Water as an issue, intersecting even with the most advanced technology

This is from an email I wrote recently.
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This water subject has been much on my mind, X..... 

Not only in the usual benevolent western sense of concern for example about my friend Vince who seeks to maintain his IT business and his farm in a Uganda town near the DRC border, not only more abstractly with the Uganda government with a wave of South Sudanese refugees being allocated land, while rains have failed in the last couple of seasons, but also in the heartland of new tech. Thus it's a problem reaching into advanced-world heartlands. Associated with all the forest fires. A vicious circle: see this from Nature yesterday on the impact of Australian fires on global CO2 and the ozone hole: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02782-w   Expect more such assessments from more recent northern hemisphere fires.

The long historical record is of civilisations being battered to death mainly by climate changes. It's not really just a new normal. Except in grand disastrous cycle. We diddle with the periphery: compare thinking of Boris haha going to Ukraine when in a pickle... with the reality of Boris going to Ukraine as the sharp end of AUKUS discouragement of Ukraine from concluding a peace with Russia, stamped on when peace was possible in early April, Boris's first visit. 

At the centre of American dreams of recovery of omnipotence is the trade war with China and at the centre of that is the American desire to hustle-muscle Japan, ROK, and Taiwan into CHIP4, 

https://techwireasia.com/2022/07/chip-4-alliance-will-south-korea-pick-the-us-or-remain-an-ally-to-china/

a subsidiary of 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/09/fact-sheet-chips-and-science-act-will-lower-costs-create-jobs-strengthen-supply-chains-and-counter-china/

There are four constraining factors: knowledge, production equipment, people... and water. A friend was telling us a story the other day (binding all these things together in about 1960) of how his mate's dad gave his son a transistor radio for his birthday, in its leather case, perhaps ten transistors... and showing it to his mates in the backyard, the dog grabbed it by the leather strap and ran into a pond with it and it never worked again. 

The current generation iPhone has an A15 processor, with 15 billion transistors at something like 150 million transistors per square millimeter. The single small chip has a 'system on a chip' that does everything in the device. We are approaching limits of "Moore's law" but not the limits of absurd human demand for 'more'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

It takes artificial intelligence to do the design of these top chips/microprocessors. Enter EDA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automation

No one country or corporation has all the EDA software skills.: the people-ability to write the software to get the AI to do the jobs. 

Now the US has moved to apply sanctions to anyone who wants to share EDA with China:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/18/1058116/eda-software-us-china-chip-war/

This post-Trump pro-Biden absurdism is as modern as punishment by chopping hand off.

The world's leading chip 'fab' (manufacturing facility/fabrication plant, contrast 'fabless' a company such as Apple that designs chips but does not manufacture them), is TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Parents in Taiwan dream of their children working for TSMC. 

Fabs require the world's cleanest water in large quantity. In moist-tropics Taiwan, drought has had TSMC trucking in water for some time.

In August 2020, in response to Trump pressure on Taiwan, TSMC announced that it would build a fab in Arizona. The next day, the Trump Administration chopped off a leg of TSMC by imposing sanctions on a lot of the trade in semiconductors etc with the PRC. Over 40% of Taiwan's exports go the PRC, some fresh produce but mainly advanced tech things.

In post-Pelosi August 2022, the Governor of Arizona visited Taiwan and announced that all was fine with the Arizona TSMC project. TSMC then said the governor hadn't visited them but they had talked on the phone (just a bit better than Pelosi going to Taiwan to tout democracy and not meeting the national assembly opposition... which favours reunification). 

In the past week, the US government, in response to years-long drought in the American southwest, has chopped Arizona's allocation of water from the Colorado river by 20%. (California's allocation unchanged—reduced water for Los Angeles and hinterland would destroy numbers for the Democratic Party.). Since the 1970s there has been a dramatic internal migration to the American Sunbelt, including Arizona. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Belt

The great, disastrous destroyer of water resources, suburban grass, increased there exponentially, but we don't talk about that, don't frighten the voters. In August 2022 the capital of one sunbelt state, Jackson Mississippi, ran out of drinking water. 

Intel, in response to TSMC's Arizona plans, announced that it too would build a new fab in Arizona. (I suppose of the people one might say, with metaphorical resonance, "let them drink Coke".)

There is a spike, inspired by all the Taiwan-TSMC news, in discussion of the cultural/lifestyle issues for Americans working for TSMC. There are relatively-OK US law provisions for high level professionals (perhaps) to be stolen out of CHIP4 and China. However, an estimated 3500 production-level staff may need to be imported, with no law to cover that. 

So... abundant shouting, print the money (necessary given the current bucket approach to US federal spending, also as Japan and China are reducing their holdings of US Treasury paper), grab-the-fab simple-mindedness, howl about China. 

But shortages of wisdom, people.... and water. 

ADDENDUM 11 SEPTEMBER.  Screenshot of part of today's chatty weekly roundup email from the South China Morning Post... a newspaper Murdoch bought, could not command, dumped. Note particularly the last little para.

Hello Turbulence, we'd better make ourselves comfortable... I hope you brought the lunch. 

