Category: Defence

What are Australia’s objectives in the Middle East imbroglio? The simple answer is that it is about the American Alliance. We see ourselves as part of a global alliance led by the USA and generally supported by European powers: countries that  “share our values”. We are there because they are. Therefore the fact that our military presence makes no difference to the situation in Syria or in defeating ISIS is not really relevant. Nor is it relevant that our military presence does nothing to discourage idealistic young Australians from joining ISIS and may even encourage them. Neither is it relevant that the US doesn’t really know what it is doing there. But of course domestic politics in Australia are always relevant.

Russia does have clear strategic objectives in supporting Bashir al Assad just as it does in Crimea and Ukraine. Western pressure, including sanctions, only entrenches Putin’s domestic popularity because he is seen as a strong man who defends the Motherland against foreign oppressors. So Putin does not need to give in to American and NATO huffing and puffing. Russians distrust NATO and even more the US who they do not believe have any right to the moral highground – especially since it was the illegal Coalition of the Willing that opened Pandora’s Box. So Putin will negotiate but will not give anything important away.  Who is the greater evil: ISIS or Bashir al Assad?  Furthermore it is increasingly obvious that the current strategy is not working so the Americans must eventually go back to the drawing board which means either go home, get heavily involved militarily on the ground or work with Assad. Russia holds the cards in the Ukraine/Crimea situation and no doubt believes it has the winning cards in Syria also. While the aircraft that strayed into Turkish airspace probably was a navigational error as the Russians claim, the Russians argue that everyone opposed to Assad is a terrorist and their aim is to support their rooster against “terrorists”. Therefore they may well be targeting non-ISIS groups opposed to Assad but they are not likely to listen to sermons from NATO. It could also be a ploy to pressure others to support Assad. As the US found out when it armed the Taliban against the USSR, it is not always easy to know who are the goodies and who are the baddies.

Australia is a babe in the Middle Eastern woods where various factions fight other factions in an ever changing kaleidoscope. We would be well advised to keep out of the region and stop kidding ourselves that we have influence. The US expects us to toe the line but we could try to persuade them to be more realistic and less ideological .However our track record is not encouraging. Russia sees us as simply a camp follower of the USA and so is not really interested in our views .Prime Minister Turnbull is showing some awareness of reality by noting that a military solution is not an option and seems to understand that our military presence in the region is more likely to radicalise young idealists than calm them down. It will be interesting to see what develops.

Cavan Hogue was formerly Australian ambassador to USSR and to Russia.

In their addresses to the UN General assembly, last week, Presidents Obama and Putin focused on the civil war in Syria. Both emphasized the need for the war, now in its 5^th year, to be brought to an end. They both said that a political solution needed to be found, but they differed on a central issue: the role of Syrian President Bashir Al Assad.

The US position widely supported by western and key regional states and, of course, Syrian groups fighting the regime, was that Assad and his government must go. The Russian position was that Assad’s government is the legitimate authority in Syria and it must have a role in any negotiations to bring about an end to the conflict and determine the future government of Syria. Even before Putin’s public address, Obama stated in his, that Assad might be given a transitional role, but could not be left standing at the end. This was seen as a concession by the US. Indeed, conservative critics of Obama decried this as yet another sign of his inherent weakness.

Importantly, both Presidents agreed that it was essential for the Islamic State (IS) to be removed. There was an expectation that, in their subsequent private meeting, they might be able to identify ways in which, despite their differing basic positions, they might forge a political/diplomatic process through which an end to the war was negotiated.

While there was no substantive indication of what took place in that meeting, other events which took place immediately thereafter, were very clear.

Obama invited States prepared to form a coalition against IS to join him in a meeting, which he chaired. Sixty States took part. Australia was one. Extradordinarily, given the history of US/Iraqi involvement, Iraq was not. This group pledged to step up and coordinate action to defeat IS.

Putin announced the formation of a group with a similar purpose. It was formed by 4 States: Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. It mirrored the establishment in Baghdad, a few weeks earlier, of a common intelligence and coordination center targeted on the situation in Syria.

Within the same period and while this public political discourse was taking place at the UN, Russia was moving significant military assets, mainly although not exclusively, aerial assets into western Syria.

Three days after the UN speeches and talks had concluded, Russia launched its first attacks on targets on the ground in Syria. They have continued daily since then. Credible reports indicate that their targets have been, in the main, forces opposed to the Assad government, not IS. Russia has not stated why this has occurred, what exactly is intended, for how long or far this military action goes.

But, these things are clear. Russia has now entered the Syrian and regional contest in a significant way. Putin gave some of the reasons for this in his UN speech. Russia is not prepared to accept a world shaped by US power or the notion so favored by the US that is “the exceptional country”. It believes that the west abused the authority given by the UN Security Council to protect threatened citizens in Libya by extending that to regime change in Libya. Russia will never accept external intervention to change a legitimately constituted government.      (See my paper on Russian foreign policy, Pearls and Irritations, January 5^th, 2015)

As ever, in international politics, the stated reasons for extraordinary action, especially military action, are never the whole or real reasons. Naturally, Putin has not highlighted publicly other issues which clearly are of concern to him because of the threat they pose to his hold on power; The existence of potentially jihadist groups within Russia, and his reliance upon support from small but immensely powerful groups in Russia, principally with economic interests.

He is convinced that this pressure demand from him the visible exercise of strength, of strong government, and this in turn, is a crucial element in his wider public popularity.

The Russians and others have watched US bombing in Syria for almost a year and have noticed that its usefulness in “degrading and defeating” IS has been questionable, to say the least, but that the impact of the actions of Syrian rebels, supported by the west have been starting to threaten the Assad regime. It is the latter trend that has more likely stimulated Russian military intervention.

The complexity of the situation in the region, with facets not unlike a rubic cube, is now underlined by immediate reactions to Russia’s military actions and its 4-power coalition.

Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf States see it entirely through the lens of their obsession with the rise of Iran. They take virtually no refugees from Syria, they supply arms and money to the Syrian rebels, the very groups the Russians are now bombing, because they are opposed to Assad, and that because he is supported by Iran. They welcome some of the US’ actions but not necessarily the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Turkey, with its long and troubled border with Syria and what it sees as its Kurdish problem, and its fairly good relationship with Russia, but bitter opposition to Assad, has promoted the idea of a safe, no fly zone, in northern Syria. The entry of the Russian air force into the area has rendered that untenable.

Perhaps above all, the US at least for the current moment seems to have no clear idea what to do, although it has just been reported that it is to increase military support to anti IS forces in Syria. It is now faced with the fact that its main nuclear armed rival has now entered, militarily, into a sphere, the gut politics of which it has thought it controlled, no matter how ineptly, and expected to continue to control. What can be done about the significantly increased possibility of military accidents between them?

The underlying philosophy advanced by Putin at the UN, a conservative, state centered philosophy, has widespread appeal in UN circles and it is in large measure supported by international law. The US/UK/Australia invasion of Iraq in 2003 was contrary to international law. The removal of the Qadaffi regime in Libya was not what the UN authorized. Russia claims that its current military intervention in Syria is at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, and if this is so, then it’s legal. The action Russia then takes within Syria may be another matter and, it’s lying about its targets there is a case in point.

Von Clausewitz’s now classic observation that, “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, would appear to be alive and well in Syria today and much of the region in which it lives. It is the approach the US has mostly employed, parlayed as pursuing peace through strength, and the Russians have now plainly adopted.

The trouble with it is that it constitutes a continuum between violence and political settlements. It is always so costly and stupid because the settlement will come, even though it almost certainly will not be the one some would have preferred, yet only after insupportable cost. As Australia has chosen to be a participant in the US led coalition to address problems in Syria and Iraq, indeed has sent military assets there without public or parliamentary debate, we should in these new circumstances, seek respectful inclusion in policy discussion within the coalition. It should not be acceptable for our military simply to be given deployment orders. We should check ourselves any proposed deployments given the shocking errors in the US bombing of Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz.

As, it seems that military competition between the US and Russia in a common theater is now more likely, and this could lead to calls for further engagement by Australia, the task of clarifying the legitimate legal and political means by which Australia decides to go to war has become urgent .

