John Menadue

John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.

John's recent articles

Pearls and Irritations - Policy Series and Current Affairs.

Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy Series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. With many other people, we are concerned about the policy vacuum and the poor level of public debate on important policy issues. We began aseries of articles on policy issues in Pearls and Irritations on 11 May.They have now all been posted.There are forty-nine articles on fifteen policy areas from over thirty contributors. They are linked to the contributor's name (below). This now completes the series. In August, we plan to publish these articles in a book in order to continue the debate for better public...

John Menadue. Health Policy Reform: Part 3 Principles for reform

Policy Series In Part 1 of this series I described the areas in our health sector that need reform. In Part 2 I spoke of the obstacles, particularly those imposed by vested interests in the health sector to protect their own interests by delaying or stopping reform. In this article, I will be suggesting ways in which we can overcome these obstacles to health reform. But make. Dont rush the process The political process encourages parties seeking election or re-election to address problems with high political salience waiting lists in public hospitals, needs among certain groups with...

John Menadue. Health Policy Reform: Part 2 Why reform is difficult. Health ministers are in office but not in power.

Policy Series. In Part 1 on health policy reform I outlined the main areas where health reform is necessary. In Part 2 I examine the reasons why I think health reform is so hard. In part 3 I will consider ways in which the necessary path of health reform can be quickened. The major barrier to health reform is the power of providers or at least their assumed power. The most recent budget showed that yet again. A succession of Australian health ministers may have been in office but they have not been in power. Aneurin Bevan...

John Menadue. Health Policy Reform: Part 1 Why reform is needed

Policy Series I will be posting three articles on health policy. This article outlines the priority areas where reform is necessary. Part 2 will explain why reform is so difficult but not impossible. Part 3 will be about processes and governance issues that are necessary to move us beyond the present inertia, incrementalism and tinkering, with suggestions for policy directions. I will not be proposing specific policies. The Rudd-Gillard Government lost opportunities Traditionally, in Australia and elsewhere, Labor and similar governments have been the initiators of health reform. Conservative governments, in general, have opposed...

David M. Neuhaus SJ. The Holy See and the State of Palestine.

Current Affairs. Last weeks headlines about the Vaticans recognition of the State of Palestine dont do justice to the rich and complex history of the Churchs commitment to the Holy Land, its people and places, says David Neuhaus SJ. He describes how the Holy Sees discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has developed over nearly 70 years.   In recent days, Palestine and Palestinians have been very present in the Vatican. On 13 May 2015, the Holy See announced that the comprehensive accords with the State of Palestine were being submitted for ratification to the respective authorities after the bilateral...

Peter Day. Grappling with same sex marriage

Current Affairs. Human sexuality is a complex and fragile thing far greyer than black or white. It is best tended to by gentle, wise, and humble hands. There hasnt been much gentleness or wisdom surrounding the same sex marriage debate. Like most issues of public importance, we tend to be led to the voices of fear that inhabit the extremes, and both extremes certainly have fiery preachers who are skilled at trotting-out the emotive and incendiary; all taken-up with alacrity by a mass media and consumer market that revels in confrontation - confrontation that is too often...

Budgets and Women at Work

Current Affairs. Since 1984 Federal Governments have produced a Women's Budget Statement as one element of the official Budget Papers. The present government discontinued this practice last year. In response, the National Foundation for Australian Women together with others took up the task of analysing the implications of the budget that were of particular interest to women. See link below for this analysis. John Menadue. http://sydney.edu.au/business/research/wwrg/budget

Peter Day. It's hard being a Catholic today.

The gut-wrenching accounts coming out of Ballarat this past couple of weeks are enough to bring a man to his knees: stories of young people crippled by sexual abuse; stories of utter betrayal; stories we would rather not hear - stories we must hear. It is hard being a Catholic today. It is hard being a Catholic priest today. Our collective shame is deep, for some, even overwhelming, because good people are being condemned by association. But we must not fall prey to self-pity because as hard as it is for us, we are not nearly as innocent, or as...

