Defence and Security
-
Cavan Hogue. Russia in Syria and Australian implications.
What are Australia’s objectives in the Middle East imbroglio? The simple answer is that it is about the American Alliance. We see ourselves as part of a global alliance led by the USA and generally supported by European powers: countries that “share our values”. We are there because they are. Therefore the fact that our Continue reading »
-
Richard Butler. Russia and Syria: The continuation of politics by other means.
In their addresses to the UN General assembly, last week, Presidents Obama and Putin focused on the civil war in Syria. Both emphasized the need for the war, now in its 5th year, to be brought to an end. They both said that a political solution needed to be found, but they differed on a Continue reading »
-
Why fighters are quitting ISIS.
The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at Kings College London points to the ways that many thousands of recruits who journeyed to Iraq and Syria may now be regretting their decisions. The more defectors speak out, the more the ISIS cause will suffer. The ICSR Report Executive Summary follows. John Continue reading »
-
Climate Change and Refugees.
We have had a wake-up call about how Western and particularly US policies have destabilised the Middle East with the resulting exodus of refugees. Half of the Syrian population has either fled or been displaced within their own country. Climate change in the Middle East is adding to the problem. This is examined in a Continue reading »
-
Michael McKinley. Disorder in the Australian National Security Mind
Strategy is difficulty to practice and even more difficult to master. Its components – knowledge leavened by wisdom and imagination – cohabit with military science only in the most tense and difficult of relationships. That said, there are three nearly invariable rules that should govern the thinking and acting of a strategic actor – nation Continue reading »
-
Walter Hamilton. Japanese Sleepwalking
Defying public protests and opinion polls that show most Japanese oppose the move, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and Shin-Komeito ruling coalition are pressing ahead with legislation to nullify the nation’s constitutional ban on overseas military action. The so-called ‘right of collective defense’ law is being voted out of the committee stage of Continue reading »
-
“U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis”
Disastrous intervention by the US has been the cause of many major refugee flows including the current flows out of the Middle East. The people’s Daily published an interesting article on this subject on 7 September. The article refers to refugees from Syria, Lybia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It could have added that one of the Continue reading »
-
Ross Burns. Syria and Persecuted Minorities.
The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the international legal instrument to which Australia was an original signatory, contains a clause making clear that ‘The Contracting States shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin’. It therefore seems curious that at least Continue reading »
-
John Tulloh. Return to the Syrian battlefield.
‘Foreign (military) adventures have long appealed to insecure leaders’, wrote the veteran British journalist, Sir Simon Jenkins, in the right-wing Spectator magazine. ‘Those who’ve had no experience of war seem to crave it’. He was referring to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s renewed enthusiasm to get involved in Syria. He could just as well Continue reading »
-
John Menadue. Don’t add to the disaster.
The government is considering adding to the disaster in the Middle East by instructing the RAAF to bomb targets in Syria. Will we ever learn from our past mistakes? In supporting the US invasion of Iraq, Australia helped trigger the tragedy that is now unfolding. Perhaps a million lives have been lost and refugees are Continue reading »
-
Richard Butler. RAAF to bomb Syria: another Captain’s pick?
Within the next ten days, the National Security Committee of Cabinet will discuss the US request to Australia to deploy RAAF assets in bombing IS targets in Syria. Presumably, senior defense, foreign affairs, intelligence and government policy staff will be preparing assessments of such military action for Committee consideration. It would be normal for such Continue reading »
-
Stuart Harris. Who are we backing in Syria?
It would be a serious mistake for Australia to respond positively to the US request, that we presumably invited, to join in airstrikes on Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Such action would probably be against international law, and in any case be ineffective, while increasing IS recruitment and failing to resolve the undoubted problem. Like Continue reading »
-
Irfan Ahmad. As Morsi faces the gallows, where are the defenders of democracy?
In mid-June, an Egyptian court upheld the death sentence against the country’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi, whom the military deposed in July 2013. Death sentences against Morsi and 105 others were confirmed after Egypt’s grand mufti gave his approval. Many Islamic scholars (ulema) in the past spoke truth to power, for which they Continue reading »
-
John Tulloh. Syria; a step too far for Tony Abbott.
It was said that in World War One the British Army laced the tea of its soldiers with bromide in order to curb their sexual impulses and concentrate on the matter at hand. It would be useful if something could be found to put in Tony Abbott’s morning cuppa to inhibit his desires for military Continue reading »
-
David Stephens. ‘There will be blood’: ministerial remarks on the responsibility of children.
There will be blood from the sword up to the belly of a horse, and the thigh of a human, and the hock of a camel. And there will be great fear and trembling upon the earth. And those who see that wrath will be terrified, and trembling will seize them. (6 Ezra, Old Testament Continue reading »
-
Cavan Hogue. Russian and Chinese naval exercises.
