Australia’s Foreign Minister has announced she will travel to Tokyo to meet with other members of the Quad (the US, Japan and India) to jointly counter disinformation campaigns by authoritarian states and to ensure supplies of minerals and technology. Does this mean it is only authoritarian states that are not allowed to engage in disinformation? Surely Donald Trump would not engage in disinformation!
This will be only Marise Payne’s second trip abroad since the pandemic, the other being to Washington.
You can choose your own cliché about people in glasshouses or those without sin casting the first stone but the idea of this bunch taking the moral high ground on disinformation is mind boggling.
The US has a long record of disinformation. The much-abused Native American in westerns told us that White Man Speak with Forked Tongue and he was right. The US fought a brutal colonial war against the Philippine republic in 1898-1902 after being presented with the Philipines after negotiating a treaty with Spain, which no longer owned the country. Many other examples could be cited but none rise to the heights of sheer chutzpah as Donald Trump, who has just discovered that Covid-19 is not mocked.
Japan’s version of what happened during World War II is another outstanding case. Glossed over are the comfort women, medical experiments and other atrocities, while students are taught a version of the war that is not found outside of Japan. The contrast with Germany is clear.
India is engaged in a Hindu nationalist attack on its large Muslim minority, which has given rise to all kinds of myths to justify religious oppression. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, called desperate Bangladeshi migrants “infiltrators” and claimed that Muslims who marry Hindu women were part of a scheme to subvert the culture.
Australia’s refugee policy is different from most other countries and Scotty from Marketing is a past master at disinformation. A hundred years of mateship ignores the facts to promote a version of US interest in Australia that suits the Government.
The Tokyo meeting is clearly directed at China, which has reacted predictably. The meeting is very much inspired by the US campaign against China and it is hard to see what it will achieve apart from pleasing American hawks. Why do this before the result of the US election is known?
This is not to deny that China also practises disinformation, as do most other countries when it suits them. Chinese international disinformation is pretty clumsy and doesn’t seem too convincing. Few people outside of China believe what is said about its treatment of the Uighurs, for example. Meanwhile, the Belt and Road is controversial: some say it is not what it seems and others say it is. Perhaps it is a bit of both? Chinese domestic disinformation may be more effective in less sophisticated areas of the country but maybe less so in the cities.
It seems our subservience to the dysfunctional United States of America has not changed. It is sad to see an Empire that has many virtues, and many faults, decline so rapidly but Australia must look forward. The Foreign Minister said this meeting will further our interests but it is hard to see how. Perhaps her claims are Australian disinformation?
Cavan Hogue is a former diplomat who has worked in Asia, Europe and the Americas as well as at the UN. He was Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia, dually accredited to Ukraine. He also worked at ANU and Macquarie universities.
Comments
7 responses to “Foreign Minister’s Tokyo claims Australia’s contribution to disinformation?”
mmmm Barney…. I am curious why you should expect that China should should treat us with respect ?
isnt our federal government trying to mirror behaviour derived from the present USA ?
I don’t think so, David. I think Scott Morrison has worked hard – if not hard enough – to distance us from the US re China, with some quite explicit statements of separation which were directed at Beijing. Do you believe China can say what it likes, such as calling us poor white trash, or chewing gum on its shoe, but we should approach them on our knees? I know that is the conventional wisdom on this website, but I can’t accept it. I wouldn’t dream of calling myself a proud Australian because I dislike that appellation, but I am relieved that Morrison seems to value Australia’s integrity when it comes to China (if not so much when it comes to the US).
I don’t think Morrison was acting at the behest of the US when he called for an independent inquiry into the origin of coronavirus. Many people who post here disagree with me, of course. He should have built the international coalition which quickly developed before speaking, however.
I know which country has not used inflammatory language over the trade disputes. We have not said the Australian people are wounded at Chinese bullying; we have wisely pretended the disputes are purely technical, so as not to escalate them. But I also note today that China seems to have decided it has made its point and is moving to normalise relations again and, as very much the minor partner, we should gracefully accept that overture.
Finally, I would hope that all countries treat each other with respect, and it is quite beside the point to say that the US does not. We can all see that, and it should not be a model for us or for China.
Thank you for interacting with me, and I would be interested to know where you disagree.
Chinese international disinformation is pretty clumsy and doesn’t seem
too convincing. Few people outside of China believe what is said about
its treatment of the Uighurs, for example.
True, but you can’t read the comments, Cavan. This is Australia’s leading English-language site for Uighur denialism. I see Godfree has already commented, but this propaganda triumph for the Chinese bears no relation to reality, and very large numbers of Muslims know it. It’s interesting that China has taken great care not to allow any independent observers – much safer to get tame observers and give them a self-interest.
As China waxes and the US wanes, a process that coronavirus has certainly accelerated, it seems to me very important to build international alliances that act as a counter to China. This meeting in Tokyo clearly has that intention.
I agree that Australia should treat China with respect (and expect the same in return), that it should not needlessly poke the bear. But it should also stand on its feet. If the US continues to implode next year, as seems likely, I fear very much for Taiwan. Perhaps that won’t be a concern for the China apologists here, but it should be.
“The World Muslim Council praised China’s treatment of the Uighurs, and 53 Muslim nations signed a UN declaration supporting it.”
One of their most shameful moments. But, despite their emphasis on the Umma, Muslims aren’t necessarily very good to Muslims of other ethnicities or denominations (in which they show they are people like the rest of us), and they seem to have had incentives for betraying the Uighurs.
In the history of disinformation perhaps we can add, in the interest of common decency, terra nullius, the Domino Theory and the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq leading to the deaths of millions of innocents.
“Few people outside of China believe what is said about its treatment of the Uighurs”?
Are Muslims not ‘people’?
The World Muslim Council praised China’s treatment of the Uighurs, and 53 Muslim nations signed a UN declaration supporting it.