Pearls and Irritations

Richard Broinowski

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. American delusions about the Philippines

    When someone  pointed out that President Duterte had just abrogated the bilateral Visiting Forces Agreement, Admiral Davidson conceded the point, but said it was up to ‘agile Australian diplomats’ among others to get it re-instated. (more…)

  • MARK DIESENDORF and RICHARD BROINOWSKI – A Push for Nuclear Weapons?

    A recent push for nuclear power in Australia has been promoted by the usual public advocates and amplified by the Murdoch press. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Pernicious Secrets

    Brian Toohey begins his new book Secret with a deliciously revealing quote from Harold Thorby, Australian Minister for Defence in 1938: ‘We the Government have vital information which we cannot disclose. It is upon this knowledge that we make decisions. You, who are merely private citizens, have no access to this information. Any criticism you make of our policy, any controversy about it which you may indulge, will therefore be uninformed and valueless. If, in spite of your ignorance, you persist in questioning our policy, we can only conclude that you are disloyal.’

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  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Can Australia Defend Itself?

    Since the advent of Donald Trump as United States president, the certainties that are said to underpin Australia’s defence doctrine are less than ever convincing. Trump’s cynicism about alliances underlines the fact that ANZUS is no longer (if it ever was) a guarantee of American military assistance. Neither Prime Minister Morrison posing on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan during the latest Exercise Talisman Sabre in July 2019, nor the promise of a state dinner in Washington dispel the uncertainty, although they do increase pressure on Morrison to commit the ADF to join the US in a war against Iran or take a more robust stand against Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea, if asked, as he is likely to be.

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  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Inverting Reality in Persian Gulf

    US assertions that Iran mined two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman on 13 June is as unconvincing as blaming Iran for attacks on three tankers in the same area on 12 May. Iran has no apparent motive, but the United States and its regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, clearly seek to portray it  as an aggressive nation and the world’s greatest terrorist threat. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. War Drums Over Iran

    In a tweet to President Rouhani in July 2018, President Trump warned: Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before. Similar threats to Kim Jong-un in 2018 did not result in war with North Korea. Could they now, in Iran? (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. The Competence of our Intelligence Agencies

    On 6 April, the ABC’s Geraldine Doogue interviewed Nick Warner, head of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), which coordinates the activities of Australia’s intelligence agencies. During the interview, Warner ventured the opinion that President Trump did the ‘right thing’ in walking away from Kim Jong-un at the US-North Korean Summit in Hanoi at the end of February 2019. Coming from someone whose job is to tell the government ‘how we see the world’, this value-judgement observation casts doubt on the objectivity of the information he gives ministers. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI Trump’s wall- bordering on chaos

    Trump threat to cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, will be counter-productive. The refugee ‘caravans’ will not stop, but increase. He will also further alienate the Mexicans, who refuse to pay for the wall along their border with the United States, but who also want to discourage Central American asylum seekers. Can Mexico’s new left-wing president stand up to Trump? (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI The ADF in the Middle East

     

    President Trump wants to get US troops out of Syria, and probably out of Iraq as well, and soon. The Pentagon however has said US forces will be out of Afghanistan in five years, a period estimated to allow successful negotiations with the Taliban, while reserving to themselves the right to initiate drone strikes. Five years will take the withdrawal into the next administration, which might decide against it. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Growth of Tribal Hatred

    Hotel Mumbai, currently screening in Australia, tells the harrowing story of attacks by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba across the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008. Indoctrinated to believe that non-Muslims are not human, 10 young men armed with grenades and AK-47s go on an orgy of destruction. Urged on through their earpieces by a faceless fanatic in Pakistan who promises riches for their families and paradise for them, they slaughter 160 defenceless Indians and foreigners in 24 hours, including many guests and staff at the luxurious Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, before all but one of them are killed by late-arriving Indian special forces from New Delhi. Their ring-master is never caught. The plot resonates with the shocking slaughter in Christchurch on 15 March 2019.

