Dennis Argall
Dennis Argall’s degrees were in anthropology and defence studies. his governmental work in foreign, defence and domestic departments and for the Australian parliament. His overseas postings included Beijing as ambassador, and Washington. He regrets the extent of his personal experience with disability but it has perhaps sharpened his desire that the future be a better country.
Dennis's recent articles
8 June 2023
China has no need for the United States, for now
In ordinary anticipatory history the game is waiting for Trump.
5 June 2023
The Shangri-La dialogue and aUStralian strategic thinking
Interpretations are being offered about prime minister Albaneses speech to the so-called Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore. This sounds like an Asian event but is hosted each year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London, an august and AUKUSian institution of such eminence that I was once invited to join. I declined. Life is too short.
7 May 2023
B52s refurbished with cruise missiles are a threat to peace
Its not just the Australian senate that cannot know whether such missiles are conventional or nuclear, its also the receiving country. This uncertainty increases risks of nuclear war.
2 May 2023
Red Alert! Knott spouts more drivel over Solomon Islands threat
In the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 May, Matthew Knott, foreign affairs and national security writer, has written an alarmist piece on the inability of the Australian defence force to respond to alarming but plausible scenariossuch as China establishing a military base in a nearby Pacific nation.
25 April 2023
The Defence Strategic Review is a claim to command civil society
The kind of strategic study Australia needs, to preside over this kind of defence staff college scribble, is one which gives a sense of our civil societys capacities, needs, aspirations and our neighbourhood. The Flippingbook is an entirely inappropriate, narrow minded, chauvinistic, militaristic thing that belongs in a country practising for fascism, the submergence of the civil power and civil society.
28 March 2023
If we spit the American dummy, what becomes of us?
Very simply, we have to shake out cobwebs and think for ourselves. While it sounds simple, it is actually hard when trying to separate from a dominant ally and the illusory truth effect which envelopes us daily.
21 March 2023
To justify nuclear submarines as protecting trade routes is nonsense
We just need to look at the facts to see how foolish the assertion is that SSNs have the capacity to prevent disruption to our trade in the event of a war. Forty percent of our exports are to, and 20% of our imports are from, China. Throwing money at submarines weakens the national economy. Investment for war is a global and national negative.
6 March 2023
End-game for American exceptionalism?
The march to maintain hegemony is pursued with a sense of 'exceptional America'. But it is now taking place in a world without elbow room. The planet is imperilled. We have to call out folly, not run with it. I cannot see how, without regime change in Washington, trust in high level relations can be restored.
16 February 2023
The Teals and Australias international situation
We know little of the views of Teals on foreign and strategic issues. There are some big issues coming, on which they will need to focus.
5 February 2023
US policies: killing our region while we sit silent
We live in an integrated and connected world, not well understood by political leaders or military moguls. Nowhere is this more important than in East Asia. Destructive action towards important neighbours who are central to our trade with the world is of course contrary to our national strategic interests. We should not sit silent.
3 February 2023
Mr Blinken goes to China
There is in the American psyche, the Hollywood psyche, the false notion that any other major power will be just like America. The view can be terrible but wrong.
24 January 2023
Ukraine: can we make sense of the war situation?
There is hectic media attention to the pressure on Germany to allow a few of its Leopard 2 tanks to be given to Ukraine by countries that have bought them from Germany. The words self-deception and fantasy come to mind. But it does make clear Ukraines underlying logistical problem.
18 January 2023
At war, the US dollar is on the brink of collapse
The US is at war, and the dollar is at risk of imminent collapse. Australias lobbying of the United States as a good ally should focus on these issues above all else.
15 January 2023
All warfare is based on deception
All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu, The Art of War
7 January 2023
A feast of new reading: Volume 3
With changes in the world, the media landscape also changes. There are shifts in particular outlets and new outlets emerge. In this changing landscape, we need a few tools and guide posts for what will be a lively ride in 2023.
20 December 2022
"No relationship more important" than China for Australia
Xi Jinping is the only foreign head of state who has visited all Australian states and mainland territories, very warmly welcomed. Let's not accept the blarney that he's changed. He's had to fight a lot and has a bad press in the west, engineered. As Bob Hawke once said: There is no relationship Australia has that is more important than our relationship with China.
16 December 2022
The breakdown of US hegemony is the defining feature of our strategic environment
The defining feature of our present strategic environment is not a competition between the US and China. It is the breakdown of the singular hegemonic command of the United States, under its own weight.