(See www.warpowersreform.org.au)

Richard Butler AC, Former Australian Ambassador to the UN and Executive Chairman of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq (UNSCOM)

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at Kings College London points to the ways that many thousands of recruits who journeyed to Iraq and Syria may now be regretting their decisions. The more defectors speak out, the more the ISIS cause will suffer. The ICSR Report Executive Summary follows.  John Menadue.

Executive Summary

• Defectors from the so-called Islamic State (IS) are a new and growing phenomenon. Since January 2014, at least 58 individuals have left the group and publicly spoken about their defection. They represent a small fraction of the many disillusioned fighters who have turned against IS.

• The defectors provide unique insight into life in the Islamic State. But their stories can also be used as a potentially powerful tool in the fight against it. The defectors’ very existence shatters the image of unity and determination that IS seeks to convey. Their narratives highlight the group’s contradictions and hypocrisies. Their example encourages members to leave the group. And their experience and credibility can help deter others from joining.

• The defectors’ reasons for leaving may be as complex as the reasons they joined. Not everyone has become a fervent supporter of liberal democracy. Some may have committed crimes. They joined the most violent and totalitarian organization of our age, yet they are now its worst enemies.

• Among the stories of the 58 defectors, we identified four key narratives:
1) ‘IS is more interested in fighting fellow (Sunni) Muslims than the Assad government
2) ‘IS is involved in brutality and atrocities against (Sunni) Muslims.’
3) ‘IS is corrupt and un-Islamic.’ 4) ‘Life under IS is harsh and disappointing.’

• Defecting from IS is complex and dangerous. Wannabe defectors are faced with numerous obstacles. Their first challenge is to separate from IS and make their way into non-IS held territory. But even those who succeed are not necessarily safe. What prevents them from speaking out is the fear of reprisals and the worry that prosecutors may use their openness against them.

• Our recommendations are for governments and activists to recognize the value and credibility of defector narratives; provide defectors with opportunities to speak out; assist them in resettlement and ensure their safety; and remove legal disincentives that prevent them from going public.

Strategy is difficulty to practice and even more difficult to master. Its components – knowledge leavened by wisdom and imagination – cohabit with military science only in the most tense and difficult of relationships. That said, there are three nearly invariable rules that should govern the thinking and acting of a strategic actor – nation state or non-state: the first is that the record of the US since its founding ought to be a caution against any involvement in its interventions: In a document compiled by the Congressional Research Service covering the 216 years period 1798 – 2014, and which excludes the current campaigns in Iraq and Syria and all covert and / or “black” operations, the following table is revealing:

Post Cold War (August 1990 – 14 August 2014):  146 deployments (averaging 6.1 per year.)   Bush 1: 9, Clinton: 65, Bush 2:  39, and Obama: 33.

Cold War (24 June 1948 – August 1990): 47 deployments (averaging 1.5 per year)

Interwar and World War II (1918 – 1948):  34 deployments (averaging 1.1 per year)

Imperial Era and World War I (1866 – 1917):  69 deployments (averaging 1.4 per year)

Nation’s Founding through Civil War (1798 to 1865):  65 deployments (averaging 1.0 per year)

In just the 24 years since the end of the Cold War, the US has deployed military force 5 times more often than in the previous 193 years.

The second proscribes the temptation to persuade the educated population of an electoral democracy of the merits of a particular strategy by resorting to slogans and bumper-sticker phrases. While conceding that they have their use (by resolute fans of sports teams or true believers in political parties with no regard for the welfare of their motor vehicle, they inevitably distort. Thus, it contributes nothing to the public understanding of IS / ISIS / Daesh to keep referring to it, as a “death cult” because, while its strategies of terror are frequently obscene, deadly and destructive, it remains more than this characterization.

Similarly, proclaiming that the objective is to “degrade, defeat and to destroy” the organisation passes a junior alliteration test but leaves unsaid how this will be done by bombing and, indeed, what victory will look like given that the ideology of IS is centuries old and bombs are essentially irrelevant against abstract nouns.

The third is that a nation-state, or non-state, actor should not persist in modes of thought and courses of action that are evident failures. The Australian Government’s recent decision to extend the RAAF’s bombing missions to Syria, and indeed, the precursor decision to join with the US operations against targets in Iraq, suggest that it is both ignorant of, or unconcerned with the former while being clear evidence that the latter is a present and chronic malaise in national security thinking and practice.

Consider this vignette by George Packer in The New Yorker of the recent time frame:

It has been almost fourteen years since the September 11th attacks—longer than the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, longer than America’s war in Vietnam. The fallout has been an improbable and wrong-footed business from the start, unfolding in a series of improvisations and flukes, with actions or reactions that often seemed not just incommensurate with their consequences but utterly disconnected: nineteen hijackers commandeer four commercial airplanes; the United States drives the Taliban from Afghanistan; Osama bin Laden escapes to Pakistan; the Bush Administration invents a secret legal apparatus; the Taliban return; the U.S. invades Iraq, occupies it for eight years, then leaves; bin Laden is hunted down and killed while under the protection of a putative American ally; Arab states disintegrate; an obscure jihadist from Baghdad declares the restoration of the caliphate; the U.S. returns to Iraq. As narrative, the war on terror has been like the nouveau roman, with no coherent plot, only jarring disjunctions of cause and effect, time and place.

A little over one year after operations against Islamic State were begun, there is little evidence of bombing’s efficacy. Whether IS is advancing or retreating is essentially unknown, not least for the fact that hard, reliable intelligence on its strength is elusive. Thus, CENTCOM claims that it has killed 10,000 fighters is a non sequitur if, as seems to be the case, their number appears to have remained constant through the period.

Perhaps more significant is the current investigation being undertaken by the US Department of Defense’s Inspector General in response to allegations from within the Defense Intelligence Agency that CENTCOM officers were “improperly reworking” conclusions of assessments that were prepared for policy-makers, including President Obama.

As unprofessional and dangerous as this is, it accords with the carnival of confusions that attend US policy and strategy in the Middle East.   The very nature of something as fundamental as the threat to US national security – and thus to US alliances – is unclear. In 2011, according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, it was the US national debt. Thereafter, and notwithstanding that little has been done to significantly improve the debt issue, the State Department’s web site is explicit: it is terrorist networks that pose the greatest security threat. At the same time, senior CIA analysts agree but numerous members of Congress and high-ranking officials from the National Security Agency have been content merely with simply stating that the threat was terrorism (national, international, home-grown jihadis, “lone wolf”) and its level is “unprecedented.”

It is a view evidently and emphatically not shared by General Phillip Breedlove, Commander of US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe: in August 2015 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee he not only nominated Russia as the principal threat to the US and its allies but advocated a direct confrontation with that country. He conceded, however, that terrorism and instability across the Middle East and North Africa were part of the larger threat spectrum.

Understandably, no mention is made at these levels of official Washington of the origins of IS in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent policies and strategies followed by the United States and its allies until their departure. The imposed institutionalization of sectarianism which facilitated anti-Sunni discrimination, and “de-Baathification,” coupled with being occupied by foreign powers and a wrecked economy were all catalysts for the emergence of an agile, militarily competent, and politically astute enemy that knows how to instill fear, extract obedience and even respect from the populations over which it rules.

Equally, strategies and policies which refuse to countenance an informal alliance with President Assad’s forces because Syria is to be another example of ‘regime change’ fail to acknowledge that he and they are determined to defeat IS and that, historically, the West has benefited enormously by accommodations of this nature. Has the West’s relationship with Stalin’s Soviet Union in World War II now so totally forgotten that it is not even mentioned in analyses and opinion pieces in Australia (and elsewhere)?

Perhaps to do so would be to acknowledge the carnival of confusions that the Iraq – Syria campaign has given rise to and which is best exemplified by the American Middle East scholar, Stephen Zunes, in another vignette:

Are you confused by what is going on in the Middle East?
If so, please let me explain it for you in clear terms:
We support the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIS.
We don’t like ISIS, but ISIS is supported by Saudi Arabia who we do like.
We don’t like Assad in Syria.
We support the fight against him, but ISIS is also fighting against him.
We don’t like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS.
So some of our friends support our enemies, some enemies are now our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies, who we want to lose, but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.
If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they could be replaced by people we like even less.
And all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists
who were not actually there until we went in to drive them out.

