Guy Beres

While I have less than a glowing view of Alexander Downer’s performance as a parliamentary representative and indeed as a Foreign Minister, I feel I should echo Senator Penny Wong’s comments on Downer’s imminent resignation from parliament today. Downer has been a member of parliament for almost 25 years; since 1984 to be precise. Assuming a basic level of faith in democracy, one would have to think that if the voters of Mayo have deigned to endorse a candidate at the polls on so many consecutive occasions, the candidate must be doing a fairly good job of representing them. I may not agree with that endorsement, but I can certainly respect it.

What I don’t really respect, on the other hand, is Downer’s fairly drawn-out loitering on the parliamentary backbenches over the past eight months, as he evidently waited for some suitably plum job opportunities to come along. It was always assumed after the election that he would leave parliament rather than stay to fight on until 2010, and Downer has certainly foreshadowed his departure quite often in recent months. I am sure that at least in part Downer has sought to shield the fragile Nelson leadership from a by-election by his hanging around, but I am afraid that really isn’t a good enough reason for him to sit around on the taxpayer’s coin like so much dead lumber waiting to be carted off on a truck somewhere.

I would like at some stage to write a more ruminative piece on Alexander Downer’s contributions to public life over the last quarter of a century; a figure of his prominence deserves as much. For the time being though, I wish him well in his new mooted role, am pleased that he is leaving Canberra, and very much glad that the foreign policy of the Commonwealth of Australia is no longer in his hands.

ELSEWHERE: Janet Albrechtsen and Jamie Walker have a bit of an up-beat political obituary of Downer in The Australian. The soon to be former Member of Mayo does seem to be leaving the door ajar for a possible future tilt at South Australian politics, and manages to make himself sound like an ass with respect to smoking laws. What part of “cancer-causing second-hand smoke” do you not get Alex?

One of the most exasperating issues out there in the world of foreign policy today is what is still going on in Zimbabwe. The election that did not deliver acceptable results to the redoubtable Robert Mugabe and is now being re-run so that it does, seems to have been dragging along dishearteningly for almost longer than the U.S presidential primaries. In Mugabe, of course, we have a dictator who is doing his darnedest to subvert democratic processes in order to stay in power, terrorising his opponents and refusing to accept the voice of the people. I know that the armies of the oh-so-brave liberal interventionist West are still somewhat occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan, but surely the world can do better than this:

Britain and its international allies indicated yesterday they would urge South Africa to cut off electricity supplies to Zimbabwe if Mugabe rigged the June 27 presidential runoff to stay in power.

Plans are being drawn up to persuade Zimbabwe’s allies to mount an economic blockade and diplomats are considering a ban on the children of the elite going to school in Europe if Mugabe loses the election but refuses to step down.

From what I hear from my unofficial and entirely non-existent Downing Street sources, the next planned step for Prime Minister Gordon Brown in relation to the crisis in Zimbabwe is to threaten to pull Robert Mugabe’s hair. Likewise, the “increasingly hawkish” Bush Administration reportedly plans to thwack its fist into its palm in a menacing fashion from another continent and wait quietly for Mugabe to slink away; lest it entangle itself in another military debacle with just a few months remaining on the shot clock.

I have to confess I am a bit bewildered by Greg Sheridan’s column in The Australian today and his likening of Kevin Rudd’s foreign policy style to that of former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad. Paul Keating might have publicly expressed his disapproval in relation to Rudd’s Asian union proposal this week, but I hardly think that he would view Australia’s Prime Minister in the same light as he did Mahathir.

The following synopsis contains the gist of Sheridan’s argument:

Kevin Rudd is in danger of turning what should be his greatest strength into a serious weakness. I refer to his weird and increasingly ratty habit of announcing foreign policy initiatives of soaring ambition and utterly amorphous content on the run, half baked, with nodetail and no credible prospect of success.

