Category: Defence

  • Was DT Mouse-Trapped Into Attacking Syria?

    Those of us of a certain age will remember the phrase ‘DTs’, short for delirium tremens: a rapid onset of confusion caused by an alcoholic’s immediate abstinence. Is the world suffering from a different set of DTs: the rapid-fire onset of domestic and global crises by a confused president revelling in his role as the wrecker-in-chief of international law, global norms and diplomatic conventions? (more…)

  • GEOFF MILLER. Korea: a comprehensive and step-by-step solution?

    That is the phrase that senior South Korean officials are using for what they hope to see resulting from coming summits, which they now envisage as involving, after the North Korea-US meeting, a tri-partite summit between the two Koreas and the US, in turn to be followed by a four-party summit of those three plus China.  But where’s Japan?  And do we really expect North Korea to give up its nuclear missiles, acquired at such a cost in resources?  If so, in return for what benefits and assurances?  And what would it ask the US to do in the cause of “denuclearisation”?  Even if both the US and North Korea are thinking of a “grand bargain”, are their concepts of it compatible? (more…)

  • ANDREW FARRAN. Parliamentary inquiry on proposal for a Bipartisan Defence Agreement to govern future procurements.

    Currently the Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is inquiring into the benefits and risks of a Bipartisan Australian Defence Agreement, as a basis of planning for, and funding of, Australian Defence capability. A comment on this reference by Richard Tanter, based on his submission to the Standing Committee, was posted in Pearls & Irritations on 14th March (“Bad, bad BADA – aka Bipartisan Australian Defence Agreement). A further submission to the Committee, prepared by Andrew Farran, on behalf of Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR), was received by the Committee on 15th March and is reproduced below. Essentially, it states, procurement proposals and decisions should arise from a sound strategic basis and doctrine, ever contestable as circumstances change.  (more…)

  • SUE WAREHAM. Parliamentary debate on going to war is long overdue.

    This week marks the 15th anniversary, on March 20, of one of Australia’s most disastrous foreign policy decisions – our involvement in the invasion of Iraq. To characterise this as “our” involvement, however, does a great disservice to the millions of Australians who were vehemently opposed to the decision that was made by just one person, prime minister John Howard. The clear wishes of the people on this most significant of all decisions were ignored, and our elected representatives in parliament were not consulted. The situation was not an emergency and Iraq posed no threat to Australia. There was every opportunity for the exhaustive scrutiny of Howard’s plan that was critically needed. But it did not happen. (more…)

  • BRIAN TOOHEY. Teresa May’s rush to judgment on nerve agents

    The British Prime Minister Teresa May failed to produce any evidence that the Russian state used a nerve agent called Novichok before she announced measures to punish the Kremlin.  At least Tony Blair famously produced a “dodgy dossier” claiming Saddam Hussein possessed a deadly arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. The Bush White House peddled similar nonsense masquerading as “intelligence”.  Politicians and journalists around the world promptly accepted this rubbish as justification for the disastrous invasion of Iraq 2003.   There is a risk a new rush to judgement could now be occurring.  (more…)

  • PAUL BARRATT: Time to involve Parliament in decisions about sending the ADF into combat.

    Today 20 March is the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” which was led by the US and included the UK, Australia and others. Far from making the world safer, and establishing Iraq as “a shining beacon of democracy” as its proponents proclaimed it would, the invasion has left in its wake violence, instability, the rise of ISIS (directly attributable to the invasion and occupation) and a permanent reshaping of the political order in the Middle East. We never undertook a Chilcot-type inquiry here, but one lesson is clear – we cannot afford to leave decisions about sending the ADF to war in the hands of Executive Government – which means, in effect, the Prime Minister. (more…)

  • MELISSA PARKE. Arms Export Goal Risks The Standing Of A Good International Citizen.

    Five years ago Australia played a key role in drafting and negotiating the UN Arms Trade Treaty in order, as the government announced at the time, “to reduce the impact of armed violence on communities around the world”.

    Five weeks ago Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced his “vision” for Australia to become one of the top ten weapons exporting countries in the world. Rather than visionary, it struck me as grotesque.

    This regression from good global citizen to swaggering deputy sheriff reflects the contradictions at the heart of our foreign policy. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. The ASEAN Summit in Sydney this weekend.

    The meeting this weekend will highlight for Australia the importance of our relations with regional countries.  It will also highlight the importance of our relationship with the US and China, and how that rivalry can best be managed in association with regional countries. As background to this weekend’s Summit meeting, I provide links to five important foreign policy articles that were posted on Pearls and Irritations in May/June 2016.

    These articles were part of a series called Fairness, Opportunity and Security edited by Michael Keating and myself.  The Foreign Affairs articles were written by former senior officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  This series was later published in book form.  The title Fairness, Opportunity and Security was, incidentally, picked up by Malcolm Turnbull as part of a government mantra.  But that is a subject for another day!.

    The five foreign affairs articles, with links, are as follows:

    Richard Butler.  Foreign Policy.  An Independent Australian Foreign Policy Richard Butler was former Australian Ambassador to the UN.

