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Chandran Nair
Chandran Nair
Chandran Nair is the founder of the Global Institute for Tomorrow and member of the Club of Rome. He is also the author of ‘Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World’ and ‘The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy and Society’.

To shake up how finance is leveraged and directed to tackle priority issues, governments need to take the lead and set new sustainability standards and policy parameters – not leave it to the whims of financiers.

The ‘military-industrial complex’, a key part of the political economy of the US, has built a global geopolitical infrastructure that fuels regional tensions and in turn both nurtures and enables countries as well as private actors to push for and capitalise on conflict.

Systemic change at scale must be led by governments with requisite political power and intent, well-defined objectives, and authority to act without fear or favour.

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The West has an unenviable track record of repeatedly failing to use diplomacy to resolve geopolitical issues while resorting to coercion and force, resulting in an approach that ignores and suffocates other attempts, including China’s most recent efforts to broker peace.

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Western media’s biased reporting reflects an inability to come to terms with the emergence of the post-Western world and has failed to account for an increasingly perceptive and critical audience in the non-Western world.

Truss’ brief tenure has shattered illusion of democracy as be-all and end-all of approaches to governing societies and serving citizens’ needs, Chandran Nair writes.

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The world needs to appreciate the rapid shifts in the global order arising from the US’ toxic domestic situation, and how its political elite distracts people from its decline with an aggressive foreign policy anchored in outdated doctrines.

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After outsourcing its security to the US and Nato, Europe now finds itself in a pseudo-proxy war. Asia should learn from this lack of leadership, writes Chandran Nair.

The racism that sparked Black Lives Matter only scratches the surface of the problem; global trade reinforces it, sport plays upon it and education colonises our minds, writes Chandran Nair.

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Washington’s Summit for Democracy has made half the world a pariah by defining as ‘authoritarian’ any country that does not share its choice of political system, writes Chandran Nair.

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Rich countries are in denial that consumptive lifestyles are the cause of climate change; thus they turn to pseudoscience and flawed market-based solutions in a bid to continue with business as usual.

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The West’s disingenuous position on Israel and its coordinated attacks on China have blown the cover of the liberal narratives it uses to hide a postcolonial, imperialist agenda, writes Chandran Nair.

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US pre-eminence was sustained by a grand bargain: it could sit at the top if it did not abuse its position – or, at least, keep its abuse to bearable levels.

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Southeast Asian forest fires affected many more people than Australia’s bush fires. But they were eclipsed because the climate debate hinges on a Western framework that distorts the problem.

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Hong Kong needs a way out of its firestorm of protests and violence – and it starts with the government admitting that, by any reasonable definition, it has failed. Another suggestion? Allow Beijing to help.

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The haze that hit Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in 2015 has since largely been avoided – but this has much to do with luck, and only governments can make the fundamental changes needed, writes Chandran Nair.

The world’s largest democracy, now awaiting the results of its weeks-long election process, needs to become an effective state that can deliver improvements to people’s lives, especially for the millions whose basic needs are barely met.