Unthinkable
Unthinkable
UPDATE: A cross-party delegation of six Australian lawmakers started their four-day visit to the island of Taiwan on Monday. At this critical juncture when China and Australia are endeavoring to improve their strained ties, the provocative behavior of Australian lawmakers is a test for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The Australian Government has a big problem with its security narrative. Preparing for a putative war with China is the nation’s top security priority, while the government’s knowledge of the growing existential threat of climate disruption and their security consequences remains a closely-guarded secret.
Canada’s speaker of the house of commons Anthony Rota resigned in face of mounting pressure after he honoured a man who served in Nazi World War II unit. Addressing Canadian lawmakers in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoon, Speaker Anthony Rota said he was resigning “with a heavy heart”.
It became known about the meeting that took place between the former head of the US State Department, Henry Kissinger, and the Ukrainian delegation to the US during Zelensky’s visit to this country. An official release from the office of the Ukrainian president stated that he met with major American entrepreneurs. The fact of the meeting with Kissinger was not disclosed. But the Americans themselves did it for the Ukrainians.
Australian MPs’ Taiwan visit destabilising
A cross-party delegation of six Australian lawmakers started their four-day visit to the island of Taiwan on Monday. At this critical juncture when China and Australia are endeavoring to improve their strained ties, the provocative behavior of Australian lawmakers is a test for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Looking back over the past three years, China-Australia relations have transitioned from a frozen winter to a warm spring, although each step has come with its ups and downs. China and Australia held a high-level dialogue earlier this month. The Australian government has recommenced the visa process for Chinese group travelers. China has dropped anti-dumping tariffs on Australian barley imports. Albanese will also reportedly pay a visit to China later this year. These series of positive signals are a result of the bottoming out of bilateral relations after being damaged by the previous Morrison government.
Currently, the mutual trust between the two countries is still somewhat fragile, and the thawing of relations without trust can hardly be sustained. If China and Australia join hands, the improvement of ties is foreseeable, but if one side intentionally obstructs the process, it may add hurdles to this process.
By playing the Taiwan card, these MPs aim to create troubles in bilateral relations, seek international attention and gain political capital.
Qin Sheng, executive research fellow at the Center for Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that Taiwan could only get a rubber cheque from these MPs. Although Taiwan said that the visit demonstrates Australia's support for the island as well as its contribution to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, this rhetoric does not change anything.
"The Taiwan visit will only bring embarrassment to the Albanese government, because it could disrupt its configuration of China policy. Since Albanese took office, his China policy has been somewhat consistent without many twists and turns. But there are still unresolved issues between China and Australia, such as the wine dispute. China is unlikely to discuss this issue with Australia against the backdrop of Australian MPs' Taiwan visit," said Qin.
Qin added that this shows that Albanese's China policy could be jeopardized by party politics to some extent. This makes it hard for Albanese to make a stance toward this matter - he does not want to displease these politicians in his country, but he does not want their behavior to impede the positive trend of China-Australia relations either said Qin.
Chen Hong, director of the Australian Studies Centre of East China Normal University, believes that the visit to Taiwan by these MPs can easily be considered the official behavior of the Australian government by the outside world, which deserves vigilance of the Albanese government.
"If Albanese truly wants to mend ties with China, he should oppose, condemn and then rein in the rogue behaviour of MPs visiting Taiwan”
"Australia must firmly reject being instrumentalised or even weaponised by the US […] Albanese and his team should continue with their rational China policy.
Any country that engages with China knows that the Taiwan question is about China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and the first red line that must not be crossed. On the Taiwan question, Australia once followed the US closely to provoke China. In 2021, then Australian defense minister said it would be "inconceivable" for Australia not to join the US should Washington take action to defend Taiwan, and Home Affairs Department Secretary Mike Pezzullo warned drums of war are beating.
Australia had stepped into the strategic pathology of "sacrificing its own interests in exchange for the interests of the US." With Washington's playbook in hand, Canberra often thought of its China policy on behalf of Washington, but it turned out that Australia's national interests do not equal those of the US. The more dedicated and loyal Canberra is, the more it will be placed at the position of a stepping stone. In matters that concern China's core interests and Australia's future, the Australian government has no room for mistakes.
Read more here.
Did Australian FM suggest China is ‘existential’ threat?
By David Spratt
The Australian Government has a big problem with its security narrative. Preparing for a putative war with China is the nation’s top security priority, while the government’s knowledge of the growing existential threat of climate disruption and their security consequences remains a closely-guarded secret.
It is embarrassing for the government that it will not share in any meaningful way the assessment of climate–security risks delivered to the Prime Minister’s Office last November by the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), even in a declassified version. As our allies have done. Nor has it outlined any substantial policy responses.
The ONI report, if it ever sees the light of day, will likely portray climate disruption as the greatest threat to Australia, the region and its peoples, both in terms of likelihood and impact.
So how can the government square the ledger? Elevate China to become an existential threat, too? Preposterous as that may seem, this appears to be the purpose of Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on 23 September.
