Australia’s future maritime warfare capability is now to include the ‘Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant Fleet’. Requiring, like the AUKUS submarines, ambitious naval acquisition and construction programs with long lead-times before delivery, serious questions are raised about how the ELSCF responds to assessments of Australia’s strategic circumstances – and of the extent to which it would be just another contribution by Australian taxpayers to US military forces.
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A second Trump administration might mean domestic chaos, violence, and division for the American Republic. However, the danger is that Biden would be more likely to lead the world into catastrophic war. Sadly, on this score at least, another Trump imperium could be the least worst outcome of the 2024 US presidential election.
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How can the flood of crocodile tears from western governments for the Palestinians, without ever condemning America as the arsenal of Israel’s war on women and children, be explained? What logic explains the weak remonstrations against Israel and the failure to see war crimes in Ukraine and in Gaza as indistinguishable?
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President Biden’s regular paeans to America as “the greatest nation in history” need to be a warning to Australian policy-makers that a second term for him could be worse for Australia than the election of Trump. Biden’s obsession with the challenge of China is not just geopolitics. It’s a fanaticism that makes war conceivable, possibly inevitable.
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Avoiding a Trump presidency requires Biden finding some compromise or accommodation with alienated voters. Instead he has opted for division; his camp are the real patriots, just like Trump calls his followers real Americans. The other side are the implacable enemy, and when the election is over, rather than increased unity, for many the result will be seen as a terrible, maybe existential, defeat.
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The norms, customs, and conventions that have been the foundations of American republicanism are dissolving. Perhaps more precipitously than in the Roman Republic, liberal democracy seems to be passing in America.
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Extravagant claims are made about the capability that the proposed AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines will give to Australia. The latest from Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy are particularly puzzling.
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Prime Minister Albanese has announced new commitments to the United States which have the potential to give American institutions and agencies access to the inside workings of Australian intelligence, research, and business in ways that will not be, and could not be, reciprocated.
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Israel’s right to defend itself is not untrammelled and by implying that it is, political leaders are undermining the authority of international law. Instead, they should be drawing heavily on it to halt the carnage in Gaza and the colonisation of the West Bank.
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Nations continue to develop climate policies within a framework that prioritises economic growth, despite the starkly evident failure of this approach to achieve emissions reduction. Surely we must now recognise that the timetable for getting to net zero cannot be left to the hope that private capital and markets will prove to be up to saving millions of lives?
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The turning point at which the American hegemony began to irretrievably unravel will retrospectively be judged as the reaction of the Biden Administration to the Gaza crisis. Amid the pomp of an Official Visit to Washington did the Australian Prime Minister sense the enormity of the moment? As he paid homage to the hegemon, could he feel the facade crumbling to reveal America’s slipping power?
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A significant number of interlinked think tanks, organisations, and individuals are engaged in extensive preparations for Trump’s return – and for reform of the ‘administrative state’ and every aspect of American government policy. The program of the reactionary forces in America is as radical as that of the interwar fascists.
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Social change creates the space for revolutionary new thoughts. A rejection of liberalism and democracy is evident – even in nations that have been liberal democracies the longest. Trump could prove an ill-disguised Trojan horse for a vanguard of illiberal crusaders in pursuit of a post liberal America.
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As it stands, the leading Republican US presidential hopefuls, and much of their base, are supportive of military action against Mexico. What would it mean if America invaded Mexico in 2025?
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The 2023 Intergenerational Report displays unwarranted optimism about the impacts and consequences that global warming will have on Australia. A problem anchored in the ongoing misconception that global warming is an economic issue and that markets will save us in the end.
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From the moment it was sworn in, the Albanese government has been swept up in a series of defence arrangements with the Americans with far-reaching implications for Australia’s ability to act independently and in its own interests. The nation’s intelligence function is the latest casualty.
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A consensus is growing that the US alliance is no longer in Australia’s national interest and the AUKUS partnership should be abandoned. But while the argument for distancing Australian foreign policy from that of America is strong in theory, its practical implementation would be difficult and risky.
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Biden, Trump, or DeSantis; the zealot, the disrupter, or the ideologue. Trump is Trump. Biden’s failing democracy crusade is already fracturing the world into opposing camps. Where would a DeSantis presidency lead?
Read moreAn open letter signed by concerned university academics argues that the public case for AUKUS has yet to be made, and calls on the government not to proceed with the development of a nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) capability for Australia until issues raised are addressed.
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America’s space policy reveals its hegemonic obsession and exposes the future quandaries for Australia. How will Australia confront the inevitable question of whether to support a peaceful or a militarised exploration of space?
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