Howard Debenham
Howard Debenham is a former diplomat with a long list of postings including as High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Consul-General in Bangkok, Tokyo and Washington DC, and State Director for Queensland. He authored ‘Waiting ‘round the Bend – a life in Australia’s foreign service’.
Howard's recent articles
15 March 2025
Rethinking China
Just about everything that is uttered about China in the West is done so in the deeply underlying presumption that everyone out there, in the wonder lands of democratic Christendom, most assuredly believes that, as a godless communist state, China is inherently evil and that its singular ambition is to take over the world.
3 January 2025
Netanyahu as an American stooge
The war about Israel and its right to exist is not really between Israel and the leading terrorist militias whose aim is to destroy Israel. It is now, more clearly than ever, between the US and Iran.
4 November 2024
Netanyahu is not the problem
In his Pearls and Irritations item of 4 November - ‘Netanyahu has been leading the United States into disaster … ‘ - Jeffrey Sachs, has put the boot on entirely the wrong foot. He is not alone, simply joining the like chorus of otherwise knowledgeable commentators who should know better. Seen against a more informed backdrop of American behavior in the Middle East where it has, since the installation of its Shah in Iran in the 1950’s, stirred an egregiously infamous cauldron of death, destruction and dispossession from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, the current behavior of Netanyahu should be...
6 September 2024
Mike Lyons' article of 6 September on China
Perhaps more pieces like the Mike Lyons P&I one of 6 September, as powerfully informed and as unapologetically free of the genetics of of American-led political and evangelical bias as it is, could help us break through the dominant news-for-profit Western media. Access to a less cowardly political platform in Australia would help, but ....
31 August 2024
The plight of the Iranian people
Given the growing likelihood of the Gaza maelstrom moving on to a direct military confrontation between the US and Iran, the epic plight of the Iranian people should not be overlooked – a plight which Britain and the Americans instigated back in the 1950s with the removal of their democratic rights and in which hopes for restoration of these rights have been dashed by the political grip of their own clerics.
22 June 2024
Labor’s cowardice on the world stage
Labor’s cowardice on the world stage stems from a deep-rooted fear that to do anything other than slavishly follow American policy would be to hand government over to a Coalition which has always done exactly that.
1 June 2024
Trump the felon or Trump the saviour?
The stunning conviction in New York of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts is more likely to encourage his legion of supporters than otherwise.
26 April 2024
Americans don’t understand: China is not afraid of the US
China knows that, if it has to, it can stand alone and that it can defend itself. It knows, too, that most nations of the world, other than America (which is, despite itself, somewhat conflicted), want to do business with it; to connect with its growing confidence and with its strengthening brand of non-threatening, non-coercive, non-evangelistic power. Clearly, the Chinese are not afraid of the Americans. Just as clearly, the Americans don’t understand this.
18 April 2024
The emerging spectre of American fragility: A reckoning
The United States, having learnt nothing from the 20th Century, is, quite characteristically, spoiling for a fight with one of the great success stories of our time, China, on the basis of nothing more than a doltishly unfounded fear of this success and an ever so faintly emerging spectre of American fragility. A fragility across not only its military and political power, but, as well, across its bellicose and tottering brand of democracy.
2 March 2022
Everyone, particularly the Chinese are supposed to yield to the Americans.
The idea of China representing some real and present military threat doesnt really stack up. But never mind, as a great many Americans and their followers can still be relied upon to believe what they are told to believe. Their political leaders understand very well that Americans are least at war with themselves when they are at war with someone else.
12 February 2022
The West can accept China's wealth but not its power
China is challenging the fractured world order of the West and the pushback from the imperial powers of yesterday is mired in hypocrisy.