on war and the Australian-American alliance

In September 2003, early in the Iraq war I wrote to an Australian Foreign Minister (who did not reply) that:

".. I have become increasingly of the view... that it is in the nature of modern war that it tends, more than anything else - certainly it does not tend to ‘victory’ - to import into the righteous invading countries the problems you seek to eliminate by invading... Your assertion of effectiveness of violence in international policy drifts down to validate the use of violence by non-states in international affairs, and increasingly by individuals in national and sub-national affairs, and indeed, I suggest, in domestic life. We are dealing not just with a narrow national security issue but a large ethical dimension."

This morning civil unrest and violence spreads in the United States, the right having been unleashed.

Meanwhile an Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has ludicrously suggested that the US goes to war with North Korea than automatically we are at war because of our defence treaty with the US. This, coming from a lawyer, is stupefyingly bizarre, inaccurate and unwise. The treaty states and one might use Art 1 against both Trump and Turnbull:



More, separately, on Korea...