
NZ depends on the rules-based world Trump is dismantling – why the silence?
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023 strategic foreign policy assessment, Navigating a shifting world, accurately foresaw a more uncertain and complex time ahead for New Zealand. But already it feels out of date. The Trump...

What was the Sykes-Picot agreement, and why does it still affect the Middle East today?
Some national borders are determined by natural phenomena like seas, mountains and rivers. Most, however, are created by people. This means the creation of borders is often a political exercise usually informed by the...

A popular model of evolution concludes that it was incredibly unlikely for humanity to evolve on Earth, and that extraterrestrial intelligence is vanishingly rare. But as experts on the entangled history of life and our...

M23 rebels are marching across eastern DRC: the interests driving players in the conflict
The current conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) resemble the situation during the Second Congo War between 1998 and 2003. This resulted in millions of deaths, with neighbouring countries especially...

With the unembarrassed audacity parties show as an election nears, the government has stolen the oppositions policy to ban foreign investors buying established homes. Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Housing Minister Clare ONeil...

The African continent finds itself in a predicament. Advanced economies in the rest of the world developed through industrialisation: their economies transformed from mainly agricultural to industrial. This involved...

Fourth industrial revolution in South Africa: inequality stands in the way of true progress
In his 2019 State of the Nation address, South Africas President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that he was creating a commission on the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). The term refers to the integration of advanced digital...