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On Sat, 3 Sept 2022 at 03:10, ....gmail.com> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: OECD What’s New <OECDwhatisnew@newsletter.oecd.org>
Date: Fri, 2 Sept 2022, 17:15
Subject: Are water crises the new normal?
To: <d....>

Latest facts on water: quantity - quality - risks and disasters - valuation and pricing - governance View this email online Building a water-smart society Water-related disasters – floods, droughts, storms – account for the majority of disasters taking lives, and are estimated to cost more than USD 500 billion in damages annually. Over the next 30 years, the number of people at risk from water-related disasters is projected to rise to 20% of the world’s population as the climate changes. But managing the rise of water-related disasters is only the tip of the iceberg. Explore the toolkit for water policies Pressures on freshwater resources are mounting Water stress levels, 2020 or latest available year Freshwater abstractions as percentage of total renewable resources The OECD projects that by 2050, global water demand will rise by 55% and 40% of the world’s population will likely be living in severely water-stressed river basins. Many areas of the world are already experiencing moderate to high levels of water stress, meaning demand for good quality water is exceeding supply.  Among other things, freshwater availability is affected by water abstractions (from lakes, rivers and underground sources), with over-abstraction leading to low river flows, depleted groundwater, and desertification. In the coming decades, groundwater depletion in particular may become the greatest threat to agriculture and urban water supplies in several regions.  While agriculture is expected to be impacted by future water stress, it is also a major contributor to water stress, accounting for more than 70% of freshwater abstractions. The sector therefore has a major role to play in mitigating future risks, notably though improving the efficiency of resource management and reducing negative impacts on water quality.  But well-designed allocation regimes are needed across sectors to ensure water is allocated where it can create the most value economically, socially and environmentally. See our work on water Listen to the podcast Aquatic pollution is a pervasive environmental issue From plastics to agricultural run-off, OECD countries still face important water quality challenges – despite decades of regulation and investment to reduce water pollution. Plastics have been accumulating in the aquatic environment since the 1950s, and it is estimated that some 140 Mt of plastics have found their way into the aquatic environment globally, of which 78% in freshwater systems.  Globally, agriculture’s impact on water quality – from nutrients, soil sediments and pesticides – has either not improved or has deteriorated over the past decade, notably linked to large irrigation schemes.  And micro-pollutants – such as medicines, cosmetics, cleaning agents, biocide residues and micro-plastics from textile products and vehicle tyres – have become an emerging concern in many countries. They have been detected at concentrations significantly higher than expected, with extremely uncertain risks to human and environmental health. Read more on pharmaceutical residues See our work on plastics Water disasters and risks threaten food production Crop and livestock production loss per disaster type, 2008-18 Least developed countries (LDCs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMDCs) Agriculture is the sector most affected by droughts, and droughts are the single greatest cause of agricultural production losses. Over 34% of crop and livestock production losses in LDCs and LMDCs are due to drought, costing the sector USD 37 billion overall between 2008 and 2018.  During this period, drought caused the largest crop and livestock production losses in Africa (over USD 14 billion), and in Latin American and the Caribbean (USD 13 billion), which also suffered from severe storms (USD 6 billion). Asia also suffered equally huge losses due to floods (USD 11 billion) and storms (USD 10 billion). Agriculture is expected to face increasing water risks in the future which will undermine the productivity of rain-fed and irrigated crops, as well as livestock activities in certain countries and regions.  Known as water risk hotspots, Northeast China, Northwest India and the Southwest United States are projected to be among the most severely affected regions, with the potential to further impact markets, trade and broader food security.   Read more about building agriculture resilience The world is not on track to meet its water goals   Country progress on SDG 6  2021, selected countries With 2.1 billion people lacking access to safe water services and over 4.4 billion without access to safe sanitation, the world is not on track to meet its global commitments on water. And the situation will likely worsen due to rapid population growth, urbanisation and increasing pressure from agriculture, industry, the energy sector, and climate change. Most OECD countries already provide access to drinking water and sanitation services to virtually all their residents (targets 6.1 and 6.2) but 1 in 10 is far from reaching water quality and waste management targets (targets 6.3).  Some OECD countries have lost over 10% of their surface water since the mid-1980s due to drought and wasteful irrigation methods. While water-use efficiency (target 6.4) has seen significant improvements in the past two decades, the pace of progress is only sufficient to reach 2030 targets in a few countries. Finally, 7 in 10 OECD countries are far from achieving target 6.6 on the protection of aquatic ecosystems. Learn more about SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation Valuing water is key to solving water challenges Valuing water is one tool that can be used to protect the human right to water while acknowledging that water provides an economic benefit that should have a cost. But it is also a politically charged issue with numerous economic implications. Pricing mechanisms provide important signals and incentives for water-wise decisions, as well as a vital means for providing revenue streams.  Yet tariffs are still too often fixed at a level well below what is needed to recover the costs of operations and maintenance. Moreover, to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030, current investment will need to increase threefold to about USD 1.7 trillion in order to cope with emerging challenges. Since pricing instruments may disproportionately affect vulnerable people, mechanisms will need to be established such that affordability constraints are taken into account through redistribution and prioritisation of water uses. Read more about financing a water secure future OECD © 2022, All rights reserved. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2 rue André-Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France You can change your preferences on your MyOECD profile or unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time.

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Tidying blog

 I have neglected this blog, used it for some ragged drafting too.

Some recent writing of mine has been published by John Menadue

https://johnmenadue.com/author/dennis-argall/

I will try to be more diligent here, will post to blog some things just emailed. 

