tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24839986039682016032024-02-19T20:45:55.219+11:00'Cephalophoria': an independent perspectiveTo get the map round the right way and bring back under one roof various streams of my writing.Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.comBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-22650677537983212692019-10-18T11:32:00.005+11:002019-10-18T11:49:29.517+11:00a small reminder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The pursuit of happiness is a lifestyle choice. A brief moment for me as film director!<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vD3mpi9uQvQ" width="560"></iframe>
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which movie I <a href="http://ongoingtomexico.blogspot.com/2015/05/saturday-morning.html" target="_blank">embedded in Mexico blog in 2015</a>. </div>
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and I should add this quiet Armenian music for contemplation in savage times. "Lullaby for the [non-voluntarily] Travelling Child", from <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMGB0c8qlZPJMhku2u1xRKg" target="_blank">Roots Revival</a></i>. Also see <a href="https://www.roots-revival.com/" target="_blank">website</a>.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ig2HoJ7lenM" width="560"></iframe>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-84055604089720778702019-08-28T14:35:00.000+10:002019-08-29T09:36:53.262+10:00Australia's strategic folly: lessons from Barbara Tuchman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-australias-strategic-folly-lessons-from-barbara-tuchman/" target="_blank">Also published on John Menadue's blog</a></i><br />
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<i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">We in a situation where decisions that seem simple can commit Australia to fundamental errors of strategic judgement. The decision to send a ship and a plane and headquarters staff to a new venture with the United States in the Middle East is foolish. It is described in isolation by the government but is additional to ongoing ADF operations in the Middle East, which have lacked legality since 2003. The late US historian Barbara Tuchman wrote two books of great relevance: about the lack of non-military options in 1914, and the tendency of governments to make decisions contrary to their core strategic interests. The first of those,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">The Guns of August,</span><i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>saved us from nuclear war in 1962, the second,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam</span><i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">, is less well known because… well, because statesmen are not foolish and don’t make mistakes.</i><span class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">In early 1962, American historian </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_W._Tuchman" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">Barbara Tuchman</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"> published a book about the beginnings of the First World War: </span><i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">The Guns of August,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">UK title </span><i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">August 1914.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">It quickly appeared in the best seller list of the New York Times. President John Kennedy read it and urged his National Security Council to read it. Then in October 1962 came the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is generally recognised that </span><a class="" href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/septemberoctober/feature/the-dramatist" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">Kennedy’s reading of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i class="">The Guns of August</i></a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"> was a major factor in the rejection by his National Security Council of advice from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to go to war. Tuchman’s lesson was that the war went as it did because of the absence of alternatives to war in strategic thinking. </span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"> But Tuchman’s lesson was forgotten well before the 9/11 events of 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Not only did the invasion fail, but our vocabulary, our benchmarks and capacity for debate and strategic though have been shifted dramatically. Military options rule and strategic advice in Australia as in the US has come to mean the advice of the military, intelligence and security industries. Trump’s first National Security Advisor, A R McMaster rose to his brief fame as author of </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dereliction_of_Duty_(book)" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">Dereliction of Duty</a><i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">which begins with a diatribe against Kennedy for rejecting the advice of the Joint Chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis. </span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">In 1984 Tuchman published </span><a class="" href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-absenting-ourselves-from-the-world/" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam</a><i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">setting out as commonplace the paradox of governments adopting courses contrary to national interest. Less popular than<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">The Guns of August</i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">: who wants to acknowledge folly? Apart from Tuchman we should take note of Clausewitz, so often quoted for observing that war is an extension of diplomacy by other means. What is generally forgotten is Clausewitz's advice that statesmen should be aware that war, once embarked upon as an instrument of policy, tends to drive out policy and pursue its own ends. As has happened in Afghanistan and the Middle East and now with China, where policy arises significantly from navy heroics in the South China Sea, where we are supposedly entitled to venture, though China makes scandalised headlines sending a surveillance ship to observe US-Australian exercises in Australia.</span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><a class="" href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-absenting-ourselves-from-the-world/" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">I have argued the folly of raging against China recently here</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">. </span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">Is it a folly to be sending a ship, additional aircraft and headquarters staff to the Gulf to safeguard shipping? While both sides of an argument may call the other foolish, I offer these considerations:</span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* First, that the government’s decision is in the direction of war as opposed to diplomacy. It is as much about war avoidance as the ventures of knights in crusades to protect holy sites in Palestine centuries ago, where war drove out policy. </span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* Forget about notions that this is just a small operation, we are not just joining up with a tanker-escorting minor team, the</span><a class="" href="https://news.usni.org/2019/07/01/usni-news-fleet-and-marine-tracker-july-1-2019" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>US Navy deployments at this moment are public here</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">. Australia’s </span><a class="" href="http://www.defence.gov.au/Operations/" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">current Middle East deployments are listed here</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">. Use Wikipedia for details.</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* Our entry into the Vietnam war began with small numbers of advisors, and crept upwards. We lost;</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* We went into the Iraq war in 2003 on the basis of spurious arguments and deceits, we helped remove a very bad government by violence and made Iraq ungovernable; we effectively handed Iraq to Iran;</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* We have never had the guts to review our involvement in the Iraq war by serious inquiry, unlike the UK. No one here is politically accountable;</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* the Iraq invasion was illegal as have been our ventures since in support of US forces in Iraq and Syria;</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* at the present time just as in Iraq after the invasion, US leaders and planners, much as here, have had no idea of how to manage the peace, sustain order, achieve a future. The focus of US policy recently has been to more destabilisation in more places, now with the tweets of Trump and the fist shaking of Bolton creating uncertainty and adding to the resolve of the threatened and revelation to many more of the ineffectuality of US war dances;</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* the US has overturned a nuclear agreement with Iran endorsed by the UN. The US has threatened sanctions against allies who have sought to sustain that agreement. There is no international legal basis for such sanctions;</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* In the Middle East it is Israel, not Iran, that has a nuclear weapons force... and now the Trump team are helping Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear industry and capability;</span><br />
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* There is a lack of historical awareness of the fundamental central conflict in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Iran basically Shia and Saudi Arabia Sunni; Iran via Hizbollah the only country to defeat Israel in war; Saudi with direct connections to Al Qaida, Islamic State and the Taliban. </span></div>
<span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">* The word ‘oil’ is now on the table: now there is a noble crusade to save oil from bad guys. But all these decades have been about oil, control over oil reserves, by violent means. </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_energy_independence" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">The US has become an exporter of fossil fuel energy and its need for imports has declined since 2006</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"> … as has its need for markets grown. In this new phase, the US has disrupted Venezuela’s oil production (for years before and then contributing to the recent crisis), the US has fought against Europe, especially Germany, securing new gas supplies from Russia, demanding purchase of US fracked gas instead, and the US has sought a total blockade of Iran’s oil exports (though interpreters of oil prices suggest the embargo may not be working). The US has diminished its dependence on oil imports, but its readiness to control oil by domination or disruption is undiminished.</span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">Those are broad strategic problems with entanglement in the Middle East. There are battle-related issues. The United States is poking a stick, threatening war, with a country geographically bigger than France, Germany and Britain combined. Iran has borders with Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan; over the Caspian Sea a short distance to Russia and Kazakhstan (plus an abundance of non-state actors in the region). Iran is not a ragged revolutionary country as in the 1980s when the US grabbed Iraq from Soviet arms and supported Iraq in a long, disastrous war with Iran, that Iraq lost. Iran is now a highly organised state with thousands of years of state management experience. Iran has built more than any other on the terrorist legacy of Lawrence of Arabia. Iran now has effective links and power involvement, not least in suppressing IS, from the border of Pakistan to the Mediterranean. The </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_Corps" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps [Pasdaran]</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"> makes Iran a superpower. No scoffing and baiting and shouting campaign will make Iran defeat-able. Compare with the fantasy expectations of 1914. </span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">After Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2017, with celebration of arms sales and talk of alliance in the region,</span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_diplomatic_conflict" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Saudi Arabia organised with others the isolation of Qatar</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">, not least in fury at the </span><a class="" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/Search/?q=saudi" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">open news reporting of Qatar’s<i class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Al Jazeera</i></a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"> news agency: border and air and sea space were closed to Qatar. Since then Qatar has, not least for food, built up relations with Iran and Turkey. Turkey is now buying air defence missiles from Russia and again is advancing in Syria against US interests. </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pars/North_Dome_Gas-Condensate_field" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">Qatar and Iran share ownership of the world’s largest natural gas reserves</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">...While Qatar is host to the </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Udeid_Air_Base" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">major US base in the Middle East</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">. </span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">All this… now in the context of destabilising and unpredictable utterances from Trump and Bolton. We should be very glad the Iranians are so quiet and patient. But quiet does not mean inactive. As </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Baer" style="font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">Robert Baer</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"> observed in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i class="" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; text-size-adjust: auto;">See No Evil,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">when the Pasdaran moved into Lebanon in the 1980s no reports to headquarters were required, headquarters only needed to follow the BBC News. </span><br />
<span class="" style="font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br class="" /></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: "helvetica"; text-size-adjust: auto;">Government must take the public into its confidence and encourage more open sensible discussion of international strategic issues. Whether media can do that is uncertain. It will never be easy to step back from integration of minds and forces with the US, but it will only be more difficult later than sooner. A good ally is one that gives sensible advice, not just one that just slips into someone’s order of battle without national debate.</span></div>
Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-89420668584648353172019-08-24T11:28:00.001+10:002019-08-30T17:35:57.103+10:00Tangled relationships in north Asia: resources<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This week a meeting in Beijing between the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan failed to budge either side from the impasse in trade relations. I am not writing a considered review of this situation yet. Here is some background.<br />
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At the end of the week South Korea announced that it would not renew a 2016 agreement with Japan for sharing intelligence directly with Japan. Sharing will still occur via the United States.<br />
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The stresses in ROK-Japan relations have a long history.<br />
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In the early 1800s the Kingdom of Joseon in Korea was loyal to the Qing Dynasty in China, and observing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War" target="_blank">the military interventions in China of European imperial powers</a> and the o<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition" target="_blank">pening by force of Japan by the United States</a>, Joseon was determinedly a 'hermit kingdom'... until Japan succeeded in an opening by force of Korea after the manner of the opening of Japan by the US. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93Korea_Treaty_of_1876" target="_blank">Imposing an unequal treaty</a>. Korea was a colony of Japan until the end of World War 2 and a peace treaty was not signed until 1965.<br />
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The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Basic_Relations_between_Japan_and_the_Republic_of_Korea">1965 treaty</a> is at the centre of current controversy. For Japan it was a conclusion of issues of reparation. For the ROK not so, a situation aggravated by the treaty having been entered into by the dictator president Park Chung-hee. Also part of the issue is that Japan at the time wanted to make payments to individuals directly. South Korea rejected that and said it would do whatever disbursement. The Park administration in fact used the reparation funds for the most part for major infrastructure projects, notably the Seoul-Busan freeway and the Pohang Iron and Steel mill... foundations for South Korea's development since.<br />
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In the past few years there has been agitation in South Korea for reparations for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsT97ax_Xb0" target="_blank">comfort women</a>, sex slaves of Japanese forces in World War 2. The daughter of Park Chung-hee, Park Geun-hye, was president of the ROK from 2013 until impeached in 2017 and had signed an agreement with Japan to bring the comfort women issue to closure — an agreement considered inadequate by public opinion and the present ROK government.<br />
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There has been persistent anger in in Korea and China at the way the Japanese Government has sought to alter history and its role in WW2 and longer wars with Korea and China, notably through <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies" target="_blank">revision of officially shaped textbooks</a>.<br />
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The Moon adminstration in Seoul has sought a new relationship with North Korea and the two Korean governments have succeeded in reducing the arms along the demilitarised zone. At the same President Trump has embarked on negotiations with North Korea. In this process, Japan has felt excluded, President Abe also anxious about prospects of trade conflict with the US.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOMOo-OXVHu5DUfsM5IkrpPyjs0_4tS_iwe__5D-fjosOn0-cdeG-F1V2HFqXuhuTmII29sqRQk_fQkOzSqgUKc6fQd3Ms_yTIRklW7pC0eUi6GrOslSTBC_Oig0gKVC72S4rygFhR5_9G/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-08-24+at+4.23.48+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOMOo-OXVHu5DUfsM5IkrpPyjs0_4tS_iwe__5D-fjosOn0-cdeG-F1V2HFqXuhuTmII29sqRQk_fQkOzSqgUKc6fQd3Ms_yTIRklW7pC0eUi6GrOslSTBC_Oig0gKVC72S4rygFhR5_9G/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-08-24+at+4.23.48+pm.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">see link at left</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Abe faced elections recently and succeeded in getting a solid majority but not sufficient in size to allow amendment of the constitutional restraints on defence. In securing the elections he played right wing cards especially against Korea. Apart from particular issues in debate, there appears to be a fundamental issue of views in Japan, and views of Abe, of Korean people as unequal to Japanese. <a href="https://apjjf.org/2019/15/Wada.html" target="_blank">This is explored in depth here</a>, article the header of which is alongside here.<br />
<a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/907372.html" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/907372.html" target="_blank">30 August: see also this</a>. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -0.8px;">“Abe’s refusal to engage with S. Korea marks end of Japan’s status as peaceful country,” says Haruki Wada</span><br />
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South Korea also perceives <a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/906880.html" target="_blank">moves by Japan to diminish relations with Korea, in its relegation to a minor position in the Indo-Pacific strategy</a>, rather than a close team in north Asia. There are complex emotions.<br />
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For further current news and discussion in Korea, see these:<br />
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<a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/" target="_blank">http://english.hani.co.kr/</a><br />
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<a href="https://en.yna.co.kr/" target="_blank">https://en.yna.co.kr</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzznO4xSV8BKnUBPyswtCUw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzznO4xSV8BKnUBPyswtCUw</a> (Arirang TV news, well presented)<br />
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and for Japan<br />
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<a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/" target="_blank">https://www.japantimes.co.jp/</a> is limited value<br />
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<a href="https://www.w3newspapers.com/japan/">https://www.w3newspapers.com/japan/</a> gives you a range of sources to explore.<br />
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And for wider regional:<br />
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<a href="https://www.asiatimes.com/" target="_blank">https://www.asiatimes.com/</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.scmp.com/" target="_blank">https://www.scmp.com/</a><br />
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both out of Hong Kong.<br />
