Let’s see how Europeans respond when they are told their peace dividend is henceforth to be spent on the machinery of war — when it’s “howitzers instead of hospitals” now, as a New York Times article puts it. (more…)
Category: Defence
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Frigates disaster a taste of the AUKUS catastrophe to come
When Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, talks imploringly in support of avoiding the “valley of death” scenario, Australians should listen. That is, until they realise he is not talking about avoiding the horrors of a modern war, but rather supporting the Hunter Class Frigate, a project in such difficulty that the picture of incompetence and mismanagement in the Australian National Audit Office’ report on the Department of Defence’s Procurement of Hunter Class Frigates (Report No.21 2022-23) and evidence presented during Parliamentary scrutiny is probably a kind interpretation of the reality. (more…)
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The South China Sea: countries in glass houses should not throw stones
The Philippines publicly announced that it is deploying navigational buoys near some of the rocks it claims and occupies in the South China Sea. It says the buoys signify “the country’s sovereign rights and jurisdiction over our EEZ” and has warned of “serious repercussions” if China removes them. This was just its latest provocative and hypocritical action in the South China Sea. (more…)
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The war in Ukraine was provoked— and why that matters to achieve peace
By recognising that the question of NATO enlargement is at the centre of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that. (more…)
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US ‘war on terror’ leads bloody way in recent deadliest conflicts
With more than 4.5m killed and millions displaced, American revenge for 9/11 attacks puts Ukraine in the shade for 21st century slaughter. (more…)
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60 Minutes Australia keeps churning out war-with-China propaganda
60 Minutes Australia has been playing a leading role in saturating Australian airwaves with consent-manufacturing messaging in support of militarising to participate in a US war against China. (more…)
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Reclaiming Australia’s strategic character
America feels above any need to explain its calamitous geostrategic actions. Of course, it has no obligation to. But its character is revealed as being comfortable with threat fabrication, on a grand scale. It is practised at making war on false premise. And appears energised by it, not repentant. Deception, including of allies, is integral to its geostrategic armoury. (more…)
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America’s wars and the US debt crisis
To surmount the debt crisis, America needs to stop feeding the Military-Industrial Complex, the most powerful lobby in Washington. (more…)
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The contracting echo chambers of the Transatlantic powers
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
The pithy words spoken by US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 has been said to be his ideal policy for the US. But in recent years, the “big stick” diplomacy has proven to be too simplistic for the world they used to dominate. (more…)
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The orbit of Russian cultural influence
One of the stranger aspects of the current war, at least for this observer, is the sight of Ukrainian military commanders telling BBC cameras in perfect Russian of their anti-Moscow plans. They have yet to learn to speak Ukrainian. (more…)
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While Sullivan and Wang build ‘guardrails’: where is Mr Blinken?
When US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met face-to-face with Mr Antony Blinken’s China counterpart Mr Wang Yi for eight hours in Vienna on May 10-11, a meeting both sides described as “constructive”, where was America’s top diplomat, Mr Blinken? (more…)
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A grim vision of nuclear warfare in Ukraine
In Ukraine, grim visions of a new age of nuclear warfare are the natural counterpart of western hardliners’ march of folly towards the nuclear brink. Thankfully, there is an alternative, one that has been possible since the very beginning of the conflict and now has growing support among Western publics. (more…)
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Government seeks to exempt SSN nuclear power plants from controls and protections
The government has a Bill before parliament which, if passed, would exempt the nuclear power plants on nuclear-propelled submarines from the requirement of two other Acts: the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. (more…)
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FOI exposes RAAF Growler rip off
In March 2023, the Australian Defence Department confirmed the arrival of an F/A18G Growler aircraft to replace a similar aircraft which was destroyed in January 2018 while on a training exercise. It had flown less than 120 hours. The aircraft was powered by two General Electric F414-GE-400 turbofan engines. According to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), the aircraft sustained “catastrophic damage following an uncontained engine failure that subsequently caused a fuel fire”. While some aircraft and mission systems were recovered, the aircraft worth $120 million on purchase was a write off. (more…)
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Defence angling to exempt itself from state laws that ‘constrain’ its activities
Far more transparency is required about which ‘important public policy objectives’ Defence wants to subvert to its needs. (more…)
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The colonisation of the Australian strategic imagination
