Pearls and Irritations

Alison Broinowski

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. The latest hobgoblins.

    On the eve of an APEC meeting, with impeccable timing, Australia’s lack of foreign policy independence was once again on display for our Asian neighbours: mimicry of US decisions, militarism abroad, securitised borders, containment of China, and fear of Islam. Indonesians and Malaysians recognise the pattern from long experience. Another terrorist event in Melbourne could not have been better timed to reinforce it.   (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Whose rules? What order?

    As baby diplomats we learned always to vote in good company. Countries, we understood, were judged by the company they kept. Not any more. The countries Australia rubs shoulders with now, and the hips we are joined at, make people who used to represent Australia overseas wonder how much worse it can get. Other Australians who come back after a decade abroad say they can’t believe what we have become.  (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Afghanistan: Set And Forget.

    If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. (Sun Tzu, The Art of War) (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. ‘Truth isn’t truth’

    While Australia was transfixed by the events of 21-24 August, troubles for another leader were mounting in Washington. Turnbull lost the Lodge, and Trump has not yet lost the White House, but a common actor in both dramas remains the Murdoch media. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Many happy returns of al-Qaeda.

    On 11 August 2018 the members of what became al-Qaeda met in Peshawar, Pakistan to form the movement which is now 30 years old. With Osama bin Laden’s money, political vision, religious fervour, and capacity as a modern communicator, it changed the course of the 21st century. Even though Its profile is lower now, there is still a lot below the horizon. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. A law to end all wars?

    Hamlet was depressed about the law’s delay. To this day, legal processes take a notoriously long time, and international ones take even longer. International lawyers, and the world, have been waiting at least since 1998 for the crime of aggression to be activated.  (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. The conference season begins, in denial.

    On the last weekend in June, the ALP will hold its NSW Conference. The agenda is packed with items including indigenous, community and country issues, education, health, and social justice. Right at the end is ‘Australia and the World.’ This is to be expected, as State governments aren’t responsible for foreign affairs and defence – although they do have to consider treaties. But resolutions from the NSW ALP will go forward to Labor’s National Conference in December, where they could influence the more vigorous debate you might expect about the growing list of problems facing Australia. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Banks wake up to their responsibilities: will governments be next?

    Australians are watching transfixed as the Financial Services Royal Commission gives a running report on a reactive, insular, complacent, greedy culture which has broken its own rules and failed its customers for years. With the people’s verdict looming at the next election, Ministers who last year resisted holding the Royal Commission now proclaim a ‘wakeup call for every director, particularly those who are the custodians of the savings and shareholdings of Australians’ (Scott Morrison, SMH 2 February 2018: 1). The salaries and bonuses their top executives receive put politicians’ remuneration in the shade. The billions Australia spends on defence and on war, huge sums as they are, don’t compare with the combined turnover of Australia’s biggest financial institutions. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Anzackery and the preening peloton.

    When John Kenneth Galbraith was Kennedy’s Ambassador to India in the early 1960s, he reported that he had inspected a guard of honour and they seemed to him to be fine. His dry wit was lacking when the Murdoch media reported the safe return from Afghanistan of Pauline Hanson, her  colleague Brian Burston and Labor’s Senator Kimberley Kitching. There they had inspected a Bushmaster MR6 multi-role armoured vehicle (built in Australia by the French company Thales, which makes a counterpart in Canada) and a Chinook helicopter (made in the US by Boeing). They were briefed on the ‘security situation’ and took a three-day intensive training course, including instruction on how to ‘handle firearms’ (The Australian, 20 April 2018: 5).  (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. War on demand

    The UK and the US moved closer this week to enabling their governments to bypass legal and  democratic processes in committing forces to war, virtually anywhere, at any time and continuously. Australian politicians and the mainstream media seem to assume that this has nothing to do with Australia and we are not interested. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Happy Anniversary Iraq

    If there are any Australians who think we have anything to celebrate on the 15th anniversary of our invasion of Iraq and the start of our longest war, they must know something the rest of us don’t. In fact, there’s a lot nobody knows. (more…)

  • The trust deficit in Canberra.

