Thursday 9th of January 2025
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the one-sided military bias of most think-tanks.......

Just before Christmas, the Albanese Government released the findings of a report into how much funding the federal government contributes to those institutions around the country that research and report on the contemporary challenges facing Australian strategic policy.

 

Marching blindfolded into the new Cold War    By James Curran

 

This is a significant report with important consequences for Australia’s global engagement. But it has not received the attention it deserves.

Led by former Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade secretary Peter Varghese, the report presents options on how to make those grants to think tanks more competitive, and what the government’s future role would be in shaping how these institutions focus on matters critical to Australia’s international security environment.

Varghese wants governments to seek contestability earlier in the making of policy and more often. And his report makes it clear that “governments must accept the [think tank] sector will present some at times uncomfortable and at times even unhelpful contributions, but debate is both healthy and necessary”.

Even before release, however, Canberra folklore had decided that the report was expressly designed to give Labor cover to close down the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

ASPI was created by the Howard Government in 2001 to provide contestable advice on Australian defence policy. But it has since strayed a considerable distance from that charter.

Since 2017, ASPI has gained a prominence all its own, owing primarily to its reporting on Australian China policy. Indeed, it worked hand in glove with the Morrison Government on how to play China as an issue in Australian domestic politics.

In that era, some political leaders, officials and commentators depicted Australia as the “tip of the spear” in calling out and confronting an assertive China. ASPI saw itself as the ideological font of that policy and some of its analysts created an atmosphere in which to question government policy settings on China was deemed unpatriotic.

It now chafes at the Albanese/Wong policy of “stabilising” relations with Beijing, virtually decreeing it to be the equivalent of appeasement.

Varghese has already rebutted claims that his report was a “get ASPI” exercise.

“The idea that a think tank should be shut down because the government does not like its views is a dangerous one,” he wrote in the News Corporation press, “and contrary to the value of policy contestability in a liberal democracy.”

Juvenile response

Nevertheless, ASPI’s current director, Justin Bassi, a former adviser to previous Coalition governments, equated the 14 recommendations of Varghese’s report to the “14 grievances” issued by an officer in the Chinese embassy in 2020.

One of those “grievances” was a demand that the government close ASPI. The list was a ham-fisted Chinese exercise, but it remains talismanic for China hawks. Bassi’s comparison is not only reprehensible, but juvenile.

Varghese’s review brought to the fore a range of critical issues.

One is that those voices of restraint in Australian think tanks on China, as opposed to ASPI’s hairy-chested approach, do not attract any significant, direct government funding. Nor do those questioning American staying power.

Varghese noted to this author that part of the answer here is that “ASPI is seen as in the advocacy more than the research space as a think tank, and the public perception is that it is quite ideological in its approach”.

Another is why the Australian foreign and defence policy community remain so closed to outside advice. Varghese identifies two key elements here.

“I don’t think the policymaking community in the national security space seeks out different analysis and perspectives: there is a view that an outside perspective could never know everything the government knows, so the conclusions are limited in their value.”

And as intelligence plays a bigger role in the making of policy, he adds, “that view has become stronger”.

This is in sharp contrast, he points out, to the greater openness on economic and social policy, where Treasury, for example, is more open to advice from the Grattan Institute, for example.

Varghese’s bigger worry is that a system closed to outside advice compounds the challenges it already faces in coming to grips with deep policy work in areas where the external strategic environment is shifting sharply.

“The value of think tanks,” he adds, “would usually be recognised where the policy community is wrestling with deep issues.”

Varghese accepts there is risk in his recommendation that the government provide think tanks with priorities each year to help shape applications for funding. He recognises that it could become manipulated by a government seeking to hear only what it wants to hear.

But he has more faith in the integrity of the public service, namely that “in setting priorities they would be focusing on the big policy questions that the system is wrestling with and where it would be good to gain an external perspective”.

The report also reveals the gaps in coverage of the Australian think tank community: a heavy focus on the US alliance means that serious thinking on China, Japan, Indonesia, India and Korea is in short supply.

Varghese noted the “systemic failure” in terms of Australian China expertise in particular.

As Professor Mark Wang, president of the Chinese Studies Association of Australia, recently remarked: “Even during the Cold War, the opposing superpowers did not stop funding research on each other. Without knowledge about China, there will be a higher risk for policymakers to make stupid or risky decisions.”

If that failure is not redressed, Australia may as well march headlong into the new Cold War blindfolded.

First published in the Australian Financial Review on 5 January 2025

https://johnmenadue.com/marching-blindfolded-into-the-new-cold-war/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME ASPI.

in the red sea.....

The US is mired in its biggest naval battle since WW2 and Australia is commanding its Red Sea Task Force against the Houthi rebels of Yemen who are trying to stop the genocide in Gaza. Michael West reports.

It is the quintessential case of being dragged into war, by stealth, without the consent of the people. Australia is at war with Yemen, or to be precise the Houthis, but you won’t hear much about it from the government or the media.

