Pearls and Irritations

A Trump administration, and even a Harris one, will pose new challenges for Australia: sycophancy or independence? Non-alignment or more complicity in US wars?

The threat to peace posed by the United States, the world’s military colossus, eclipses anything from any other nation, including China. America’s centuries-long record of waging and provoking wars is unmatched. The US uses assassinations, military force, and economic pressure to displace governments it doesn’t like, and starvation sanctions to keep others in line. Its allies largely accept US edicts about which nations are their enemies, and which groups are terrorists. Some, like Australia, whose media are in a Murdoch stranglehold, go along with most of the dictates of the US MICIMATT (the Military Industrial Congressional intelligence Media Academic Think Tank, for those who haven’t caught up with Ray McGovern).

Which is where Mike Pezzullo War Book comes in. The former Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, who was sacked after allegations about private lobbying of government officials, apparently has time on his hands. Having written the 2009 Defence White Paper, and seeking perhaps to reclaim his former glory and gratify our US ally, he wants to produce a War Book for Australia that would set out the roles of each sector of the community for civilian defence. It would contain a national security statement to prepare society for the worst-case scenario, a full-scale conflict involving Australia and China. The likelihood of that in the next six years, Pezullo said in July, has risen from 10 to 20 percent. This replicates the recent predictions of several senior American military people, and like them, Pezullo wants more spending on ‘defence’ and ‘deterrence’ – that is, preparations for military aggression.

Richard Marles, as Defence Minister, emerged from the recent AUSMIN talks to inform us that the war in Ukraine is shaping events in the Indo-Pacific region. Both Russian and Ukraine accuse each other of aggression and terrorism. Does that mean China’s declared support for Russia from the outset proves Beijing supports terrorism, and that war over Taiwan will follow? Right on cue Mike Burgess, ASIO’s director-General, said that an increase in ‘politically motivated violence, not just terrorism’ justifies raising Australia’s terrorism threat level from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’. Australians heard we should now be frightened of more mob violence at home and Chinese threats abroad, spilling over from Ukraine. Scared Australians will accept more spending on defence and ‘counter-terrorism’, and accept the US role in the ‘defence’ of Australia, whatever it costs, and whatever the MICIMATT wants.

Meanwhile back in the US, the conservative Heritage Foundation, where Owen Harries was once Senior Fellow, has been at work on Project 2025. Its ‘Mandate for Leadership’ proposes Trump replacing tens of thousands of non-political career civil servants with non-tenured political appointees, loyal to him. Trump as former president issued an executive order to do this, which was rescinded by President Biden. In the New York Times Paul Krugman points to the unprecedented power its reinstatement will give a re-elected Trump to reward supporters and punish opponents. The Heritage Foundation’s ‘Transition Project’ aims to infuse government and society with conservative Christian values, doing away with such outdated concepts as the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties. Even more than now, it will favour fossil fuels, cut funds for climate research, Medicare and Medicaid, contraception and abortion, and will terminate gender diversity, while prosecuting perpetrators of ‘anti-white racism’. Illegal immigrants will be arrested, detained, and deported, and the military will enforce domestic law. Speedy executions will become part of capital punishment. In June, Trump’s imprisoned former aide Steve Bannon named FBI and Department of Justice officials to be pursued for crime or treason under the re-elected Trump. Gun law reforms are not prominent in Project 2025’s more than 900 pages.

The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, who is close to vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, admits that Project 25’s role is ‘institutionalising Trumpism’. With more than 200 former Trump officials on its staff, the Project is ‘far more ambitious’ than any in the organisation’s Mandate for Leadership series, that began in 1981. While he campaigns, Trump is keeping some distance from Project 25, but he has told Christians this is the last time they will need to vote. The Mandate says Trump intends to appoint ‘full, proud MAGA warriors and…zealots…willing to test the boundaries of executive power to get [his] way’. This includes jailing his critics in government and the media, Axios reports. Trump’s prospective Attorney-General Mike Davis has promised a ‘3-week reign of terror’ after election day. Trump himself told a rally he would only be a dictator on day one, closing the border and ordering ‘drill, drill, drill’. After that, he said, ‘I’m not a dictator’.

On 2 July – before Biden stepped aside, allowing Kamala Harris to puncture the tyres of the Republican campaign – Heritage’s Roberts anticipated a second American Revolution, which ‘will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be’. He lists the four aims of the Mandate for Leadership as being to: restore family at the centre of American life, dismantle the administration state, defend America’s government and borders, and secure God-given individual rights to live freely.

Project 25 tells us little about America’s forever wars, and as president, Trump may follow its isolationist agenda. That could mean peace in Ukraine, no war against China, possibly no more weapons for Israel, and even the end of AUKUS. What a great outcome! But Australians should be careful about what they wish for. The trouble our alliance may get us into is clearly not worth what Australia gets out of it. If our leaders imitate Trump, that could be a game-changer here too.

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