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Best to hunt Asian sources rather than depend on news organisations elsewhere. And to regard all sources as reflecting local opinion and perspective, rather than certain evidence. We should similarly look with care at the quality and perspective of media in Australia, the US and Europe, tending so often be briefly caught up in passing violence. <i>The Guardian </i>is especially (and very disappointingly) guilty of this in the Third World, rushing a generalist to bash out a story and duck off to the next big thing. This is a problem that arises increasingly when even the media we would like to trust most are confronted by limited budgets requiring fleeting coverage of more and more.<br />
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-40608606431154659882019-08-22T10:45:00.000+10:002019-08-22T13:01:49.728+10:00Australia in the Persian Gulf<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Australia is sending a frigate, an aircraft and headquarters staff to the US led task force notionally to protect tankers in the Gulf.<br />
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I have just made this comment on a paper at <a href="https://theconversation.com/infographic-what-is-the-conflict-between-the-us-and-iran-about-and-how-is-australia-now-involved-121490" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> entitled "<span style="color: #383838; font-family: montserrat, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Infographic: what is the conflict between the US and Iran about and how is Australia now involved?"</span><br />
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This is what I wrote:<br />
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The biggest problem is that they indicate no awareness of regional issues, they seem to have no understanding of ‘the enemy’, no idea of the impossibility of a conventional war with Iran. No sense that escalation is likely to get out of control.. and in no circumstance will we have full control of this deployment.</div>
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The deployments of US forces in the middle east are much greater than this suggests and in no way focused on escorting tankers.<a href="https://news.usni.org/2019/08/19/usni-news-fleet-and-marine-tracker-aug-19-2019#more-68879" rel="nofollow" style="color: #557585; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">https://news.usni.org/2019/08/19/usni-news-fleet-and-marine-tracker-aug-19-2019#more-68879</a>[Red Sea, North Arabian Sea, Carrier Strike Group 12]</div>
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Under the heading “What is the conflict between Iran and the US about?” the author neglects to mention the long historical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, thus between Sunni [Saudi] and Shia [Iran]. The headlong rush by Trump to embrace the Saudis in 2017, and sell more weapons, while threatening violence on Iran. The unilateral US disruption of the nuclear agreement (approved by the UN) and threats to allies who trade with Iran. Saudi as the home variously of Al Qaida, IS and the Taliban and guilty of astonishing war crimes in the civil war in Yemen, which is a proxy war with Iran, Saudi and partners supplied in that war by the US and UK. Australia, having been one of the illegal invaders of Iraq in 2003, an act of naive folly that rendered Iraq ungovernable and handed Iraq to Iran, with continuing air force deployments in the middle east, strike aircraft and tanker aircraft to refuel US aircraft in the air. But we shouldn’t mention all that, shouldn’t mention our complicity in the disastrous destabilisation of the middle east in the last two decades. </div>
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Israel, not Iran, is the middle east country with a formidable nuclear weapon force, never mentioned by nice people; the US currently assisting Saudi Arabia with nuclear capability. Iran the only country ever to defeat Israel, via proxy Hizbollah, 1982-2000 and 2006. Iran geographically bigger in size than Germany, France and the UK combined. Iran with close relations with Russia and China and with millennia of experience in strategy, the most skilful inheritor of the terrorist fervour begun by Lawrence of Arabia.</div>
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The US has a large base in Qatar<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Udeid_Air_Base" rel="nofollow" style="color: #557585; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Udeid_Air_Base</a>… which deserved mention, as does also the fact that after Trump’s visit Saudi Arabia and the UAE and cohort broke off relations with Qatar and closed the border and sea and air space to Qatar</div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%9319_Qatar_diplomatic_crisis" rel="nofollow" style="color: #557585; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%9319_Qatar_diplomatic_crisis</a></div>
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… whereafter Qatar, host to the major US presence, has steadily built relations with Iran and Turkey (other things aside, for food), Turkey buying missiles now from Russia despite US protests. Turkey currently advancing again into Syria against US interests. So the big US base in the middle east is in a country mainly linked to ‘the other side’. </div>
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Can someone in office explain all that to the smiling people at the top of the article. Or if they know all that they should explain it all. Explain it better than did Minister Reynolds in the presence of the US Secretaries of State and Defense recently</div>
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“The request that the United States has made is a very serious one and it is a complex one. That’s why we are currently giving this request very serious consideration. We will ultimately, as we always do, decide what is in our own sovereign interests, and we certainly discussed this issue during our ministerial consultations. But again, no decision has yet been made.”</div>
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<a href="http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-pompeo-view.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #557585; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-pompeo-view.html</a></div>
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The concept of and description of this intervention by Australia as in the article and as apparently in the minds of the worthies in the top photo is utter folly and very dangerous. The prospect of finding ourselves in a wider war, far beyond the nonsense argument offered, is high. </div>
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The reality is that government and parliament have for too long relegated strategic thinking to the defence force. The Australian Defence Force is largely embedded in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. We are not an independent country.</div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-42190043875460440282019-08-21T05:38:00.000+10:002019-08-28T21:25:16.415+10:00Hong Kong and Londonderry and the global crowding of everything. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This posted to <a href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-hong-kong-and-londonderry-and-the-global-crowding-of-everything/" target="_blank">John Menadue's blog</a> on 15 August<br />
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DENNIS ARGALL Hong Kong and Londonderry and the global crowding of everything.</h1>
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<span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <a href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-hong-kong-and-londonderry-and-the-global-crowding-of-everything/" rel="bookmark" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #777777; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="7:11 AM"><span class="entry-date" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">15 August 2019</span></a></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The uproar in Hong Kong has become very serious, with a situation as developed in 1989 before Tiananmen: of leaders unable to cope and an uprising implacable in resolve and unable to focus on achievable objectives. The comparison should not be overdrawn but Hong Kong now is threatening greater consequence than did Tiananmen. Tactically the police have made mistakes in dealing with trapped demonstrators as on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland in 1972, staining decades with misery.</em></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is written on the night of 12 August 2019, events are unfolding but I make observations that may endure. </em><span id="more-30428" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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Looking at the live YouTube Hong Kong coverage of long days of peaceful protest, degenerating regularly as families have gone home into tough guys shifting to confrontation with police, there was generally a pattern of police restraint. But things deteriorate.</div>
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Without doubt ordinary police are suffering from fatigue, as much as demonstrators. But this does not explain the way things have gone awry.</div>
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There has no doubt been a strategy of restraint on the part of the Hong Kong Government, also a strategy of not conceding to violence and not allowing public places to be occupied indefinitely. The government and police have not had answers to the way attacks have evolved. Intelligence would seem to be lacking. Political and administrative leaders have been flat-footed and uninspiring, affronted not leading.</div>
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As of Monday 12 August protest anger has shifted up a notch following an incident in a rail station where a bean bag pellet fired at short range destroyed a woman’s eye. Notch by notch the distinction between the mass of demonstrators and the more militant may reduce. Demands increase. And with Hong Kong airport occupied and all departures cancelled, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3De4juPPrdZYM&source=gmail&ust=1565737363808000&usg=AFQjCNEwdDVMR4771LfyWBg1mcOV49ljMw" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4juPPrdZYM" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4juPPrdZYM</a> Chinese official media are now running film, with drum beats, of Chinese armed police units lining up in Shenzhen two days ago. <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DbKjTmJM5tdU&source=gmail&ust=1565737363808000&usg=AFQjCNEyL3k5WWWLagt-LUd5Yu9GK9Gitg" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKjTmJM5tdU" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKjTmJM5tdU</a> This official video refers to the Law of the People’s Republic of China on People’s Armed Police, text here: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Law/2011-02/16/content_1620753.htm&source=gmail&ust=1565737363808000&usg=AFQjCNH-ainZBrQvyeQT09jrgUv2uKIJDg" href="http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Law/2011-02/16/content_1620753.htm" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Law/2011-02/16/content_1620753.htm</a></div>
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It may seem odd to compare with events on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on 30 January 1972, given that Londonderry had a population as I recall, of about 26,000 at the time. <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)&source=gmail&ust=1565737363808000&usg=AFQjCNF3iSNuTuz1HTcgGl9VwTgbQcRM4w" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)</a></div>
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But the great loss of life on one day in Derry, 28 wounded of whom 14 died promptly, another person weeks later, was caused by tactical error much as evident in individual skirmishes in Hong Kong. The paratroopers sent into Derry were untrained for the circumstance and <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">they cut off paths of retreat for demonstrators. </em>A complex of descent into horror occurred then in Derry as develops now in Hong Kong. Although a British army officer attending the Australian Chief of General Staff’s annual exercises later in 1972 was able to provide already an account of tactical error in Londonderry in such terms, such official awareness did not prevent the consequences of that day rolling on through long decades of nastiness.</div>
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Tactical mishandling of conflict in Hong Kong in recent and coming weeks will cast long shadows. In both Londonderry and Hong Kong, bitternesses have run deep. Everything is magnified, intensified. The scale of distraught in Hong Kong is now off the chart and climbing.<br />
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In 1982 an American ethologist coined the term “behavioural sink” to describe the collapse of behaviour resulting from overcrowding, shown in experiments with rats. As is commonplace in the social sciences, this hypothesis vanished down its own behavioural sink, a rabbit hole of debate about the relevance of rat experiments to understanding human behaviour. But it seems to me at a minimum relevant to examination of the state of the world approaching 2020; a useful metaphor.</div>
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I think of ‘crowding’ now not just physical or geographical but also the volume, velocity and excitement of what floods most people most days, through the internet, elevating awareness of global bad spots, local political, economic and social atrocities, through diverse megaphones. This is a new neurological and psychological experience for individuals. The internet has of course been an engine of insurrectionist uprising for some time but things get more disruptive.</div>
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Hong Kong offers a dramatic example of a ‘behavioural sink’, with</div>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">High population density,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Entrapment of ordinary people in a society dominated by an extraordinarily rich elite,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The role of ordinary people being to serve the local and visiting rich from other countries and the Chinese mainland, the role of the very rich to buy and sell anyone and anything (not entirely unusual)</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For twenty years or more any ordinary person falling out of work after age 40 in Hong Kong has had great difficulty finding new employment,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Whereas forty years ago Hong Kong was unique as a doorway to China, now Hong Kong is a relative backwater as many other places in China have grown from nothing to greater than Hong Kong as doors to the world,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The current political system with mildly democratic elements is shaped by a deathbed conversion to participatory democracy by a departing British tenant,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Historically riddled with spy organisations and movements for foreign religions and political agendas,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pervasive awareness of news and worse via the internet leading now to organising of rebellion via the internet</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Governed by the upper crust of all the foregoing, led by a chief minister with history and reputation as a tough administrator… but politically naïve,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Policed by police not of the elite but for half a century of high standard of integrity with a union speaking out now about their misery and resentment at being put in the middle of the current street situation… and remaining mainly restrained … but lacking tactics to deal with the way situations have developed</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Living with the time bomb of end of special status within China in 2047, as agreed with Britain in 1997. But 2047 is as far ahead as the Tiananmen events are in the past. China’s GDP per capita passed $300 in 1989, passed $8000 in 2015. But who thinks, in troubled circumstances, how things may be thirty years ahead?</li>
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Hong Kong is only one of many places on the globe in torment, driven partly by impacts of economic management and by imperial attitudes of political leaders, diverse chiefs going wilful as the world is whacked by the singular and monstrous contributions of the rule-breaking unruly Trump, kneecapping cherished beliefs and institutions at home and abroad, enabling the utterance of untruth in all directions daily with scarce rebuttal… bringing news everywhere that uprising against authority can succeed.</div>
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In 1989, in days leading to the Tiananmen Incident, there was comparable circumstance in the incapacity of leadership to cope and the implacable unwillingness of the besiegers of the state to compromise and adopt realisable objectives.</div>
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What follows now in Hong Kong will have consequences beyond China.</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dennis Argall is a former Australian ambassador to China. His undergraduate studies were in social anthropology, his masters degree from the Australian Defence Force Academy.</em></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-40614177386663036952019-08-21T05:02:00.002+10:002019-08-21T05:20:13.580+10:00History and the statuses of Hong Kong and Taiwan in China<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I wrote the following paper two days ago, it became too long and unwieldy for <a href="http://johnmenadue.com/?s=argall" target="_blank">John Menadue's blog</a>. Difficult to cover multiple dimensions and several centuries in a short note. I will be trying to convert it into shorter notes, but I am concerned that making it brief tends too often to lead to that standard current era genre of "I'm just so smart, take my word for it" adopted now by everyone and dog, as truth and awareness of wider context and history vanish.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>So here below is my disorderly draft, as is for now.</i></blockquote>
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...but first, see this <i>Caspian Report</i> video essay released since my writing below. <i>Caspian Report </i>becomes more professional, I wonder who sits in the back room. This video essay raises questions. I might question some of the argument, or inflection, but it's a valuable start point. I marvel at the <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/azerbaijan/foreign-relations.htm" target="_blank">geostrategic circumstance of writing from Azerbaijan</a>... where you have the geostrategic at the breakfast table and on the bus, not just in mental speculation.<br />
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Also valuable in this moment is <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3022057/two-months-and-nearly-2000-rounds-tear-gas-later-what-do" target="_blank">the series of essays produced twenty four hours ago by the </a><i><a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3022057/two-months-and-nearly-2000-rounds-tear-gas-later-what-do" target="_blank">South China Morning Post</a>. </i>The SCMP, in Hong Kong for a very long time, is owned these days by Jack Ma, who created Alibaba, something of a parallel with Jeff Bezos, creator of Amazon, owning the <i>Washington Post.</i> See this video from the World Economic Forum to understand the Jack Ma perspective, as counter to China as monolithic boogeyman role cast by many commentators.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Here then is my draft paper of 29 August, on the status of Taiwan and Hong Kong</span>.</i><br />
It is written with Australian readers in mind, but of wider value.<br />
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;"><i class="">The situation in Hong Kong becomes more difficult. And reporters covering Hong Kong increasingly bring Taiwan into the story. It is useful to have an understanding of the history underlying the status of Hong Kong and Taiwan in China and the attitudes that come from turbulent history.</i></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">If you depend on the news from the Australian Broadcasting Commission (let alone the less responsible) you will understand our neighbourhood in East Asia not with balance but mainly in violent terms, with a rush to cover demos more familiar in tabloid rabblerousing. And with curious fear of change in the balance of power, promoting the security and strategy industries in their militaristic focus in international affairs. It is easy to see how government ministers could be perplexed.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<a class="" href="https://search-beta.abc.net.au/#/?query=hong%20kong"><span class="" style="color: windowtext;">https://search-beta.abc.net.au/#/?query=hong%20kong</span></a></div>
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<a class="" href="https://search-beta.abc.net.au/#/?query=china"><span class="" style="color: windowtext;">https://search-beta.abc.net.au/#/?query=china</span></a></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">More level heads can be found regarding Hong Kong.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<i class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">“I can understand the disquiet of Hong Kong people subject to a China that under Xi Jinping has increasingly stressed the control of the Chinese Communist Party, over every sphere of life in China and not just in Hong Kong. But Hong Kong lost that battle before it even began.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">“Ever since the end of the Qing Dynasty in the late 19<sup class=""><span class="" style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">th</span></sup> century, the legitimacy of Chinese governments – Imperial, Republican or Communist – has rested on the ability to defend China’s sovereignty and its borders. I don’t think Beijing is eager to exercise direct control over Hong Kong. But the unity of China is not a matter on which any Chinese government will ever compromise.”<o:p class=""></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">“Harsh Truths for Hong Kong” Bilahari Kausikan. former head of the Singapore Foreign Ministry, July 9, 2019. </span><a class="" href="https://globalbrief.ca/2019/07/harsh-truths-for-hong-kong/"><span class="" style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt;">https://globalbrief.ca/2019/07/harsh-truths-for-hong-kong/</span></a></div>
