Bruce Haigh
Bruce Douglas Haigh is an Australian political commentator and former diplomat.
Bruce's recent articles
6 January 2024
Australia, Sovereignty: the long and short of it
Projections on Australias future are bleak if it maintains its hostility to China and cloying dependence on America, particularly when coupled with a corrupt and incompetent LNP government.
2 January 2024
Albo is in denial. He seeks protection and reassurance
Instead of thinking through and independently acting in Australias best interests, Prime Minister Albanese has followed in the footsteps of his discredited predecessors and outsourced defence and foreign policy to the US.
11 April 2023
Albo is in denial. He seeks protection and reassurance
Instead of thinking through and independently acting in Australias best interests, Prime Minister Albanese has followed in the footsteps of his discredited predecessors and outsourced defence and foreign policy to the US.
14 January 2023
Albo is in denial. He seeks protection and reassurance
Instead of thinking through and independently acting in Australias best interests, Prime Minister Albanese has followed in the footsteps of his discredited predecessors and outsourced defence and foreign policy to the US.
22 November 2022
What caused the Anthony Albanese China change? Better advisors?
To say that the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has been poorly advised would be an understatement. For reasons best known to himself he picked up and ran with a posse of advisers from the corrupt and inept Morrison regime. A big mistake.
9 November 2022
God save Australia because America will not
Despite the best endeavours of Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, to put the relationship with China on a more even keel, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, seems determined to destabilise it.
4 November 2022
B52s mark the demise of Australia as a self-reliant nation
News that the US plans to base six B52s at RAAF, Tindal, will likely change the dynamic, in what has admittedly been a half-hearted attempt by Australia, at improving relations with China.
28 October 2022
AUKUS: A US Trojan Horse undermining Australias sovereignty
We have been shocked, angered, and disturbed about what we learnt from The Washington Post about the secret insertion of senior US defence officials and Admirals into the Australian defence establishment. At least one served in a very senior decision-making role within The Australian Department of Defence as an American citizen.
8 September 2022
The Defence Strategic Review: The insiders will just tinker around the edges
The Defence Strategic Review will tinker around the edges, but will not push back on negative game changers such as AUKUS and all it represents in casting China as the enemy.
7 August 2022
The Rajapaksas rotten to the core
Australian foreign policy and morality sunk to a very low point over its dealings with the Rajapaksa regime and demonisation of Tamil asylum seekers.
19 July 2022
AUKUS contrived to foster the unrealistic and unattainable aims of American foreign policy
In all of my experience, AUKUS is the worst example of abuse within the so-called American alliance.
28 June 2022
A word on war with China
Professor Hugh White argues, in an essay, If growing US-China rivalry leads to the worst war ever, what should Australia do? published in Pearls and Irritations on 26 June, that, ..the very real possibility that a war with China launched to preserve the USs position in Asia might end up destroying it, just as the First World War destroyed the empires that went to war to preserve themselves in 1914.
5 June 2022
ASPI a bastard child
Foreign Minister Penny Wong in two forays into the Pacific over the same number of weeks has shown both ASPI and the Chinese how diplomacy should be conducted. No megaphone and no presumption.
15 May 2022
Morrison loathes foreigners and foreign policy
Morrison dislikes any one and any thing he cant control. It is very fortunate for him that News Corp's hatreds, prejudices, intolerances and racism correspond to his own.
17 April 2022
We can be friends of the US without being vassals
A manifesto for a new incoming foreign minister.
5 April 2022
Hysteria, hyperbole, hubris and denial are driving foreign and defence policy
The US had its moves worked out three years ago. Australia, with the most pro-American government since Holt, has been malleable, fawning, uncritical and easily led.
27 March 2022
The rot began with John Howard
The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison does not have qualities of leadership. He is unable to act in a crisis, he fades in the face of fire and flood, he demonstrates poor judgement and when challenged he bullies.
26 February 2022
Hysteria over China
On the 14 February I had an opinion piece published in the, CPC owned Global Times, which looked at the prospect of an improvement in relations between China and Australia.
26 January 2022
The US-funded 'think tank' pushing Australia towards war
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is irrationally hostile towards China and has unprecedented influence over Australian defence policy.
11 January 2022
A quarter century of failure in foreign policy mars Australian credibility
Antagonistic towards China and Asia-Pacific neighbours and in thrall to America, Australian governments have presided over the demise of Australian diplomacy. It has been sidelined by exaggerated defence and security concerns.
2 January 2022
Mangled by Macron: Morrison's French farce shows lack of character
Our prime minister is an embarrassment on both the national and the world stage. But few would be surprised at his latest escapade.
28 December 2021
Australia's clumsy retreat from Asia will prove costly
The decline in our ties with Asia that began under John Howard has accelerated alarmingly as the Morrison government.
13 December 2021
Bullying the neighbourhood: the show trial of Bernard Collaery and Witness K
There are echoes of the Dreyfus affair in the Australian government's pursuit of two Australians who blew the whistle on Canberra's dealings with East Timor.
1 December 2021
Where Australian fools rushed in: the Afghan war was always unwinnable
America's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where it had aimed to bolster international security, will create a new breeding ground for terrorism.
27 October 2021
Bullies meet their match: Morrison team lurches from farce to disaster
Even though the world is now out from the shadow of Trump, Australia's representatives are acting as if The Donald is still in the White House.
