Tag: World Affairs

In ten days’ time, Tony Abbott will be visiting Malaysia and India.

The visit to Kuala Lumpur will at last be an opportunity for him to thank on our behalf the Malaysian Government’s significant contribution to ‘Operation Bring them Home’.

Without fanfare the Malaysian Prime Minister secured two key outcomes that have been of great benefit to Australia and others who suffered losses as a result of the shooting down of MH17. The first major outcome was the release from rebel territory of the refrigerated trains that carried over 200 bodies out of rebel territory. The second major outcome that the Malaysian prime Minister secured was the handover by the rebels to the Malaysian Government of the black boxes.

Efforts of other parties particularly the Dutch Government and our own Australian Federal Police were helpful but the substantial breakthrough was organised by the Malaysian Government.

Yet in his overseas travels to the ‘Anglosphere’ Tony Abbot has been almost everywhere except visiting the one country that has been of the greatest help to us. For all our talk about the importance of Asia out focus is almost always Europe. That has occurred also on the Russia/Ukraine confrontation which is overwhelmingly a European issue.

Media headlines don’t necessarily make for a good foreign policy and particularly relations with countries in our region. And by the way, in that other diversion from the budget, nothing has yet been found of MH370 although Tony Abbott told us in April that he was confident that we had found the black boxes.

In addition to acknowledging Malaysia’s major role in ‘bringing them home’, thanking the Malaysian Government will also be a useful way to put more ballast in the relationship with the Malaysian Government particularly after the intemperate remarks that Tony Abbott made about Malaysia’s human rights record.

Justifying his opposition to the agreement with Malaysia over asylum seekers, Tony Abbott said in June 2011 in Parliament ‘Why would the Prime Minister send illegal arrivals to Malaysia where they could be detained and tagged, when she can’t guarantee the standard and accessibility of medical care and when she can’t guarantee the access to school for the children‘. Tony Abbott then went on ‘The one thing that is absolutely certain about this deal is that this Prime Minister, this Minister and this Government cannot be sure that boat people sent to Malaysia will be treated humanely.’

A gracious and earlier thank you to Malaysia over MH17 would have been most appropriate and helpful in many ways. But better late than never.

The Japanese have coined a new word, kopipe, from the English phrase ‘copy and paste’. It featured, for instance, in recent reporting of the discredited stem-cell researcher caught out copying images and data from one research paper to another. But the word kopipe has many possible applications, such as in the ongoing debates about history and Japan’s expanding security alliance with the United States.

On the matter of history, let me do some copying and pasting of my own from the text of the San Francisco Peace Treaty which Japan signed in 1951 to formally bring to an end the Second World War. Here is what it says in Article 11:

            Japan accepts the judgments of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East [IMTFE] and of other Allied War Crimes Courts both within and outside Japan, and will carry out the sentences imposed  thereby upon Japanese nationals imprisoned in Japan. The power to grant clemency, to reduce sentences and to parole with respect to such prisoners may not be exercised except on the decision of the Government or Governments which imposed the sentence in each instance, and on recommendation of Japan.

What are we to make, then, of Japan’s current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who patently does not accept the judgments of the war crimes tribunals? Abe, on the contrary, is a determined revisionist who apparently thinks that those responsible for making war on their neighbours and conducting or condoning systematic atrocities are worthy of celebration. (For the record, the President of the IMTFE was Justice William Webb of Australia.)

During a parliamentary budget committee hearing last year Abe said the war crimes trials were a case of the Allies imposing their view of events on the Japanese. And in April this year Abe sent a message of support to a Buddhist event honouring Japanese who died after being convicted of war crimes. Abe wrote that they had ‘staked their souls to become the foundation of the fatherland,’ according to a report in the Asahi newspaper. The annual ceremony is held before a memorial statue that describes the war crimes tribunals conducted by the Allied powers as ‘retaliatory’ and calls executed Japanese war criminals ‘Showa Era (1926-1989) martyrs.’ Showa is the era name of the reign of Emperor Hirohito by whose authority Japan waged war in China and the Pacific. The memorial statue records the names of about 1,180 war criminals who were either executed or who died of illness or committed suicide in detention camps.

It’s not the first time Abe has sent a message of encouragement to the event. Last year he wrote: ‘I want to establish the existence of a new Japan that would not be an embarrassment to the spirit of the war dead.’

Abe’s maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, wartime Munitions Minister, was held as a suspected Class ‘A’ war criminal himself though never put on trial. He later made a political comeback and served as prime minister between 1957 and 1960. Abe could be described as a kopipe of his blood relation. But while Kishi’s unpopular policy of closer military co-operation with the United States eventually cost him the leadership, Abe’s pushing through of a new interpretation of Japan’s post-war constitution that effectively strips away its pacifist intention has come at little political cost. The Japan of 2014 is much less alert to its wartime responsibilities than the Japan of 1960. (It is worth noting that Abe’s language when addressing the subject during his speech to the Australian Parliament in July was not as conciliatory as that used by Kishi when he visited Australia in 1957.)

The Japanese Government makes a lot of noise about the importance of observing international law­­­­ in its territorial disputes with China and South Korea, and over issues such as whaling. When convenient, however, it seems ready to bend or ignore laws and commitments. The official explanation that Abe was acting purely in a ‘private’ capacity when he honoured Japan’s war criminals is the usual ‘copy and paste’ for the double standard.

Abe’s kopipe method was evident, too, during last month’s ceremonies marking the end of the war and the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war dead would be more than embarrassed, one imagines, if they had been able to hear the Prime Minister read out a statement in Hiroshima that was, in large part, identical to the one he made at last year’s ceremony. Some official had simply copied and pasted from the old speech and so little concerned was Abe for reflecting sincerely on the past he read the whole thing without either noticing or caring.

Finally, and probably most importantly, there is the continuing ‘copy-and-paste’ militarization of Okinawa, the island prefecture that occupies less than 1% of Japan’s landmass but plays host to 74% of its US-only military bases. For decades politicians have promised the people of Okinawa that their disproportionate share of the burden would be reduced. A primary focus of groups campaigning for the pledge to be fulfilled has been the Futenma Air Station operated by the US Marines in the centre of Ginowan City. The facility is an obstacle to local development and seriously affects the lives of nearby residents with its noise pollution and constant danger of aircraft accidents.

