Preliminary reflections on 2023: Ukraine

 After a turbulent few years, 2023 looks likely to follow the same pattern. 

When President Putin launched his Special Military Operation in Ukraine in February 2022, there was some debate about the causes of the conflict, a debate that has dragged on. Regardless of that, few expected a war with such significant global implications. Looking back at the small number of posts I wrote from 2014, I downplayed suggestions that we might have a repeat of the Second World War. Now I'm not so sure. I also underestimated the global impact of the conflict.

President Putin expected his invasion to yield quick results. The strength of Ukrainian resistance took him by surprise, providing time for Ukraine's allies to provide financial and material assistance that in turn forced the Russians back. Now Russia is regrouping trying to use its stronger population and resource base to wear down the Ukrainians. President Putin has been reluctant to move to a full total war footing, it's hard to do that when you even deny that there is a war on, but circumstances are likely to force his hand. 

The present war position can best be described as a stalemate reminiscent of  World War 1 with trench and defensive lines running over thousands of kilometres. President Putin hopes that the extended conflict will finally drain the West's willingness and ability to sustain support given domestic political considerations in the various countries involved. The West hopes for a Ukrainian breakthrough that will erode Russia's ability to fight the war. I could wish that, but it seems to me that the most probable military result is a period of stasis with heavy casualties on both sides. Meantime, the effects of the war continue to spread and spread.

Saigon, Afghanistan and the West's decline?

The sudden collapse of the Afghanistan Government in the face of the Taliban offensive took me by surprise. I am old enough to remember the fall of Saigon in the face of the North Vietnamese offensive and the chaotic scenes that followed. President Biden's suggestion that Afghanistan could not be compared to that fall was frankly risible. 

There was another similarity as well. As South Vietnam was falling, the then Whitlam Government resisted calls calls to bring to Australia those who had supported Australian troops. At the time I was involved with a small group in Canberra seeking to bring people to Australia. My involvement was peripheral, writing to Ian Sinclair whom I had known for many years to seek his support, but I remember the atmosphere very clearly if not all the details. This time the Morrison Government was prepared to take some action, but became so tied up in red tape of its own making that action was too little and too late. 

Of all the various events, the evacuation of the Bagram airbase stands out in my mind as a symbol of just went wrong. This base, the main US base in Afghanistan, seems to have been abandoned without any plan or attempt to transfer effective control to the Afghani Government. It added to a picture of a chaotic withdrawal that effectively undercut the authority of a Government already under pressure. That Government's authority had previously been undermined by decisions taken by the Trump administration that effectively treated the Government in Kabul as a cipher.  Maybe a total Taliban victory was inevitable, but the actions followed by the US and its allies including Australia accelerated the process, creating chaos. 

What will come now? I have no clear answer. The Taliban claims to have changed, although the same religious and ideological elements are still there. Afghanistan itself has changed, especially in the cities. The new Taliban Government still in the process of formation faces some difficult challenges. I suppose my feeling is that pragmatism will temper ideology to some degree.

I think that the biggest problem from a Western perspective is the damage done to the reputation of the West. Many will see it as another symbol of the West's decline. Only time will tell if those views are correct. 

Postscript 

kvd pointed me to this piece Farewell to Bourgeois Kings. It's an interesting read although it mixes different things together. I have listed it here because I thought that it may interest readers and also may wish to reference it later.  

 

Trump, fear, hate, love and the need for objectivity in US politics

Nancy Pelosi. To my mind, she has become part of the US problem, impeding a US solution. 

Like many Australians, I watched events unfold at the US Capitol Building with a degree of distress. Like many Australians, I felt that President Trump had gone totally off the rails. All that said, I think that the Democratic Party is in danger of doing the same. that many who oppose President Trump and his objections are doing so blindly, allowing emotion to overcome objective analysis and that we will all be poorer as a consequence.  

Some 75 million Americans voted for President Trump. He has used his marketing skills and showmanship, his understanding of the many Americans who feel disenfranchised, to develop a loyal supporter base that spans from decent Republicans through independents and even Democrats, to right wing conspiracy theorists. As many have pointed out, President Trump is a symbol of a divided America, an America in which many feel betrayed by the American system. 

Alone in his White House bunker with encircling enemies, President Trump lost all sense of tactics, let alone strategy. He kept trying to pull the levers of power even though they were becoming increasingly disconnected, even as his closest aides were distancing themselves. As recently as four weeks ago I thought that he had a path through not to retention of the presidency but to retention of influence and protection of his commercial assets. It was not a path I would have chosen, but as an analyst I could see ways in which it might work.  

His remarks and consequent Capitol riots have destroyed that path. It left a country further divided, fearful.The key need in these circumstances was unification, the calming of emotions. Instead, President Trump's opponents have resorted to emotional language driven by payback and a get Trump mentality playing on the fear of what right wing fringe groups might do that has further divided the nation.  

One common thread in all this is that Trump brought US democracy and the US system of government to its knees. I have a very different view, This episode has actually demonstrated the strength of US democracy. President Trump used every one of the diminishing levers at his disposal to try to overturn the results and failed.

The move by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats to try to impeach the President strikes me as very unwise. The previous attempt failed and was early recognised as certain to fail. In that sense, it was a symbolic gesture whose political purpose was to wound the President. It failed there too. 

Now in the last eight days of the Trump presidency, we have another Pelosi political gesture in impeachment which adds to the theatre of it all but whose practical results are quite uncertain.  It does play to the Democratic political base, but equally it plays to the underlying Trump narrative that everybody is out to get him, that he and his supporters are being robbed. In doing so, it does increase the risk that some Trump supporters may take matters into their own hands. 

For the moment in all this I am just keeping my fingers crossed that we get through to the Biden administration with minimum trouble. Then we can look at new things.    

        

China's apparently expanding Great Wall against Australia

 

The signature on Sunday 15 November 2020 of  the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) after eight years of negotiations should mark a step forward, combining China, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea alongside members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), 

I say this with a considerable degree of caution because it comes at a time when China is apparently raising barriers against Australian trade in retaliation for what it sees as Australian wrong doing. The latest escalation came when a defence pact, the Reciprocal Access Agreement, was agreed to '"in principle" during Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's state visit to Japan, The agreement would pave the way for the Australian and Japanese militaries to have access to each other's bases, and would deepen cooperation between the two countries. China, correctly, sees this as a reaction to its international objectives.

According to the ABC,  an editorial in the Global Times published in both Chinese and English for domestic and foreign audiences framed the two countries as pawns of the United States.

"China is unlikely to remain indifferent to US moves aimed at inciting countries to gang up against China in the long run," it read.

"It's inevitable that China will take some sort of countermeasures.

"Countries like Japan and Australia have been used as US tools. The strategic risk for a tool to be damaged is certainly higher than that of a user." 

We do not know what form those counter measures might take, but they could well involve further trade retaliation. The process here has been interesting. Apart from not taking Australian ministerial calls, trade retaliation has involved a series of apparently actual or threatened ad hoc decisions that act to impede or sometimes stop Australian exports of particular products. The process is opaque in that actions or potential actions can come at local or regional level Chinese level via reports in the Chinese media allowing a measure of deniability. This can have the same chilling effect on trade because it means that Australian exporters have to make commercial decisions based on the costs and risks of possible Chinese decisions. The measures taken skirt the WTO rules as China tries to balance its official support for free global trade with the need to punish Australia.