The United States, in decline but still able to kill us all

 The global dominance of the United States, in so many fields, from space, to science, to entertainment, to sport, to novelty in the development of the English language, has been taken for granted, is part of our fabric of Australian existence. Reinforced by the Covid Era of Isolation, Netflix, Facebook, and Computer Games and inability even to get to Bali or Thailand let alone China. We are now in a noisy metal barrel where even dissident voices seem projections from the dissident voices of the US, similarly muted and squeezed. At a time when the US and its roles in the world are suddenly dramatically changing.

The undoing of the United States, the collapse of the imperial centre, is happening with little awareness in Australia. Our generally oblivious mindframes affect the capacity of political leaders to reflect upon or point to core problems of our world. Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, that great rabbit adventure full of meaning for human society, coined the rabbit language word 'tharn' for the mental state of rabbits caught in the headlights and stuck. We are a tharn nation, gabbling about entertainments and irritations, eyes glued to the seatback monitor, not wanting to know the plane is crashing. 

Heed these markers:

• the Americans were first to the moon, but NASA for some time depended on Russian rockets to get to their joint space station and the Russians are now planning to remove the propulsion units of the station which keep it from crashing, for use on a bigger new venture. America is losing in space, though US private business has appallingly taken the lead in cluttering near space with junk.
• the US economy, measured in purchasing parity terms, has not been the biggest for some time. 
• with Donald Trump, America became revealed much as the Great Oz. With his successor Biden, for whom we all hoped for something better, we have a revelation of a dodderer behind the big screen. 

• The fiercely presented wearisome trope of commitment to a Rules Based International Order is quite suddenly unmasked as an American Establishment desire to maintain a unipolar control of the world, with violence. This is being unmasked in much of the world if not NATO and AUKUS and the conservative acolytes in Japan and ROK. Ideological assertions of democracy versus autocracy, built by vilification and isolation of China and Russia, is rotting from the head as big democracies are in serious trouble. We are doing OK in Australia, our minds from age 12 filled with bubblegum flavoured vape and Tiktok, graduating to Facebook and the metaverse, and with a newer, kinder, kinda-tealish government we can all go to sleep, take off our masks and order American franchised fast food. Or real Aussie drinks. But while we have had a narrow focus on bad boys in the SAS we fail to review our complicity in the great crimes of the twenty first century, led by champions of democracy, smashing the lives of people in a number of countries far more violently than has the Ukraine war so far. Biden and his Secretary of State were advocates for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, so appallingly bringing down bad governments and making countries ungovernable. Creating Al Qaeda and ISIS in the process, directly through funding and arming extremists (in Afghanistan beginning before the Russians were invited into Afghanistan) and via embitterment of ordinary people. The world is destabilised, American control is widely undone.
• The march of folly in American strategic policy has enshrined the madness of control by a giant defence industry and defence budget now past $800 billion. Poverty of foreign policy has led to regimes of sanctions which have been substantially shaped by Richard Nephew, whose book reveals that far from focusing on potentates and oligarchs, the targets of sanctions must be ordinary people and the purpose is to inflict pain and weaken resolve (his words). Consider sanctions related deaths in Iraq, Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan. Pain but no loss of resolve, hatred not submission. The US official study of the effects of strategic bombing on Germany in World War II by J K Galbraith and others long ago suggested morale and resolve were increased by the bombing of cities and civilians. And yet we have the ongoing commitment to defend and achieve democracy by mass murder, with constant focus on disruption, regime change, and violence... not on peace. 
• Jeffrey Sachs has recently returned to the themes of his 2013 book on the 50th anniversary of President John Kennedy's Commencement Speech at American University in 1963. Speaking in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy spoke of peace not as an event or a state but a constant process of engagement. We now have no such thing, we are in an Age of Meanness, Folly and Decay. 
• There is no more important issue than climate. Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Accords, Morrison pretended not to. Australia, Canada, and the United States lead the world in per capita carbon dioxide emissions (apart from small states and oil producers), emitting around 15 tonnes; the EU 6 (Germany 8... Luxembourg, where the population produces 300kg of steel per capita, is up there with us at 15). China while factory to the world and producer of more than 50% of the world's steel, 7.6% in 2019. [World Bank numbers]. Biden and now Albanese quick to signal climate intent internationally. But there is the problem of passing legislation in the US... On 27 July 2022 after prolonged negotiations there was agreement on a so-called Inflation Reduction Act, for expenditure of $433 billion, of which $369 for energy and climate. Democrat Senator Manchin, a coal magnate from West Virginia, who has hitherto opposed all climate spending, agreed but with the stipulation that if the Interior Department plans wind or solar projects on any public land it first must hold a sale of oil and gas leases on that land. The Republican party as a whole, and soon as a majority in both houses, is entirely opposed to climate action. That is to say, the prospective majority of the legislative arm of the United States government wants the planet to die... while also continuing the campaign for a rules based planet under American exceptionalist power. This is religious fascism, as well as existential folly. Barbara Tuchman we miss you!
• The American constitution of government, with Executive, Legislature and Judiciary equal (very different from Australia), is coming undone. Most celebrated recently in the actual and anticipated reduction of rights by the Supreme Court, a process only just begun. Most dangerous is the legislature where as noted Democrats are blocked by one of their own, a coal magnate senator who lets little of the Biden agenda through. There will likely be a rout of Democrats in the midterm elections this November, for the whole of the House and part of the Senate (there are two senators for each state, six year terms). Electoral prospects are affected also by the efforts in many states to make voting more difficult. The Republican party and major business appear steadily more openly oppose as far as possible government involvement in anything beyond defence and the massive subsidy of the defence industry and banks, and a capacity to print money. This is the most likely successor to Trump, Florida governor De Santis. The American mind is to be narrowed down. Religious fascism.
• In the executive there is evident enfeeblement of a president of my age, 79, notionally working hours that grey the hairs of young men. He is now universally unpopular, not even Democrats want him to stand again in 2024, though he wants to. His international policies are driven by his long experience in the Senate and as Vice President to Obama; dreaming of past power. Both he and his Secretary of State are foreign policy mainstream conservatives who advocated for invasion of Iraq in 2003. 
• Into this separation of powers comes Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a long term heavyweight for pro-democracy intervention and regime change, planning a visit to Taiwan to spruik independence. The president says not a good idea but out of my control. The Chinese president and American president on 29 July 2022 had two hours of phone conversation. Reuters reported: "Those who play with fire will perish by it," China's foreign ministry quoted Xi as telling Biden in their fifth call as leaders. "It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this." The aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan and missile cruiser Antietam have left Singapore and are headed north. (The inconclusive Civil War Battle of Antietam in September 1862 in a tiny valley near Washington DC was the bloodiest day in American history to now, 22,000 dead or missing in the morning and afternoon.) I do not know what Australian naval or air force elements are entangled with this. Australia recognises, as does the United States, that Taiwan is part of China. Though the media vague up the history, China kicked the Portuguese and Dutch out of Taiwan early in the 1600s, long before the greatest land grab in history, of Britain over the Australian continent, could even be imagined as the British didn't know it was there then. The government in Taipei is the Government of the Republic of China. The large opposition party in the National Assembly is the Kuomintang, ruling party of the government of the Republic of China that lost the revolutionary war on the mainland in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan. The ROC held the China seat in the UN until 1971 with American backing. The majority of local governments in Taiwan are governed by the KMT because the party of the national government is on the nose both because of its independence-advocating foreign policy and corruption allegations. Pelosi's visit risks great power war as not seen since 1945. The American right wing is fervently in support.  Stanley Kubrick made a movie about such madness, we are sleeping through it.

