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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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 »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Are we preparing to fight the wrong war : an interesting but lower order question.
In weapons systems, as in many other areas of life, Artificial Intelligence is being heralded as “the future for all humankind”. This description is part of the problem: it comprises a submission to a fatalistic view of the future in which we are all information organisms (“inforgs”). It does not have to be this way Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia, China and three fragments of militarisation in context.
The term ‘militarisation’ is the new portmanteau expression for describing China’s initiatives in the South China Sea; it is at once accusatory and exculpatory: China is the instigator, the Western powers and those Western-aligned (defensively-minded, and innocent) are exonerated from any guilt their reactions might attract. The term, however, is misused in the current context, Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. War talk, China phobia and Australia’s Hobbesian choices.
Australia’s choices and policy debate on China are in need of clarification and rethinking. Currently, they are mired in an idealised past which has gone and cannot be recovered but the resulting nostalgia, now indulged, requires accepting phobic propositions by the US which reflect its preoccupation with decline and not with understanding the imperative to Continue reading »
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Deeply Denying the American Reality. Part 2: Australia’s avoidance means complicity.
In any other context but the alliance, the facts attending the US global strategy at both the conventional and nuclear levels would be seen by Australian strategic analysts and policy-makers for what they are – profoundly threatening developments and habits of mind which threaten international peace and security and the ecology of the planet. But Continue reading »
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Deeply Denying the American Reality. Part 1: Faces Australia Chooses Not to Recognise
The alliance with the United States is not now what it was thought to be at the beginning because the US itself is not now what it was thought to be. The problem was that, even then, it wasn’t what Australian leaders thought it was. The rose-coloured view remains however: no evidence in official Australian Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Defence policies and alliances have become a new religion. Part 5 of 5 : White Papers, Strategic Reviews, Papal Bulls and Encyclicals
Government pronouncements in Australia, especially in the fields of Strategy and National Security, it is claimed, are determined by scientific rationality and definitely not configured according to religious belief. This is both fraudulent and a dangerous conceit: religion, has not been banished; indeed, the present reeks of ecclesiastical history and religion (more specifically, its deformation, Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Defence policies and alliances have become the new religion. Part 4 of 5 : The Sacramental Alliance.
Government pronouncements in Australia, especially in the fields of Strategy and National Security, it is claimed, are determined by scientific rationality and definitely not configured according to religious belief. This is both fraudulent and a dangerous conceit: religion, has not been banished; indeed, the present reeks of ecclesiastical history and religion (more specifically, its deformation, Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Defence policies and alliances have become a new religion. Part 3 of 5 : Alliance Wars: Papal Prerogatives and Vaticanisation.
Government pronouncements in Australia, especially in the fields of Strategy and National Security, it is claimed, are determined by scientific rationality and definitely not configured according to religious belief. This is both fraudulent and a dangerous conceit: religion, has not been banished; indeed, the present reeks of ecclesiastical history and religion (more specifically, its deformation, Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Defence policies and alliances have become a new religion. Part 2 of 5: The Acutely Deranged Present.
Government pronouncements in Australia, especially in the fields of Strategy and National Security, it is claimed, are determined by scientific rationality and definitely not configured according to religious belief. This is both fraudulent and a dangerous conceit: religion, has not been banished; indeed, the present reeks of ecclesiastical history and religion (more specifically, its deformation, Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Defence policies and alliances have become a new religion. PART 1 of 5
Government pronouncements in Australia, especially in the fields of Strategy and National Security, it is claimed, are determined by scientific rationality and definitely not configured according to religious belief. This is both fraudulent and a dangerous conceit: religion, has not been banished; indeed, the present reeks of ecclesiastical history and religion (more specifically, its deformation, Continue reading »
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia and the wars of the alliance: fragments for a coronial inquiry – Part 4: A REPOST The finding: a disordered national mindset and body politic
Australia’s alliance wars – their respective causes, conduct, and consequences – are overdetermined by the politics and strategies of the United States. In general, though they consist of few battlefield successes, the overall record is one of failed campaigns informed by repeatedly failed – indeed, ‘dead’ – ideas that for various reasons maintain their currency. Continue reading »
