What I'm Reading
March 21: Five reads that piqued my interest this week
Machiavelli’s The Prince
This was one of those books that had sat on my bookshelf for more than 15 years — I bought a copy at Manuka bookstore in 2010 in Canberra for $6 according to the receipt I found hidden between the last pages of the book when I finished it — but had never gotten around to reading.
I plucked it from my bookshelf a few weeks ago needing some reading material for the sauna that was cheap and I didn’t mind if it got destroyed in the heat and wet.
By the time I finished this book was bound no longer and an assortment of pages but I loved every one of them. With the world facing so much upheaval, the threat of conflict and what looks to be the subversion of democracy taking place in the United States, I’m not sure there was a better time than 2025 to read The Prince.
I’m a total fan of short books. As I scan bookstores and my friend’s bookshelves (is this something you do too when you go to someone’s house? I totally judge my mates by their bookshelves!) I’m constantly wondering — when did books get so big and why do people need so many more words these days?
The joy of Niccolò Machiavelli is that he is capable of making such profound points in so few words. His pithy one-liners have come to define political behaviour and Machiavelli has a bad name for cunning and manipulation but I didn’t get this reading his letters.
Rather I found them the manual for how to acquit modern politics. So many of his observations remain true and for me and where I’ve landed in my interests, his musings on how to think about defence, protection and shoring up rule particularly resonated.
He was such a good judge of human character — I laughed at so many of his cutting observations as they chimed with many of the political characters I’ve obseverved over two-plus decades of journalism.
Some of my favourite quotes in no particular order:
‘And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.’
‘He who becomes a Prince through the favour of the people should always keep on good terms with them; which it is easy for him to do, since all they ask is not to be oppressed.’
‘Therefore the best fortress is to be found in the love of the people, for although you may have fortresses they will not save you if you are hated by the people.’
‘There is no other way of guarding against adulation, than to make people understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth.’
‘The people, as Cicero says, may be ignorant, but they can recognise the truth and will readily yield when some trustworthy man explains it to them.’
‘Experience shows that only rulers and republics with their own armies make serious progress, while mercenaries bring nothing but trouble. And a republic with a citizen army is less likely to fall victim to a coup than a republic paying for mercenary armies.’
Ok, you get the gist. Highly recommended.
Bibi and Trump flout the constitution
I really enjoyed this astute observation from Thomas Friedman, drawing the parallels between Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu has fired the head of Israel’s equivalent of the FBI — Shin Bet — something that has never happened before. This act follows the Israeli Prime Minister’s attempts to water down the strength of the independent judiciary.
Bibi himself is on trial for corruption and should absent himself from making any appointments in law enforcement agencies that might be involved in his own trials.
This is setting up a constitutional crisis unlike anything Israel has ever seen. Sound familiar?
As the Times reported, the Trump administration is heading to a ‘constitutional showdown with the judicial branch of government’ as a result of ‘airplane loads of Venezuelan detainees deplaned in El Salvador even though a federal judge had ordered that the planes reverse course and return the detainees to the United States.’
Time to stop kidding ourselves, folks.
The rule of law is in danger in both America and Israel if some red lines are not drawn and defended right now.
Trump will seek third term says Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon was once Trump’s adviser and is certainly the ideological brains behind the Make America Great Again movement (MAGA), so while there is now distance between Trump and Bannon, there is still plenty of reason to pay attention to what he says.
This week, he told former CNN journalist Chris Cuomo that ‘they’ were trying to define the definition of a term limit. US Presidents are prohibited by the Constitution from seeking more than two terms.
‘We’re working on it. I think we’ll have a couple of alternatives,’ Bannon told NewsNation’s ‘CUOMO’ when asked how Trump could overcome term limits.
‘We’ll see what the definition of term limit is.’
Bannon expressed confidence in this effort, comparing it to Trump’s 2024 comeback.