An immediate accounting of this disconnect between modest, but sound strategic theory and action must include the national tragedy that has befallen the Syrian people, especially over the last 5 years which marks its civil war. The estimated death toll from four years of civil war is between 220,000 and 310,000, up to half of its population of 23 million has been displaced and 5 million have created an exodus of refugees. Just as deciding precisely upon the causes, deciding who is with, or without blame for it all is an exercise in the forensics of power politics in the Middle East. Suffice to say that understanding might best be served by appropriating the wisdom of Abraham Joshua Heschel: few might strictly be guilty, but all are responsible.

What, then is the objective of Australia’s contribution in this context given that it is unlikely that US air power will be enhanced by the addition of six F/A-18 Hornets, a Wedgetail airborne control aircraft and a KC-30A tanker, and given also that, in the year to August this year, the US had carried out 5,900 strikes against IS targets in an extended operation described by one general as “the most precise and disciplined in the history of aerial warfare.”

If we take into account that the 22,478 mainly US weapons directed against targets in Iraq and Syria in the past year represents a factor five times greater than during the period 2010 to 2015 in Afghanistan, then the reported lack of success against IS argues against even a claim of Australia’s marginal utility. And this is without entering into a debate on the financial cost of the US air campaign, now reported as $USD9.9 million per day.

Indeed, to ask this question is to beggar the whole notion of strategy even as an art. Official statements are devoid of any mention of a strategy for the Iraq-Syria theatre of operations. What exists is the alliterative “degrade, defeat, and destroy” – in other words a vague sense that bombing at least satisfies a need to be doing something, and on the offensive. It also allows Australia to engage once more in its peculiar form of strategic mimetism whereby it assumes US imperatives and categories to reinforce the political validity and utility of it alliance with the US.

This is a curious and dangerous neurosis: from the beginning, it was officially conceded that bombing alone would not defeat IS and the evidence to date is that the $USD500 million plan to train 5,400 anti-IS fighters in 2015 is officially a failure with only “four or five” Syrian trainees actively engaged in this according to Central Command’s general Lloyd J. Austin. The danger would only be exacerbated if the current Republican presidential debates are any indication, and / or if they drag US debate further to the right because many of them openly advocate the insertion of US ground troops as a solution to Syrian default.

The problem here is that this neurosis is also a reflex, and its accompanying spasm of non-strategic thinking, collides with not only genuine strategic practice, but also with what I understand to be the First Law of Political Action. That Law holds that political action is only ever undertaken if it can satisfy one of two criteria: to improve the situation, or stop it from getting worse. How either can be argued on the basis of recent history, or the present circumstances, would be a wonder to behold.

Dr Michael McKinley, Visiting Fellow, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU.

Defying public protests and opinion polls that show most Japanese oppose the move, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and Shin-Komeito ruling coalition are pressing ahead with legislation to nullify the nation’s constitutional ban on overseas military action.

The so-called ‘right of collective defense’ law is being voted out of the committee stage of the Diet––thus ending formal debate––and will soon go to the full parliament where Abe has the numbers to push it through. There have been rowdy scenes in the corridors and chambers of parliament as angry Opposition members have tried to prevent the gag being applied.

Outside, in the streets of central Tokyo, thousands of demonstrators, defying cyclonic rain, have kept up a protest vigil. In Yokoyama, protestors clashed with police. There is a mood of crisis not seen probably since the anti-U.S.-Japan Treaty demonstrations of the 1960s, although that earlier protest movement was far bigger and more determined.

There is every indication that Japan will take the historic step to free up its military options in a way not seen since the end of the Second World War. The Abe Government will have spent a considerable amount of political capital, but even so its approval rating in the latest survey by NHK (the public broadcaster) showed an improvement to above 40%, which is comparatively good for a Cabinet this far into its term of office.

On what will the new Japanese posture be built? In terms of historical memory, I would suggest that the foundations are dangerously weak. Unlike Germany––as has often been observed­­­­­­­––Japan has never adequately faced up to its past. In a real sense, Abe’s conservatives are starting again where his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi (a high official in the wartime state and the postwar Prime Minister who forced through the unpopular treaty with the U.S.) left off. In their world-view, Japan was not the aggressor in the 1930s but the victim (of the European powers) and its mission in China and Korea was noble.

I remember visiting Berlin a few years ago and taking a tram to the Philharmonie. In the tram shelter there I noticed a sign bearing a photograph and some bilingual text. It turned out to be one of a series of historical markers related to the Second World War. To my great surprise, it named and described a German Nazi who had perpetrated crimes against humanity: it was a very public and unalloyed reminder of Germany’s dark past. Places like the Holocaust Monument in Berlin and the museum erected at the site where the Nuremberg Rallies were held are further examples of the clear-sighted German approach to their historical legacy.

Contrast this with Japan, where places like the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo perpetuate the nationalists’ apologia for decades of aggression in China and Korea and the brutal military occupation of Southeast Asia.

Whether on a large scale or small, the Japanese are unprepared emotionally and intellectually for a remilitarized future.

I give as a small example of the unreconstructed attitude to the past one encounters almost every day. I happen, at present, to be doing some translation work connected with art history. In a Japanese commentary I am working on, concerning an artist who painted in Manchukuo (the puppet state set up by Japan) and occupied China, the writer persists in using anachronistic place names dating from the time when the Japanese were master. Instead of describing Japan as attacking China in 1937, she refers to the Sino-Japanese Incident. The involvement of the particular artist in wartime propaganda is also silently passed over. Nothing like this would be tolerated in a German publication of any status.

I do not for a moment suggest that the writer of this commentary is a right-wing zealot or even politically aware. Indeed, her approach and language are typical of the way these events are written about in Japan. It runs right through the so-called educated classes. Either people do not know or do not care to know what really happened in the past. The education system has failed to prepare the present generation to deal in a different, safer way with the pressures emerging from the Right for a renewal of national pride and self-assertiveness.

Television coverage of the anti-security legislation protests suggests that a majority of those demonstrating are middle to older-aged Japanese. Perhaps the news programs may be distorting the truth (friends of mine who have attended say around a third are younger people), but what is different about these protests, compared with those in the 1960s, is that they are not being led or joined by mainly student-age Japanese. This is a worrying aspect: the rising generation is either complacent or so badly informed about their nation’s past, the inherent dangers of a society that hides or obfuscates what it should, like Germany, confront every day––whether at a tram-stop or in the classroom or in an art book––are just not appreciated.

Japan does not seem to know how unready it is.

Walter Hamilton reported for the ABC from Japan for 11 years.

     ‘Foreign (military) adventures have long appealed to insecure leaders’, wrote the veteran British journalist, Sir Simon Jenkins, in the right-wing Spectator magazine. ‘Those who’ve had no experience of war seem to crave it’. He was referring to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s renewed enthusiasm to get involved in Syria. He could just as well have been referring to another conservative leader, our own Tony Abbott.

His cabinet this week is expected to approve what he reportedly is keen for, namely to extend Australia’s involvement in Iraq to the Syrian battlefield. This would mean joining a small US-led coalition force of air power targeting Islamic State (IS) or Daesh, as Mr Abbott calls it. It fits in well with his frequent mantra about anything related to national security, no matter how far away it is.

Australia is no military stranger to what is independent Syria today, having been involved there in both world wars.

In 1918, troops of the Australian Light Horse were first into Damascus, driving out the Ottoman occupiers of what was then known as the Arab Levant. But popular history overlooks the Australian role, preferring the myth that it was no less than Lawrence of Arabia and his Arab army which captured Damascus and sent the Turks fleeing.

The facts are that the Australians entered the city at 5am on October 1, 1918, paving the way for the Lawrence forces to enter later the same day. The Arabs were given the credit for propaganda purposes and historians have tended to go along with this as what actually happened.

In 1941, Australian troops and this time the RAAF were back in Syria, now a French mandate, to help fight the pro-German Vichy forces. The intention was to prevent any German move into the eastern Mediterranean. The Australians suffered 416 killed and 1136 wounded. It was only later that Australia learned the Germans had no intention of getting involved there. Its new focus then was the attack on the Soviet Union.