Rob Nicholls. NBN

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. The policy rationale behind a national broadband network would appear to be a simple one. The objective would be to part subsidise the construction of a national network that ensures two policy elements would be achieved. The first is a broadband infrastructure that ensures that Australian homes and businesses have broadband at a level that does not limit the national competitiveness compared to its trading partners. The second is to ensure that this broadband service is universal. The policy challenge is that this was never the...

Terry Flew. Regulating Convergent Media: An Ongoing Policy Challenge.

Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. In the 2013 Federal election, neither of Australias major political parties took forward a detailed media policy. This was surprising as one of the main features of the Gillard and Rudd Labor governments was significant attention being given to reviews of media and communication law and policy, particularly between 2011-2013. The Convergence Review was established in 2011 to review the current policy framework for the production and delivery of media content and communication services (Convergence Review Committee, 2012, p. 110), and presented a comprehensive roadmap for media...

John Menadue. Failed policies have made us a larger terrorism target.

Current Affairs. The major drivers of Islamic terrorism are a century of Western policies in the Middle East that have colonised, expropriated and attacked the people of the Middle East. Those suffering from these policies are overwhelmingly Muslim. Add to that the continued and current meddling of Western powers in the Middle East and it is not surprising that we have a surge of young Muslim misfits who have a sense of resentment and grievance against the West. But we want to avoid the truth about the awful consequences of what we have inflicted on the people of the...

Kim Williams. Creative Arts Policy Formulation

Policy Series I have been giving presentations recently in which I have exhorted the creative community to accept responsibility for: - Writing refreshed meaningful arts policies for federal political parties to inform a renewed approach for support and activity; Forming renewed priorities and objectives for national arts training and other tertiary institutions which address evident misdirection and negative trends; and Advocating coherent and well-formed detail in school curriculums of our primary and secondary systems which are devoted to the arts generally and music specifically as fundamental rights for all Australian students so as to improve the national capacity to...

Julianne Schultz. Comparative advantage. Culture, citizenship and soft power

Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. ITS TIME TO think much more seriously about culture. For years we bought the Clinton truism, Its the economy, stupid, but this simple binary no longer provides sufficient guidance for the future. Self-evidently, a successful society must have a robust and innovative economy one that is able to adapt to changing domestic and global circumstances. This process of adaptation and change seems to be one that Australia is ill-equipped to tackle; there is little evidence of big thinking, and a lot of protection of...

Pope Francis and Raul Castro - The Jesuit Alumni.

Current Affairs If you continue talking like this, sooner or later I will begin to pray again and return to the Catholic Church. That's what Raul Castro confessed to having said to Pope Francis during their May 10 private meeting at the Vatican. The comment underscored a dramatic rapprochement between the two men, which some will point to as evidence that the Argentine pope is politically naive or worse, that he's really a communist. But to do so would be to commit as big a mistake as those that see him as a liberal. In fact,...

John Menadue. Making the Federation work better.

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. State governments spend about 25% of their budgets on health and another 25% on education. A cooperative arrangement between the commonwealth and state governments in one of these areas would greatly improve the operation of our federation. This article will focus on possible cooperation in health. A State handover of health services to the Commonwealth, as suggested by Tony Abbott many years ago, would be one way to overcome the waste and buck-passing between the Commonwealth and State governments in health. Kevin Rudd suggested that his...

Parliament of Australia. Russia in the Region.

Current Affairs. Beyond the attention assigned to the arrival of Russian naval vesselsin the Coral Sea coincident with the G20 meeting in Brisbane in November last year, there has been little public scrutiny of Russias recent activities in the Asia-Pacific, and particularly in Southeast Asia. Russian engagement with Southeast Asia is certainly not a new phenomenon, with Presidents Putin and Medvedev clearly pursuing Asia-oriented foreign policies since the late 1990s. Recent efforts to expand relations with China have been teamed with attempts to expand links with Southeast Asia and promote investment in Russias Far East and the Eurasian...

Stephen Morey. How 37% of the vote in the UK resulted in 51% of the seats.