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<i class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">“A Hong Kong ruined by instability, anger and perpetual protest works for no one — not for the government, nor for the protesters, nor for Beijing. It would be a tragedy for the world to see this wonderful and vibrant city avoided by visitors, its population divided and demoralised. A resolution in which the grievances of the protesters are addressed, the administration is restored in credibility, and the Beijing government is recognised for having acted responsibly and respectfully might seem like a distant prospect at the moment, but it is precisely this outcome that all parties, and the world, should support.”<o:p class=""></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">“On the Brink”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i class="">Inside Story<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i>16 August 2019, Kerry Brown, former Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London. </span><span class="" style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt;"><a class="" href="https://insidestory.org.au/on-the-brink-2/">https://insidestory.org.au/on-the-brink-2/</a></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">On 19 August the South China Morning Post published four essays, which are invaluable to understanding the evolution of the situation. </span><a class="" href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3022057/two-months-and-nearly-2000-rounds-tear-gas-later-what-do" style="font-size: 16px;">Start here,</a><span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;"> links at end of each to the others.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">As regards Taiwan, there is much focus on the current Taipei administration’s approaches. toying lightly with independence, playing with support in the US, especially among Republicans. But with the 24-hour news cycle and perhaps twenty-four-days-awareness of history, there is no mention that while the KMT (Kuomintang) lost the Taiwan presidency in elections in 2012, it won local government elections in a landslide in November 2018... and perhaps could win the 2020 presidential elections. The KMT sees Taiwan as part of China, has been central to China's political history from the 1911 revolution. The KMT is a member of the International Democratic Union, as is the Liberal Party of Australia; John Howard was chair of the IDU 2002-2014.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">Decades ago my advice to defence staff colleges and other audiences in seeking to understand China and other issues was to avoid focusing on some point on the rim of a wheel of the bouncing vehicle and try to understand the vehicle and its movement as a whole.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>With concern to broaden perspectives, my purpose here is to provide historical background to the status of Hong Kong and Taiwan.</b><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-size: 12pt;">China sees two hundred years of history leading up to 2049 as in two parts. First, a century of invasion and ‘unequal treaties’ in which China was wrecked by western imperial powers and Japan. The second century, from the 1949 revolution, a century (not without ruckus) of reordering and recovery of status… as the ‘Middle Kingdom’, literal translation of the Chinese word for China.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">China in the 1700s had been an economic power comparable to Europe. But was closed to the enlightenment ripping through Europe and to the Industrial Revolution.<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">When Portuguese ships had entered the Indian Ocean from 1497, those ships were technologically comparable to the great number of Chinese, Malay, Javanese, Indian, Arab and African vessels they encountered. Later, larger Dutch ships with more advanced firepower defeated all, including for example Portuguese in the Moluccas in what is now Indonesia; on the island of Banda murdering the local population, custodians of all nutmeg trees, and replacing the locals with slaves.<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">The Portuguese had been raping and pillaging and trading at Canton (Guangzhou) in China from 1516, but more stable relations led to a 1554 treaty which eventually allowed Portuguese settlement and warehouses at Macau, but not fortifications. The uproar in Hong Kong won’t be followed in Macau. A story about </span><a class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/29/archives/booming-macao-belongs-to-portugal-but-chinese-residentsand.html" style="font-size: 16px;">Macau in the days of the end of Portuguese empire here</a><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">; more<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Macau">history here</a>.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">The Qing dynasty 1644-1912 opened more readily to trade, after taking Taiwan from the Koxinga in 1683. The Koxinga were supporters of the Ming dynasty, which was defeated by the Qing in 1644, wise in the ensuing violence for the Koxinga to duck off to Taiwan, as Chiang Kai-shek would do in 1949. …Speaking of political violence in the mid-1600s I’m reminded of English history.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">The Koxinga drove the Dutch out of Formosa (Taiwan) in 1662. The Dutch had taken Taiwan from the Spanish in 1642, an outcome of the Eighty Years War. Taiwan’s colonial history began with a Portuguese settlement in 1544, a settlement that became Spanish after 1580 when the Hapsburg kings of Spain became kings of Portugal. But New Spain, headquartered in Mexico City, was too busy coping with Dutch and British warships at Manila to defend Formosa.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Trading through Canton, the British had found themselves in the early 1800s in that very modern situation of having an adverse trade balance with China because Chinese products were very popular back in Britain. The remedy? — Grow opium in India and demand its use in China. When Chinese authorities said the British could not bring opium into China the British insisted and there followed the First Opium War [1839-1842] which set a pattern of European powers bringing pressure for concessions by Chinese rulers local and national, going to war when resisted… and then demanding concessions as reparation. The British dominated the opium business and thus had a particularly nasty role in China’s degradation, on a huge scale and more devastating than what the Dutch did to monopolise the nutmeg trade. The great trading houses of Hong Kong and Hong Kong's upper crust of wealth, arose from that. Current uproar reflects not just issues with Beijing but class struggle in Hong Kong and the tin ears of the mighty.<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Towards the end of the Qing Dynasty, end of the 1800s, there was an uprising against the foreign– the Boxer Rebellion– a wild rejection of foreign things and beliefs, of foreign dominance and the presence of foreigners in China. Imperial powers came to the rescue, again with demands for reparation and predilection to pillage and loot.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=boxer-rebellion&sort=moviemeter,asc&mode=detail&page=1&title_type=movie&ref_=kw_ref_typ">Portrayed in our world in such movies as these</a>. The Australian War Memorial, an institution that does not have the courage to recognise punitive expeditions against indigenous people in Australia,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a class="" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/boxer"><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">says this about Australia’s role in the Boxer Rebellion</span></a><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">.<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">The territory we know as Hong Kong had two parts in origin. Hong Kong Island was seized by Britain during the First Opium War in 1841, ceded to Britain in 1842, became a Crown Colony and expanded to include in the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 in the Second Opium War.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bruce,_8th_Earl_of_Elgin">Context here</a>. The New Territories, beyond Kowloon, were a 99-year lease from 1898. It was in the years before that lease expired in 1997 that London and Beijing negotiated return of the whole to Beijing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Lost from general sight is the role of China in World War I. The Qing had been overthrown in a revolution in 1911, led by Sun Yatsen, founder of the KMT. But the centre did not hold, warlords took power in various places. With Japan entering World War I on the side of the Triple Alliance against Germany, Japan took the Chinese province of Shandong from Germany, much as Australia seized New Guinea from Germany.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="http://multimedia.scmp.com/ww1-china/">China sent 100,000 workers to Europe</a>, to support the military effort against Germany, offers of troops rejected. China hoped to get Shandong back in the peace settlement. But Japan kept Shandong.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://insidestory.org.au/when-the-british-spied-on-billy-hughes-at-versailles/">The curious role of Australian Prime Minister Hughes in this, revealed recently,</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>reminds us of deep racist roots in Australia and of how statesmen may regard lesser places and peoples as toys, or proxies and fail to understand how things they do can have extensive and unintended, unacknowledged consequences.<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Loss of Shandong thus to Japan in 1919 by the Versailles Treaty precipitated the ‘<a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Fourth_Movement">May Fourth Movement’</a>. Whereas the 10 October 1911 nationalist uprising (still marked as National Day in Taipei) faltered, the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/opinion/china-may-fourth-movement-protests-1919-wusi.html">May Fourth movement profoundly changed China</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and saw the founding of the Communist Party, which then worked with the Nationalist Party (KMT) in a United Front for some years. Central figure in the May Fourth Movement was the Dean of the Arts Faculty at Peking University Chen Duxiu, who was one of the founders of the Communist Party in 2021 and its first General Secretary. Whereas the Boxer Rebellion had rejected the foreign, the 2011 revolution and May Fourth Movement were led by modernisers looking abroad for ways to overturn the feudalism of the Qing. Gregor Benton has just<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xpWaDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">published a book on<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i class="">Poets of the Chinese Revolution</i></a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>including Chen Duxiu and Mao. Deep historical traditions are embedded in Chinese political life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">May Fourth is a key date marked in the official calendar… and by dissidents.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/II116/articles/young-pioneers-a-may-fourth-manifesto/">Like this dissident statement this year</a>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Within mainland China dissident statements have not been post-it sized as we see in Hong Kong now, in the founding of the communist party by poets and artists, the feuding among leaders or at the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://weijingsheng.org/doc/en/THE%20FIFTH%20MODERNIZATION.html">Democracy Wall in 1978-79</a>. Hong Kong, long insulated from the intellectual as well as political turmoil of the mainland, is catching up in recent decades. Dissidents who based themselves in Hong Kong after Democracy Wall and Tiananmen are not marginal now. Meanwhile the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i class=""><a class="" href="https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/08/article/hk-protests-seen-as-a-color-revolution-in-beidaihe/?utm_source=The+Daily+Report&utm_campaign=85b7257e53-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_08_19_02_32&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1f8bca137f-85b7257e53-31609737">Asia Times</a></i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>reports that leaders in Beijing, at their summer confab at the beach in Beidaihe have reportedly retreated to belief that what is happening in Hong Kong is a ‘colour revolution’ involving many foreign countries;<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3022970/blindsided-why-does-beijing-keep-getting-hong-kong-wrong">the SCMP reports on the interdepartmental muddle of China’s efforts</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to understand and deal with Hong Kong contributing to incomprehension.<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Taiwan and other territory had been taken by Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki ending the first Sino-Japanese war 1894-5. During World War II, at the 1943 Cairo Conference, the UK, US and China (President Chiang Kai-shek leader of the KMT) issued a press release saying that at war’s end<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 14px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 15px;">"<span class="" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, including </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchuria" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Manchuria">Manchuria</a><span class="" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">, </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Taiwan">Formosa</a><span class="" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">, and the </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penghu" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Penghu">Pescadores</a><span class="" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">, shall be restored to the Republic of China</span>."</span></span><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The more formal Potsdam Declaration in 1945, the USSR now present, affirmed the intentions regarding those territories as expressed at Cairo.</span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">During the period of Japanese invasion and occupation of China in that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War"><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Second Sino-Japanese War</span></a><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>1937-45 the Nationalists (KMT) retreated their capital to Chongqing in Sichuan Province as Japan seized Beijing, Shanghai and more.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://www.betterworldbooks.com/search/results?q=han%20suyin">Han Suyin’s memoirs</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>provide a vivid account. The Communist Party was headquartered in Yan’an, mountainous country north of Xian. After 1945 the KMT came back down to Nanjing and in 1949, losing the civil war, fled with numbers and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Palace_Museum"><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">treasures</span></a><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to Taiwan, locating the capital of the Republic of China in Taipei, while the government of the People’s Republic of China took office in Peking (Beijing).<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Australia pursued a Commonwealth initiative to seek a solution to the ‘China problem’ until the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/quemoy_matsu-2.htm">Offshore Islands Crisis of 1958</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>when Prime Minister Menzies announced that henceforward our China policy would be that of the US.<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Nonetheless, while the Republic of China retained an embassy in Canberra we did not open an embassy in Taipei until 1966 (a one sentence cabinet decision without submission, after the very popular Chinese Ambassador buttonholed Prime Minister Holt at a party). The ROC had territorial claims larger than the PRC, including to the territory of the Mongolian People’s Republic. It has never sought recognition as ‘Taiwan’.<o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;">In 1971 the UN General Assembly by </span><a class="" href="https://china.usc.edu/sites/default/files/legacy/AppImages/1971-UN-China-seating.pdf" style="font-size: 16px;">Resolution 2758</a><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;"> restored the seat of China in the UN to Beijing, including China’s permanent seat on the Security Council along with the Britain, France, the US and USSR (now Russia). In that period a number of governments shifted recognition of Government of China from Taipei to Beijing. Australia did so in December 1972, among the first actions of the Whitlam Government in a process of relating foreign policy to realities in Asia. Claimant to the title of Government of China, Taipei immediately withdrew recognition from governments shifting recognition to Beijing and expelled their embassies. Britain had never withdrawn its embassy from Beijing, recognising the People’s Republic of China. The shift of recognition to Beijing by France in 1964 disrupted NATO. Pakistan had recognised Beijing in 1951, nonetheless participating in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asia_Treaty_Organization" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt;">SEATO</a><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Pact" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt;">CENTO</a><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: small;">, elements of US ‘containment’ of China for many years, reminders of times past when Australia was participant in plans for war with China.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">With a background of vicious fighting on the Korean peninsula (some of it currently being reviewed by the Moon administration in Seoul) North Korean forces invaded the south in June 1950. The Korean War 1950-53 is another subject but the US Seventh Fleet was promptly sent to the Taiwan Strait to inhibit conflict between the PRC and ROC.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">In the period of China’s revolutionary war, with Nationalist and Communist headquarters far apart and at war after the United Front of the 1920s broke down, the United States maintained a mission in Yan’an, to the Communists, as well as an embassy to the ROC in Chongqing. The “loss of China” saw the rise of McCarthyism in the United States,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Hands">Senator McCarthy’s first target being those State Department officers whose careers had directed them into contact with the Communists</a>, rather than those assigned to Chongqing, to the Nationalists. The Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’s Chongqing government built its American connections from which to sustain conservative support in the US, through associates from that time such as<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Lee_Chennault">General Chennault</a>, who like other military leaders on other wars since, told the Congress that they would not have lost China is civilian government had given the military enough means to win. Without understanding<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War#Reasons_for_the_Communist_victory">broader contexts</a>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p class=""></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;"><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_28_incident">In Taiwan, in 1947, the Nationalists had violently suppressed a popular uprising.</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Chiang and his son as successive presidents of the Republic of China from 1949 did not permit political opposition in Taiwan until the ending of martial law in 1991.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang#In_Taiwan_since_1945">Wikipedia provides background</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to that period. A recent<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/FP_20190226_taiwan_bush_hass.pdf">Brookings Institution paper</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>sets out dilemmas now faced by Taiwan, of which China is just one. And notes that<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div>
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<i class=""><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Civil society activism reflects a growing disenchantment in some quarters with the performance of representative institutions. Even though the Taiwan public generally favors democracy as a political system, it does not necessarily approve the policy performance of their own democratic system.<o:p class=""></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">There is some of that evident in public opinion polls in Australia. We advocate for democracy everywhere while democracy in too many places is in difficulty, unpopular, a weak instrument for addressing fast moving issues. We should be careful with our evangelisms, aware of shortcomings in our institutions and beliefs. </span></div>
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<i class="" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 13px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="" style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 12pt;">Dennis Argall is a former Australian ambassador to China. </span></i></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-86214030015076714932019-08-13T20:30:00.001+10:002019-08-13T20:30:41.327+10:00The Pompeo view<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Secretaries of State and Defense of the USA visited Australia recently. I wrote this short comment for <a href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-the-pompeo-view/" target="_blank">John Menadue's blog</a>, published 9 August 2019.<br />
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DENNIS ARGALL. The Pompeo view</h1>
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<span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <a href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-the-pompeo-view/" rel="bookmark" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #777777; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="7:03 AM"><span class="entry-date" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">9 August 2019</span></a></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">US Secretary of State Pompeo said a couple of things in Sydney recently that were wrong in fact. He articulated an absurd philosophy about foreign investment, unaware that he’d just accused China of thinking something similar. His utterances of high-minded principles in the Australia-US relationship and US strategic policy mask very dark realities.</em><span id="more-30307" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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Two statements in Sydney recently by US Secretary of State Pompeo need to be quoted and challenged.</div>