But in 21st century warfare it is hard to see what, if any, impact a handful of RAAF fighter-bombers would have on a ground force like IS which has melted into local communities and is scattered across a vast terrain representing one-third of Syria as well as part of Iraq.

Defence Minister Kevin Andrews was very cautious about how far Australia would dip its toes into the sands of Syria. He told the government’s favourite mouthpiece, The Australian, that RAAF missions would be planned in advance rather than be ‘hot pursuit’ operations. He rejected claims that the bombing to date had achieved little.

But the reality is that IS is still firmly in charge of Mosul, Iraq’s main northern city, and Raqqa, its capital in Northern Syria. Indeed, according to Al Jazeera, some in Raqqa say life is better despite IS’s brutal approach to law and order. IS reportedly has brought stability to daily life by restoring the power supply, painting road signs, introducing a new education system and imposing taxes.

The best that could be said is that, unlike most of the world, we in Australia are taking action against a vicious and dangerous organisation. But at the same time the law of averages says innocent lives will be lost, even more refugees will be on the move, more grievances created and more jihadists will want to join IS.

Abbott’s enthusiasm to get involved is hard to reconcile when you consider the coalition consists of just the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Canada and Turkey, though the latter seems more interested in attacking Kurdish targets. Britain is hinting it might get involved, but that would have to wait until next month when parliament resumes.

Syria is a tangled political web like none other. In addition to IS and the coalition air forces, there are the al-Qaeda offshoot, the Nusra Front; another militant Islamic organisation, the anti-government Ahrar al-Sham; the Free Syrian Army now in disarray; the Kurds and, of course, the demoralised Syrian armed forces.

In addition, Russia is stirring the pot. Recent news reports suggest Moscow, a long-time ally of Syria, intends to expand its aid to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. According to the London Daily Telegraph, ‘speculation is growing that Russia has significantly expanded its involvement in recent months, including deliveries of advanced weaponry, a raft of spare parts for existing machines, and the deployment of increasing numbers of military advisers and instructors’. President Putin has not ruled out military intervention, leading Washington to worry it might even lead to a ‘confrontation’ with the US-led coalition. This should particularly concern coalition pilots as Russia has supplied Syria with advanced air defences, including missiles.

Crushing IS might lead to a much bigger problem: what to do with a hopelessly fragmented Syria when it has other violent groups jostling for power. We should beware of getting entangled.

FOOTNOTE: It is possible we could see Australia fighting on – or at least from – Turkish soil for the first time since the Gallipoli debacle 100 years ago. According to The Australian, Canberra has been in touch with Ankara about the possibility of operating from the Incirlik air base in SE Turkey, though it says it has no plans at this stage.

John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

The government is considering adding to the disaster in the Middle East by instructing the RAAF to bomb targets in Syria.

Will we ever learn from our past mistakes?

In supporting the US invasion of Iraq, Australia helped trigger the tragedy that is now unfolding. Perhaps a million lives have been lost and refugees are flooding in their millions into adjoining countries and Europe. Our involvement has triggered both ethnic and sectarian conflict. Does Tony Abbott ever stop and think about his role in the Howard Government that helped sow the seeds of this disaster?

In considering the Middle East, Tony Abbott has two clear objectives that have nothing to do with our national interest. The first is to wedge the opposition and make it appear weak on security. He has instructed his private office to look for regular and if possible daily opportunities to highlight security threats. He wants to make the Canning bi-election a khaki election. Secondly he is determined to show that he is the most loyal ally of the US. He even asked the Americans to ask us to step up our role in the Middle East. He is quite unwilling to acknowledge that we are tying ourselves to a country that is perpetually at war. That is putting us at great risk.

The West is not winning the war in the Middle East. The history of foreign intervention in the Middle East is one of loss and ignominy. Just ask the Russians.

There is serious legal doubt about extending our role into Syria. The Saudis, Emirates and Qataris are not contributing to the campaign against IS. Many Saudis privately support and fund IS. Having suffered defeat as a result of the intervention by the US and its allies many Sunni in Iraq now support IS. None of our neighbours in South East Asia is involved.

The commander of our joint operations in the Middle East Vice-Admiral David Johnson has told us that bombing Syria will not be a ‘game changer’

Turkey, one of our ‘allies’ in the area, is playing a double game. Despite its alleged opposition to IS, Turkey has remained a major transit country for foreign fighters, including Australians, to join IS in Syria and Iraq. Turkey helps fund IS through large purchases of oil. Turkey is now conducting aerial strikes on IS in Iraq and Syria, but it is using these strikes against IS as a cover for much heavier aerial attacks on Kurdish positions. It is done to play to the domestic hostility to the Kurds living in Turkey. Yet the Kurds are the most effective military opposition on the ground to IS.

We keep compounding the disaster we triggered in the first place. We cannot undo what we helped create, but we should not make it worse by allowing ourselves to be goaded by IS. Only a diplomatic and political resolution is possible. In any resolution Iran will be a key player.

We would make a much greater contribution to wellbeing if we agreed to take 10,000 people displaced from Syria and provide refuge for them in Australia as we did for Kosovans in 1999.

For an outline of the mess, see the link below to an article in the New York Times by Roger Cohen.  Middle East Zen

Within the next ten days, the National Security Committee of Cabinet will discuss the US request to Australia to deploy RAAF assets in bombing IS targets in Syria. Presumably, senior defense, foreign affairs, intelligence and government policy staff will be preparing assessments of such military action for Committee consideration. It would be normal for such assessments to include: the nature, aims and duration of possible military actions, including target selection, their command and control, risk assessment, actions needed in the event of downing of RAAF aircraft, relationship to Australia’s national security and the impact of such action on its international relationships.

Whatever might be a rational preparation of analyses for consideration by Cabinet, Prime Minister Abbott has already stated his preferred position, predictably, in an exclusive interview with The Australian newspaper.

He stated that the US request to Australia is “a very serious request…We’ll take it very seriously” and on the substance of what might occur, the depth of his analysis was to declare that there is no moral difference between attacking sites in Syria from those already subject to attack within Iraq, and on the international legal aspect, national borders for example, he asserted “This (ISIS) is an evil movement whether it is operating in Iraq or in Syria, it is an absolutely evil movement, and in the end, when they don’t respect where the border is, the question is why should we?”

In the light of these declarations from the Captain, the preparation of fundamental analyses of what our reply to the US might be can now stop and be replaced by papers simply describing operational and search and rescue arrangements.

The Prime Minister’s assertion that no difference should be drawn between what is now happening in Iraq and what is planned for Syria, apart from being glaringly wrong, shockingly illogical – justifying a dubious decision by arguing that it’s not as bad as an earlier one – further obscures the fact that the decision to commit Australian military assets to Iraq was itself done without consideration by the Parliament or any consultation with the public.

The absence of any such consultation on the decision by the Howard government to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the woeful inadequacy of mechanisms through which a decision by Australia to go to war is considered is fully explored by Australians for War Powers Reform. (www.iraqwarinquiry.org.au).

Abbott is continuing the conservative practice that asserts that such matters as Australia going to war are too difficult for ordinary people to understand. Ordinary people did understand Howard’s 2003 decision. They marched against it in Australia’s streets in record numbers, were ignored, and turned out to have been right. That invasion of Iraq violated international law, killed at least half a million people, settled nothing, and is widely regarded as having given rise to the present chaos in that region, including the emergence of ISIS.

Prime Minister Abbott is evidently guided by his belief that our national interest, and his domestic political interest, dictate that we agree to this latest US request. He appears to be amongst the most enthusiastic supporters of the notion first enunciated by Menzies to justify our sending troops to support the Americans in Vietnam, that Australia must have a “great and powerful friend”, and crisply encapsulated by Prime Minister Holt at the height of the Vietnam War; “all the way with LBJ”. According to reports just published and not denied, Abbott in fact asked the Americans to request Australia to undertake this proposed action against Syrian targets. This echoes the action by Menzies in 1962 when he claimed Vietnam had invited Australian participation in the war. This was shown to have been false. Menzies had misled the people and the Parliament. Australia had in fact asked Vietnam to invite it to enter the war. So an infamous conservative tradition is extended.

