It has been only in recent times that we have had former prime ministers taking up positions in foreign countries, even working for foreign governments. It ought to be regarded as deeply shameful, and more than somewhat disloyal. If our public stewards cannot be trusted to do the right thing, it becomes necessary to control them by law. (more…)
Category: Defence
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The US silence on Israeli nuclear weapons and the right-wing Israeli government
The Israeli protests against its new right-wing government have now touched on Israel’s nuclear weapons. To underline what is at stake, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak cast aside Israeli ambiguity over whether it possesses nuclear weapons to warn his compatriots that Western diplomats are worried that a Jewish messianic dictatorship could gain control over Israel’s nuclear weapons. (more…)
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B52s refurbished with cruise missiles are a threat to peace
It’s not just the Australian senate that cannot know whether such missiles are conventional or nuclear, it’s also the receiving country. This uncertainty increases risks of nuclear war. (more…)
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China, America and the Saudi-Iranian normalisation
The Saudi-Iranian normalisation deal brokered by China has sent shockwaves throughout the region. Regional actors had not expected China to suddenly desire a political role in the Persian Gulf. Others were skeptical of Beijing’s diplomatic capacity and skills. Few, however, were as surprised as foreign policy hands in Washington – even though it is the United States’ actions and missteps that inadvertently created both the opportunity for Beijing to mediate and the environment that compelled regional actors to sue for peace. (more…)
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Doubts about AUKUS
Eighteen months ago, when Australians first learned of the AUKUS proposal for their country to build nuclear-powered submarines, it came as a stunning shock. So great was the shock, in fact, that for a time it eclipsed any serious debate about this revolutionary and quite unprecedented idea. An initiative of such scale and audacity seemed almost to defy critique and analysis. (more…)
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The Ukraine war – lessons for Australia and the Asia/Pacific
We often look to history or contemporary events to help explain issues and to seek guidance. Thus Graham Allison went back millennia to explain America’s current drive to war with China in his Thucydides Trap. Recently Gregory Clark joined others in making the natural comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan. Analogies are admittedly fraught with danger – parallels are never exact, the present never fits easily into the past and superficially similar events may be essentially very different – but they can be fruitful. (more…)
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The American version of “one country, two systems”
Over a period of decades, the US has refined and applied its own exceptional version of One Country, Two Systems. What is most curious is that this has materialised within plain sight yet it has largely remained undetected, as such. (more…)
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North Korea: same old, or another ticking bomb?
Continued missile testing by North Korea invites the question, why do they do it? It’s tempting to regard it as “just what they do”, but is that all there is to it? Is it “urgent but not important”? What about the response? (more…)
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Are Australia’s climate–security risks too hot to handle?
The Australian government is keen to talk about defence, big submarines, China and national security. And renewable energy, big batteries, electric cars and big hydrogen. But put the two together — security and climate — and an odd thing happens. (more…)
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Best not to know: how secrecy and ignorance feed AUKUS policy
Reports that Australia pays retired senior US military officials up to $7,500 a day for advice on AUKUS related defence projects, reveals a cultural cringe and taste for secrecy. Such practice is coupled to a common policy technique, of avoiding criticism by maintaining public ignorance. (more…)
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Eternal hate in Ukraine
Carlin gives his impressions of the war in Ukraine during a visit to the country. There may be peace one day, but there will never be love from the Ukrainian side. (more…)
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The coming war: Time to speak up
Silences filled with a consensus of propaganda contaminate almost everything we read, see and hear. War by media is now a key task of so-called mainstream journalism. (more…)
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Australia is being goaded into war with China
John Menadue’s article in Pearls and Irritation about Australia being goaded into war with China is a must read for those Australians who desire to live in harmony and leave a legacy for our descendants to live in this lucky country of ours, in peace and prosperity with our neighbours in the Asia Pacific region. (more…)
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ABC analyst Mick Ryan’s US government funded affiliations
It seems the automatic go to for the ABC on matters military is Major-General Mick Ryan. His opinion is usually presented as unbiased fact. Is that the case? (more…)
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Labor’s serial betrayal of Australia
Make no mistake, the Albanese government knows that in joining the US fight against China, Australia will be left defenceless on American withdrawal. And only a dodo could not know this risk is high. Maybe the government doesn’t appreciate that war for America is different. It is the war which matters, not the result. “Winning” is incidental. (more…)
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‘National Defence’ takes Australia closer to war with China
The 2023 Defence Strategic Review has recommended Australia adopt a new strategic conceptual framework dubbed ‘National Defence’ that incorporates a ‘strategy of denial’. This approach is tied to a broader concept of ‘collective security’ in the Indo-Pacific and is aligned with America’s framework for ‘integrated deterrence’ of China. ‘National Defence’ is consistent with American force structure designs to develop the northern Australian expanse as an increasingly important base of operations for force-projection.
