on the need for more thought about Australian strategic policy

This was published on John Menadue's blog on 28 May 2019

DENNIS ARGALL: Australian strategic posture from here forward

Posted on 28 May 2019

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.

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?

I should perhaps stop there.  If focus goes towards that kind of thinking all else should fall into place.

But there are three urgent needs.

1: The United States Government needs to be told clearly that Australia will not go to war with Iran. 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:

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.

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 issues which do not compel to violence. It is a curious situation to have Trump as best hope against madness.

2: US and China. Interesting that while Jeff Bezos who made Amazon owns the Washington Post, Jack Ma, his China equivalent, who established Alibaba, now owns the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.  A better paper since Murdoch gave it up.

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.

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3011186/xi-jinping-calls-new-long-march-dramatic-sign-china-preparing

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, just as we should not have to agree with the US on everything.  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 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.

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!

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.

http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_forpol_principles.htm

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.

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:

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.

I also said then that

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:

• Delusions of moral rectitude.

• Defence of imperial status quo.

• Nothing but narrow military options.

• Resort to alliances, hostility to thought.

• Vilification of the enemy, climate of fear and promotion of paranoia.

• Simplistic notions of victory, expectations of speedy end.

• Failure to address real wider issues.

• Enveloping sea of violence.

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.

3: Indonesia

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.

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.

Not so scary under Korean skies: the things that happen while the world yells.

as published just now at John Menadue's blog

and republished at Crikey, under the title "South Korea seems to be the only country reacting sensibly to Pyongyang."

DENNIS ARGALL. Not so scary under Korean skies

2 October 2017

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. 

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]

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]

If Secretary of State Tillerson claims he’s winning something in this contest, he won’t.           [I wrote that yesterday before Trump told his Secretary of State via Twitter not to waste his time.]

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]

Then President Moon and Mrs Moon went to have lunch with ordinary seamen on an ROK naval vessel, the Yonhap photo showing happy laughter.

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 were a significant component.

Another round of discussions on the US ROK Free Trade Agreement will take place in Washington on 4 October.

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.

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.

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.

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” in trilateral coordination.”

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.

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]

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.”

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.

Dennis Argall, a former Australian Ambassador to China, has been an observer of North Asian affairs since 1970

Korea, next week critical

click to enlarge....source

This, below, was reasonable concern at the time, but the worst did not come about.
The US and the DPRK remain competitive in huffing and puffing and as usual the testing of three minor missiles by the DPRK is more news than this Ulchi Freedom Guardian, see box.

Some more coverage here, here and here. 

Geoff Miller, former ambassador to South Korea, Director-General Office of National Assessment, etc, etc, wrote a piece for John Menadue's blog this morning pointing out that critical moments, determining war or peace on the Korean peninsula, are from Monday 21 August 2017.

I added comment on other sides of the situation, tidying up this version a little from my scrappy writing earlier:

One Response to GEOFF MILLER. Korea: Missiles or exercises or both?

1. Dennis Argall says:

   18 August 2017 at 9:53 AM

   Yes indeed. And while calculated order at the top in Pyongyang, not so in Washington.

   The problem arising is that the asserted objectives of the UN Security Council, others involved with non-proliferation, the US, Australia, the EU, etc… are not going to be achieved. The DPRK is on the threshold of nuclear weapon state status, as much as India, Pakistan and Israel and their certain conviction is that their (regime, family) survival can only be assured by nuclear weapon state status. The NPT has failed in this case, the apparati of non-proliferation now well over 40 years old have failed. The exponents of non-proliferation need now to focus on motivation to nuclear weapon state status, which is an expensive buy for most states. Getting big heads around that will not be easy, harder than getting Australian leaders to read Article 1 of the ANZUS Treaty. Viz: “The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international disputes in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

   Ulchi [the very large US-ROK exercise to which Australia is adding something] begins on Monday 21 August. Trump (and many more) will be focused on his going to a divisive rally in Phoenix Tuesday evening (11am Wednesday, Seoul time). Kim knows that, one hopes.

   General Kelly, White House Chief of Staff was reported to have difficulty finding perspective over the weekend of developments at Charlottesville and was then a distraught bystander during the Wednesday rant at Trump Tower.

