Defence and Security
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Australia’s alliance with the United States: passed its use by date
Australia’s alliance with the United States has become an unthinking custom and practice. It has already cost us dearly in both blood and treasure with little to show for it. It is time to look at the alternatives. Continue reading »
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Qui custodiet ipsos custodes? Counting down to the 1956 Melbourne Olympics
In April 1949 Chifley agreed to host the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, the first time they were held in the southern hemisphere. Six months later, within days of returning to office as Prime Minister, Menzies agreed in principle to UK atomic weapons testing in Australia. Thirty kilotons were detonated at Maralinga in the three months Continue reading »
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Australia’s strategic conundrum-Is America declining?
Jon Stanford and Hans Ohff criticise the ADF for “[P]lanning for the last war rather than the next”. Yet, their plan returns to a simplistic defence of Australia scenario from the 1980s. Nevertheless, their recent piece in ASPI’s Strategist blog (republished in P&I) provides an entrée to the related conundrums facing Australia’s strategic policy; the Continue reading »
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Why is Australia still investing in a balanced defence force?
When the Prime Minister recently compared Australia’s strategic situation to that in 1939, he was right in two respects. Both in 1939 and in 2021, we have put too much trust in a ‘great and powerful friend’ to secure our independence. Australia’s problem is a Defence department that, simply put, lacks foresight, resourcefulness and innovation. Continue reading »
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A refection on our engagement in Afghanistan – echoes of Vietnam;
As Australian troops pull out of their twenty year engagement in Afghanistan, I find myself reflecting on the similarities of the outcome of this conflict and the war that I served in- Vietnam, half a century ago. Continue reading »
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Australia is suffering from a defense information dearth
Australia’s defence reporters are being denied access to senior Department of Defence officials under a clampdown imposed by new Defence Minister Peter Dutton. Continue reading »
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The Council on Foreign Relations, the Biden Team, and Key Policy Outcomes. Serving a corporate ruling class.
The U.S. working class, led by people of color, has, at least temporarily, defeated the criminal Trumpian regime and the specter of the consolidation of gangster neofascism. Continue reading »
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Archival documents reveal British H bomb was developed in Australia despite denials
Documents found in the National Archives reveal previously ignored proof that promises made by the UK not to test thermonuclear weapons in Australia were broken. Continue reading »
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Militarism has become the norm. We now even have an Army Lieutenant General heading the vaccine roll out
What a reflection this is on the standing of the Australian Public Service and the Morrison Governments lack of interest in a robust and well functioning civil society. We invariably turn to the military. Continue reading »
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The use of US armed forces abroad, 1798-2020, by US Congressional Research Service: 20 July, 2020
This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its Armed Forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes.(Covert activities are not included) Continue reading »
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Planning to not lose: the Australian Army’s new philosophy of war
The Army and the wider ADF will not go forth and force the enemy to succumb to our will. That is no longer possible, as the succession of lost wars shows. Instead, our future lies in being a state whose objective is to maintain the status quo or, in other words, to not lose. Continue reading »
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Militarism the winner in Biden’s budget
The Biden budget of $6 trillion dollars is being sold as a turn to liberal reform, but the media has largely neglected one significant fact. The budget allows for $1.52 trillion that is ‘discretionary’ spending. Half of that figure will be devoted to the military. It is a record figure. The US has an economy Continue reading »
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Of bars, prosthetic legs and statements that are no longer operable
Whether General Angus Campbell was aware of the “Fat Ladies Arm” bar or not, fact is, it was allowed to operate, and its mere existence points to a broken culture within the ADF. Continue reading »
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Not the war over Taiwan again!