In 1996, the US agreed to return the land––but only on condition that another location was found in Okinawa.  As a result, work preliminary to the construction of a new facility recently began in Oura Bay at Henoko, Nago city, near the existing American base Camp Schwab. The city’s mayor and many others are fiercely opposed to the project, so the Japanese coast guard has been mobilized to haul in any protestors trying to breach a large exclusion zone in the bay proclaimed under a little-used provision of the criminal law.

According to Professor Gavan McCormack of the Australian National University, Oura Bay ‘happens to be one of the most bio-diverse and spectacularly beautiful coastal zones in all Japan. It hosts a cornucopia of life forms from blue––and many other species––of coral…through crustaceans, sea cucumbers and sea weeds and hundreds of species of shrimps, snails, fish, tortoise, snake, and mammal.’ McCormack goes on to say: ‘If the project proceeds, it will rival in scale Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay, take a decade or more to complete and cost somewhere in the vicinity of $25 billion. Those [foreign leaders such as Tony Abbott] who believe they share values with [Shinzo Abe] should look carefully at the burgeoning confrontation in Oura Bay between the Abe state, with its monopoly of force, and local, non-violent, democratic citizens.’ 

Kopipe, rather than original thinking and genuine engagement, seems to be the fashionable way in Japan these days.

Walter Hamilton is the author of Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.

A major problem with the situation in Ukraine is that you can’t believe anything anyone says because they all have their political agendas to push and don’t hesitate to lie.

Crimea, Odessa and the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine have Russian majorities who would produce a majority for being part of Russia in any free and fair plebiscite. So the issue is one of self-determination versus territorial integrity. There is also the question of Russian minorities elsewhere but only where they occupy a definable territorial area.

Russia wants friendly states around it and Putin has pushed a highly nationalistic line domestically which has been popular. He says he will protect Russians wherever they may be.  Domestic perceptions are vital to his continued success at home.. He is now in a position where he either bows publicly to Western pressure which will do him great harm domestically or continues to stand up to the wicked West which will be popular domestically..There is nothing unusual about Russians telling porkies about what they are doing. This is typical Russian behaviour and not unknown in the West.

It is increasingly clear that Russia has gone from arming and supporting the separatists (cf the US in Nicaragua and Chile) to the insertion of “volunteers” to actually fight (cf US and Australian advisers in Vietnam). It is highly unlikely that Russia would go beyond the Russian speaking areas because that would be a whole new ball game where the Russians would find themselves amidst a hostile population. However, they are unlikely to stop supporting the separatists and presumably the ultimate aim is separate Russian states well disposed towards Russia.

Putin’s reminder that Russia is a major nuclear power should be seen as simply tweaking the American nose because he knows that neither the US or the Europeans will commit troops. Kiev’s talk about full scale war is an obvious plea for stronger Western support which goes beyond threats of sanctions.

The problem for the West is that sanctions will only strengthen Putin’s resolve and any solution must involve some kind of face saving formula which the Ukrainians will not be interested in finding. The Europeans are also vulnerable to counter sanctions from Russia in a way the Americans are not. Ukrainian membership of NATO would probably be seen by Russia like the US saw Soviet missiles in Cuba and, in any case, the Europeans would not be interested in this. Pushing NATO right up to the border with Russia was not a smart move.

Australia’s hairy chested approach has lost our farmers export markets and achieved nothing else. We are not a serious player but are vulnerable if Russia wants to punish the monkey as a way of getting at the American organ grinder. Our approach has served to show our neighbours that, for all our talk about Asia, Europe is still our focus otherwise why would we be so strident about what is essentially a European problem? The Government’s aim is probably to appear tough domestically and to get our tummy tickled by Washington.

Cavan Hogue was former Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia.

The seeds of the disaster in Iraq were sown long ago. We are now reaping a very bitter harvest.

A major contributor to the upsurge in violence, terrorism and extremism in Iraq is the sense of outrage that many young Muslim men feel about the invasion of their country by successive Western powers, including Australia.

The Howard Government and News Corporation which supported our participation in the coalition of the willing must bear a heavy responsibility for the unfolding horror.

I have set out below an article by Tony Walker in The Australian Financial Review of 29 March, 2003, headed ‘America’s hard history lesson’. I have also a link below to an editorial in the National Catholic Reporter of only a few days ago, entitled ‘Editorial: Path of destruction in Iraq began in 1991’

Both articles draw attention to the futility of earlier Western interventions in Iraq.

In 2004, Mick Keelty, the AFP Commissioner warned us that our involvement in Iraq made us a greater target for terrorism. In 2010, The Head of UK’s MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller, told the Chilcott Inquiry that ‘ Our involvement in Iraq radicalised … a whole generation of young people, … who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam.’

George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard were obviously unaware of the history of Iraq. We are now seeing a catastrophe because of leaders who were unable to learn from history.

John Menadue.

AMERICA’S HARD HISTORY LESSON

By: Story Tony Walker, DOHA    

Through the centuries, the Middle East has proved hostile territory to invaders from the west and north. Even if the invaders won the battles, none, ultimately, won their particular war.

‘The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia [what is now Iraq] into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information … Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far out from disaster.’

That dispatch was written for The Sunday Times by its special correspondent T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). It appeared on August 22, 1920. How extraordinary that the same words could be published today and seem almost contemporary, depending on your point of view.

What Lawrence was talking about was the irredeemable arrogance of British colonial rule although he might just as easily have been referring to the consequences of a new American unilateralism. He was not talking about an all-out war, like the one we are witnessing now, but about the aftermath of conflict, namely World War I, in which the Ottoman empire crumbled and was replaced across the Middle East by Pax Britannica. In Mesopotamia it was no benevolent pax; far from it.

As Iraq braces for a further intensification of a conflict whose aim is to rid the country of its leader and his regime, Iraqis must fear that the war itself will be only part of the horror. If history is a guide, war will be followed by an uncertain possibly bloody aftermath.

Ten thousand Arabs were killed, according to Lawrence, by the British military governors in Baghdad in putting down an uprising in the summer of 1920, two years after the end of WWI.  ‘We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil … Our government is worse than the old Turkish system,’ Lawrence wrote.