Current Affairs. UK election On Thursday, May 7 2015, the Conservative Party won the national election in the United Kingdom despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of ballots were cast for other candidates. With only 36.9% of the vote - some 3% more than opinion polls predicted - the Conservative Party won a 50.9% absolute majority of seats, 331 out of 650, in the House of Commons. The 61.1% of voters who supported other candidates will thus be represented by a minority in the Commons. There have been public protests at an outcome that some feel was not...

Stuart Harris. What Australias Foreign Policy Should Look Like

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. The focus in Australias foreign policy has shifted back and forth between the global and the regional, and between multilateralism and bilateralism in economic and political relationships, due only in part to party political differences. While some policies, such as immigration, refugees and to a degree defence, are widely debated in Australia, many are not. Moreover, foreign policies are often not just linked to domestic interests but become part of domestic electoral politics whether as photo ops with foreign leaders, muscularly assertive security stances or support...

John Menadue. Role of government . The importance of values.

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Good government must be based on some broadly shared values that inspire and enthuse us. We can accept that our leaders must make some compromises from time to time, but we need to know what they stand for. We look for leaders who have conviction. For example, we need to discuss tax reform but so often it becomes a technical discussion when what is really at stake is the sort of society we want and how tax can help us in the goals we seek....

John Menadue. The Budget and Liberal economic management.

Current Affairs: The Budget Opinion polls and the public generally seem to believe that the Liberal Party is a superior economic manager to the Labor Party. There are also signs that the Liberal Party believes this about itself. But the somersault in last night's budget was extraordinary. I don't think I have ever seen a government repudiate so quickly - what it had been telling us for years - how it was necessary to ensure our future. We had dire problems of debt and deficit that the former government had bequeathed to the Abbott/Hockey government. The debt and...

John Menadue. Democratic Renewal and our loss of trust in institutions

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue We speak often about the need for new ideas and policies to fill the void in the public debate. We will be examining these issues in this series Fairness, Opportunity and Security. But I think there is a prior problem. We need political reform to restore trust in our political system and our polity. In the community there is a pervasive sense of powerlessness and disillusionment with governments, parliament and political parties. We are tired of one liners, zingers and endless rhetoric. We want...

Ian Marsh. Part 2. Democratic Renewal: policy-making practice.

Fairness, Opportunity, Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. In Part 1, I pointed out that the Westminster style two-party system is in trouble. Part 2. Implications for Policy Making Practice. At least four implications would seem to follow from the above analysis. The first concerns the need to create systemic capacities to address single issues. As Bernard Crick observed many years ago, the present forms and processes of parliament under the Westminster system are tantamount to a continuing election campaign. This suits majoritarian or winner-takes-all government. This mise-en-scene was designed for an era...

Ian Marsh. Part 1. Democratic Renewal: towards a post-majoritarian policy making structure?

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Whoever wins the next election, the challenge of dealing with a hung Senate will almost certainly loom large. Perhaps also a hung House of Representatives. Malcolm Turnbull tells us that the appropriate response is a compelling narrative delivered with conviction and resolve by a sufficiently competent leader. Is this enough? In this short note I will argue that the problems in present political arrangements are much deeper they are systemic and structural. The present political and policy system is largely gridlocked. This is the result...

Joel Windle. School choice: parents follow the money.

If private schools offer little academic value over public schools, why do 35% of Australian parents continue to choose to pay the hefty fees rather than sending their child to the local state school? Parents have a high regard for public schools School choice is a dilemma for a minority of parents. My research with parents in Melbourne suggests that the preference for public schooling is strong even amongst those who end up sending their children to a private school. In fact the most highly regarded form of education, as reported by parents, is the local public primary school....

Philip Clarke. Pharmacy sector in dire need of reform.

