Writer
Richard Butler
Richard Butler AC Former Ambassador to the United Nations, Executive Chairman of UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq, Professor of International Affairs.
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RICHARD BUTLER. Russia and the US Elections
The US elections campaign has set-up a deeply negative framework for the future management of US/Russia relations. If Hillary Clinton is President her past attraction to military solutions to foreign policy problems will need revision, if conflict is to be avoided. Speaking at the Alfred Smith dinner, in New York, on October 20th, Hillary Continue reading »
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RICHARD BUTLER. The Seeds of War, and the New UN Secretary General
The sources of potential serious international conflict are expanding, as States increasingly ignore the UN Charter. Australia should support efforts by the new UN Secretary General to strengthen the Charter and join the majority of States seeking to reform the Security Council. Continue reading »
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RICHARD BUTLER. Nuclear disarmament – Australia’s Profound and Cynical Failure.
In 1995 Prime Minister Keating established the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. He did this because he was appalled at the intensity of the, mainly US/USSR, nuclear arms race. He wanted to find a safe way in which nuclear weapons could be eliminated, to which international agreement might be given. The Continue reading »
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RICHARD BUTLER. Foreign Policy. An Independent Australian Foreign Policy (Repost from Policy Series)
Summary: For fifty years, since Australia entered the war in Vietnam in 1965, Australian foreign policy has been made increasingly subservient to a specific concept of Australia’s relationship with the United States. That concept, first enunciated by Prime Minister Menzies in 1955, was that for its survival, Australia needed ”a great and powerful friend”. All Continue reading »
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RICHARD BUTLER. Interesting Times
The so-called Chinese Curse: “ May you live in interesting times”, is apparently not of Chinese origin, but certainly apocryphal and wonderfully ironic. I think it is hard to recall more “interesting times” than those in which the world finds itself today, nor a time fraught with more danger, since the sleepwalking towards World Continue reading »
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RICHARD BUTLER. The Invasion of Iraq: Will anyone be brought to trial, held to account ?
There was anxiety about why it had taken 7 years for the result of the UK’s Iraq Enquiry to be published. Would it prove to be a whitewash of Tony Blair and his decisions? Within minutes of watching its Chair, Sir John Chilcot, introduce to the public the Enquiry’s report, yesterday, it was clear Continue reading »
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RICHARD BUTLER. Obama and Nuclear Weapons
It is widely acknowledged by those who have had anything substantive to do with nuclear weapons that as long as they exist they will, one day, be used, either by accident or decision. Equally, it is acknowledged that any such use would be a catastrophe. Thus, the logical and human solution is to eliminate them. Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Nuclear Security Summit: Washington Finale?
Seven years ago, President Obama spoke in Prague Square and undertook to “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”. He cautioned that this outcome would be immensely difficult to achieve and may not be reached in his own lifetime, but his speech was heard and widely taken as signaling an enhanced Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. An act of faith and a blind eye.
The Defence White Paper 2016 has now been published. An engaging, critical, analysis of it has been offered by Professor Hugh White, ANU, (Pearls and Irritations March 10th ). Rightly, the purpose of the White Paper is to outline how Australia’s security can be assured in the current and expected environment. A central assertion of Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Nuclear North Korea: Profound and Dangerous Hypocrisy
During the last 10 years, North Korea has resigned its membership of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and conducted four nuclear test explosions. It claimed that the latest of these, detected four days ago, was of a hydrogen (fission-fusion) bomb. It made no such claim for the earlier three tests; said to be merely Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Bombing Syria: Where’s our Debate?
On December 2nd, the UK House of Commons debated for 10 hours, a motion moved by the Government, that it should authorise bombing of DAESH targets in Syria by UK airforces. (Prime Minister Cameron announced early in his statement that, henceforth, ISIL should be referred to as DAESH: the acronym of its name in Arabic). Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. After Paris
The attacks in Paris were textbook in terms of the philosophy of terrorism: hit publicly, indiscriminately, affecting as large a group of innocent people as possible, attract maximum publicity, generate widespread fear. They also represented a continuation of terrorist actions within metropolitan Europe: Madrid 2004, 191 dead; London 2005, 56 dead; Paris January 2015, Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Russia and Syria: The continuation of politics by other means.