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First at an event hosted by the conservative Centre for Independent Studies:</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“T[O]M SWITZER:</strong> Does Washington still believe unequivocally that the ANZUS alliance obliges Canberra to America’s side in the event of a conflict. The ANZUS alliance, does that oblige us to Australia’s participation in any conflict?</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“MIKE POMPEO:</strong> Yeah, the ANZUZ [sic] alliance is unambiguous.” <a href="https://foreignminister.gov.au/transcripts/Pages/2019/mp_tr_190804.aspx" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://foreignminister.gov.au/transcripts/Pages/2019/mp_tr_190804.aspx</a></div>
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The treaty is not ambiguous, but it doesn’t say what he seems to think it says.</div>
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Article IV of the ANZUS Treaty says:</div>
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“Each Party recognizes that an armed attack in the Pacific Area on any of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes.</div>
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“Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall be immediately reported to the Security Council of the United Nations. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”</div>
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<a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/treaties/1952/2.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/treaties/1952/2.html</a></div>
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Any presumption of automatic obligation is wrong.</div>
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Second, in remarks to press at the AUSMIN meeting in Sydney, arising from comparison of the US with China:</div>
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“The United States invests nearly $170 billion in Australia each and every year. The United States is by far the largest investor here in Australia, accounting for more than 25 percent of all foreign direct investment.</div>
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“It’s easy sometimes to forget that the amount of private investment in the Indo-Pacific far surpasses the amount of government investment here. Judging how private enterprise has been the engine for driving the astounding prosperity in this region over several decades, we hope all countries will welcome more of it.” <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-michael-r-pompeo-and-secretary-of-defense-mark-esper-australian-minister-of-foreign-affairs-marise-payne-and-australian-minister-of-defense-linda-reynolds-at-a-press-availability/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-michael-r-pompeo-and-secretary-of-defense-mark-esper-australian-minister-of-foreign-affairs-marise-payne-and-australian-minister-of-defense-linda-reynolds-at-a-press-availability/</a></div>
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He’s entitled to his philosophy but the numbers are wrong. $170 billion is close to the total value of US direct investment in Australia (investments in which Australia has no share), but has no meaning in annual data. Annual growth has been $47bn and $33bn in the two years 2016-2018. <a href="https://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/investment-statistics/Pages/statistics-on-who-invests-in-australia.aspx" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/investment-statistics/Pages/statistics-on-who-invests-in-australia.aspx</a></div>
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But the philosophy that nations do better proportionally with the level of US investment may suit a Rotary speech in Kansas but is not reflective of any balanced judgement by the investment-receiving country. Though it’s close to the thinking of the United States Studies Centre at Sydney University.</div>
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<a href="https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/indispensable-economic-partners-the-us-australia-investment-relationship" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/indispensable-economic-partners-the-us-australia-investment-relationship</a></div>
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(Were any university organisation with China connections to publish a promotional paper like that it would of course be ridiculed.)</div>
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At the core of Pompeo’s perspective is this:</div>
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“Let me be clear: The United States is a Pacific nation. We care deeply about what happens here and we’re here to stay. And I want all Australians to know they can always rely on the United States of America. And just as we talk about Britain as a special relationship, we think of this as an unbreakable relationship. It’s grounded in our shared values of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.”</div>
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While that provides a framework for disparagement of others, the United States has a second to none record of intervention in democratic processes in other countries and support for repressive dictatorship. They are not alone, but they stand out in cloaking self-interest and violence in such sanctimonious language. Foreign policy based on threats of sanction or violence. Notably recently in Senator Rand Paul being authorised to offer the Iranian foreign minister a chat with the US president, with advice also that if he said no he’d be sanctioned (which he did, which he was). A situation in US domestic affairs too, of divided realities and sense of rectitude feeding to increasing violence; of electoral gerrymander; tricks to shape the membership of the Supreme Court, and tyrannical tweeting from a president who ignores law.</div>
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They now wish Australia to entangle with more military ventures in the Middle East. Thus far having no connection to the rule of law, our current entanglements lacking legal basis as did the invasion of Iraq in 2003, argued for with lies and based on nonsensical expectations. The 2003 Iraq war instantly turned a badly governed country into an ungoverned country, Iraq handed to Iran. Iran, now subject to threats, the only country to defeat Israel in war, via Hezbollah, 1982-2000 and 2006. Arguments from the US and UK for intervention reflect imperial dreaming. Former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has just published a book about Iran called “<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The English Job</em>” making use of a very old Iranian expression “when things go wrong it’s always an English job.” This <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Al Jazeera </em>article of 30 July contains a recent chronology and long-term perspective: <u style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://aje.io/aqsnk</u></div>
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As to Australian thinking about the Gulf, Defence Minister Reynolds told journalists at AUSMIN this, which belongs to the genre of explanations to five year olds of where babies come from, forever the standard for consultation in Australia:</div>
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“The request that the United States has made is a very serious one and it is a complex one. That’s why we are currently giving this request very serious consideration. We will ultimately, as we always do, decide what is in our own sovereign interests, and we certainly discussed this issue during our ministerial consultations. But again, no decision has yet been made.”</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dennis Argall worked in the Australian Departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence, worked in other areas of government and held posts as counsellor and acting minister in Washington and as ambassador to China.</em></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-82166136973546134002019-07-12T17:36:00.001+10:002019-07-12T17:39:09.401+10:00It’s not just about stomping on Iran<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This article from the Centre for Research on Globalisation, based in Montreal, discusses current US pressure on Iraq. In the context of history since the hapless invasion of Iraq, in 2003, in which Australia participated. I made the observation at the time that the invasion took a badly governed country and made it ungovernable. It is clear that Iraq has been able to restore some order, but little thanks to the US (or Australia). Few in Australia have of course sustained interest in Iraq and commitment of Australian forces now continuing in the Middle East has no clear legal basis though there is some minor sense of our tidying a mess of our own making, much as might a three year old. But I digress. This is worth reading.<br />
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<a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-declares-war-usas-covert-influence-iraq/5683333">Iran Declares War on the USA’s Covert Influence in Iraq</a><br />
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See also <a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/about-2">https://www.globalresearch.ca/about-2</a></div>
Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-4413408822262863872019-06-26T10:22:00.000+10:002019-06-26T10:22:10.843+10:00Regarding Hong Kong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've just made this comment in <a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-feelings-sour-towards-china-lowy-poll-119392?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20June%2026%202019%20-%201344312598&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20June%2026%202019%20-%201344312598+CID_045c1fbade0897afcb325f3377ba09ee&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Australians%20feelings%20sour%20towards%20China%20Lowy%20poll#" target="_blank">a discussion at </a><i><a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-feelings-sour-towards-china-lowy-poll-119392?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20June%2026%202019%20-%201344312598&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20June%2026%202019%20-%201344312598+CID_045c1fbade0897afcb325f3377ba09ee&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Australians%20feelings%20sour%20towards%20China%20Lowy%20poll#" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>, </i> in reply to someone noting the presence of many Christian in the demonstrations in Hong Kong.<br />
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Yes, you make a good point Cxxx.<br />
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<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-20/the-christians-behind-the-hong-kong-protests/11224766">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-20/the-christians-behind-the-hong-kong-protests/11224766</a><br />
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It seems the Christian issue has become interwoven, though not the sole or initiating issue... and I'm not aware of Christians from Hong Kong getting into trouble in China just for being Christian.<br />
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It's interesting that this democracy movement has emerged in Hong Kong given that Hong Kong has no prior history of such, for a long time a British colony acquired from China through thuggery. <br />
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There is a lot of focus on the chief executive, described as appointed by China. The electoral college for the appointment is very complex.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Hong_Kong_Chief_Executive_election">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Hong_Kong_Chief_Executive_election</a><br />
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I think it's been a major contributor that Carrie Lam took office with purely administrative background, out of the class of Hong Kong people who presume to rule, and has been shown to lack political skill. And yes, clearly acceptable to Beijing and of course, formally appointed by Beijing as chief executive of a region. I note, without wishing to stretch the comparison, that Australian prime ministers are appointed by the representative of a British monarch.<br />
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The reaction in Singapore is interesting. This commentary from a former editor of the [Singapore] Straits Times.<br />
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<a href="https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3015595/hong-kong-extradition-bill-no-singapore-living-fear-city-ripping">https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3015595/hong-kong-extradition-bill-no-singapore-living-fear-city-ripping</a><br />
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There is anger in Hong Kong at inequality, the disparity between rich and poor increases. I was aware from Hong Kong friends a decade ago that anyone over forty losing a job was unlikely to find another. This is a recent report.<br />
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<a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/2165872/why-wealth-gap-hong-kongs-disparity-between-rich-and-poor">https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/2165872/why-wealth-gap-hong-kongs-disparity-between-rich-and-poor</a><br />
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By and large there is less inequality in mainland China<br />
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<a href="https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-017-0640-9">https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-017-0640-9</a><br />
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even the worst case Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong, negligible market town before 1980, now population of 12 million.<br />
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So I think much of the uproar is about Hong Kong, and neglect of Hong Kong by a Hong Kong government running a huge budget surplus, responsible to a Chinese government claiming it will eliminate poverty by 2020.<br />
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There are some remarkable dissident voices in China<br />
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<a href="http://chinaheritage.net/journal/imminent-fears-immediate-hopes-a-beijing-jeremiad/">http://chinaheritage.net/journal/imminent-fears-immediate-hopes-a-beijing-jeremiad/</a><br />
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The biggest mistake we can make is to think of China as one great authoritarian blob.<br />
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<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rule-of-the-rigid-compromiser/">https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rule-of-the-rigid-compromiser/</a><br />
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-29404643514542030832019-06-22T10:10:00.000+10:002019-06-22T15:21:18.955+10:00How war between the US and Iran could unfold<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Shirvan, of <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnKziETDbHJtx78nIkfYug" target="_blank">Caspian Report</a> </i>, an independent writer in Baku, has just produced this credible projection of how war between the US and Iran might unfold and widen in the video essay below. It has certainly been my expectation, as written recently, that attacking Iran would simply not work. But Shirvan’s video essay puts flesh on how war would likely spread. It is difficult to understand how planners could contemplate opening the door to this deliberately or by inadvertance.<br />
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The essay draws attention to the 2002 American war game "Millennium Challenge" in which US forces wished (cost of war game $250m) to demonstrate latest technology. Unfortunately the Blue Force (US) was effectively destroyed in two days by Red Force (unspecified middle eastern) whose commander used old technology and surprise to avoid detection and achieve the sinking of an aircraft carrier and more. The games were stopped after those two days and the rules changed to ensure Blue victory. Real life isn't like that. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002" target="_blank">Information at <i>Wikipedia.</i></a><br />
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It is unfortunate that the Australian Government is silent on this when should be alert and outspoken. We simply need to make clear to the US and the Australian public that we will not join a war with Iran; indeed we should firmly discourage such a thing. It is clear from this forecast that the destabilisation begun with the Iraq war would be multiplied many times, oil supplies disrupted, the global economy set back... to name some of many costs. I note that the UK seems mumblingly supportive of the US, a classic path to war.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AccjEv2eVe0" width="560"></iframe>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho-VpXhhSD1cC2bBfNbAJjYYI97OTrv7H9u-N62ASC4rlP8z-AamLqUJjBfQfJyWU0rraknrXQhGTlXq_-SrrVWL6VjcFJbgvIN9b00JHRtVGEhrHOJYQBpVCfqJ4nh5s9KxTBfAKt3Sxs/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-22+at+10.08.14+am.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho-VpXhhSD1cC2bBfNbAJjYYI97OTrv7H9u-N62ASC4rlP8z-AamLqUJjBfQfJyWU0rraknrXQhGTlXq_-SrrVWL6VjcFJbgvIN9b00JHRtVGEhrHOJYQBpVCfqJ4nh5s9KxTBfAKt3Sxs/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-06-22+at+10.08.14+am.png" width="400" /></a>I received advance notice of this posting to YouTube because I am a 'patreon' of Shirvan's <i>Caspian Report</i>. An inexpensive way to encourage independent thinking. Please consider also doing so.</div>
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<a href="https://www.patreon.com/CaspianReport/posts">https://www.patreon.com/CaspianReport/posts</a></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-77279298167732503002019-06-21T14:26:00.001+10:002019-06-22T16:06:55.202+10:00Australia absents itself from the world<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This essay of mine first published in John Menadue's blog 21 June 2019.<br />
Also see these [<a href="https://johnmenadue.com/gay-alcorn-call-to-arms-how-can-australia-avoid-a-slow-and-painful-decline-the-guardian/" target="_blank">1</a>] [<a href="http://johnmenadue.com/j-bradford-delong-what-to-do-about-china-project-syndicate-5-6-2019/" target="_blank">2</a>], same day.<br />
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Photos and videos added here.<br />
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<h1 class="entry-title" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, "Nimbus Sans L", sans-serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
DENNIS ARGALL. Absenting Ourselves From the World.</h1>
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<span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <a href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-absenting-ourselves-from-the-world/" rel="bookmark" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #777777; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="7:01 AM"><span class="entry-date" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">21 June 2019</span></a></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is mainly about China, but more. We have excluded ourselves in many ways from the engines of modernity in Asia and more widely by our recalcitrance on so many issues and our unwillingness to engage with the new. We are not of such weight for others to care. We demonstrate an incapacity to maintain a progressive society in Australia. That fact and its consequences for our standing are the greatest threats to our national security. We need to be aware of and sensitive to large issues affecting China.</em></blockquote>
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Recent events in Hong Kong may have serious impact in China. The news will not fail to arrive throughout China. It is difficult to know what the consequences will be.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6MmC817I0nnrvSlnBAFQheHhbZKb4Lr9a6tQPYRIAgxLzSAo8Mpn5IswbNsHe5wPhKj1O3cPFKxfXiiqBNlMjB91tKsOE3qYvh6FRwX1CjBkNKQHVXQCvEYuY0hn2FqF2LJ7LHRK_Cti3/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+11.42.04+am.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6MmC817I0nnrvSlnBAFQheHhbZKb4Lr9a6tQPYRIAgxLzSAo8Mpn5IswbNsHe5wPhKj1O3cPFKxfXiiqBNlMjB91tKsOE3qYvh6FRwX1CjBkNKQHVXQCvEYuY0hn2FqF2LJ7LHRK_Cti3/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+11.42.04+am.png" width="248" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril" target="_blank">from wikipedia</a></i></td></tr>
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A break-up of the Chinese state would be dangerous for the world, destructive of peace, the environment and climate, destructive of the world economy. Many of those who speak ill of China these days seem to have attachment to fissiparous causes that would eat China from the edges or in social fabric. Some are caught in the disease of military competition. Some seem driven simply by psychological impulses, apprehensive of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril" target="_blank">Yellow Peril.</a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">A lot of interpretation of China and future China is projection by people from inside their heads, imagining China in their own form or that of other great powers, such as the US or Russia. This is naive and dangerous. It is also odd to consider the future in terms of a zero-sum game, a world in which there is no gain, just a win-loss between competitors.</span></div>
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There are lots of accessible facts which could illuminate the perspectives of the willing.</div>
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To begin, a simple comparison of Chinese life in the winter of 1978-9 with the winter of 2018-9— see these two videos.</div>
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—Democracy Wall 1978, also a glimpse of life in the streets in Beijing very much as we saw it back then, discussed in my previous essay at <a href="http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/06/tiananmen-in-context.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/06/tiananmen-in-context.html</a></div>
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<br />
