Ramesh Thakur
Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary-general, is emeritus professor at the Australian National University and Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He is a former Senior Research Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute and editor of The nuclear ban treaty: a transformational reframing of the global nuclear order.
Ramesh's articles (274 total)
8 October 2025
Trump’s Gaza peace plan: Today, tomorrow and the day after
Back in January last year, my Toda Policy Brief 182 was published with the title “Israel and Gaza: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”.
23 August 2025
Trump’s attacks on BRICS could strengthen its cohesion
President Donald Trump, exploiting US geopolitical heft and market power, has ushered in “a new world order of tariffs”.
28 December 2024
The risk of a nuclear breakout by Iran has increased
The Donald Trump-JD Vance victory marks a repudiation of the post-Cold War neoconservative Washington playbook of militarised responses to foreign policy challenges. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence-designate, shares their anxiety over America’s addiction to intervening in foreign conflicts not of vital interest to the US, whose net effect has been to destabilise countries and entire regions.
2 October 2024
The challenge of nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council: Adapt or Die
The United Nations is the biggest incubator of global norms to govern the world and the vital core of the rules-based global multilateral order. Four parts of the UN system have complementary roles in efforts to regulate and eliminate nuclear weapons.
12 September 2024
The long arc of India-Russia relations
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Russia on 8 and 9 July and embraced President Vladimir Putin. The outcome of the visit included mutually beneficial substantive agreements, but damaged India’s reputation in the West at a time when President Joe Biden hosted the NATO summit in Washington. The BBC featured an analysis under the title Modi’s balancing act as he meets Putin in Moscow. On 23 August Modi went to Kyiv, the first visit to independent Ukraine by an Indian PM. The BBC headlined it as ‘Diplomatic tightrope for Modi as he visits Kyiv after Moscow.
13 August 2024
What stands in the way of a nuclear weapon-free world?
Stronger treaties are needed more than ever as Hiroshima marks A-bomb anniversary.
10 June 2024
Voters tell Modi: Keep going, but under caution
The biggest takeaway from India’s eighteenth general election is that the death of Indian democracy has been much exaggerated. The exercise was a resounding win for the election machinery of the world’s most populous democracy. The entire exercise and the outcome affirm once again the competence, professionalism, and integrity of the country’s election machinery. ‘India is starting to look like a Central Asian dictatorship,’ said an article in the Australian Financial Review on 7 May. Really? That particular analyst will not be the only one with egg on their face.
2 February 2024
Israel and Gaza: Yesterday, today and tomorrow
Veterans of Middle East affairs say wryly that anyone who claims to understand the Israel-Palestine conflict has been misinformed. This paper reviews the complex and emotionally fraught history of the Conflict; looks at 10/7 and Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza in retaliation, and then speculates on possible pathways to the conflict’s resolution that could amount to more than another truce in the endless cycle of violence.
14 October 2023
While Australia votes, India-Pakistan cricket is downstream of politics
On 14 October, my attention will wander between three unconnected stories as they unfold in real time. I will be in New Zealand on that general election date. Polls indicate the Labour government will be replaced by a centre-right coalition. But the peculiarities of the electoral system make election results and the outcome of post-election negotiations between the major parties and potential allies teasingly uncertain.
26 September 2023
Assassination allegations: The caution of Canada’s allies is well grounded
Seemingly out of nowhere, Canada and India are embroiled in an escalating diplomatic crisis after PM Justin Trudeau implicated India in the June 18 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent British Columbia (BC) Sikh leader. India has strongly rejected the ‘unsubstantiated’ charge as ‘absurd’.
13 September 2023
US decides to supply depleted uranium shells to Ukraine
At the G20 summit in Bali last year, most of the world’s most influential leaders had strongly deplored ‘the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine’. By contrast, the joint declaration from the just concluded summit in New Delhi does not mention Russia by name. Instead, it talks about ‘the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war in Ukraine with regard to global food and energy security’. It calls on states to ‘refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition’ and notes ‘different views and assessments of the situation’. Not surprisingly, Russia hailed the unexpectedly soft...
14 July 2023
NATO enlargement enthusiasts look to the Indo-Pacific
Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general (SG), famously said the purpose of NATO was to ‘keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down’.
9 July 2023
The Wagner coup: Strategic setback or military deception?
The Wagner coup equation doesn’t compute. It just doesn’t add up. Herbert Wulf gave us a concise summary of the surreal 24 hours that gripped the world. But there are missing pieces of the puzzle that we haven’t been given. And now we learn that the Wagner boss is back in St Petersburg, Russia.
9 June 2023
U.S. allies look for their place in the emerging global order
America and the West are more isolated from the rest of the world than at any time since WWII.
