The Whitlam Government took office with public support for fundamental changes in our approach to our region, to embrace reality. The Albanese government is tangled in the neocon skirts of Morrison and Dutton. (more…)
Dennis Argall
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A good ally is not a faithful well-armed dog but a thoughtful calm advisor reflecting its own national interests
As the Australian prime minister heads for the Nato summit in Madrid on 29-30 June, there is churn in the global strategic situation. The Albanese government has thus far taken strongly supportive positions towards US policy in both Asia and Ukraine. We are supporting flawed postures. (more…)
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US, Russia, NATO, Ukraine: Truth is out there, beyond the memes
“Today we face an avoidable crisis [between the US and Russia regarding Ukraine] that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense”.
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Trapped by memes: on China, national strategy, and Ukraine
There is popular concern about climate and the environment. But of comparable danger is the way we have simplified our thinking about the world, seeing threats, losing our capacity for diplomacy and for building and maintaining friendships, wildly overspending on defence force toys. This must change. (more…)
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Hong Kong and Taiwan: seeking perspectives
My intention here is to provide some information on Hong Kong and Taiwan, having regard to media failure and the general drought of information in Australia. Policy and public sentiment is being driven by passions and our tendency to prefer conflictual in news and argument.
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The axis of evil shaping our minds, on China and more
If ever there is now an axis of evil it is surely the uncoordinated journey of fellow travellers ASPI, now reportedly replacing DFAT as strategic advisor to government; Adrian Zenz, conservative Catholic inventor of Xinjiang genocide, who wants to see the overthrow of the government of China, and the ABC team led by Stan Grant, who have taken propagandistic reporting to unprecedented levels. (more…)
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Being driven to war with China by government folly. How to change course?
Essays by Max Suich on 16, 17, 18 and 19 May 2021 in the Australian Financial Review have unearthed the dreadful path of mismanagement of Australia’s relations with China since 2017, entrapping us foolishly in a path to war. We have to end this folly. Machinery of government is bung, leadership is out of control. Change is almost certainly dependent on the election of a different government, a government fearless and clear-minded and persuasive. I am not hopeful, but we have to work on it.
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Darkness in a propagandised state risks war with China.
Our distorted perspectives, our ignorance, is now more dangerous than the situation leading to the Vietnam War in the 1960s. We have experienced a sudden end to immediate knowledge of Asia including China We are vulnerable thus to pandemics of media misinformation. (more…)
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American objectives in disrupting East Asia-economic catchup with China
American wars in the Middle East have been largely driven by oil hunger. The next generation of major conflict is about control of advanced semiconductor manufacture and disruption of supply chains between Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Mainland China. This is the reason for US provocation of hostility towards China and getting an even tighter grip on Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
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Alas America, the outlook is difficult; but should not be aggressive
Ignorance of the world, along with a belief in American exceptionalism, combines with an obsession with a capitalism that is rapidly increasing inequity. That is the USA. (more…)
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The approaching crunch in US policy towards China
The Republican and Democrat leaders of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have issued a joint statement of intense hostility towards China. This posture is a threat to Australia’s national security… and the world. An attempt to tear China down will be unsuccessful. To follow paths to antagonise China will eventually reap hostile responses and darken global affairs at a time when global cooperation is essential. (more…)
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Ending permanent war, ending hatred of China
The rage of a prime minister against a modest ranking cartoonist in a foreign government is foolish for a number of reasons. (more…)
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October 1972, October 2020: prospects for the United States… and us.
Decent minded Australians are tending to assure themselves that Trump will be defeated in November; many decent Americans work feverishly for the defeat of Trump. But the defeat of Trump is far from assured. (more…)
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Defence Strategic Outlook lacks a civilian perspective.
The Defence Department’s Strategic Update is somewhat servant to the past rather than the future. It’s just one way to see the world and should be subordinated to a civilian perspective in less adversarial terms. The government’s endorsement of the Update is tragic and dangerous. (more…)
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The inevitability of fundamental change in the world and what China wants
“The coronavirus pandemic will change the world order forever. When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, institutions in many countries will look as if they have failed. It is not a question of whether this judgment is correct from an objective point of view. The reality is that after the coronavirus, the world will never be the same again.” Henry Kissinger 2020. (more…)
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Our strategic partnerships with China, India, Japan and the US
The signature of a strategic agreement between Australia and India is being hailed as a success. Certainly our construction of positive relations with India has lagged, although efforts to do better began in the 1980s. But what’s it all about? What are the strategic policies (or impulses) of Indo-Pacific powers. (more…)
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We may be stuck in our bigotry. Urgent change on many fronts needed
So much of our political mainstream has been based on bigotry and racist perspectives. We have always had the comfort of the US and UK accepting our attitudes on race. That no longer will be the case. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. We are ill prepared for inevitable dramatic change. and the need to shift fundamentals of national strategy
“A revolution is not a dinner party”: Chairman Mao.