The Australian Government's position suffers from lack of subtlety. Australian PM Morrison is not an especially subtle man. He is not helped by ideological warriors such as Senator Abetz whose treatment of Chinese witnesses to a senate inquiry where he called on them to  “unconditionally condemn” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was to my mind unconscionable, reminiscent of a certain US Senator in the immediate post war period. If I had been a witness and had been asked that question I would have refused and fired right back. 

 In all this, I think that there are certain things that we should remember:

• Chinese Australians are an integral part of our community. Some have been here for many generations. Others, like Senator Arbetz himself, were brought here by their parents. Others are more recent migrants.They are valuable members of our community. Some, I would like more, have been my friends
• The Government's present focus on national security and the avoidance of foreign interference may or may not be right. More likely, it's partly right. However, it strikes me as very ham fisted and poorly implemented 
• Australia is, at best, a mid-size power. We need to recognise that. Theodore Roosevelt reportedly said, "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." We need to speak still more softly because our stick is small. This does not mean giving up on our values or core interests. It does affect how we express them. It also means that we need allies
• We need to recognise that other people's values are different from ours. This does not mean that that we should not protest abuses. We just need to recognise limitations, as well as the beams in our own eyes. I winder how many recognise the allusion? It comes from the Bible where criticism of the mote in some one else's eyes is contrasted with the failure to recognise the beam in our own
• We have no control over the Chinese Government. It will  do what it will do. If we are to be punished, we will be punished. We just have to get on with life regardless. Our responses are the only things that we can control.   

I suppose, in conclusion, that we are trying to build a new and different society in Australia, I think that we need to focus on that, for that gives us the best chance of a future. 

Postscript 191120

Even as I wrote this, the position was deteriorating. This ABC story, Australian officials respond angrily to fresh attacks from Chinese diplomat, provides a picture. 

A new phrase has been added to the English language, Chinese "wolf diplomats", diplomats who see their role not in traditional terms but in the aggressive public pursuit of their country's interests.  I corrected this. I had written tiger eather than wolf. 

Postscript 201120

More from the BBC

• Hong Kong: 'Eyes will be plucked out,' China warns West

Trying to understand foreign policy in a Trumpian and febrile environment

To say that I find President Trump unsettling is an understatement. It's not just what he does, but how he does it.

Since coming to office, he has launched trade wars that are now dragging the global economy down. He has launched a detente with North Korea whose effect appears to have been an entrenchment of the regime without any reduction in its arms program. He has begun and then partially withdrawn from attempts to bring peace to Afghanistan whose primary effect to this point has been a strengthening of the position of the Taliban. He announced that the US would develop a new circuit breaking deal between the Israelis and Palestinians while taking steps that would seem to preclude any such deal. He withdrew the US from the deal with Iran triggering a new round of sanctions and uncertainties. Now President Trump appears to have triggered the long planned invasion by Turkey of parts of Syria designed to break the power of the Kurds.

These various moves have taken place against a backdrop of a rapidly changing international scene and have added to the pace and uncertainty associated with those changes. They have been delivered with a mixture of bluster and blandishment expressed through tweets that I sometimes feel have been composed by a lonely man sitting alone at night seeking to establish relevance and satisfaction through the artificial sugar hits that come from twitter audience and responses. Others have responded, making twitter the dominant news mechanism of this new age. Who would have thought?

Millions of words have been written analysing the man, his policies and actions. I don't have a lot to add here, especially on immediate events  I agree that his approach is transactional. I agree that he has delivered on things he promised during his election campaign. I agree that US domestic political issues including the Muller Inquiry and the impeachment moves play into his responses. To my mind, none of this matters. We just have to wait it out.

The current international scene is as uncertain as I have seen it in my life time. To a degree at least, Europe and the UK are paralysed over the UK's departure from the EU as well as political divides within the UK and EU countries. Relations with Russia are uncertain as President Putin continues to push his own agenda. Fighting continues in the Ukraine.

The Middle East can only be described as a mess with both Syria and Yemen humanitarian disasters. Further west, war continues in Afghanistan, while the sub-continent is tense following Indian actions in Kashmir. China continues its expansion despite US trade actions, has become more authoritarian, is dealing with internal ethnic tensions and faces problems in Hong Kong and potentially Taiwan. South Korea and Japan, two key US allies, are at each other's throats.

Without going further, this simple list indicates the scale of global problems and uncertainties. Within this mix, President Trump has become a random wild card. As I said earlier, it's not just what he does, but also the way he does it.

I suppose that I could make guesses as to what might happen, but with so many cards in play it's perhaps better to wait on events, It must be creating nightmares for the planners and policy advisers in Canberra and other capitals.

From an Australian perspective, this is a time for caution. It is not clear to me that Australian Prime Minister Morrison is capable of exercising the caution and subtlety required to work through the shoal waters we face. I don't have a really solid evidence base to support this conclusion. It is based on his US trip, on his attacks on globalism, his arguments for the reshaping of the trade order, some of his responses to China.

To a degree, the Government seems locked in a time warp still driven by concepts such as the "war on terror", the need to propitiate and manage hard right ideas within the Liberal Party as well as sometimes xenophobic fears within the Australian community driven in part by the Government's own previous rhetoric, fears shared by those on the left as well as the right.

Managing all this requires a clear articulation based on a combination of principles and pragmatism, as well as the capacity not to say things, something that is very hard in Australia's sometimes febrile    political and media environment. It's not easy.

Postscript 13 October

In  a comment kvd wrote:

"Judges 15:16
Twitter is Trump's "jawbone" - in more than one way."

You will find the reference here. I had to laugh.

The BBC's Anthony Zurcher had a useful summary of the apparent confusion of the US position on the Kurds and Rurkey over the last week. Mr Trump's suggestion that he might mediate struck me (and I suspect the Turkish President) as very odd. Meantime, the roller-coaster continues with President Trump proclaiming that a phase one deal had been agreed with China on the trade war. We will have to wait and see what this actually means. 

 

Saturday Morning Musings: the Australian decision on Jerusalem

I have now added some contract policy writing to my other writing. I need the money, but it has further slowed me down. Oh well. I have continued to follow events, however. It remains a strange old world.

 In my post that dealt in part with the Wentworth by-election I referenced in part the Australian Prime Minister's statement on the possible move of the Australian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. There I said:

 Prime Minister Morrison then threw another curled ball, announcing that at the suggestion of Dave Sharma the Government was considering shifting the Australian embassy to Jerusalem. This was in fact part of a broader statement including apparent continuing recognition of East Jerusalem as capital of an independent Palestinian state and needs to be seen in that context, but the timing and the reference suggested an attempt to woo the Jewish vote. If so, that was a serious error of judgement at several levels. Wentworth includes many Liberal Jews who do not necessarily support the current Israeli Government position as well as many centre or centre left voters sympathetic to the Palestinian position. 

The reactions since have been quite polarised. Those on the right have been angry because other countries might react negatively. "They shouldn't tell us what to do." Those on the left have been angry because they see it as affirming Israel's claims over Jerusalem as capital to the detriment of the Palestinian cause. And never the twain shall meet.