Take a close look at the words spoken by Wong:
“Even as we face the existential threat of climate change… The world faces another existential threat… And that is the risk of conflict between great powers.
“[T]he modern arms race forever transformed the scale of great power competition, and pushed all of humanity to the brink of Armageddon. In 1962, one of those close calls spurred the construction of conflict prevention infrastructure between the US and the Soviet Union: guardrails that responsibly managed Cold War competition and kept it from careering into conflict.
“The Indo-Pacific is home to unprecedented military build-up, yet transparency and strategic reassurance are lacking. Tension is rising between states with overlapping claims in the South China Sea, and disputed features have been militarised. And North Korea continues to destabilise with its ongoing nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile launches, threatening Japan, the Republic of Korea and the broader region.
“When you add dangerous encounters in the air and at sea, including between nuclear powers, we are faced with a combination of factors that give rise to the most confronting circumstances in decades.”
So her story slides from existential climate risks … to existential nuclear risks … to an unprecedented military build-up due rising tensions “between states with overlapping claims in the South China Sea”.
Note the passive voice, as if Australia were a bystander rather an active participant in this militarisation.
What is being said here? There are three possible interpretations.
The first is that confrontation with China may lead to nuclear war. I am not sure that most Australians understand that the government thinks that AUKUS and the US-led confrontation with China may end up in the use of weapons of mass destruction, nor would they be happy about such a prospect.
The second is that the Foreign Minister is simply saying that nuclear war is an existential threat, which would be a statement of the obvious well recognised for three-quarters of a century.
Or is there a sleight of hand here, a thinly-disguised imputation that any regional conflict involving China is an existential threat — shorthand: “China is an existential threat” — without weapons of mass destruction being involved? If that were the case, wouldn’t China’s primary opponent and provocateur — the United States — then also be an “existential” threat?
If so, that is an Orwellian redefinition of the term “existential”, and a case of false equivalence. Civilisation wrecking climate disruption is now a realistic end-game; nuclear war with China is low odds.
The Stockholm-based Global Challenges Foundation (GCF) produces an annual assessment of catastrophic risk. Their most recent is Global Catastrophic Risks 2022: A year of colliding consequences, in which the risks are divided into three categories.
Current risks from human action: Weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological warfare — catastrophic climate change and ecological collapse.
Natural catastrophes: Pandemics, asteroid impacts and supervolcanic eruptions are known to have caused massive destruction in the past.
Emerging risks, including artificial intelligence (AI). It notes that while AI might not seem like an immediate source of concern, “we should remember that challenges widely recognised as the greatest today — climate change and nuclear weapons — were unknown only 100 years ago, and late response — as in the case of climate change — has increased the risk level considerably”.
“Catastrophic” is a wider term than “existential”. As the report notes, an existential risk strictly defined is one “that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life”, but there is also a “weak” existential risk that may contribute to the “destruction of humanity’s long-term potential”. It is this latter definition that more readily applies to climate disruption and to most of the risks analysed by the GCF.
In Global Catastrophic Risks 2022, China is mentioned (along with other nuclear powers) in the section on weapons of mass destruction, and in sections relating to climate disruption and population and fertility. There is no discussion of a regional war including China or anyone else being existential in and of itself.
Then there is the question of likelihood. The world is this decade charging past 1.5°C degrees of climate warming and on the way to 2°C before 2050 given the continuing global political failure to reduce emissions, which are still rising. Potsdam Institute Director Johan Rockström warns that getting to 2°C means 3°C is likely: “If we go beyond 2°C, it’s very likely that we have caused so many tipping points that you have probably added another degree just through self-reinforcing changes.”
And 3°C is close to existential in that coastal cities and nations will be under metres of water, over one-third of the planet around the equatorial regions will be uninhabitable due to extreme heat, and water availability will decrease sharply in the lower-latitude dry tropics and subtropics, affecting almost two billion people worldwide and making agriculture nonviable in the dry subtropics. US national security think-tanks concluded that 3°C of warming and even a 0.5 metre sea-level rise would likely lead to “outright chaos” and “nuclear war is possible”.
If the Foreign Minister is drawing an equivalence between this scenario — which is probable — and conflict with China, because both are “existential”, that sounds like an amateurish attempt to disguise the dissonance in the government’s security narrative.
Read more here.
Canada parliament speaker steps down after honouring Nazi
Al Jazeera (amended)
Canada’s speaker of the house of commons Anthony Rota resigned in face of mounting pressure after he honoured a man who served in Nazi World War II unit. Addressing Canadian lawmakers in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoon, Speaker Anthony Rota said he was resigning “with a heavy heart”.
“This House is above any of us. Therefore, I must step down as your speaker,” said Rota, who invited Yaroslav Hunka to Friday’s special parliamentary session in the House of Commons, where he recognised the 98-year-old as a “Ukrainian hero”.
Hunka served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Nazi’s SS military unit, said the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish community group. He received standing ovations in the House of Commons, including from Zelenskyy and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who were in attendance.