—Xi Jinping’s New Year Address, 2018-9. To whatever extent one discounts such a presentation as government propaganda (like the Queen’s Speech) it’s impressive and reflective of what is officially labelled <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Xi Jinping Thought</em>. I am not and have never been an apologist for China; I am an advocate of looking and thinking, starting from facts.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcYnKn7stMrVJdjHfpIc5qGTJPG6l8ZULmG08CLTjq9GTRX33XCVrBBYYfezLr_7mpwqgRwxnGoSR2oirDay3qYb8a41OyyCWn2B3OFJR7NtLciyAnHO-m0HStdnuFF-MsT8mIwyokdaWr/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+12.04.30+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcYnKn7stMrVJdjHfpIc5qGTJPG6l8ZULmG08CLTjq9GTRX33XCVrBBYYfezLr_7mpwqgRwxnGoSR2oirDay3qYb8a41OyyCWn2B3OFJR7NtLciyAnHO-m0HStdnuFF-MsT8mIwyokdaWr/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+12.04.30+pm.png" width="320" /></a>Xi Jinping comes from a family notably progressive in perspective, his father Xi Zhongxun known for seeking political rather than military outcomes in the stabilisation of China’s west seventy years ago, purged first by Mao when Vice Premier in the early 1960s, important to the world for having pioneered China’s opening to the world in Guangdong and its Special Economic Zones in the early 1980s, and for having supported Hu Yaobang’s liberalism that led to Hu being purged by Deng in 1987 and the Tiananmen situation of 1989, Xi Senior purged then again. The family home invaded and smashed and a daughter murdered by Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution in1966, Xi Junior sent to the countryside and thereafter held back for a time as a ‘princeling’, a child of a former leader.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6SfwvowIWJeQIH7d0I2N6K1iyaN1vBGF-E5Z8rS6EQ5JZLF4u7954jigYnF-EkUH-X157mIYAiV8rpWmF1lfCaac4LkdDDVQFNXPqeh9__3FUUXIZEewti7kDWOvGAIrojZjxsKzVE8S0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+12.41.03+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6SfwvowIWJeQIH7d0I2N6K1iyaN1vBGF-E5Z8rS6EQ5JZLF4u7954jigYnF-EkUH-X157mIYAiV8rpWmF1lfCaac4LkdDDVQFNXPqeh9__3FUUXIZEewti7kDWOvGAIrojZjxsKzVE8S0/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+12.41.03+pm.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-18/china-president-meets-tassie-devils-during-hobart-visit/5898814" target="_blank">An interesting caption from the national broadcaster!</a></td></tr>
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It is useful to look back at President Xi’s 2014 visit to Australia. After addressing the Australian Parliament, Xi went to Tasmania, to complete having visited all Australian states. The <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hobart Mercury</em>’s banner headline read “Welcome Mr President” and at Constitution Dock a Chinese icebreaker, decked out in red bunting, was docked near a visiting Australian submarine. Mostly the hysterical shift reflects US perspectives and shoves and the internal momentum of Australian Defence Force integration into US operations and perhaps the Yellow Peril mind state, which has been with us throughout Australian history. I note that the countries of Southeast Asia have adopted more subtle approaches to the issues in the South China Sea which directly concern them.</div>
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Nothing comparable in recent Chinese history stands between the events of 1989 and those recently in Hong Kong. Beijing has created ill-will and fear in Hong Kong by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearances" target="_blank">kidnapping writers and publishers from Hong Kong</a>. That overshadows the relevance of an extradition arrangement to deal with major crime and corruption. (I suggest the changes at Sydney’s Barangaroo development, caused by decline in the big Chinese gamblers, can also be sheeted home to Xi’s anti-corruption machine.)</div>
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That there are at least some young people in China of kindred spirit to the young people in Hong Kong is evident in Geremie Barmé’s translation of a speech by a Chinese high school student, published recently:</div>
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<a href="http://chinaheritage.net/journal/mother-china-a-fatherland-for-two-millennia/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://chinaheritage.net/journal/mother-china-a-fatherland-for-two-millennia/</a></div>
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Look in that text for the ‘Three New Dreams’. The ideas exist, now as in the 1980s. They will not be allowed to well up in China. I note recent surveys indicating that an increasing number of Australians are fed up with politics and just want to get on with their lives. So also a high proportion of people in China.</div>
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The peril in contestations, in Hong Kong, the UK Conservative Party and too many other current turbulences is that the headline focus is on the swirl, rather than outcome. Whether the ruckus is generated by the leaders, the media, social media, or popular restlessness is not clear, they intertwine. But because of this state of affairs we are surrounded by great inefficiencies in the way of achieving economic decency, social equity and environmental survival.</div>
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From 1980, as mentioned in the essay to which I linked above, we sought to assist China create systems of government and regulation to enable transition to modernity. Those efforts in retrospect were modest pieces of string compared with the extraordinary tapestry of infrastructures being built under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). See this statement from the April 2019 leaders meeting:</div>
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<a href="https://www.beltandroad.news/2019/04/28/joint-communique-of-the-leaders/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.beltandroad.news/2019/04/28/joint-communique-of-the-leaders/</a></div>
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and the list of deliverables from that meeting:</div>
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<a href="https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1658767.shtml" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1658767.shtml</a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXnEB3ygnvoT_tiY4BC4bWS19IabaJs4iB2bk3sA37zSc_xjNzNTctDuCIhhB4R04c6ikKIWowgz2kwvZgDBGwv3suqyYtOcfvAFllCNj6425KmsyD7ypFI1Rqdus0FJ9tLN1F4G0K9iW0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+12.51.23+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: transparent; clear: right; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXnEB3ygnvoT_tiY4BC4bWS19IabaJs4iB2bk3sA37zSc_xjNzNTctDuCIhhB4R04c6ikKIWowgz2kwvZgDBGwv3suqyYtOcfvAFllCNj6425KmsyD7ypFI1Rqdus0FJ9tLN1F4G0K9iW0/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+12.51.23+pm.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">source <i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/The%20particulars%20extend%20to%20achieving%20sensible%20tax%20systems%20through%20a%20very%20large%20number%20of%20countries,%20of%20relevance%20nationally%20and%20in%20the%20facilitation%20of%20trade.%20Here%20is%20a%20commentary%20on%20that%20from%20the%20Philippines:" target="_blank">Manila Times</a></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif;">The particulars extend to achieving sensible tax systems through a very large number of countries, of relevance nationally and in the facilitation of trade. Here is a commentary on that from the Philippines:</span><br />
<a href="https://www.manilatimes.net/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-and-tax-administration/555292/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.manilatimes.net/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-and-tax-administration/555292/</a><br />
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and as primary source, here is the action plan agreed at a conference in Wuzhen, China, in May 2019.</div>
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<a href="http://www.chinatax.gov.cn/download/pdf/wuzhenactionplan.pdf" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.chinatax.gov.cn/download/pdf/wuzhenactionplan.pdf</a></div>
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This next is the conference statement… get used to the acronyms: BRITACOF, BRITACOM, BRITACEG.</div>
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<a href="http://www.chinatax.gov.cn/download/pdf/wuzhenstatement.pdf" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.chinatax.gov.cn/download/pdf/wuzhenstatement.pdf</a></div>
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There were Australian officials there.</div>
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And yet media and public discussion focuses simply on the assertion that China is seeking to push countries into a debt trap—without dignifying such discussion with comparison with US or European colonial entrapment of poorer countries, even though perhaps subconsciously, expectations of China are driven by those more familiar bastardries.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I wrote this essay the day<br />
the <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/Showcase/ANO" target="_blank">CSIRO published this sobering outlook paper</a></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjuwE6OGnjCSHPyVZYuzjzCn_kNXSninlM_JysLPcvWQHzZHqPklYOKJaYj4VnRGCNK_MKOamjohooar5Sn2Iocq595IpzUQgUYc3d0j9sF6TEAUvvjYnlaJd4vRTBPzY4NfHtLW1Hef0W/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+2.18.50+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="245" data-original-width="509" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjuwE6OGnjCSHPyVZYuzjzCn_kNXSninlM_JysLPcvWQHzZHqPklYOKJaYj4VnRGCNK_MKOamjohooar5Sn2Iocq595IpzUQgUYc3d0j9sF6TEAUvvjYnlaJd4vRTBPzY4NfHtLW1Hef0W/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-06-21+at+2.18.50+pm.png" width="320" /></a><br />
We have excluded ourselves in many ways from the engines of modernity in Asia and more widely by our recalcitrance on so many issues and our unwillingness to engage with the new. We are not of such weight for others to care. We demonstrate an incapacity to maintain a progressive society in Australia. That fact and its consequences for our standing are the greatest threats to our national security.</div>
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This commentary by Geremie Barmé</div>
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<a href="https://chinachannel.org/2018/04/27/zhengyou/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://chinachannel.org/2018/04/27/zhengyou/</a></div>
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on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s speech at Peking University in 2008 is a more extensive and eloquent discussion of my concern expressed previously that we should as friends be able to speak about things that are of concern; discordant notes in relations. But we have now taken ourselves away into a corner from which we yell: from friendship to a place without influence or basis for good engagement.</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I am indebted to Gavan McCormack for pointing me to Barmé’s website. I am indebted to Doug Townsend, former Australian Ambassador to Kazakhstan for information on BRITACOM etc, with which he is involved.</em></blockquote>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dennis Argall is a former Australian Ambassador to China who also worked in other areas of government and for the Australian parliament.</em></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-35344827983965188632019-06-13T10:07:00.000+10:002019-06-13T10:47:47.869+10:00Tiananmen in Context<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-tiananmen-in-context/" target="_blank">As published in John Menadue's blog </a>on 12 June 2019. Photos and videos added here.</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There has been feverish interest in the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen incident, in Australia with some focus on repression in China, fuelling antagonism towards China. In this essay I want to provide context that is lacking: in the evolution of economic reform and liberalism in China, in the evolution of Sino-Soviet relations and regional strategy and China’s united front with the US (and Australia) against Vietnam and the Soviet Union.</em></div>
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On the morning of Sunday 4 June 1989 I was woken early in Canberra by a request from the Sydney Morning Herald to write their editorial page background article on why this event was happening right then in Beijing, focused in Tiananmen Square. So I did, for the 5 June issue, setting out background of the enormous transformation under way in China, indebted for perspective to a comment made to me some days earlier by a middle level Chinese official, a friend from Beijing, trailing behind a senior visitor, buttonholing me to press upon me not to be complacent as in his view (which in the SMH I adopted as my own view) the leadership in Beijing did not have the capacity to comprehend or manage the situation.</div>
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On 5 June, in my Parliament House office as head of the research service, I received a call from Stephen FitzGerald, first Australian ambassador to the Peoples Republic of China, to discuss holding a memorial service. I said it must be in Parliament House and presided over by the Prime Minister and that it would be best if the approach came from him, not from me working in the building. And so we found ourselves seated behind Prime Minister Hawke at that extraordinary memorial event.</div>
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I offer that personal story to affirm my deep awareness of it all, on the day. But nothing happens just in a day, ever.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party<br />
and Bob Hawke, Australian Prime Minister<br />
in Western Australia, 1985, at the Channar site, <br />
where China's first overseas resources joint venture would be.<br />
<a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/true-father-of-our-minerals-miracle-20100528-wlkl.html" target="_blank">Source, <i>The Age.</i></a></td></tr>
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The upwelling of protest and demand for freedom in Beijing in the months leading to 4 June followed the death of Hu Yaobang, purged by Deng Xiaoping in 1987 from his post as General Secretary of the Communist Party because of his projects to advance political and creative liberalism. Hu Yaobang visited Australia in 1985, accompanied by the head of the party secretariat Hu Qili. It was my great privilege to spend quite a lot of time with the two Hus before during and after that visit.</div>
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Years before, the two Hus became known to some senior party members in Beijing as the <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">erhu</em> literally meaning ‘two hus’ but also the name of that two-stringed traditional Chinese instrument that can dominate any concert performance.</div>
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Before the crackdown, there was a meeting of heavyweight leaders on 25 May.</div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif; font-size: 16px;">Hu Qili attended that meeting and was alone or only one of two to vote against martial law, He was pushed into obscure work. Zhao Ziyang, who like Hu had made his first western country visit as Premier to Australia in 1983, had succeeded Hu as general secretary. Zhao had met with the protestors and pleaded for patience; he did not attend the 25 May meeting. He spent the rest of his days under house arrest. His memoirs <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Prisoner of the State </em>are important reading for understanding the times. See also the Wikipedia entries for these three leaders to get a sense of the scale of history and struggle.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><i>This from YouTube is Zhao Ziyang at 4.51am on 19 May, </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "bitstream charter" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><i>in Tiananmen Square, surrounded by and addressing students.</i></span></div>
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A Chinese vice minister said to me one night in 1984 as we endured a cultural performance together in Beijing that despite the battering days of the Cultural Revolution the very worst time was not then but after the death of Premier Zhou Enlai in January 1976, when leadership was uncertain and at risk of falling into the hands of the so called Gang of Four, drivers of the Cultural Revolution. We had come out of hell, he said, just for a few years…and here in front of us was very real prospect of falling back into it again. When Mao died in September 1976, the Gang of four were arrested and later tried.</div>
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Zhou had held the country together during and despite the Cultural Revolution. The death of this beloved leader, China’s ‘first son’, had been followed by an upsurge of popular feeling, quickly suppressed. A precursor to events in 1989.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCX2oBMlpLce0-FC8XquoqT497c9Hb5YzlSzgZxj3x_Yz0gFL8CTPzv-h3zZNuePik5ZvAkhycuRQ8LvHouuxQdLUITjkGMNJc9yxuVSiJ82AHn0ofvKvmBAAW4yT6UkG3M09DYq9NjLV3/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-13+at+10.13.33+am.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="262" data-original-width="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCX2oBMlpLce0-FC8XquoqT497c9Hb5YzlSzgZxj3x_Yz0gFL8CTPzv-h3zZNuePik5ZvAkhycuRQ8LvHouuxQdLUITjkGMNJc9yxuVSiJ82AHn0ofvKvmBAAW4yT6UkG3M09DYq9NjLV3/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-13+at+10.13.33+am.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Deng Xiaoping<br />
Source <i><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Deng-Xiaoping" target="_blank">Britannica</a></i></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #333333;">It was Deng Xiaoping who, secured from prison after the death of Mao, led the often-ruthless push for reform that followed and continues. I had in an annex to a 1980 cabinet submission that shaped the modern relationship with China expressed the view that Deng was the second most divisive figure in modern Chinese history, after Mao.</span></div>
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My time as ambassador in Beijing was cut short by illness not to be diagnosed properly for decades. Lots of visitors got sick in China in those days. On my last day in Beijing, August 1985, I had lunch with Hu Qili. Sitting beside him among a few others I said it seemed that he was making progress with organising his special party conference that I knew was to deal with difficult issues. In his impeccable English and with his wry humour he asked: “why would you think that?” Lamely, I said I thought I had read something in the paper, whereupon he said with a grin, for all the table to hear: “Oh well, I suppose you could say I’m making as much progress as would be possible under the leadership of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.”</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.chinatoday.com/who/h/hu.qili.htm" target="_blank">Source, <i>China Today</i></a></td></tr>
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Emboldened, I ventured to compare him with Gorbachev, with this observation: “A year ago with the USSR stuck and China proceeding with reform, the question for any ambassador here was what would Sino-Soviet relations be like in ten years. But now China has its young leader and the Soviet Union also has its young leader and new questions arise as both pursue reform policies.” I had expected a gentle push-off at my comparison but no, he said this. “Your question is important. It is very important for the world that Gorbachev succeed. But I am concerned that whereas I have support from senior leaders, I am not sure whether Gorbachev has such support”.</div>
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Not quite as events would unfold.</div>
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That gives you a sense of the times. We were one evening Hu Yaobang’s guests at dinner in Mao’s sumptuous former rooms, a thank you for hospitality in Australia. The Hus were endeavouring to process and work out what to do, in the wake of an unprecedented outburst of English-style soccer hooliganism at the Beijing stadium the night before. Their only thoughts were in the direction of trying to understand and manage, none of the style of the Australian state premier riding with President Johnson in motorcade in Sydney, confronted by demonstrators, allegedly shouted “run over the bastards!” in 1966. Every day and evening in Beijing, dealing with senior people discussing very complex issues positively; to wake in the morning to the Radio Australia news which I described as mostly bottom-pimple comparing, feuding and unconstructive.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gorbachev and Deng, Beijing May 1989<br />
<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/04/i-do-not-want-red-square-to-look-like-tiananmen-square/" target="_blank">Source, <i>Foreign Policy</i></a></td></tr>
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Gorbachev had launched two programs, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">glasnost</em> meaning political and cultural liberalism and <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">perestroika</em>, economic reform. Deng was in charge of economic reform in China, as supreme leader above party and state structures, with Zhao as premier, he who pioneered the ‘responsibility system’ in agriculture in Sichuan in 1978, a shift from every brick, chook and egg belonging to the state and the peasant world of 900 million eating from the iron rice bowl, to a system where the farmer met a quota for the state and everything else he produced was private property. Hu Yaobang as party general secretary sought to command a program of liberalisation, or as the Hus were to style it in 1986, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sankuan</em>, the party’s three [<i style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">san</i>] principles for ideological-cultural affairs, development of “generosity, tolerance and relaxation.” [see an explanation of how this evolved in a document I have pasted here:<br />
<a href="http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/06/political-thought-in-china.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/06/political-thought-in-china.html</a><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> ]</span></div>