Britain’s occupation of Mesopotamia might not have ended in the disaster predicted by Lawrence, but the clumsy redrawing of the map of the Middle East under the Treaty of Sevres by the ‘Great Powers’ actually, the dividing up of WWI spoils contributed in no small way to the general volatility of and latest convulsion in the region.

Whatever happens in Iraq over the next days, weeks, months and years, it requires a level of optimism to believe that good will necessarily come from the destruction that is being visited on Iraqis and their country.

Baghdad’s bloody history is not encouraging. Built in 762AD by the Abbasids, it has endured war and conquest repeatedly. It was sacked by the Mongols in 1258, the streets turned into rivers of blood, the alleyways filled with corpses. It fell to Tamerlane in 1401. The Persians seized it in 1508, then it was captured by the Ottoman Turks in 1534. It was recaptured by the Persians in 1623, before the Ottomans regained control in 1638 for the next three centuries.

While it might be argued that no fate is too dreadful for Saddam Hussein, to achieve such a desirable result as his demise it should not be necessary to raze cities. You shudder to think what Iraq and its people will look like if the bombing continues for a few more weeks, followed by an assault on Baghdad itself. The errant missiles that slammed into a suburban Baghdad market on Wednesday, killing 15 civilians and wounding many others, are unlikely to be an isolated tragedy, even though the US has said repeatedly wrongly, as it turns out that the precision of modern weaponry makes this strike the military equivalent of laser surgery: no blood, no scars. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sounds more like Dr Strangelove every day.

Speaking of Rumsfeld, his observation on Tuesday that the war was much closer to the beginning than the end was a belated nudge towards candour in light of the obvious that Iraqis, whatever they think of Hussein, are resisting more determinedly than expected.
It’s interesting to note here that last week the Americans, repeating their mantra of ‘shock and awe’ to describe the initial bombing campaign, were telling people to stay in their homes and await further instructions while exhorting the Iraqi military to surrender. Now the message to people, especially in the southern city of Basra, is to rise up against their oppressors. Sceptics might conclude this is an admission that the undermanned invaders their supply lines stretched, their ability to secure their rear shaky need some help on the ground.

If there is a querulousness in the latest statements by US officials it is quite simply because, whatever they pretend, things are not going according to the script. The regime has not imploded, the populace has not risen up, the liberators are not being welcomed with hearts and flowers. It is entirely possible that when the blowtorch is applied to Baghdad, a horrible regime will indeed collapse, or shrivel up in its burrows deep below the city. But on the evidence so far, it seems unlikely the Iraqi citadel will fall without a fight.
In the meantime, George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and their advisers might reflect if it is not too late on some historical amber lights, starting with the Crusades, a campaign 900 years ago to liberate the heathen and enlighten them in the ways of Christianity (note that word: liberate). It failed.

Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf remarks in his book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes that ‘the Arab world simultaneously fascinated and terrified by these Franj [Frankish invaders], whom they encountered as barbarians and defeated but who subsequently managed to dominate the earth cannot bring itself to consider the Crusades a mere episode in the bygone past. It is often surprising to discover the extent to which the attitude of the Arabs (and of Muslims in general) towards the West is still influenced, even today, by events that supposedly ended seven centuries ago.’

Whether Westerners believe reference to the Crusades by Hussein or Osama bin Laden to bolster support to be legitimate, these historical events do resonate in the minds of many Arabs as if they happened yesterday.

As the editor of the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat said in one of this week’s more acute observations: ‘I think this is an emotional time rather than a rational time.’

Princeton University professor and Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis noted in a 1990 essay, ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’, published in The Atlantic Monthly, that just as blind Arab prejudice about the West weighed heavily, so Americans functioned in a fog of ignorance about the Muslim world. When Lewis wrote then that American policy had not suffered disasters in the Middle East comparable with those in South-East Asia or Central America, he could not have imagined that things would change so dramatically in a decade or so.

Regime change was but a twinkle in the eyes of Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld, and there was no sign of a malleable occupant in the White House.

‘There is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as “advisers”. But there is a Libya, and Iran, and a Lebanon, and a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms and above all baffles Americans,’ Lewis wrote.

The bafflement is set to deepen in fact is deepening, as it seems that since September 11, 2001, Americans have lost a sense of proportion. Certainly normal prudence has been jettisoned.

Among the more frequently cited historical lessons about the perils of Western hubris in the Middle East is the experience of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon may have been the world’s most brilliant general, but he suffered his worst defeat in the Middle East when his forces were repelled in 1799 in a siege of a stronghold of the Ottoman Turks at Acre, in what is now Israel. Attack after attack failed, and hundreds of French soldiers died in the process. Napoleon eventually retreated to Cairo with a decimated army.

Accounts of the siege of Acre are not recommended bed-time reading for Bush, Blair and Howard. Blair, whose troops are laying siege to Basra, may draw some encouragement from the British experience in Mesopotamia during WWI. British troops occupied Basra in 1915. By 1917, they had control of Baghdad, and a year later they took Mosul. By the end of the war they held the whole of Mesopotamia. That was when the real trouble began as nationalistic Arabs formed anti-British secret societies. Riots broke out in 1920.

These are the events that Lawrence, doubling as journalist and agent for British military intelligence, described in his dispatch for The Sunday Times. His final paragraphs make interesting reading in light of current events, especially the need for the US to rush additional troops to the region to cope with nagging Iraqi resistance.

‘We have not reached the limit of our military commitments,’ Lawrence wrote. ‘Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad.’ And, in conclusion: ‘We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world … How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?’

All this underlines just how complicated will be the task of pacifying Iraq and then reconstructing it, which is why there has been such a premium on a swift military victory causing minimum civilian casualties and avoiding large-scale destruction of infrastructure. That prospect has faded. A viper’s nest has been stirred. The legacy of bitter conflict will further contaminate what is in any case a poisonous cocktail dating back to the days of British rule.

As a paper on regional fallout from a war in Iraq by the Middle East program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) points out: ‘Iraqi politics, from the creation of the state in the aftermath of World War I, have been dominated by the deployment of organised violence by the state to dominate and shape society; the use by the state of oil revenue to give it autonomy from society; and the recreation of ethnic and communal divisions within Iraqi society. The degree to which these dynamics can be overcome will depend upon the extent and nature of external influence in the aftermath of regime change. This in turn is dependent on the way war is waged.’