Among the most significant reforms proposed by recently released Harper Competition Policy Review is the removal of regulatory restrictions that greatly limit competition in the community pharmacy sector. But implementing the recommendation will require politicians who are up for a real challenge. Any changes to how the pharmacy sector works involves taking on what has been described as the most powerful lobby group youve never heard of. The Pharmacy Guild of Australia, which represents the interest of pharmacy owners, is widely perceived as one of the most influential lobby groups in Australia. Monoploy rents Australian pharmacies are currently protected...

The British Election

The Observer newspaper in the UK has an interesting background piece on the issues facing people in the UK. It raises many of the questions that concern Australians about the disfunction and the loss of trust in our political institutions. See link to article below. John Menadue http://gu.com/p/48435/sbl

LAUNCHING NEXT MONDAY. 11 May 2015. Policy Series

Fairness, Opportunity and Security A Policy Series to fill the policy vacuum. Edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. On May 11 in this blog- Pearls and Irritations- we will begin a series of articles on important policy issues. There will be over forty articles on sixteen policy areas from over thirty contributors. The series will run for four to five weeks. Each of the policy articles will be about 2000 words. They will be realistic, given our political and financial constraints. Ken Henry will be introducing the series. In the week commencing 11 May we...

Joan Staples. The Value of NGOs

Australian civil society is again facing attacks from government and conservative think tanks seeking to silence and weaken community voices. The Labor years of 2007-2013 saw a break from the attempted silencing of the Howard decade, but there is now a new push, that aims to detract from the legitimacy of NGOs and to deny the valuable role their advocacy plays in our democracy. The detail of the new push has been documented recently. It is not a coincidence that at the same time there are new younger voices in an energised environment movement. Many new groups of younger activists...

Anne-Marie Boxall. Mental health challenges in rural and remote Australia

Mental health challenges in rural and remote Australia are widespread and serious. Although the prevalence of mental illness is about the same across the country about one in five people report having had a mental health problem in the last 12 months a higher proportion of people in rural and remote areas pay the ultimate price of mental illness and related concerns; suicide rates in rural and remote Australia are 66 per cent higher than they are in major cities. There are many positive aspects to rural and remote living: people in rural areas, for example, report...

Wiryono Sastrohandoyo. Getting the Australia-Indonesia relationship back on track.

John Menadue asked me to discuss how best toget Australian-Indonesian relations back on track, although I agree that this is a politically sensitive issue and weighing it up may not be the prudent thing to do while there is still a lot of anger in the heart of many Australians and Indonesians. The anger on the part of the Australians is easy to understand. Two of your citizens have been executed by firing squad, after having been found guilty of a capital crime by a duly constituted court and after all the legal processes to save their lives had...

Walter Hamilton. Constitution Day in Japan

Last Sunday was Constitution Day in Japan. The national holiday memorializes the historic fact that, in 1947, for the first time Japanese embraced the principle that sovereignty resides with the peoplenot an emperor or a shogun, but the people. This is no ordinary year for thinking about Japans post-war Constitution, given that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to fundamentally change it to provide his conservative government scope for military adventures. The basic laws existing renunciation of the use of force to settle disputes he considers outmoded, because a neighbour like China is not similarly constrained. So, then, pretty...

Richard Woolcott. Australia and Indonesia.

For Australia no bilateral relationship will be more important, complex and challenging in the future than that with Indonesia. The relationship is, however, going through a difficult period at present, especially due to the reaction in Australia to the execution of the two Australian citizens for drug smuggling. The necessary improvement will take time and require sensitive management by both Governments. Efforts to improve knowledge and reduce suspicion in the wider communities in each country of the other will be necessary. Globally, Indonesia is also of growing importance to major powers such as the United States, China, Japan,...

COMING SOON. A policy series to fill the policy vacuum.

COMING SOON. 11 May 2015 Fairness, Opportunity, Security. A Policy Series to fill the policy vacuum. Edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue There is growing public disquiet. The government and the opposition keep playing the political and personal game at the expense of informed public discussion of important policy issues. As a community we have become concerned about the trustworthiness of our political, business and media institutions. Insiders and vested interests are undermining the public interest. Money is unduly influencing political decisions. There is gridlock on important issues like climate change and taxation. We are not satisfied with...

