Category: Politics

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Trump and Syria

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

  • ROSS BURNS. US Withdrawal from Syria

    There is everything wrong with the way in which Donald Trump reached his decision to pull US forces out of Syria, apparently without touching base with his own advisers and commanders. Australia is also now exposed to such impromptu creativity in foreign policy as in PM Morrison’s attempt in October to float a new initiative on moving the Australian Embassy to Jerusalem, again without prior warning even to Foreign Minister Payne.   (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. The Best of 2018: Peter Dutton is an embarrassment for all of us.

    Peter Dutton failed as Health Minister. His track record since then is even worse.  (more…)

  • ALLAN PATIENCE. Saving some of the Liberal furniture.

    Time is running out for the Liberal Party and the Coalition as the 2019 federal election looms. The change of Prime Minister from Malcolm Turnbull to Scott Morrison was a classic example of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Opinion polls have consistently shown that the Coalition is running significantly behind Labor. Can anything be done to save at least some of the furniture? Not much. But some face-saving possibilities hover in the background.    (more…)

  • MACK WILLIAMS. Trump: Beginning of end or end of beginning?

    Following the major Republican defeat in the US mid-term elections, President Trump has accelerated preparations for his 2020 re-election replacing “Make America Great Again” with  “Keep America Great” as the theme. This will put more pressure on achieving his initial campaign rhetoric to clear the decks. But the series of problems he encountered in the past few weeks are complicating his plans. This is the scene in which the shock announcements on Syria and Afghanistan need to be viewed.  (more…)

  • ABUL RIZVI. What were the drivers of Net Overseas Migration in 2017-18?

    Net Overseas Migration (NOM) in 2017-18 fell to 236,733, down from 262,490 in 2016-17. The decline is not as large as might have been expected given cuts to the migration and humanitarian programs and policy changes to employer sponsored temporary and permanent migration. Visitors changing status after arrival now represent a record 24 per cent of NOM – a crucial indicator the visa system is in a bad way.   (more…)

  • CLIVE KESSLER. New hopes or old fears for Malaysia?

    Against the odds, and against most informed predictions, Malaysia’s 14th general elections in May 2018 produced a change of government. The Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition under Najib Razak, which had been in power since 1957, was ousted by the opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH) consortium led by Mahathir Mohamad, a now second-time prime minister. What had long seemed Malaysia’s permanent government was humbled, and its anchor party — the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) — has been thrown into disarray.   (more…)

  • JONATHAN STEVENSON. How Jim Mattis failed (New York Times 24.12.2018)

    Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who submitted his resignation on Thursday, was the last “adult in the room” of the Trump administration — or so claim a small army of pundits, who now worry that the president, finally unchecked, will unleash an unvarnished, unpredictable America First foreign policy on the world.  

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  • M.K.BHADRAKUMAR. Trump’s Afghan withdrawal could pave the way for peace (Asian Times 24.12.2018)

    The US president’s controversial decision signifies a well-crafted political and diplomatic move aimed at ending the 17-year conflict

    There has been withering criticism from within the United States regarding the reported decision by President Donald Trump on troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. Predictably, Trump’s detractors in Washington are painting the town red lampooning his decision (especially its timing) and visualizing apocalyptic scenarios. But the good part is that no one has had the audacity to present an alternate road map.   (more…)

  • M.K.BHADRAKUMAR. Trump made the right decision to quit Syrian conflict (Asia Times 21.12.2018)

    Despite the criticism, there is a strong argument that the US president has done the right thing by withdrawing his forces from Syria

    If 700 days out of US President Donald Trump’s 1,461 days of presidency seem a wasteland of unfulfilled promises and expectations in foreign policy – except, perhaps, on the Korean Peninsula – things dramatically changed on December 19 when he announced the troop withdrawal from Syria.

    Taken together with Washington’s hurry to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban, it appears that Trump is, finally, on the move as a man of peace, fulfilling the pledge of Candidate Trump to prioritize nation-building over extravagant military adventures in faraway lands.

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  • MICHAEL MULLINS. Abstract thinkers living in bubbles.