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As Hu had experienced in 1984 at a conference of writers and artists, and as Zhao Ziyang was to experience at Tiananmen, the lively response from the proponents of liberty to this <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sankuan</em> was a chorus of don’t be absurd, you are not speaking of liberty, you are speaking of lengthening our chains. You have no right to define and limit liberty. As encountered in other societies, idealists grasping defeat from the jaws of victory by fervent adherence to rigid principle. On the other side of the situation, in 1986 as in 1989, dinosaurs in the party did not want to be disadvantaged by any favours to the liberal crowd and brought their venerable and disgruntled case against Hu to Deng, who removed Hu from office in 1987.</div>
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In the land of the hardnosed, especially in Washington, Hu was just Deng’s puppet anyway and Deng was the one to open the economy and deliver business opportunity. This perspective, while commonplace in uglier dynamics of international relations ignored the real volatilities in China, the rising urban ambitions as the economy rose but rose more slowly than in the countryside. Historical family aspiration for the “two things that go round and the one that stands up” (sewing machine, bicycle, transistor radio) were no longer enough. From around 1984, children had been swung higher, walking with parents. The sea of uniform blue and green Mao jackets were modified by coloured socks. Couples cuddled on the Bund, by the river in Shanghai, in the evening. Young people asked to practice English they had learned on the radio. The <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">China Daily</em>, first English language paper, whose editors had trained and whose first dummy issue had been printed at <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Age </em>in Melbourne, with scepticism printed material to support Radio Australia language programs; sold instantly. Radio Australia conducted calligraphy contests, one for China, one for Japan. 200 entries arrived in Melbourne from Japan. Ten thousand from China, posted airmail. An artist in residence at the ACTU knew that modern art would unfold much more vigorously in China than Japan. He dreamed of murals on the Beijing subway, but we never got to that. A society coming alive. I said to a senior person, a friend that I would believe China safe, the people unbruised, when the apples in the Friendship Store were not bruised, which they always seemed to be. Care, respect, safety, society, culture, warmth, confidence.<br />
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Deng had form as ruthless with force against party ructions in the mid-1970s. In 1978-79 he first encouraging the Democracy Wall movement <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Wall" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Wall</a> to achieve leverage among his party opponents: to get to Washington, get relations with the US normalised (the US embassy from Taipei to Beijing), get a united front with the US (and Australia) against Vietnam and the USSR… then to smash the Democracy Wall movement and launch a small invasion of Vietnam.<br />
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In early 1989, Deng and others in the leadership were confronted by unmanageable pressures created by the frustration of social demand, gagged with the purge of Hu Yaobang—old leaders, with their fibres and fears shaped by other great upheavals, times of war and destruction, including the struggle with the Gang of Four mentioned above.</div>
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Deng had been working to normalise relations with Moscow but that was now running in difficult directions. They were aghast at what Gorbachev had done. Gorbachev was coming to Beijing in mid-May 1989. Gorbachev, whose country was obviously about to fall apart. Gorbachev: whose empire in Eastern Europe was about to evaporate. Gorbachev: who was about to lose his job. Gorbachev who thus represented everything that China historically and now fears most, disintegration of a giant and diverse nation… and everything dinosaur party leaders fear: disemployment, disentitlement and retribution.</div>
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But above all else, the states of affairs in other big places (the US, USSR, India, Japan, etc.) provided no leads, no pointers; no models for running a giant country through dramatic change. China was on its own and at grave risk.</div>
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Gorbachev could not be given the normal welcoming ceremony in Tiananmen Square, occupied by demonstrators. But he did go out to meet the demonstrators. Then he went home, to lose job and country in half a year. Then three US warships made a friendly visit to Shanghai and departed. Then the bunch of most powerful in the party met on 25 May, declared martial law and set in train what was to happen on 4 June.</div>
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Our Cabinet-approved policy framework for relations with China from 1980, when China’s reforms had begun, was to assist China to build institutions to establish civil society and responsible government. Lots of practical things were done. But…it is in the nature of Australian political leaders that they do not like difficult issues on the table in discussions with the mighty. The elephant in the room was that warm public opinion in Australia would, as relations became more complex, depend upon people-to-people relations and evaluations and especially how Australians saw the rights of people in China. My suggestions that this be gently flagged were not entertained.</div>
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At that time Australians were per capita the most numerous visitors to China. There was warmth of substance.</div>
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Our desire was to build a relationship valued by whatever prospective government in China. But then, just as Chinese leaders could not cope with the 1989 rebellion, so we could not, government-to-government, cope with the aftermath. Except that when Howard became prime minister all the broad scope of relations launched by Fraser in 1980 disappeared from view in preoccupation with the money, the waterfall of income from resources sales to China, thrown largely into tax breaks whereas it could have modernised infrastructure. From which time the absurd mantra: we have a great ally over there, a great trading partner over here. How inadequate and disrespectful.</div>
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In the absence of Australian leaders building wider understanding of China and the importance of our relationship with China, and in the absence of leaders articulating an independent Australian view of the world, we arrive now at a point where public opinion seems driven by ancient hostilities and shallow current affairs reports.</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Before appointment as Australia’s ambassador to China in 1984, Dennis Argall was from 1970 variously, among other jobs, China desk officer, head of the China and Korea Section, head of the North Asia Branch and acting head of the North and South Asia Division of Foreign Affairs.</em></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-731513348638786472019-06-06T13:15:00.003+10:002019-06-06T13:18:20.521+10:00Political thought in China<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Right in the middle of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IVS7S84" target="_blank">this astonishing book</a><br />
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...is this entry, at pages 366-7.<br />
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In taking the liberty of reproducing this entry I hope some readers will be encouraged to buy the book.<br />
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I am currently writing an essay in which describing the events here as the most important pivot point in the history of the Peoples Republic of China. This blog entry thus a footnote.<br />
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-26395033956064278692019-06-05T16:24:00.003+10:002019-06-05T16:24:53.251+10:00A Palestinian teacher's advice on peace and greening the planet.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-26428625827316618832019-06-04T13:36:00.000+10:002019-06-04T13:36:26.687+10:00Thinking through the choppy issues in trade and strategic threat.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As published today in <a href="http://johnmenadue.com/denniss-argall-thinking-through-the-choppy-issues-in-trade-and-strategic-threat/" target="_blank">John Menadue's blog</a>.<br />
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The public discussion of trade war and security issues is too simplistic. Trump’s bilateral adventures in liking and bullying will mean discussion of structural changes in regional affairs to which Australia will not be party. Trump is not a passing phenomenon. We cannot say as some are saying “our alliance is with the US, not Trump”.</em><span id="more-28510" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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I am sitting at a computer attached to the internet via two things. A modem of ordinary quality, provided by my ISP, a Chinese brand, with 5G connectivity to the computer. Beyond the modem is the National Broadband Network, large parts of which are made in China. I suspect that those Chinese bits are not the elements of the NBN that fail us often here. I can’t see the strategic case against Huawei without mention of such inconvenient details.</div>
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I read the tabloid-stirring news of the US-China trade war. The Deal Artist, among changes and shocks in terms on offer, seeks to hit China by killing the world’s leading communications technology company, Huawei. Equally involved is Apple, whose products dreamt up in California are manufactured in China. There are other companies in similar situation, with Google now forced to cut off use of its software use in Chinese products.</div>
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But it’s not a simple bilateral matter.</div>
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According to a report released last year by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) titled, “A New Smartphone for Every Fifth Person on Earth: Quantifying the New Tech Cycle,” which analyzed the global smartphone supply chain, “the supply chain has evolved over the last few years and become more complex,” consisting of “large shipments [of intermediate goods] from several Asian countries to China, where final manufacturing and assembly of most smartphones takes place. [. . .] The main contributors to this complex supply chain were Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan Province of China.”</blockquote>
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<a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/894160.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/894160.html</a></div>
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This network of mutual reliance is a major element in the rise of East Asia. With the movement of components goes language. Businesses communicate with each other. Governments nod and bind together. The ways to deal with the simple-minded US bash of China will be discussed and resolved by very smart people in this region. What languages they use, what they resolve to do, will reshape the world. Australia is not part of that evolving world.</div>
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On this ranking of international competitiveness</div>
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<a href="https://www.imd.org/contentassets/6b85960f0d1b42a0a07ba59c49e828fb/one-year-change-vertical.pdf" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.imd.org/contentassets/6b85960f0d1b42a0a07ba59c49e828fb/one-year-change-vertical.pdf</a></div>
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Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, China, rank ahead of Australia. We delude ourselves in sense of superiority.</div>
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President Trump has been in Japan recently and, cloaked slightly in macho entertainments, has given Prime Minister Abe a roughing up. Gavan McCormack has written recently about the curious instabilities in Japan, and Abe’s circumstance.</div>
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<a href="https://transnationalasia.rice.edu/journal/Volume-2/Issue-1/Number-4" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://transnationalasia.rice.edu/journal/Volume-2/Issue-1/Number-4</a></div>
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In my view Abe’s obsequious approach to the US reflects his awareness that Japan’s economy has not recovered from its last trade war with the United States in the 1980s. The next trade war with the US will likely take down Abe and more. Trump gracelessly disagrees with Abe on North Korea as they stand together and patronisingly says he will talk to Kim Jong-un about allowing an Abe-Kim meeting. He gives this Prime Minister his approval to talk to Iran, a task, in representing the US, likely to be as successful as Menzies’ excited desire to talk to Egyptian President Nasser and tell him not to take the Suez Canal in 1956. Though Japan has been assiduous in its pursuit of good relations with the oil producers since the 1973 oil shock, that represents how Japan could be wedged away from the US, not an asset in speaking somehow for the US.</div>
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To fend off the next US economic shocks for Japan for a bit, Abe ordered another 105 F35 aircraft. An aircraft of which Wikipedia at today’s date says:</div>
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As the largest and most expensive military program ever, the F-35 became the subject of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_development#Concerns_over_performance_and_safety" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">much scrutiny and criticism</a> in the U.S. and in other countries. In 2013 and 2014, critics argued that the plane was “plagued with design flaws”, with many blaming the procurement process in which Lockheed was allowed “to design, test, and produce the F-35 all at the same time,” instead of identifying and fixing “defects before firing up its production line”.By 2014, the program was “$163 billion over budget [and] seven years behind schedule.” Critics also contend that the program’s high <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sunk costs</a> and political momentum make it “too big to kill”.</blockquote>
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Aircraft of this type are enthusiastically sought by air forces because others might have similar and because of the general enthusiasms that infect air forces. Of course a Japanese purchase like this needs to be seen in the context of Japan’s large foreign reserves and negligible cost of money in Japan.</div>
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Big tech items, military and civil, are central to the approach of the US to stem the tide of declining competitiveness. The Boeing 737MAX built in haste with accountant imperatives</div>
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html</a></div>
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has (yet to be measured) negative consequences for the US, political and financial. There are 96 MAX aircraft grounded in China and Chinese airlines will seek compensation for this loss. As will others.</div>
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We have recently been witness to an alleged security alert in the Persian Gulf. With suggestions that Iran must be responsible for non-critical damage to several oil ships not shown to journalists and drone attacks from places unknown on pumping stations in Saudi Arabia causing slight damage. In response to this US naval forces in the Gulf have been expanded, to a total strength there much greater than the rest of NATO could assemble anywhere. There is ambiguity in threats by the US towards Iran. It seems to me that the major achievement of this American deployment against a declared threat has been Presidential approval of arms sales that would probably not be approved by Congress. I find my suspicion has been articulated already by <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Intercept.</em></div>
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<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/24/us-saudi-arabia-arms-sales/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://theintercept.com/2019/05/24/us-saudi-arabia-arms-sales/</a></div>
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There continues to be discussion as to whether we should take sides with either China or the US. I wrote recently about how the choice is about how to see the world.</div>
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<a href="http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-australian-strategic-posture-from-here-forward/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-australian-strategic-posture-from-here-forward/</a></div>
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But war commitment too often arises from inadvertence and unexpected foci of irritation inflaming public opinion and policy: from Sarajevo 1914, to the Gulf of Tonkin 1964, excuse for widening US commitment in Vietnam, to the minor event near the Gulf of Tonkin in 2019 involving the Australian navy.</div>
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<a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australian-pilots-hit-with-lasers-during-indo-pacific-exercise/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australian-pilots-hit-with-lasers-during-indo-pacific-exercise/</a></div>
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Menzies said in 1939 that as Britain was at war with Germany, so was Australia. We live still on such a slope of easy commitment. At what level are alternatives discussed and by what strategic judgement are we engaged in Indo-Pacific exercises aimed at China, far from Australia, far from the US? Where is the debate?</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dennis Argall’s career included work in Foreign Affairs and Defence departments and overseas postings including Washington and as Ambassador to China.</em></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-11227866405123249802019-05-28T21:47:00.000+10:002019-05-28T21:47:27.729+10:00on the need for more thought about Australian strategic policy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-australian-strategic-posture-from-here-forward/" target="_blank">This was published on John Menadue's blog</a> on 28 May 2019</span></span><br />
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DENNIS ARGALL: Australian strategic posture from here forward</h1>
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<span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Posted on</span> <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-australian-strategic-posture-from-here-forward/" rel="bookmark" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #777777; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="6:13 AM"><span class="entry-date" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">28 May 2019</span></a></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is no sign of political enthusiasm to grasp the need for coherent national strategy, but basic principles need to be put in place and three particulars need urgent attention.</em><span id="more-28225" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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Australia’s international strategy has somehow slipped to mean, in political and public minds, military strategy. This is wrong and needs to be corrected. It should be central to Australian strategy that we seek war avoidance and pursuit of Australian interests by non-military means. This should be obvious but it’s not how things stand. Resort to the use of force needs to be put back in its place as an instrument of policy, bearing in mind Clausewitz’s admonition that statesmen need to be aware that this instrument of policy, having been embarked upon, tends to drive out policy and pursue its own ends. The question must remain “what are we trying to do here, what do we need?” rather than “what will we do with these submarines that will be irrelevant to security before they slide into the water?” (substitute aircraft, other weapon systems and the overall comprehensive integration of Australian defence forces into interoperability with US forces.) Which is the brain, which is the tail of this dog?</div>
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I should perhaps stop there. If focus goes towards that kind of thinking all else should fall into place.</div>
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But there are three urgent needs.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1: The United States Government needs to be told clearly that Australia will not go to war with Iran.</strong> One needs to say such things while they are hypothetical. Leaving aside arguing this way and that on issues, such a war would not work. Some basics:</div>
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Iran area 1.6 million square kilometers. Just a bit less than the combined land area of the UK 240,000, France 640,000, Germany 357,000 and Spain 506,000.</div>
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Iran culturally complex. They already had very complex societies and governance, agriculture, industry and defence capacity long before the brave English King Richard the Lionheart paid to use the flag of St George of Genoa to sail safely along the scary Mediterranean to whack Muslims. To go to war now with Iran, leaving out of the equation the use of nuclear weapons, would be like the old joke about Russia attacking China: “on day 1 the Russians advanced and took a million prisoners; on days two and three they did the same again… and on day four they surrendered.” Ludicrous, foolish to contemplate…but inasmuch as Bolton dreams about it, we need to say “no, not us, not this time” even before thinking through the Iran <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">issues</em> which do not compel to violence. It is a curious situation to have Trump as best hope against madness.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2: US and China.</strong> Interesting that while Jeff Bezos who made Amazon owns the Washington Post, Jack Ma, his China equivalent, who established Alibaba, now owns the <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">South China Morning Post</em> in Hong Kong. A better paper since Murdoch gave it up.</div>