The signs at this early stage are not promising. These are worrying moments for members of the coalition of the willing, no matter what sort of face they seek to put on progress in the war. History is not necessarily a comforting guide.

The National Catholic Reporter, editorial, August 25, 2014.

 http://ncronline.org/news/global/path-destruction-began-1991

Australia will be dealing with a new Indonesian government in just two months. This will involve challenges and opportunities for both countries.

The Constitutional Court in Jakarta has now confirmed the election of Joko Widodo as President-elect with 53.15% of the eligible vote. The Court’s decision is not appealable and he will be sworn in as President on the 20^th of October.

All Australians, especially our political leaders and senior officials, should be in no doubt that no bilateral relationship will be more important in the future than that with Indonesia.

Indonesia stretches across our north, a distance from Broome in Western Australia to Christchurch in New Zealand. It is a country of some 250 million people, 81% of whom are Muslims. It has a literacy rate of 94%, an increasing middle class, and its economy is growing rapidly.

Prime Minister Abbott has described the relationship with Indonesia as “our most important relationship” in many respects. His policy that his foreign affairs approach would be “more Jakarta and less Geneva” was shorthand for this approach.

Our relations with the United States, China, and Japan, as well as neighbouring New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, are also of great importance to us. The future stability and prosperity of a democratic Indonesia is, however, of paramount importance to us.

President-elect Joko Widodo, 53, represents a generational change and the potential for a significant shift away from established Indonesian politics. From central Java, he is a businessman who made furniture. He was the mayor of Solo, and then served 18 months as the Governor of Jakarta. He has a reputation of being a nationalist and a relaxed and friendly “man of the people”.

While his experience of politics and of foreign policy issues is limited, he has indicated that he wants to unwind corruption and patronage in Indonesian politics and focus on raising the standard of living of the poor. His vice President, Yusuf Kalla, has more experience having been Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s first vice President for several years.

Our government will need to discuss in depth with Widodo and Kalla, and the foreign minister when appointed, bilateral and wider foreign policy issues. Widodo has said that he is looking to make professional rather than political appointments, and it may be that Marty Natalegawa will be reappointed as foreign minister because of his wide knowledge and experience of foreign policy issues, with which Widodo is not familiar.

Joko Widodo has said he wants good and consistent relations with Australia, but Indonesian sensitivities about territorial integrity and earlier allegations of phone tapping are seen as irritants in the relationship. Joko himself has referred to a “lack of trust” and he is aware that many Indonesian politicians and officials consider Australia as unpredictable and untrusting of Indonesia.

The Joint Understanding on a Code of Conduct to manage more effectively the reaction to allegations that the Defence Signals Directorate was monitoring the phones of the President, his wife, and members of his staff is hopefully an important step forward if it is implemented to the satisfaction of both parties.

The reason for the Indonesian reaction was that SBY had understood from his discussions with then Prime Minister Rudd that Australia was seriously seeking a closer, friendlier strategic relationship with Indonesia. Indonesia therefore saw the allegations as undermining trust. It was not, foreign minister Natalegawa argued, the way to treat a major neighbouring strategic good friend.

It would be unwise not to acknowledge that the relationship has been damaged. In the 2014 Lowy Institute poll, 40% of Australians polled considered the relationship to be “worsening”. According to the Lowy institute the priorities on which Australia and Indonesia will need to consult most closely are asylum seekers, security, and terrorism. This will be a prickly task, calling for a courteous, culturally sensitive, sophisticated, and professional approach to restore and maintain the firmly based relationship we need.

In our future relations with Indonesia Australia also will need to avoid several approaches, which have been disruptive in the past. One is “gesture politics” that is making statements and appointments that are insubstantial gestures in response to perceived public opinion.

Australia should also avoid making statements on foreign policy issues which are essentially made for domestic political reasons but which are criticized by Indonesia, for example the suspension of live cattle exports without any prior consultation and towing boats back to Indonesian territorial waters.

I believe we should listen more and lecture less. We also need to avoid making unnecessary statements that are seen as unbalanced in the region, for example alleged “assertiveness” by China and Japan are widely seen in Indonesia as responses to United States and Japanese assertiveness towards China.

Joko Widodo is likely to make it clear that Indonesia will not take sides in China/US disputes, in China/Japan disputes, or on the South China Sea claims. Indonesia is not a claimant and has been assured by China that it does not claim any Indonesian territory. This underlines the desirability for Australia of a more nuanced focus on the region we share, and the regional problems that we need to manage.

In this context I believe Australia does need a fundamental change to our national psyche, that would focus more on Asia than our traditional and well established links with the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada (collectively the “Anglosphere”), and Europe.

We do need a continuous and sustained approach to the main countries of Asia. In this context a key task for the Australian government, when the new government is formed in Indonesia next October, will be to determine an appropriate and updated balance with our relationships with the United States, China, and Japan and to reinforce the government’s rhetoric about our role in the Asia-Pacific region with action and funding. We should consult Indonesia on a range of political issues, such as the Middle East for example, rather than limit our consultations to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

There will be a major role for public diplomacy in that Australians and Indonesians do need to know much more about each other. It is regrettable that many Australians still regard Indonesia as a mysterious, chaotic, and corrupt country in which the rule of law is weak.

According to the Lowy institute polls many Indonesians still see Australia as a potential military threat. This is largely because of historic fears, Indonesia’s size, its proximity, and its presumed potential instability as well as the situation in West Papua.

While Indonesia, like Australia, welcomes a constructive and continuing United States involvement in the Asia-Pacific there is concern in Indonesia about the so-called “pivot to Asia” – now referred to as “rebalancing”. Many Indonesians regard Australian policy as too closely tied to the United States.

The incoming Indonesian government can be expected to be concerned, for example, about close cooperation on the reported use of US missiles by the Australian navy and the purposes of drone flights from Australia.

Also there will be concern that the Cocos Islands, so close to Indonesia and Malaysia, yet now part of Western Australia, might be used for security purposes in South-East Asia and the South China region. Such activities would be seen as directed at the containment of China, notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary.

To conclude, the importance of our bilateral relations with Indonesia, and regionally in the context of the Asian century, cannot be overstated.  As a nation we need to be genuinely and continuously engaged with the incoming Widodo government of our very large neighbour of increasing global and regional importance.