• The US economy is in serious trouble. Disrupted by COVID. Made flaccid by many years dependence on China for products of all kinds, and with industry shipped abroad. The economy bulged by COVID recovery funding. Growing inflation and technical recession. Because of the dominant anti-socialist, anti-interventionist (other than in subsidy of major industries and banks) perspectives, there is no control over inflation other than by the Federal Reserve lifting interest rates. Not only does this inside the US favour the rich and hurt the poor , but also much the same is the case internationally. There is a big shock arising from US interest rates in Asia. Also in Australia: there is a big difference between US housing loans, predominantly at fixed rate, and those in Australia, predominantly variable, shifted in response to official interest rate changes. Where the US needs a sharp yank on the reins of interest rates to get results, such action has greater impact outside the US. The US dominated International Monetary Fund wants to give no more loans to Asian countries in trouble, including Sri Lanka. China is blamed for Sri Lanka's debts but borrowing from China represent less than 10% of total foreign borrowing. See this not-friendly-to-China Indian study.
• The US dollar is the reserve currency of the world and the US government can print money to cover its huge fiscal deficit. This situation is made more serious as Japan and China are, for their own economic reasons, reducing their near trillion dollars of holdings of US government bonds. They may each see emerging risk in having such exposure. China is succeeding in getting more trade transactions settled in Chinese currency. Saudi Arabia thinks it's wise to do that with China. India and Russia want the same kind of shift from the USD, Russia has more leverage. 
• The US campaign for unipolar dominance has included partly fabricated propaganda against China and Russia. This no longer convinces or concerns a wide sweep of the world beyond NATO, the G7,  the EU and AUKUS. The summit meeting of BRICS in June seemed a more constructive meeting than the G7. The countries of Eurasia also have the SCO. The Iran, Russia, Turkey summit meeting in Tehran in July 2022 seems to have been more successful than President Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia to meet also other Arab leaders, a visit described by the Wall Street Journal as worse than an embarrassment, with no success in getting more oil onto the market, no turning Arab countries away from growing ties with China, no agreement to sanction Russia, no advance on the mad notion of war with Iran. A new rail line from Russia to Iran with plans to connect it to ships to India has been opened. The American desire to frustrate development of the overland Eurasian world is not succeeding. 
• The Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June exposed erosion in support for the United States because the US refused to invite people it did not like; therefore the Mexican president and others stayed away. There is unraveling of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine of US dominance of the western hemisphere. The Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel addressed a 'peoples summit of the Americas' held at the same time, from home.  Part of the live broadcast... 
• 
  