    Stuart Harris.  What Australia’s Foreign Policy Should Look Like.  Stuart Harris was Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs, 1987-88.

    Cavan Hogue.  Australian Foreign Policy.  Cavan Hogue was Australian Ambassador to Mexico, USSR, Russia and Thailand, and High Commissioner to Malaysia.

    John McCarthy. Foreign Policy. Australia, the United States and Asia. John McCarthy was Australian Ambassador to Vietnam, Mexico, Thailand, USA, Indonesia and Japan; and High Commissioner to India.

    Stephen FitzGerald.  Security in the region.  Stephen FitzGerald was Australian Ambassador to China.

     

     

  • NANDINI PANDEY. Rome’s “Empire Without End” and the “Endless” U.S. War on Terror (Replaying the Roman Civil Wars in Reverse Since 9/11)

    That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. (more…)

  • RICHARD BUTLER. The US/DPRK Summit: War or Peace?

    The planned Trump/Kim Summit has a clear choice between a negotiated solution, or war. There is a choice, whatever both sides may say. War is not unavoidable and if it were to occur it would be devastating.   (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. When will we wake up to the risks as well as the benefits of the US alliance? (Repost)

    We are a nation in denial that we are ‘joined at the hip’ to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, almost a ‘hidden state’, that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its ‘manifest destiny’ which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others

    . We are running great risks in committing so much of our future to the US. We must build our security in our own region and not depend so exclusively on a foreign protector.

    Unfortunately many of our political,bureaucratic,business and media elites have been so long on an American drip feed that they find it hard to think of the world without an American focus.. We had a similar and dependant view of the UK in the past. That ended in tears in Singapore. (more…)

  • Returning To The Edge Of The Nuclear Cliff

    The two leaders most responsible for bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end were U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev. They also kick-started the dramatic reductions in nuclear arsenals with a mix of unilateral measures and bilateral agreements. The driving force behind this was acceptance of Reagan’s affirmation in his State of the Union address on Jan. 25, 1984, that “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

    Now their successors, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, seem determined to resurrect the Cold War rivalry, restart a nuclear arms race, and look for technological breakthroughs and doctrinal justifications for “usable” nuclear weapons. (more…)

  • GEOFF MILLER. The ASEAN meeting in Sydney and the Quad – same same but different.

    Singapore and Australia are having to deal with the same set of problems and relationships as the strategic situation in the Asia-Pacific changes.  Singapore isn’t a contender for an expanded “Quad” but, as next year’s Chairman of ASEAN, it will have an important role to play in one of the Turnbull Government’s major foreign policy initiatives, the ASEAN-Australia Summit to be held in Sydney March 17-18. A REPOST   (more…)

  • ROSS GWYTHER. Our nuclear chickens come home to roost

    Popular TV personality Mike Higgins addressed a packed Brisbane City Hall gathering on a rainy November night in 1983.  As chair of the meeting he was joined on the podium by later-to-be Governor General of Australia, Quentin Bryce, retired US Army colonel David Hackworth, Anglican Dean Butters, the president of the Qld Trades Hall council Harry Haunschild, famous Aboriginal writer Oodgeroo Noonuccul, and others.  Convened by the newly formed People for Nuclear Disarmament, the meeting foreshadowed one of the largest and most active mass movements in Australian history – the nuclear disarmament movement of the 1980s and 90s. (more…)

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. American Malaise and Malice.

    The key to the Trump presidency is its malice. Trump daily mocks Lincoln’s noble intent: “with malice toward none”. There is now not a country or region in the world untouched by Trumpite malice, defined as the irrational desire to do harm or mischief, fuelled by a sense of imaginary grievances.Australia cannot expect to be exempt.   (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Afghanistan – the graveyard of empires and the opium poppy.

    They have all failed to conquer Afghanistan – the Greeks, Indians and more recently, the British in the mid 19th Century and the Soviets in the late 20th Century. And now the US empire is failing to subdue the tribes of Afghanistan despite enormous cost of people and treasure. What has not received much attention is that the Taliban depends very heavily on the opium trade which finds its market in the US and other developed countries. That opium trade determines what happens in Afghanistan and not military intervention.   (more…)

  • RICHARD TANTER. Bad, bad BADA (aka Bipartisan Australian Defence Agreement)

    One explanation popular in some thinktank and corporate circles for incoherence in Australian defence policy and inefficiencies in defence procurement attributes these problems to the influence of politicians and elections. If only politics could be got out of the way, so the argument goes, we could have an effective policy process and an efficient defence procurement process. (more…)

  • RICHARD TANTER. Joined at the hip with Donald Trump and implications for Pine Gap and Australian sovereignty.