Richard Woolcott was formerly Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Australian Ambassador to Indonesia

In 1967 the Israeli military attacked the USS Liberty, an American spy-ship which had been monitoring Israeli transmissions about the conflict during the Six-day War. Intercepted Israeli communications indicated that the goal was to sink the Liberty and leave no survivors. 

As the story reveals, – see link below – both the US President Lyndon Johnson and the Secretary of Defence, Robert Macnamara, did their best to ensure that this action by the Israeli military – an attack on the US navy – never became public. 

This story is written by Ray McGovern who works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. After serving as an army infantry/intelligence officer, he spent a 27-year career as a CIA analyst. He is co-founded of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

During the tenure of President George Bush, he provided daily intelligence briefings to the Vice President and the Heads of National Security.   John Menadue

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/17/a-uss-libertys-heros-passing/

George Bush and his neocons must bear the principal responsibility for the disaster which is continuing to unfold in Iraq. In Australian terms, the most guilty partners are without doubt the Howard Government and News Corporation.

The Howard Government’s decision to support the invasion of Iraq in 2002 was loudly supported by Tony Abbott. He said the invasion ‘was to liberate other people, to advance everyone’s interest and to uphold universal values that the coalition of the willing went to war in Iraq. If it’s possible to engage in an altruistic war, this was it.’

The consequences of the war for Iraq have been almost unimaginable. Hundreds and thousands of Iraqis have died and been driven out of their homes. Genocide and ethnic cleansing is now widespread.

We spent over $2 b on the Iraq war which the head of the AFP said made us less safe.

We knew little and cared little about the history of Iraq and its people. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, but he kept the clash between Shia and Sunni under some control. Christians and other minorities were tolerated. Islamic extremists did not get a foothold in Iraq. After Saddam was deposed and killed, Al-Queda grew in strength, which has now morphed into the murderous IS.  It is as if the heavens have really fallen in. Christians, minorities and moderate Sunni are being murdered.

It is time John Howard and Tony Abbott really confessed that they made a terrible mistake in joining the coalition of the willing. They relied on dodgy intelligence information that was manipulated to support a previously determined political decision to invade Iraq. Our intelligence agencies, particularly the Defence Intelligence Organisation, were highly sceptical about alleged biological and chemical weapons.

The best service we could have given to our US allies was to warn them against the course that they had determined to pursue.

And there was News Corporation raucously calling for support for the war and doubting the patriotism of the war’s critics. The campaign by News Corporation in support of the Iraq war was as unscrupulous and dishonest as its campaign now in support of sceptics on climate change.

In 2003, Rupert Murdoch said ‘We can’t back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam … I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly … The greatest thing to come of this to the world economy … would be $US20 a barrel for oil.’ The next year, Rupert Murdoch told ABC Radio ‘There is tremendous progress in Iraq. All the kids are back at school, 10% more than when Saddam Hussein was there. There is 100% more fresh water … Most of Iraq is doing extremely well.’

The Australian in an editorial mocked the critics of the war whom it described as ‘the coalition of the whining’. Greg Sheridan, the Foreign Editor of the Australian described George Bush as ‘a really modern Winston Churchill’. Three months after the invasion of Iraq, Sheridan still thought ‘weapons of mass destruction doubts are ludicrous’.

Tony Abbott is now telling us of the appalling humanitarian plight of so many in Iraq. Yet he with John Howard and Rupert Murdoch, must bear a heavy responsibility for what has transpired.

The Israeli public relations is almost as powerful as the Israeli military machine. An alternative view is expressed below by Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, and the author of ‘Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation’. This article was published in ‘Mondoweiss’ which describes itself as ‘a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective’.  John Menadue

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/catastrophe-inflicted-standing.html

I can understand Tony Abbott’s wish to direct attention away from the budget by going off to The Hague and London. But are Australia’s national and policy interests being served by his absence when John Kerry and Chuck Hegel visit us.

In my blog of July 31 ‘Overplaying one’s hand’ I quoted Tony Abbott’s comments on MH370 in PNG. He said ‘Satellite footage shows what could be debris from the missing airline’s flight MH370’. But he was wrong.

In Shanghai about two weeks later Tony Abbott said ‘We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorders to within some kilometres … we are very confident the signals we are detecting are from the black boxes on MH370’. On the same day Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, who was in charge of the search, said ‘On the information that I have available … there has been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370’. What Angus Houston told us still stands. Apparently we are now to contract out the search for MH370 to a foreign company.

Then Tony Abbott adopted what Paul McGeough in the SMH called ‘megaphone diplomacy’ on MH17. It has now become clear that it was the Malaysian Prime Minister who quietly contacted the rebels in Donetsk and secured the release of the refrigerated train with 200 bodies or more on board. The Malaysian Prime Minister also secured from the rebels the two black boxes of MH17. The role of the Malaysian Prime Minister clearly doesn’t suit Tony Abbott’s agenda. I have yet to hear him make any mention or thank the Malaysian Government for its role in what really mattered after the crash of MH17. Help from the Dutch and others has been helpful, but their contribution did not compare with what the Malaysian Prime Minister achieved. So Tony Abbott went to The Hague to thank the Dutch but there is still no sign of him dropping in to Kuala Lumpur to thank the Malaysian Government. Operation bring them home has become more like wait and see.

Now Tony Abbott is on a side trip to London at the same time that the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and the Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel, are in Australia. This is quite remarkable. After President Obama, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel are without doubt the two most important foreign visitors that could come to our shores at this time. But Tony Abbott was not here to discuss with them what more we might be doing in Iraq and Syria. Just imagine what News Corporation and other media might be saying if Prime Ministers Gillard and Rudd were absent at a time like this.

Our national interest would be much better served with less grandstanding and less megaphone diplomacy.

Anyone with any knowledge of Russia could have told the Prime Minister that
his gratuitous public and personal attacks on Mr Putin and on Russia in
general would lead to retaliation. Russia was left with no other option
except humiliation and Russians are too proud and too sensitive to accept
that. So the Australian Government must have known that banning of our
exports was the most probable Russian response and therefore prepared
contingency plans to deal with this event. So why all the panic now? Why has
the National Party not protected the interests of its constituents simply so
Mr Abbott can engage in a contest with Mr Putin to show who has the hairiest
chest?

