One of my favourite blogs marked its third anniversary yesterday. I have been reading the pseudonymous Chirol, Curzon and Younghusband since mid-2005, and their blog has just gone from strength to strength, with excellent posts, fascinating travel diaries, and an attractive, functional redesign earlier this year. If you don’t read them, you should. Also, belated congratulations to the three authors on their respective marriages – all in the last eighteen months!
Oceania Day
Peter of The Strategist and I embarked on a fruitful collaboration with Coming Anarchy recently, in which we wrote weekly guest posts on security issues in the South Pacific. Here is a link to the Oceania Day archives at Coming Anarchy, and here are the links to the individual posts:
- Dark Side of Paradise: Conflict in Melanesia (Peter)
- Oceania’s regions: Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia (Phil)
- Oceania: The “arc of instability†and the “Africanization of the South Pacific†(Phil)
- A Long Game: The Rise of China in Oceania (Peter)
- Transnational crime and street gangs in Oceania (Phil)
- Fanning the Embers: China and Instability in Oceania (Peter)
- The White Man’s Anger (Peter)
- Cursed by riches: Melanesian resource wars (Phil)
- The Fighter’s Guard: Australia and the ‘Arc of Instability’ (Peter)
I would like to thank Younghusband for making it happen, and Peter for the informed contributions. It was great to have the chance to contribute to a blog like Coming Anarchy.
Also, I just wanted to reproduce this graphic I made illustrating the South Pacific “arc of instability”:
PS: Normal transmission should resume at Pacific Empire in 2-4 weeks time. I’m finishing off my final research papers before preparing for exams, and Luke is working and job hunting. Apologies to those of you who have emailed or commented without reply – I haven’t forgotten you!