13 May 2024 Mid-April marks the completion of a year of the raging civil war in Sudan. The war has caused a full-fledged humanitarian crisis and brought hidden, but long-standing, political and ethnic tensions into sharp focus. Sudan, located in north-east Africa, one of the largest resource-rich countries in the continent, covers 1.9 million […]
Continue reading
Archive | Whispering Thoughts RSS feed for this section
Whispering Thoughts No 48 Military History Part III: Modern Trends
May 6, 2024 
0 Comments
06 May 2024 From the mid-19th century, military history emphasised theoretical analysis of conflict at the expense of recording the events of a war. As mentioned in Whispering Thoughts No 47, Jomini and Clausewitz were pioneers in the field, moving the narrative away from the use of mathematical laws of war towards employing historical […]
Continue readingWhispering Thoughts No 47 Military History Part II: The Philosophy
April 25, 2024 0 Comments
25 April 2024 The study of military history is encompassed in a broad philosophical and methodological perspective. However, its philosophical underpinnings produce several questions that must be answered to have a clear understanding of the depth of the subject. What is the philosophy of military history? What are the basic assumptions that military historians […]
Continue readingWhispering Thoughts No 46 Military History Part I: The What and The Why
April 20, 2024 0 Comments
20 April 2024 War is undoubtedly the most complex human activity, especially since its inherent characteristics of danger, friction, and chance bring about an assured uncertainty to its conduct. In war, it is difficult to accurately predict the end-state—the unknowns tend to make achieving the desired goal a difficult task. A tried and tested […]
Continue readingWhispering Thoughts No 45 Making Peace with Oneself
April 13, 2024 1 Comment
13 April 2024 As the autumn of life inevitably turns to winter, it is but natural for a person to revisit past experiences. Predictably and inevitably, introspection unconsciously creeps into the reflections, a process that cannot be denied. As and when one gets a chance to have a few quiet and honest days to […]
Continue readingWhispering Thoughts No 44 Taiwan – The Flashpoint? Part III: Crystal Gazing
April 5, 2024 0 Comments
05 April 2024 The 2024 elections in Taiwan exposed the emerging generational and socio-economic fault-lines in the country. There is growing demand for greater governmental accountability and more progressive economic reform to address the high-income trap leading to the unsustainable entitlements that accompany it. Solutions to these vexing challenges will need strong political will […]
Continue readingWhispering Thoughts No 43 Taiwan – The Flashpoint Part II: Emerging Challenges
April 3, 2024 0 Comments
03 April 2024 On 13th January 2024, Taiwan elected William Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), to be its next President to be inaugurated in May, although the party lost its legislative majority. The 113-seat Legislative Yuan consists of an eclectic mix of 73 geographic constituency seats, three each low-land and high-land […]
Continue readingWhispering Thoughts No 42 Taiwan – The Flashpoint? Part I: Immediate Background
March 26, 2024 0 Comments
Canberra, 26th March 2024 Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is an island separated from mainland China by the Taiwan Strait. It is a democracy of 23 million people, governed independently since 1949. Mainland China, officially the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) asserts that there is only ‘one China’, themselves, views Taiwan as […]
Continue readingWhispering Thoughts No 41 The Art of Saying No – Gently
March 22, 2024 1 Comment
22 March 2024 Requests for one’s time, energy and assistance—from family, friends, colleagues—are a continuous stream. They can, and do, lead to over commitment. Accepting all requests tends to make one spread too thin and do things not to the best of one’s ability. All of us have, sometime or the other, said yes […]
Continue readingWhispering Thoughts No 40 Towards Living an Ideal Life
March 13, 2024 0 Comments
Canberra, 13 March 2024 Modern psychology has delved deep into the functioning of the human mind and made few startling discoveries. They found that humans are not good at realising what makes them happy (content?) and further, that humans tend to ‘mis-remember’ events that made them happy in the past. This is so because […]
Continue reading
Sanu Kainikara 
Recent Comments