This is not about MH17 although our attacks on Russia after that can only
have made things worse. The sanctions and insults to which Russia is
responding took place before the plane was shot down. While we do not know
for sure who did it, the most likely explanation is that some incompetent
separatist thought he was shooting down a plane out of Kiev. Whether Russia
was directly or indirectly involved is not clear. What would Russia have to
gain by deliberately shooting down a Malaysian airliner? If stupidity will
explain something, we shouldn’t look for devious plots.

The Australian Government claims to have an Asian oriented policy so why are
we getting involved in a European problem in which we have no direct
interest? How will publicly insulting Russia promote our interests? And when
will the Government explain what Australian interests have been served that
outweigh the damage done to innocent Australian farmers?

Cavan Hogue is a former Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia.

In launching an investigation into former security chief Zhou Yongkang, Chinese President Xi Jinping has entered uncharted and possibly dangerous territory. It not only raises the stakes for Xi’s increasingly iron fisted rule, but also for the Communist Party itself.

The case announced last week targets an official who until recently was ranked the third most senior member of the party hierarchy as a senior member of the elite seven-man Politburo. Zhou controlled the police, paramilitary, courts and state security.

Never before has such a senior figure faced a corruption probe in Communist China, a sign that Xi is going after some of the biggest “tigers” in the party as part of a wide-reaching fight against corruption. Former Energy Commission chief Liu Jiemin, retired army general Xu Caihou and Guangdong party chief Wan Qingling have already been targeted. Wang Qishan, a current Politburo member and the head of the party’s Central Discipline and Inspection Committee is leading a purge that includes hundreds of people around Zhou.

In Wang, Xi has chosen one of his most capable lieutenants to head the campaign. Wang, an erudite former banker, is very well regarded in international business circles, and was seen as a certainty to be Premier Li Keqiang’s chief deputy. In trying to trace the tortuous money trails that lead off key officials and their families, who is better qualified than a banker?

The main target has been the state oil industry clique of which Zhou was the godfather – many previously under him are now under investigation. Zhou is by any measure a reprehensible human being. He sanctioned a program of extra-legal kidnappings and torture, and rumors remain over the death of his first wife in a car crash in 2000, leaving Zhou free to remarry a famous television anchor 28 years younger than him.

The Chinese press have hinted in recent weeks that foul-play may have been at work. The corruption probe against 71-year-old Zhou represents a clear warning that no one is safe, and China is increasingly rife with rumor about who could be next. Chinese state media – without naming anybody – is making increasingly unsubtle noises that Xi’s administration could next target former president Jiang Zemin, a still powerful figure in the so-called “Shanghai clique” and the man who propelled Xi himself to power.

There have been strategic purges at state-owned companies and government departments in recent weeks, all of which eventually lead back to Jiang. “Who cultivated the corrupt officials of today? Were they promoted for a reason?” Asked the state-run Xinhua in a blog published in early July.

After previous anti-corruption campaigns withered away, many doubters failed to take Xi’s effort seriously, seeing it as just another purge against internal enemies as the propaganda department cast him as a man of the people. Both Xi and predecessor Hu Jintao named corruption as the single biggest threat to the Communist Party’s survival. Hu also launched a drive against corruption early on during his presidency, but never on a scale or reaching the party heights seen so far under Xi.

“This is massive,” says Kerry Brown, executive director of the China Studies Centre at Sydney University. “I think they know that the sort of tribal style of looking after your patronage networks that was practiced par excellence by Zhou is old style, the sort of method of someone in charge when China was pumping out double-digit GDP growth. Now those years are over and the terrain is tougher.”

Xi appears ready to destroy the party faithful for the good of the collective, and with an expected seven more years at the helm, many more senior purges are expected. The detention of Zhou is the clearest signal so far that party is deeply concerned that the odds of its own survival are slimming.

The Communist Party has reached an intellectual cul-de-sac, appears ideologically bankrupt and bereft of any purpose save power for its own sake and its associated wealth, apparently the target of Xi’s pogrom. At the center of his plan is a raft of wide ranging economic reforms. The corruption campaign is central to them in two regards: cowing officials into submission, and making sure under-the-table deals are not derailing those reforms.

But there is a dark side to Xi’s campaign. Like the crackdown on high ranking officials of the regime, the campaign against religion – particularly Islam and Christianity – has gathered pace with stricter measures against Muslims in western Xinjiang and orders to remove hundreds of crosses in eastern Zhejiang province. China’s emperors old and new have always viewed themselves as the moral authority, and Xi appears to be determined to restore the party to this lofty position.

It’s by looking within China and its history that Xi’s actions make the most sense: he, like the rest of the Politburo, studied in China. None come from the growing ranks of those who have been exposed to higher education in the West. The general disturbing lack of exposure to the outside world is probably why the leadership continues in the belief it can conduct deep and serious economic reform with barely a pretense of political change.

“There is obviously a consensus view amongst the current leaders on this,” Brown says. “They are risk averse, and doing something like this means they feel it will deal with a profound crisis in the party of being able to maintain its legitimacy and authority as the country undertakes some of the hardest possible changes over the next few years.”

Xi appears to be choosing the path of lesser risk, taking a stand now that threatens far-reaching and unpredictable repercussions in the hope of staving off a bigger crisis down the line.

He clearly believes there is little time left. But convincing those around him he can steer everyone to safety only by tossing friends and colleagues overboard is a hard sell, especially when you haven’t told them who – in fact – is going to be sacrificed.

Michael Sainsbury is a Bangkok-based journalist and commentator. 

This article was first published in ucanews.com on 7 August 2014.

Read more at: http://www.ucanews.com/news/will-chinas-crackdown-save-or-sink-the-communist-party/71609

This interview in De Spiegal is of interest and merit on the Gaza crisis. See link below.  John Menadue.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-sociologist-eva-illouz-about-gaza-and-israeli-society-a-984536.html

There is continuous debate, within the US, about President Obama’s handling of international affairs. To some, he has responded to their wish to see the US less entangled, everywhere; to others, he’s a feckless weakling and should be impeached. The only thing that seems clear about this debate is that it is agitated, apparently, interminable and operates on a low factual base. 