8 June 2023
Four nuclear myths
The hubris and arrogance of the nuclear-armed states leaves the world exposed to the risk of sleepwalking into a nuclear disaster. The case for nuclear weapons rests on a superstitious magical Realism that puts faith in the utility of the bomb and the theory of deterrence. Here are four myths about the utility of nuclear weapons.
15 May 2023
Nuclear weapons may not be in Seoul’s best interest
Going nuclear would likely hurt rather than enhance South Korea’s global prestige.
12 April 2023
NATO’s mission creep remains a threat to European and world peace
In September 2014, in the aftermath of the Maidan coup that saw yet another in the distressingly long list of US-engineered regime change coups in foreign lands where the government proved insufficiently deferential to the ruling Washington foreign policy elite, I argued that NATO’s mission creep had become a threat to European and world peace. The article was published in The Japan Times on 9 September 2014 and reprinted in Pearls and Irritations on 29 October 2016.
11 April 2023
The minefields that could sink AUKUS SSNs
The most consequential aspect of AUKUS is it embeds the UK and the US firmly into Australia’s Indo-Pacific strategy. But what if the secret US calculation behind AUKUS is to goad China into war before China’s superiority outpaces US and allied capabilities? A war that China does not want and will likely lose?
31 March 2023
Australia is an important Quad partner that India cannot trust
Despite flourishing relations, Australia is governed by a ruling elite whose commitment to a rules based order is suspect, selective and risks dragging India into a catastrophic conflict with China.
23 February 2023
What are the possible endgames in the Ukraine war?
Prudent nations would do well to prepare for peace even in the midst of an armed conflict.
30 January 2023
What’s not to like about Rudd’s appointment as Canberra’s man in Washington?
On Dec. 20, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the appointment of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as his country’s next ambassador to the U.S.
8 November 2022
The mystery of the Nord Stream pipeline explosions
On 26 September, the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines were badly damaged in a deliberate act of sabotage that released huge amounts of methane gas. Almost all the Western media has pointed the finger at Russia but Moscow blames actors hostile to it. There are four plausible suspects: Russia, the US, Poland and Ukraine. Given the actors involved, the issues at stake and the impotence of the UN system caught in the crossfire of great power rivalry, an impartial independent investigation is extremely unlikely. In classic thrillers style, it’s worth looking at means, opportunity and, most revealingly, motive.
6 September 2022
Gorbachev changed the world
Most people have modest aspirations of being able to feed, house, clothe and educate their families, assist their children to climb one rung higher on the social ladder and spend their autumn years in comfortable retirement. Some aim a little higher and strive to make a mark in a chosen field of human activity. There are very few of whom it can be said: they changed the world.
13 August 2022
Learning the right nuclear lessons from Ukraine
The Hiroshima gathering affirms the importance of nuclear arms control and disarmament.
24 July 2022
Modi and the polarisation of India
Modi must reverse the sectarian polarisation, rein in the hate-spewing Hindutva mobs and practice as well as preach inclusion.
9 July 2022
The journey from nuclear non-proliferation to prohibition and disarmament: roadmaps, roadblocks and speedbumps
This is the text of the address delivered by Ramesh Thakur at the launch of The Nuclear Ban Treaty: A Transformational Reframing of the Global Nuclear Order (Routledge, 2022) at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation on Friday, 24 June 2022.
21 May 2022
Truth - the first casualty of war
Wars are complex issues with blame shared albeit not equally distributed among all sides. They are unpredictable and can lead to perverse, including lose-lose outcomes. In a war with the world’s biggest nuclear power, a dispassionate analysis of costs (of victory and defeat), risks and constraints is especially advisable. Yet this is mostly missing in the one-eyed mainstream media (MSM) framing of the Ukraine war: Russia bad, West good; Putin evil, Zelensky superhero. Almost all coverage falls into one of three categories: the heroism and valour of Ukrainians; a Russian column, tank or ship destroyed; and Russian atrocities. Although all...
11 April 2022
Russian and US parallel pathways to a nuclear conflict
Biden escaped rigorous critical scrutiny that is the normal lot of presidential campaigns with the help of major media and Big Tech platforms that despised Trump. The world is now discovering just how grave the real-world consequences can be when reality bites back.
21 March 2022
The tale of two airlines, Iranian Air IR 655 and Malaysian Air MH 17 and double standards
While in Iranian territorial waters, USS Vincennes fired two surface-to-air missiles to bring down the Iranian plane with the loss of all 290 on board on 3 July 1988. The captain and crew of the Vincennes were later awarded medals. Vice President George H W Bush insisted he would ‘never apologise for the United States – I don’t care what the facts are’.
17 March 2022
Putin's actions in Ukraine are vile, but Russia was sorely provoked by NATO
The moral outrage insisting on retaliation over the invasion of Ukraine ennobles the American war machine.
