Response to Binoy Kampmark's article

March 24, 2025

I enjoyed reading Binoy Kampmark’s article. I thought it was spot on. Brave-sounding talk by Australian “Big Men” about Australian participation in another “Coalition of the Willing”, as Kampmark notes, “Particularly, in Australia’s case, such a foolhardy promise shows that governments are willing to contemplate sending troops to conflicts they ill-understand and have no direct strategic value to them.”

As others have said, any such plan would need UN Security Council approval, which would be highly unlikely, given Russia’s veto power in the UNSC. Unlike the USSR (which did not turn up to veto a proposal for UN participation in a peacekeeping force to be sent to the Korean War as it was protesting against the refusal of the UN to accept the PRC as the legitimate representative for China at the UN. The Chinese Communists under the leadership of the great helmsman Mao tse-dong had won the Civil War on the mainland, and the Chinese Nationalists led by the KMT, under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, with US support, had lost).