The Pompeo view

The Secretaries of State and Defense of the USA visited Australia recently. I wrote this short comment for John Menadue's blog, published 9 August 2019.

DENNIS ARGALL. The Pompeo view

Posted on 9 August 2019

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.

Two statements in Sydney recently by US Secretary of State Pompeo need to be quoted and challenged.

First at an event hosted by the conservative Centre for Independent Studies:

“T[O]M SWITZER: 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?

“MIKE POMPEO: Yeah, the ANZUZ [sic] alliance is unambiguous.” https://foreignminister.gov.au/transcripts/Pages/2019/mp_tr_190804.aspx

The treaty is not ambiguous, but it doesn’t say what he seems to think it says.

Article IV of the ANZUS Treaty says:

“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.

“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.”

https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/treaties/1952/2.html

Any presumption of automatic obligation is wrong.

Second, in remarks to press at the AUSMIN meeting in Sydney, arising from comparison of the US with China:

“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.

“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.” 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/

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. https://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/investment-statistics/Pages/statistics-on-who-invests-in-australia.aspx

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.

https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/indispensable-economic-partners-the-us-australia-investment-relationship

(Were any university organisation with China connections to publish a promotional paper like that it would of course be ridiculed.)

At the core of Pompeo’s perspective is this:

“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.”

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.

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 “The English Job” making use of a very old Iranian expression “when things go wrong it’s always an English job.” This Al Jazeera article of 30 July contains a recent chronology and long-term perspective: https://aje.io/aqsnk

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:

“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.”

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.

How war between the US and Iran could unfold

Shirvan, of Caspian Report , 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.

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. Information at Wikipedia.

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.

I received advance notice of this posting to YouTube because I am a 'patreon' of Shirvan's Caspian Report. An inexpensive way to encourage independent thinking. Please consider also doing so.

https://www.patreon.com/CaspianReport/posts

Thinking through the choppy issues in trade and strategic threat.

As published today in John Menadue's blog.

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”.

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.

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.

But it’s not a simple bilateral matter.

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.”

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/894160.html

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.

On this ranking of international competitiveness

https://www.imd.org/contentassets/6b85960f0d1b42a0a07ba59c49e828fb/one-year-change-vertical.pdf

Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, China, rank ahead of Australia. We delude ourselves in sense of superiority.

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.

https://transnationalasia.rice.edu/journal/Volume-2/Issue-1/Number-4

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.

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:

As the largest and most expensive military program ever, the F-35 became the subject of much scrutiny and criticism 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 sunk costs and political momentum make it “too big to kill”.

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.

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

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html

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.

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 The Intercept.

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/24/us-saudi-arabia-arms-sales/

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.

http://johnmenadue.com/dennis-argall-australian-strategic-posture-from-here-forward/

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.

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australian-pilots-hit-with-lasers-during-indo-pacific-exercise/

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?

Dennis Argall’s career included work in Foreign Affairs and Defence departments and overseas postings including Washington and as Ambassador to China.

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.

Korea, hysteria, self-examination

It was pleasing to read this morning that the leader of the opposition Labor Party here in Australia, who, according to polls, should be elected prime minister, will be visiting Seoul and Tokyo, not hanging on Trump's words as Prime Minister Turnbull does at the moment.

From The Guardian

V Putin has also spoken sensibly on Korea.

An article at The Conversation this morning talked about what 'sniffer aircraft' can tell us about the DPRK's nuclear explosion the other day.

I offered these thoughts:

Maureen Todhunter, a writer at John Menadue's blog offered wisdom on finding ways forward to sanity:

...Exposing ourselves to others’ ways of seeing life and its crises, and revealing our own ways to others, may seriously challenge most of us. But I think it’s an important step in developing empathy, capacity and will for collective remedial action. This is action that rejects war and cultivates peace, that nurtures the irritations of resistance and civil disobedience into pearls of civic-minded behaviour caring for all people and planet. Importantly then, a 21st century update on Marx: imaginations of the world, unite!
An exciting place for learning, thinking and imagining collectively is the IPAN (Independent and Peaceful Australia Network) National Conference 2017 in Melbourne on 8, 9 & 10 September 2017. Its theme: War, Peace & Independence: Keep Australia out of US Wars. http://www.ipan.org.au/#/To register for the conference www.trybooking.com/286873
Maureen Todhunter is an academic copy editor and member of Just Peace Qld

In reply I drew on the comment I'd made at The Conversation, adding a note at the end about past difficulties in endeavouring to walk down the middle between the left and the right.