   There are three generals in conclave on Korea at this moment, Kelly, Defence Secretary Mattis and National Security Advisor McMaster. McMaster author of a book scathingly critical of civilian ‘interference’ with command decisions at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. Mattis is a marine general and despite his ‘Mad Dog’ labelling reportedly has a history of some ethical concern, presence among soldiers in hard places and relieving of dishonest or less than upright officers. Kelly seems to have been brought into the administration for his unblinking toughness, characteristic of the US Southern Command and perspective towards Latin America. Present at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, Wikipedia records that: “During the initial assault on Baghdad, Kelly was asked by a reporter for The Los Angeles Times if, considering the size of the Iraqi Army and the vast supplies of tanks, artillery and chemical weapons available to Saddam’s forces, he would ever consider defeat. Kelly’s archetypal response was “Hell these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima. Baghdad ain’t shit.”

   Timeline and cast.

Korea: our first need is to step back from mass hysteria.

We need to move beyond a rage against Australian Prime Minister Turnbull’s folly on Korea, calmly assess the provocations by Trump and Kim, respect the rights of south Korea and understand how destructive US global strategies have become.

A number of commentators have characterised DPRK strategy as pursued by acting, out of necessity, “ferocious, weak and crazy”.

In the 1990s they used their nuclear program as an economic bargaining chip. All that changed after 9/11 when G W Bush lumped the DPRK, Iran, Iraq and Libya together as the Axis of Evil.

North Korean leaders watched the fate of others identified in this axis by Bush. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, his regime was destroyed... and in the end Iraq more controlled by Iran than anyone else. In Libya Gadaffi submitted, undid his nuclear program and was still chewed up. Iran has done all asked of it and is now subject again to war threats.

Blind Freddy, or a Blind Kim, can see that the only security for the DPRK must therefore be to hasten to achieve a credible nuclear deterrent. They are at that threshold.

North Korea has never threatened first strike with a nuclear weapon. It has however lived with persistent first strike threat for a long time.

China once supported the notion of unification of Korea but now cannot tolerate the prospect of a US dominated South Korea taking command of the North.

In South Korea since May a reforming president who might make a Whitlam envious has been embarked on domestic reform as well as pursuit of sanity in intra Korean affairs. And has had Trump’s agreement that the ROK is to take the lead and there must be no war. Speaking thus also to Trump for an hour in the past week.

It is appalling that an Australian Prime Minister could so misread the ANZUS Treaty as to claim that we are automatically at war with North Korea if the US is at war. This is not 1939; Turnbull is not Menzies. Are we to think all bankers have such naive understanding of the world? Who advises Turnbull?

In 1965 the Menzies Government had the almost-decency to squeeze from the government in Saigon a request for troops we would send to Vietnam at US request. But in the post modern, why is Turnbull (why are so many) blind to the existence and the entitlements of South Korea to its own self-determination: as a country in the region, member of the G20, GDP same as ours, population double ours. Where do our heads live? Solely in a Murdoch-trumpian media world?

There are annually-scheduled major US-ROK exercises, with history of practising decapitation of the DPRK, planned for next week …when now also the DPRK leader may make a demonstration of nuclear status, firing a nuclear capable rocket or rockets targeted at points just outside the territorial waters of Guam. In the past week nuclear-armed US B1-B bomber have once again cruised over the ROK and very close to North Korean airspace. Who is entitled to demonstrate what?

The ROK is trying to speed up transfer of command over its own troops from the US in wartime, legacy of decades of dictatorship and the unfinished war.

from article at Concept News Central, Philippines

This recent article in a South Korean media outlet shows something of what the ROK president is trying to do in domestic reform. A progressive perspective we cannot imagine in Australia, lifting wages, getting more employees off casual to permanent, challenging commercial conglomerates, focus on human rights including migrants. Etc. Difficult.

Especially difficult with a big essential ally acting so badly and with the example of Venezuela for any challenges to hegemony. We should be alert and sensitive to actualities in a regional country and not acting like the fifth cockatoo on the branch.

The world has been led up a stupid path with fear of North Korea. More credibly the US is bent upon undermining every other nuclear power’s second-strike capability, ending all balance of power. While on the real front, away from unusable nuclear weapons, the US tears up one country after another.

