Introducing “The Analyst”, A New and Exciting Online Media Project. Oh, and It Is Good to be Back
By rights I should have been born in Holland, and lived there for a couple of years, but alas I was pretty rapt to see Spain win the World Cup especially given that the nucleus of the team hailed out of Barcelona. Barce is indeed "more than a club."
At any rate, I write this blog post to report on a new and exciting media project in Australia. The Analyst is a new online and print media project, covering a whole raft of topics of contemporary interest, that this country is really, really crying out for. I am to be involved in this project as a writer, so you shall see more meaty articles from me on arms control, global security and intellectual and current affairs being published over there, so to speak. The Analyst website is still in its formative and developmental stages.
In a previous post I had mentioned that I had wanted to write an essay on knowledge and the Iranian nuclear crisis. I have duly written such an article and it is now available at The Analyst. It's long, so beware.
I recommend that you check it out.
Now I also will have a blog at The Analyst on international relations. It is called "Maxim." Watch out Stephen Walt!
That means my other niche blog, The Vile Maxim, is pretty much done and dusted. That's gone.
So, what am I to do with this blog?
I am pretty fond of it, even though it probably has very few readers. One good thing about a blog, especially on an academic topic, is that it really helps you think. Take say the B61-Mod 7 LEP recently discussed in the media. I want to write a post on it. So you end up engaging in more detective work and thinking about the evidence than you normally would when you have a specific blog post in mind. It really is a great learning device, in my opinion. I think it's worth doing even if you have 2 readers, which is probably my market share.
So, given that, I'm keeping this nuclear-global security oriented blog. I will cross-post. So any substantive blog post here I will also post at the Maxim blog with The Analyst.
This silly blog is proving to have nine lives already.
A Delusion of Grandeur: Kevin Rudd in Politics
If Graham Freudenberg was able to write of Gough Whitlam's political career that it exhibited “a certain grandeur”, then for Kevin Rudd we might speak of “a delusion of grandeur.”
Many of his most vocal supporters shared in this delusion. For instance his lead cheerleader amongst the Australian intelligentsia, Robert Manne, even went so far as state that Rudd's critics did not seem to understand that the colossus from Griffith was “an intellectual in politics,” who was “struggling” to simultaneously both “understand and change” the world. No self respecting philosopher king can take seriously Marx's clarion call in the Theses on Feuerbach.
For Rudd ,and Manne, such an injunction is too modest by half.
Rudd seems to have seen himself as some sort of philosopher king with a Hawkian “special relationship” with the Australian people to boot. His political legitimacy and authority resided in his own personality and talent.
This delusion of grandeur proved to be his undoing.
How else to explain his claim that he did not owe his leadership to the ALP? How else to explain the sheer contempt that he showed the party during the course of his leadership? For example, by coming and going as he pleased at the last ALP national conference? By announcing on radio, well away from the conference, that its resolutions, especially on tax reform, are irrelevant? Not even Paul Keating would have displayed such brazen contempt.
By sidelining cabinet, even to the extent of exiting cabinet meetings to attend to petty media interviews? How else to explain the extraordinary level of centralisation that he vested in the leader's office, against more than a century's worth of Labor tradition that places primacy upon the parliamentary party?
He treated both the Labor Party and the Labour movement with contempt. He did so because of his grandiloquent view of himself, but his leadership was based on nothing else other than high standing in the polls. When those polls turned against him so did the party he viewed as an irrelevant appendage.
He was not able to see this until the end. Such are the delusions of grandeur.
A good deal of commentary has focused on the manner in which Rudd was replaced as leader.
Attention has been especially drawn to the role of factional and union power brokers in his ousting and the efficient manner in which they organised his “assassination.” This aspect of the Rudd downfall has been best encapsulated by Mark Latham and Paul Kelly. Writing in the The Australian Financial Review Latham observed that (AFR, 25 June 2010, p24), “the leadership of Australia's oldest political party has become a transit lounge, controlled by poll and media obsessed appartchiks.”
Latham surely has a point.
The ascension of Gillard did not follow on from policy or ideological differences. This is not a political party that is struggling with its soul, with its policy direction, with its goals and visions, and so has changed its leader. “Our princess” Julia Gillard was seen as a better prospect at the next election. So the powers that be helped to elevate her to the leadership.