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  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Ambiguity in Hanoi

    The Trump-Kim summit began and  ended in Hanoi on 28 February with Donald Trump peremptorily terminating his discussions with Kim Jong-un. According to media reports, Trump claims Kim demanded the lifting of all US-imposed sanctions in exchange for closing the nuclear complex at Yongpyon. Kim claims he only asked for a partial lifting of sanctions in exchange for closing Yongpyon. Speculation about all this is running hot among informed commentators. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Cognitive Dissonance in Canberra

    At the annual conferences of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2017 and 2018, at least two retired senior public servants strongly asserted their faith in the United States as guarantor of Australia’s security. They did so with varying degrees of asperity in response to questions from the floor suggesting that American power was slipping, and with it Washington’s inclination, even its ability, to defend Australia in the event of an attack. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. The US-Mexican Border Paradox

    President Trump’s characterisation of asylum seekers from Mexico as illegal criminals and rapists threatening American citizens is a cynical distortion of reality. Drug runners and criminals both from Mexico into the United States and vice versa represent a tiny fraction of the flow of one million people who legally cross between the two countries every day to work, shop or visit relatives. A much larger proportion of criminals, from many origins, enter the United States by air.   (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Trump and Syria

    While Prime Minister Morrison was visiting Australian troops in Iraq this month (but not Afghanistan -‘ too dangerous’), President Trump was preparing to pull US ground forces out of Syria. Nothing Morrison said indicated that he or Joe Hockey, our Ambassador to the United States , who is supposed to have special access inside the Washington beltway, appeared to know that this was going to happen. Once again, Australia was treated with the lack of respect that our subservience to American military policy deserves.   (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Will Japan’s Love Affair with Nuclear Power be Resurrected?

    On Friday 11 March 2011, a tsunami knocked out emergency generators at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, resulting in melt-downs in three of six reactors, covering the countryside in eastern Honshu with radiation. Some isotopes were short-lived, others will be around much longer. Seven and a half years later, an endless torrent of sea water continues to be pumped into the damaged cores to try to keep them cool with no safe options for disposal or preventing leakage into the biosphere. Some of Japan’s most productive pastoral land around the reactors has been permanently poisoned against future use.   (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Defence Plan B.

    Canberra’s foreign and defence bureaucracy is appalled by Donald Trump’s monstering of the Anglo allies and of NATO, his enthusiasm for Kim Jong-un and his appeasement of Vladimir Putin. Where to without the comfort of a great, powerful and reliable friend, it asks? To Plan B, say some analysts – a more capable and self-contained defence force that can protect Australia without recourse to an increasingly unreliable United States. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. North Korea and the Trump Bashers

    President Trump declared at his post-Summit press conference in Singapore on 12 June  that US-ROK war games were expensive and provocative and he  would abolish them, starting with ‘Ulchi Freedom Guardian’ next August. His decision has drawn some surprising reactions. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Demonising Iran.

    It was the hope of all observers around the world wanting peace in the Middle East that President Donald Trump would revalidate the nuclear deal with Iran on 12 May. Not only did he not do so, but later that month his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched an inflammatory and inaccurate attack on Iran and its leaders, impugning them with the worst possible motives. Hopes for a nuclear-free Middle East have faded as a result. So has the United States’ erratic record for honouring its international undertakings. This has, in turn, reduced hopes for a successful outcome to a summit between Trump and North Korean President Kim Jong-un, even if the two leaders decide to reconvene it following Trump’s cancellation on 25 May.  (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Iran on the ground

    Iran continues to be stereotyped in western media as a rogue state full of corrupt mullahs ,an abuser of human rights, an exporter of  Islamic terrorism to Syria, Iraq, the Gaza Strip and Yemen, and an extremist  theocracy with territorial and nuclear ambitions on a collision course with Saudi Arabia, Israel and their backer, the United States .

    A three-week tour of the country in April 2018 by the Australian Institute of International Affairs  provided a much needed reality check, and an update on a country first observed by this writer as a young Australian diplomat during the Shah’s time in 1971-73. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI- Trump and Turnbull – Shared Values?

