Alison Broinowski

  • 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…)

  • Don’t ask about the war

    John Howard contributed to world events that are still affecting us: invasion, illegality, sycophancy to our allies, refugees, and even Brexit and Trump. Why do Australians not hold him accountable?   (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. What side are we on in Syria and Iraq?

    The mainstream media are agonising about the Syrian government‘s nearly completed overthrow of rebels and the devastation of Aleppo. But the fog of war is not a sufficient excuse for their utter confusion about who the enemy is. The Australian Government doesn’t seem to know either, nor to have any idea what a successful outcome would be. As the latest example of vacuum that is at the core of our defence and foreign policy, we can expect soon to be involved in retaking Fallujah for the Iraqis against whom US and coalition forces led by Australian General Jim Molan fought over it in 2004. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Trump – Seize the moment. Quo vadis series.

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Summary. We have a unique moment to do something Australia has never done – make a rational distinction between our national interests and our enduring regard for the US. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Reclaiming Australia

    ASIO Director-General is under-reported when he says anti-Islamic groups also threaten Australian security.

    ‘Incredible’ is a word over-used in the media when all they mean is ‘very’. So when something truly unbelievable happens, we have no description ready for it. In recent days, while American and Australian leaders were debating their various degrees of credibility, a revelation from the Director-General of ASIO, Duncan Lewis, was ignored by the mainstream media except the Guardian online and AAP (Reclaim Australia in Asio’s sights, intelligence chief tells senators, 19 October 2016). But what he said was close to incredible, at least for those with long memories of the domestic spy agency. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Your laptop is watching you: ‘Snowden’ the movie.

     

    Before Snowden comes on, there’s a short film of Oliver Stone, the director, warning cinema audiences that they can be surveilled, so please turn off their devices. Even as a humourless joke for geeks, it sets the sombre tone of the movie to follow. This is a feature version of Linda Poitras’ Citizenfour (2014), that adds political and personal narratives to the story of the young intelligence employee who exposed America’s mass surveillance of the world’s communications. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. What was all that about?

     

    Afghan troops who were trained in Uruzgan until 2013 by Australian soldiers are now reportedly confined to barracks. More for their own safety than the protection of the province, it seems, because the Taliban have waited them out and are progressively taking back control of Uruzgan, just as contending forces have done in Afghanistan for centuries. After 41 Australian deaths and many more of Afghans, Australian military figures are casting about to make their loss seem worthwhile. Former General Peter Leahy, now at ANU, says if Australia had been able to rebuild Uruzgan that would have lent legitimacy to the Afghan government. http://ab.co/2ccmYA6 The Chief of Army, General Angus Campbell, on the other hand, says Australia’s contribution wasn’t just to Uruzgan, but to the coalition effort in the whole of Afghanistan. Either way, they assert, Australia’s losses were not in vain. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. A Foreign Affairs White Paper. What is there to inquire about?

     

    We have just had a Federal election, so now the inquiry season has begun. The government already has a Royal Commission inquiring into the detention of children in the Northern Territory, it wants a plebiscite on gay marriage, the inquiry into institutional child abuse is still running, and the Opposition wants one on the banks. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. What Chilcot doesn’t say.

     

    Comprehensive though the Chilcot report is, and 12 volumes long, its promised revelations about how Britain went to war in Iraq and the lessons to be learnt are incomplete. What’s missing is particularly important for Australia, which has yet to hold such an inquiry, and where public pressure for one is mounting. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Bush ‘s poodles

     

    There is a sense in Britain that its very foundations are shaking. Just weeks since the Brexit decision, the prospect of recession is real, the value of the pound and the price of real estate have dropped out of sight, credible leaders are lacking, and uncertainty threatens the future of Great Britain itself. Piled on top, now, is the Chilcot report on the war in Iraq. Its revelations about the moral failures of government in the UK are so serious that some feel they could bring the whole edifice crashing down.

    How has it come to this and what does Chilcot mean for Australia? (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Process or Policy

     

    Three governments are currently consulting their constituents. Two are offering them a significant choice about future foreign policy: one is not. The US asks delegates to decide between a President Donald Trump who would expel Hispanics, bar entry to Muslims, and flatten parts of the Middle East, and a President Hillary Clinton who would take a tougher line against states which challenge the US. The UK has asked citizens to decide if Britain should separate from the European Union and, presumably, tie itself more tightly to the US. Australian leaders are asking voters almost nothing about what foreign policy initiatives would differentiate Prime Minister Turnbull from a Prime Minister Shorten. (more…)