In their addresses to the UN General assembly, last week, Presidents Obama and Putin focused on the civil war in Syria. Both emphasized the need for the war, now in its 5th year, to be brought to an end. They both said that a political solution needed to be found, but they differed on a Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. RAAF to bomb Syria: another Captain’s pick?
Within the next ten days, the National Security Committee of Cabinet will discuss the US request to Australia to deploy RAAF assets in bombing IS targets in Syria. Presumably, senior defense, foreign affairs, intelligence and government policy staff will be preparing assessments of such military action for Committee consideration. It would be normal for such Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. The Cost of Having no Independent Foreign Policy
How is it possible that the Australian people: citizens, elected representatives, media staff, academics, to name just some relevant categories, allow the Abbott government to spend $1 billion this year on Australian participation in war in the Middle East, and accept that there is no need for this to be discussed? * Prime Minister Abbott Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. The Iran Nuclear Agreement: Safe if Implemented.
The Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed with Iran by the UN Security Council’s five Permanent members, plus Germany and the EU, (Vienna, July 14th), is unprecedented. No comparable arms control plan has been as detailed or thorough. Above all, it is vastly preferable to any of the proposed alternative approaches, the main one Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Foreign Policy. An Independent Australian Foreign Policy
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Summary: For fifty years, since Australia entered the war in Vietnam in 1965, Australian foreign policy has been made increasingly subservient to a specific concept of Australia’s relationship with the United States. That concept, first enunciated by Prime Minister Menzies in 1955, Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Australia No Longer Interested in Nuclear Disarmament?
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is universally described as the “cornerstone” of nuclear arms control and disarmament. All but four members of the United Nations subscribe to it. Those four; India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, have developed nuclear weapons. Five countries, party to the Treaty, are recognized in it as Continue reading »
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Ukraine: Watch This Space
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his decision to send a contingent of 75 trainers to Ukraine as a demonstration of support for Kiev in its fight against Russian supported rebels in South Eastern Ukraine. The deployment will provide instruction in command procedures, tactical intelligence, battlefield first aid and logistics. Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Russia.
Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop have been playing loosely in our relations with Russia even thought those relations are quite modest, at least as far as the Russians are concerned. Threatening to ‘shirt-front’ President Putin is not a dignified way to behave with a major nuclear power. Our recent behaviour towards Russia underlines that prejudices Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Obama transformed?
The jingoistic pressures applied to the media, commentators, academics, policy advisors in order to contain their commentary on the US’ illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, have been in evidence again following President Obama’s decision to commence war on ISIL. This time, however those pressures have been significantly smaller. Then it took almost three years Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. ISIL. Ask the right questions.
Any assessment of what, if anything, countries outside the region should do about the seizure by ISIL of substantial portions of Syria and Iraq, should be based on the answers to three basic questions: what is the significance of this event; whose fight is it; what can be done about it, effectively. On the principle Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Ukraine, not Sarajevo
In recent months, there’s been no shortage of suggestions, indeed warnings, that Russia’s absorption of Crimea and now it’s pressure on eastern Ukraine, is the equivalent of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, in Sarajevo almost exactly 100 years ago: the “ shot heard around the world”, which saw the beginning of the First Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. US: What Leadership?
There is continuous debate, within the US, about President Obama’s handling of international affairs. To some, he has responded to their wish to see the US less entangled, everywhere; to others, he’s a feckless weakling and should be impeached. The only thing that seems clear about this debate is that it is agitated, apparently, interminable Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. The Dissolution of Iraq?
On June 10th, some 1,500 fighters from the Jihadist group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria) seized Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul. Half a million citizens fled to the Kurdish areas. ISIS then moved further south, towards Baghdad, and took the cities of Tikrit and Samarra, a sacred Shia site. On June 13th, Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. The Invasion of Iraq,the decision and it’s consequences
It was reported on May 29th, that Sir John Chilcot, the head of the UK inquiry into the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, had reached a “breakthrough” on the issue of how much of the official records of the decision to invade can be published. The publication of the Chilcot report is some two Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. American Greed trumps the American Dream: With help from the referee.
During the last two weeks a Professor from the Paris School of Economics, Thomas Piketty, has been touring the US speaking about his book; Capital in the Twenty-First Century. His audiences have been overflowing. Public television described the reception he has received as reminiscent of that given the Beatles, in their first visit to the Continue reading »