Gigi Foster and Paul Frijters. This budget ... will favour the rent-seekers.

Long before the release of French economist Thomas Pikettys smash bestseller, it was recognised by social scientists that income inequality in developed countries had been rising for a while. Economists' stock-in-trade explanation for this trend was that people whose skills combined well with modern production technologies had seen bigger income growth than people whose skills didnt combine well with these modern inventions. In other words: those whose skills complement new technologies are the disproportionate beneficiaries of economic development. Raising your income, with complements The line of argument here is best illustrated by example. If the income of an illiterate...

Philippe Le Corre. World War II is also not over in Asia.

Historians estimate that 14 million Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese in WWII. The Chinese economy and society was in ruins. Will Australia attend the 70th anniversary of VJ Day in Beijing on September 3 this year. John Menadue. All the controversy on the Russian celebration of the end of World War II has obscured the similarly problematic role of such events in Asia. Indeed, at a recent roundtable among think-tankers and government staffers, one participant candidly asked a simple question. What will governments do when Chinas official invitation letter to attend World War II celebrations in...

James Hogan. An Unspeakable Wrongness

And so, it has come to pass. With a dreadful inevitability, Indonesian Law has taken its course, and the sentences passed so long ago on Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran have been carried into execution. Some will wonder at our capacity to mourn these men and their fellows when we struggle to find compassion for other, more deserving victims. Others will take an even harder line, noting with approval the completion of a fine evenings work, a message sent regardless of the tariff. Yet if recent months have shown us anything, it is the growing recognition in our community that...

Peter Christoff. On these numbers, Australia's emissions auction won't get the job done.

Last Thursday, the Abbott government announced the results of its first reverse auction of emissions-reduction projects. Using A$660 million drawn from the A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), the government has purchased 47.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, as a first step towards reducing greenhouse emissions under its Direct Action plan. Federal environment minister Greg Hunt proclaimed the auction to be a stunning result, claiming that the ERF alone will get the government to achieve its existing Kyoto target. The Australian newspapers triumphant front page headline hailed the outcome as a direct hit on carbon target, with national...

Mark Triffitt and Travers McLeod. Hidden crisis of liberal democracy.

A burning platform with big, tangible impacts on our everyday lives is often the tipping point for concerted action. We call these crises. Think of the G20s actions in the wake of the global financial crisis or the global response to 9/11. Both events left governments and decision-makers with no choice but to act. Then there are the hidden crises. These are usually not a single, explosive event, rather a pattern of events whose impacts are difficult to connect. As such it takes time to bring to the surface the underlying cause and have it widely recognised...

Peter Day. Rather Be Dancing With Me Rosie.

My grandad, he represented Australia; wore a green helmet, too. Walked out and faced the music: ducked a lead ball, not a leather one, mind you. Not much of a dressing shed in which to relax and prepare; A stinking-bloody-trench, sick mates, a smoke, and a God-help-me prayer. Such a long way from home; just seventeen, no one has a clue. The pollies speak of glory and sacrifice; another teenagers down no, not Blue. No greater love can a man have than to lay down his life for a friend. That Jesus...

Walter Hamilton. In the Name of the Emperor

Emperor Hirohito never made it to Okinawa. He passed away before he could fulfill that stated desire. (He was scheduled to go in 1987, until illness intervened.) Okinawa was the scene of some of the most savage fighting of the Pacific War: 100-200,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians died there in April-June 1945, as well as 14,000 Americans. The Okinawan or Ryukyu Islands were annexed by Japan in 1872 during the reign of Hirohitos grandfather, the Emperor Meiji. Ever since, the islands ethnically distinct people have remained stuck at the bottom of Japans socio-economic ladder; Okinawans endured disproportionately heavy sacrifices...