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On 21 May 2019 the SCMP gave substantial coverage to President Xi Jinping’s speech commemorating the Long March, in which for a year, in 1934-35, the Chinese Communist Party walked away from conflict to survival and a future.</div>
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<a href="https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3011186/xi-jinping-calls-new-long-march-dramatic-sign-china-preparing" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3011186/xi-jinping-calls-new-long-march-dramatic-sign-china-preparing</a></div>
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A Long March in which Bob Hawke’s great friend. General Secretary Hu Yaobang, was once left on the battlefield triaged to die, and on another occasion was sentenced to death — Hu, whose purging and later death in 1989 precipitated the popular push for freedom in Tiananmen Square, after the crushing of which Hawke wept at a service in Parliament House in Canberra and granted residence to a host of Chinese in Australia at that time, the second wave of Chinese to shape Australia. I am old enough to have seen the anti-Chinese yellow peril advertising by conservatives in the 1950s, wise enough to recognise the old-as-Australia hysterical nonsense in the tide of anti-Chinese sentiment being whipped up now in Australia. We have to get back to the values in the Australia-China relationship as they were before they vanished under money and thoughtlessness in the Howard years. We don’t have to agree with China on everything, <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">just as we should not have to agree with the US on everything. </em> The mark of a valuable country, a valuable friend, is possession of clear mind, with confidence and ability to express views that are fair, clear and directed at positive outcomes. Views that add, not just mimic. A vice foreign minister in Beijing, one night as we politely endured a long cultural event together in 1985, said: “we have always appreciated the way you have dealt with difficult issues. You have made Australia’s interests clear and Australia’s views are seen by us in that light <em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and unlike the United States Australia has dealt with issues calmly, unlike our situation with the United States, where issues too often are inflamed and insoluble.</em></div>
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We tell, or we should tell, our children such principles. Easy. Can we get back to that sort of practical decency. Back from in the immaturity of social media and the general rubbish of much mainstream news in Australia about the region, our attention dragged to saucy margins. Can we focus on the fact that China’s population is 56 times greater than Australia’s population; that China has land borders with fourteen other countries; that the fifty five ethnic minority populations in China number around 120 million, about five Australias. Imagine our border security chiefs dealing with all that!</div>
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China is positioning itself for likely failure of sensible negotiation with the Trump Administration. Xi Jinping has called on China to undertake another Long March. We do not know to what extent China may need to discard its western financial assets. China holds over a trillion dollars in US Treasury Notes. The prospect is not of flamboyant shedding of such assets, but we should expect China to continue as now to pick apart dependence on the dollar in international finance. There is a measure of hysteria about the BRI, China’s Belt and Road Initiative. As noted above China is a continental state, with borders with fourteen other countries and long traditions and modern practical advantages in rail and other ground connection with the world. White globalism has a history of talking down to China. China now expects others to understand its five principles of peaceful coexistence. This is a useful little paper from Columbia University on that.</div>
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<a href="http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_forpol_principles.htm" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_forpol_principles.htm</a></div>
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Contrast with the dominant meme in US strategic thinking, as first articulated by Alfred Thayer Mahan, first commandant of the US Naval War College. Thousands of metres of writing and doctrine-building about that but at its core, the idea that there can only be one dominant navy, one dominant power. As articulated not least by former president Clinton to the 2012 Democratic Party nominating convention: “We can and we will be great again.” That’s a dream, a problem-building dream, not a basis for strategy that works unless for example you really just want to be National Security Advisor to the President and have a big horse.</div>
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There is a big clash between how China and the US see the world. We need to be focused on defining Australian interests and the weight we give to negotiation and dispute resolution on the one hand and violence on the other. In a letter to then Foreign Minister Downer in 2003, I wrote:</div>
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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.</blockquote>
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I also said then that</div>
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I am … of the view that since September 2001 we have been watching events and strategic responses unfolding as at the outbreak of war in 1914:<ul style="background: transparent; border: 0px; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 24px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Delusions of moral rectitude.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Defence of imperial status quo.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing but narrow military options.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Resort to alliances, hostility to thought.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Vilification of the enemy, climate of fear and promotion of paranoia.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Simplistic notions of victory, expectations of speedy end.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Failure to address real wider issues.</li>
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<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Enveloping sea of violence.</li>
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Alex didn’t reply. The problems still swell. We are so stuck that we have lost track of how permissible vocabulary and attitude have shrunk since 2001 as also we fail to see that the diverse horrors around the planet as they proliferate are directly comparable to the out-of-control mental frameworks and eruptions of WW1. As a nation we shut up fifteen years ago, as told to do. But the wrongs against which people spoke in 2003 are there still and are larger, smothered though they may be by downloadable pap projectable on finer and finer TV screens, far from reality.</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3: Indonesia</strong></div>
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Somehow we have to have a brain-reset about Indonesia. Away from cheap holidays to understanding that this country next door with ten times Australia’s population has a GINI coefficient (measure of inequality) not far from Australia’s. Its GDP will very soon pass Australia’s. Its affluent consumer class will soon be eight times Australia’s population. Had Indonesia at any time pursued adventurist power projection policies like Australia’s we would have fainted long ago and gone home to mamma. It is amazing that sensible nearby countries dealing with huge problems in development have continued to take seriously almost all Australian leaders, or at least receive them politely. If we cannot advance in prosperity with Indonesia then we will as a medical professional suggested to me some time ago, be the white trash of Asia. Many of us in the foreign service from the 1950s and 1960s, when national perspectives were too often disrespectful and harmful sought to advance Australian interests in the world positively, avoiding the manner and style of Apartheid era South Africa in arrogance and ignorance. We have to make up for lost time.</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dennis Argall’s career in public service was cut short by illness. For a time he was head of the parliament’s research service, before that in domestic, defence and foreign affairs departments and overseas postings including as Counselor and Acting Minister in Washington and as Ambassador to China.</em></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-12730790041029019712019-05-28T21:41:00.001+10:002019-05-28T21:48:20.610+10:00lessons for the future for the Australian Labor Party<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-lessons-and-thoughts-for-labors-future/" target="_blank">This was published on John Menadue's blog,</a> having been written on 19 May 2019, the day after national elections delivered an unexpected and severe loss for the Australian Labor Party.<br />
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DENNIS ARGALL. Lessons and thoughts for Labor’s future</h1>
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<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There is a lot of emotion in the wake of disaster for Labor in the federal elections on 18 May 2019. There will be forensic examinations and recriminations. There is good prospect of a Labor Government after the next elections… if…</em></div>
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In retrospect the massive plate of reforms on offer from Labor was too big. Not just because it was a big target for Morrison to slander requiring a reverberation of detailed responses, but also because people just don’t cope with a lot of change and new ideas at once. That should have been a lesson from Whitlam, whose fall derived to a significant degree from his creation of visions, plans, programs creating whirlwinds and vortices. There should have been a lesson there from Hawke, who in success nearly always had just three points or three objectives and often enough did not get to the third.</div>
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It did not help that Keating, making points of importance about China and the state of China policy and perception in Australia, did not remember that his own electoral failure was in good part contributed to by his love of <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ad hominem</em> excess. Which obliged Shorten to rebut what Keating said, placing Shorten in a potential difficult situation when in government. It was not Keating’s election.</div>
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There was a problem for the supporters in the campaign, at least in NSW, in that an online team in the NSW Labor office was allowed for a time (as throughout the state election in March) to write frequently, impolitely and less than coherently with money demands. Apparatchiks are to be invisible and unheard; and should be polite. Mercifully the leaders took over the message and wrote intelligently and informatively.</div>
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There will be much mulled over within Labor. A leader needs to be appointed without rancour and a shadow ministry needs to be a sensible and orderly force. As experience of being in government retreats, potential for disorder grows. It will be important for the new caucus to be orderly and disciplined. Review and refocus will take time. The team must not be baited and tempted by the 24 hour news cycle. Let the Morrison ‘team’ be embroiled in that.</div>
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Morrison shares some qualities with Trump, but he does not possess a tyrannical capacity to sack people right and left. Carry this thought into the problems governing in minority, with cross bench people some of whom could eat Morrison for breakfast when Morrison has more to do than bluster. First also, there is a coalition agreement to renegotiate.</div>
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I hope that the nation may realise that they did something less than best. A disciplined Labor caucus will surely have more sense than to suggest that Morrison supporters have been a ‘basket of deplorables’, but it will be generally important to leave it to people to review and rue. In 75 years I have come to realise that I have rarely met anyone who thought his or her opinion was wrong. People won’t be badgered not least because they won (Bob Brown may now understand this).</div>
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In its sea of policy papers, the Labor party lost identity with community at large, despite opposite intentions. Ours is a many-ways-divided nation. Finding a coherent package of policies going forward is difficult, but there will need to something better than rubbery mumble on the hard stuff.</div>
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We can review the calamitous issues in this very recent election, but that has to be put behind; the next war will be different.</div>
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As a particular point, there was absent from this election any show of statesmanship and leadership on international issues. Despite dogmas to the contrary, it seems to me that major elections that elect important governments in Australia have had international vision and inspiring leadership woven into them. That was at the core of our period as a positive multicultural society, admired in many places including China. Who would regards us now as an exemplary civil society?</div>
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Try to run a better parliament. The adversarial rowdiness is at the core of public disdain and of course is contributory to adversarial rowdiness and violence in society. With Morrison willing to spout irrelevance and distortion, it’s not easy, but standards are essential to be seen as a decent alternative.</div>
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There is real possibility, given the velocity of everything these days, that Labor could form government after the next elections. But Labor must go steadily and clearly and must look like a government in brief exile.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dennis Argall’s career covered domestic departments and foreign service, overseas postings including Washington and as ambassador to China. After the disastrous (for Labor) 1977 elections, Dennis returned from Washington to head the office of the new deputy leader of the Labor Party, Lionel Bowen, who later became Deputy Prime Minister to Hawke.</em></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-23339352034974810652019-05-25T16:02:00.001+10:002019-05-25T16:21:13.308+10:00Shirvan on the geopolitics of the Cold War.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am impressed by the analyses of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnKziETDbHJtx78nIkfYug" target="_blank">Shirvan, the Azeri author of the <i>Caspian Report</i> </a>at YouTube. He writes with independent mind from an unusual perspective, drawing on academic resources. I am alert and watchful for manipulative writing on the web. His work seems genuinely independent. He has written now a paper and oral presentation on the geopolitics of the Cold War, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k5T_k4AuoY&t=264s" target="_blank">to be found here</a>. I commend it.<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k5T_k4AuoY&t=264s" target="_blank"><br /></a>
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<span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k5T_k4AuoY&t=264s" target="_blank"><img alt="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k5T_k4AuoY&t=264s" border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="1063" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBNeYx-aMatjq1J0FLRQxRXoTNLQuejdKH0jWuFt8r1OdWwsrLXH8bbA5LfLb8XlYIAU_bvcymqLKwWQzpUaa8LXgYdofGfskpquHybO3ngPhRyAHi__WjqWeLSZLTzYynGYih8i8qFuWK/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-05-25+at+3.51.59+pm.png" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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I added a comment, which I copy here:<br />
<div class="style-scope ytd-comment-renderer" id="main" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: black; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex: 1 1 1e-09px; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-comment-renderer" id="content-text" slot="content" split-lines="" style="--yt-endpoint-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); --yt-endpoint-hover-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); --yt-endpoint-visited-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); color: var(--ytd-comment-text-color); font-weight: 400; line-height: 2rem; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thank you Shirvan for this elegant report. My background in Australia more in the practical dimensions of the cold war from a western allied perspective. Of the theorists you mention, Mahan clearly the most influential in the US and thus of critical significance; the era of American dominance itself a Mahanian phenomenon. Mahan's vision easier seen from US-Australian oceanic perspective than mid continental Caspian. </yt-formatted-string><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-comment-renderer" id="content-text" slot="content" split-lines="" style="--yt-endpoint-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); --yt-endpoint-hover-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); --yt-endpoint-visited-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); color: var(--ytd-comment-text-color); font-weight: 400; line-height: 2rem; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the Cold War to 1991 there was tension between concepts of strategic balance on the one hand and on the other the persistent need for force commanders to have forces that would not balance but conquer. In practice balance does not apply to naval thinking preoccupied with staying afloat not sinking. So there was public notion of balance but planning intent for example to eliminate Soviet naval forces in the Pacific in a few hours in a central war. The US doctrine presented the third leg of the nuclear triad, the underwater submarine missile force, undetected, as fundamental to war avoidance because it could reply to any first strike from Moscow with huge prompt megadeaths, from underwater. But in fact the Soviet missile submarines were granted no such status as safe underwater, being monitored by aircraft with dropped sonars, moment to moment, with no capacity to survive. The highly entertaining movie "The Hunt for Red October" muddles all this. </yt-formatted-string><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-comment-renderer" id="content-text" slot="content" split-lines="" style="--yt-endpoint-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); --yt-endpoint-hover-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); --yt-endpoint-visited-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); color: var(--ytd-comment-text-color); font-weight: 400; line-height: 2rem; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the post 1991 era, the notional and fabled US dominance has meant Mahan realised and applied everywhere. Except that it doesn't work. The tendency in the cold war years for big minds, from Kissinger to Brzezinski to disregard local reality and run puppet wars without need to understand reality, led later, with sense of victory in the cold war, into the enveloping disasters and widening ruin of projected force undertaken without understanding governance, the readiness to turn badly run countries into ungovernable spaces. And in democracies, the inability of leaders so say "we were wrong".</yt-formatted-string><yt-formatted-string class="style-scope ytd-comment-renderer" id="content-text" slot="content" split-lines="" style="--yt-endpoint-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); --yt-endpoint-hover-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); --yt-endpoint-visited-color: var(--yt-spec-call-to-action); color: var(--ytd-comment-text-color); font-weight: 400; line-height: 2rem; white-space: pre-wrap;">So we come through to the present where mahanic fantasies of superior capability, uninhibited power projection, destruction without consequence, Bolton certainty place us in far more jeopardy than did the Cold War... though I did not know life in Azerbaijan in the 1970-80s. In naval thought it's straightforward. You go to the bottom or stay on top. Woven among peoples in a diverse and alive world none of this makes sense. Something I wrote recently mentioning Mahan is out there now as yet unpublished, the next thoughts are shaping here <a href="http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/05/new-perspectives-new-facts-new.html">http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/05/new-perspectives-new-facts-new.html</a></yt-formatted-string></blockquote>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-81532066052711375782019-05-24T03:43:00.000+10:002019-05-25T13:37:43.479+10:00New perspectives, new facts, new communication<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is an abundance of new <i>opinion</i> everywhere and worth a passing glance, but fact-based new <i>perspectives</i> are the most important to getting a clearer view of the world.<br />
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<a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/894160.html" target="_blank"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/894160.html" target="_blank">This South Korean article on the supply chains behind smart phone manufacture in China</a> based on IMF data has much wider importance if you apply the anthropological/historical eye. Begin here with this screenshot:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQBEt-jxXhHmMWMMVJBiv0_8uY1fN9_O2Sf9wQqTevVXPBlSiOspT-XCN0VZu-5-AITfGkdBXCEcnkHNs6zoF4QKOGxY3NU2-8dtZ0ibDcKsMgGZJY4J4h0MzsqNeH8wqu42zmm0jRbJs/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-05-24+at+2.55.14+am.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="1568" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQBEt-jxXhHmMWMMVJBiv0_8uY1fN9_O2Sf9wQqTevVXPBlSiOspT-XCN0VZu-5-AITfGkdBXCEcnkHNs6zoF4QKOGxY3NU2-8dtZ0ibDcKsMgGZJY4J4h0MzsqNeH8wqu42zmm0jRbJs/s640/Screen+Shot+2019-05-24+at+2.55.14+am.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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[<a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/894160.html" target="_blank">article dated 16 May 2019, same link as above</a>]</div>