The lack of high-quality strategic analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has been frequently highlighted in P&I. Nonetheless, ASPI’s dangerously inadequate analysis should be regularly confronted. Continue reading »
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Intelligence agencies have helped precipitate the crisis in our relations with China (An updated post)
In Max Suich’s outstanding series in the Australian Financial Review, on 16, 17 and 18 May, on how we got into the pointless confrontation with China there is no doubt that much of the ‘intelligence’ came from US sources and that our naive and China ignorant intelligence agencies tagged along and served up US intelligence dressed up as their own. Continue reading »
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Israeli deceit and US complicity in attacks on Palestinians
‘We are the only people on Earth asked to guarantee the security of our occupier.’..Hanan Ashrawi ‘America is behind this war and I am ashamed to be an American’…Anthony Hopkins. Continue reading »
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Review Essay: David Kemp. A Liberal State. How Australians Chose Liberalism over Socialism 1926-1966
David Kemp’s multi-volume studies of settler-colonial Australian Liberalism since 1788 have been carried out with support from the Menzies Research Centre and funding from the Cormack Foundation, which is registered as an ‘associated entity’ of the Liberal Party with the Australian Electoral Commission. But does the latest volume forget to factor in Australia’s regional challenges Continue reading »
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The True Meaning of the Afghan “Withdrawal”
The many Afghans who believed in America’s democratic promises will join a growing line of abandoned allies, stretching back to the Vietnam era and including, more recently, Kurds, Iraqis, and Somalis, among others. Once the full costs of Washington’s withdrawal from Afghanistan become apparent, the debacle may, not surprisingly, discourage potential future allies from trusting Continue reading »
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Whitlam, Keating, Anzac, and the drums of wars past
“I think the war against Hitler was justified. I don’t know whether the war against Wilhelm II was.” Thus spoke Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in a BBC TV interview with Lord Chalfont recorded in September 1973, and aired in December. It was screened in Australia in early January 1974. The transcript is in the Whitlam Continue reading »
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Armed Neutrality: an alternative, principled defence policy to safeguard an independent Australia, keep us out of wars and promote peace- Part 2
Armed Neutrality provides an alternative defence policy which would safeguard continental Australia, keep us out of wars and promote peace. It is strategically feasible and cost effective but would require investment in rebuilding our manufacturing base, restructuring the ADF and removing foreign bases from our soil in a series of steps. Continue reading »
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On the bandwagon: Australian media helps government peddle disinformation
There has, quite rightly, been criticism in the mainstream media of authoritarian states and their use of disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks. However, the US and its democratic allies decades ago pioneered the use of disinformation in their huge propaganda campaigns. China is just a beginner. Continue reading »
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Anti-China Threat Production in Australia: A redundant, out-of-control industry
Australia cannot lay claim to being the sole, or even senior author of its defence strategies and policies. Continue reading »
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War with China despite their immense military capabilities?
Five years ago, I would’ve said that the possibility of a “kinetic war” in the Indo-Pacific was very unlikely, now it is more likely than it was then. This is something that you and I may well have to confront in the next 5 to 10 years, Christopher Pyne. Continue reading »
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Afghanistan: drawing the curtains on the final act
The past month or two has brought back some imagery that’s haunted me for some time. Images that were part of footage taken by insurgents of my husbands smouldering crash site. It featured on news channels being watched in lounge rooms across the world well before any military official had the chance to even get Continue reading »
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Anzac Day and the frontier wars
Anzac Day in Hobart in 2019 did not turn out in the way that participants expected. The Hobart Mercury explained why the following morning. The front page was dominated by a large and arresting headline. ‘Battle Cry’ it declared and went on to explain that ‘Anzac Day Marchers Highlight Black War.’ Underneath the headline was Continue reading »
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Reinventing ANZAC Day away from its imperial origins
Attendance at ANZAC DAY dawn services plummeted by 70% between 2015 and 2019, and questions have been asked about the Day’s ‘fading relevance’. We need to re-invent ANZAC Day as a day of restitution for the appalling losses of an imperial expeditionary tradition that bears no relationship to the defense of Australia and its dignity Continue reading »
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How do we show true respect for the Anzacs?
First things first: let us remember and respect all those lost forever to the juggernaut of war, and all those crushed by it who still live with the trauma. But what does it mean to be truly respectful of our ‘Anzacs’? Should we focus unwaveringly on military achievement, or should we also probe fearlessly the Continue reading »
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It’s not what they know, it’s what they choose to tell us: reading the Australian War Memorial
Many more things happened in the past than are recorded in history. Some versions persist. Others have currency for a time, then get put aside, because fashions change or because the version does not fit political agendas or notions of what audiences expect. Some versions have been sanitised. Others are just suppressed. The Australian War Continue reading »
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I’ve got the Anzac Day Blues
Australia has never been the maker of its own history. So said the legendry Manning Clark, who spent a life mapping the heart of our nation. From the utterly worthless Sudan campaign of 1885 to the atrocity-ridden Afghanistan War of 2001-2013, our people have been made to wade through blood in foreign lands to satisfy Continue reading »