13 March 2022
Ukraine and nuclear risks
Three overarching goals have informed the Asia Pacific Leadership Network's (APLN) approach to nuclear threats since its inception a decade ago: the imperative to hold firm against proliferation, the matching importance of credible steps toward disarmament, and defusing geopolitical tensions that heighten nuclear risks. All three are at play in Ukraine.
11 March 2022
The slide to war with Russia. Part 1 & 2...First posted on October 26, 2016
God Created war so the Americans could learn geography
28 February 2022
Putin may be executing NATO's 1999 playbook, not Hitler's from the 1930's
The brutal reality is NATO played hardball, won in the short term but now finds itself at the receiving end as Putin decides it’s payback time.
16 February 2022
False flag meets fake news: The Ukrainian invasion that wasn't
Organisations like NATO never die, but reinvent themselves to keep growing.
7 June 2021
India’s suspect ‘Quad’ credentials
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s carefully cultivated competence bubble has been punctured by his government's ineffectiveness amid the second wave of the COVID-19 virus that has ravaged his country.
5 May 2021
India's Coronavirus emergency tells a story poorly understood
The blanket and punitive travel ban for Australians returning from India is neither justified, nor does it make much sense in the efforts to curb the spreading of the virus. The Indian Coronavirus emergency is also raising many questions of the policies imposed around the world during the pandemic.
22 April 2021
China's geopolitical reach extends to Iran
After an attack on its main nuclear facility in Natanz on 11 April, quite likely by Israel, President Hasan Rouhani said that Iran will begin enriching uranium to 60 per cent. From a technical point of view, that would put Iran within a short sprint to full-fledged weapon-grade (90 per cent) uranium enrichment.
21 January 2021
The Irrepressibles tame the Invincibles in their impregnable fortress
A transformative cricket series will do more to strengthen Australia–India bonds than any amount of public diplomacy.
10 June 2020
The ScoMosa Summit
The value of personal diplomacy was on display in the Morrison-Modi Summit last week – quickly dubbed ‘the ScoMosa’ summit after some culinary Twitter banter between the leaders. But the virtual dialogue had great substance, paving the way for closer bilateral relations against the backdrop of a more aggressive China and less reliable US.
3 June 2020
Lockdown mea culpa: Norway sets an example
On 5 May, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health published an important report on Norway’s experience of dealing with the Coronavirus crisis. The text that follows is a verbatim extract of the equivalent of the executive summary from the report, using Google translation.
30 May 2020
Let’s learn from this pandemic to be better prepared for the really big one
On 26 May, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said if Australia’s mortality rate matched the UK’s, we’d have had 14,000 Covid-19 deaths. This is just tautological rubbish. It would be just as true and equally pointless to say if Australia’s mortality rate matched Vietnam’s, we’d have zero deaths.
28 May 2020
A great documentary from Canada on the Iraq War
I strongly encourage all readers of Pearls and Irritations to watch this remarkable new documentary from the National Film Board of Canada on PM Jean Chretien's decision to say no to the Iraq War in 2003.
27 May 2020
The rise and fall of coronavirus modelling
Will the Great Lockdown’s epitaph be ‘The Greatest Mistake in History’?
25 May 2020
Coronavirus data prove Australia is in Asia
Cross-jurisdiction comparisons are notoriously difficult and it’s almost impossible to prove lockdowns have saved lives, except by falling back tautologically on the epidemiological model’s own projections of mortality figures with no lockdown.
14 May 2020
Scapegoating the WHO as the CHO (Japan Times 4.5.20)
Now is not the time to demonize and defund the WHO
6 May 2020
Sound the Trumpists: The deputy sheriff rides again – Part Three: Goading the dragon
Cockwomblette: A neologism coined to describe the lesser antipodean cousin of the cockwomble (see Monday’s Part One). Its natural habitat is the bush capital of the world; the inheritor of an obsequious line of deputy sheriffs.
5 May 2020
Sound the Trumpists: The deputy sheriff rides again – Part Two: India and Australia
Consider the case of India. What exactly does ‘social distancing’ – elegant as it is as an abstract concept – mean in practice in Indian conditions, a country of 1.3bn people with a population density of 464 per km2 compared to 153 in China?
4 May 2020
Sound the Trumpists: The deputy sheriff rides again – Part One: The global landscape
Cockwomble: A person, usually male, prone to making outrageously stupid statements and/or engaging in inappropriate behaviour while generally having a very high opinion of their own wisdom and importance. Presently exemplified by Agent Orange who dwells in the casa blanca in the geopolitical capital of the world and is the inheritor of a long line of global sheriffs.
27 April 2020
BRUCE W. JENTLESON. Compete with China, but No New Cold War
The balance to be struck is to confront China as warranted, compete as necessary, and cooperate when possible