As I write, ABC news reports that the Australian Prime Minister is about to announce that the Australian Government will recognise West Jerusalem (my bold) as the capital of Israel but will not immediately move its embassy from Tel Aviv. He is also expected to acknowledge the aspirations of Palestinians for a future state with its capital in East Jerusalem (my bold). 

I'm not sure that I see why Australia should have become involved in this matter in such an overt way. I also note the irony that it is the right that should be so pro-Israel. After all, antisemitism was and indeed still is a thread in right wing political thought. That said, the decision may well meet the diplomacy test of leaving everyone dissatisfied.

Israel, or at least the current Government with its claims over all Jerusalem, can hardly welcome the idea that Australia has recognised its claims only over the west of the city. The Palestinians and their supporters many of whom deny Israeli claims even to West Jerusalem may well react angrily.

Leaving aside the wisdom of becoming involved in the first place and subject to the exact wording of the PM's statement, it's an apparent decision that I find hard to argue against. It limits Israeli claims, affirms to some degree the Palestinian position and provides a base for future even policy. Which is not something that those on the right appear to have wanted.      

Jack Ryan and Tom Clancy - interpreting Donald Trump revisited

It's been a while since I said anything about President Trump. There seemed to be little sensible that I might say that would add value to such a polarised discussion.

Looking back over the little I have written, in  Jack Ryan and Tom Clancy - interpreting Donald Trump (18 January 2018)  I suggested that the writing of Tom Clancy might be used as a framework to interpret President Trump. I said:

I am not equating Jack Ryan with Donald Trump. They are very different people. However, Clancy did capture accurately certain aspects of US right wing populist thinking (I am using that phrase in a descriptive not pejorative sense) including distrust of those within the Beltway and of career politicians, a belief in bureaucratic inefficiency, a belief in the people, a belief in US military power and a somewhat mercantilist view of trade.

I also noted that in bringing about change, President Ryan has to deal with a media and political establishment that constantly tried to interpret his actions against existing models, paradigms, of thought and action. I thought that this was important, for that's what people were trying to do, judge Mr Trump against existing models that didn't quite fit. I thought that we would have to watch and wait to see what it all meant. I really didn't know! At the end of this post, you will find the new President's inaugural speech. That's worth re-reading, for it does provide a framework for President Trump's subsequent actions.

Clancy wrote rattling good yarns and I still enjoy them. However, I always thought that there was a certain naivety in his view of the world, one that became more pronounced with time. This included a belief in and fascination with the application of technology in a military environment allowing the US to win wars despite an over-stretched military. .

Jack Ryan is not Donald Trump. In Executive Orders (1996), Ryan becomes President unexpectedly after a Japanese pilot crashes his airliner into the Capitol building during a special joint sitting killing nearly all members of the Congress, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court. That's cleaning the swamp on a large scale.

Ryan inherited a fully functioning White House staff. This included Arnold van Damm as a Chief of Staff, a key figure with extensive political and Washington experience who guided the President through those first turbulent days. Ryan also picked highly competent replacement figures, especially in Treasury and Defence. They may be stereotypical of that belief that private sector figures are best, their attitudes may reflect prevailing orthodoxy about the inefficiencies of the public sector,the need for tax reform and redeployment of Defence spend, but they were highly competent, able to manage the re-emerging Congress without involving the President. In turn, Ryan gave them a wide degree of freedom.

Unlike Ryan, President Trump came to office after a very messy election campaign. Unlike Ryan, he faced a fully functioning if somewhat dysfunctional Congress. Unlike Ryan, he had to create his office from scratch. President Trump also faced a problem in that he did not have a lot of real depth to draw from in setting up that office and in making Executive appointments.

Twelve days after that first post I wrote Monday Forum - the administrative competence of the Trump Administration.That post began:

I think that the thing that most surprised me about President Trump's Executive Order "PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES" was the apparent administrative incompetence involved, something that may be becoming a feature of the new US Administration at this point in its life.          

This was an initial analytical, not political; observation. I said something very similar about new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd very early.The weaknesses and features displayed in the immediate period after his election would ultimately bring Mr Rudd down.

It will be twelve months Saturday since President Trump's inauguration. It's been a roller-coaster ride. If we look at a policy level, I think that President Trump has broadly tried to stay true to his original campaign pledges sensible or not. But then we have twitter and off-the-cuff Trump. Not only has this created uncertainty, but it has continued an almost existential debate that began prior to Mr Trump's election, one in which different world views collide in ways that may not have a lot to do with what is actually happening.

One unfortunate result has been a coarsening of the political rhetoric on both left and right as they talk past each other and try to relate beyond.. I listened to an example of that this morning from Australian Trade Minister Steven Ciobo.

Australia is engaged in a trade dispute with Canada over wine. In describing this this morning on ABC Radio National, Minister Ciobo used Trumpian language about Australian jobs and Australian first. I'm not sure he used exactly that last phrase, but that was the message.

This is a trade dispute. Australia believes, correctly to my mind, that Canadian restrictions are reducing importation of Australian wine in a way that is in breach of World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements intended to prevent restrictions on global trade.. Australia is therefore taking action against Canada under the WTO rules  to try to reduce the perceived barriers.

The way that Minister Ciobo phrases it plays into the current trope about the dangers of globalisation and free trade and the need for countries to to adopt them first attitudes regardless of the broader consequences. This began on the left and has now spread to the right and to the left and right populist parties. To my mind, it is one of the most dangerous sides of Trumpism.

This cartoon presents the results of the me-first policies that helped create the Great Depression. I could not find the Low cartoon on autarchy that shows each country eating their own legs in the interests of self sufficiency. 

At present, my train reading is W K Hancock's Argument of Empire (Penguin Books, 1943). Keith Hancock is arguably Australia's greatest historian. I will write about this book properly later in my train reading series. For the moment, the book reminded me of the Great Depression and its aftermath.

In 1930,  The US Congress passed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act. This was an America first measure designed to protect American jobs at a time of global downturn. It lead to other countries adopting or increasing protectionist measures. The result was disaster, a collapse in world trade, that turned a depression into the Great Depression. As the results were recognised, countries began to reduce tariffs and sign free trade agreements, a process brought to a sudden end by the onset of war. However, the lessons learned led to a new series of agreements including Bretton Woods (1944) and the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (1947) that created the structure for a new rules based economic order.

This structure laid the base for economic expansion in the Post War period, but is now under severe threat. How President Trump responds on trade issues is one of the two critical Trumpian things I will be watching in 2018.

The second can best be described as insecurity. For much of the time since the Second World War, Australia has operated within a relatively stable international relations and security framework. The American Alliance has been central to that. New developments such as the rise of China posed a challenge to that framework, but few Australians (me included) expected a situation where instability and uncertainty in US foreign policy itself would become a significant challenge.What do Australia and all US allies do now?

I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing, but it is unsettling. It's unsettling for the US too in ways that I'm not sure are properly recognised there as yet. The US is used to doing its own thing, used to being in the lead with others following. As the US withdraws  from certain activities such as the agreement on climate change or the TPP, other countries step up.

We simply don't know how the Trump administration will evolve over the next twelve months, we don't know what changes in defence and foreign affairs will be made as a consequence. We just have to wait.     .

