A twenty-first century riddle of real politik throve: what did the Tongan Prime Minister’s zoo, Australia, and the European Union have in common? Two factors illustrating how preserving the unequal distribution of wealth between northern hemisphere states, and the global south, determined international relations: climate change and asylum seekers. (Idrissov, 2015; Al Jazeera, 2015; Perraudin, 2015). In context, the ill-fated decision making of political leaders had allowed climate change and asylum seekers to overshadow world affairs as leading markers of the present age. (Quartz, 2015; Hedges, 2010).