James O'Neill on the need for Australia to change strategic direction.

Link to articles at
Independent Australia
See articles also at
New Eastern Outlook 
and New Matilda

James O'Neill, barrister at law and geopolitical analyst has been writing about the urgent necessity for review of Australian strategic policy.

I commend to readers to go and read other entries at James's website, including also about Korea. There much wisdom there, also consistent with and more powerful than some things I have been writing.

With permission, this is the most recent of his essays, which is here at James's web site also at John Menadue's blog.

It is important that arguments for serious review of Australia's strategic direction are posted far and wide.

AMERICAN BLUEPRINTS FOR WAR POSE AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AUSTRALIA

Standard

James O'Neill 

25 August 2017

See Elizabeth Farrelly's excellent article,
from which this image borrowed

The recent statement by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to the effect that on defence issues Australia and the United States were “joined at the hip” raises the serious question of how far Australia will actually go in support of the United States as it embarks on one foreign policy misadventure after another? A possible change of government in Australia after the next election will not make any appreciable difference. The Labor leadership is always quick to ensure minimum daylight between themselves and the Coalition whenever yet another pledge of fealty to the Americans is made.  

There are two useful tests to employ to gauge an answer posed to the above question.   The first test is one of history. There have been at least five major conflicts since World War 2 where Australia has followed the Americans when a vital national security issue was either difficult to discern or was invisible.

useful further reading

The Korean War 1950-53 has always been justified to the Australian public as a UN based “Police action,” with American led forces responding to an invasion of South Korea by the North. That explanation was never adequate. It ignored a large number of relevant factors, including a history of American interference in that country since at least the 1880s.

It further ignored American acquiescence in the brutal colonization of Korea by Japan after 1910 in exchange for Japan not interfering in America’s colonization of the Philippines (600,000 Filipinos died resisting that colonization.) With Japan’s defeat in 1945, Korea was divided in two along the 38th Parallel, a line drawn by the US State Department without consulting the Koreans. Contrary to international maritime law, that boundary line then turned north, thus depriving the North Koreans of access to their own maritime exclusive economic zone.

Between 1945 and 1950 the promised national elections were never held. South Korea’s US installed military dictator made repeated forays into the North, killings tens of thousands of North Korean citizens. The “invasion”, more accurately a civil war, has never been resolved. (1) Several opportunities to steer North Korea away from nuclear weapons were squandered and there is now a level of belligerence that poses the risk of a further outbreak of war. Australia’s willingness to become involved has repeatedly manifested itself, although a rational basis for doing so remains elusive.

Useful further reading

The second great conflict was Vietnam, again a civil war initially and again a country divided artificially after the defeat of the former colonial occupiers. Another similarity with Korea was again, the Americans refused to allow an election as provided for in the Geneva Accords, no doubt because the “wrong” man would have won.

Australia’s involvement in the war was prefaced by Harold Holt’s infamous “all the way with LBJ” although the internal Vietnam conflict posed no national security threat to Australia, the blatant “red scare” propaganda notwithstanding. In common with so many American invasions, this one was justified on the basis of a blatant falsehood; in this case the alleged attack on an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Afghanistan, the third major conflict we entered at the behest of the Americans was similarly based on a number of lies, which have continued unabated in the nearly 16 years of subsequent occupation. The real causes of that intervention and continuing occupation have been well documented. (2) Trumps most recent speech on the topic (21 August 2017) was similarly an exercise in concealing the real purposes behind the continuing American occupation (3).

In 2004, my thoughts on Iraq war here
the 'cost of war' counters are still running.

Iraq in 2003 was a similar lie-based invasion and occupation, the disastrous consequences of which continue to this day. Australia’s presence there is so tenuous that there is no Status of Forces Agreement signed and all Australian military personnel carry diplomatic passports (4).

The fifth illustration is Australian participation in the US led “coalition” currently attacking Syria. Notwithstanding the nonsensical claims of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop invoking Article 51 of the UN Charter, the American and Australian presence in Syria is in blatant breach of international law. It is worse than just being illegal. Australia is a party to the commission of war crimes, most notably at present in the current assault on Raqqa with an horrendous civilian death toll that even the UN was drawn to criticize (5).

With this history we should not be surprised that more wars are looming in which Australia will assuredly be involved unless there is a radical change in foreign policy.  [my emphasis added] This brings us to the second test that can be applied: what do the protagonists themselves say about their intentions?

text here

To assist in predicting future wars, the Americans have helpfully produced a document that might reasonably be described as a blueprint for future wars. These documents have valuable predictive power, as we have seen demonstrated with the PNAC document, Rebuilding America’s Defences (1997).