Interrogating the public record provides a fundamental challenge to the integrity of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR). It comes in the form of a reality which few wish to acknowledge: the captive Australian strategic imagination – a phenomenon of which Peter Dean, Head of the United States Study Centre at the University of Sydney and principal author of the DSR, is the current leading example. (more…)
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The dangerous idiocy of current Red Menace Journalism
Many contributors have exposed the blatant ethical corruption of recent journalism that presages combat with a rampaging China. Just as before, now again, there are ‘interested’ parties more than happy to be the beneficiaries of the click-bait journalism on display. Eisenhower cautioned against complacency towards the military-industrial complex. To this we can nowadays add too much of the mainstream media (‘MSM’) and the advertising industry. (more…)
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Limits, damned lies, and perception management
At a reconstruction site in Mariupol during President Putin’s visit in March, a woman cried from the back of the crowd, ‘It’s all lies’. Her comment was later taken down from social media, though it wasn’t clear who did that, nor whose lies she meant. (more…)
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As Arab states seek peace, US insists that Syrians suffer
After the Arab League re-admits Syria, Washington threatens new sanctions to prevent reconstruction. (more…)
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The Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba) and Australia’s responsibility
Yesterday, 15th May marked the 75th anniversary of the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland, known as “the Nakba” or “the Catastrophe.” (more…)
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The Army we don’t see: The private soldiers who fight in America’s name
The way mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his private army have been waging a significant part of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has been well covered in the American media, not least of all because his firm, the Wagner Group, draws most of its men from Russia’s prison system. Wagner offers “freedom” from Putin’s labor camps only to send those released convicts to the front lines of the conflict, often on brutal suicide missions. (more…)
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Rime of the AUKUS submariner
Lines composed on Budget Day as Australia starts saving up for our new nuclear-powered fleet. (more…)
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War profiteers: Morrison, Sinodinos feed at trough of pro-war organisations
After leading a government that trashed Australia’s relationship with China, Scott Morrison and Arthur Sinodinos have joined Kurt Campbell’s US influence network cashing in on war talk.
[WITH AN URGENT NOTICE AT THE END FOR A CHANCE TO MOBILISE AGAINST AUKUS]. (more…)
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Turkish elections: What if Putin loses Erdogan?
During a 27 April ceremony marking the delivery of Russian-made nuclear fuel to the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in southern Turkiye, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his support for his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the hotly-contested, upcoming 14 May presidential elections. (more…)
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A worst case scenario for the South China Sea
The increasing militarisation of the South China Sea disputes sets the stage for the worst case scenario—frequent and widespread conflict that eventually results in a military confrontation between China and the US. To avoid this scenario, the reality is that China, its rival claimants and the U.S. have to compromise. (more…)
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Demonisation and the US encirclement of China
“It’s quite clear from recent policies that the US aims to curb China’s economic development and encircle the country with military bases in unfriendly (from China’s viewpoint) countries. Such demonisation only reinforces repressive trends in China and benefits security-obsessed hardliners in China’s political system. That’s why “de-demonisation” can help those in China who favour a more open and humane social and political system. I have yet to meet a single academic, for example, who favours more rather than less censorship and “de-demonisation” can help to strengthen such forces”, says Daniel Bell in a recent interview with Alex Lo. (more…)
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In international politics, how the worm has turned for the United States
The historian of American foreign policy Gabriel Kolko would often say that those who seek to determine the destiny of humankind were in for surprises and, ultimately, disappointment. (more…)
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Are Pacific nations setting themselves up as US ‘pawn sacrifices’?
Being led by the nose by warmed-over former colonies like the US, Australia and India to fight a country thousands of miles away is neither smart diplomacy nor smart foreign policy. (more…)
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The Ukraine war and the Hitler analogy
As the Russia-Ukraine war enters what could be its most decisive phase, the award-winning American journalist, Stephen Kinzer, has announced a ‘Society for Abolishing World War II Analogies’. (more…)
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Very bad advice: $368b nuclear submarines and the Federal budget
At a time when the Reserve Bank’s interest rate rise is adding to cost of living pressures and increasing the chances of a recession, Albanese is finding it hard to justify the staggering $368 billion cost of AUKUS nuclear submarines. (more…)