•  

• The ferocity of sanctions against Russia this year has speeded the diversion of US oil and gas to Asia and away from Europe. 
• In the 1950s Mao used the expression 'paper tiger' to describe the US: "Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain."  In the mid1970s, heading towards normalisation of relations with the US, the Chinese Foreign Minister spoke of the US having "ten fingers on ten fleas" to describe American overreach and in particular the failure of the US war in Indochina and absence thus of any threat capacity of the US against China. It could be said that the US now also has ten fleas under ten fingers... but it has two lively ambitions afoot: to antagonise China and damage Russia. 
• As Dostoevsky observed, we tend, in seeking to see the world, to look in a mirror. The United States in looking at the world sees threats. The world, broadly speaking, is not like the US. Australia, with our military imperialist views, is similarly misguided. Some useful words from an intelligent young Chinese entrepreneur:
• 
  

• There is a podcast accessible on Patreon and YouTube called Fall of Civilisations... serious presentations about civilisations and how they came to an end, so far fifteen episodes, by Paul Cooper an English writer with relevant doctorate. One of these is about the end of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean, suddenly, around 1200 BCE. Literate societies, writing, maintaining financial and trade records, big cities trading with each other. Appearing to be eliminated by climate change and food shortage, with evidence of violence and fire in all the cities; also with the arrival of 'sea people', probably climate and starvation refugees. There is gentle comparison with our present global situation. The big point to me being that crises are not gentle or slow, but come about in lurches, much as a brain tumour works, growing and pressing and with pressure in a confined space smashing parts of the brain suddenly and unpredictably. The world is littered with failed civilisations, none of whom believed they would fail and disappear.  

Australia muddled in a changing world

text submitted to John Menadue's blog on 29 July 2022.

DENNIS ARGALL: Teal is important but blood red international issues are right now dangerous.

The Whitlam Government took office with public support for fundamental changes in our approach to our region, to embrace reality. The Albanese government is tangled in the neocon skirts of Morrison and Dutton. There is a serious risk of drift into a situation comparable to the mind-closure of apartheid South Africa. Despite gentle tones of the Foreign Minister, our broader strategic perspective has gone bung.

The Albanese government has been confronted dramatically with international issues from its first day. The Whitlam government was similarly confronted but there was a major difference. The Whitlam government came in with passionate concern to make changes: to end our involvement in the Vietnam War and shift our recognition of government of China from the authorities in Taipei to the authorities in Beijing… to attune Australia to the realities of our region, including in immigration policy. Those things were done swiftly despite hostility from the authorities in Washington DC. This year there has been a muddle of passions on international issues, rather than clarity about national interests. It's a difficult year with the interaction of pandemic, climate, environment, and fear of war entangled.

In several international matters we are dangerously up the creek. These must be discussed nationally, openly and in the parliament. Citizens worry and need sound information.

First. We are silent while the Speaker of the US House of Representatives is planning a visit to Taiwan. This is opposed by President Biden, but seems to include planning for US defence force involvement, defence forces of course under command of the president not the speaker. Republican leaders, including Trump's secretaries of state and defense, are in vociferous support of a visit by Ms Pelosi, second in line of succession to the president. This plan carries more risk of war in the Pacific between major powers than anything since World War II. Even without planet-threatening use of nuclear weapons, the global economy would crash.

It has been part of the alliance fabric that Australia be consulted by the US on matters of fundamental security concern… and any decent ally should speak up. On this matter of the possible Pelosi visit, Australia needs to be sending a clear message, writing to the speaker and the president, and publicly. There is little public awareness of this risk. A government statement is essential, not least to keep the initiative away from Dutton.

Second. We still have a muddle of views on China. The Prime Minister as well as the outspoken Deputy Prime Minister are advised by deeply conservative people who have neocon perspectives but no understanding of China. China is not a threat to Australia unless we continue to develop hostile approaches to China. Apart from the absurdity of believing we have a sense of entitlement to send warships to the straits between Taiwan and the mainland (where in any case most of the commercial shipping of direct relevance to Australia and needing ‘freedom of navigation’ is between Australia and China) there is the question of how we would feel if China patrolled the waters between Tasmania and the Australian mainland. There is widespread understanding and concern not just in China but throughout Southeast Asia that AUKUS and the long ranging nuclear powered submarines make Australia an aggressive and destabilising force, not a friend. We need to embrace the future, not pretend there is some white mans empire to be proud of.

Third, we have signed on to a notion of "rules based international order", alliances of democracy versus autocracy. This not the same as a law based international order as advocated by China, instead it is an American desire to sustain a unipolar world, dominated by the US: it's America’s rules. The rules based international order is destroying the planet. This notion of omnipotence has been falling apart for decades since it first arose in the braggadocio after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In these decades the Champions of Democracy have been responsible for more deaths and destruction in interventionist wars than in any other conflict since World War II. Notions of alliance with the United States enhancing Australian security are illusions in a changed world. If at the G20 Summit in Indonesia the Australian prime minister rattles off the nonsense of international rules and AUKUS, he will be seen as a fool by countries in our region. He could do better.

We have now joined a war far from Australia's interests, continuing to arm and avoiding peace negotiation, in support of a country, Ukraine, ranking 122 on the 'corruption perception index' of Transparency International. With a secret police organisation child of the KGB and as numerous as the FBI, for a population one eighth of the US. Political opposition and independent media are stifled, closed, imprisoned, hunted. The population of Ukraine has declined by 20% since 1990. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women have been trafficked. The rights of the 40% of the country speaking Russian and culturally Russian have been removed,. Agreements signed in Minsk, with France and Germany participating, for a regional system to protect minorities in the east, have been ignored. The war is not new this year, not begun by Putin, but begun with a coup in Kyiv enabled by the US in 2014, against an elected government that had chosen economic association with Russia rather than the EU. There was abundant warning of the inappropriateness of carrying an anachronistic militant NATO up to Russia's borders, long before. Listen to President Putin's 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference.