From August 20-28 Russia and China will conduct a large scale naval exercise in the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. Russia will send 20 ships and China seven plus11 aircraft. They will practice air defence and anti-submarine drills as well as a beach landing. Both countries are publicly beating up their defence Continue reading »
-
Naval shipbuilding in South Australia is a waste of money.
In this blog on 19 August, I reposted an earlier blog from Jon Stanford on ‘The government’s new naval shipbuilding policy’. Hugh White, a columnist at The Age and Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Study Centre, ANU, has written a recent article on the same subject. The article is consistent with Continue reading »
-
John Menadue. Saving lives at sea!
To justify its harsh refugee policies, the government has been telling us that their policies are designed to save lives at sea. What hypocrisy! And only last week we saw at the ALP Federal Conference, former Labor ministers justifying their ‘turn-back’ policies as a means to reduce drownings at sea. Please spare us this charade. Continue reading »
-
Jon Stanford. The government’s new naval shipbuilding policy
I think this is an outstanding article on naval shipbuilding, industry policy and economic prospects in South Australia. Jon Staford suggests that in terms of industry policy, ‘continuing to prop up the car industry … would probably have been a much cheaper way of [creating jobs]’. In case you have missed it, I have Continue reading »
-
Alison Broinowski. . Borderless war
(or – when you get in a hole, stop digging) To the sound of approaching drumbeats, first the ever-reliable Jim Molan, then Peter Jennings, and after them Liberal MP Dan Tehan have been wheeled out to tell us in recent days that the RAAF should start bombing in Syria. Right on cue, on 13 August Continue reading »
-
John Menadue. Don’t tamper with citizenship.
The Australian Government has presented new legislation that would enable the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection to revoke Australian citizenship for dual nationals who might have been involved in terrorism activities. There would be no judicial review. As a result of an apparent disagreement in Cabinet, the government has deferred a decision on how Continue reading »
-
Richard Butler. The Cost of Having no Independent Foreign Policy
How is it possible that the Australian people: citizens, elected representatives, media staff, academics, to name just some relevant categories, allow the Abbott government to spend $1 billion this year on Australian participation in war in the Middle East, and accept that there is no need for this to be discussed? * Prime Minister Abbott Continue reading »
-
John Tulloh. Goodbye Syria.
THE DEAD-END ROADS TO AND FROM DAMASCUS Fifteen years ago this month, Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father to become president of Syria. Having spent some years studying and living in France and England, he had hopes of a Western-style liberalisation and development and turning his country into the Switzerland of the Middle East. Those ambitions Continue reading »
-
John Menadue. Militarisation, the new norm.
I was surprised recently on arriving at Sydney Airport to see the new Australian Border Force (ABF) decked out in their new military-style uniforms. The personnel looked like part of the Australian Defence Force instead of Customs and Immigration officers. There was clearly a new message being conveyed. But perhaps I should not have been Continue reading »
-
Richard Butler. The Iran Nuclear Agreement: Safe if Implemented.
The Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed with Iran by the UN Security Council’s five Permanent members, plus Germany and the EU, (Vienna, July 14th), is unprecedented. No comparable arms control plan has been as detailed or thorough. Above all, it is vastly preferable to any of the proposed alternative approaches, the main one Continue reading »
-
Warwick Elsche. Heads must roll at ABC, but not at ASIO
“Heads must roll;” words from the Prime Minister Tony Abbott. And in case you missed them he said them twice – on national TV. He was talking of the ABC and presumably some executives who failed to detect the “threatening” presence of a convicted Islamist sympathizer Zaky Mallah in the audience of popular current affairs Continue reading »
-
Failure in Afghanistan. We don’t want to talk about it.
On the 24th June, I posted a link to a review from the London Review of Books. (See https://johnmenadue.com/blog/?p=3957) In referring to the UK involvement in Afghanistan, it was headed ‘Worse than a defeat: shamed in Afghanistan’. The review by James Meek said ‘The extent of the military and political catastrophe [in Afghanistan] it represents Continue reading »
-
Worse than a defeat: shamed in Afghanistan.
Current Affairs In London, I have been reading again some of the history of the recent UK military venture in Afghanistan. It is disturbing reading. Neither people in the UK or in Australia seem to want to learn from the disaster in Afghanistan. Only recently our Prime Minister and senior military officials have been telling Continue reading »
-
James Laurenceson and Hannah Bretherton. What Australians really think about a rising China.
Current Affairs What does China’s rise as a major power mean for Australia? The answer depends on who you ask. In March 2015 the Sydney Morning Herald’s International Editor, Peter Hartcher, described China as a fascist state that bullies its own citizens and neighbouring countries alike. That about sums up the ‘China threat’ view. Yet Continue reading »
-
David Stephens. Why is Australia spending so much more on the Great War centenary than any other country?
Current Affairs The question at the head of this article has intrigued Honest History since we began our coalition and our website. This was in the floundering days of the Labor Government. When Abbott replaced Rudd II, the federal commitment to the Anzac centenary already stood at $140 million, it has been going up ever Continue reading »