Enough!

on war and the Australian-American alliance

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

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

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

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



More, separately, on Korea...

on evolution, Sagan, Blake, superstition, belief, fear, enemies, friends, decency

I am pasting here the top and tail of an opinion piece "Don't believe in God, Maybe You'll Try U.F.O.s" published by the New York Times on 21 July 2017. My comments below.





and here is a screenshot of the end of the article.



That seems to me appalling, a sad reflection on the limits of social science or the capacity of a social science department in a state not religious institution in the US, looking no further than the end of his religious tract for explanations. Psychology does not float like a green mould on a strange Chinese soup. It has to connect with science, neurology, evolutionary biology, especially if it ventures thus into Big Questions.

I have to recommend, as I have before, the triune brain theory, which is based on some reality not superstition and is called a theory because that's what happens with science, as distinct from faith.

There's some history of the triune brain theory here.


A rebuttal here. But there you see he's arguing against rigidities in MacLean's concept, while laying out again in different form the way we have ancient brains... [screenshot from text at link]

Here's a link to Carl Sagan's wonderful The Dragons of Eden, Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, which did much to popularise MacLean and gave it a broader philosophical and evolutionary science cast. Do try to find a copy.

 And a link to another, kindly, write-up on MacLean.

For present purposes, let us step away from rigidist scientific sniping. Acknowledge that no, we do not have hat on hat on hat as in MacLean's image taken literally.

But let me suggest these ideas:

1. There are deep in our brains elements shared with dinosaurs, other reptiles (and ants). For practicality call this the reptilian complex or R-complex. These give rise to ganging up, building walls, calling names, taking to arms, exclusion, hostility, fear and violence. And underpin beliefs which are exclusive and rigid. 
2. There are, next, elements of our brain which we share particularly with mammals, but evident far beyond, which elaborate emotions and ... and things we are inclined to call humanitarian, though they actually are found far beyond Homo sapiens. Our vanity and limited vision calls them humanitarian. 
3. Then, the third element, the big frontal brain, of which all kinds of creatures have some, even our guts have some, but which broadly speaking come out absolutely trumps in the human brain, inside the human skull. 

(I note in passing, as before, Peter Godfrey-Smith's wonderful writing on cephalopods – squids and octopuses – whose brains match those of dogs, and are brains evolved from only the most remote common pinprick ancestor with ourselves, and who appear to be full of emotions and cunning and wit. Since reading his book I've stopped eating cephalopods.)

Pardon the cephalopodial digression. My point about 3 above is that it is in this brain that we get the power to reason and explain. Without necessarily understanding that about which we set things out. Which you are entitled to say about me. Every human seems to have some element of this, the Book of Genesis offers a particularly interesting insight into the Eurosemitic psyche, where god supposedly tells Adam that he must not use god's name, but he can name and control everything else. 

My own notion is that we are descendants of awkwardly upright, inadequately hirsute hominids on hot African plains. We were able to develop big brains because we learned to cook meat. And those who developed really big cooling devices on the tops of their heads were the ones who survived in the heat. Evolution is not purposive: if there is anything that should be bedrock of theory it is that the neocortex, this super-fatty (40% cholesterol), easy-cooling front and upper part of the brain did not develop because someone said "We need to build a Bill Gates." The uses of the neocortex followed and include of course wonderful and bizarre explanations of existence, reasons for going to war, justifications of different diets and articulated doctrines for going to a religious institution on certain days. These are interpretations by the front brain of things it doesn't understand of pressures arising from other brain areas. The capacity to communicate does not in itself mean understanding or rectitude, though these are the first claims made by us all. I run with doubt and questions.

We are only recently emerged from centuries where my left-handedness let alone weird ideas like this would have had me burned at the steak years younger. William Blake, natural scientist, wrote in poetic form, hand engraved his books writing backwards on copper plates in an unusual approach to etching, then circulated his books privately... so as to avoid being hung drawn and quartered for seditious thoughts in the late 1700s in England. (Note that beheading remained legal in England until 1973, ISIS please not, you are not all that medieval.)

THIS FROM WIKIPEDIA NOT FOR THE DELICATE READER: 

(I may never cook with cumin again)

We may be moments from return to dark times with the power Trump, Putin, Erdogan, the Polish parliament and far too many others, all the way down to east to Australia's own Peter Dutton. 