Train reading - reflections on Lyon's Balcony over Jerusalem

One of the books I was given for Christmas was Balcony Over Jerusalem: a Middle East Memoir (HarperCollins Publishers, Sydney 2017) written by John Lyons with partner Sylvie Le Clezio who provided the photos. John Lyons is a distinguished Australian journalist. In 2009 he, Sylvie and son Jack moved to Jerusalem following John’s appointment as Middle East correspondent for the Australian. They lived there for the next six years.

While the book does describe some of John’s experiences covering conflicts across the Middle East, its primary focus is on the relationships between Israel and the Palestinians using both family experiences and John’s interviews as catalyst and evidence.

It’s actually a difficult book to summarise properly. In broad terms, he:

• Shows how Israeli occupation including the settlement program affects, penalises, ordinary Palestinians
• Examines the evolution of the settlement program, arguing that it reflects long-standing Israeli policies
• Traces the rise in power of the settler movement
• Suggests that occupation and the settlement program is having a coarsening affect on Israeli culture and political life, with most Israelis increasingly isolated, cocooned, 
• Is very critical of the Palestinian leadership which he regards as inept, corrupt and self-serving, caught in an almost  symbiotic relationship with the Israeli Government
• Is very critical of US Government policy and the influence of the pro-Jewish lobby in Australia and the US 
• Suggests that a real two state solution may no longer possible given fragmentation of Palestine lands
• Suggests that the Israeli Government cannot accept majority rule in a single state since demographic change means that the Jewish population would inevitably be in a minority. In these circumstances, the most likely outcome is an apartheid Bantustan style arrangement.

I note that this is my interpretation in my words.

Issues of Balance, Bias and Pattern

I felt that this book was partisan to the point that balance was lost.

I will explain this in a moment. First, I want to give you a link to a response from the polar opposite, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), an organisation heavily (and I suspect correctly) criticised by John. His descriptions of the AIJAC’s lobbying efforts within the Australian were a bit staggering.

The AIJAC piece suggests, among other things, that John is biased to the point that it distorts his judgement; that he misrepresents or at least misreads the history of Jewish settlement in the occupied lands; that he presents attitudes in Israel as fixed and uniform when there is variation; and that he quotes selectively from those who support his position.

To cross-check the AIJAC report from an Israeli perspective, I spent a frustrating three hours searching for Israel  English language responses to the book, including site specific searches on both Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post. Recognising the growing weaknesses of Google as a search tool, a constant frustration, I thought that I might find something since I think the book received some form of Israeli launch. That was not to be. The coverage that is out there was almost entirely written from a Palestinian perspective.

I said that I felt that Balcony over Jerusalem was partisan to the point that balance was lost. It is a passionate book, a memoir, neither a journalist’s report nor a coldly objective analysis. I found myself wishing that John had dealt a little more with the why, including Israel’s place in the region. I found myself questioning some of his examples not because they were necessarily wrong, but because of a feeling that John’s passion made the reporting unreliable. In this context, I thought that the AIJAC response made some valid points.

John also has something of a reputation as a campaigner.This 2005 piece from Crikey, John Lyons: hatchet man on the make, provides a then left perspective. The review of Balcony over Jerusalem by David Leser  in the Australian (Still Occupied, 5 August 2017)  provides another perspective.

If you accept the book's bias, if you accept that the reporting on individual events and broader history is not necessarily reliable, there is still a pattern of events, one that is supported by other reports, linked to the nature of occupation itself, to the concept of a Jewish state and to the need for that state to defend itself. That is why I read Balcony Over Jerusalem with interest, but with a sense of depression..

My Own Evolving Position

Back on 11 November  2009, I wrote:

I do not pretend to understand the dynamics of this conflict, although I do know a fair bit of the history. Like many Australians, I have swung from very strong support for Israel coming out of the dynamics of World War II to something of an opposite position, almost a pox on both your houses. 

Leaving aside current issues, I think that the combination of economics and demographic change is working inexorably against Israel. I suspect that if I sat down and looked at the numbers I could probably guess the point at which the balance will finally tilt. It may be that Israel has now lost its chance for a viable two state solution and that, instead, it is now staring down the barrel of a gun at some far more unpalatable outcomes.

I am old enough that the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust were very fresh when I was a child. I also grew up in a fairly religious environment, so I was very familiar with the the Bible and its stories. I was also strongly influenced by Leon Uris's 1958 novel, Exodus and the subsequent 1960 film of the same name.  I wasn't blind to things like the Irgun terrorist attack on the King David Hotel nor to the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians, but I was very pro-Israel.

There was a an underdog, David and Goliath thing in all this. As Israel grew in strength to become a nuclear power with the most powerful armed forces in the immediate region, it became harder to think of it as underdog. The continuing troubles associated with occupation, settlement and injustice began to rank more highly, to erode my support for Israel. I was not alone here. It was part of a broader trend. The Israeli/Jewish lobby may be powerful and able to deliver tactical victories in certain countries, but it appears to have lost the strategic war. so far as public opinion is concerned.

Part of Israel's problem lies in its definition of itself as a Jewish and democratic state.Originally, Jewish was defined in terms of ethnicity. Hitler did not distinguish between Jews by ethnicity and Jews by religion. If you met the Nazi definition of Jewish based on birth you went to the gas chambers. With time, the Israeli definition of Jewish seems to have become more focused on religious belief.

There is an inherent tension between a Jewish and democratic state. How can you be a Jewish state if the majority of your population is not Jewish? How can you be democratic if you have rules to preserve your Jewishness and role as a Jewish state that over-ride democratic majorities?

In theory, the problem might be resolved in this way. Israel is a secular state.It is also homeland to the Jews. Both are written into the constitution and are accepted by all. Being a Jewish state need not mean, however, that non-Jews are discriminated against. All Israelis are equal but all accept that Israel is a home for the Jews wherever they may live, a refuge. This does not preclude Israel being home to others, nor does it mandate special treatment for Jewish people in domestic law. In practice, this is not so easy. The problem has become more complex as the definition of Jewishness becomes more religious based.   

At present, people of Jewish descent make up around 75% of the Israeli population, around 6.6 million people. All these numbers are rubbery since they are affected by boundary definitions and disputes. The Arab population is around 1.85 million. In West Bank and Gaza, the non-Jewish population is around 4.7 million. Again very roughly, the Jewish and non-Jewish populations are roughly in balance. However, the higher non-Jewish birthrate means that the Jewish population is likely to drop well below half over the next thirty years. Here-in lies the rub.

The original two state solution would have made two different spaces. However, the progressive fragmentation  of the West Bank now makes it very difficult to create anything approaching a viable, sensible Palestinian state. A one state solution means that  the Jewish population could be out-voted if votes proceeded on ethnic lines.

 I am going to have to leave this thought thread up in the air. I am out of time on these reflections.I suppose that what I am searching for is a path outside the current binary approach.

Updating China's Belt and Road project

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) had an interesting story,  
One Belt, One Road: Australian 'strategic' concerns over Beijing's bid for global trade dominance (23 October 2017), about earlier Cabinet discussions on Australian participation in China's "One Belt, One Road" project. Apparently, the heads of Immigration and Defence strongly advised that Australia should not participate because of strategic risks, while the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was split with Trade officials in favour of participation, Foreign Affairs officials against.