…

If you announce twice a week that you’re going to save the world and you manifestly lack the means to give the slightest effect to your pronouncements, the world soon loses interest. The chief casualty is your credibility.

I don’t think anybody is seriously anticipating that Kevin Rudd is single-handedly going to “save the world” by throwing these proposals out there, or is even remotely attempting to. Being an international political superhero is clearly not the intention of the government in being expansive; realistically, the intention of the government is to make hay while the sun shines and try a few things that might actually serve to improve the global political scene and Australia’s corner of it. I have little doubt that some of these proposals will not actually result in meaningful improvements to the current situation that Australia finds itself in. I also have little doubt that some actually will.

In writing this column, methinks Greg Sheridan must be suffering from some form of foreign policy initiative starvation syndrome, no doubt a symptom of the hopelessly uncreative and unadventurous Howard/Downer years. Over its decade in office, the previous administration increasingly lost interest in trying bold new things and trying to “seize the day” in its policy pursuits. Comfy stagnation was rejoiced in by the government and in the mainstream media. A certain thematic routine with respect to foreign relations was established and adhered to, evolving gradually into a wholly uninspiring policy norm.

In trying to play catch-up for the last decade over the past few months, the Rudd Government can hardly be blamed for being expansive and throwing some ideas out there. With respect to foreign affairs, there are certainly a number of norms out there that the previous government established that deserve to be smashed. The progressophobia that Sheridan seems to be lamenting the loss of in his column today is one of them.

I have to admit that while I think the humble guestbook is a neat way of annotating the worth of a museum or gallery exhibition to its visitors, for whatever reason I very rarely leave a comment when I visit one. Perhaps part of the reason why is that when it comes to summarising my thoughts, I am simply unable to reduce what I think and feel to a single sentence or two. I am not sure if that is more a failing or more a virtue. It is a failing, of course, because a certain crucial aspect of the skill of using language is being succinct. The writing of folks like who make a virtue of their prolixity aside (e.g. take for example Marcel Proust), it is usually better to use ten good words rather than one-hundred sloppy words to get across what you are trying to say. On the other hand, it is a virtue, because I am sceptical of the notion that your average guestbook comment provides anything more than a virtually content-free expression of either “it was good” or “it was bad”.

It is with these thoughts in mind that as someone who writes and is a bit of an armchair student of language in public life, I thought that this comment left by Kevin Rudd in the guestbook of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was beautifully phrased:

“Let the world resolve afresh, from the ashes of this city - to work together for a common mission of peace for this Asia-Pacific century and for a world where one day nuclear weapons are no more.”

Not only does this single sentence express a clear abhorrence for nuclear weapons, but it also gracefully alludes to a point often implied but rarely talked about explicitly in the mainstream media: the spheres of power in the global political economy are set to shift quite dramatically in the coming decades. Thanks to the growing might of China and India and also the importance of Indonesia, Asia is indeed looking set to be the most dynamic and influential arena for political and economic debate amongst the nations of the world in the 21st century. The era when Europe and the United States dominated the political and economic affairs of the globe is not precisely over, but it does look set to ebb.

The statement also ties in neatly with the Prime Minister’s bold announcement for a new International Commission of Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. Although the government has been criticised in the media of late for going committee and commission crazy since assuming office, there is little doubting that new frameworks for international co-operation are required in order to progress debate beyond the status quo on nuclear disarmament that currently exists. One would also hope that the government works to ensure that its position on uranium trade does not serve to fatally undermine its good will in establishing this commission. We must remember that it is easy politics to establish commissions; whether or not the government has done the right thing will depend on whether the commission achieves anything of worth. The outcome is what, at the end of the day, we should judge, not just the intention.

UPDATE: From this report, it seems that the commission’s goal will be to deliver a report to a conference of experts in the field in 2009, before serving as input to the planned 2010 review of the NPT.

