I sometimes see people expressing bafflement that the US would back a genocide in the middle east knowing that it will radicalise the region against them, mistakenly thinking this goes against US strategic goals. And I always want to say to them, uh, have you been asleep the last quarter century? Have you not seen Continue reading »
Defence and Security
Imagine being Tony Blinken, and facing the arduous responsibility as US Secretary of State to rule the globe! This seems a daunting task, but fortunately, Blinken doesn’t have to strain his brain too much because he has a manual already written to instruct him. This manual is called The Grand Chessboard. It tutors you to Continue reading »
Labor’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has a strange attraction to muddying the political waters in areas that are going well, such as its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Serious gains are already occurring in the efficiency of battery storage of electricity from solar, wind and pumped hydro sources. Bigger gains seem likely as breakthroughs Continue reading »
With Australian defence writers now arguing for society to be reimagined as an ‘input to defence capability’, we are witnessing further incursions in the Democracy – Defence Nexus. A recent article appearing on the website of Defence Connect claims a discovery: the identification of Australian society as a “fundamental input to defence capability.” In a Continue reading »
In an essay entitled “Australia’s Choice” published in Australian Foreign Affairs in 2022, the leading Singaporean commentator on international relations, Kishore Mahbubani, highlighted how Australia needed to choose whether to be “a bridge between East and West in the Asian Century – or the tip of a spear projecting Western power into Asia” It transpires Continue reading »
The ‘National Defence Strategy’ is not a strategy. It is an ideology. An ideology that firmly ties Australia’s future to that of the United States. A horrifying thought. Australia apparently faces the ‘most complex and challenging strategic environment since the Second World War’. From the perspective of the underpinnings of Australian defence policy for many Continue reading »
China knows that, if it has to, it can stand alone and that it can defend itself. It knows, too, that most nations of the world, other than America (which is, despite itself, somewhat conflicted), want to do business with it; to connect with its growing confidence and with its strengthening brand of non-threatening, non-coercive, Continue reading »
Anzac Day. We mark it respectfully. True respect demands that we also not forget the essential question about the first ‘Anzac Day’ – 25 April 1915. Why were Australian soldiers at Anzac Cove in the first place? In fact, Gallipoli provides a stunning lesson in the disasters that can follow from unwavering loyalty to a Continue reading »
Perhaps it is my imagination, but in the days immediately preceding Anzac Day 2024, there seems to be less media exhortation to observance than has been usual in recent years. I think that we can take it as given that those who march and attend at dawn will participate again this year with undiminished spirit Continue reading »
At the levels of public ritual and private observance, the ANZAC narrative is much about processing loss and assuaging grief. But let us recall here its nature as an imperial romance, and what that might mean for our place in the multi-polarity of the current world order? With its genesis in imperial war, the Anzac Continue reading »