"The economic case for Australia formally joining simply wasn't made," a senior government figure has told the ABC. 

"We saw very little in additional economic benefit for signing up, but a lot of negative strategic consequences if we accepted Beijing's offer."  

The project, a signature project of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was first announced in 2013. So far, 68 countries including New Zealand have signed up.This 14 May 2017 ABC story, China wants 'new Silk Road' One Belt One Road project to help it dominate world trade, provides additional information, while this earlier piece from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library provides a useful overall summary.  

I wrote of the initiative in Sunday Essay - is this the Eurasian century? (14 June 2015). There I concluded:

Considerable doubts have been raised about the geopolitical problems facing the Chinese initiative. I think that these miss a key point. We are talking relatively long time periods, several decades. As the roads and railway lines spread, so will trade. In a way, I also think that the Chinese are hedging their bets here. If the recreation of the southern Silk Road with all its various projects lags, they still have fast routes to Europe via Russia. 

No where so far as I have seen, I may well have missed something, will you see references to the rise of Eurasia as a continent.We are used to thinking of Europe and Asia as separate continents. They are not. They are a single land  mass that has never been fully integrated because of distance. This is changing quite quickly. 

I think that this is important. In Australia. we like to talk of this as the Asian or Asian Pacific century.What happens if this is actually the Eurasian century?  What does Australia do then?  

In August 2015, I recorded Great Silk Road - first eastbound Polish train leaves Lodz for Chengdu.In January of this year an English service was announced. In April, the first train left England for China.

These trips are hardly fast. I quote from Forbes. "The journey is as much an engineering challenge as a logistical problem. Freight must swap trains along the way, as railway gauges vary between the connecting countries. In its 18-day journey, freight will span 7,456 miles of railways, crossing Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium, France and the UK."

It will be some time before the trains provide effective competition to either sea or airfreight, but the process has begun.

Since I wrote that first story in 2015, I have noticed references to Belt and Road everywhere from travels through the Stans to African stories to stories about ports and investments. I am not talking here about specific Belt and Road pieces, rather stories in which the Belt and Road connection is incidental. I haven't attempted to track them, although perhaps I should. The sheer scale and diversity is a little mind blowing. Herein lies a problem.

Belt and Road combines economic and political considerations. Just considering economic issues in particular,  I am left with a feeling of incoherence, of fragmentation, of failure to prioritise. The project may or may not deliver on China's political objectives, but I have a feeling that it's going to leave a lot of economic white elephants in its wake.

Monday Forum - is democracy in decline, Brexit, Australia's new foreign policy white paper

The Wold Economic Forum released a piece on the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2016. It begins:

Democracy is in decline. 

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) latest Democracy Index 2016 shows 72 countries experienced a decline in democratic values last year. Countries with declining levels of democracy outnumbered those becoming more democratic by more than 2 to 1. 

The EIU’s Democracy Index measures the state of democracy by rating electoral processes and pluralism, the state of civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture in more than 160 countries worldwide. The EIU’s ranking shows the average global democracy score in 2016 fell to 5.52, down from 5.55 in 2015 (on a scale of 0 to 10).

According to the index, Norway leads as the world’s strongest democracy, followed by Iceland and Sweden. New Zealand comes fourth, with Denmark in fifth and Canada and Ireland in joint sixth place. Switzerland, Finland and Australia round off the top ten of “full democracies.”

I have written before about what I perceive to be a crisis in confidence among what are called the world's liberal democracies, but I do wonder about the value and validity of these types of indices. Do you think democracy is in global retreat? I have my doubts.

On 29 March 2017, the British Prime Minister signed a letter triggering Britain's withdrawal from the EU. That same day, the European Council released a very short statement in response. In supporting remarks, President Tusk said:

Brexit has made us, the community of 27, more determined and more united than before. I am fully confident of this, especially after the Rome declaration, and today I can say that we will remain determined and united also in the future, also during the difficult negotiations ahead. 

This means that both I and the Commission have a strong mandate to protect the interests of the 27. There is nothing to win in this process, and I am talking about both sides. In essence, this is about damage control. Our goal is clear: to minimise the costs for the EU citizens, businesses and Member States. We will do everything in our power - and we have all the tools - to achieve this goal. And what we should stress today is that, as for now, nothing has changed: until the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, EU law will continue to apply to - and within - the UK. 

Finally, I would like to say that we have just released an official statement by the European Council, in which leaders stress that we will act as one and start negotiations by focusing on all key arrangements for an orderly withdrawal. On Friday I will share a proposal of the negotiating guidelines with the Member States, to be adopted by the European Council on 29 April.

The withdrawal process was always going to be messy. In addition to the purely economic aspects, there are the questions of Gibraltar, the Northern Ireland border, Scotland and the EU citizens in Britain, UK citizens living in Europe. While the EU will no doubt try to be rational in its approach, its own interests and the complexity of EU decision processes provide little incentive for it to provide concessions to the UK. The EU itself will survive the process. I wonder if the UK can?

Finally, the Australian Government has announced the development of a new Foreign Policy White Paper, the first since 2003, to guide Australia's international engagement over the next five to ten years. As part of the process, all ambassadors and high commissioners were summoned back to Australia for a round table session, something criticised on the grounds of cost but which seemed to me to make perfect sense.

What do you think should guide that white paper/

As always, feel free to go to whatever topic or any direction you like. You don't need to be constrained by these topics!

Following events in The Gambia via twitter

For those who do not know The Gambia, it is a thin sliver of a country in West Africa along the Gambian River largely surrounded by Senegal.

As 12am Gambian time, I watched the news to see what outgoing President Yayha Jammeh might do. Would he stand down to let newly elected President Adama Barrow take over or would he resist? Would Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States) forces intervene and, if so, when?

Mainstream Australian media, indeed most English language Western media, coverage of Africa is very poor. There is a distinct gradient in which Latin American and then Africa are at the bottom of the pile, with Africa very much at the bottom. The reason for that is very simple. There is very little knowledge of Africa. It has, indeed, become the dark continent.

It is no secret that I am older. I grew up in a world in which British Empire and Commonwealth were still real entities. I actually studied some African history at school, was exposed to coverage of African events if through an arguably distorted lens. That may give me a distorted perspective from the viewpoint of my African friends, but at least I know something!

To try to monitor what was happening in Gambia, I went to the BBC. Nothing. Frustrated, I switched to Twitter following the #Gambia tag. I was quite sucked in. There was the usual misinformation, late discoverers repeating earlier stuff, brief comments expressing opinions, in all a raw stream including lots of garbage.

Slowly a picture began to emerge. Initially, it was one of diplomatic activity, but of quiet on Gambian streets. The quiet seemed important. If President Yayha Jammeh intended or was able to use the security apparatus to maintain his position then you would expect to see signs of it. There were no such signs. Slowly, the picture unfolded. By now, the mainstream media had begun to catch up, including the swearing in of new President Adama Barrow in the Gambian Embassy in Dacca. However, in the midst of all the rubbish, Twitter provided the best early coverage.

This video shows Ecowas troops entering Gambia. It was first posted on Twitter before the news flashes appeared on the BBC.