Although I’d have to do some extensive rummaging around to confirm, I dare say that few world leaders have had the gumption to criticise China’s human rights record on Chinese soil as straightforwardly as Kevin Rudd did at Beijing University yesterday. An English transcript of the full speech (which was of course delivered in Mandarin) is here, provided by The Australian, and the key passage from the speech that has no doubt got a few chins wagging in the Chinese bureaucracy is as follows:

Some have called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics because of recent problems in Tibet. As I said in London on Sunday, I do not agree.

I believe the Olympics are important for China’s continuing engagement with the world. Australia like most other countries recognises China’s sovereignty over Tibet.

But we also believe it is necessary to recognise there are significant human rights problems in Tibet. The current situation in Tibet is of concern to Australians.

We recognise the need for all parties to avoid violence and find a solution through dialogue. As a long-standing friend of China I intend to have a straightforward discussion with China’s leaders on this.

In my estimation, Rudd has played his hand forthrightly here because he feels that the political measure of the Chinese Government is within his grasp. His diplomatic experiences, and of course his strong personal relationships with people in numerous prominent positions in China are proving emboldening. If the world was casting a mold for a leader who is able to speak frankly and openly with the Chinese Government and bridge the gap between tomorrow’s superpower and the West, I don’t really think there is very much doubt that Rudd’s frame would fit it. It will be very interesting to see if the discussions that the Prime Minister now has with Chinese President Hu Jintao are impacted at all by the situation in Tibet and Rudd’s comments on the situation there. One hopes that the the two governments take this opportunity to build closer and less obfuscated ties, and that the Chinese President absorbs Lu Kewen’s comments in the spirit they were given; a tap on the shoulder from someone who wants to help.

ELSEWHERE: Of course, there’s no mention of Rudd’s concerns about Tibet in this blatantly information-washed article covering the speech from Xinhua. Truly shameful.

The passage of the Olympic torch through these parts of the world over the last few days has been a lot more dramatic than it usually is. I probably can only admit to having a passing interest in the world’s premier quadrennial sporting competition, but this year, the political slant of this year’s games promises to have quite profound ramifications across the international world. The recent skirmishes between the Olympic bandwagon and protesters in London and Paris throw up some interesting questions about the right way to pressure the Chinese Government into ending its seemingly malignant authority over Tibet. Like many, no doubt, I am incensed by the images of violence that have found their way out into the media in recent weeks from the troubled province. Relatively speaking, on a much milder scale, I have also found myself disgusted at the way that some torch runners have been treated by the odd rat-bag protester. That is of course an absurd juxtaposition of concerns to have when one considers the relative severity of the actions that we are talking about, but its hard not to think that the more aggressive protests aimed at the torch relay participants are representing the protest lobby in a poor light.

China is the elephant in the room of the modern global political economy. It is a superpower to be; that is, if it can not already be considered a superpower, given its population and the ubiquity of its economic power. You only have to have a look through the various items in your own house to get a thumbnail view of this ubiquity. I don’t really doubt that the Gordon Browns, the Kevin Rudds or the Nicolas Sarkozys of this world are not morally troubled about developments in Tibet and their own vague complicity in what is going on. I also don’t doubt that each of these leaders is acutely keen to avoid any rash act of political activism that does more harm than good diplomatically. Presumably, no leader with strong personal feelings on Tibet wants their act of political activism to be the straw that sets the world on a path towards another catastrophic military conflict. It is for this reason that Kevin Rudd’s reluctance to be around the Olympic torch or indeed to engage in talk of boycotts is understandable. A unilateral protest action by Australia would merely ensure that we would no longer have a credible position for engaging in talks with the Chinese. A multilateral diplomatic effort may under the right conditions achieve something, but the Olympics is far too tokenistic a platform to carry the burden of a debate of this scope.