    During the Christmas break I read Rick Morton’s One Hundred Years of Dirt, which is one of the more acclaimed Australian memoirs published during 2018. It details the wretched life he’s led and also challenges the culture warriors of the left and the right. Speaking about politicians as well as journalists, he says: ‘We don’t need more journalists from the right or from the left… What the media needs is more reporters with the ability to understand their subjects.’  (more…)

  • The Best of 2018: The Liberals and the Nationals – Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce

    Only weak and compromised Liberal Party leadership would put up with the behaviour of Barnaby Joyce and the Nationals who have influence way out of proportion to their numbers and on policy issues, are a blank page or even worse. As Ian McAuley said yesterday Barnaby Joyce is an albatross around Malcolm Turnbull’s neck. It is getting worse every day. (more…)

  • CHARLES M. BLOW. What Happens If … (New York Times, 02.12.18)

    I no longer think that anyone in America, including Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters, can afford to put off the consideration of the central question of this administration: What if Donald Trump or those closest to him were compromised by the Russians or colluded with them? (more…)

  • IAN DUNLOP. The Best of 2018: The Monash Forum – of Coal & Horses.

    Sir John Monash was a visionary engineer, military leader and much more, who succeeded in spite of the prejudices of the conservative Melbourne establishment (read: The Coalition right wing), to become, in Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s view, “the best general on the Western Front” in WW1. Monash was renowned for his vision and innovation. In 1920 he became Chair and General Manager of the newly-formed State Electricity Commission of Victoria, continuing for many years to oversee major power developments, particularly the opening up of the Latrobe Valley brown coal deposits. (more…)

  • ANNETTE GORDON-REED : What We Lost. Martin Luther King

    “Well, they killed King.” The matter-of-fact statement hung in the air of the kitchen where a roomful of women—including my mother (I was the lone child)—had gathered on that April day in 1968 to learn to make hot tamales for sale at church fund-raisers. Our herald, the adult son of the kitchen’s owner, delivered the news after pushing through the swinging door from the living room where the men had settled to watch television while we worked. His face—downcast eyes, furrowed brow, pursed lips—showed the resignation of one who had long suspected this would happen—a painful but near-inevitable outcome.

    This article was published by The New York Review of Books on the 8th of November 2018.  (more…)

  • SYLVAIN CYPEL. From Sans Culottes to Gilets Jaunes: Macron’s Marie Antoinette moment.

    In Soviet times, Russia’s Jews told a joke about a man named Rabinovitch who was distributing pamphlets in Red Square. In a matter of minutes, the KGB had found him and taken him to headquarters. Only there did the agents realize that the sheets of paper were completely blank. “But there’s nothing written here,” one of them said. Rabinovitch said: “They know quite well what I mean.” 

    For two months, the French government has been unable to make head or tail of the blank sheets of paper handed out by the gilets jaunes, or Yellow Vests, this decentralized, leaderless movement that has no explicit agenda or demand apart from the abolition of a fuel tax. While Emmanuel Macron’s government has blindly concluded that this sudden, violent movement bereft of any clearly articulated purpose has no other goals, movements don’t block major intersections just to protest hikes in gas costs.  (more…)

  • PETER RODGERS. Israel-Palestine – the fallacy of the two-state solution.

    I posted the following on Pearls and Irritations mid-year. I have been involved in Middle Eastern affairs for more than 30 years and, like many others, have clung to the notion of two states like a life-line. Letting go is painful, it creates even greater uncertainty. But to suggest that there is the slightest chance of two states happening ignores the realities both of today and the past 70 years. For our Prime Minister to use the two-state solution as “cover” for his foolish and pointless decision on Jerusalem is nothing more than a cheap marketing trick. (more…)

  • TONY BOYD. ‘Trump’s evidence-free trade war’, Australian Financial Review, 22 Dec 2018, p.56

    Rarely has there been a more comprehensive dissection and damnation of a government policy founded on misinformation than economist Stephen Roach’s analysis of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Roach, who traded his job as chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia for faculty membership at Yale University in 2012, was masterful in his use of humour, satire, irony and hard facts to tear apart the arguments put by Trump and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to justify US protectionism.  (more…)

  • KATHERINE FRANKE. The pro-Israel push to purge US campus critics.