11 October 2021
Tony Abbott in a China shop: Former PM's ham-fisted Taiwan intervention
Former prime minister Tony Abbott's poorly judged speech in Taiwan last week was inept diplomacy. The question is: who put him up to it?
29 September 2021
The all-American coercive diplomacy: bullying by any other name
China is repeatedly accused of coercion. But China is a minor player in the coercion game. The US is the grand master.
12 September 2021
Bruce Haigh: We have been used again by America, this time in Indonesia.
Indonesians wonder why we fear China so much, when they dont?
29 August 2021
Crocodile tears by Morrison over plight of Afghans
The Taliban advance was swift; that was the point at which the Australian evacuation of at-risk personnel and their families should have begun. . Hiding behind intelligence is a poor excuse. US intelligence relating to Afghanistan has been as bad as their intelligence on Vietnam.
19 August 2021
The Failure of the American War Machine
The American War Machine (AWM) is big and brassy. Sound and light, chest-thumping, shock and awe. It is an extension of the American psyche.
25 July 2021
Public service or politics?
Senior public servants are only as good as the leadership provided by politicians working in the national interest. With appropriate checks, balances and protections in place, senior public servants should be able to give the frank and fearless advice required of their position and as set out in law.
6 July 2021
Afghanistan: An enterprise for the stupid
Viet Nam, Iraq and now Afghanistan demonstrate that our ally, the US, is flaky.
4 July 2021
Timor-Leste, Witness K, Bernard Collaery, Howard and Downer
This is a tale of greed, denial, delusion, racism, power, loyalty, ethics and courage. Dressed in black are Howard and Downer, in white are Witness K and Collaery. The tale takes place in the subterranean world of spies, spooks, spivs and secret trials.
28 June 2021
A sinking DFAT has given policy making over to ASPI
Despite the line being spun by recently retired Secretary, Frances Adamson, AC, DFAT appears to be in the process of being scuttled by ASPI.
13 June 2021
A family from Biloela holds a mirror to unconscionable Government behaviour
For the second time in their lives the two adults of the Murugappan family have been forced to be resilient and brave in the face of confrontation by a government intent on causing them harm.
8 June 2021
Australian democracy is fading fast
Australian democracy is fading fast, with little care on the part of the Coalition and mainstream media or realisation on the part of Labor.
24 May 2021
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is done and dusted
There was a time in the sixties through to the 1980s when the Department of Foreign Affairs, (Trade was subsumed into it in 1987) was a powerful department within the Federal bureaucracy. It had Branches that mirrored every major department in Canberra and when it felt necessary it would intervene in policies being developed by other departments; some acquiesced, others contested and often enough DFAT prevailed.
17 May 2021
ASPI has us trapped in the ice
The philosophy and attitudes underpinning and guiding the direction of the Australian Stategic Policy Institute (ASPI) can be traced to the early years of the Howard government. Since that time there has been a steady erosion of core values that might once have been said to constitute the Australian social fabric.
15 April 2021
Look at Morrison and see for yourself
The LNP, led by the mendacious Morrison, is in a bad place. Morally bankrupt, it is destructive, by default and design. Many have followed, both blindly and with intent, and now find themselves equally bereft.
8 April 2021
Biden has a big job on his hands to convince the Chinese that the US has a functioning democracy.
The political systems in China and America are not what their leaders claim them to be. However, Biden has embarked on a campaign to prove American democracy can trump whatever China has on offer.
17 March 2021
Without leadership, Australia is vulnerable to foreign powers including the US
Having sold and ceded our sovereignty to the US on the international market, all but rendering Australia incapable of making independent decisions, Morrison is now hellbent on squandering domestic sovereignty. He is dividing the nation on the most basic of issues, the rights of women.
14 February 2021
Australian sovereignty: not in our hands, and not in safe hands
We hitch our wagon to a nation that is bereft of influence and respect, deploys its considerable military arsenal in a display of strength it vainly hopes will broker influence; naked power as a substitute for diplomacy. It has ever been thus.
7 February 2021
Myanmar: the US howls and seethes from the sidelines but it has no influence
America is calling the military takeover in Myanmar a coup. Not quite. Myanmars fragile democracy always existed at the pleasure of the military and the military became displeased when it appeared the people wanted to strengthen democracy.
1 January 2021
Australia, Sovereignty: the long and short of it
Projections on Australias future are bleak if it maintains its hostility to China and cloying dependence on America, particularly when coupled with a corrupt and incompetent LNP government.
16 December 2020
We have already ceded our sovereignty, not to China but to America for no good reason.
Racism, fear and lack of moral courage sees Australia tied to a declining America, suffering, as a result, a lack of self-respect, independence and a viable and progressive relationship with our largest trading partner.
27 September 2020
Remember the Stasi who ran East Germany's government
The question taxing many, and one to be answered, is why are our security services and not the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade running our relationship with China?
17 September 2020
Does Australia need some 20th-century spying?
There is, or there should be, more to spying than high-tech electronics. As we have seen, it can get agencies into trouble. It can lead up the wrong paths, to dead ends and bear pits. We need to get back to basics, feet on the ground.
6 September 2020
China policy - the children are in charge
Is the Australian Government serious about restoring the relationship with China? There are disturbing indications that it is not.
26 August 2020
The militarisation of Australia
The military in Australia has been played into a key role in the national narrative. Its achievements have been woven into myth. External threat has long been part of the political fabric.