Writer
Michael McKinley
Michael McKinley is a member of the Emeritus Faculty, the Australian National University; he taught Strategy, Diplomacy and International Conflict at the University of Western Australia and the ANU.
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Sleepwalking into a fascist alliance
Those critically engaged in understanding and debating the future of Australian defence and national security strategies should pass two votes of thanks: the first is to former President Donald Trump; the second to the recent political-strategic proclamations of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Continue reading »
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It’s time to decommission ASPI
The time has come – indeed, is well past – for those responsible for giving the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) its Length Of Type Extension to decommission it in the manner of a ship of the line, or submarine, whose usefulness to the fleet has demonstrably expired and cannot under any circumstance be regarded Continue reading »
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Hamlet’s glass and the Brereton Report: the radical reality of Australia’s security culture
It is almost an invariable rule that the citizens of nation-states in their generality, and Australia in particular, are obsessed with security and fascinated with violence; equally, they are illiterate in understanding their own traditions and practices. And when they ostensibly honour international law, rules-based orders, add peace, they require a more suspecting glance than Continue reading »
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The Brereton Report: the failure of political and military leadership
Our political leadership will never be the subjects of the Office of the Special Investigator or the Australian Federal Police, nor, therefore, will they ever be charged. Indeed, in their exaggerated innocence they will display only the inevitable hypocrisy of the failed war-maker: a passion for condemning others and a total unwillingness to accept responsibility Continue reading »
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Australia and the United States: the opposed fantasies at the heart of the alliance relationship
One of the refrains among those defending Australia’s alliance with the United States is that arising out of their pasts, sharing a core set of moral and ethical values, political and economic arrangements, and visions of the desirable world order. Continue reading »
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Pathological philanthropy in the Australia-US Alliance
With confirmed coronavirus cases in excess of two million, the number of new, confirmed cases across the country approaching 45,000 per day for most of the last ten weeks, and resultant deaths in excess of 126,000 (and climbing), the decisions made across the United States to open the economy should not surprise. Continue reading »
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Accelerating securitisation and militarisation in Australian politics: symptoms of democracy in decline.
As though these trends are not worrying enough in themselves, in the present, they need to be understood as effects rather than causes. And the causes are even more frightening. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Arse-backwards: Surveying Australia’s future submarine debate and finding that it doesn ’t start with Australia. Part 5 of 5.
In the course of studying the arguments for and against the decision to acquire the Shortfin Barracuda submarine to replace the Collins Class boats the sense has emerged that almost every aspect of the debates was concerned with the need to please strategies determined elsewhere. This applies, moreover, to both the bureaucratic inarticulacy of government Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Arse-backwards: Questions which should have preceded the decision on the future submarine. Part 4 of 5
The enemification of China and Russia in US, and thus, alliance statements and documents on international security can now reasonably be described as an idée fixe: a persistent preoccupation which has become a delusional idea that dominates all proceedings and is demonstrably and firmly resistant to any attempt to modify it no matter the dangers Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Arse-backwards: Substituting the Strategic Dreamtime for the Berthold Brecht Principles of Strategic Analysis. Part 3 of 5.
Sometimes important strategic issues and questions are made more intelligible and transparent when viewed from the perspectives not normally associated with national security and defence policies. Now is one of those times. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Arse-backwards: The SEA 1000 Attack Class future submarine project and the emergence of the neo-Carrollian School of Maritime Strategy. Part 2 of 5.
In a reproach to all reason the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland famously demanded verdict first, evidence later. In an evolutionary turn, the decision to acquire the Shortfin Barracuda for the Royal Australian Navy has taken the Carrollian principle one step further: evidence of a strategic-operational nature which had a direct bearing Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Arse-backwards: the now unmistakeable nature of the Future Submarine programme by refusing to ask the prior questions. Part 1 of 5.
Even from well outside the arcana imperii of the processes which led to the decision to select the Shortfin Barracuda proposal by French shipbuilder Naval Group to replace the Collins-class submarines it is apparent that the result is contrary to the good order and strategic discipline which should be the hallmarks of such a project. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The “China threat” has moved beyond the frantic into the realm of the explicitly dangerous.
One of the most disturbing features of Australian Foreign and Defence policies over the last two years has been the obvious encroachment into actual policy-making by not only the intelligence agencies – which is outrageous enough in itself – but also by the Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), Andrew Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia’s Domestic War Parties: The Colonisation of the Australian Strategic Mind
National Defence and Security questions in Australia are, like so many areas of government policy, difficult to follow, let alone master, and debate about them tends to attract only a small attentive public. The answers to them, in the form of various forms of cost, however, are frequently in the currency of death and destruction. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia’s AUSMIN invitations: clean the driveway, wash the dishes. Again
In the course of the current AUSMIN talks Australia has once again been invited, by the United States, to assume a role for which it is well, indeed over-qualified for – namely to provide janitorial services in the aftermath of a series of strategic debacles by the US itself. Serial prodigality and recklessness are to Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Reflections on the nuclear dimensions of Hugh White’s ‘How To Defend Australia’
Australian strategic thinking, like Dracula’s Transylvania, is very much troubled by the undead. Research undertaken 50 years ago by Ian Bellany, a nuclear physicist and predecessor of Hugh White in the ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, wrestled with a remarkably similar Australian defence problematic – namely whether nuclear weapons might be a safeguard against Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Another climate change warning and the return of a Pentagon prophecy the new government might take seriously.