The role of the Washington Post, in print and on line, in this discourse in the US and beyond, is believed to be significant. This makes the thoughts and decisions of Fred Hiatt very important. He is editor of the Post’s opinion page, which publishes 4 or 5 op-ed pieces each morning, chosen by him, and Hiatt’s own piece once a week.

At the end of July, his piece lamented President Obama’s alleged disengagement with the world and the evacuation of US leadership it had produced: “We have witnessed as close to a laboratory experiment on the effects of US disengagement as the real world is ever likely to provide”. He gave as examples of such disengagement: the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, the failure to adequately support the opposition to Assad in Syria, the failure to ensure a better post-Qaddafi Libya, and, the acceptance of the Russian proposal to dispose of Syria’s Chemical Weapons, rather than to bomb Syria.

Hiatt began his piece by acknowledging that the world is currently facing a somewhat bewildering array of disturbances and that opinions of Obama’s and his Administration’s responses to them varies widely.

But, he offered no concrete policy suggestions, relying instead on an unspecific notion of “leadership”, which it is fair to say, accurately translates, for most purposes in the US, as the achievement of US aims and interests, mainly through the threat or use of military force. Indeed, this identification of foreign policy with military actions has become entrenched in the US public discourse. This cast of mind is also reflected in the fact that the US maintains some 800 US military bases in the world.

Hiatt’s uncertainty in his own outlook, is underlined by his concluding remarks, drawing on his introduction of the laboratory analogy:

“There are no true laboratory experiments in international relations. Even with different US policies the Arab Spring might have fizzled and the Iraqi army may have crumbled. No one can say for sure what would have happened if the United States had not signaled its exhaustion with external affairs, downgraded its interests in Europe and the Middle East, abandoned Iraq and stayed aloof from Syria”.

It must be pointed out that, astonishingly absent from this reflection, is any notion that at least one important source of current malaises is US military and political intervention, such as in Iraq.

If the need to examine so called US leadership in the world is to be taken seriously, it would be best if it were first defined in a way which went beyond the achievement of US purposes and was thus, able to attract some acceptance, because of its substantive goals.

One such goal was articulated by President Obama in Prague in April 2009. “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of the world without nuclear weapons”. This US policy goal, articulated publicly, at the highest level won world wide acclaim, And, President Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize.

The current facts with respect to attempts to both control the spread of nuclear weapons and to eliminate them, are multifarious and depressing. Here are some highlights: the US is increasing it’s expenditure on it’s arsenal and reducing it’s expenditure on non-proliferation ( see: Douglas Birch in Politico, July 30); Russia is developing a new generation of warheads and it seems has recently violated the intermediate range nuclear arms treaty by testing a prohibited missile; India is significantly expanding it’s missile delivery range and capability; Pakistan is producing new nuclear weapons at a rate faster than any other country; a few days ago, the US and the UK signed a 10 year extension of it’s nuclear weapons cooperation agreement, keeping the UK’s Trident system alive; North Korea continues it’s nuclear weapons and delivery capability development.

To this list, which is merely some highlights, should be added the continued US protection of Israel’s nuclear weapons capability and the immensely fractious and plainly hypocritical business of attempting to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear explosive capability, while others maintain and expand theirs.

Incidentally, to introduce Ukraine into this picture, because of the current crisis; in 1994, the newly independent Ukraine decided to return to Russia the substantial number of nuclear weapons the USSR had stationed on its territory, and to join the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state party to the Treaty. In return, its independence and territorial integrity was guaranteed by the UK, US, and Russia, the depository states of the NPT. This was an Agreement signed by those three and Ukraine, in Budapest. It seems to have been forgotten in Moscow and Donetsk.

Fred Hiatt accuses President Obama of thinking: “he could engineer a cautious, modulated retreat from US leadership”. This is Hiatt’s characterization of Obama’s decisions which wound down costly, misbegotten, failed foreign interventions, something which has widespread support within the US and which decency should recognize, as desirable.

Many contend, and it is clear, that President Obama has, in fact, shown determined leadership in these contexts, in the face of vituperative criticism from the right, within the US polity.

But, US leadership is, in fact, in deep deficit in the areas of: nuclear weapons and reform of the UN Security Council, which the US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power has publicly acknowledged is needed.

Nothing will happen in those areas without US engagement, and that of the other Permanent Members of the Council.

If nothing happens, the five permanent members of the Security Council will continue to abuse their veto power and neuter the UN in the performance of it’s responsibility for ”the maintenance of international peace and security” ( look, for example, at photos of Aleppo today, and the devastation in Gaza); and as was pointed out in 1995 by the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will one day be used either by accident or decision and, that any use would be catastrophic.

These are fit subjects for leadership

Richard Butler AC, was Australian Ambassador to the United Nations and was appointed by Prime Minister Keating to Chair the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Japan both treasures and abhors its status as the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perceived, because of their unique and extraordinary destructiveness, as moral markers: warnings to the world and proofs that Japan paid in full for its part in the war.

The A-bomb attacks are also portrayed in some Japanese narratives as events outside history, in the sense that they cannot be compared to anything else, acts that should never have happened and should not happen again. Rather than being the historical full stop in a sentence that begins with Nanjing or Pearl Harbor or Singapore, the atomic wastelands shame to silence attempts at arguing the logic of cause and effect.

August 9th will be the 69th anniversary of the A-bombing of Nagasaki, which followed by three days the destruction of Hiroshima. In those two cities more than 200,000 people were killed outright or died within six months from wounds or radiation sickness. Even if one accepts the argument that the first bomb was necessary to shock Japan’s leaders into surrendering, the use of the second so soon afterwards seems wantonly cruel. For a Japanese person, therefore, any thought that he or she had a hand in delivering Nagasaki to its fate would be the stuff of nightmares. Which is exactly what 85-year-old Satoru Miyashiro says he has been struggling with these many years.

To explain Satoru’s story is to open up the Hiroshima-Nagasaki narrative to a more subtle interpretation of responsibility, adding new ironies to the decisions that produced the mushroom clouds.

Satoru Miyashiro was just 16 when employed at the famous Yahata Steel Works near the city of Kokura in northern Kyushu. Whenever the air raid sirens sounded it was his job to help light drums of coal tar placed near the steel works to create a smoke screen to prevent the B-29 pilots gaining a clear sight of their target. This counter-measure had been devised as early as 1936 because of Yahata’s importance as an industrial asset; by 1945, the local air defenses were so depleted little else stood in the way of Bomber Command.