    When Marshall Green was sent by Richard Nixon as Ambassador to keep a close eye on Gough Whitlam, some said his was the first serious American appointment in our history. Harry Harris, for different reasons, may turn out to be another. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Is militarism in Australia’s DNA?

    Australians who don’t live in other countries don’t realise how our self-image differs from the perception, particularly in Asia, that we were militarists from the start. Australia’s tendency to resort to force is hard-wired, hard to eliminate, and goes back a long way.  (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Murky wars and missions unaccomplished.

    In December 2017, Australia announced the withdrawal of six RAAF Hornets from Syria. But this is not our ‘mission accomplished’ moment. The US is committed to a longer war in Syria, and its target is Iran.  (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. War on the cheap.

    It’s unlikely that the Army will commission a further report following Albert Palazzo’s account of the ADF’s operations in Iraq. We have years to wait for Professor Craig Stocking’s official history. What Australia urgently needs is a full independent inquiry into our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Truth is not an excuse.

    If ASIO bugged Mr Huang’s phone, and sat on what it knew, the political timing of the latest leak against Dastyari could not have been more deliberate. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. If you want to know the truth

    WikiLeaks continues to get up the nose of the media and security establishment. They will use a newly revealed proposal to make Assange Ambassador to Washington to make things worse for him. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Back to the FutureAsia.

    How can Chris Bowen ensure that engagement with Asia will be different this time? By convincing all Australians it’s important and urgent, and by getting Bill Shorten to endorse it convincingly. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Till war do us part.

    A survey reports a significant movement of Australian opinion about the US alliance, away from current government policy which unquestioningly supports the Afghanistan deployment. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Existential threats

    In a sequence of events that recall the Cuban missile crisis, the world has again come within a brain-snap of nuclear destruction. This is the moment Australia should have been ready to deal with properly and democratically, by having a parliamentary debate to decide whether and why we should or should not go to war. Instead, this most serious matter of national security is reduced to party rivalry and media sensationalism.   (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Still losing the last Afghan war.

    President Trump’s many current distractions did not prevent him telling his military advisers the simple truth about Afghanistan on 19 July: ‘We aren’t winning.  We are losing.’ (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Beware, armed response.

    If Turnbull’s plan becomes law – and the prospects of the Opposition stopping anything to do with ‘fighting terrorism’ are remote – we can expect a terrorist attack to trigger an emergency response from the Special Operations Command, whose officers will have to be trained to shoot to kill other Australians.   (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Our mission creeps into Southeast Asia

    We should not have to resort to speculation about what our troops are doing either in Syria or in the Philippines. But the mere mention of Islamist terrorism now generates an armed response. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Shameful wars.

    During more than a century, our Anglo-allies fought several highly-publicised wars, but also many secret ones, directly or through proxies. If we don’t know the details, people in whose countries the wars were fought certainly do, and those who survived have not forgotten them.  (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Agents of influence and affluence.

    If energy and armaments are the agents behind America’s ‘empire of bases’  and its ‘empire of markets’, how influential are they? On security, barely; on terrorism, hugely. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. The Merkel moment: wherever that works.

    If NATO cannot rely on a Trump administration, should Australian leaders not see this as an opportunity to face the facts?   (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Press freedom is a minefield

    Julian Assange has cleared the Swedish legal minefield between him and freedom. The two which lie ahead are British and American. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. What Australian Foreign Policy?

    Insider, analyst and adviser Allan Gyngell finds that Australian defence and foreign policy are more bipartisan than ever. But even as Australia’s national security agenda metastesizes, we have more to fear from an unreliable ally and an increasingly lawless world.   (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. If Australia has switched enemies in Syria, who and why are we fighting?

    If Australia has switched enemies in Syria, as our allies apparently have done, the Turnbull Government owes us at least an explanation about who and why we are fighting.  (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. The pact of silence.

    The death of Dr David Kelly in 2003 has not been explained to the satisfaction of everyone in Britain. Investigations suggest the Government of Tony Blair still has questions to answer.   (more…)