This 90-page document served as a blueprint for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.   It promoted policies to “preserve and extend” the US’s position of “global leadership” by “maintaining the preeminence of American military forces” that would better enable them to fight and win “multiple simultaneous major theater wars” which themselves provide a framework within which to “spread American principles of liberty and democracy.” That last phrase was used without a hint of irony.

We then had General Wesley Clark’s revelations that he was shown a document at the Pentagon in September 2001 that was a blueprint for war with “seven countries in five years.” (6) In the light of subsequent events, the list is instructive: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, and Sudan.

Of the seven, only Lebanon and Iran have escaped direct US military intervention. Lebanon has suffered invasion and occupation by Israel before being driven out by Hezbollah. The US armed, financed and politically supported Israeli aggression, while Australia has always been slow to find fault with Israeli foreign policy and is one of a literal handful of countries that vote with Israel in the UN General Assembly on resolutions critical of Israel.

Iran has been the victim of hybrid warfare through sanctions, massive propaganda assault, US sponsored terrorist activity through their proxy group the MEK, and drug warfare through the US controlled heroin production and distribution from Afghanistan (7).

Text here

In 2012 the US published another Defence Department document entitled “Operational Environments to 2028: The Strategic Environment for Unified Land Operations. To the best of my knowledge its existence, let alone analysis of its contents, has never appeared in the Australian mainstream media.

The plan, written in 2012, foresees the economic and social collapse of Europe caused by massive immigration from Africa and the Middle East. It also predicts that Ukraine will become a NATO member. This was written two years before the US financed coup in February 2014.

There have been a range of events that have occurred since 2012, all of which were “anticipated” in the document. The whole document is worth reading, but some highlights illustrate the wider point.

• The Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) transferring nuclear technology to North Korea, but blaming the Russians. (The CIA runs the SBU).
• Blaming Pakistan for “WMD proliferation, being a direct threat to the Homeland, supporting terrorist organisations, and causing regional tensions with India.” All of these points appeared in Trump’s 21 August speech).
• A cold war with China and a proxy military conflict using India’s military. This is currently being played out on the Bhutan-China border.
• Azerbaijan is named as a future war zone. Azerbaijan not only shares borders with Iran and Russia (two prime targets for the Americans) but it is also a key link in the North South Transportation Corridor that is a key component of the Eurasian geopolitical transformation that is underway. That transformation, spurred by China’s massive One Belt One Road program, is in turn a fundamental threat to US hegemony.
• A plan to trigger war between Russia and China. This is one of the major strategic miscalculations in the document. As a direct result of US policy in Europe and Asia, Russia and China have been driven into a closer strategic embrace than at any other time in their long history. Together they have the capacity to destroy US hegemony.
• According to the 2012 plan, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen will continue indefinitely and can be used as launch pads for wars in Azerbaijan, China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan.

The arrogance implicit in these plans is astonishing. They are also exceedingly dangerous. Can it seriously be argued that Australia’s national interest is served by being a party to any of these plans? Does Australia really want a war with any of the named targets, several of whom are nuclear armed?

The history of the past seventy years demonstrates the folly of Australia’s blind fealty to US imperialism. A serious rethink is urgently needed before it is too late and we are dragged into yet another war, the results of which would be terminal in every sense of the word.

*Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au

References

1.  Cumings The Korean War. The Modern Library 2010
2. O’Neill The Ongoing Disaster of Australia’s Policy in Afghanistan johnmenadue.com 16 May 2017
3. O’Neill Trump and Afghanistan: a Hidden Agenda journal-neo.org 25 August 2017.
4. Tanter Australia in America’s Iraq 3.0 Nautilus Institute 2014
5. telesurtv.net 23 August 2017
6. Global Warfare. globalresearch.ca 30 January 2017
7. Shoring Up a Flood of Drugs unodc.org 19 July 2011; Afghanistan’s Role in Iran’s Drug Problem www.cfr.org 13 September 2006.

On Pine Gap and problems of the Australian-American alliance

This is a re-post from John Menadue's blog.

DENNIS ARGALL. Pine Gap and national strategic independence.

Posted on 24 August 2017 by John Menadue

For a long time people have focused concern on Pine Gap.  But Pine Gap is but an element of our entanglement with United States strategic policy, which is the big thing to be addressed and turned around. 