9 December 2022
The crushing of the Unipolar World in the Middle East
The unipolar world is dead and American control of the Middle East is a wreck.
28 November 2022
How the US is rupturing the Transatlantic alliance with Europe
We are at an inflexion point in world affairs in which the economies of Europe and East Asia are paying the price for a misguided US strategy to re-establish its position as leader of a unipolar world and defeat competition from China and Russia.
6 November 2022
Prime Minister Albanese has little understanding of regional issues
It is puzzling that the Prime Minister would choose to make this presentation to Greg Sheridan the arch conservative writer of the Murdoch stable.
3 November 2022
It's impossible to understand Chinas Party Congress through White Man's Media
While the worlds of the democracies have been afflicted by growing inequality and corruption, the Chinese government has worked to stop corruption and gross inequality of wealth. Here are six basic points to better understand Chinas recent Party Congress.
27 September 2022
We are at war and it may soon be nuclear war
We are in a far more dangerous situation than the Cold War, or either of two world wars.
25 September 2022
A feast of new reading outside the grip of corporate Western media: Part 2 - Asia
Australian mainstream media is generally lacking in coverage of Asia, with occasional fly-in-fly-out-shock-horror or dependence on Reuters or AUKUSWORLD news sources. This isnt consistent with any claim to be an advanced member of our region. We can however turn to local newspapers in the region.
19 September 2022
A feast of new reading outside the grip of corporate western media
John Menadue has drawn attention to how our views of the world are dominated by white mans media.
11 September 2022
The Defence Strategic Review must not confine itself to more of the same but address a new world
The government is conducting a Defence Strategic Review: an independently-led review that will consider Defence's force posture and force structure. The terms of reference are narrow. What is needed, what this Defence Review may not be able to do, is a review of Australias overall strategic circumstances. Courage is needed to choose between allocation of resources to what makes Australia strong and healthy as a nation on the one hand, and deeper spending on dangerous pointy toys on the other.
19 August 2022
The Ukraine war prequel
Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred. President George H W Bush to the Ukraine parliament, August 1991. Quoted in Lawrence Freedman, Ukraine and the Art of Strategy, Oxford 2019, p53
18 August 2022
Following the war in Ukraine
To write in real terms about war is not to condone war. War is an inappropriate activity for a species calling itself sapiens.
14 August 2022
The age of stupidity and enthusiastic folly - Australia, an endangered nation
It is difficult to understand how weirdly Australia now conducts itself internationally, the postures it adopts. We have notionally a new government with a sense of social justice and a vision opposed to inequality. But it is promptly, a neocon enthusiast.
13 August 2022
Nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference in historical context
The Tenth Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is underway at the UN in New York. The record of the treaty is not perfect but it is the major persisting arms control agreement. If peace means a continuing negotiating process with the other, as President Kennedy asserted, we need more of this.
9 August 2022
The United States, in decline but still able to kill us all...
The global dominance of the United States, in so many fields, from space, to science, to entertainment, to sport, to novelty in the development of the English language, has been taken for granted, is part of our fabric of Australian existence.
31 July 2022
Teal is important but blood red international issues are dangerously neglected
The Whitlam Government took office with public support for fundamental changes in our approach to our region, to embrace reality. The Albanese government is tangled in the neocon skirts of Morrison and Dutton.
26 June 2022
A good ally is not a faithful well-armed dog but a thoughtful calm advisor reflecting its own national interests
As the Australian prime minister heads for the Nato summit in Madrid on 29-30 June, there is churn in the global strategic situation. The Albanese government has thus far taken strongly supportive positions towards US policy in both Asia and Ukraine. We are supporting flawed postures.
5 March 2022
US, Russia, NATO, Ukraine: Truth is out there, beyond the memes
Today we face an avoidable crisis [between the US and Russia regarding Ukraine] that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense.
10 February 2022
Trapped by memes: on China, national strategy, and Ukraine
There is popular concern about climate and the environment. But of comparable danger is the way we have simplified our thinking about the world, seeing threats, losing our capacity for diplomacy and for building and maintaining friendships, wildly overspending on defence force toys. This must change.
7 July 2021
Hong Kong and Taiwan: seeking perspectives
My intention here is to provide some information on Hong Kong and Taiwan, having regard to media failure and the general drought of information in Australia. Policy and public sentiment is being driven by passions and our tendency to prefer conflictual in news and argument.