The Americans identified Yahata early on as a prime target, but initial bombing raids proved ineffectual. Everyone in the city of 250,000 knew they were living on borrowed time.

The list of Japanese cities targeted for incendiary attacks was a long one: the sort of hit parade nobody would want to be on. A much shorter list of cities was drawn up in April-May 1945 for the atomic bombs. The American military-civilian committee given this task included the old capital, Kyoto, among them. The cultural treasure-trove was assessed as a major industrial centre.

The Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, however, was familiar with Kyoto from having visited there some years before and vetoed the decision. In its place Nagasaki was added to the list.

Young Satoru, of course, knew nothing of these high deliberations in Washington. He was fully occupied at Yahata fighting fire with smoke. Then came news of a terrible new kind of weapon unleashed on Hiroshima the morning of August 6th; like many in Yahata, which was still largely unscathed, Satoru feared what was coming next. Sure enough, two days later, the B-29s arrived overhead. But it was a conventional, not a nuclear attack (though 20 per cent of the urban area was destroyed by incendiaries the Americans rated the results only ‘fair’).

The next day Bomber Command set off from the Pacific island of Tinian with the second nuclear weapon. Their principal target was Kokura, site of a large arsenal, less than 10-kilometres from Yahata (both cities are now incorporated into Kitakyushu). Official war histories state that when the B-29 carrying the A-bomb reached Kokura the weather had closed in, forcing the pilot to divert to his secondary target, Nagasaki. Visibility was bad there also until the clouds opened up just long enough for the bomb to be detonated, as it turned out, right above the main Christian neighbourhood in that port-city.

But is it true that Kokura was spared, and Nagasaki laid waste, because of the vagaries of the weather? Ever since that day Satoru Miyashiro has believed otherwise. On the 9th, an hour before the A-bomb flight approached Kokura, the air raid sirens sounded again, sending Satoru and his colleagues running to light the coal-tar drums. Black smoke soon filled the sky and floated on the wind across to Kokura. The weather in the area that day, according to meteorological records, was fair­­––not cloudy as the history books say––although a mixture of smoke and mist hung in the air. Rainsqualls had doused the worst of the fires from the incendiary attack on Yahata the day before, and it was probably vapour plumes mixed with coal-tar smoke that blocked the nuclear flash––and sent it on to Nagasaki: the hand of man, rather than nature, determined events.

‘I’ve been hearing this story ever since I was a child,’ says Satoru’s daughter Yumiko. ‘But my father did not mention it to others because he felt a sense of guilt at having brought suffering to the people of Nagasaki.’ Now, as he approaches the end of his life, Satoru has finally gone public adding his recollections to the complex tangle of history.

Was a teenage boy charged with lighting a line of coal-tar fires responsible for destroying Nagasaki? Of course not. The significance of Satoru’s story relates not so much to the past as to the present. Japanese are losing touch with the generation that experienced the war; they are vulnerable to the patriotic pitch of revisionists and others who wish to throw clouds of doubt over Japan’s war responsibility. Sometimes, however, one man’s conscience and sense of personal responsibility is able to throw new light on great events, and in that human affirmation we recognise a necessary truth.

The original report about Satoru Miyashiro was published in the Mainichi newspaper. Walter Hamilton is the author of Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.

The election of Joko Widodo as Indonesia’s seventh president is a victory for burgeoning democracy in our neighbour with 240 million people. It was a victory for civil participation by ordinary people to defeat Prabowo Subianto by a margin of 53% to 47%, by 8 million votes and winning in two thirds of Indonesia’s provinces.

Prabowo had a very dubious performance on human rights when he was in the military. But like so many people from” born to rule” elites he now refuses to accept the result. What would the lower orders know about the need for strong leadership from his business and military friends?  It is similar to the way Tony Abbott behaved after the 2010 election. Denied the prime ministership by a vote of the House of Representatives he set about with Christopher Pyne to wreck the place.

Jokowi will not have a majority in the Parliament. He will need to be a good negotiator

All being well and despite Prabowo, Jokowi will be sworn as president on October 20. President Yudhoyono is likely to smooth any troubled waters in the meantime.

What could it mean for Australia?

In the short term I would think not much. Jokowi will be preoccupied with domestic issues that he campaigned on. He has promised two presidential regulations on corruption and expediting business permit licencing. It is also expected that he will release a third regulation that he promised on religious discrimination directed against religious radicals.

Outgoing President Yudhoyono was well disposed towards Australia and we often tried his patience! President Jokowi does not have the same disposition. We should not take him for granted. He will approach foreign policy issues very cautiously in the early days. He will be guided by professional advisers. Who he appoints to his cabinet will be very important and a good indicator of his priorities.

Jokowi will not have the same sensitivity as President Yudhoyono has on spying issues which offended Yudhoyono greatly. Our spying agencies are often a menace.

For Jokowi, boats will simply not be a priority. Given Indonesia’s other problems boats will remain a third rate issue. An important issue however for the Jokowi administration is how it regards the stategic question of the South China Sea. That might begin to emerge in six months or so. All in all I don’t think we will see much departure from existing  foreign policies.

Attitudes to foreign investment  howeverwill be coloured by economic nationalism which remains a major political issue for all Indonesian political parties.

In all of this it should not be assumed that Australia will get any preferred treatment. We don’t deserve it and we won’t get it.

One issue which could shore up the relationship would be a much more robust business relationship, even given Indonesian reservations about foreign investment. Our investment in Indonesia is 0.5% of our total investment abroad. Yet investment into Indonesia from Singapore and Japan pours in. Indonesia is growing rapidly at twice our rate. It is a member of the G20. But our trade with Indonesia as a trading partner ranks number 12.

Business and economic ties could be the ballast in a relationship which has been difficult from time to time. A business underpinning of our relationship with Indonesia would be a great stabiliser.

Our relationship with Japan was underpinned by business relationships. Leaders on both sides helped us through difficult times particularly after WW2.

Enhanced business cooperation between Indonesia and Australia would be a great help in the years ahead. Politics and governments change but business interests usually goes on and on.