Commenting upon the Latham thesis Kelly states in The Australian today that the Rudd ouster, “reveals a party governed not by ideas but powerful interests that span networks of factional, trade union, family and special interest group connections that thrive on the patronage, finances and appointments that only incumbency can deliver.”
That is also true. However, it is possible to overcook this view.
What Latham and Kelly state is surely correct. But there were more issues and, crucially, more players involved. There is a widespread view amongst the Left side of Australian politics that Tony Abbott, and those around him, are rabid right wing extremists. It would be a disaster for progressive politics in Australia should the Liberal Party win the next election. This has played an important element in the change of leader.
The focus on factions and so on is important, but it should not obscure this part of the equation.
Perhaps the most important institutional factor in the demise of Kevin Rudd was big business. It is big business that, ultimately, determines the leadership of the Labor Party. One reason why the corporate media turned viciously against Mark Latham is because big business did not trust him.
To be sure, as Robert Manne pointed out, up until then Latham was the most right wing Labor leader in history. However, Latham always had the dangerous class warrior lurking within him. I saw it. I perceived it. I liked it. But, the rich saw it, they perceived it, they did not like it.
At times his use of the idiom of class sounded almost Marxian. He would not give big business a trusted place in his office. He would, in short, not “consult.” The big end of town did not trust him and so it was easy for the corporate media to portray him as an unhinged nut.
This has happened many times to Labor in the neoliberal era. Recall, for example, the role of the corporate media and the big mining interests in the ouster of Gough Whitlam and Rex Connor. It is not ideological orthodoxy that big business seeks from the ALP. It is important that Labor tends to its interests. Because of the party's roots in the Australian working class the ALP always represents a risk for corporate Australia.
The main function that the faction system in the ALP serves is to take away the risk of democracy that the rich at all times face.
Consider the case of Bob Hawke. The so called “Hawke ascendancy” and his own “special relationship” with the Australian people was a corporate media fiction. Throughout the 1970s the corporate media pushed the Hawke bandwagon, which was resisted by the Labor caucus almost until the 1983 election.
In office Bob Hawke did not disappoint his corporate patrons. For the rich the Hawke era was a veritable bonanza. But Hawke was ousted precisely because of his adherence to neoliberal orthodoxy. He was successfully challenged by Paul Keating during the depths of the 1990-1991 recession, the one “we had to have.”
Throughout this deep recession Hawke was maintaining neoliberal orthodoxy. Keating, by contrast, was brazenly abandoning neoliberal austerity in favour of fiscal stimulus and loose monetary policy. Keating understood that when the rich get in trouble they want the nanny state to bail them out.
Hawke didn't and so the corporate media, reflecting the consensus of big business, turned on Hawke and the rest is history.
They made Hawke and then they broke him.
Rudd seemed to understand that “the Latham debacle” represented big business disciplining the Labor Party into proper behaviour. Under Rudd's leadership the door for big business was widely opened. Commentary at the time reflected how much better the relationship between the Labor leader's office and big business was when Rudd took over the leadership. Prior to the 2007 election meetings with business leaders were frequent, even formalised on a weekly basis.
Compare that with the relationship that Rudd has had with big business in recent times.
Though his tax reform policies were designed to assist corporate Australia as a whole, though he has extended a helping hand to the financial services industry, though he ditched the ETS to mollify big business, none of that was enough. When the mining industry turned on him because of his minor infringement after announcing the resource super profits tax, which is what the tax is, big business was loathe to come to his defence. Laurie Oakes has spoken of a “disastrous” meeting with the Business Council of Australia days prior to his ouster.
Comments and analyses on Rudd and the Rudd style in the corporate media thereby recently became frequent. The Rudd “brand” was rendered toxic by precisely those who helped to craft it in the first place. The mining industry decided that it would destroy Rudd and destroy him they did. The change over has been fulsomely praised by all of Australia's peak business bodies. The ascent of Julia Gillard comes with the promise that they will be “consulted” better, as if they have not hitherto been consulted enough already.
In other words, Gillard knows her place unlike the grandiloquent Rudd.
Mark Latham and Kevin Rudd lost the leadership of the Labor Party because they lost the confidence of corporate Australia. How is that Rudd was able to forget the lessons that corporate Australia dished out to the Labor Party during “the Latham debacle?”
This owed to his delusion of grandeur. He saw himself as striding the Australian political stage on the back of his own unique vision, drive and capability. However, a minor infringement against those who really run the country, the big moneyed interests, was very much the big nail that was driven into his political coffin.
