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Articles by Malcolm Jorgensen
Rehabilitating the “Neocons” is no Zeitenwende
The old adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is prevailing in 2025 Berlin foreign policy circles, where an antagonistic history with leading Republicans is making way for a shared disdain of the Trump administration. The US architects of the 2003 Iraq War and “war on terror” under President George W. Bush were once synonymous with the breakdown of the Transatlantic Alliance and post-War international order.
Abandoning the rules-based order is no solution
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in his recent Senate confirmation hearing that “the postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us”. Those words appear to herald a repudiation by the incoming Trump administration of what Washington and its allies have termed the “rules-based international order”.
A “Democratic Exception” to ICC Jurisdiction: The Law and Politics of Double Standards
On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and the former Minister of Defence, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in the ongoing Israel-Gaza War. Equally contentious was the response of leading Western states – including Germany and France – who have questioned or openly rejected treaty obligations to enforce the warrants.
The German National Security Strategy and International Legal Order’s Contested Political Framing
The German National Security Strategy and International Legal Order’s Contested Political Framing – EJIL: Talk!
Log-jam in the Indo-Pacific economic policy space
In a region that has over the years seen the emergence of multiple forums and agreements with an economic dimension – ASEAN, ASEM, APEC, RCEP, TPPA, CPTPP – the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) could easily join, as one tweet put it, this Asian alphabet soup. The question is whether IPEF, launched in May this year, would complement or instead displace existing regional economic institutions.
Solomon Islands-China security pact: A feminist foreign policy answer
Solomon Islands has signed a security pact with China and set off a flurry of foreign policy chatter in Australia and the region. Understandably, the focus of the discussion is on why this has happened, what this means, what to do next, and of course, because Australia is in the midst of an election campaign, who should be blamed. The major players in Australia all acknowledge that Solomon Islands as a sovereign nation has the right to enter into agreements with any other nation of its choosing.
Is bipartisanship on national security a good thing?
In the mass of commentary on the Morrison government’s feverish attempts to paint Labor as “weak” on national security and not to be trusted with China policy, one word has been prominent: bipartisanship. The pithy Oxford Languages’ definition of bipartisanship is “agreement or cooperation between two political parties that usually oppose each other’s policies”. Some areas of national security policy have a long history of bipartisanship.
Yemen: the search for leverage after Afghanistan
Concerns are growing about the ramifications of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The ripple effects of the pull-out and its urgent consequences have bolstered Islamist ambitions – not only in Afghanistan but beyond. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of a “real danger (that) terrorist groups may feel enthusiastic about what happened and have ambitions beyond what they thought a few months ago”.
Debating the alliance
Ed’s note: The Interpreter is featuring select articles from the past year over the summer. Check back for more this week. Book review: Emma Shortis, Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States (Hardie Grant, 2021) Depending on your perspective, Australia’s China debate might be relatively sophisticated, or resemble shell-churned ground in a war zone. Either way, it’s noisy and vigorous. Australia’s debate on the United States, by contrast, is mostly quiet and cautious.
India fears a poison harvest from Afghanistan
The takeover of the Afghan government by the hard-line Islamist Taliban was swift and bloodless – at least on the day the group marched into the capital, Kabul. It means a u-turn for the country domestically, away from progressive policies and relatively liberal climate, and a return to the restrictive doctrines of the 1990s. It also means that geopolitically, the regional landscape will undoubtedly shift, something that is particularly unwelcome for India.
Risks versus opportunities in national security thinking
National security thinkers follow a distinct pattern when they consider Australia’s future defence requirements. For most, the preferred point of view is risk-based. A policy response is framed in military-diplomatic terms, generally a proposal for increased capability and support for the ANZUS alliance. However, such an approach downplays other potential threat offsets, namely non-risk based opportunities.
Round 1 to the Republican: Mitt Romney Comes out Swinging
Verdicts on the first presidential debate of 2012 overwhelmingly favour Governor Mitt Romney. Romney articulated his message with a sense of clarity about the political ideas and principles he represents. In contrast, President Barack Obama conveyed his arguments with the deftness of a policy wonk, the clarity of his own vision overshadowed by dense policy explanations.
The China challenge: Highlights of The Interpreter in 2020
Interpreter columnist Greg Earl started the year noting the economic challenge of the two big Cs – China and climate change. A few weeks later, there was suddenly a third: corona. Roland Rajah: Australia’s tourism and education exports to China would appear most in the firing line. So it proved, if not for the pandemic as much as politics. Wild speculation about the source of Covid-19 didn’t help, any more than Beijing’s brittle attitude to media criticism.