    Fantasy and emotion were in free play at the White House on Friday 23 February 2018 when President Trump received Prime Minister Turnbull. Trump was well scripted, even getting Turnbull’s name right. He added that Australia was the United States’ closest friend, a claim successive US presidents have made, with variations, about many other countries when their leaders visit the White House. Turnbull gave a predictably gushing response, long on confections about shared values and mateship but short on historical accuracy – a good example of Canberra’s bipartisan delusions about the bilateral relationship. (more…)

  • A new Cold War arms race has begun

    In the immediate post Cold War period, regular United States Nuclear Posture Reviews have been relatively restrained, emphasising no first use and no attacks against non nuclear weapons states which are signatories of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. With his 2018 Review, however, President Trump has thrown circumspection out the window. Citing new emerging threats from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, he has blurred the distinction between usable and non-usable nuclear weapons and the situations in which they can be applied. To pay for an enormous expansion in the US nuclear arsenal he wants a colossal annual defence budget increase of three to four percent per annum over existing levels over ten years. (more…)

  • Corruption in the Arms Trade

    The Turnbull government is very excited about turning Australia into one of the world’s ten biggest arms traders. The announcement was prompted as much as anything else by President Trump’s announcement of a $US716 billion rise in the United States military budget, with prospects of Australia gaining a significant share in this gigantic spend. Of course the government claims Australian arms sales are selective, never offending Australian foreign policy or humanitarian priorities. But foreign weapons  companies which inevitably control the trade, have a record of corruption and indiscriminate selling. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Korean Hot Line

    Kim Jong-un’s offer to re-open the hotline with South Korea cannot be seen as merely a ploy to wedge ROK and the United States, as so readily claimed last Tuesday by Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations.   (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Trump’s foolishness over Iran

    Those with short memories forget what a gem of non-proliferation the Iran Framework Agreement of July 2015 is. Trump wants to trash it. If he succeeds it will create regional uncertainty and the likelihood of nuclear proliferation that the Framework currently postpones. Along with his posture towards North Korea, Trump’s contempt for Iran makes him the most dangerous of American presidents. (more…)

  • Sabre rattling off the Queensland coast

    Exercise Talisman Sabre does not address any of Australia’s main security concerns and sends the wrong messages to Australia’s neighbours. It contributes towards locking Australia into America’s wars, no matter how irrelevant to Australia’s own interests. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Matching Colonial Wars

    The record of British colonial history proves that what occurred to Aboriginal Australian communities at the hands of white settlers and British military forces was not a unique event. The same thing occurred with as much inhumanity and ferocity in other parts of the Empire, notably in South Africa against the Khoi, the Xhosa and the Zulus. The difference is that the Xhosa and the Zulus, if not the Khoi, had a fierce warrior-like mentality and were able not only to defend themselves effectively, but frequently to invade white settler areas, torching their farms and killing their inhabitants. Hence eight very bloody frontier wars followed between 1779 and 1853. If Australians were more aware of the similarities,  denialist Australian academics like Keith Windshuttle would not be able to get away with his white-wash of Australian settler history as easily as they do. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Still demonizing North Korea

    Following recent North Korean missile tests and American declarations that they have run out of ‘strategic patience’, the Western media and the governments they serve, are busily repeating time-honoured myths about North Korea.   (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Series. We can say ‘no’ to the Americans

    How Bill Hayden stood up to the Americans on Vietnam. 
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  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. The Battle of Long Tan turns Fifty

     

     

    Some excitement was generated in the Australian press around 15 August when it was reported that the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan would be commemorated by Australians at the site of the battle at a rubber plantation in Phuoc Tuy Province. So it was – by a small and subdued group of ex-diggers with no medals, uniforms, ANZAC pomp nor post-ceremonial piss-up, nor even a brass band or bagpipes. Festive crowds of Australian tourists who wanted to go were not allowed. In fact the event may not have gone ahead at all but for some eleventh hour pleading by Prime Minister Turnbull to his opposite number in Hanoi. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Merchants of Death – the Weapons Trade

     

    According to Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick in The Untold History of the United States (2012), North Dakota Senator Gerald Nye persuaded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1934 to investigate the enormous profits made by American weapons makers during the Great War. Amplifying public indignation, Fortune magazine ran an article in March of that year claiming that it had cost the US Treasury $25,000 to kill an enemy soldier in 1917-18: ‘Every time a burst shell fragment finds its way into the brain, the heart or the intestines of a man in the front line, a great part of the $25,000, much of it profit, finds its way into the pocket of the armament maker.’ (more…)