Since October, Australia has led the “Combined Task Force (CTF) 153” to combat the Iran-backed Houthis in the Red Sea. It is not going well. In fact, hostilities are escalating this week. The Houthis repelled an attack by the USS aircraft carrier Harry S Truman and fired another round of missiles into Israel.

With the US navy now mired in their biggest naval battle since the Second World War, overnight US President Elect, Donald Trump, upped the rhetoric:

“If those hostages [in Gaza] aren’t back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas. And it will not be good frankly for anyone. All hell will break out.”

Yet the might of the US military, alongside naval allies from the UK, France, Australia and other nations, have been unable to defeat the impoverished rebel forces of the Houthis firing off drones to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea and landing a few missiles in the heart of Israel 2,000k away.

The problem is that disinformation is rife. The Red Sea operation is mostly a secret. MWM put questions to Defence as to Australia’s involvement in the Red Sea task force but no response was forthcoming.

In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s extreme retaliation in Gaza, the Houthis of Yemen declared war on Israel. Their demands are simple. They vowed to attack Israel and any ship connected to Israel until the IDF stopped its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Suez Canal accounts for 10-15% of world trade. The war has therefore taken a toll on world shipping, and on the allies military resources as it has dragged on for a year.

Amid the failure of the allies to publicise their activities and the propaganda on both sides of the conflict, finding an accurate account of the war is difficult. This is the best we could find, from James Angell on Substack, who goes through a year of claims and incident reports to pull together a comprehensive account of the Red Sea mission.

“US Navy fighter pilots and sailors returning to the US after months of being deployed to shoot down Houthi missiles and drones over the Red Sea have spoken of the trauma of what is now the navy’s most intense sea fighting since World War II. US pilots tell of ‘traumatising’ deployment to stop Red Sea attacks by Houthis,” writes Angell.

“According to The Associated Press (AP), sailors would see incoming missiles just seconds before being destroyed by ship defence systems. Most on the ships were not used to being attacked, Commander Benjamin Orloff, a Navy pilot, said.

“‘I’ll be honest: It was a little traumatising for the group. It’s something that we don’t think about a lot until you’re presented with it,’ he said. A US aircraft carrier strike group deployed to the Red Sea in mid-October. After months of operations to shoot down missiles and drones, the deployment was twice extended placing additional stress on the crew of roughly 7,000 sailors, the AP reports.”

Australia’s involvement

Amid the sparse disclosures by Australian Defence it was announced in October that Australia would head up the Combined Task Force.

“Air bases in Australia have helped with this week’s United States air strike on underground Houthi weapons stores in Yemen, an attack that has been seen as a warning to Iran,” said the ABC.

“The Department of Defence confirmed Australia provided support for US strikes on October 17, targeting the Houthi facilities ‘through access and overflight for US aircraft in northern Australia’.

And in another story: “Acting Prime Minster Richard Marles announced earlier that the country would send a “significant number” of ADF troops and two RAAF aircraft to the Middle East.” Apart from that, not much information is publicly available.

We can assume the secretive Pine Gap surveillance facilities are being used to help Israel in its brutal Gaza campaign. We can also assume that it is likely that casualties of the war will escalate. Notwithstanding Trump’s bellicose rhetoric about Gaza, the Houthis by all accounts are fiercely determined to escalate against Israel.

Back-channel efforts by the Allies to negotiate with the Houthis have yet failed. The Houthis position has remained steadfast, that Israel has to cease its ‘seige of Gaza’. And amid the IDF’s atrocities against the Palestinians, world opinion is not behind the Allies.

Australia’s Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, jetted off to meetings in Israel this week, to “mend the factured relationship” with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

This news did not go down well on social media with almost ubiquitous condemnation that an Australian minister would travel to Israel to kowtow to the government of an alleged war criminal whose activities in Gaza had led to world condemnation and a case in the International Court of Justice for plausible genocide.

Meanwhile, reports by US think tanks claim China is funding the Houthis, as well as Iran, as the Houthis are allowing Chinese ships safe passage in the Red Sea. Civilians in Yemen continue to die in aerial bombardments by US and Israel fighter jets, and the Houthis continue to hit Israel with missiles and Red Sea shipping is down as much as 90%.

The Allies’ rhetoric that the Houthis are a primitive rebel group is wearing thin, such is the success of their drone warfare which has endured for more than a year. The Houthis had previously survived a decade long war from the US-backed Saudi regime (with weapons supplied by Australia) and their popularity in Yemen as only grown with their determination to fight Israel.

For Australia, the stakes are rising. If it is the duty under the Genocide Convention of nations to oppose genocide, what is the legal position of countries engaged in war against people trying to uphold the Geneva Convention and stop a genocide?

Questions put to Defence Media last week:

Could you please provide an update on how the Yemen operation is travelling? 

Is Australia still leading the Combined Maritime Force’s Combined Task Force (CTF)? 

How many Australians are deployed, and from what branches of the military?

What is Australia’s legal position/advice in regards of the impact of our military involvement in this operation and the risks associated with the Genocide Convention and proceedings in the ICJ?

https://michaelwest.com.au/secret-war-australias-war-against-the-houthis-of-yemen/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME AMERICA.