Pearls and Irritations

Australia has willingly become the “epicentre of the projection of US power in the Indo-Pacific”. It does not make Australia safer. It makes Australia the epicentre for any retaliation to that projection of power.

The government justifies this vulnerable position on the basis of our “shared values and democracy” and our shared commitment to uphold the “international rules based order”. Perhaps we should take a good hard look at the values on display in the America of today and question whether we do, or should, share them.

The values

• Illegal Sanctions
• Illegal invasions (Iraq Afghanistan) and bombing campaigns (Libya, Serbia, Yemen)
• Overthrowing democratically elected governments (Ukraine, 2014)
• Supporting dictatorships (Saudi Arabia)
• Massive armament spending
• 900 military bases in foreign countries
• Illegal occupation of foreign territory
• Increasingly rampant wealth disparity
• Environmental degradation
• Debt traps for developing countries through IMF and World Bank loans with coercive political strings attached
• Illegal appropriation (theft) of other countries’ sovereign assets
• Inadequate and deteriorating infrastructure
• Declining educational standards
• Unaffordable health care
• Drug epidemic
• Epidemic of gun deaths across the domestic civilian population
• Authoritarian “domestic security” measures
• Increasing restrictions on freedom of speech.

(Although, President-elect Trump has surprisingly vowed to restore unfettered freedom of speech as the guarantee of democracy, we shall have to wait and see. Don’t hold your breath!)

The rules

Because of the Alliance, Australia insists that it must uphold the “international rules-based order”.
This is not international law, as evolved through the United Nations. It is a set of largely arbitrary rules, designed by the US to keep its position as top dog in the world.

• The USA flouts most laws/rules: Just look at what USA refuses to sign/ratify:
• Rome Statute of the International Court – repudiating the jurisdiction of both the ICJ and ICC
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights
• Convention on the Rights of the Child
• Most of the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation
• Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers
• The UN Genocide Convention (the USA claims to be exempt)
• UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (China is a party)
• Agreement on Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space
• Anti-personnel Landmine Convention
• International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
• The USA has withdrawn from most Arms Limitation Agreements, most significantly those relating to the control of nuclear weapons. The USA violates: the Geneva Convention on the Laws of War; the Chemical Weapons Convention; the Biological Weapons Convention; the Convention on the Prohibition of Torture;

The USA has violated or ignored the many treaties it had entered into with its own indigenous peoples. The USA withdrew from the Paris Climate Change Accord.

The USA has blocked appointments to the Appellate Board of the WTO, thus neutering its capacity to enforce internationally agreed trade rules. The USA has placed illegal economic/financial sanctions on at least 37 countries, not only Russia but some of the world’s poorest developing countries -Cuba; Iran; Afghanistan; Palestine; Venezuela etc.

In the current slaughter that the US is fuelling in Israel/Palestine, it is important to note that the US considers that neither the Genocide Convention, nor the jurisdiction of the international courts, apply to it. The USA applies its own laws to the rest of the world and hypocritically holds other countries accountable to the very international laws that it refuses to sign.

Abandonment of law

Australia joins with America in flouting international law, whenever it suits the USA for us to do so. We did it when we joined the “coalition of the willing”- better described as the “coalition of the killing”- in the destruction of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of a million people. We did it, to similar effect, for twenty years in Afghanistan.

We are doing it now, in supporting Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians, in breach of the Genocide Convention, which obliges us to take all possible action to prevent a potential genocide, which the International Court of Justice has determined, does exist.

Our participation in the bombing of Yemen contravenes the Geneva Convention on the Laws of War, which prohibits attacks on the territory of another country, unless that country poses a direct threat to our own territory. Similarly, our participation in the war in Ukraine breaches international law and exposes Australia to potential retaliation from Russia – a nuclear superpower.

In our own region, although we claim to adhere to the legal position that Taiwan is an integral part of China’s sovereign territory, we join in so-called “freedom of navigation operations” in the Taiwan Straits. This is an incursion into China’s territory, in contravention of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which expressly prohibits military operations in another country’s territorial waters or Exclusive Economic Zone. China’s reactions have been mercifully non-violent so far, despite the mainstream media propaganda machine’s distortion of them as “acts of aggression”.

This litany is by no means comprehensive, but it does reveal how Australia opts for the rule of the jungle, where might makes right, instead of the rule of law.

Australia’s constant flouting of international law disqualifies it from recourse to international law for the protection of its interests, thus further weakening Australia’s security.

Australia needs to determine its true values, reassess where it lies in the world and recognise where the real threat is coming from.

Share and Enjoy !

SHARE TWEET SHARE COPY EMAIL PRINT