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Archives
Category Archives: Defence/Security
DAVID STEPHENS. Lest We Forget again: Anzac Day is an opportunity to confront our violent frontier past and its shadow today.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a young Somali-Australian Muslim woman, was driven out of Australia last year after she implied that the Anzac sacred cow might be ready to graze new territory. ‘Lest. We. Forget.’, she said, ‘(Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)’. I … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, Politics
4 Comments
HENRY REYNOLDS. Remembrance Day in New York: Anzac Day in Tasmania.
I was in New York during May last year. At the end of the month, there was a public holiday. It was their Remembrance Day. Not that much happened in New York. There were no flags, no marches or processions. … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
2 Comments
SUE WAREHAM. Honouring the war dead means learning from the horror.
This Anzac Day, as on every other, we will hear of the horrors of war to which many of our service people have been exposed, horrors that certainly call into question any notion of us assuming the title “homo sapiens”. … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, Media, Politics
5 Comments
DOUGLAS NEWTON. Anzac Day: From respectful remembrance to festival of forgetting
Are our war memorials becoming sites for mere flag-waving? Should they feature exhibition halls boosting national pride in our military prowess? If so, Anzac Day itself risks descending into a Festival of Forgetting.
Posted in Defence/Security
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DAVID JAMES. The big, bad business of America’s war industry.
The spread of militarism does not just involve creating the specific apparatus of war. As the Western allies flirt with starting World War III in Syria, it is worth examining some of the financial and business dynamics behind the United … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
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ALISON BROINOWSKI. Anzackery and the preening peloton.
When John Kenneth Galbraith was Kennedy’s Ambassador to India in the early 1960s, he reported that he had inspected a guard of honour and they seemed to him to be fine. His dry wit was lacking when the Murdoch media … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security
2 Comments
RICHARD FLANAGAN. Freedom means Australia facing up to the truth of its past. (Part 2 of 2)
We should, of course, question these things more. We could ask why – if we were actually genuine about remembering patriots who have died for this country – why would we not first spend $100m on a museum honouring the … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, Human Rights, Indigenous affairs, Politics
1 Comment
RICHARD FLANAGAN. Australians in WWI didn’t die for Australia. They died for Britain. (Part 1 of 2)
And so, the Monash Centre, for all its good intentions, for all the honour it does the dead, is at heart a centre for forgetting. It leads us to forget that the 62,000 young men who died in world war … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, Human Rights, Politics
2 Comments
MICHAEL PASCOE. The reality of our ‘scary’ China confrontation.
Fresh on the heels of the Chinese invasion of Vanuatu that wasn’t, febrile minds have been seized by the headline-grabbing story of a Chinese navy “confrontation” with the Royal Australian Navy. The Prime Minister was quickly ready in London to assert Australia’s right … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Defence/Security
2 Comments
GREG HAMILTON. Dying for nothing, a-la-Australienne.
According to the oldest surviving veteran of The Great War, Sgt Ted Smout, dead at 106, our war dead died in vain. In his words, ‘they died for nothing’. He must have known something most of us don’t know for … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security
10 Comments
ANDREW FARRAN. Stalemate and Lawlessness over Syria.
On ABC News Radio (Monday 16th April) Paul Barrett, a former Deputy Secretary of DFAT and former Secretary of the Department of Defence was asked in an interview whether the military actions over the past weekend in Syria by the … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
4 Comments
RICHARD BUTLER. Hypocrisy and Sanctimony: a Poisonous Brew.
The arguments advanced to justify the illegal US/French/UK attack upon Syrian CW related facilities incorporated buckets of sanctimony and numbing hypocrisy. There has been no serious discussion of the justification given by the three; because it was known to be … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
2 Comments
JOHN MENADUE. The Coalition and media myth about stopping the boats.
With the appointment of Angus Campbell as the new Chief of the General Staff we have witnessed again the repetition of the nonsense that the Coalition and Operation Sovereign Borders stopped the boats. As if the media farce over a … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, Refugees, Immigration
3 Comments
MORTON HALPERIN, PETER HAYES, LEON SIGAL. Options for denuclearising the Korean peninsular
A critically important part of assembling the Korean peninsula-wide denuclearization jigsaw puzzle is the institutional and legal form of North Korean commitments on the one hand, and the nuclear negative security assurances by the NPT-Nuclear Weapons States (NWSs), especially the … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
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RAMESH THAKUR. Was DT Mouse-Trapped Into Attacking Syria?
