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Tom Switzer

Tom Switzer is Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, and presenter of Between the Lines on ABC Radio National.

Articles by Tom Switzer (9)

  • Tom Switzer 6 Jul 2016 14:30

    Chilcot Inquiry: What Blair knew in the rush to war

    The Chilcot report into the invasion of Iraq will be released later this evening (AEST), and it should be a devastating indictment of how Britain was misled into an illegal, unnecessary, unpopular, foolish and ultimately disastrous war in 2003. Why do I say this?
  • Tom Switzer 12 Jun 2015 12:17

    Don't blame Obama for ISIS

    This week marked one year since the ISIS's takeover of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. Since then, a Republican foreign-policy consensus has emerged in Washington which blames the breakdown in Iraqi security and the rise of Sunni jihadists on one person: Barack Obama. From presidential candidates to conservative pundits to centre-right think tanks, the argument goes like this: when George W Bush left office in 2009, Iraq was largely at peace.
  • Tom Switzer 20 Mar 2015 19:10

    Malcolm Fraser's foreign policy wisdom

    Many Liberals and conservatives have looked on sadly over the past three decades at the career of Malcolm Fraser. Like British prime minister Ted Heath, Fraser started off as a man of the Right but ended up as anything but. But some political questions transcend party, and in the post-Cold War era, ideological divisions on foreign policy all too often foster simplistic divisions and create artificial alliances.
  • Tom Switzer 19 Mar 2015 14:50

    Scowcroft at 90: A tribute to a wise man

    Scowcroft (C) with President Bush (L) and White House Chief of Staff John Sununu in 1989. (Wikipedia.) Today marks the 90th birthday of America's leading foreign-policy strategist of the last 40 years. No, not Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security advisers to presidents Richard Nixon (1969-75) and Jimmy Carter (1977-81) respectively.
  • Tom Switzer 11 Feb 2015 15:33

    70 years on, lessons from Yalta

    The past week has marked the 70th anniversary of Yalta, one of the most controversial diplomatic conferences in modern history. On 4-11 February 1945, the 'Big Three' political giants of the Allied cause – US president Franklin D Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin – gathered in Yalta, a small town in the Soviet Crimea. The goal of the conference was to shape a post-war peace that represented not just a collective security order but a plan to giv
  • Tom Switzer 25 Nov 2014 12:22

    Hagel was never a good fit for Obama White House

    US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel unexpectedly resigned this morning (AEST), the apparent victim of heavily criticised Obama Administration foreign-policy failures and brooding discontent within the White House. Hagel, one of just two Republicans in the Obama White House, gave no definitive reason for his sudden decision to leave the Pentagon after less than two years in the job. But there is strong speculation he was fired.