The idea that we are obliged to align ourselves with the US, abandoning an independent foreign policy, raises among other important things such as our integrity, the risk described by Michael McKinley ( Pearls and Irritations, July 16^th, 2015): “minor powers aligned with major powers share the risks and eventually the significant costs of conflicts that are, at root, derived from a status that is beyond them”.

Virtually automatic commitment to the US’ wars is a prospect that is now almost as limitless as what has become the US’ current continuous commitment to war. On the latter reality, McKinley cites the 2014 report of the Congressional Research Service that, inter alia, between 1990 and August 2014, the US deployed military force 5 times more often than in the prior 193 years.

In Abbott’s version of great and powerful friendism, as is his wont, he has introduced a moralising element. The problem this raises is not to be found in the notion that there is a moral aspect to international relations, but in the entirely inconsistent and dogmatic application of notions of morality employed by Abbott. His attachment to morality in the field of dealing with “the death cult” stands in stark contrast with his sense of morality on a range of other issues: Aboriginal Australians, taxation of individuals and corporations, education, climate and the environment, asylum seekers. The list is well known and brutal.

When the current military commitment to Iraq was announced by the Prime Minister, in April 2015, he rejected the notion of mission creep. Yet, here it is, after only five months. Again, no Parliamentary or public discussion is planned. Abbott will consult with opposition leadership, but Leader Bill Shorten has already signaled his readiness to offer bipartisanship on the issue. A commentary published recently in the Guardian newspaper on the current argument in the UK Labour Party about the prospect of a new leader from the left of the Party, was headlined “What is Labour For”, meaning if not for defending social justice and decency in politics. Indeed.

Leaks from Tony Abbott’s Cabinet indicate that he has been insisting to his colleagues that the key issues for them to remain in power are taxes and national security. What else in new from the conservatives; the conviction that the important human motivations are greed and fear. Abbott is obviously convinced that the latter, in particular, is a winner. So, the drafters of position papers for the National Security Committee can indeed turn off their computers, they have received their basic instruction. The Captain has made his pick, we will again go to war with the USA.

The Americans can be certain of this as, after all, we asked them to ask us to do so. What Abbott may be less able to rely on however, is that in the crucial by-election in Canning, where environmental issues are considered to be very important, his belief that militarism and xenophobia will always work to his benefit may be tested.

Richard Butler AC, former Australian Ambassador to the United Nations, and Head of the UN Special Commission to disarm Iraq.

It would be a serious mistake for Australia to respond positively to the US request, that we presumably invited, to join in airstrikes on Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Such action would probably be against international law, and in any case be ineffective, while increasing IS recruitment and failing to resolve the undoubted problem.  Like US policies towards Syria, it also lacks clear strategic objectives.  IS, while certainly brutal is the armed opposition to the also brutal and corrupt Assad government, the overthrow of which ostensibly remains the prime target of US effort.
More importantly for Australia, the civil war raging in Syria, with its multiple competing domestic and international interests, has increasingly developed into an intense Sunni versus Shia sectarian civil war.  Whose side are we backing?  Despite political concerns about Australia’s domestic security, nothing could be worse for our multicultural society and its  security than an action likely to stir a sectarian conflict among our Moslem citizens”.

Stuart Harris was Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs, 1987-88. He is currently an Emeritus Professor in the Department of International Relations, School of International, Political and Strategic Studies, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU.

It was said that in World War One the British Army laced the tea of its soldiers with bromide in order to curb their sexual impulses and concentrate on the matter at hand. It would be useful if something could be found to put in Tony Abbott’s morning cuppa to inhibit his desires for military adventures. He is like a corporal trying to please a general.

Media reports suggest he wants to oblige an American request for the RAAF to extend its Iraqi operation to Syria to combat ISIS or Daesh, as the Prime Minister calls it. At the same time, he acts like the national town crier, drawing constant attention to the threat to domestic security posed by Islamic extremists in Australia, jihadists and impressionable young Moslems who have been radicalised.

Does it not occur to Mr Abbott that, the more we get involved in a far away conflict, the more resentment and bitterness we cause among disaffected Australian citizens of Middle East origin and thus the greater the threat to the stability of our way of life?

It also raises other questions which the Prime Minister, given his repeated assertions of his concern for the well-being of Australians, should be addressing, such as:

+ What impact has the air war in Iraq had so far? Has it made any real difference to the strength and influence of ISIS? The Defence Dept’s website has a lot of bland figures which mean little. Occasionally, more meaningful information is released. But overall the fog of war information prevails.

+ Is it not about time that federal Parliament had a proper debate about the pros and cons of our participation in this conflict? Britain’s House of Commons did two years ago, voting down a proposal for military involvement against Syria for its use of chemical weapons? Why all the secrecy of huddled briefings behind closed doors and sealed lips?

+ Why should a country removed as far as we are from the Middle East be lured into its troubles when nations under greater threat, especially in Europe and elsewhere in the Arab world, leave it to others to deal with? Can it be that we are in the permanent thrall of the mighty U.S. war machine?

+ Australia went to great lengths to ‘legitimise’ our return to Iraq almost 12 months ago both on the ground as advisers and in the air. Mr Abbott is quoted as saying there is ‘no moral difference’ whether RAAF attacks ISIS targets in Syria or Iraq. Why the change of policy?

+ It is one thing to go after ISIS, but where does the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda splinter group which also operates in Northern Syria, stand in Australia’s thinking? Australia regards it as a terrorist organisation and yet it operates in coalition with the Free Syrian Army which the West supports.

+ Something like $500 million was earmarked earlier this year to cover the cost of Australia’s return to warfare in Iraq. How much has been spent so far and what domestic needs will have to be sacrificed to cover the inevitable additional funding?

+ If Australia should help in eliminating ISIS, what are the likely political, social, demographic and peace-keeping consequences for the region? In other words, are we inviting a new form of geopolitical crisis? Dr John Blaxland, a senior fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the ANU, told ABC radio that he thought Australia was being baited by ISIS:

‘To me, it’s pretty compelling that this is a goading. (It) is a ‘comeon’, if you like: to spill more blood in the sandpit, if you like. And I think we need to be very, very cautious about going down that path.

‘While it is attractive to try and topple them, realistically we have to look at it and think: If we do defeat the Daeshists in Iraq and Syria, what then?’

Mr Abbott may have been a Rhodes scholar, but it is unlikely because he was outstanding at modern history. He should be asking himself: When was the last successful bombing strategy in recent times? The answer is debatable.

Vietnam was plastered with bombs and napalm, including under the concerted Operation Rolling Thunder. Overall, it made little military difference. Cambodians were subject to secret bombing from unseen B-52s at 30,000ft. The plains of Laos became a bombing free-for-all arena. The aim was to crush the Communists. It failed in Vietnam and Laos.

In 1999, all of NATO got together to bomb Serbia on the basis that it was committing atrocities in Kosovo, forcing President Slobodan Milosevic to sue for peace. Result: Thousands of Serbs being driven out of Kosovo into exile, seething resentment still to this day and social distress. The Iraqi war in 2003 was fought mainly from the air by the US-led coalition forces. The bombs certainly helped get rid of Saddam Hussein, but the effect on overall life in Iraq was catastrophic and remains so.

Syria thought it could deal with its civil war in 2011 by concentrating on air attacks, including its terrifying barrel bombs dropped from helicopters at random into civilian areas. The strategy failed catastrophically again and the country is now in such a hopeless state.

In 2011, many NATO countries got together to deal with Libya and behead the Gaddafi regime. They succeeded except look at the fractured, shambolic state that Libya is now. It back-fired in a way because Libya has become an easy conduit for thousands of asylum-seekers and economic immigrants wanting to settle in Europe.

Look also at the situation in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has plunged into mainly an air war against the Houthi rebels in the south of the country. An International Red Cross official said only this week that ‘Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years’. What’s more, the UN says the conflict has left Yemen on the brink of famine.

If there is a moral in all this, it is that meddling by anyone in the Middle East or the Arab world is asking for trouble. The best of intentions never succeed.