In short, Tibet represents a seemingly intractable political conundrum. There are no easy answers, and the path towards Tibetian independence is an uncertain and risky one. It seems certain that the only path towards an eventual resolution will be paved with the (perhaps begrudging) cooperation of the Chinese. It is for this reason that the global community should avoid trivialising the issues by using the Olympics as a primary vehicle for pressuring the Chinese Government. These are clearly not problems that are going to be solved by turning our backs on a little sporting event, nicking the Olympic torch or directing attacks at the athletes and celebrities who want to honor the greatest sporting competition of our times. A resolution, if it comes at all, can only realistically be reached if the international community slowly and patiently nibbles away at the resolve of the oppressive elements within the Chinese Government.

The only alternatives to this approach imply a high risk that the bloc-centric military antagonism of the last century will return.

Kevin Rudd’s assertion today that Australia will be seeking temporary membership of the UN Security Council for the 2013-14 term is a welcome and not altogether surprising move. The Rudd Government’s time in office so far has been characterised by a strong interest in re-engaging in a multilateral sense with the international community, and a willingness to commit to fairly long-winded plans that could conceivably only come to fruition beyond the life of the current government. In a foreign policy sense, it is refreshing. One imagines that John Howard was never that interested in seeking representation for Australia on the security council; probably partly because he didn’t have much belief in the United Nations, and partly because there was no need given that the United States spoke for Australia while he was in power anyway.

What I am hopeful of is that Australia takes an activist role in its interactions with the United Nations. In relation to most of the metrics one can conceive of, we are of course a bantam-weight at best on the international scene. Our twenty million people are barely a drop in the ocean when compared to the billions of people shared between the likes of the United States, China, and India. Australia may not be in the position to throw its weight around in the international political arena, but we are perfectly suited to playing a “fixer” intermediary role between the most powerful nations in the world. We have strong friends and the respect of nations in both the West and Asia. Kevin Rudd has the unique power to talk to the Chinese in a way that no Australian leader ever has. The prospects for Australia’s role in global politics to become greatly enhanced over the coming five years or so are extremely good, and this is an exciting and wonderful thing.

The recent presidential “election” in Russia creates some interesting moral conundrums for the rest of the democratic world. One could be forgiven for wondering whether things have really improved for those living in the largest country within the former Soviet Union since the heady days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. It is indeed true that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is by and large a friend of the broader West, at least, much more so than was the case when the Communist Party controlled the Soviet Union. And yet, he is, in a not dissimilar way to Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, a dictator. He personally wields a truly disgusting amount of power for a single individual, ruling over such a large country.

The latest, blatantly obvious manifestation of Putin’s near-monarchical control of his power base is the Russian presidential election, won convincingly (numerically speaking) and yet unconvincingly (transparent process-wise) by the President’s chosen candidate, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin, of course, is continuing on in true dictatorial style as Prime Minister, where one would think he will likely continue to pull the nation’s strings. As David Hearst comments in the Guardian, Medvedev is somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place in his new role:

But even greater danger lies in Medvedev being too successful and becoming his own man. For then, he will be sucking both limelight and power away from his political master and that is a dangerous thing to do, unless Putin agrees to it first and is planning his early retirement. There is no indication that he is. In the short term at least, Medvedev has to steer a middle course between failure and success. He has to be competently mediocre.

It will be interesting indeed to observe how the international community works with Medvedev (and Putin, his putative puppet-master) moving forwards. Gordon Brown has already extended something of a fig leaf, in the hope that relations between Russia and the United Kingdom might stand to improve as a result of this change in leadership at the top. True to form, President Bush admitted, a couple of days ago, not knowing much about Medvedev. As far as I can tell, neither Foreign Minister Stephen Smith nor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd have been asked about their thoughts on developments. One hopes that the international community takes a constructive approach, but also attempts in the most diplomatic way possible to remind Putin and Medvedev that they are not painting a particularly rosy picture of the state of Russia’s democracy with their tag-team approach to the government of the nation.

