Defence and Security
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Malcolm Fraser. Australia’s dangerous ally.
The National Interest, in its January/February 2015 edition has just published an article by Malcolm Fraser, ‘Australia’s dangerous ally’. The National Interest is not sold on news stands in Australia, but it is available online. Malcolm Fraser concludes his article by suggesting several steps that Australia should take to address problems in our relationship with Continue reading »
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Brian Johnstone. Terrorism and torture – the Catholic tradition.
In Australia today, we accept that a person who has expressed ideas that justify terrorism may be restrained from acting out those ideas. But we would not justify torturing a person suspected of harbouring such notions to force him to reveal them or to reject such ideas. However, surveys in the Western world find that Continue reading »
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Is religion the cause of war and violence in the Middle East and elsewhere?
We are consistently seeing the ghastly side of Islam with public beheadings but we also need to keep in mind the ghastly side of Christianity which was so evidence during the Crusades. Many conclude that religion, now and in the past, is the cause of so much violence. Karen Armstrong has just written ‘Fields of Continue reading »
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Brian Johnstone. How to Respond to Terrorism?
How can we make sense of the contemporary situation of increasing violence? Some groups engage in terrorism against other groups and these engage in torture as a means of defeating the terrorism of the others? In liberal states torture is condemned as immoral; some seek to prohibit it by law, others defend it as a Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Sydney seige and social misfits. Will we ever learn?
I posted the following blog ‘Will we ever learn?’ on 27 October this year. Amongst other things it highlighted the domestic risks that would result from the Abbott Government’s decision to join the war in Iraq and Syria. Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association has today described the hostage taker and killer as a Continue reading »
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Rethinking the cost of Western intervention in Ukraine.
In the Washington Post on November 25, Katrina vanden Heuvel had a very interesting article on the mistakes that Europe, NATO, and the US have made in their approach to Russia over the Ukraine and Crimea. She quotes Henry Kissinger as saying ‘Nobody in the West has offered a concrete program to restore Crimea. Nobody Continue reading »
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Walter Hamilton. Japan and China: agreeing to disagree
In diplomacy, sometimes a nod is as good as a wink. You can argue later over the question of who nodded first (if at all). The leaders of Japan and China are maneuvering towards their first face-to-face meeting after two years of chilly and occasionally belligerent relations. To enable the meeting to happen officials on Continue reading »
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ISIS and Vietnam.
In an op ed column in the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman spoke of the parallels between the war in Vietnam and the conflict now in Iraq and Syria. He mentions how the executive of foreign journalists is designed to provoke Western intervention. See link below for Thomas Friedman’s article. John Menadue http://nyti.ms/1vcTEK5 Continue reading »
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Annabelle Lukin. When governments go to war, the Fourth Estate goes AWOL.
A year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a postmortem of the media coverage of the so-called “Iraq war”. The conference included academics, journalists, UN weapons inspectors and diplomats. UC Berkeley also invited Lieutenant Colonel Rick Long, whose job it had been to prepare journalists to be embedded with Continue reading »
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Hugh White on Australians and War from Honest History.
In my blog of 20 October ‘It is becoming much easier to go to war’ I highlighted the reasons and the background to developments since the Vietnam War that are making it much more likely that we will commit ourselves to war. In an earlier posting of March 23 – see below – I carried Continue reading »
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The Italian solution.
Last night the ABC program, Foreign Correspondent, carried a remarkable and moving account of the work of the Italian Navy in rescuing ‘people fleeing conflict or economic despair in the Middle East and Africa’. The Italian Admiral in charge of the operations in the Mediterranean said ‘We have the duty in these cases when we Continue reading »
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Cavan Hogue. The new Vietnam.
We seem to be rushing forward to the past in the Middle East and it looks increasingly like a rerun of Vietnam which began with a request from the Saigon Government (that we had to ask for), initial popular support for intervention against the Communist bogey, followed by disillusionment and defeat. A domestic political asset Continue reading »
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Malcolm Fraser. Without a ground force and an end point, the war against ISIS will be a farce.
In The Guardian, Malcolm Fraser has said ‘Air power alone will not make a difference in Iraq. Barack Obama and his allies have the worst strategic understanding possible of what they claim is an existential threat ‘ See link to article below http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/without-a-ground-force-and-an-end-point-the-war-against-isis-will-be-a-farce Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Is this justifiable delicacy or insidious censorship?
The Battle of Bita Paka occurred in then German New Guinea on 11 September 1914. It saw the deaths of the first six Australians killed in the Great War, as well as the deaths of a German officer and 30 Melanesian soldiers. It was really a series of skirmishes rather than a battle. On the Continue reading »
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Marilyn Lake. fracturing the nation’s soul.