This was followed by scenes of celebrating crowds in the Gambian capital Banjul including a shot later of the head of the Army dancing with the crowds.By now, it was pretty clear that President Yayha Jammeh was totally isolated.

Bloodshed was still possible. There was a real feeling of impatience, of wanting to get things over. Here the West African leaders seemed to be playing with a cool head, seeking a graceful exit with no violence. As I write, it seems that President Yayha Jammeh will go peacefully into exile, although there is still a degree of uncertainty. Whatever the result, the matter seems to have been well handled.

And Twitter has proved its worth.

Postscript

From Twitter:
 @MichelSow Confirmation by Flight Tracking: #Jammeh left 9:12pm #Gambia, no longer on its ground, 1000s feets high in air!!

Just before departure:

Sunday Snippets - Round-up with a special focus on the Pew international migration statistics

At a time when the news is a tad depressing, its good to see Aer Lingus and Air New Zealand in a twitter war over something important, the respective merits of their two countries rugby teams.

The dispute over censorship of false news on Facebook largely passed me by. There are enough problems on FB now without the company being forced to try to use algorithms to screen out the fake. Even though conspiracy theories and false reports do abound, let people sort it out for themselves.

The one exception I might make is sponsored stuff where FB is taking money. Then the company does have some responsibility. But how do you distinguish between the satirical false news sites and the plain crap? In Australia, we have the Betoota Advocate (company site here, Wikipedia here).  They did fool me once. It was the first time I came across the site. The story was strange, a bit funny, but vaguely credible. What I couldn't work out was how there could be a Queensland country newspaper that I had never heard of in a town that that I had never heard of. A bit of investigation soon revealed the hoax.

The first story I saw from The Onion was harder to spot, in part because it is a US site and I didn't have the local familiarity. I also saw it via a repost from someone who had taken the story seriously. I actually felt a bit silly when I realised that it was a spoof even though it hadn't taken me that long to work it out. In a way, that's the point: these stories remind us of our own credulity.

Christopher Moore's History News continues to remind me of the similarities but also especially the differences between Canadian and Australian histories. Accepting that Canadian history is more complex, I am left with the feeling that Canadian historiography is deeper and more varied than that practiced in this country. And all this despite Christopher's sometimes complaint about the paucity of Canadian historiography.  

In one post, Christopher wrote:

Reconciling indigenous history into "Canadian" history? On the evidence of two substantial, successful Canadian books on what's a pretty thin shelf these days, still a long ways to go, historians. Not saying it's easy, either.

I really struggle with this one, a struggle that deserves a fuller post on my history blog. I don't have an answer.

It's been a while since I mentioned Gordon's lookANDsee blog, partly because he has been posting less regularly. This photo is a Kingfisher taken near his place to the east of Armidale.

The Pew Research Centre has a fascinating interactive, Origins and Destinations of the World’s Migrants, from 1990-2015. You can search by five years from 1990 to 2015, by nationality of overseas born in each country and by number of people from each country living elsewhere and in which country. Have a play. There are some problems with the numbers, but the results may surprise you. From a quick scan, here is a not inclusive list of countries where the total number of people living in Australia in 2015 is ranked in the top ten from the viewpoint of the source country: The numbers include students.

• New Zealand first
• Fiji first
• United Kingdom first
• French Polynesia around first
• Cook islands second
• South Africa second
• Cyprus second 
• Bhutan equal second
• Gibralta second
• Brunei around equal second
• Croatia third
• Canada third
• Japan third
• Ireland third
• Greece third
• Cambodia fourth
• Chile fourth
• Ecuador around fourth
• Guam around fourth
• Hong Kong fifth
• Botswana equal fifth
• Israel sixth
• Italy sixth
• Hungary sixth
• Laos sixth
• Burundi around equal sixth
• China equal sixth
• Czech Republic seventh
• Iran seventh
• Finland seventh
• Denmark equal seventh
• Burma seventh
• Afghanistan eighth
• Djibouti ninth
• Angola around equal ninth
• Bosnia-Herzegovina equal ninth
• Indonesia tenth
• Albania around equal tenth
• Iraq equal tenth
• Estonia around tenth

I am going to pause here both because I am out of time and because the material is better presented in tabular format.  Immigration statistics are usually presented from the viewpoint of the host country and then ranked in order of magnitude. If you look at it from the viewpoint of country of origin, a different perspective emerges.

If you look at the list above, two things stand out. The first is the diversity of Australia's immigration intake, the second the number of countries in which Australia ranks in the top group from the viewpoint of the source countries. This actually gives Australia a remarkable reach in international terms. But that's another story.

Brexit Conundrums

Updated 21 June

On 23 June, the UK will vote on Brexit, the decision to leave or remain within the EU. The last stage of the campaign has been overshadowed by the tragic murder of British MP Jo Cox.

We are not used to MPs being assassinated. I had actually forgotten that the IRA murdered a number during the troubles.

The Brexit campaign has been quite messy. According to the BBC, there is a large pro-Remain majority in the House of Commons, 454 MPs to 147. The vote is being held because of Euro-sceptic views within the governing Conservative Party, views that appear unrepresentative of the Parliament itself.

The electorate is polarised, with the majority of the young supporting remain, while leave support climbs with age. UK nationalists support leave, while Scottish nationalists support remain.

Now that a leave majority seems distinctly possible, everybody is scrambling to work out what it might mean. Can the UK, as the leave case argues, continue to gain the economic benefits of a common market and EU association while removing the disadvantages? The issue then becomes the price to be paid. According to French Economy Minister Macron, "If the UK wants a treaty of commercial access to the European market, the British will have to contribute to the European budget like the Norwegians or the Swiss. If London doesn't want that, then the exit will have to be total,"

It is quite difficult unscrambling an egg. The UK is enmeshed with the EU at so many levels that a managed exit would be quite difficult. The volume of legislation that would need to be amended or replaced alone would be a considerable task.

Other countries and international bodies including the IMF have lined up to warn of the dangers. The IMF's most adverse Brexit scenario predicts 2019 growth 5.6% below what it would otherwise have been, and also a drop in GDP in 2017 of 0.8%. The leave case argues that the UK would gain an economic bounce from reduced EU regulation and that the UK Government would, if necessary, replace EU subsidies presently received by some parts of the nation.

As the campaign evolved, the leave campaign seemed to gather strength because it was selling positives, the advantages of leaving, while the remain campaign was selling negatives, the risks of leaving.

To a degree, the EU polarises left and right, although the Euro sceptics are mainly on the right. Within Europe, there are significant fears that a UK exit might unbalance the Union and encourage those who want to tear it down. There is also a degree of anger. If the UK were to vote to leave, it would be in everybody's interests that that exit be handled with minimum harm to both sides, but that might not happen.

Within the UK, the Cameron Government is likely to face significant problems regardless of the result. If the vote is yes, it will have to deal with a Parliament in which the substantial no majority appears to be already organising to make life difficult, to try to preserve as much as possible of the relationship with the EU. It is also likely to face a renewed push for Scottish independence, with less left to offer.

If the vote is no, the Prime Minister has to manage as best he can the divisions created in his own party by the campaign.

Whichever way the vote goes, 23 June will be an historically significant date.

Postscript

Useful piece by Nick Miller and Mark Mulligan in the Canberra Times. Just noting for the moment.