Corporate Australia has brought Kevin Rudd back down to Earth with a thud. It is indeed ironic that this is just as it was with Mark Latham. The element of the delusion of grandeur in Rudd's case immediately brings to mind Marx's refrain in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
Quite.
The emphasis on the factions and patronage is thereby only half the story. The Labor Party's power brokers do seek office in order to dispense patronage and thereby secure institutional prerogatives. But they understand that this can only be achieved by looking after the needs of big business. If they lose touch with corporate Australia they lose elections.
One interesting aspect to the latest developments in Canberra is the announced departure of the socialist minister for deregulation, Lindsay Tanner. He was widely praised in the corporate media following his announcement. In fact, he earned high praise too from financial market economists for his commitment to economic rationalist orthodoxy.
Tanner was a person who, in his maiden speech to parliament, declared himself to be a socialist. His departure from parliament is now mourned by financial market economists, who shall miss his economic rationalist zeal. This has been taken as praise, but such valedictories by financial market economists are a fitting end to Lindsay Tanner's career.
Good riddance, Comrade Tanner. Don't ever come back.
Despite Julia Gillard’s Support for Neoliberalism, Progressives in Australia Should Now Back Her
Australia has a new Prime Minister after the bursting of the Rudd asset price bubble. As I stated long ago, when the Rudd bubble was in full flight, his leadership of the ALP was based on little else but his high poll numbers. These numbers were a bubble, I had argued, for Rudd was a leader distinctly lacking in substance.
Mark Latham summed him up very well in his diaries.
I had stated that the Rudd bubble might prove to be a dilemma for the ALP in the future. I had not expected that the bubble would burst so suddenly and with such force. If the property bubble, that the former PM has helped to sustain, bursts like the Rudd bubble then heaven help us.
Julia Gillard has achieved the highest political office in the land by betraying her socialist beliefs and her core working class constituency. If she had not done either of these things during the course of her political career, rather than being PM, she would be organising the next Altona ALP chook raffle. Lindsay Tanner, who has done the same, was right to have characterised her as a “careerist”.
In the Tanner lexicon no pejorative ranks higher.
Although in media commentary much as been made of Gillard's working class roots, this all should not be taken too seriously. Gillard has announced, loudly and clearly, her whole hearted support for neoliberalism and her dedication towards the further pursuit of neoliberal reforms.
The Age reports newly minted PM Gillard as stating today that
..."I give credit to the Labor giants Bob Hawke and Paul Keating as the architects of today’s modern prosperity," she said.
"I give credit to John Howard and Peter Costello for continuing these reforms," she said...
These remarks are truly amazing. The former socialist Gillard even has gone so far as to praise Howard and Costello for continuing and extending neoliberal reforms!! This is how low the ALP has sunk since Gough Whitlam took away the power of the organisational wing.
If Gillard stays true to these comments then this change over will amount to what Keating would have called “embroidery.” Gillard might change the style and packaging of neoliberal Labor, but the essential commitment to neoliberalism, one of the defining features of the Rudd leadership, will continue to obtain.
The ALP power hierarchy will remain committed to neoliberal policies and programs so long as the current structure of the party endures. The ALP requires root and branch reform if it is to return to being a genuine working class party.
Changing leaders could be a start. However, if so the new leader would need to be dedicated toward the dismantling of the Hawke-Keating legacy. That, Gillard has stated, she won't do. Quite the opposite. She will continue the neoliberal programs that Hawke and Keating, but also Howard and Costello, did so much to bring into being.
There can be little doubt ,however, that a Gillard government would be better than an Abbott government. It would truly be a disaster for progressive politics in Australia if Abbott should win the next election. He is a rabid right wing extremist. So are the people pushing his cart.
I don't expect much from Gillard, but in saying this I nonetheless maintain that she should be supported by progressives. Those of a left wing persuasion should not allow their justified scepticism of Gillard to obscure the huge stakes involved in the next election.
I sincerely hope that both she and the ALP win the next election. When she does, we should continue the struggle against neoliberalism. That, judging by these remarks, will mean that the Australian left will end up opposing her.
I submit that now is definitely not the time for all that. I submit that it is possible for progressives to support Gillard but also at the same time to continue to work against neoliberal policy and ideology.
Surely Gillard still has some place inside her that remains true to her old fiery and passionate commitment to social justice. I don't think there was anything of that in Rudd. If there was, he kept very well hidden.