5 July 2021
The axis of evil shaping our minds, on China and more
If ever there is now an axis of evil it is surely the uncoordinated journey of fellow travellers ASPI, now reportedly replacing DFAT as strategic advisor to government; Adrian Zenz, conservative Catholic inventor of Xinjiang genocide, who wants to see the overthrow of the government of China, and the ABC team led by Stan Grant, who have taken propagandistic reporting to unprecedented levels.
19 May 2021
Being driven to war with China by government folly. How to change course?
Essays by Max Suich on 16, 17,18 and 19 May 2021 in the Australian Financial Review have unearthed the dreadful path of mismanagement of Australias relations with China since 2017, entrapping us foolishly in a path to war. We have to end this folly. Machinery of government is bung, leadership is out of control. Change is almost certainly dependent on the election of a different government, a government fearless and clear-minded and persuasive. I am not hopeful, but we have to work on it.
17 May 2021
Darkness in a propagandised state risks war with China.
Our distorted perspectives, our ignorance, is now more dangerous than the situation leading to the Vietnam War in the 1960s. We have experienced a sudden end to immediate knowledge of Asia including China We are vulnerable thus to pandemics of media misinformation.
6 May 2021
American objectives in disrupting East Asia-economic catchup with China
American wars in the Middle East have been largely driven by oil hunger. The next generation of major conflict is about control of advanced semiconductor manufacture and disruption of supply chains between Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Mainland China. This is the reason for US provocation of hostility towards China and getting an even tighter grip on Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
13 February 2021
Alas America, the outlook is difficult; but should not be aggressive
Ignorance of the world, along with a belief in American exceptionalism, combines with an obsession with a capitalism that is rapidly increasing inequity. That is the USA.
8 December 2020
The approaching crunch in US policy towards China
The Republican and Democrat leaders of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have issued a joint statement of intense hostility towards China. This posture is a threat to Australias national security and the world. An attempt to tear China down will be unsuccessful. To follow paths to antagonise China will eventually reap hostile responses and darken global affairs at a time when global cooperation is essential.
3 December 2020
Ending permanent war, ending hatred of China
The rage of a prime minister against a modest ranking cartoonist in a foreign government is foolish for a number of reasons.
6 August 2020
October 1972, October 2020: prospects for the United States... and us.
Decent minded Australians are tending to assure themselves that Trump will be defeated in November; many decent Americans work feverishly for the defeat of Trump. But the defeat of Trump is far from assured.
9 July 2020
Defence Strategic Outlook lacks a civilian perspective.
The Defence Departments Strategic Update is somewhat servant to the past rather than the future. It's just one way to see the world and should be subordinated to a civilian perspective in less adversarial terms. The governments endorsement of the Update is tragic and dangerous.
28 June 2020
The inevitability of fundamental change in the world and what China wants
The coronavirus pandemic will change the world order forever. When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, institutions in many countries will look as if they have failed. It is not a question of whether this judgment is correct from an objective point of view. The reality is that after the coronavirus, the world will never be the same again. Henry Kissinger 2020.
18 June 2020
Our strategic partnerships with China, India, Japan and the US
The signature of a strategic agreement between Australia and India is being hailed as a success. Certainly our construction of positive relations with India has lagged, although efforts to do better began in the 1980s. But whats it all about? What are the strategic policies (or impulses) of Indo-Pacific powers.
14 June 2020
We may be stuck in our bigotry. Urgent change on many fronts needed
So much of our political mainstream has been based on bigotry and racist perspectives. We have always had the comfort of the US and UK accepting our attitudes on race. That no longer will be the case.
2 June 2020
DENNIS ARGALL. We are ill prepared for inevitable dramatic change. and the need to shift fundamentals of national strategy
A revolution is not a dinner party: Chairman Mao. We are in the middle of a number of revolutions, which we must try to understand and which require independent national strategy and vigour. These processes will be rough and unavoidable. Can we make it? Not with present political leadership and community attitudes.
28 August 2019
Australia's strategic folly: lessons from Barbara Tuchman
We arein a situation where decisions that seem simple can commit Australia to fundamental errors of strategic judgement. The decision to send a ship and a plane and headquarters staff to a new venture with the United States in the Middle East is foolish. It is described in isolation by the government but is additional to ongoing ADF operations in the Middle East, which have lacked legality since 2003. The late US historian Barbara Tuchman wrote two books of great relevance: about the lack of non-military options in 1914, and the tendency of governments to make decisions contrary to their...