Sri Lanka’s elections: Another step in the wrong direction
Sri Lanka just held a parliamentary election and the results were unsurprising. The Sri Lanka People’s Front (SLPP) dominated, winning 145 seats and nearly 60% of the vote. The SLPP and its allies even obtained a two-thirds majority, meaning they can easily rework Sri Lanka’s constitution and further undermine democracy. The vote reiterates the mandate that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was given during the November 2019 presidential poll.
China Overturning the Global System From Within
China Overturning the Global System From Within By contesting basic principles of international law, China is doing far more damage than is often recognised. Read Full Article »
China is overturning the rules-based order from within
Persistent debates over the meaning of the “liberal” or “rules-based” international order demonstrate a point of agreement among scholars and policymakers: the real power of the concept when employed as a metaphor for a disrupted global order. Less well understood in comparison is the architecture of the order as a hierarchy of rules, with the most authoritative and determinate being the rules of international law at its foundation.
International law takes a step towards Asia
As the historical development of international law has been dominated by European principles and doctrine, there is an argument that public international law has always been associated with a Western-centric view of the world.
The Afghanistan Investigation and the International Legal Order
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has the dubious honor of being among the most visible focal points for conflicted U.S. attitudes toward the international legal order. Tensions between the U.S. and the ICC, never entirely absent, have now been renewed after the ICC Appeals Chamber authorized the long-delayed investigation into alleged war crimes committed during the war in Afghanistan—including by U.S. armed forces and CIA personnel.
The Afghanistan Investigation and the International Legal Order
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has the dubious honor of being among the most visible focal points for conflicted U.S. attitudes toward the international legal order. Tensions between the U.S. and the ICC, never entirely absent, have now been renewed after the ICC Appeals Chamber authorized the long-delayed investigation into alleged war crimes committed during the war in Afghanistan—including by U.S. armed forces and CIA personnel.
The Afghanistan Investigation and the International Legal Order
Published by The Lawfare Institute in Cooperation With The International Criminal Court (ICC) has the dubious honor of being among the most visible focal points for conflicted U.S. attitudes toward the international legal order. Tensions between the U.S. and the ICC, never entirely absent, have now been renewed after the ICC Appeals Chamber authorized the long-delayed investigation into alleged war crimes committed during the war in Afghanistan—including by U.S. armed forces and CIA personnel.
Assange May Have Committed a Crime, But the Espionage Act Is the Wrong Law to Prosecute
Is Wikileaks leader Julian Assange a journalist? If journalism is a profession, it is because, like other professions, it has standards and a code of ethics. As an example, a journalist may make use of information that she or he obtains from any source, but a journalist would not participate in the theft of information. So, I’m skeptical that Assange is a journalist.
Internationalizing the Monroe Doctrine: From Venezuela to Golan Heights and Back Around
A remarkable diplomatic intervention has been published by United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who, along with the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, declares that “International Law Backs The Trump Golan Policy.” The opinion justifies President Donald Trump’s recent proclamation that the United States will recognize the Golan Heights, acquired from Syria by Israeli military force in 1967, as “part of the State of Israel.” The U.S. legal claims are incomprehensible in terms of any recognized...
Australia and Indonesia trade: deal (not quite) done
The signing on 4 March of the Indonesia Australia–Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) has been hailed as a major bilateral trade agreement and a diplomatic breakthrough given recent tensions between Canberra and Jakarta. However, now the negotiations are concluded, there may still be some challenging hurdles ahead to ensure the agreement’s ratification and entry into force.
International Law Cannot Save the Rules-Based Order
A curious aspect of the many accounts about meanings and significance of the “rules-based order” has been the relative silence from international lawyers. It is increasingly clear that this core aspect of the rules-based order, stability fixed on universal legal rules, is now all but unattainable in the Indo-Pacific. The most authoritative rules on which global order is based are precisely those agreed between states to have legally binding status.
A Note on FISA "Verification"
Last week, former FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees in closed session. When, at Comey’s request, a transcript was released shortly thereafter, mainstream news outlets mostly yawned, finding relatively little new or noteworthy. But numerous Trumpophile outlets had a different reaction, seizing on Comey’s acknowledgement that the now-notorious “Steele Dossier” was still in the process of being vetted when Comey left in the Bureau.
Is the US Congress the main impediment to a rules-based order?
President Barack Obama finally has authority from the US Congress for advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a signature foreign policy of his final term in office. The TPP aims to establish a free trade zone around the Pacific Rim covering 40% of the global economy, while excluding China. The future of the agreement had been left in doubt after the President's own party initially voted against granting him trade promotion authority, with some members now vowing to defeat the TPP itself.
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