Hopefully, some of that old passion will emerge during her leadership. I personally doubt that it will, but we always have “the audacity of hope.”
Has Afghanistan Turned Into a War of Attrition?
For President Obama Afghanistan is staring to resemble the BP oil spill. It's looking like a real PR disaster for the Obama administration. Everybody is focusing on the extraordinary bust up between General McChrystal and the Obama White House following leaks of a forthcoming interview that the General gave Rolling Stone magazine. That interview was a real shocker.
If I remember correctly the White House replaced General McKiernan because he was seen as a latter day General McClellan. General McChrystal was seen as more of a gung ho commander. It looks like Obama made a big mistake in going for a wild card like McChrystal. Obama appointed him after sacking McKiernan and now he has to wear him.
But there is more happening on the Afghan front than this Korea like spat between the commander in chief and his theatre commander. For example Richard Holbrooke just visited Marjah, which seems to have been a disaster in itself. It looks as if the Osprey helicopter carrying Holbrooke came under Taliban small arms fire. Recall that Marjah was supposed to have been pacified
...According to ABC News, Taliban gunmen tried to shoot down the Osprey. Several suicide bombings were carried out after his departure, the report said.
Holbrooke was visiting Marjah for a first-hand assessment of US- led NATO efforts to take over a Taliban-controlled region that they had hoped would set an example for tougher battles to follow.
Troops have met with stiff resistance, which has delayed plans to take on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province this summer. Holbrooke was also to visit Kandahar...
Much more serious than these political issues is the status of Pakistan army counterinsurgency operations along the border with Afghanistan. According to a RAND Corp study
...PAKISTAN HAS failed to develop an effective counter-insurgency strategy, undermining efforts to tackle militants who roam the Afghan border, according to a new study by security analysts.
A report by the Rand Corporation, a non-profit research group frequently used by the Pentagon, concludes that Pakistan’s army and frontier corps have failed to hold territory regained from insurgents...
The Pakistani army is clearing insurgents from places like the Swat valley and Bajaur agency ,but the Government is finding it tough to hold ground and build alternative political, economic and social structures. This is a bit like Marjah. The strategy adopted is one of “clear, hold and build.” If you can't hold and build then you are waging an attritional strategy of "clear, clear, clear" until the insurgents are bleed white.
Who will crack first? The strategy for Af-Pak was supposed to be a classical counterinsurgency based strategy. It looks as if we have got ourselves into a war of attrition to me.
The Pakistan army is clearing, but according to the RAND report it is not so good at holding and building. You can't blame the Pakistan army for this. The cash strapped Government in Pakistan probably doesn't have the resources to both destroy the border areas and then rebuild them. Don't forget that Team Obama early on took to calling the Afghan theatre as Af-Pak. Strategic planners in Washington surely would be reading the conclusions of this RAND Corp study with deep concern.
Here in Australia I wonder for how long the Government will stomach a war of attrition. I think Canberra bought the McChrystal-Obama counterinsurgency strategy. But if Australia is finding itself in the middle of a war of attrition then maybe this might prompt a strategic rethink in Canberra.
Australia’s Mounting Casualties in Afghanistan Reignites Debate on the War
The recent multiple deaths of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan has reignited the debate on Australia's role in the conflict. Polls, according to media reports, suggest that public opposition to Australia's participation in the Afghan war is increasing as the human toll mounts.
It would come as no secret to anybody that has read my posts and articles on the Afghan war that I am firmly against Australia's involvement. However, I am troubled by the way the latest debate is being structured.
The argument now seems to be that the mounting death toll is too high a price for Australia to pay. Because the intensity of the conflict is increasing, and will continue to increase, more Australian casualties are to be expected. Given this, now is the time to withdraw. The strategic gains for Australia are not worth the human cost that our soldiers are paying, and can be expected to continue to pay in future.
These are bad arguments, and dangerous to boot. Consider. Australia's level of commitment is not strategically significant. But if Australia were to withdraw then the Taliban would thereby make a politico-strategic gain, namely the US led coalition losing another member state. This would be widely reported both in the region and globally.
The Taliban would be following the debate in Australia. If opposition to the war in Australia is allowed to be based on the mounting casualties then the Taliban will increase the level and intensity of its attacks against Australian forces in hopes of achieving a politico-strategic objective, namely the further withdrawal of a US coalition partner.