‘I’m a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028,’ Bannon said. ‘We’ve had greater long shots than Trump 2028.’ He added that they’re ‘not prepared to talk about it publicly, but in a couple of months, I think we will be.’
When pressed on whether he was suggesting revolution or overthrow, Bannon rejected that characterization, describing himself as a ‘huge believer in democracy’ while claiming the country is experiencing a ‘1932-type realignment’ comparable to the FDR era.
‘We’re in the middle of a 1932-type realignment if we can continue to have populist nationalist policies,’ Bannon said. ‘We have African-Americans coming to our side. We have Hispanics coming to our side.’
He described the current administration’s actions as a ‘revolution of common sense to deconstruct the administrative state’ and claimed anti-democratic forces are working through the courts to ‘obstruct a sitting president’ from fulfilling his executive mandate.
Is Starmer’s Coalition of the Willing falling apart?
I’ve detected more than a bit of schadenfreude in some quarters at the apparent unravelling of Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron’s push to form a Coalition of the Willing to provide military security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of any peace deal.
More than 30 countries, including non-EU countries Australia, New Zealand and Canada have offered support but the idea of fielding tens of thousands of allied troops in Ukraine is diminishing.
It’s not necessarily a blow to Starmer, his leadership has already sent a signal, but it is more damaging to Macron if this doesn’t come together in a meaningful way, as he has been the one most prominently pushing for European ‘boots on the ground’.
There is clearly a major disconnect between the political will and the military reality — most of these countries are battling severe under-resourcing of their defence forces themselves, making any long-term deployment a tough sell.
It’s too early to say the Coalition of the Willing has fallen apart, but insiders tell me there is a huge difference between what the politicians and military planners say.
The article below captures this mood but a couple of caveats, the UK Telegraph is dubbed the ‘Torygraph’ for good reason and Italy has always been vehemently opposed to defending Ukraine with troops.
There are no guarantees, moreover, that the US would provide the necessary intelligence-sharing and air cover requirements a Ukrainian peacekeeping force would need to keep the Russians at bay.
Such is the dysfunctional nature of Europe’s current military dispositions, that they could soon find themselves sitting ducks for the Russians. This is particularly true of the UK military, where a generation or more of defence cuts means that only about 30 of our remaining 120 tanks are currently operational.
Fortunately, the evident flaws in Starmer’s coalition plan are now starting to surface, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offering some refreshing clarity on the venture, insisting that sending European peacekeeping troops to Ukraine would be ‘risky, complex and ineffective.’
Octopus jumps shark
A dream headline thanks to a natural encounter captured by researchers and their drone in New Zealand.
We launched the drone, put the GoPro in the water and saw something unforgettable: an octopus perched atop the shark’s head, clinging on with its tentacles.
This `sharktopus’ was a mysterious find indeed – octopus are mostly on the seabed while short-fin mako sharks don’t favour the deep.
We moved on after 10 minutes so I can’t tell you how what happened next. The octopus may have been in for quite the experience since the world’s fastest shark species can reach 50 kilometres per hour
This summer, sharks have been on people’s minds. We’ve had the ‘Please don’t attack me bro’ kayaker tailed by a great white shark in remote Northland, the drone footage of a bronze whaler cruising in the shallows at Ōhope Beach, and a number of hasty beach evacuations.
And that’s my list for this edition.
Not so many media engagements for me this week due to being on a long haul to Australia via Singapore!
But I did chat with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Global Roaming podcast about what’s next for Australian foreign policy.
Please do send me anything that’s caught your eye, I enjoy knowing what you’ve been reading.
The Prince resonates through the ages - timeless advice. Unfortunately not so short but I would put Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" in the same class along with some early Karl Marx especially the 18th Brumaire of Louise Napoleon Bonaparte - "Hegel remarks somewhere that all events and personages in history occur twice - he forgot to add the first time as tragedy, the second as farce" and "the weight of dead generations lay like a nightmare on the brain of the living".
Has anybody recommended The Discourses yet? Machiavelli's advice for republics might be quite timely just now!