If there is a certainty in all this, it is that meddling causes death, displacement, destruction, untold misery and even more woe on a scale that in our comfortable Australian lives we cannot even begin to imagine.

Mr Abbott might care to listen to his chief of joint operations, ViceAdmiral David Johnston, who also told ABC radio:

‘The contribution of Australia, while always welcome, isn’t a game-changer one way or the other’.

That begs the obvious question. So does whether we would still feel strongly enough to get involved closer to the ground if we did not have the advantage of overwhelming superiority in the skies.

John Tulloh had a 40 year career in foreign news, much of it dealing with warfare and its consequences.

From August 20-28 Russia and China will conduct a large scale naval exercise in the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. Russia will send 20 ships and China seven plus11 aircraft. They will practice air defence and anti-submarine drills as well as a beach landing.

Both countries are publicly beating up their defence ties as part of a closer relationship. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jin Ping have met and made appropriate noises about their growing friendship. Clearly both countries see advantage in closer relations as they face criticism from the USA and some other countries.

We sometimes forget that while its primary focus is Europe Russia is a Pacific power and sees itself as a global power. Western sanctions are driving it to seek friends elsewhere. Similarly, while China’s focus is primarily on Asia Pacific it also has pretensions to being a global power. Both countries resent what they see as American meddling in their affairs.

Given the long history of troubled relations between the two it is hard to know how long this rapprochement will last. Is it just a reaction to outside criticicism or will it develop into something deeper? At least in the short term, the more both countries see themselves, rightly or wrongly, the victims of foreign interference, the more they will move away from the West and seek friends elsewhere. Both do want good relations with the the USA and others but on their terms.

Watch this space.

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

(or – when you get in a hole, stop digging)

To the sound of approaching drumbeats, first the ever-reliable Jim Molan, then Peter Jennings, and after them Liberal MP Dan Tehan have been wheeled out to tell us in recent days that the RAAF should start bombing in Syria. Right on cue, on 13 August Kevin Andrews said Australians would soon direct drone attacks into Syria, and Tony Abbott said expanded RAAF raids across the border had –wait for it – ‘been discussed’. Always briefed, Greg Sheridan informed us on 14 August that Australia was in discussions with the US, Iraq and other ‘coalition allies’, which he did not name, but some of whom had ‘already joined the US in attacks inside Syria.’ (Sheridan, ‘RAAF Syrian bomb missions loom’, Australian 14 August 2015, 1,2. David Wroe, ‘Australia in talks to bomb IS in Syria’, 14 August 2015, 3)

Australians with long enough memories will be smiling grimly as the band strikes up again for the old song-and-dance routine, Mission Creep, nicely orchestrated to distract from noises offstage about travel rorts, captain’s picks, and climate change. This latest re-run stars Abbott in Iraq III, reviving Howard’s 2003 role in Iraq II, which he understudied when Menzies starred in Vietnam. All Australia’s undeclared wars since the 1960s have had the same plot, and all of them have been disastrous flops, yet our leaders expect the punters to rock up to the box office every time.

Here’s what always happens. First, conservative governments press the US to ‘do more’, offering Australian support in return. They then make a surreptitious preliminary contribution, while the major deployment is organised. When that’s ready, they dribble out the ad campaign, denying we’re at war or even thinking of it because it may be illegal. Still they point to atrocities and dangers, real or fabricated, claiming the enemy (Communists, Terrorists, Death Cult, whoever) can reach Australia, so we’re all under threat. Then off the troops go, and patriotic support kicks in, particularly if anyone is killed, right in time for the next election.

There are a lot of problems with putting the Mission Creep show on yet again. Everyone knows we have not won a war with the Americans since 1945. We also know – even though the government refuses to hold an inquiry into the invasion of Iraq – that it was illegal and disastrous. We know too – even though we are told very little about what our troops are now doing in Iraq – that the Baghdad government won’t let them out of the bases where they train soldiers who are conspicuously underperforming against IS. Since late last year, Australians have been refuelling US aircraft flying missions into Syria, and many US drone strikes are coordinated from bases in Australia. What we don’t know is what would change if we sent more of them, or managed to get a Status of Forces Agreement that would let them do more. We also don’t know what effect the RAAF bombing has had, or what would be gained by expanding it into Syria. Even the loyal Sheridan admits that any difference it could make is ‘very marginal’.

We remember from Vietnam and Iraq II that local movements can metastesize across borders, particularly artificial ones. Even if IS is ‘defeated,’ the tumultuous reshaping of Iraq and Syria will continue. IS must right now be planning new publicisable atrocities, hoping that Shorten will be forced to share Abbott’s righteous outrage, and Australia and other US allies will be drawn into a wider war. This, surely, is the last chance for Shorten and Plibersek to restate Labor’s opposition to any Australian mission creep into Syria. They should ask the government to explain what we want from such a civil war, how we propose to win it, and how Syria is to be governed and reconstructed. If the Opposition stood up now and denounced Mission Creep as a time-worn farce, Australia could avoid responsibility for another disaster.

Instead, the shadow Foreign Minister put out a statement on 15 August http://gu.com/p/4bg9v/sbl

echoing Tony Abbott’s line about ‘Daesh’ as an evil cult, and calling it ‘a shockingly brutal force that is destroying the lives of many innocent people.’ The fact that Australia has sent one solider to Iraq for every 24 000 of our citizens has clearly not made much impression on IS. Plibersek didn’t say why we should fight them, and not other nasty groups like Boko Haram. Nor did she mention that when President Assad was the enemy of choice, the US subsidised IS in the first place http://universalfreepress.com/former-dia-director-gen-flynn-says-obama-created-isis-supposedly-to-overthrow-syrian-government/ )

Most significantly, she didn’t repeat Shorten’s condition of Labor support for the Iraq mission last year: that it now overflowing into Syria. ‘If the government has a case to make about a potential change to Australia’s existing mission in Iraq,’ she said obligingly, ‘the Opposition is ready to hear it.’

Alison Broinowski was formerly a senior officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Director of the Australia Japan Foundation. She is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU. She recently edited a book ‘How does Australia go to War’. The book carried a foreword by the late Rt.Hon. Malcolm Fraser.

How is it possible that the Australian people: citizens, elected representatives, media staff, academics, to name just some relevant categories, allow the Abbott government to spend $1 billion this year on Australian participation in war in the Middle East, and accept that there is no need for this to be discussed? *

Prime Minister Abbott considered it enough to announce the commitment of 1000 ADF personnel and 8 military aircraft, immediately before they departed, saying that they were going to take part in the US defined and led fight against ISIS. The full majesty of his understanding of the ISIS phenomenon, the situation in the Middle East, and his assessment of the intellect of the Australian voter, has been displayed in his mantra that ISIS is a “death cult, a death cult”, which we must fight.

Abbott is simply continuing what John Howard started 12 years ago with his decision to take part in the US invasion of Iraq. That action violated international law and was based on US claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were false, fabricated by the Bush Administration and endorsed by Tony Blair. Even John Howard has recently admitted that the WMD data was “wrong”.

Then and now, it seems to be sufficient for us to commit Australian lives and money to war, simply in order to support the US’ actions. And, lamentably, the ALP opposition has acquiesced in, indeed now supports this source of policy determination.

Today, apart from being self evidently manipulative of the politically much favoured notion that we are under dire terrorist threat, the Abbott government’s analysis that there is simply one good side to the conflict in the Middle East, the one we are on, is pathetic: “Team Australia”, as if its all a bit like a footy match.

The situation in that region is the consequence of repeated western interventions for the last 100 years. 2015 has seen the Centenary of Gallipoli, but also of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, in which the British and French divided up the Ottoman Empire.

Among other deeply flawed dispositions, this created Syria and Iraq without respect to precisely the kinds of ethno-confessional conflicts that are now being played out.

The US/UK/Australian/Spain invasion of Iraq in 2003 was seen across the region as consistent with this interventionist history. It is now widely regarded as having provided the impetus for the growth in Al Qaida and the emergence of ISIS.

The purported cure for all of this, as currently envisaged in the US, NATO, and by the Australian Government, is more military intervention. Fix the problem by increasing the dose of what caused the problem.