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The world has travelled a vast distance since the beginning of reforms in China forty years ago. Such a network of involvement between peoples, people who should be involved together constructively but such involvement come out where before a cold war of opposition to communication at all. While languages in binary and languages of Arabic origin in money are involved, all the communications languages are and have history of power relationships. When we sit in a whitish country blessed or cursed with English language dominance/hubris, we have to shove off a bit to see how complicated it is, how a new world of communication arises with this kind of phone-building, also also belt and road building. As in "excuse me sir, there's something big happening over there and I'm sure it's big" and standard reply "piss off Edric, we're busy" — core of much of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii_(novel)" target="_blank">Robert Harris</a>'s writing and modern Korean and Japanese films about tsunamis etc. [<a href="http://asianwiki.com/Haeundae" target="_blank">Link</a>][<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch-q_qELmms" target="_blank">Link</a>]</div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language" target="_blank">Consider the history of Korean language</a>. Note the rise of the Hangul script around the time of the arrival of the printing press in Europe and the rise of English with Shakespeare and rise of <a href="http://dinuovoinitalia.blogspot.com/2016/10/mantova-according-to-edith-part-2-plus.html" target="_blank">Italian especially at Ferrara and Ludo Ariosto's great melange of European memes in Orlando Furioso, under the gaze of the wondrous Lucrezia Borgia daughter of Pope Alex 6</a>. Those people over there in East Asia are building ways of communicating that will either profoundly alter English or lead to 'other'. We have only a tiny appreciation of the scale and direction of change this big communication revolution, the biggest since the printing press. </div>
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To add to the melange of freshperspectivism do visit <a href="http://americanempireproject.com/">http://americanempireproject.com/</a> at which I arrived via the American John Feffer's wonderful <a href="https://fpif.org/" target="_blank">Foreign Policy in Focus</a> which as I speak headlines the wondrous <a href="https://fpif.org/bolton-in-wonderland/" target="_blank">John Bolton with an appropriate nod to Alexander Haig</a>.</div>
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This is just a start. We have to look to ragged edges and the unfinished (the blog is the opposite of the tweet, the tweet being a single final statement and a blog entry a meandering step into can't-define, idea-push). </div>
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Stay wary of people who have the answers. I said this as first principle in a speech in 2004 about the Iraq war:</div>
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<span style="font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 12.000000pt;">FIRST: we should be very wary of people of whatever hue who say they have the absolute
truth. Not because there is no truth available, but because truth is individual. I hold
passionately to my beliefs, you hold passionately to your beliefs. But this is a crowded world
now, even here on the [southeast coast of Australia], and if we do not put first an ethic of dealing as community
with each other at grass roots level, we will never be able to deal sensibly with international
issues. Fundamentalisms, fanaticisms, uncompromising pursuit of whatever absolute belief is
what will kill us all. </span></blockquote>
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I rest my bones, for a moment.</div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-57701244427978335972019-05-16T13:50:00.002+10:002019-05-16T13:50:48.962+10:00multitasking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We also now have put up a <a href="https://streetlibrary.org.au/" target="_blank">street library</a> in front of the house. ....Someone has to read books still!?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzfLhjioz2yPuTqr_rVS8VBTHZVtF2ThlfXh0W2deoBiQLoFD9MUS3DCoM-eYag6P_Gbv9YSVkD84Y_Jb6Olm9ivaxCYdLstneOw90O6YHt-m7aFBgkv89-7_uWLRyMBlXryMTuE7vjr6h/s1600/IMG_0873.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzfLhjioz2yPuTqr_rVS8VBTHZVtF2ThlfXh0W2deoBiQLoFD9MUS3DCoM-eYag6P_Gbv9YSVkD84Y_Jb6Olm9ivaxCYdLstneOw90O6YHt-m7aFBgkv89-7_uWLRyMBlXryMTuE7vjr6h/s640/IMG_0873.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-81454862607967826262019-05-16T10:21:00.000+10:002019-05-16T10:21:37.227+10:00individual contribution in an age of environmental catastrophe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The news is currently full of terrible news about species extinction and climate change and the absurdity of policy of many governments.<br />
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Governments must do much more but individuals also can do a lot more than read the news and get depressed. There are glorious stories on YouTube about people doing extraordinary things in faraway places, but much can be, must be done in the cities, not least to get rid of lawns and grow trees and food plants. To get people out of gyms and into fresh air. To improve air quality with trees too. Easiest and most reliable to use seeds from trees in your own street, trees that evidently thrive. With herbal understory running wild.<br />
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See what intelligent people can do in very difficult places.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xNbk4xKNdzk" width="560"></iframe>
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We also create beauty in this kind of step by step project. <a href="http://suburbanfoodforest.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Here is the most recent news from our gardens</a>. We did not start with deserts... except, except... that in reality the <a href="https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8nan/your-well-manicured-lawn-is-contributing-to-climate-change" target="_blank">great dull lawns we started with are worse than deserts, major contributors to global warming</a>.<br />
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-19356802382215262002019-05-16T08:25:00.000+10:002019-05-16T08:25:50.758+10:00a big gap in writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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My health has made writing difficult, daily severe headaches and other chronic pain issues.<br />
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We did manage to get to <a href="http://settesettimane.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Italy in 2018</a> but that's my last long journey.<br />
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A greeat pleasure to have unplanned conversations, chance encounters, with people in Italy far from touristworld including in Arezzo with Pier Ferruccio Rossi who just came up to us to talk in a phone shop. Here is his good humoured articulation of being an eighty year old poet.<br />
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I am about to have a week in hospita<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23432384" target="_blank">l for ketamine infusion</a> managed by a rheumatologist who has done this for fifteen years.<a href="http://fpm.anzca.edu.au/documents/proposal-for-practice-guideline-low-dose-ketamine.pdf" target="_blank"> See this too</a>. Dreaming of writing more often afterwards.<br />
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Meanwhile <a href="https://transnationalasia.rice.edu/journal/Volume-2/Issue-1/Number-4" target="_blank">I invite your attention to this excellent paper on north Asia by Gavan McCormack, on how well states measure up and have capacity for essential change in these turbulent times</a>.<br />
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Gavan is a committed and practical academic, as here, out on prohibited waters at Okinawa, for background see the paper linked from previous paragraph.<br />
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or if you prefer terrible recordings by eminent people in Britain of longer account of last year's book...<br />
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-2926824293339457912017-10-02T10:48:00.000+11:002017-10-02T12:59:09.935+11:00Not so scary under Korean skies: the things that happen while the world yells.<h1 class="entry-title" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; clear: both; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">as published just now at <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-not-so-scary-under-korean-skies/" target="_blank">John</a> <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-not-so-scary-under-korean-skies/" target="_blank">Menadue's</a> <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-not-so-scary-under-korean-skies/" target="_blank">blog</a></span></span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">and <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/10/02/south-korea-seems-to-be-the-only-country-reacting-sensibly-to-north-korea/" target="_blank">republished at Crikey, under the title "South Korea seems to be the only country reacting sensibly to Pyongyang."</a></span></div>
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DENNIS ARGALL. Not so scary under Korean skies</h1>
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<span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><a href="https://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-not-so-scary-under-korean-skies/" rel="bookmark" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #777777; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="7:44 AM"><span class="entry-date" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2 October 2017</span></a><span class="meta-sep" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Australia has had yet another high level former US defence official breeze in, this time to warn that we might be attacked by the DPRK. Whether there is or is not a concerted plan to all this, the visits of the grave and famous and warnings about improbable threat serve a purpose of keeping us from wandering away from Uncle Sam’s skirt in these strange times. It is useful to step away from speculation and look at some things actually happening, taking the last few days as a slice of life. </em><span id="more-12508" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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On 1 October the US Secretary of State, visiting Beijing, told journalists “…the United States is in direct contact with North Korea and is looking into whether Kim Jong Un is open to talks.” [Washington Post]</div>
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I think it’s a perilous business to tell journalists you may have a fish biting. On the same day a DPRK spokesman “called on the United States…to halt what it claimed to be a hostile policy toward Pyongyang, threatening to turn America into a “sea of flames.” [Yonhap, Seoul]. On 28 September Choe Son-hui, director general of the North American department at the DPRK Foreign Ministry, at talks in Moscow, “stressed that it is necessary for the U.S. to stop its hostile policy toward the DPRK in order to defuse tension and ensure peace and security in the Korean Peninsula and the Northeast Asian region.” [KCNA]</div>
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If Secretary of State Tillerson claims he’s winning something in this contest, he won’t. [<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">I wrote that yesterday before </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/us/politics/trump-tillerson-north-korea.html?_r=0" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;" target="_blank">Trump told his Secretary of State via Twitter not to waste his time</a><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">.]</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">On 28 September on ROK Armed Forces Day, ROK President Moon awarded a “the highest unit-level award given by the ROK government … to all the Sailors of CNFK [US Combined Naval Forces Korea] for “outstanding contribution to the defense of the Republic of Korea” [Stars and Stripes]. Since the Korean War ROK forces have remained under US control in wartime. In his speech on the same occasion President Moon called again for transfer of ‘OPCON’ from the US to the ROK: “It’s only when we regain wartime operational control of our military that North Korea will fear us more and the South Korean public will trust the military more. The goal of this administration is to accelerate the transfer of wartime operational control,” [Hankyoreh]</span></div>
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Then President Moon and Mrs Moon went to have lunch with ordinary seamen on an ROK naval vessel, the Yonhap photo showing happy laughter.</div>
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On 1 October, the ROK monthly trade figures showed a year-on-year increase in exports of 35%. In September “outbound shipments came to US$55.1 billion for the month, up from $40.8 billion tallied a year earlier…Imports also rose 21.7 percent on-year to $41.4 billion.” Petrochemical exports in the wake of hurricane damage to the US oil industry <a href="http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2017/10/01/0501000000AEN20171001000752320.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">were a significant component</a>.</div>
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Another round of discussions on the US ROK Free Trade Agreement will take place in Washington on 4 October.</div>
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Also on 1 October the Korea Resources Corporation published an estimate of the value of DPRK mineral resources at approximately USD2.8 trillion, fourteen times those of the ROK. Modest joint ROK-DPRK minerals projects have been suspended for some time. Sanctions exist, prospects remain.</div>
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Again on 1 October in response to the decision of the ROK government to extend electrical vehicle subsidies to Tesla cars previously excluded because they take more than ten hours to charge, Tesla announced plans to extend its network of charging stations in South Korea.</div>
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Also on the same day, President Moon released a video wishing everyone well for travel home over the Chuseok (Harvest Moon) holiday break… and separately congratulated DPRK figure skaters on their qualification for the Winter Olympics in the ROK next year.</div>
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Meanwhile in the wake of the trilateral summit between heads of state of the US, ROK and Japan in New York (at the Korean Lotte hotel, not a Trump hotel), “[t]he Blue House and White House have reportedly shared concerns that “distorted” reports from the Japanese press could “cause fissures”<a href="http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/812440.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> in trilateral coordination</a>.”</div>
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This report does not implicate Prime Minister Abe in the shaping of the news items attracting concern, but anxious Prime Minister Abe has been using articulation of tension and criticism of the ROK as well as the DPRK and China (plus a USD18 billion education and aged care package, to be paid for by a GST increase of 2% in 2019) in support of his campaign for re-election on 22 October.</div>
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On 27 September, at an event to mark the tenth anniversary, on 4 October, of the meeting in 2007 between then ROK President Roh Moo-hyun and the DPRK President Kim Jong-il, President Moon said: “Many of the matters agreed upon in the Oct. 4 summit statement can be implemented even now. I hope that both North and South Korea will declare that the Oct. 4 summit statement remains valid,” He once again called for the restoration of military talks, humanitarian cooperation and the reunions of the families divided by the Korean War. Restoring military talks was particularly urgent, Moon said, “to relax inter-Korean tensions.” [Hankyoreh]</div>
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In his address to the UN General Assembly in New York on 21 September, President Moon quoted former US President Ronald Reagan: “Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”</div>
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This ROK Government demonstrates a flexibility and skill in dealing with all sides in the current difficult situation. Many domestic supporters were alarmed by President Moon’s siding with President Trump on issues relating to the DPRK, but had Moon been strident rather than flexible, troubles would abound domestically and perhaps more dramatically in the trade relationship with the US. Nothing would have been gained strategically by antagonism, just as nothing is gained by being joined at the hip with a major power.</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dennis Argall, a former Australian Ambassador to China, has been an observer of North Asian affairs since 1970</em></div>
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-6214645938627228612017-09-17T11:40:00.000+10:002017-09-17T12:14:35.569+10:00meditations on art and cultural bridgesWith a little help from Kaurismaki.<br />
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[1] dialectics (with a little Italian lesson in subtitles)<br />
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[2] If Finns and Russians can have so much fun, Finland being the last country to swiftly repulse a Russian invasion, indeed the last country to repel swiftly a superpower invasion... why can't we have such as this below between Australia and Indonesia or Vietnam, or China and Japan? Some <a href="http://worldmusicsblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/leningrad-cowboys-red-army-choir-meets.html" target="_blank">background on the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir here</a>.</div>
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And for those who fear Arabs as a class of people, meet Yasmine Hamdan.<br />
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and if you have time enjoy the movie in which that scene takes place, near the end</div>
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Jim Jarmusch made the film, surely America's answer to Finland's Kaurismaki<br />
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— Everyone speaks slowly, so the Spanish subtitles are an excellent language lesson</div>
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With Tilda Swinton and John Hurt, not really your average vampire movie,<br />
but a voyage into the jadedness of world-wandering people who live a very very long time...<br />
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Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2483998603968201603.post-30984143745001939342017-09-06T11:20:00.000+10:002017-09-06T11:20:03.058+10:00on dreams and sleep<i>The Conversation </i>runs a series for 'Curious Kids'. <a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-our-brains-freak-us-out-with-scary-dreams-81329" target="_blank">Today an answer to a question about dreams</a>.<br />
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I thought the answer was a bit limited, in focusing on the history of psychological interpretation of dreams. So I ventured into the physiology:<br />
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/dennis-argall-170363" style="color: #557585; display: inline; float: none; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Dennis Argall</a></h3>
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I think it’s important to connect dreaming with the state of our whole body. While we sleep, it is normal for the sugar level in our blood stream to decline. Towards morning this process reaches a point where the body responds by lifting adrenalin llevels. Adrenalin, more scientific name epinephrine, is what gives us a charge to run away from something or chase madly after something when challenged when we are awake. It has broad roles like that in body systems and as we sleep and sugar levels fall adrenalin’s rise wakes us… But along the way it churns up other things, bladder alerts, appetite alerts and brain alerts which can mean dreams of better or worse kind. We may dream at other times, unaware. The dreams remembered are those just before waking. </div>
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I think there are a couple of things that flow from this. First is the need to maintain healthy levels of protein, sugar and caffeine (chocolate, tea, coffee, cola) without big spikes. And to treat sleep with respect, allowing it to happen and not getting too caught up in dramatic phone or tablet games in bed. </div>
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A recent news story suggested that billions of dollars would be saved in the US if schools began later…in the case of the US meaning not 8am but a bit later, because adolescents need to sleep in a bit and there would be better school results and fewer teenage car accidents if that were respected. Which suggests to me also that adolescent sugar-adrenalin cycles are different. Perhaps most young people sustain blood sugar levels better. Perhaps parents should just envy the capacity to sleep in! But perhaps also adjust bedtimes to get enough sleep altogether. Because… </div>
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During the day we yank minerals out of muscle and bone to do all kinds of work, including brain work. When we sleep those resources have to be put back. These processes are called catabolic and anabolic. Modern society with its levels of stress put people into problems because they may not get their resources restored in sleep. Crash. And nightmares. </div>
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So my thought is that we need to think very broadly about the importance of sleep, not as a dead zone but critical to life. I had sleep and nightmare problems for decades but eventually did a sleep test and found that my nightmares were not caused primarily by brain ruckus but because my breathing was stopping (sleep apnea) and the adrenalin rush to keep me alive, as we normally have gently in the morning, was violent in the middle of the night. Good habits of sleep when younger may have avoided that nonsense.</div>
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</section>Dennis Argallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465343834162583738noreply@blogger.com0