Last year, while standing on the foreshore at Nightcliff in Darwin at low tide, I watched an ascending Bell MV-22 Osprey transforming from helicopter to airplane mode. Looking down just after it passed, I saw …
Articles by: "David Ritchie"
The new German government’s response to the evolving situation between Russia and Ukraine has been both underwhelming and complicated. Along with responding to the recent spike in Covid-19, peaking at well over 100,000 new cases …
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government haven’t had a good couple of weeks. After a tortuous, deeply divisive and increasingly acrimonious debate, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU)—conservative coalition partners for almost 70 …
Europe’s problems just seem to grow worse. The huge and continuing dislocation caused by Brexit is bad enough, but the news is also disturbing on several other fronts. The continued weakening of Germany’s (and its …
Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Washington on 27 April for only the second time since Donald Trump became president. It was described as a ‘working visit’ and lasted just 22 hours, including about two and a half hours …
Malcolm Turnbull’s travel to the UK, Germany, France and Belgium next week reinforces the higher priority that his government has put on relations with key European countries. A major focus of Turnbull’s visit will be …
In the past week we’ve seen two important developments that will materially shape the new (post-Brexit) Europe. On 4 March the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) announced that about two out of every three of …
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to form a new government following the September 2017 federal election have clearly taken a toll on her. Voters share her frustration. Almost five months on, Germany still has no government, …
Nearly three months after the 24 September 2017 federal elections in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel is still trying to form a new coalition. Negotiations will continue into the new year. Her Christian Democrat/Christian Social Union …
Germans have voted to keep Angela Merkel as chancellor, and expressed deep unhappiness about her Christian Democrat Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) – Social Democrat (SPD) coalition government. The SPD, the party of former chancellors Willy …
Angela Merkel’s frustration, clearly aimed at the United States and Britain, boiled over in her extraordinary speech in Munich late last month. ‘The times in which we can fully count on others are to some …
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said something startling last month at the Munich Security Conference. He rejected, explicitly, the so-called ‘liberal world order’, asserted that ‘the post-Cold War order’ had come to an end and …