But, it’s all become much more complicated since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, that is, the decision by Assad to crush protest against his hold on power. His group represents the Alawite minority in Syria, the group patronized by the UK in the Sykes-Picot disposition.

That war has endured for almost 5 years, has killed some quarter of a million people, and driven 11 million into external and internal displacement. The UN has declared it to be the worst refugee crisis since WWII.

The destruction of Syria and the impact of the 2003 intervention in Iraq has seen the entry into a region wide contest by Iran, Saudi Arabia, some other Gulf States, Russia, Jordan, and, Turkey. The non-State groups, in addition to ISIS; Al Qaida, AL Nusra Front etc. have proliferated This is to say nothing of what has obviously been the deep clandestine involvement of Israeli, US, British, French, Russian, and other intelligence services.

The decision, last week, by Turkey to commence direct military action in Northern Iraq and Syria and to allow the US to do the same from Turkey, is a significant development. Its origins are dubious.

The Turkish government did not gain a parliamentary majority in the elections held on June 7^th. It was prevented from achieving this by the substantial support given to the Kurdish based party. It is therefore engaged in negotiations to form a coalition with other parties. But, it has terminated peace negotiations with the Kurdish group in Northern Syria and in its bombing campaign against “terrorist” groups in Iraq and Syria, it is targeting both ISIS and Kurdish groups. NATO has endorsed Turkey’s actions.

It appears that Turkish President Erdogan’s aim is to destroy the influence of Kurdish groups within Turkey so that in a re-run election his Peace and Justice Party (AKP) will win a majority. Within Turkey the AKP caretaker government is contemplating banning the Kurdish party and arresting at least its leader and possibly other members as well, on the ground that they are connected to terrorists.

Consistent with this mess of mixed motives, within the overall region of conflict, there are areas, such as Yemen, where Saudis and Iranians are on the same side and others where they are deeply antagonistic. Similarly, there are areas where, incredible though it may seem, the US is enlisting the support of Al Qaida sympathetic groups. These are merely two examples of a diabolical patchwork. As John Stewart sometimes remarks, “ you can’t make this stuff up”.

On Australia’s role; we have not been told, without propaganda, what interests or values our commitment to war in the Middle East purports to advance, how our effort will contribute, what is its limits, important given the ubiquitous phenomenon of mission creep, when might it end, who’s in charge – us or the US command.

It is a terrible lapse that the ALP opposition has not demanded such explanations and has agreed that a debate in Parliament is not needed. These are distant days from those in which the ALP opposition demanded that the Menzies Government table the invitation it claimed to have received from the Government of South Vietnam to join it in war there. ALP action revealed that there had, in fact, been no such invitation. Menzies had misled the Parliament. Menzies had asked the South Vietnamese Government to invite us, because he believed that this was what the US wanted.

So, here we are again. This time in the Middle East because Abbott and friends believe this is what the US wants. This is the same US that is currently seeking to impose a Pacific Trade Treaty on us, which inter alia, would make pharmaceuticals more expensive in Australia and enable US corporations to sue Australia on the basis that our national policies might be impeding their right to operate without regulatory restraint.

There will be no externally induced solution, military or otherwise to the political and ethno-confessional conflicts in the Middle East. For the US to think otherwise is folly, but that’s perhaps understandable because there remains in the US a widespread reluctance to accept that they did not win the war in Vietnam.

Our participation with the US in this folly will bring us nothing but affirmation in the minds of others that we are a mere clone of the US and, thus possible heightened exposure to external terrorist attack. Above all, it will further retard the urgent need for us to craft an independent Australian foreign policy that serves our national values and interests.

As a first step, the ALP opposition should demand that the Government allow a debate in Parliament on our commitment in the Middle East.

Richard Butler AC is former Australian Ambassador to the United Nations and Head of the UN Special Commission to disarm Iraq.

* For more detail on the $1 billion, see, Anthony Ricketts article, Canberra Times, July 26^th.

 THE DEAD-END ROADS TO AND FROM DAMASCUS

Fifteen years ago this month, Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father to become president of Syria. Having spent some years studying and living in France and England, he had hopes of a Western-style liberalisation and development and turning his country into the Switzerland of the Middle East. Those ambitions proved naively fanciful and now he finds himself inextricably wedged, the country under his control shrinking and the outlook hopeless.

Assad’s report card is a shocking one. A four-year-old civil war. More than 200,000 people killed. A total of 7.6 million Syrians displaced inside their own country, according to the UNHCR. Another 3.9 million driven into exile or living as refugees outside their country. In other words, half the country’s population either dead or driven from their homes.

Two international terrorist groups – ISIS and al-Nusra (an arm of al-Qaeda) – now control much of northern Syria. More than half the country is no longer in government hands. Syria’s armed forces are demoralised. The army is only half the strength it was four years ago due to death and desertion. Syria, which once prided itself on its secularism, is now racked by sectarianism. Christians have fled for their lives. The economy is in a shambles and unemployment is at record levels. Much of the once vibrant Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, is in ruins. Its main allies are only Russia and the leper of most of the Arab world, Iran.

If all this were not bad enough for a country’s ruler, there is more. Assad is said to have locked up 200,000 opponents. He has been implicated by the UN in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The U.S., E.U., Canada and Australia among others have imposed sanctions. Syrian assets in those countries have been frozen.

Despite all this, Assad carries on almost as if it’s business as usual. The U.S., some Arab states and now finally neighbouring Turkey have got involved. But that has been only from the air and their targets have been just ISIS and al-Qaeda and for Ankara the Kurdish PKK militants exploiting the turmoil. President Obama once threatened to intervene when Assad was accused of using chemical weapons, but later thought better of it and still does. The CIA has been training and arming the Free Syrian Army and other anti-Assad rebels, but they are in disarray.

     Last year, a European Council on Foreign Relations report found that: 

   ‘The Syrian economy lies in ruins. Assets and infrastructure have been destroyed, half of the population lives below the poverty line, and the human development index has fallen back to where it stood 37 years ago. It is estimated that even with average annual growth rate of 5 percent it would take nearly 30 years to recover Syria’s 2010 GDP value’. 

     How did it come to this? Bashar Assad was never meant to be president. His father, Hafez al-Assad, from the minority Alawite sect, ruled Syria for 30 years with the help of patronage, a strong army, the Mukhabarat secret police, smart politics and protecting all religions. His successor was supposed to be his eldest son, Bassel. He was killed in a car crash in 1994.

‘His name (Bassel) summoned images of a vocal, shrewd, dynamic man who was a parachutist, a ladies’ man, an accomplished athlete and an outgoing statesman’, wrote Syrian journalist Majid Rafizadeh in The Atlantic. But ‘Bashar did not seek out recognition or popularity. He had no interest in being in the middle of politics. The people of Syria viewed Bashar as a nerd, not someone with the instincts or drive to lead a country’.

When Bassel died, his father summoned home the next son in line to prepare to replace him. That was Bashar, who had been studying in Paris and London. He wanted to be an ophthalmologist and it was said all he aspired to was to have a family and a comfortable life, probably in Europe. His early introduction to the levers of power was being despatched to Lebanon as an unlikely gauleiter to keep an eye on the Syrian security presence there.

His father died in 2000. Bashar Assad, with his lugubrious looks, diffident manner and beanpole figure, was now in charge. He introduced some of his ideas in what was known as the Damascus Spring. But he tried to run politically before he could walk and within a year those good intentions were scuttled. The Damascus regime settled back into its old ways.

The turning point came in 2011 when Syrians became infected by the Arab Spring demonstrations which began in Tunisia and spread to Libya and Egypt. Enough of that, decided Assad. Egged on by his widowed mother, he cracked down on it in the same way as his father had crushed a Moslem Brotherhood uprising in the Syrian city of Hama in 1982 with the loss of thousands of lives. Little did he realise he had sowed the seeds of a real revolution and now the disintegration of his country as hostile forces surged in to fill the vacuums created in the north.

Assad emerged from the twilight shadows only this week to make his first public speech in a year. He admitted to what most Syrians already knew about the state of their country and the armed forces. ‘The word defeat does not exist in the Syrian army’s dictionary’, he said disingenuously. ‘We will resist and we will win’.