Those of us of a certain age will remember the phrase ‘DTs’, short for delirium tremens: a rapid onset of confusion caused by an alcoholic’s immediate abstinence. Is the world suffering from a different set of DTs: the rapid-fire onset … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
1 Comment
GEOFF MILLER. Korea: a comprehensive and step-by-step solution?
That is the phrase that senior South Korean officials are using for what they hope to see resulting from coming summits, which they now envisage as involving, after the North Korea-US meeting, a tri-partite summit between the two Koreas and … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
1 Comment
ANDREW FARRAN. Parliamentary inquiry on proposal for a Bipartisan Defence Agreement to govern future procurements.
Currently the Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is inquiring into the benefits and risks of a Bipartisan Australian Defence Agreement, as a basis of planning for, and funding of, Australian Defence capability. A comment on … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security
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SUE WAREHAM. Parliamentary debate on going to war is long overdue.
This week marks the 15th anniversary, on March 20, of one of Australia’s most disastrous foreign policy decisions – our involvement in the invasion of Iraq. To characterise this as “our” involvement, however, does a great disservice to the millions … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
2 Comments
BRIAN TOOHEY. Teresa May’s rush to judgment on nerve agents
The British Prime Minister Teresa May failed to produce any evidence that the Russian state used a nerve agent called Novichok before she announced measures to punish the Kremlin. At least Tony Blair famously produced a “dodgy dossier” claiming Saddam … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
5 Comments
PAUL BARRATT: Time to involve Parliament in decisions about sending the ADF into combat.
Today 20 March is the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” which was led by the US and included the UK, Australia and others. Far from making the world safer, and establishing … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security
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MELISSA PARKE. Arms Export Goal Risks The Standing Of A Good International Citizen.
Five years ago Australia played a key role in drafting and negotiating the UN Arms Trade Treaty in order, as the government announced at the time, “to reduce the impact of armed violence on communities around the world”. Five weeks … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security
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JOHN MENADUE. The ASEAN Summit in Sydney this weekend.
The meeting this weekend will highlight for Australia the importance of our relations with regional countries. It will also highlight the importance of our relationship with the US and China, and how that rivalry can best be managed in association … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Defence/Security, International Affairs, SERIES: Freedom, opportunity and security
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NANDINI PANDEY. Rome’s “Empire Without End” and the “Endless” U.S. War on Terror (Replaying the Roman Civil Wars in Reverse Since 9/11)
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs, Politics
2 Comments
RICHARD BUTLER. The US/DPRK Summit: War or Peace?
The planned Trump/Kim Summit has a clear choice between a negotiated solution, or war. There is a choice, whatever both sides may say. War is not unavoidable and if it were to occur it would be devastating.
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs
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JOHN MENADUE. When will we wake up to the risks as well as the benefits of the US alliance? (Repost)
We are a nation in denial that we are ‘joined at the hip’ to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs, Politics
5 Comments
RAMESH THAKUR. Returning To The Edge Of The Nuclear Cliff.
The two leaders most responsible for bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end were U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev. They also kick-started the dramatic reductions in nuclear arsenals with a mix of unilateral … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, Politics
2 Comments
GEOFF MILLER. The ASEAN meeting in Sydney and the Quad – same same but different.
Singapore and Australia are having to deal with the same set of problems and relationships as the strategic situation in the Asia-Pacific changes. Singapore isn’t a contender for an expanded “Quad” but, as next year’s Chairman of ASEAN, it will … Continue reading
Posted in Asia, Defence/Security, International Affairs
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ROSS GWYTHER. Our nuclear chickens come home to roost
Popular TV personality Mike Higgins addressed a packed Brisbane City Hall gathering on a rainy November night in 1983. As chair of the meeting he was joined on the podium by later-to-be Governor General of Australia, Quentin Bryce, retired US … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security
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GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. American Malaise and Malice.
The key to the Trump presidency is its malice. Trump daily mocks Lincoln’s noble intent: “with malice toward none”. There is now not a country or region in the world untouched by Trumpite malice, defined as the irrational desire to do … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs, Politics
4 Comments
JOHN MENADUE. Afghanistan – the graveyard of empires and the opium poppy.
They have all failed to conquer Afghanistan – the Greeks, Indians and more recently, the British in the mid 19th Century and the Soviets in the late 20th Century. And now the US empire is failing to subdue the tribes … Continue reading
Posted in Defence/Security, International Affairs, Politics
1 Comment