Postscript 21 June 2016

Neil Whitfield has written a companion post to this one, Watching the UK’s big decision. In a comment, Bill Pilgrim wrote:

My understanding of this is that the objection by those against leaving the Euro is about Europe being a conduit for refugees entering the UK. And I am guessing that this was behind the recent assassination of Jo Cox. Is there not some way that the laws could be changed to allow Britain the right to determine who can migrate there without throwing out the whole EU union? 

This BBC piece while written from a particular direction shows some of the difficulties in a general sense when part of the angst is about general migration, when refugees become a touchstone issue to galvanise debate and where political parties responding make deliverable promises.

Another BBC piece, Chris Cook's The EU referendum may prove to be a generation game, looks at the generational and regional divides within the UK on the Brexit issue. There are some lessons here for Australia.
 

Saturday Morning Musings - the 2016 global outlook

The first post for 2016. I wish you all a happy new year.

Over at his place, Winton Bates applies his economist's eye to the question of new year resolutions. I am going to avoid the trade-offs involved with making new year resolutions by not making any, or at least keeping them private! However, I do hope to continue to pursue my various interests including Australian art. There is just so much to learn.

Regular readers will know that I like to record my prognostications because they provide a framework for my thinking and writing. Sometimes its damn embarrassing when I get things totally wrong, but then I can ask why I got them wrong! So this post looks at some of the things I will be watching in 2016.

2015 saw the European Union face a series of rolling crises, culminating in the migration/refugee crisis at the end of the year. The scale here is hard to visualise properly. It's not the largest refugee crisis in human history. I think that sad record is held by the partition of British India where some 14 million were displaced. However, from a European perspective, its the largest moment of people since the Second World War.

The crisis poses an enormous almost existential challenge to the EU. Its resolution will affect the form and structure of the EU as an operating entity including the Schengen Agreement. 2016 will also see the UK referendum on membership of the EU, probably during the European summer. This is probably more important to the UK than to Europe itself. The EU can survive without the UK. It's less clear that the UK can survive without Europe. A UK withdrawal from the EU might well act as a further trigger to the internal forces that have threatened to tear the exiting entity apart because both Northern Ireland and Scotland would be adversely affected.

Doubts about the future of the EU has been a common theme in the reporting and commentary on the various European crises of 2015, with sometimes gleeful predictions of a break-up of the EU. I would be very surprised if that happened. As I have explained in previous posts, the model that I have used to understand some EU dynamics is the Federal model for the EU is an evolving Federation; the term Union is a misnomer. Applying this model, I expect Europe to muddle through through with some strengthening of central power.

2015 was the year of ISIS and terrorism. In my writing, I have tried to emphasise the need for perspective, in part to avoid further erosion of the principles of freedom central to liberal democracy in the name of keeping us safe, in part to avoid the distortion in thinking and policy making that comes with extreme rhetoric. I think that that battle has already been lost to some degree, although I do not expect the more extreme responses that we see in some of the more extreme European radical right wing parties, the Australian far right or indeed in Donald Trump in the US to triumph. The probability, certainty, is that there will be more terrorist attacks in 2016. How individual countries and the world responds will be something to watch.

The position in the Middle East can best be described as chaotic, creating strange bed fellows. While I have some reservations about this piece by Seymour Hersh, it does bring out some of the shifting complexities involved. I do not pretend to be an expert on international relations, but what can we say if we apply some best guess judgments?

It seems fairly clear, I think, that ISIS will cease to exist in a territorial sense. It's just going to be ground away. Beyond that? This is where the position gets very confused in my mind. My best guess would be that we will see the maintenance of existing state boundaries, if with accommodations to placate minority groups as well as other vested interests. The Assad Government will survive for the present, but there will be some transition of power in either 2016 or 2017. The relative power and influence of both Israel and Saudi Arabia will continue to weaken, if for different reasons. Iran's position will depend upon the actions and reactions of its governing systems. Played carefully, its influence will be at least consolidated and may increase.

At this point, I need to diverge into economics. From an Australian perspective, prices for natural gas, iron ore and coal are very important. Most projections suggest some weakening in the global economy over 2016. That plus increased production means that oil and natural gas prices are likely to stay low for the immediate present. This means reduced returns from the Australian LNG plants now coming on stream. It also places pressure on oil dependent exporters including Russia, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Saudi Arabia is already experiencing growing budget deficits at just the time when general spend and especially defence costs including the Yemen excursion are rising. The country needs to restructure and has begun to do so, although the strategic challenges facing the ruling family are substantial. I may be wrong, but I think that these challenges are one of the key drivers of current international policy, including the attempt to create a global anti-terror alliance. Saudi Arabia has considerable financial reserves, oil prices will rise, but the challenge is there.

Russia is a second country affected by oil prices. Commentators debate the extent to which Mr Putin is affected by strategic as opposed to tactical considerations. I think that Mr Putin's Ukraine adventure was to some degree a strategic error, while Russia's involvement in Syria has been a considerable strategic success.

In the Ukraine, Russia gained Crimea, but the Eastern Ukraine intervention has bogged down with Mr Putin apparently not wanting to take matters further. To the degree that his strategic objective was to assert Russian influence, to divide Europe, he has succeeded, but at considerable economic cost. The involvement in Syria seems far more strategically important, reestablishing Russia's position after Ukraine. Again, there is a question of money. The Russian economy is now in considerable trouble. I just don't think that it can provide the resources to support President Putin's apparent objectives.Mind you, that won't stop him trying.

The contretemps between Turkey and Russia strikes me as a significant strategic error because of the costs to Russia. At the same time, Turkey has emerged as a strange wild card in the whole equation, one that must be watched in 2016. I am not sure of President Tayyip Erdoğan's  objectives beyond the newspaper reporting. Erdogan's period as Prime Minister strikes me as a considerable success. However, as president he has set Turkey on a path which does not have a clear outcome, where the risks to the country seem to be rising all the time.

Returning to the global economy, iron ore and coal are down as well as oil, again both important to Australia. Iron ore will likely stay down. Some production is dropping out, but existing lower cost mines are ramping up. Coal is a different issue because there are so many existing high cost producers in the market.

Coal production can be broadly divided into metallurgical and thermal coal. Demand for the first depends upon steel making which is down. Demand for the second depends on the use of coal in power generation. Yes, the second is affected by the responses to global warming, but for the present it is (I think) less cyclical It takes time for coal fired generators to be replaced by other energy sources, so I expect thermal coal prices to bounce before metallurgical coal as higher cost producers phase out.  Perhaps Nathan Tinkler is not so wrong in trying to pick up distressed thermal coal assets.

For both types of coal, Chinese economic growth is critical. as it is for the global strategic balance. In economic terms. I expect Chinese growth to continue to slow because of the continuing imbalances in the Chinese economy. This will affect both commodity demand and China's global reach. I don't think that the second will matter in 2016. China will continue to pursue its global strategic objectives along two dimensions.

Domestically, the aim remains state stability. This has international effects in areas such as the fight against terrorism. China will join with efforts that defend existing borders and which contain separatist threats such as that posed by the Uyghur minority. Internationally, China will continue to extend its influence and to assert its right to be heard in areas that it perceives to be important such as the South China sea.