    In the repost below from 18 December 2017, Richard Tanter pointed out

    Apart from the multiple US–Soviet nuclear crises of 1983, there has probably never been a more important time for Australians to consider the immediate implications of hosting Pine Gap. In the event of war on the Korean peninsula, Pine Gap hardwires Australia into US military operations, whether Canberra likes it or not. … Pine Gap today is a US battlefield asset, and if President Trump’s threat to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea shifts from rhetoric to policy, Australia will automatically be involved in the second Korean War, unless the Turnbull government turns away from ‘joined at the hip’ rhetoric of alliance to join the German blanket rejection of its — and Canberra’s — ally’s belligerence.   (more…)

  • GARY JOHNSTON. The Future Submarine: a technical problem

    It is nearly two years since the government announced that the Shortfin Barracuda, to be designed and built by the French company, Naval Group, would be Australia’s future submarine (FSM). The proposed acquisition remains controversial. As an Australian citizen who has observed over many years the ongoing waste and incompetence exhibited in many Defence acquisitions, I have been concerned since the outset at the huge cost and immense risks around the FSM project. In this article, I describe what may be a major technical error on the part of the Defence department, with potentially far reaching consequences. (more…)

  • SAUL ESLAKE. The quest for ‘security’ – is it rational, has it made us safer, and at what cost?

    In November last year, I gave an address to the Royal Society of Tasmania – the oldest such society ‘dedicated to the advancement of knowledge’ outside of the United Kingdom – at an event hosted by the Governor of Tasmania, Her Excellency Professor Kate Warner AC, at her official residence in Hobart.  In this address I posed, and sought to answer, three questions:

    • How significant a risk is the threat of terrorism in Australia, both in absolute terms and relative to some of the other risks and threats on our horizon?
    • How effective in reducing that risk have the various measures enacted in the name of ‘security’ actually been? and
    • How does whatever reduction in the risks posed by terrorism which has been obtained compare with the costs, broadly defined, of those measures? 

    (more…)

  • Australia: A Belligerent Nation

    Much discussion has been generated by the recently released Defence White. There were several penetrating essays in Pearls and Irritations. But looking at the text as a historian it seemed that some of the most interesting observations passed without notice. I was drawn to the statement that there was no more than a remote prospect of a military attack by another country on Australian territory in the foreseeable future. It was a truism which, it seemed, scarcely needed examination. (more…)

  • The Right to Keep and Bear Arms; and to use them

    Guns and arms are embedded in US culture. It seems unable or unwilling to fix this, even though its people want it fixed.Its arms manufacturers are opposed to any solution. This shapes US foreign policy. Our engagement in this syndrome endangers us.

    (more…)

  • Joined at the hip Mr Turnbull goes to Washington this week.. Part 1 of 2 Repost

    We are a nation in denial that we are ‘joined at the hip’ to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, almost a ‘hidden state’, that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its ‘manifest destiny’ which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others. As the US goes into relative economic decline, it will be asking allies such as Australia for more help and support. We are running great risks in committing so much of our future to the US. We must build our security in our own region and not depend so exclusively on a foreign protector.   (more…)

  • Joined at the hip, Mr. Turnbull goes to Washington this week. Part 2 of 2. Repost

    We are a nation in denial that we are ‘joined at the hip’ to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war, wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, almost a ‘hidden state,’ that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its ‘manifest destiny’ which brings with it an assumed moral superiority denied to others. As the US goes into relative economic decline, it will ask allies such as Australia for more help and support. We are running great risks in committing so much of our future to the US. We must build our security in our own region and not depend so exclusively on a foreign protector. 

    In Part 1 yesterday I outlined the facts and reasons for the US being almost always at war. Today I highlight that  the risks pre date Trump and discuss the role of the media and others in keeping us in denial about the risks in our dependence on the US.  (more…)

  • The Alliance: Deeper thought required urgently

    This is not the time to deepen our commitment to the alliance and, become ever more involved in the US’ imperium and need for enemies. We need to think freshly about our international relations and security. The recent Foreign Policy White Paper, constructed by Julie Bishop, was depressingly free of any such fresh thought. The new US Ambassador clearly sees his role to ride shot gun on Australia’s  military role in the Alliance.

    (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…)

  • Jim Molan’s delusions

    No-one would expect a surgeon to recommend Chinese medicine to his patients. His advice usually involves a scalpel and some nasty cutting. Similarly, it would be surprising for military men to advocate political solutions to global conflicts. It’s not their area of professional expertise. By default they lead with their strongest suit — organised violence — not geopolitics or diplomacy. (more…)

  • The media, the Iraq war and Fallujah

    The Australian media continues to fail us badly over its coverage of the Middle East wars, terrorism and the continuing disaster of ISIS.  That failure  began with the invasion of Iraq .  Unlike important overseas media, no Australian media has admitted or apologized for its failure in the coverage of the Iraq war and its consequences.  As is  often the case, our media was embedded in the ADF in support of Coalition policy. The political class sticks together.

    News Corp media has been most at fault. (more…)

  • Nuclear portents mount while Rome burns

    “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” (Albert Einstein May 1946). (more…)

  • BILL ROWLINGS. ‘Secret’ committee wants more power, but what about ASIO?

    The Australian Parliament’s most secret committee is angling for more powers and the ability to conduct its affairs live on TV, just like in the USA. (more…)