This is not a joke picture, it's an Australian prime minister
representing force, security, fear and creatures clearly representing the reptilian brain,  2017.
Screenshot from excellent piece by Elizabeth Farrelly.

We should not presume that we are on a constant upward slope. Back here in 2004 I quoted the late Norman Mailer — he was speaking against going to war in Iraq, a war that has stolen half our brains:

source

I shudder to think what language Mailer would use now if still alive.

I am no longer fit, nor able to organise, what has to be done to keep us going forward. 

Silence is acquiescence. 

I write. What do you do? 

What we face is NOT some fiddledy-dee little question for a psychologist to leave open in North Dakota (see the ND Trump vote here).

It's about the future of civilisation and dangers much greater than Kim Jong-un, inside our heads.

–––

Consider things done in some places now, compare what happened to Simon de Montfort, jumped up little earl who thought as king he could establish a mildly representative parliament in England in the early 1200s. Having lost a battle, thus dealt with:



Mind you, Simon's kids got a vengeance on Henry of Cornwall, son of the new king who did in Simon, as I recorded in 2010 from Viterbo:-

Iran and war.

Earlier I wrote:

A thoughtful piece in the New York Times has set out in detail how the US intervention has given Iraq as a gift to Iran, with Iran now consolidating its road to the Mediterranean via Syria. How good or bad that may be for the wider world is another matter, the point first is that intervention in Iraq, at one time the single greatest error of strategic judgment in Australia’s history, shuffles forward to assume the same status for the US, putting Vietnam in the shade, the latter now a problem that has kinda solved itself in a way the Middle East can’t.

But now today the Washington Post reports that Trump, with resistance from most of his security advisors, wants conflict with Iran. There is doubtless a psychological problem for Trump in that the president is obliged every 90 days to report to congress on whether Iran is complying with the 2016 nuclear deal. 

Apart from its substantial control of Iraq, a country of almost 40 million people, Iran itself has a population of 80 million (one Germany) and territory equal to one Germany plus one France plus two x UK. And, um, it has porous borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.... oh and also with Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey. 

Who can count the numbers of wars in this wide expanse, children? Who can imagine the current and potential number of non-state violent actors. 

I can list the two interventions in which the US has been successful since the Second World War:

• Grenada, population 91,000
• Panama, population small too and just a US-installed president to abduct.

Those links will provide detail of the phenomenal order of battle of US forces for such small targets. Rather than divide the population of Grenada into the population (and territory) of Iran, consider that this whole US order of battle absolutely hasn't been able to win in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Oh, I've not mentioned North Korea. Population one Australia, adjoining South Korea, population 2 x Australia, South Korea's GDP = Australia's GDP.

The old Chinese image for the problem of the US strategic posture in the 1970s still fits: "ten fleas under ten thumbs." The difference between the 1970s and 2017 is that now many more nations and non-national actors see the emperor's lack of clothes. Trump and Kim Jong-il both have to act frenzied to sustain their domestic support.

---

In these troubled times, ructions – or loss of grip on common sense – in the ruling Australian conservative government have led to the keys to national security being handed to Dr Goebbels's dog. 

Alison Broinowski put it more elegantly at John Menadue's blog. And more alarmingly. 

what's really happening in South Korea and dealings with the North

I am now placing here something of mine published a couple of weeks ago at John Menadue's blog. Just to keep my record in one place. I had called my piece "Moon over Trump... and over Whitlam,' but John Menadue, perhaps because such a big part of the Whitlam years, gave it a new title... or perhaps I was just being too poetic. But I find this title a bit grating.

DENNIS ARGALL. Ignore Trump’s tweets about North Korea ; the diplomacy is being handled by adults

Posted on 6 July 2017 by John Menadue

Since his election in May South Korea’s President Mon Jae-in has developed a productive relationship with US President Trump, particularly on the difficult issue of both countries’ dealings with North Korea. Regrettably Australian and other mainstream media is reporting Trump’s rants, intended for his domestic support base, rather than the positive outcomes from those summit meetings.