Ramifications of the current war in Europe are expanding. European governments are destabilised; they tire of the whip of Zelenskyy and his implausible demands for money. Much as with the Euro crisis a decade ago, the big countries Germany and France are expecting smaller members to make sacrifices for them. The Italian government has collapsed and the party most likely to lead a new government is Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) heir to Mussolini's fascist party. There is a muddle of voices in Germany, few critical of the rearmament program of the Social Democrat-Green government, but there are blunt statements at state and federal level from social democrats and Greens that the winter without fuel will produce great anger and political upheaval.

In France the centre-right banker President Macron has lost control of the National Assembly to the left. In Britain... who can say what coherence is possible.

There is high risk of another crisis in the Eurozone as there was a decade ago.

In response–even to questions about the effect of the Ukraine war on gasoline prices–the US President has said the war will be fought “for as long as it takes”.... Takes to do what? There can be no military victory, there will be no humiliation of Russia. Peace becomes more elusive as Ukraine is destroyed. Ukraine is not a level platform. The territories in the east cover what was an energy and resources powerhouse of the Russian empire, and the Soviet Union. Rebuilt after each World War, run downhill by oligarchs after independence, and battered in war since 2014. The Russians cannot stop advancing while US heavy weapons stand back and hit not only military opponents but civilian populations in Donets. Our rules based order is murderous here as elsewhere in the world. Democratic ideals need to respect rights of minorities. Gigantic defence budgets need to be diverted to save the planet.

what title? unfinished

If we are to think clearly about the United States we have to think also about China and Russia.

The Chinese foreign minister has again said he is ready to recalibrate China's relations with Australia but that Australia needs to correct its understanding of China.  This is the simplest explanation of the necessary adjustment that I have seen.

But, but, but the oligarchs of strategic hoohaa will say.  

Foolish misjudgement of China is not new. Exactly 40 years ago when I was head of the North and South Asia Division in the Department of Foreign Affairs I received a delegation of more matured officers of the department to tell me the policy, for which I was responsible and for which I had drafted the 1980 cabinet submission, of working to assist China with its reform policies was folly. I was told by the genteel elders that we were watching a dirty trick comparable to the New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union that Stalin crushed in 1928. 

Or someone might, noting very recent intensification of China's relations with Russia, unearth the Record of Conversation of Owen Harries from lunch with the Soviet Embassy in 1980. Harries was speech writer for Malcolm Fraser and much more, shaper of Fraser's fiercely anti-Soviet speeches, accepting of Fraser's united front with China, invited to lunch by Soviet diplomats to write in his record of the conversation that the Sovs said to him "one day we will get back together again with China and then we will fuck you at both ends". The intelligence czars who have made beds in the Albanese office, plus the chiefs of ASPI and the Lowy Hubricator are today's old guards to defend old perspectives. 

We are in a mess. We are stuck with allegiance to the concept of Rules Based International Order which is a ratbag collation of inconsistent arguments for acceptance of American dominance where that is sliding away. We have put several hundred million dollars of old army toys and more on the madcap adventure of defeating Russia in Ukraine... to the last Ukrainian. We seem oblivious to the rise of social and political disorder in the US and even more so among the Europeans, where politics is polarising and the cost of following the US and NATO in closing relations with Russia in economic recession and social misery. The suckerisation of the west is perhaps best illustrated by Vogue giving its cover to an oligarchically associated and enriched President Zelinskyy enveloping his wife: Zelenskyy who who has destroyed opposition parties and non-government media, while sacking his secret police chief and chief prosecutor because some of their staff are in parts of Ukraine under government by the new republics of Luhansk and and Donets, and working their. This self-proclaimed republics products of the refusal of Zelenskyy and predecessor to implement the so called Minsk agreements. These agreements followed on from repression of Russian speaking Ukrainians and turmoil over the president in 2013 choosing closer association with Russia rather than the EU and NATO. And the notorious entanglement of the US in oversight of the coup of February 2014. Efforts have been made to suppress, erase, from YouTube the conversation of then US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland with Geoffrey Pyatt, US ambassador in Kyiv. This survives:

Nuland now occupies the most senior career position in the State Department, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. President Biden was Vice President back then. There is a stern resolve to repress any information about Biden's son who may have been deeply involved in corruption in Ukraine. Donald Trump shamelessly tried to twist Zelenskyy's arm, to get dirt on the Bidens with leverage of denying aid to Ukraine. But the involvement of the apotheosis of dirt in the matter does not prove his suspicions wrong.

There is a pattern. The people who run the show remain the people who run the show. Antony Blinken now Secretary of State was among other things Deputy Secretary of State under Obama, also close to Biden as his national security advisor. His wikipedia story says he helped craft policy towards Afghanistan. An earlier sign of his quality of judgement, when he was chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was his advocacy for invading Iraq. A champion of and frequently advocating for a Rules Based International Order, he has a deep commitment to aggression and no understanding of peace. 