Recently Andrew Farran wrote (http://johnmenadue.com/andrew-farran-we-should-discuss-pine-gap/)  expressing concern about the increased capabilities of the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap.  It is a big and impressive cart but nothing can be done about it without dealing first with the horse of strategic entanglement with the US.

Pine Gap: near Alice Springs in central Australia.
click on image to enlarge
Source google map

For the record… I am the surviving participant in the negotiations between Australia and the US from December 1972 to February 1973 in relation to Pine Gap, after the election of the Whitlam Government.  I reported directly to Sir Arthur Tange, Secretary of the Defence Department.  The Department of Foreign Affairs was not party to those discussions.

Andrew wrote:

“Initially Australian authorities did not know as much as they would have liked about the…  operations [of defence facilities with the US in Australia, particularly Pine Gap] and saw this as a diminishment of national sovereignty.   Through negotiations in the 1970s, the Whitlam Government obtained the agreement of the US that it would be informed of and required to assent to all operational activity on the part of the facilities to ensure that nothing would be done there that would complicate or prejudice our own diplomatic relations or national interests.”

Governments prior to the Whitlam Government did not regard the bases as diminishing sovereignty, perhaps because they didn’t give it much thought, or had a sense of being joined at the hip to the US.

Prime Minister Whitlam [left] and
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence
Lance Barnard, December 1972 [source]

The Whitlam Government’s position on Pine Gap and other US bases in Australia was set out by Lance Barnard, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, on the second sitting day of the parliament at the end of February 1973.  http://historichansard.net/hofreps/1973/19730228_reps_28_hor82/

That statement was more slender than it would have been had Whitlam submitted the draft to the whole Cabinet and not to the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee of Cabinet.  By Whitlam’s account, Senator Lionel Murphy, chair of that committee, had snarled “you can have your bloody bases but I’m not wearing your bloody argument” — the ‘bloody argument’ being that Pine Gap and Nurrungar contributed to war avoidance and strategic balance, an argument extracted from the US with as much ease as wisdom tooth extraction without anaesthesia or consent.  It was my sad duty, having fought with Sir Arthur to get a big part of our text to cover strategic perspective, then to chop the guts out of the text.

I remain on the Pine Gap ‘silent list’ but I can say that the American judgement at the time was that the USSR did not distinguish between big bases and little bases and they did not want to attract attention to Pine Gap and Nurrungar.  For that reason alone there was no mention in the draft speech, contrary to our desires, of the place of Pine Gap and Nurrungar as elements of the National Means of Verification at the core of the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT1) between the US and USSR.

The latter part of the quote from Andrew’s text, above, is not quite correct.  Dealing especially with issues related to the North West Cape communications facility, with very low frequency capability of communicating with and sending commands to submerged nuclear missile submarines, one comes to Article II of the NPT: “Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices OR OF CONTROL OVER such weapons…” [emphasis added].

Time cover 11 February 1974

So we needed something other than ‘control’ and, when Barnard later visited Washington, the accord reached with Defense Secretary Schlesinger was that, as Australia associated itself with United States strategic policy, there arose an entitlement for Australia to have a consultative relationship on strategic policy.  As this process of consultation developed, it vanished on the Australian side down some hole in Defence with which I am only tangentially aware –  though recently looking at US archives for record of the Barnard-Schlesinger meeting, I find that there is nothing mentioned in their record of conversation of a significant new accord having been reached.

Leaving aside the quality, or not, of ongoing strategic consultation, we are now in a very different world from the days of strategic balance between two nuclear superpowers.

Now we have a world of one hyper-power, a hegemon that creates more conflict than it resolves and – by chauvinistic ambition and force structure and deployment momentum – seeks to denude other nuclear powers of security based on possession of second-strike capabilities.  This situation is now complicated by erratic and social discord in the US, though with a Clinton Administration the same hegemonic ambitions would likely be being pursued with greater efficiency.

Of course a clear minded strategic consultation process with the United States would have made that evident and perhaps enabled independent policy judgement by Australia…

Pine Gap is a very substantial element in, but best regarded as part of, a network of capabilities entangling us with the United States. Our involvement in all that network can only be altered by political resolve:

• first to take back command of strategy from the Australian defence force to civilian government leadership,
• second to enter into serious thoughtful strategic discussion with the US about the future of our region and
• third to find our way to more overt and coherent public enunciation of a decent place for Australia in the region as an independent country among peers.

I have doubts about our capacity to do those things, not least given the drift into domestic militarism and continuing thoughtless international adventurism.

The keys must be the commitment of younger people to a democratic system that many of them think is broken, and the capacity of younger people to work to rebuild the system from within.