Pearls and Irritations

When a new Labor government was elected in May of this year there was a degree of optimism that their reform agenda would extend to foreign policy. Those hopes were not to be realised. The last Labor government to show a measure of independence in its foreign policy was the Whitlam government that ruled from 1972 to 1975. Among its brave foreign policy initiatives was to withdraw Australian troops from the Vietnam war.

The governor general of the time engineered what was effectively a coup and the government lost office in November 1975. It was the last time that any Australian government showed a measure of independence in its foreign policy. Although Australian governments avoided involvement in foreign wars for the rest of the 20^th century, that was broken by its ready involvement in the wars of the 21^st-century, in particular the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq early in the century, and most recently by involvement in the war in Ukraine.

The invasion of Iraq was a particularly well chosen and ill-considered war of choice. The Australian political class demonstrated not one iota of scepticism about American claims that Iraq was a hotbed of weapons of mass destruction. They willingly joined the United States invasion of the country. The failure to locate any of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons did not lead to a single second of reflection about the wisdom of the invasion. Indeed, 20 years after the invasion Australian troops are still in that country, having refused an Iraqi demand that all foreign troops should leave their country. That refusal, made after consultation with their United States allies, demonstrates more than any other indicator the total extent that Australia is in a completely subservient relationship to the United States.

The invasion of Afghanistan had a similarly long and discredited history, although it does provide a rare illustration of United States troops actually leaving the country that they have invaded. Although the troops are no longer in Afghanistan, some of the residue of that war lingers on. One of the countries heroes of the war, a winner of the Victoria Cross, has recently ended a lengthy civil trial against various media outlets for the alleged death of multiple Afghanistan citizens. The judgement in that trial has been reserved and it may be many months before judgement is delivered. The outcome is likely to be appealed irrespective of who wins.

It appears that the Australian government learned nothing from its involvement in those two wars. It has joined the war in Ukraine, thus far without committing any troops, but giving the Ukrainians weapons and political support. On a recent European visit, the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Ukraine’s leader and offered his support.

It is even more difficult to understand Australia’s involvement in that war than in either the Iraq or Afghanistan fiascos. If anything, the level of disinformation about that war, extolled by both government owned television channels (ABC and SBS) as well as the mainstream print media, exceeds Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan by a comfortable margin.

This support extends beyond promoting the government’s version of events. There has been an active policy to suppress the dissemination of any alternative view of the war with the Russian News being arbitrarily removed from the viewers options. One is clearly expected to listen to the “official” version with the risk of being influenced by the “wrong” version eliminated. The irony of this situation, where the official news outlets reflect the worst practices of the old Communist governments up to 1991 is something that is completely lost on those who dictate our choices of what we can see and hear.

To watch the television today, one could be forgiven for thinking that the war in Ukraine started in February 2022 when the Russians sent troops into the Donbass region. You will never hear on local television the term “Minsk agreement”. This agreement, signed in 2014 and again in 2015 between the two Donbass republics, Ukraine, France and Germany, has never been honoured by the Ukrainians. A former prime minister of that country recently admitted that Ukraine never had any intention of complying with its obligations under the Minsk accords and only signed them to give themselves time to invade the Donbass and crush any rebellion that might occur there.

That France and Germany acquiesced in this blatant deception for many years is also something that is not considered worthy of comment. More than 15,000 Donbass civilians were killed during the years between the signing of the agreements and the Russian intervention in February 2022. Neither is it ever acknowledged that the Russian intervention was designed to stop a planned Ukraine operation that had as a major goal the complete subjugation of the Donbass.

It is this one sided and highly selected version of history that is the dominant characteristic of western reporting of the Donbass. Now a new element has entered the equation. Votes were held in the region as to whether or not the citizens wished to join the Russian Federation. Again, the reporting of the referendum has been a complete distortion of reality. An overwhelming majority of people in the region voted to join the Russian Federation. It is a result that has not been accepted by the Western media that has offered reasons why the votes should not be accepted.

The voters were “coerced” is a common theme, despite the complete absence of supporting evidence. It was a “rushed” result is another furphy, despite the vote being held over four days and after eight long years of repression and discrimination by the regime in Kyiv. Similar lies are repeated ad nauseam about the vote in Crimea to re-join Russia. The word “re-join” never appears in western media where Crimea is treated as having belonged to Ukraine forever. Its actual history as a long-standing part of Russia gifted in 1954 by the then Russian leader without reference to the people of Crimea is completely ignored. Instead, the public are told that Crimea was “annexed” by Russia, a pejorative term bears no resemblance to reality.

The recent sabotage of both Nord Stream 1 and 2 and the bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland may be interpreted as the last desperate efforts by a flailing and failing Empire (the United States) to assert its place in the world. The vast majority of the world’s nations reject the crude and cowardly attempt to assert hegemony. It will ultimately prove to be a colossal error of judgement. It is a great pity that Australia does not condemn this crude attempt to assert power. It is a show of weakness that they will ultimately come to regret.

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