Richard Butler recently made the point on this site that, in relation to foreign policy, the Australian Government finds the disposition and pose of the ostrich to be to its liking: a futile self-absorption in reality denial. To this I would add that it is common to almost every policy area, and it recalls the traditional Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Returning to the time of “Able Archer” and Australia’s need to remember 1983
Nearly thirty-six years ago NATO carried out its annual Able Archer command post exercise designed to simulate an escalation in conflict with the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations which culminated in a coordinated nuclear attack against the Soviet homeland. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The present and future national security policy of Australia is to be found on the coast of Victoria.
National security will not be the determining factor in the forthcoming elections but it will get frequent redacted mentions for the purpose of injecting elements of fear and additional insecurity into the impoverished discussions it will attract. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The unsettling reality if Five Eyes is the guardian against Huawei, Part 2: A survey audit concerning prudence, integrity, law and ethics.
In the frequent denunciations of Huawei and ZTE the inference is that these Chinese corporations are existing, or potential espionage agents of the Beijing Government and a threat to all who have been foolish enough to acquire their products. These threats, moreover, are held to be of a type that are politically, legally and ethically Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The unsettling reality if Five Eyes is the guardian against Huawei, Part 1: Questions of Honesty and Loyalty.
According to a recent assessment Australia is the world’s 11th most vulnerable country in terms of its exposure to internet security threat. This is the general case. The particular case, articulated by the Five Eyes signals intelligence agencies, is that China is to be feared the most because Huawei, the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, and ZTE, Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The Occupation of the Australian Mind.
Fear and apathy have taken up residence in the collective political consciousness of Australia. Indeed, it may be that they have achieved that most desirable of states for governments seeking to remain in power, or oppositions sensing their imminent ascendency to it: a state of collective unconsciousness that consents to its own increasing subservience and Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The ascendancy of the age of Thorby (PART 1 – the state’s justification for requiring passive citizens)
Contrary to popular belief, modern democracy does not welcome an active, engaged citizenry especially between election campaigns because its interventions would hinder the operations of the state. The preferred condition is one of citizen passivity in which the authorities go about their business of securing the national interest as defined by themselves through an ever-increasing Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The age of Thorby (PART 2 – The addictive denial of transparency and the protection of malfeasance)
Where matters defined under the rubric of national security are concerned, the intelligence agencies of the state demand nothing less than the indulgence to act with unwarranted secrecy – secrecy beyond that which is absolutely essential. Over the last 80 years, as detailed in Part 1, this arrogation and its putative rationale have been explicit Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The ascendancy of the age of Thorby (Part 1 – The state’s justification for requiring passive citizens)
Contrary to popular belief, modern democracy does not welcome an active, engaged citizenry especially between election campaigns because its interventions would hinder the operations of the state. The preferred condition is one of citizen passivity in which the authorities go about their business of securing the national interest as defined by themselves through an ever-increasing Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The age of Thorby (Part 2 – The addictive denial of transparency and the protection of malfeasance)
Where matters defined under the rubric of national security are concerned, the intelligence agencies of the state demand nothing less than the indulgence to act with unwarranted secrecy – secrecy beyond that which is absolutely essential. Over the last 80 years, as detailed in Part 1, this arrogation and its putative rationale have been explicit Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Crony capitalism and corruption in our midst.
Revelations of corruption and actions that look suspiciously like corruption shock us but they shouldn’t: look for corruption in Australia – as in many western democracies – and you will never be disappointed. It’s as common as other national institutions – the barbecue or the Akubra – indeed, it’s been normalised. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Whither Political Science?: Not dead but on life support – a response to Roger Scott.
In a recent post Roger Scott asks an appropriate question but it’s anachronistic – like asking why doesn’t Elvis do live concert anymore? Political Science was always a bastard, left-handed, red-haired child of the turn to scientism by the social sciences in the late 19th Century and it never recovered, thanks to the domination of Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. A possible deep-seated flaw in the ADF’s third inquiry into allegations of misconduct and war crimes.
The allegations against rogue elements within the Special Air Service Regiment are, sadly, almost predictable: other, similar units in the military traditions of both Britain and the United States have succumbed to such behaviour in similar circumstances as those faced in Afghanistan. Indeed, they constitute a virtual template for the decline in discipline which is Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia’s China policy: who rules, who governs and the SAS connection
Australia’s China policy in recent days has moved from being a subject of heated and understandable debate and controversy based on argument and evidence, to a target of bureaucratic and organisational guerrilla warfare. From within the state and parliamentary system, attacks of one type or another come without warning, raising questions about who is ruling Continue reading »