While someone from Lowy gravely (and absurdly) suggested on the ABC News on 4 July that the DPRK (North Korea) now had an ICBM that could be launched at Darwin, around the same time, the South Korean newsagency Yonhap reported that South Korean President Moon Jae-in had told David Cameron in Seoul that he hoped North Korea would not go past a ‘point of no return’ and Yonhap further reported;

“The policy to seek the resumption of dialogue while maintaining maximum pressure remains unchanged,” a Cheong Wa Dae [the president’s office] official told reporters, while asking not to be identified.

Regrettably Australian and other mainstream media is still doing what Trump wants, reporting Trump rants, intended for his domestic support base, rather than what is agreed out of summit meetings.

South Korean officials, media and business leaders who had been in Washington with Moon on 29-30 June were apprehensive about delay in release of the agreed joint statement. They knew that Trump White House staff deliberately delayed release of such statements (for days in the case of Saudi Arabia) and they did not want the outcome of the visit to be as  ranted by Trump at a joint press conference.

After seven hours, the joint statement emerged — intact and it is important to read carefully.

Down in the middle of the statement is this critical paragraph:

President Trump supported the ROK’s leading role in fostering an environment for peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula.

and

President Trump expressed support for President Moon’s aspiration to restart inter-Korean dialogue on issues, including humanitarian affairs.

This too shows strength in the ROK’s getting back sovereignty and command of issues on the peninsula:

The two leaders decided to continue the Alliance’s work to expeditiously enable the conditions-based transfer of wartime operational control [OPCON] of ROK forces.

“Continue” covers the to and fro on this transfer issues, postponed by the previous administration. The statement is a recognition of ROK sovereignty.

There is also a large amount of conventional expression of support for the alliance. Conventional except in that there were apprehensions Moon might be a radical and Trump might be a bit… Trump. All of the statements out of Washington indicate good rapport between the two and real trust of Moon by Trump. Trump accepted an invitation to visit Seoul this year.

Moon’s comment to Cameron on 4 July needs to be seen in that context: he does not want to be trampled, to lose what he has gained, by trampling of elephants before and behind. Also, in my view, the DPRK’s missile launch is part of a hurried approach to ‘negotiation from strength’. But who will assess it rationally?

Moon’s visit to Washington was preceded by a carefully-orchestrated academic and media conference at which some forward looking views on inter-Korean relations were presented by one of his advisors, who could then say “oh, I’m just an academic”. Moon took with him to Washington a great contingent of business leaders, to whom – people who would have never wanted Moon elected – he said in Washington that he was sorry that this was their first meeting since he took office, but hey, we’re here together now. He announced Korean investments in the US and other warming goodies. The Joint Statement does not say, though Trump said, that the Free Trade Agreement would be re-negotiated.

The presidential election results were declared on 9 May just before 9am. Moon Jae-in was inaugurated at 4pm. On 10 May he abolished the ‘official’ history texts his predecessor had demanded for schools, and he reversed the ban on commemoration of the Gwangju Massacre in May 1980 and the ban on singing the march of that uprising. On 18 May he want to Gwangju for the anniversary, taking with him heads of political parties, to hold hands, weep and sing (all but one of them sang). In the ROK current history this compares with Tiananmen. The ROK has turned a corner, China has not.

Instead of meeting with business leaders he went to see workers at the international airport on 11 May and said he wanted to see the 10,000 of them who were casual employees made permanent during his term of office. The airport corporation promptly said this would happen before the end of 2017.

Instead of meeting promptly with business leaders Moon began an assembly of office holders to take on the chaebols, the handful of conglomerates (Hyundai, Samsung, etc) that dominate the Korean economy. Instead of falling in with habits, he appointed a woman as foreign minister, who had not been through the foreign ministry system but had a history in charge of human rights at the UN and as head of the transition team of the new UN Secretary General. He gave charge of veterans affairs to a woman, the first female South Korean helicopter pilot, and gave the job ministerial status.

Instead of meeting with business leaders he visited classrooms and talked with children. At the end of a month he shocked the nation where no one takes a day off from work, declaring he would take a public service day off … and went with his wife to their house in the country for a day.

And so it has gone. He has a popularity rating over 80%.

In May at the request of a Korean political science journal I wrote a paper in part drawing comparatively on the history of the Whitlam Government and problems it faced as a reform government. Moon has in two months shown the world, with smiles, how to reform, make friends and secure control of difficult issues. But who is watching? All eyes are on the shrieking roller-coaster. 

