Richard Broinowski

Richard Broinowski AO is a former Australian diplomat, general manager of Radio Australia and adjunct professor at the Universities of Canberra and Sydney. He has published eight books, the latest being an expansion of his 2003 book Fact or Fission – the truth about Australia’ nuclear ambitions. The later edition includes extra chapters on Australia’s intention to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. (Scribe 2022).

 

 

Richard's recent articles

RICHARD BROINOWSKI- Trump and Turnbull - Shared Values?

Fantasy and emotion were in free play at the White House on Friday 23 February 2018 when President Trump received Prime Minister Turnbull. Trump was well scripted, even getting Turnbull's name right. He added that Australia was the United States' closest friend, a claim successive US presidents have made, with variations, about many other countries when their leaders visit the White House. Turnbull gave a predictably gushing response, long on confections about shared values and mateship but short on historical accuracy - a good example of Canberra's bipartisan delusions about the bilateral relationship.

A new Cold War arms race has begun

In the immediate post Cold War period, regular United States Nuclear Posture Reviews have been relatively restrained, emphasising no first use and no attacks against non nuclear weapons states which are signatories of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. With his 2018 Review, however, President Trump has thrown circumspection out the window. Citing new emerging threats from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, he has blurred the distinction between usable and non-usable nuclear weapons and the situations in which they can be applied. To pay for an enormous expansion in the US nuclear arsenal he wants a colossal annual defence budget...

Corruption in the Arms Trade

The Turnbull government is very excited about turning Australia into one of the world's ten biggest arms traders. The announcement was prompted as much as anything else by President Trump's announcement of a $US716 billion rise in the United States military budget, with prospects of Australia gaining a significant share in this gigantic spend. Of course the government claims Australian arms sales are selective, never offending Australian foreign policy or humanitarian priorities. But foreign weapons companies which inevitably control the trade, have a record of corruption and indiscriminate selling.

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Korean Hot Line

Kim Jong-un's offer to re-open the hotline with South Korea cannot be seen as merely a ploy to wedge ROK and the United States, as so readily claimed last Tuesday by Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Trump's foolishness over Iran

Those with short memories forget what a gem of non-proliferation the Iran Framework Agreement of July 2015 is. Trump wants to trash it. If he succeeds it will create regional uncertainty and the likelihood of nuclear proliferation that the Framework currently postpones. Along with his posture towards North Korea, Trump's contempt for Iran makes him the most dangerous of American presidents.

Sabre rattling off the Queensland coast

Exercise Talisman Sabre does not address any of Australia's main security concerns and sends the wrong messages to Australia's neighbours. It contributes towards locking Australia into America's wars, no matter how irrelevant to Australia's own interests.

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Matching Colonial Wars

The record of British colonial history proves that what occurred to Aboriginal Australian communities at the hands of white settlers and British military forces was not a unique event. The same thing occurred with as much inhumanity and ferocity in other parts of the Empire, notably in South Africa against the Khoi, the Xhosa and the Zulus. The difference is that the Xhosa and the Zulus, if not the Khoi, had a fierce warrior-like mentality and were able not only to defend themselves effectively, but frequently to invade white settler areas, torching their farms and killing their inhabitants. Hence eight...

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Still demonizing North Korea

Following recent North Korean missile tests and American declarations that they have run out of 'strategic patience', the Western media and the governments they serve, are busily repeating time-honoured myths about North Korea.

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Series. We can say 'no' to the Americans

How Bill Hayden stood up to the Americans on Vietnam.

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. The Battle of Long Tan turns Fifty

Some excitement was generated in the Australian press around 15 August when it was reported that the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan would be commemorated by Australians at the site of the battle at a rubber plantation in Phuoc Tuy Province. So it was - by a small and subdued group of ex-diggers with no medals, uniforms, ANZAC pomp nor post-ceremonial piss-up, nor even a brass band or bagpipes. Festive crowds of Australian tourists who wanted to go were not allowed. In fact the event may not have gone ahead at all but for some eleventh hour...

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Merchants of Death - the Weapons Trade

According to Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick in The Untold History of the United States (2012), North Dakota Senator Gerald Nye persuaded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1934 to investigate the enormous profits made by American weapons makers during the Great War. Amplifying public indignation, Fortune magazine ran an article in March of that year claiming that it had cost the US Treasury $25,000 to kill an enemy soldier in 1917-18: 'Every time a burst shell fragment finds its way into the brain, the heart or the intestines of a man in the front line, a great part of...

Richard Broinowski. French submarines for RAN - Why?

The 2016 Defence White paper asserts that Australia's future acquisition of 12 French submarines costing around $50 billion is the largest defence procurement program in Australia's history. The first vessel is to be delivered 'in the early 2030s', the twelfth in 'the 2040s or 2050s'. They are said to be for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, not only in Australia's maritime zones, but in our maritime approaches and further afield. They are to be 'regionally superior, with a high degree of interoperability with the United States'. No doubt the boffins in Defence put much expert thought into submarine selection, but...

Richard Broinowski. Australia's maritime espionage

According to The Australian's defence editor Brendan Nicholson, an Australian submarine twice penetrated the Cam Ranh Bay naval base in Vietnam in 1985. Nicholson's claim appeared in an article in the newspaper on 27 April 2016 analysing Canberra's decision to build French Barracuda submarines in Adelaide. HMAS Orion's first intrusion resulted in 'brilliantly clear' footage of sonar and other hull fittings on a Soviet Charlie-class nuclear submarine. On the second, it shadowed a Soviet Kirov-class nuclear-powered cruiser and monitored its communications. In 1985 I was Australia's Ambassador to Vietnam, resident in Hanoi. I knew nothing of Orion's activities. Foreign...

Richard Broinowski. Australia and the South China Sea

A tangled web of territorial claims threatens stability in the South China Sea. The figures appear rubbery, but a consensus is that Philippines occupies seven islands and reefs, Malaysia five, China eight and Taiwan one. Vietnam occupies twenty seven. There is also conflict over fishing grounds. Meanwhile, there seems little or no room for compromise, especially between China, Vietnam and Taiwan, all of which claim sovereignty over all of the main chain of islands, the Spratlys. In three unusual examples of public diplomacy, both Chinese and Vietnamese officials recently put their conflicting cases to selected Australian audiences. On 1...

US complicity in chemical weapons. Guest blogger; Richard Broinowski

In recent days, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have made much of their moral repugnance at alleged chemical warfare attacks by the Syrian regime against rebel groups. Their retaliatory missile strikes, if made, would demonstrate that the use of chemical weapons byanyforce againstanyfoe, is completely unacceptable to the worlds community. It was a moral line that, if crossed, would bring condign punishment to the perpetrators. These US threats lose their moral authority in three respects. The first is that it is not at all clear (despite claims to the contrary) that the weapons were used...

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