Grand foreign policy speeches are not usually the specialty of Australian Prime Ministers.\u00a0 Little insight can be gleaned from them.\u00a0 A more profitable exercise would be consulting the US State Department\u2019s briefings, which give more accurate barometric readings of policy in Canberra.\u00a0 The same goes for the selected adversary of the day.\u00a0 Washington\u2019s adversaries must be those of Canberra\u2019s.\u00a0 To challenge such assumptions would be heretical.\u00a0 To act upon them would be apostasy.<\/p>\n
The speech<\/a> by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on March 7 to the Lowy Institute lived down to expectations.\u00a0 Where it did serve some value was to highlight a mirror portrait of the man himself, describing an amoral world of power he inhabits.\u00a0 \u201cWe face,\u201d he solemnly stated, \u201cthe spectre of a transactional world, devoid of principle, accountability and transparency, where state sovereignty, territorial integrity and liberty are surrendered for respite from coercion and intimidation, or economic entrapment dressed up as economic reward.\u201d<\/p>\n In other respects, this speech was derivative of previous efforts to simplify the world into camps of wearying darkness and sublime light.\u00a0 In his 2002 State of the Union Address<\/a>, US President George W. Bush did precisely that.\u00a0 Before losing our intellectual integrity in examining Morrison\u2019s efforts of profound shallowness, let us go back to that original, dunce-crafted address, amply aided by David Frum, the Iraq War\u2019s polished and persistent apologist.<\/p>\n When Bush delivered his address, the moment was certainly strained.\u00a0 The September 11, 2001 attacks still searingly fresh; the administration trying to come up with a doctrine to cope with the scourge of international Islamist terrorism.\u00a0 In such instances, a subtle analysis of the global scene, a mapping of sensible policy, might have been too much to ask.<\/p>\n What the world got was an adolescent morality sketch based on angry pre-emption in a rotten world.\u00a0 The US, Bush promised, would pursue \u201ctwo great objectives.\u201d\u00a0 The first involved shutting down terrorist camps, disrupting the plans of terrorists, and bringing \u201cterrorists to justice.\u201d\u00a0 The second: \u201cto prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n With the objectives stated, the heavy padding was introduced into the speech.\u00a0 North Korea, Iran and Iraq were singled out for special mention.\u00a0 \u201cStates like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.\u201d\u00a0 The sequence of catastrophic, and bloody blunders that would culminate in the destruction of the ancient lands of Mesopotamia, was being floated.\u00a0 Evidence would be secondary to assumption and ideology.<\/p>\n Morrison\u2019s own assessment is not much better.\u00a0 \u201cA new arc of autocracy is instinctively aligning itself to challenge and reset the world order in their own image.\u201d At best, this silly formulation is dated, one straight out of musty history books depicting Beijing and Moscow as joined at the hip, keen on world revolution.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s assault on Ukraine is taken to be an attack on the \u201crules-based international order, built upon the principles and values that guide our own nation\u201d.\u00a0 This order \u201csupported peace and stability, and allowed sovereign nations to pursue their interests free from coercion.\u201d<\/p>\n This same order was grossly, and willingly violated by the US-led coalition that marched into a sovereign state in 2003, unleashing tides of sectarianism that continue in their fury.\u00a0 The grounds for attacking Iraq were specious, and there was no interest in allowing it to pursue its \u201cinterests free from coercion.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, a sanguinary, ramshackle protectorate was created, crudely supervised by international forces that aided in driving jihadi tourism.<\/p>\n The same order Morrison blithely describes was violated by NATO in its bombing of vital civilian infrastructure in Serbia in 1999, ostensibly to halt a genocide of Kosovars.\u00a0 In 2011, the same rules-based-order became something of a joke with the aerial intervention by French, UK and US forces in backing a revolt against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.\u00a0 Unceremoniously butchered by an ecstatic mob, Gaddafi did not live to see his country virtually partitioned by rival militias.<\/p>\n The adversaries of the US are on very solid ground to point these misdeeds out, and Russian President Vladimir Putin does not shy away from reminding the West of this fact in his February 24 speech<\/a>.\u00a0 Western colleagues, Putin remarked, \u201cdo not like to remember those events, and when we talk about it, they prefer to point not to the norms of international law, but to the circumstances that they interpret as they see fit.\u201d\u00a0 This hardly adds weight to his own self-interpreted claims, but they serve to draw a thick line under hypocrisy masquerading as virtue.<\/p>\n Morrison hits a sinister register in describing the effects of the principle-free, transactional world.\u00a0 \u201cThe well-motivated altruistic ambition of our international institutions has opened the door to this threat.\u00a0 Just as our open markets and liberal democracies have enabled hostile influence and interference to penetrate not our own societies and economies.\u201d\u00a0 What is he suggesting?\u00a0 A violent retaliation, a forced reversal?<\/p>\n Much impatience was expressed with how these naughty regimes of the autocratic arc have managed to get away with it.\u00a0 It might be \u201cright to aspire\u201d to \u201cinclusion and accommodation\u201d, but Australia and its allies had been left \u201cdisappointed\u201d.\u00a0 But not his government \u2013 not the Liberal-Nationals, who had been \u201cclear eyed\u201d, having \u201ctaken strong, brave and world-leading action in response.\u201d<\/p>\n To show how clear of eye Morrison has been, he has successfully made Australia the subservient partner in the AUKUS security pact with the United States and the UK.\u00a0 What was left of Australian sovereignty has been brazenly outsourced.\u00a0 The prime minister barely acknowledges the rationale of the agreement in the Lowy address, which has little to do with Australia eventually having its own questionable submarines with nuclear propulsion.\u00a0 The central point is granting greater access to US armed forces for easier deployment in the Indo-Pacific, a logistical benefit that is bound to make any war more, rather than less likely.\u00a0 Some freedom; some sovereignty.<\/p>The post Foreign Policy Tripe: Scott Morrison\u2019s \u201cArc of Autocracy\u201d<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Grand foreign policy speeches are not usually the specialty of Australian Prime Ministers.\u00a0 Little insight can be gleaned from them.\u00a0 A more profitable exercise would be consulting the US State Department\u2019s briefings, which give more accurate barometric readings of policy in Canberra.\u00a0 The same goes for the selected adversary of the day.\u00a0 Washington\u2019s adversaries must [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post Foreign Policy Tripe: Scott Morrison\u2019s \u201cArc of Autocracy\u201d<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,32151,192,194,712,20461,75,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548956,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548955\/revisions\/548956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}