The debate in Australia needs to be framed in a way that does not expose Australian troops to extra risks. I myself oppose the war and continue to do so. I opposed the war when Australia was experiencing no casualties in Afghanistan. Let me explain my reasons, briefly, why I oppose the war.
Firstly, I do not accept that Australia should be assisting the US to set up a political regime and social structure that clearly does not have the support of the Afghan population, especially in the South where the troops are deployed. Outside forces do not have the right to do this. For example a recent report in The New York Times suggested that the US is seeking to maintain stability in Ourzgan province, where our troops are deployed, by working with a brutal and rapacious local warlord. In return the warlord is allowed to, effectively, rule over the province.
Australia's participation is usually framed in the context of nation building, and reconstruction, and the like. I am sure that our forces are doing their fair share of providing security for reconstruction and so on, but this is being done within the context of the US supporting the regional rule of a rapacious warlord. That is similar to what Afghanistan was like before the Taliban came to power.
Any good Australia does in Ourzgan province is being conducted within the context of this overarching regional strategy being pursued by the US. If the report in the Times is true then Australia is being effectively undercut by our ally.
As the NYT article pointed out
...In some cases, these strongmen have restored order, though at the price of undermining the very institutions Americans are seeking to build: government structures like police forces and provincial administrations that one day are supposed to be strong enough to allow the Americans and other troops to leave...
That's not good enough.
Furthermore, it is commonly argued that it is necessary to stay in Afghanistan in order to prevent that country from being a terrorist safe haven, as it was prior to 9/11. This argument is very sloppy. Even if true that does not imply that only an outside western military presence can prevent this.
According to the head of US military intelligence in Afghanistan al Qaida has only about 100 fighters in Afghanistan. The Taliban don't have any need for tactical, let alone strategic, assistance from bin Laden.
The argument is also based on a misreading of the 9/11 plot. The 9/11 attack did not rely for its success on the Afghan safe haven as much as it is commonly assumed. Of course, the Afghan haven played a role. But this role has tended to become exaggerated in the public mind. Many terrorism analysts argue that al Qaida is now a loosely connected jihadi franchise. Fighting in Afghanistan, therefore, really amounts to us fighting yesterday's war.
If there is a terrorist threat to the Australian homeland then, I submit, that threat exists here in Australia not so much in Afghanistan. Indeed, al Qaida always was a jihadi franchise, rather than a jihadi central committee, to a significant extent, as pointed out by Jason Burke in his top class study of al Qaida.
Also western forces in Afghanistan have the freedom to conduct military operations as they see fit. This contributes to the rising civilian death toll in Afghanistan. Every day we read reports of scores of civilians being killed as a result of either western military operations or brazen Taliban attacks. It is not right that we are propping up illegitimate thugs in military operations that are killing too many innocent Afghans.
I agree that the Taliban are assholes, but that doesn't absolve us of our own moral responsibilities.
At the end of the day it is hard to disagree with Michelle Grattan's summation in The Age today
...In reality, we will be there as long as the United States wants us to be. Whatever its other reasons and justifications, this commitment is part of what we do for our American allies. For us to withdraw support would be a declaration that it is hard to see any Australian government making, whatever the public might say through polls. That is, unless the number of casualties really increases...
It is true that what Grattan states here is amazingly cynical. Namely, that our involvement in Afghanistan is just part of the insurance premium we pay to the United States. The deep thinkers in Canberra believe that so long as the premium in Australian blood can be kept down then Australia's role can be maintained politically.
That's brutal. But you can't blame Grattan for relaying to the public the facts of the matter. This is how the foreign policy making elite in Canberra thinks. Grattan does us all a service by openly showing this.
I myself do not consider this sufficient reason for supporting Australia's role. I don't accept the cynicism of Canberra's sophisticates and so I reject the policy that flows from it.
Remember one thing about insurance premiums. To loyally pay your insurance premium over a long time is by no means a guarantee that your insurer will pay you out when disaster strikes. We all know this. The bean counters in company headquarters will do the math and decide whether it's in their interests to pay you out.
The United States will act no differently no matter how high our premium may be and for how long we dutifully pay it.
That's tough. But that's what international relations is all about.
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Marko is also interested in philosophy, especially the theory of knowledge, and science, especially physics, and considers himself to work within the naturalist and enlightenment tradition. He is writing a book on nuclear terrorism.