Too late, said Amos Gilad, a senior official at neighbouring Israel’s Defence Ministry. ‘Syria is gone. Syria is dying’, he said as quoted by the Jerusalem Post. ‘The funeral will be declared in due time. This Bashar Assad, he will be remembered in history textbooks as the one who lost Syria’.

Assad’s best hope may be a rump state carved out of his shrinking territory and dominated by his minority Alawites. After all, Syria was an artificial state in the first place, part of the spoils Britain and France cynically divided up as the Ottoman empire crumbled a century ago. Who will run the rest of the country is anyone’s guess as so many fractious parties fight for possession, power and influence.

ISIS with its grandiose caliphate already controls the north-east area along the Iraqi border. It will not want to surrender any influence or territory. The Nusra Front has the backing of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the usual source of support for undesirables in the region. Its intentions are not clear yet. Although it has been involved in suicide bombings, news reports suggest it is trying to ‘rebrand’ itself as a respectable anti-ISIS/Assad Syrian organisation with no links to al-Qaeda.

Then there is Iran. It sees Syria as a conduit to arm its fellow-Shiites, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Brookings Doha Centre in Qatar, said Iran with the help of Hezbollah and other militias is building ‘a state within a state in Syria, an insurance policy to protect itself against any future Assad demise’.

Then there is Turkey, which shares the longest border of all with Syria. It has exploited the ISIS presence to break its truce with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which it – along with the West, including Australia – regards as a terrorist organisation. However, the Kurds, with their own sovereign state ambitions, have been doing as much as anyone in resisting ISIS.

As for the U.S., the New York Times editorialised: ‘Having failed to reach a consensus over the scope and nature of an authorisation of war that would have set parameters for Washington’s involvement in Iraq and Syria, lawmakers appear resigned to allow the Obama administration to slide even more deeply into a complex war’. 

     In short, it is a fine old mess. None of this will soothe the nerves of Bashar Assad and his family as they view the increasing uncertainty of their future. Even their Alawite stronghold, Syria’s main port of Latakia, is under threat from dissident forces. His father, the Assad patriarch, would have been aghast.

A century later, Syria’s borders can expect to be redrawn no matter what happens, though not as cynically as before.

John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

The Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed with Iran by the UN Security Council’s five Permanent members, plus Germany and the EU, (Vienna, July 14^th), is unprecedented. No comparable arms control plan has been as detailed or thorough. Above all, it is vastly preferable to any of the proposed alternative approaches, the main one of which has been war.

If the negotiation of this agreement had failed, there would have been further proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, in addition to whatever Iranian capability may have emerged. Israel already has them and Saudi Arabia has been contemplating them. Then, war with Iran, the preferred option in US Republican circles and Israel, would have almost certainly ensued with devastating and global effects, and, war would not have prevented Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability thereafter, for which it would have been given a massive incentive.

The Plan and its technical annexes comprise some 150 pages. At root, it establishes four pillars:

1. Cutting off Iran’s access to the weapons grade fissile material needed for a nuclear explosive device. 98% of the relevant material it now holds will be removed, 65% of the centrifuges it has employed to enrich uranium will be removed and the core of its reactor at Arak will be modified to remove its ability to make plutonium.
2. The UN’s nuclear Agency (IAEA) will be given an unprecedented level and extent of access to all relevant materials and technologies within Iran to verify its compliance with the Plan. This access by the Agency exceeds the level given to the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) to disarm Iraq.
3. Sanctions on Iran will be phased out.
4. A review and dispute settlement process has been established comprised of the parties to the Plan and the role of the UN Security Council in seeking to enforce compliance with its decisions. The Council already exercises a similar role with respect to reports to it on compliance with the Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It was such reports that triggered the existing sanctions on Iran.

JCPOA states that Iran “ reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons”.

On the face of it and in its text, JCPOA is very much an agreement on material and technical matters, but it is overwhelmingly a political agreement. It is for this reason that if it is to be correctly understood and its chances for success are to be usefully assessed, a little of the relevant history needs to be recalled.

The discussion/negotiation on the subject of Iran’s possible attempts to develop nuclear weapons has been going on for 12 years. This originated in the IAEA reporting that it was having difficulty in verifying Iran’s compliance with its obligations as a non nuclear weapon state party to the NPT. The main such obligation is the one Iran has reaffirmed in JCPOA, quoted above: Never to acquire nuclear weapons.

Iran’s conduct had been disturbing and uncooperative and when this was reported to the UN Security Council, sanctions were imposed upon it. The US and the EU also imposed severe sanctions. These significantly harmed the Iranian economy.

On the other hand no unambiguous report that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons had been produced. Indeed, the CIA, in its last two major reports to the US government has stated that it has no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The motivations to find a negotiated solution to the Iranian problem have been various, but two concerns have been dominant: the wish of the Iranians to bring the sanctions to an end and, the wish of the Obama administration to avoid yet another war in the Middle East and to prevent Israel, from dragging it into a war with Iran.

Back a little further, in 1953, the UK and US external intelligence Agencies staged a coup in Iran removing its democratically elected government. They did this to protect the interests of their oil companies in Iran. They then propped up the Shah of Iran as their preferred Iranian leader until the Iranian Revolution overthrew him in 1979, The revolution instituted an Islamic government and installed Ayatollah Khomenei as supreme leader. Later that year the US Embassy hostage crisis began, lasting 444 days.

The Islamic Republic of Iran retains the system of government established by the Revolution, and continues to insist that the US is hostile to it and has a policy of seeking regime change in Tehran. It has also repeatedly expressed extreme, sometimes terminal hostility, towards Israel.

The Obama Administration has attempted to reset US relations with Iran, but its attempts to do so have been strongly opposed by Republican, Congressional, pro-Israel, and media circles, mainly Murdoch outlets in the US. Their stated preference is clearly for war with Iran. It has been farcical and deceitful that, in such circles, the past role of the US within Iran is never mentioned.

The negotiation of JCPOA also had at least surreal, if not farcical aspects. On one side of the table there were five nations, all nuclear armed. Two of them, the US and Russia possess tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, representing 90% of such weapons in existence globally, and as the negotiations proceeded they each announced plans to enhance their nuclear arsenals.

The position of each of the five, with varying degrees of emphasis, was that it was of supreme importance that Iran not become anything remotely like them. While they insist that their national security demands retention of these weapons, it is inadmissible for Iran to think the same.

Strictly excluded, not simply physically, but also as a subject for deliberation, was the only regional country possessing nuclear weapons – Israel. The staunchest defender of this abuse of the logic of proliferation is the US, which rejects any suggestion that Israel’s nuclear weapons status might encourage others in the region, including Iran, to obtain such weapons.

For reasons such as these, the agreement of Vienna represented a triumph of pragmatism.

The two main motivations, mentioned above, were satisfied, concessions were made all round, none proved to be deal breakers, and a basically sound set of behavioural conditions was established, designed to verify that Iran is not making nuclear weapons.

But, within hours of the agreement being announced, but not yet published, the Prime Minister of Israel denounced it as a mistake of historic proportions, the Republican leadership in the US Congress pledged to reject it, President Obama stated that he would veto any legislation that sought to reject the agreement, and a few days later, in a statement made at the end of Ramadan, the Supreme Leader of Iran said Iran would honor the agreement but did not intend to change any of its other policies, particularly given US arrogance. There was dancing in the streets of Tehran at the prospect of the lifting of sanctions.

It will be a rough ride in the US Congress, Iran will continue to support Shia causes in the region, including the Assad regime in Syria, and the P5+1 and the IAEA will try to make the agreement work in order to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, all the while continuing to refuse to address the elemental hypocrisy of their own possession of nuclear weapons.

The central lesson of UNSCOM’s experience in Iraq was that the arms control system will work reliably if the subject country will let it work.

So, the outcome for the Vienna Plan will largely be in Iran’s hands.

It will work, if Iran wants to make it so and provided that some others are prepared to let that unfold, given the difficulty that they will clearly have at taking yes for an answer.

Richard Butler AC, Former Head of the UN Special Commission to disarm Iraq, (UNSCOM) appointed by Prime Minister Keating, Convenor of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.