Aircraft in NATO's tactical command and control of Ukraine air defences

 

I am just parking these images here for the time being...

This first is unmanned, flying far above commercial aviation, based in Sicily. Able to stay on post for many hours. 

That Global Hawk is providing electronic intelligence data probably including to this beast below. A Rivet Joint, an AWACS, airborne warning and control system. The extent to which these NATO units directly talk to crews on the ground in Ukraine or via other channels command I don’t know. There may be Ukraine staff on board. The air war in Ukraine is between Russia and NATO. This aircraft is alongside commercial traffic as you see. It may be based at Mildenhall, one of many US bases in the UK labeled as RAF bases.

This is Turkish airlines regular route Istanbul to Moscow, skirting the war zone. 

This is Etihad going to Chicago from Abu Dhabi last night, over Iran, then up the Caspian, then Russia. 

My interest is in basic facts. 

The Age of Stupidity, Bewilderment and Enthusiastic Folly

A draft essay potentially for John Menadue's blog

I need to begin with some sweeping observations, because I believe that if Australia is to be able prosper and be an harmonious society some sweeping changes are necessary. 

Australia has a damaged tertiary education sector, first because of the flight of students to the money in accounting and commerce; second because the Morrison Government set fees deliberately to discourage teaching and study of subjects that would enable the development of free-thinking minds with an awareness of history and of other societies; third because in the wake of 9/11 universities rushed to build departments of security studies that train minds to think in adversarial terms. I have not seen these security organisations presenting views on one of the major threats to our whole framework of  security and identity: the drift of the United States into oligopoly and fascism.

Economics as a body of knowledge in the west focuses on Darwinian notions of survival in competition … when evolutionary science has for the most part moved on to see that evolutionary progress occurs mainly because of collaboration. Narrow Darwinian perspectives of conflict and survival of the fittest are driving forces for chewing up the planet. We have to rethink many things, escape narrow Darwinian perspectives, to find ourselves on safer ground. We also need to be aware that China, committed to globalism, has been victim of trade war assaults and is actively pursuing other ways of making products and using money, away from sanctions and the US dollar. So my point is not academic: we need to be aware of the ideological basis of market economics.

We are an adversarial society. Going to war more often than most, almost uniquely sending our heroes to distant battles where our interests are obscure; where our involvement may be illegal or supporting the illegal but we don’t care — because it’s a blind and perverse element of belief in a ‘rules based international order’. The broader population remains isolated from war, oblivious of the violence, violation, killing, destruction, hunger, despair, and total upheaval that are the essence of warfare. 

We are addicted to loyalty to sporting teams and gambling, filled with need for winning and defeat; admiring of Australian cricketers who mired the sport in sledging. In the New Guinea highlands the introduction of Rugby League reduced enthusiasm for constant war; less so in Australia. Many of us are addicted to computer games, most of them involving killing. Big careers are made in law, fighting for issues or money or property; our politics, heavily infested with lawyers, is contestatorial. Loving the look of men and women in uniform; enjoying entitlement to strut in uniform. In politics no uniforms, but factional feuding–fighting–that diminishes focus on national interest. Our parliaments are unrelentingly conflictual. At the last national election we saw a drift of voters away from the self-stuck, self-struck major parties. Whether this is clearly understood by the major parties is not clear. The marginal Labor majority in the House of Representative may mean a stubbornness in Labor at a time when collaboration essential. 

We face as a planet dual threats of climate change and of nuclear war, more serious than at any time in history. 

The Executive Editor of the South China Morning Post, of Hong Kong, wrote in an email on 17 July about the death of Shinzo Abe that “[h]istory is often a summary of accidents”. This sounds a simple notion but look closely and compare with what great leaders believe they do; history is what happens when you dream of something else, often enough. We could look upon history also as the detritus left by great men who in their determination cause great harms. Robert MacNamara former head of the Ford motor company, former US Defense Secretary during the Vietnam War, subsequently chief of the World Bank,  thirty years ago wrote a book about ‘blundering into disaster’, expressing disappointment that people were not like him, doing things with orderly discipline. But in counterpoint, at Reykjavik around the same time, the chiefs of the US and Soviet tribes, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sent their advisors out of the room so they could discuss the dismantling of nuclear weapons… such a foolish and blundersome notion, quickly diminished by the orderly men behind them. We will all be killed by sound consistent thinking. There was agreement achieved on a treaty to eliminate intermediate range nuclear missiles from Europe. This eventually ran down into the ground. (We should bear in mind that in NATO planning of defence against the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War there was heavy reliance on the NATO side on theatre nuclear weapons to meet the preponderant conventional capacity of the Warsaw Pact countries.)

Other writers in this blog in recent days have produced a body of good sense on strategic policy, relations with China, connection to NATO, etc… leaving me needing first to recommend that everyone read their work. They need to be published as collection of important essays. John Menadue did a great service to the new Labor Government assembling recommendations in many essays during the campaign. But now that the tadpoles of Opposition have become hopping frogs with ministerial power there is greater need to put sensible ideas before government and its advisors. There are two very large ideas of first importance. 

• First the need to understand cultural and language differences in relations with China, eloquently articulated by Jocelyn Chey and Wanning Sun. 
• Second the need to stop thinking in conflictual terms and build a strategic environment on the basis of cooperation. 

