2 days Ago
Never waste a good beat up, especially when your political opponent calls a non-event a catastrophe. The foreign minister, Penny Wong, the defence minister and deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, and the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, have had a great time punishing the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, for his ill-judged foray into regional strategic affairs. A report on Tuesday that Russia had filed an official request with Jakarta to base Russian military aircraft on Manuhua air force base in Biak island in eastern Indonesia tricked Dutton, a former defence minister who might have known better, into premature claims of catastrophic intelligence failure with monumental strategic consequences.
But his political misadventure does prompt some consideration of the more serious issues at play. US president Donald Trump has created a massive opportunity for America's adversaries to capitalise on his rare facility for ceding economic, political and strategic ground to China and Russia. China's president is now making hay in the sunshine of Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia, while his trade minister was recently in discussion with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts on a joint approach to tariff imposts – three ancient enemies joined at last in common purpose.
The US has also given Russia virtual carte blanche in eastern Europe, as it combines duplicity with opportunism to kill Ukrainian civilians, smash their cities and exacerbate the apparent impotence of Ukraine's...
Allan Behm.