COMING SOON - Mike Keating and John Menadue (joint editors). POLICY SERIES

Mike Keating and John Menadue (joint editors) Fairness, Opportunity and Security -filling the policy vacuum There is a growing public disquiet that both the government and the opposition keep playing the political and personal game at the expense of informed public discussion of important policy issues. As a community we have become concerned about the trustworthiness of our political, business and media elite. Insiders and vested interests are undermining the public interest. Money is unduly influencing political decisions. There is gridlock on important issues like climate change and taxation. After a near death experience Tony Abbott has said...

John Menadue. The price we are paying for the Greens.

The recent successes of the Greens in state elections in Victoria and NSW show us how populist nonsense can succeed at least in the short term. It has also shown the failure of the ALP to counter the threat of the Greens. There are two major issues on which the policies of the Greens have brought disastrous results for Australia. When it really mattered on climate change and asylum seekers, they sided with Tony Abbott. The Greens literally shed tears over the plight of asylum seekers. But they must bear a heavy responsibility for what we now see...

Julianne Schultz. The Great War and Australia's future.

The Gallipoli centenary provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the many wartime legacies human, political, economic, military that forged independent nations from former colonies and dominions. Over the next fortnight, The Conversation, in partnership with Griffith Review, is publishing a series of essays exploring the enduring legacies of 20th-century wars. It seems poignantly appropriate that the web address gallipoli.net.au, which features the logo, Gallipoli: The Making of a Nation, is owned by Michael Erdeljac of the Splitters Creek Historical Group. Splitters Creek is now a suburb on the western edge of Albury, better known...

Bruce Kaye. Corporate Tax and Ethics Dodging

The Senate committee hearings with testimony from high profile executives from some very large corporations have brought to notice the strategies to shift profits in order to avoid paying taxes in Australia. The companies claim that they are acting legally. The counter claim is that such manipulation of the law is unfair it is not ethical. I am not competent to deal with the all complexities on tax law or the international agreements that are relevant to this problem. But even those who are competent do seem to suggest that there are problems largely arising from the failure...

Trevor Boucher. International Tax : Some Constraints

I certainly would not want to be seen as an apologist for multinational company groups in the current debate on what to do about profit-shifting tax avoidance activities of groups like Google and Apple. But there are some significant legal/technical obstacles in the way of solutions. Like other countries, Australia taxes each company in a group on the basis of where it is resident. An Australian resident is liable here on its worldwide income, but a foreign resident is taxed by Australia only on income with an Australian source. Put simply, profits have a source where the activity...

Judith Crispin. Anzac day, the Armenian Genocide and destruction of cultural heritage in the Caucasus.

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives...

John Menadue. Best we forget - the Frontier War and the Maori Wars.

See below post I made on this subject in October 2013. John Menadue Repost. The drumbeat grows louder. In the lead-up to the centenary of Gallipoli in 2015 the military drums are growing louder. We are expected to cheer it all. In the process we will be encouraged to engage in a lot of mindless myths. Amnesia will also play a large part. In an interview published in the SMH on October 5 this year, Brendan Nelson, the Director of the Australian War Memorial, former Minister for Defence and Parliamentary Leader of the Liberal Party, said: The...

Government White Paper on Energy - the good, the bad and the ugly.

In the Australian Financial Review on 15 April, Ross Garnaut comments about the Abbott Government's Energy White Paper. He says that by failing to take global warming seriously, the White Paper discourages solar power, encourages doomed coal investment, hobbles the RET and misses the chance to raise petrol taxes. John Menadue. See link to article below: http://afr.com/opinion/columns/abbott-governments-energy-white-paper-fails-to-face-reality-20150414-1mkroh

Paul Komesaroff, Alphonso Lingis, Modjtaba Sadria. Julie Bishop can reach out to Iran now that confrontation has failed.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishops visit to Tehran this week presents a rare opportunity for Australia to take the lead in global diplomacy. The publicly stated goal of the trip has been limited to the dubious intention of convincing the Rouhani government to allow Iranian nationals seeking asylum in Australia to return without fear of victimisation. But the implications of the visit are much more important and far-reaching than that. The need for a diplomatic initiative to change the dynamic in relations with Iran is obvious. As the mounting crisis in the Middle East reminds us every day, the policy...

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