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What the Defence Strategic Review does not tell us
There are a number of salient points arising from the Defence Strategic Review which have not been exposed to clear light – which might explain why the government has taken the approach it has. There are two scenarios behind the DSR: war over Taiwan with the US, or war with Indonesia by ourselves. (more…)
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The American way: exporting US dysfunction to the world
The United States of America is not well, a fact that even as an acolyte the Australian government does not seem to be aware or care about, on account of our unconditional love for the Americans. (more…)
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$368 billion on submarines: not a chance in hell!
This week the Federal ALP Government announced a significant cutback in the number of tanks to be stationed in the north to repel whatever is expected to land there to take our beautiful country away from us. Why – because tanks just won’t do the job in future. (more…)
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Fulfilling human potential and saving the planet
Australia, and my Party too, must make a commitment to restoring the primacy of reason, rejecting a paranoid view of history and ‘telling truth to power’. Our blind adoption of irrational policies, supine and unquestioning acquiescence to anything the United States proposes must end. Our species, facing an existential threat to civilisation from climate change, is infinitely complex, infinitely precious, infinitely vulnerable, infinitely destructive, but also infinitely capable of the sublime and transcendent. (more…)
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Penny Wong has inherited huge challenges as Foreign Minister
Penny Wong has inherited huge challenges in her role as Foreign Minister. She is surrounded by alpha males controlling the defence and security debate, convinced that only deadly military weapons can secure a safe future for Australia. She heads a department historically seen as weak and irrelevant by too many men in power. They dismiss diplomacy and negotiation as a soft option preferring military dependence on old allies like the United Kingdom and United States. (more…)
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Civil-military relations and the AUKUS debate: no public role for the military
Subordination of the military to the civil power in a democracy is non-negotiable, but is often taken for granted. More democracies falter because of a breakdown of civil-military relations than through external subversion or foreign aggression. (more…)
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War prevention depends on respecting invisible geopolitical faultlines
If we look back on the major wars of the prior century and forward to the growing menace of a war fought with nuclear weaponry, there is one prominent gap in analysis and understanding: in an imperfectly governed world, spheres of influence in certain regional settings play crucial war prevention roles.
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The DSR’s desultory treatment of nuclear submarines
The Albanese government’s Defence Strategic Review is marred from the outset by its bald assertion that China’s military build-up is the largest and most ambitious of any country since the end of the Second World War. (more…)
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Australia pays Washington swamp monsters for war advice
Australia has been paying insiders of the US war machine for consultation on how to run the nation’s military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China. (more…)
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Act of self-harm: US ‘Defund China’s Allies’ bill targets Solomon Islands
Lawmakers in the US Imperium are getting stroppy. China is on the rise. Russia is not folding. Iran and Saudi Arabia have decided, if not to bury the hatchet then certainly cover it. So it comes as little surprise that Congress now has, before it, the Defund China’s Allies Act (HR 2511), an instrument that is bound to pass and enchant the Empire’s followers in Canberra. (more…)
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Japan’s ‘strike north’ military faction
As a Quad member Japan is supposed to be focussed on Taiwan and the South China Sea. (more…)
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New Defence Review further enslaves Australia to US war agendas
The Australian government has released the declassified version of its highly anticipated 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR), and the war propagandists are delighted. (more…)
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The Defence Strategic Review is a claim to command civil society
The kind of strategic study Australia needs, to preside over this kind of defence staff college scribble, is one which gives a sense of our civil society’s capacities, needs, aspirations — and our neighbourhood.
The Flippingbook is an entirely inappropriate, narrow minded, chauvinistic, militaristic thing that belongs in a country practising for fascism, the submergence of the civil power and civil society. (more…) -
Destroying deterrence
The Albanese government wouldn’t be able buy nuclear attack submarines from the US without agreeing to let them keep performing all their core roles in our region. (more…)