Booker Prize nominated writer Mohsin Hamid has a nicely written piece in the Guardian that sums up his feelings about the election results in Pakistan. What is truly wonderful about the result, as he points out, is that it does seem to offer credence to the idea that Pakistan has a secular heart:

Instead, Pakistan managed a relatively free and fair election that delivered a crushing defeat to the ruling party of Pakistan’s unpopular President Musharraf. More than that, the country’s religious parties were assigned to the electoral dustbin, with voters even in the supposedly conservative Northwest Frontier province that borders Afghanistan flocking to secular candidates. The winners were moderate, centrist politicians - suggesting perhaps that Pakistanis, notwithstanding acres of newsprint to the contrary, are at heart a moderate centrist bunch.

There’s more detail on that point over at OpenDemocracy:

The MMA, the major alliance of Islamist parties, won only three seats in the National Assembly. In 2002, the MMA won 63 seats in the country’s parliament. Tellingly, the godfather of the MMA and the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, lost in his constituency.

Assuming that President Musharraf goes soon and goes quietly, one wonders if there is a lesson to be learnt for the West from these election results. If Musharraf had not been so amenable to the West during his time as dictator, his administration would surely have been targeted by the Bush Administration for a spot of regime change during the heady period immediately following 9/11. It is hard to imagine secular elements within Pakistan achieving the same levels of support today if a more hawkish approach to Pakistan was taken back then; disliking America and the West would have been all too easy a trend to create for extreme fundamentalist groups around the country.

Instead, democracy has been allowed to run its course in Pakistan, and although it is perhaps too early to be sure, the results are promising.

The scene is set for what promises to be a fairly emotional week in Australian politics. For the first time in over a decade, Federal Labor will take their seats on the government benches in parliament. By the end of tomorrow we will know what the full text of the government’s apology to the stolen generation will look like, and we will have a better idea whether the apology really is set to heal old wounds, or just to re-open them for some. Either way you look at it, history will be made tomorrow, in what may well prove to be one of the Rudd Government’s defining moments. In political terms, not just compassionate terms, the new government’s early credibility on indigenous affairs rests on its ability to deliver a national apology that compels the country to move on. The last thing that the country or the government needs is for tomorrow to kickstart a regressive discussion about whether or not the apology was “good enough” or not. An apology that does not satisfy the majority of the country, and in particular the majority of impacted indigenous Australians, could derail the government’s ambitious reform agenda. Needless to say, the apology is not going to please everyone and some people are going to feel short-changed by the process.

To add to the tumult, the apparent attempted coup in East Timor that has left President Jose Ramos-Horta in a critical condition bodes ill for political stability in the region. We can only hope that Ramos-Horta, who has been an admirable voice for the East Timorese and a popular political figure in Australia, recuperates from the attempt upon his life; he is reportedly in an induced coma and being treated in Royal Darwin Hospital. Details of just how serious his condition is are somewhat sketchy at this stage. Jill Jolliffe’s reports from East Timor in the SMH are well worth a read, and would seem to indicate that there are likely to be some heavy questions asked of the Australian UN forces responsible for security once the immediate concerns created by the crisis are addressed:

He [Ramos-Horta] fell to the ground after being hit by up to three bullets. Men in two cars - one of them the renegade major Alfredo Reinado - fired the shots. Presidential guards, who live at the Ramos-Horta residence, and nearby soldiers from the Timorese Army rushed to the scene and returned fire. But it would be another hour or more before the bleeding President got medical attention.

The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith have reacted quickly, deploying 340 additional personnel to East Timor. What this latest development does reinforce, however, is just how important stability in the immediate region is to Australia’s foreign policy outlook. Contrary to all the sensationalism propounded by the more hawkish Western administrations and certain corners of the media in relation to the “war on terror”, it would seem that Australia’s foremost national security challenge at the moment relates to the stability of one of our closest neighbours. It is a black and bitter irony that one of the region’s foremost political champions needs to be lying in a critical condition in an Australian hospital before news and events from East Timor get a bit more of the focus the country deserves from the media.

ELSEWHERE: Former (more’s the pity) television current affairs journalist Stan Grant’s contribution is also worth reading.