We are in the middle of a number of revolutions, which we must try to understand and which require independent national strategy and vigour. These processes will be rough and unavoidable. Can we make it? Not with present political leadership and community attitudes. (more…)
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Australia’s strategic folly: lessons from Barbara Tuchman
We arein a situation where decisions that seem simple can commit Australia to fundamental errors of strategic judgement. The decision to send a ship and a plane and headquarters staff to a new venture with the United States in the Middle East is foolish. It is described in isolation by the government but is additional to ongoing ADF operations in the Middle East, which have lacked legality since 2003. The late US historian Barbara Tuchman wrote two books of great relevance: about the lack of non-military options in 1914, and the tendency of governments to make decisions contrary to their core strategic interests. The first of those, The Guns of August, saved us from nuclear war in 1962, the second, The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam, is less well known because… well, because statesmen are not foolish and don’t make mistakes. (more…)
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Hong Kong and Londonderry and the global crowding of everything
The uproar in Hong Kong has become very serious, with a situation as developed in 1989 before Tiananmen: of leaders unable to cope and an uprising implacable in resolve and unable to focus on achievable objectives. The comparison should not be overdrawn but Hong Kong now is threatening greater consequence than did Tiananmen. Tactically the police have made mistakes in dealing with trapped demonstrators as on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland in 1972, staining decades with misery.
This is written on the night of 12 August 2019, events are unfolding but I make observations that may endure. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. The Pompeo view
US Secretary of State Pompeo said a couple of things in Sydney recently that were wrong in fact. He articulated an absurd philosophy about foreign investment, unaware that he’d just accused China of thinking something similar. His utterances of high-minded principles in the Australia-US relationship and US strategic policy mask very dark realities. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. Absenting Ourselves From the World.
This is mainly about China, but more. We have excluded ourselves in many ways from the engines of modernity in Asia and more widely by our recalcitrance on so many issues and our unwillingness to engage with the new. We are not of such weight for others to care. We demonstrate an incapacity to maintain a progressive society in Australia. That fact and its consequences for our standing are the greatest threats to our national security. We need to be aware of and sensitive to large issues affecting China. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. Tiananmen in context
There has been feverish interest in the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen incident, in Australia with some focus on repression in China, fuelling antagonism towards China. In this essay I want to provide context that is lacking: in the evolution of economic reform and liberalism in China, in the evolution of Sino-Soviet relations and regional strategy and China’s united front with the US (and Australia) against Vietnam and the Soviet Union.
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DENNISS ARGALL. Thinking through the choppy issues in trade and strategic threat.
The public discussion of trade war and security issues is too simplistic. Trump’s bilateral adventures in liking and bullying will mean discussion of structural changes in regional affairs to which Australia will not be party. Trump is not a passing phenomenon. We cannot say as some are saying “our alliance is with the US, not Trump”. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL: Australian strategic posture from here forward
There is no sign of political enthusiasm to grasp the need for coherent national strategy, but basic principles need to be put in place and three particulars need urgent attention. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. Lessons and thoughts for Labor’s future
There is a lot of emotion in the wake of disaster for Labor in the federal elections on 18 May 2019. There will be forensic examinations and recriminations. There is good prospect of a Labor Government after the next elections… if…
Labor must go steadily and clearly and must look like a government in brief exile. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. A letter from Italy: to put some global and Australian issues in perspective.
In the languages of the mighty, in the temples of globalisation, the simplicities of neoliberal globalisation and orthodoxies of Brussels and money, Italy is the coming big problem, bigger than Greece, needing to be reined in, needing to conform and spend less. A country which many of the serious and mighty think is a bit of a joke.
My intention in writing this, against a backdrop of daily fast paced developments, is to show the complexities of this country, its compassion and passions and urgencies. Things are in a ditch here. Whereas from 2010 to 2015 Australia’s GDP grew from USD 0.92 to 1.32 trillion, Italy’s shrank from 2.4 to 1.9 in similar period, having doubled in the first decade of this millennium.
Italy’s intention is to deepen its budget deficit in 2019, contrary to EU wishes. Compromise will be difficult. There are elements in the budget which are naive; the Brussels lambasting will be severe, Merkel seeks compromise, but Brussels is Brussels. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. In a changing world, who are we, where are our eyes and minds?
In what is perhaps a fantasy endeavour – to find Trump’s objectives in recent travel and assess outcomes – I suggest three. And in this essay, I look further into global and perceptual actions and needs… and the lack of decent vision in Australia. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. A comparison of the DPRK now with China in the early 1970s
Public discussion of issues relating to North Korea and détente with the United States is largely deprived of any sense of history — unstudied or seen through prisms by the lawyers, commerce graduates and high priests of strategic analysis who command discussion with airy speculation and terror talk…with an adversarial sense of our justness and wisdom, the enemy’s wickedness and folly. (more…)
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DENNIS ARGALL. Many steps on Korea between the principals.
While the US and DPRK are at very early stages in working forward from the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore on 12 June 2018, a wide range of practical steps have taken place between the ROK and DPRK and China and Russia are involved too.
While upheavals in American political perspectives are possible, there is orderliness in security discussions and arrangements between the US and ROK.
In the ROK these activities mesh with sustained progress in reform. (more…)