Copy of my paper if you write here.  

(These are good sources: Yonhap News Agency and the more radical Hankyoreh.)

The chaotic state of play here and abroad, with minor decent exceptions.

As submitted to John Menadue's blog yesterday (image added here):

Both domestic and international affairs are in a state of nastiness and chaos. Ironically Trump’s presence is creating a new love-in between the alliance chiefs in the US and Australia and popular support for them. All in the face of the disaster that is US policy in many places.

With tiny candles of hope on hills: at the UN with the nuclear weapons ban treaty and in South Korea, where people who really understand threat are defiantly being decent.

Two very recent issues here in Australia:

·      The assorted musings on whether WA Greens candidate Mr Steele-John will take up the seat in the Senate vacated by Scott Ludlam, with Michelle Grattan, sympathetic to his personal dilemma as a young person with disabilities,  noting Katharine Murphy’s essay observation that “the environment parliamentarians work in is a pressure cooker, the tone of national affairs is reflexively hostile, trolling and takedowns set the tone of the day, and protagonists are being rewarded for their efficiency at treachery rather than the substance of their contributions”. Which seems an adequate description also of the seething state of folly in international relations;

·      The arrival of Australia as not before, as a frequent news item in Washington for example just now as Julie Bishop comes to the fore, seen as an icon of decency among women in response to the trumpian slur delivered to the Macrons and in her commitment to the US alliance in troubled times… a burgeoning, fear-manipulated cling-to for Australian minds. Who would have imagined that trumpery would strengthen the alliance. We have been infested of course, by the stay-the-course heavies of the US establishment led by VP Pence, Senator McCain, intelligence chief Jim Clapper and the neo-kissingerist pawn-playing real-world-avoidant Jake Sullivan who might have held the keys of too many things under Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile in the US, former presidents George W Bush and W Clinton at one event and Vice President Pence at another event have spoken of the importance of humility in leadership.

How cute. There is nothing such, no humility, never has been, in US world leadership, not now, not with them in office. US leadership is, of course, not working, though as the saying might go ‘you can tell that to Julie Bishop’, the Pencian grey nemesis of the Australian right.

A thoughtful piece inthe New York Times has set out in detail how the US intervention has given Iraq as a gift to Iran, with Iran now consolidating its road to the Mediterranean via Syria. How good or bad that may be for the wider world is another matter, the point first is that intervention in Iraq, at one time the single greatest error of strategic judgment in Australia’s history, shuffles forward to assume the same status for the US, putting Vietnam in the shade, the latter now a problem that has kinda solved itself in a way the Middle East can’t.

Perhaps the most poisonous news of the week is of the UAE’s role in hacking government web sites in Qatar, broadcasting lies and precipitating the current divide among Gulf emirates … and between the President and Secretary of State of the US. A matter brought on by Trump’s folie de grandeur in Saudi Arabia, now made the more sickening by his boasting to a Christian conference in the US that he’d made very clear to them he wasn’t going to Saudi, betcha bottom brain cell, unless they wrote the cheque, bought the weapons package. Can none of these people see beyond their own mirrors?

There is scant evidence of either humility or vision in international affairs. There has been a majorescalation in the civilian body count in US operations in the Middle East sinceTrump (and Mattis) took over.

From a story in The Atlantic in praise of Moon Jae-in

But far away, beneath the vision of the Big Strategists, the new Moon Jae-in administration in South Korea, with its weird sense of decent purpose in a crazy world, has proposed military talks at Panmunjom to discuss with the North “stopping all hostile activities that raise military tension.” This doubtless will get wider public attention when the DPRK issues a likely initial raspberry.

The necessary steps for the Korean question are akin to what is needed as regards the new UN treaty banning nuclear weapons. Someone commented on that treaty at the New York Times today:

“Unrealistic. Unenforceable. Unproductive.
“If they wanted to create a new norm against using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, they would have needed buy-in by the major powers.”

To which I responded:

“Silence does not lead to new norms. Submission and silence in the face of bullying does not stop bullies. Alliance of opponents to bullying is the only way to start. Bullies are not prompt to join such alliances. But such alliances are a beginning. And important.”