Teow Loon Ti binds this together with the business of relations with China, as does Geoff Raby. 

Mike Scrafton and Brian Toohey make important comments on the problems of the defence and security areas of government and their power over the prime minister and defence minister who have arrived on the one hand with background education and work in economics and the union movement and law and industrial law on the other. 

The tale is wagging the dog, defence force strategic views still are strangely taken as appropriate for national strategy, a folly, as I pointed out here, several years ago. This dog is, of course, tethered by a leash to the grand (and now foolish and dangerous) strategic designs of the United States. The lack of vision and sense of national interest is disturbing. 

There are four globally important matters that lead me to the view that US strategic policy is now foolish and dangerous. I write having had responsibilities in relation to the relations with the United States in the Washington embassy and the Department of Defence in Canberra, and China both in Canberra and Beijing. The four areas are: 

• Ukraine and the long war coming between the US and Russia in Ukraine; 
• North Asia and the Pacific and the folly of hunger for war with China; 
• the Middle East and hunger for war with Iran; and 
• the cavalier approach to the global threats of climate change and nuclear war. 

There is also combination with the coming likely decline and disintegration of Europe; a  Europe riding to war with Russia as Napoleon did, to destroy his empire and kill half the horses of Europe; as also Hitler did, convinced of strategic necessity, creating in Ukraine a boiling pot of anguish, corruption, hatred and capacity to bring down the chandeliers again. 

This is my 1000 word limit here. I will write about the grand follies and dangers separately.

Elements for a strategic perspective for Australia

As published in John Menadue's blog, 27 June 2022

A national strategy needs to encompass all that we can do to build harmony, particularly in our part of the world, diminishing prospects for conflict. Image: iStock

As the Australian prime minister heads for the Nato summit in Madrid on 29-30 June, there is churn in the global strategic situation. The Albanese government has thus far taken strongly supportive positions towards US policy in both Asia and Ukraine. We are supporting flawed postures.

The government may well be following elements of public opinion but poll driven policy is not wise, no matter how strong in a democracy public opinion may be. Government must lead sensibly. We the Australian public are in a vacuum of news and notions of strategic and foreign policy concern. This is dangerous, leaving most people to run on unfounded worries. We are in a period without the parliament sitting. The government nonetheless needs very soon to set out a strategic perspective for the nation (and especially for the Green and Teal elements in community and parliament)… which absolutely should not be based on defence force threat perceptions, as the previous government’s policy seemed to be. If you start by defining threats, as defence assessments do, you just get a list of problems from which to claim funds for weapons. A national strategy needs to encompass all that we can do to build harmony, particularly in our part of the world, diminishing prospects for conflict.

Key elements in a new strategic policy need to be:

• That China is not an enemy and is victim of a lot of propaganda. Our relations with China must be based on interests not hysteria
• That the United States is entering into a period of instability at home and overreach abroad. The US’s declared intent to use the Ukraine war to diminish Russia is neither healthy nor attainable. The US provocation of war with China is contrary to our interests as well as common sense
• That the shift to discussing the potential for use of tactical nuclear weapons is an existential threat to the planet
• That the war in Ukraine and the continued delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine is destroying Ukraine
• Nothing will alter the certainty of Ukrainian military defeat, or descent towards very destructive guerrilla warfare. The best daily military sitrep is here There is no sanity in destroying the country to save it
• That continued delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine will not reverse the rapid depletion of Ukraine’s armed forces, will increase the direction of fire onto civilian populations and diversion of weapons to the black market
• That the serious threat of food shortage in the middle east and beyond cannot be eased without a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine. Ukraine mined its ports (and so might the Russians, Ukraine will not remove the mines while there is a threat from Russian naval forces (and removing them will not be quick, and rail and road options are limited
• That resolve in the EU in support of Ukraine will be seriously dented as winter approaches. The fiscal and monetary problems of many EU countries are serious, and for next winter there is no alternative to gas supplies from Russia. The granting of candidate status for membership of the EU to Ukraine does not admit Ukraine to the EU soon. Ukraine has to reduce corruption and there will be other obstacles, compare the position of Turkiya which sought membership in 1987
• That sanctions against Russia have (putting aside propaganda baloney) been effective mainly in altering Russia’s trade to the east and south. The ruble is the best performing currency of 2022
• That there is prospect of global economic and financial divide, with Russia and China and the BRICS countries and more of Asia, Africa, and Latin America developing trade patterns and currency connections away from the US and EU; Australia’s position in this situation must be based on sensible articulation of national interest
• Australia’s dealings with the South Pacific and Asia must relate to realities there, not projection or intervention of strategic partnerships
• Australia has no permanent friends in NATO, AUKUS, Quad, or Five Eyes; Australia must base its posture on interests not mateship memes
• If the government can accept even half of these propositions, it will underscore the need to be prudent at the Madrid NATO summit

Indonesian President Widodo will be in Madrid, as chair of the G20 until the Bali summit of the G20 in November. He will seek to shift the US and UK away from their declaration that they will not attend the Bali summit if Russia is there. Prime Minister Albanese has assured President Widodo that Australia will attend.

The period from now to the Bali summit on 15-16 November will see much movement in the variables above, not least with the US House and part-Senate elections on 8 November.