The Great Silk Road initiative, something that I have written about, actually combines domestic and international objectives. It aims to protect Chinese domestic stability, while also extending China's international economic reach. This is an area where China and Russia's strategic objectives coincide at this point, so it's an area to watch in 2016.

Africa was once called the dark continent because of  Europe's lack of knowledge of the continent. It remains the dark continent so far as Western news coverage is concerned. Coverage is better in North or Saharan Africa because of its closer proximity. Here the two countries to watch are Egypt and Libya, Egypt because of the growing difficulties of the military regime, Libya because the collapse of the Libyan state is one of the proximate causes of the European migrant crisis as well as creating a terrorist breeding ground. Attempts to rebuild the Libyan state now underway will become more important as 2016 proceeds.

Western reporting of Sub-Saharan Africa is presently dominated by terrorism issues. This ignores two important developments. One is the evolution of the African Union, the second and more important one in the shorter term is economic development within Sub-Saharan Africa. This seems to be proceeding apace, something I expect to continue over 2016.

What about Australia? What can I say?

I think because of time I will leave this to a separate post, setting the domestic economic and political environment within the context set by this post.

Postscript

Just recording two stories for later reference:

• A smuggler's haven in the Sahara
• Image compares Saudi Arabia with Islamic State as execution protests grow

Monday Forum - The Limits of Power

Somehow it's much more fun writing on Thea Proctor (Musings on Thea Proctor) than it is on current events. Certainly it's more relaxing.

The sheer scale of the migrant/refugee problem unfolding in Europe is mind-boggling. I deliberately used migrant/refugee. The BBC feels obliged to explain why it is using migrant as a term  I quote:

A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants.

Meantime, Al Jazeera has decided to stop using the term migrant and instead use refugee: Why Al Jazeera will not say Mediterranean 'migrants'. To quote: "The word migrant has become a largely inaccurate umbrella term for this complex story."

Here in Australia, Prime Minister Abbott has been quite wrong-footed. Instead of recognising the complexity of the European problem, his instinctive reaction was to restate the stop the boats mantra. This time, his own side has broken away. Again I quote:

It was Craig Laundy​, one of Abbott's own MPs, who articulated the public response to those harrowing images of a dead toddler washed up on a Turkish beach in a single phrase: "Can we please do more?" 

Laundy's emphatic view is that the Australian response should extend above and beyond the existing refugee intake. It is shared by many others in the Coalition, including New South Wales Premier Mike Baird.

More importantly, it resonates with the broader community reaction to the largest forced movement of people since World War II.

Mr Abbott is moving, being dragged, I guess, but he was too locked in to his domestic rhetoric to be able to respond in a compassionate way. Even now, he is emphasizing that an extra refugee intake must fit within existing quotas.We control our own borders, he says.This resonates with some, but is increasingly being seen as a limited blinkered response.

The human tragedy unfolding in Europe, Africa and the Middle East is significant. However, to my mind the bigger tragedy lies in the progressive erosion of trust in existing institutions. In the Middle East, there are increasing responses on social media pointing, rightly, to the failure of Gulf States in particular to do anything to assist the refugee crisis. In Europe, national and EU institutions have been placed under great strain, accentuating already existing divisions within and between countries. In Australia, there has been a progressive diminution of trust in the national government.

I am not being a bleeding heart liberal when I say this, although my own views are reasonably clear. One can ignore the constant social media stream from those opposed to the Government's position on refugees, terrorism, citizenship and the borders, although it does have an erosive effect. Of more importance are the increasing doubts and concerns held by those who are traditional Liberal Party supporters. I cannot give you hard evidence here, I am basing my view just on those I talk too.

Things tend to balance over time. As an optimist, I feel that the EU institutions will, finally, emerge stronger, while the current position of the Australian Government will come to be seen as an unfortunate aberration. For the moment, however, the loss of trust is quite palpable.    

I think that one of the lessons to be drawn from the current turmoil is the limits of power.As a traditional liberal, it is a tad humiliating too conclude that the world would be a better place if Colonel Gaddalfi or Saddam Hussein had remained in power, if the Arab Spring had not occurred, if the Ukrainians had been more subtle in managing Russia. The West's reliance on air power as a weapon of choice has severe limitations. You can destroy, but you can't build.

In the end, the West is not prepared to put boots on the ground. It would be easier if the West did not suffer from an imperial angst dating back to the break-up of colonialism. Then the gun boats could go in, withdrawing if the calculus of power dictated otherwise. Now we have to just oh-so polite. We talk the talk, but can no longer walk the walk.

I am not arguing for ground troop military intervention in Syria. I am saying that we need a realistic assessment on the limits of power. Australia should not commit war planes within Syria because there is no military gain that I can see. Better to spend the money on dealing with the collateral damage from decisions already taken.

Saturday Morning Musings – refugees, diplomatic trolls, the Middle East war

I am sorry that I haven’t posted since Tuesday.

The problem of the stranded migrant boats may have been resolved for the moment, but Mr Abbott’s dismissive “nope,  nope, nope” has become another strain point with Indonesia. This is Neil Whifield’s view on the matter: Random Friday (Thursday) Prime Minister. Neil provides a link to a piece by the Melbourne Age’s political editor Michael Gordon that is worth a browse for its different perspective. The Jakarta Globe has a short piece (the comments go both ways).

This piece from the Jakarta Post provides a broader picture of the human tragedy, giving a human face to some of Michael Gordon’s points. The picture of Somirahatun and her baby comes from the Post.

Regardless of what can or should be done, I thought that Mr Abbott’s comments were crass, unwise and inhumane.

Two interesting pieces on the Lowy Institute blog. Richard Gooding’s Diplomats, trolls and memes looks at the influence of twitter on diplomacy. I hadn’t come across the concept of diplomatic trolls before! I guess that it’s another small sign of what I have come to think of as the instantizing of life. It’s actually very frustrating, for it leaves people with the attention span of  a gnat.

When the kids were young, I commented on the way that their groups always had to be in touch with each other. I thought that it was very tribal. You know, messaging: where are you, I’m on my way, nearly there etc.  Then they grew out of it, well more or less. I wish the same were for true for their elders.

I really don’t know some managers or executives I have observed get any real work done at all. They are just so busy keeping in touch, responding, demanding, rushing, meeting; life is a busy whirl of constant interaction in which instant response however shallow is the requirement, Still, perhaps that’s a matter for another post.

The second Lowy post I wanted to refer to was Vanessa Newby’s Summer in Lebanon: Holidays, beaches, clubs...and war?. This followed an earlier post by Bob Bowker, Assad's regime is brittle, and it may fall fast, written before the fall of Palmyra.

I have always wanted to visit Palmyra. It looks as though I many not get the chance now.  I find the destruction by IS of so many ancient monuments personally confronting. However, more worrying is the spread of conflict. I think that we should stop using the term terrorist, for the so-called war on terror has now evolved into a full scale if ill-defined sectarian war being fought on multiple fronts with multiple ripple effects.

Not a pretty prospect. 

Postscript

The Melbourne Age had a powerful editorial this morning on the stranded migrant boat issue: Nope is not good enough, Mr Abbott.The words I used in this piece to describe Mr Abbott's comments were crass, unwise and inhumane. As an Australian, I felt a deep sense of personal shame at Mr Abbott's comments because he is my nation's leader.