    There are signs that we’ve reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel’s suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campuses across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, and hold it to the same human rights scrutiny we apply to other nations around the globe. Global companies such as Airbnb have recognized that their business practices must reflect international condemnation of the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Natalie Portman, Lorde and other celebrities have declined appearances in Israel, acknowledging the call to boycott the Israeli government on account of its human rights violations. And The New York Times published a column arguing, with unprecedented forthrightness, that criticism of ethno-nationalism in Israel (for example, defining Israel exclusively as a “Jewish state”) isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic.  (more…)

  • GABRIELLE CHAN. Nationals face their biggest threat yet after an annus horribilis (The Guardian).

    Traditional party of the bush wracked by personal scandals, leadership instability and a raft of new competitors on their turf. 

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  • JENNY HOCKING. The Best of 2018: Royal distortions of history: why the Queen’s secret “Palace letters” about Gough Whitlam’s dismissal should be released.

    The long-running ‘Palace letters’ case over the Queen’s secret correspondence regarding the 1975 dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam heads back to court on Wednesday 28 November, with an appeal hearing before the full bench of the Federal Court in Sydney.  (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Morrison will not go quietly.

    And so this is Christmas;
    And enough is enough.
    Another year over
    And who gives a stuff.

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  • LISA NANDY. Let the people take back control of Brexit.

    With 100 days to go until the United Kingdom officially leaves the European Union, the British government is in crisis, political parties are riven by deep divisions and Parliament is gridlocked. Without something to break the deadlock, caused by politicians who hold such different views on Brexit that we are unable to agree on any of the options available, we will leave the EU with no deal at all on 29 March 2019, and the economic consequences will be severe.  (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Seasons’ greetings.

    John and Susie wish you a peaceful Christmas and a meaningful new year.  

    We do appreciate the help that we have received from contributors, readers and supporters.  

    There will be no posts on 24, 25 and 26 December.

  • GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND

    A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media (more…)

  • JAMES BUTTON. The ALP Federal Conference.

    It looks like the times will suit Bill Shorten. Voters don’t love him, yet in a year in which the feral rump of the Liberal Party hopelessly botched a coup that felled a Prime Minister but failed to install his self-anointed successor, by-election after by-election and poll after poll showed Shorten’s party poised to take power.   (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. The Best of 2018: Scott Morrison did not stop the boats.

    With the appointment of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister we will witness again the repetition of the myth that the Coalition and Operation Sovereign Borders stopped the boats. They did not.

     I expect that many in the media will also climb aboard again to continue the myth about the stopping of the boats. Perhaps being careless in the first place the media finds it embarrassing to admit error.  

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  • SATYAJIT DAS. Australia’s flip-flop policies put off Asia. (Nikkei Asian Review 19.12.2018)

    If the opinion polls are correct, Australia will have a new federal government around May 2019. A new prime minister will likely take charge, which would make seven in the past decade, compared to four in the previous 32 years.

    This instability has long prevented consistent domestic decision making. Now it is starting to change Australia’s relationship with Asia.   (more…)

  • Trump abandons the cheese to escape the Syria mousetrap

    Robert A. Lovett, Secretary of Defense (1951–53) in the Truman administration, advised that faced with political crises that carried great risks for small gains: ‘Forget the cheese; let’s get out of the trap’. Since the end of the Cold War and the resulting upsurge of triumphalism and exceptionalism among US policymakers and public intellectuals, America has been serially mousetrapped by the cheesy allure of Pax Americana across North Africa and the Middle East. The era of grand delusions may be drawing to a close.   (more…)

  • COLIN HESELTINE. In a war against Huawei, we are the likely losers. (AFR 20.12.18)

    Let’s call a spade a spade. The efforts by western powers, Australia included, to cut Huawei out of major telecommunications projects such as 5G, where Huawei is arguably the world’s leader, are aimed at containment of China (of course, we don’t officially call it this – we call it “push-back”). Much has been reported recently about the so-called technology war between China and the west (“Huawei: Australia fears the Canadian Club, AFR, 16 December 2018). Huawei is clearly at the centre of this battle. The recent arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, is the latest – and most dramatic – development in this saga (“Meng arrest is part of America’s economic war on China”, AFR 13 December 2018).   (more…)