You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue. During World War 1 Australia lost its way. Its enmeshment in the imperial European war fractured the nation’s soul. Marilyn Lake World War I had consequences for individuals as well as nations. HB Higgins’s life would be deeply affected by the British decision to invade Continue reading »
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Bruce Duncan. Iraq: where to now?
Threats from the self-styled Islamic State to kill Australians randomly on the street or wherever by any means possible have shocked us all. The threats were not just against Australians, nor only against westerners, but against other Muslims, even Sunnis who refused to bow to the IS, and especially against the modernising Muslims and the Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. Australia could fight another far away war in a better way.
It is sobering to consider that the 21st century is only 15 years old and a geographically isolated and peaceful country like Australia has already participated in two major conflicts – Afghanistan and Iraq – and fought skirmishes in a lesser one, the birth of Timor Leste. Now we are preparing to join another one Continue reading »
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Kerry Murphy. Kurds in the way.
Since the collapse of three divisions of the Iraqi army at Mosul in June 2014, it has been the Peshmerga, Kurdish militias, that have strongly opposed the apocalyptic death cult of ISIS in Iraq. Already Syrian Kurdish forces had strongly defended their territories in Syria. The relief of the besieged Yazidis on Mount Sinjar saw Continue reading »
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Gaza, Israel and Palestine.
In the link below from AlterNet, published on 9 September 2014, you will find a very important analysis by Noam Chomsky. John Menadue. http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-real-reason-israel-mows-lawn-gaza?akid=12222.32110.TSqdYT&rd=1&src=newsletter1018632&t=2&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark Continue reading »
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Will we ever learn?
In an article in the Washington Post – see link below – Katrina vanden Heuvel says ‘Our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan should have made one thing clear: we have neither the patience, the resources nor the willingness to wreak the violence needed to suppress the regional sectarian conflicts. For more than a decade, we Continue reading »
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Secrecy and Propaganda.
Yesterday Richard Ackland in theGuardian.com highlighted the way that the media cooperated with the government in the propaganda about raids on potential Muslim terrorists in Sydney and Melbourne. Both the NSW and Commonwealth Governments spared no effort to highlight the raids. What a contrast this is to the secrecy of ‘on water matters’ in Operation Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Ukraine, not Sarajevo
In recent months, there’s been no shortage of suggestions, indeed warnings, that Russia’s absorption of Crimea and now it’s pressure on eastern Ukraine, is the equivalent of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, in Sarajevo almost exactly 100 years ago: the “ shot heard around the world”, which saw the beginning of the First Continue reading »
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John Menadue. We ‘warn the Tsar of Russia’.
In September 1892, the headline ‘The Hobart Mercury warns the Tsar’ did not threaten Russia sufficiently to attract a response or change its belligerent behaviour. I don’t think the Tsar thought it necessary to respond to people who have an exaggerated view of their own importance The Hobart Mercury over-reached itself. Australian Prime Ministers, particularly Continue reading »
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Annette Brownlie. No new war in Iraq.
Both major political parties are once again standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the US, in support of what amounts to a new military intervention in Iraq. The process began with the dropping of humanitarian aid supplies to the Yezidi. It has now moved on to the delivery of weapons and munitions to Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Meanwhile, Defence Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. Canberra’s fork in the road – the humanitarian way or the warpath?
What interesting, fraught and changing times we live in. This month marks the 75th anniversary of the start of World War Two. Britain and France with little ado told Germany to get out of Poland or else. Three days later King George VI made a radio speech to the British nation that good must prevail. Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. The failure of imagination
Australia has rushed to despatch even more armaments into the already troubled areas contested by men of violence across Iraq and Syria. It is clear that once again, our national government has assumed that this action is necessary and unavoidable. In reality, there are always choices and it is disappointing that the Coalition has failed Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The ANZAC Myth.
The four-year and well-funded carnival celebrating Anzac and WWI is now rolling. The carnival will depict WWI as the starting point of our nation, as our coming of age! It was nothing of the sort. It was a sign of our international immaturity and dependence on others. What was glorious about involving ourselves in the Continue reading »
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David Stephens. The children suffer.
Osbert Sitwell’s The Next War, published in 1918, depicts some plutocrats deciding what would be an appropriate war memorial. The senior plutocrat puts a suggestion which his colleagues eagerly take up. “What more fitting memorial for the fallen Than that their children Should fall for the same cause?” Rushing eagerly into the street, The kindly Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. Dubious celebrations of war.
On 28 July 1914, the world was thrown into a terrible conflict. On that day, a Serbian nationalist assassinated an Austrian archduke and his wife. Because European states belonged to alliances which were heavily armed and many countries on other continents belonged to their empires, the war spread until it had consumed over a million Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Anzac and hiding behind the valour of our military.
For those who may have missed this. I have reposted this earlier piece about Anzac and hiding behind our heroes. John Menadue There is an unfortunate and continuing pattern in our history of going to war- that the more disastrous the war the more politicians and the media hide behind the valour of service men Continue reading »