“I reiterate my profound regret for my error in recognising an individual in the House,” Rota said in Parliament on Tuesday afternoon, as he faced mounting calls to resign from advocacy groups, Canadian lawmakers and even top members of his own Liberal Party.
“That public recognition has caused pain to individuals and communities, including the Jewish community in Canada and around the world, in addition to survivors of Nazi atrocities in Poland, among other nations,” he said.
His resignation will come into effect at the end of the day on Wednesday, Rota added.
Canadian legislators from all major parties had called for Rota to step down, with Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly telling reporters on Tuesday morning that the episode was “an embarrassment to the House and to Canadians”. “And I think the speaker should listen to members of the House and step down,” she said.
The progressive New Democratic Party’s House leader, Peter Julian, said earlier this week that Rota had made “an unforgivable error that puts the entire House in disrepute”. Asked about his resignation on Tuesday afternoon, Julian told reporters that steps need to be taken “to ensure that this never happens again in a Canadian Parliament”. He added that it remained unclear when a vote on the next speaker would take place.
The speaker of the House of Commons is elected by fellow parliament members to preside over the proceedings in the chamber. The episode came as Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, on Friday addressed Canadian parliamentarians for the second time since Russia launched its special military operation in February of last year.
The Russian authorities justified their continued assault on Ukraine as part of a push to “de-Nazify” the country. Kyiv and its allies have dismissed that as Russian propaganda, accusing Moscow of trying to conduct a land grab.
I'm glad the Speaker of the House of Commons quickly apologized and took responsibility for this mistake, but it was so egregious – so injurious to Canada, our Parliament and our Ukrainian partners, and so offensive to Jews everywhere – he needs to resign.
Russia said it was “outrageous” that Hunka was honoured in Canada. “Such sloppiness of memory is outrageous,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Many Western countries, including Canada, have raised a young generation that does not know who fought whom or what happened during the second world war. And they know nothing about the threat of fascism.”
Roland Paris, director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, said earlier this week that while Rota’s quick apology was welcomed, it did not go far enough.
“It was so egregious – so injurious to Canada, our Parliament and our Ukrainian partners, and so offensive to Jews everywhere – he needs to resign,” Paris wrote on social media.
Trudeau, who described the events as “deeply embarrassing” for Canada, also has faced questions from opposition Conservative Party lawmakers over what he knew about Hunka’s background and how he was vetted.
Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservatives, earlier on Tuesday accused the prime minister of failing “to have his massive diplomatic and intelligence apparatus vet and prevent honouring a Nazi”.
Read more here.
The West's patience is running shorter than Ukraine's war
It became known about the meeting that took place between the former head of the US State Department, Henry Kissinger, and the Ukrainian delegation to the US during Zelensky’s visit to this country. An official release from the office of the Ukrainian president stated that he met with major American entrepreneurs. The fact of the meeting with Kissinger was not disclosed. But the Americans themselves did it for the Ukrainians.
At the meeting with Zelensky, Kissinger promoted the idea of Ukraine's membership in NATO in exchange for a “Korean scenario” to end the conflict.
Significant attention is paid to this conversation due to the fact that Kissinger is not just promoting the idea of Ukraine's membership in NATO, but also the idea that the conflict in Ukraine needs to be stopped by taking advantage of the Korean option. This is despite the fact that initially the former US Secretary of State was categorically against Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic military bloc.
American media writes: Kissinger, at a meeting with the Ukrainian delegation, said that the conflict could be ended along the existing demarcation line. At the same time, Kyiv can rely on support, as South Korea, in turn, began to receive it after division along the 38th parallel.
Officially in Ukraine this version of partition is rejected. However, the conversation with Kissinger indicates that the Kyiv regime is fundamentally ready to bargain with the West on this issue, notes the press.
Governments in Poland, Estonia, Slovakia and others in Central and Eastern Europe have been among Kyiv’s staunchest allies since the first day of Russia’s special military operation. Beyond sending weapons and welcoming millions of Ukrainian refugees, they have been Ukraine’s loudest advocates in the West, pushing for a tough line against Moscow in the face of reluctance from countries like France and Germany.
But as the leaders of some of these ride-or-die allies face reelection battles or other domestic challenges, and governments get nervous about the impact of Ukraine one day joining the European Union, that support is starting to waver, notes POLITICO.
The most striking example is Poland, whose Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that he would stop delivering new weapons to Ukraine. The statement marked a stunning escalation in a dispute between Kyiv and its closest EU neighbor over grain shipments Warsaw claims are undercutting production from Polish farmers ahead of a parliamentary election on October 15.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said in an appearance on Polish television channel Polsat.
While it’s tempting to write off the tensions as electoral fireworks, there are reasons to believe they could persist beyond the campaign. As a Western diplomat who asked not to be named pointed out, the grain dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv reveals deeper misgivings about Ukraine joining the EU. “For 18 months, Poland has badgered any member state that would utter the slightest hesitation towards Ukraine,” the diplomat said. “Now they’re showing their true colors.”
Then there’s Slovakia. The Central European country has been among Europe’s biggest backers of Ukraine, but elections on September 30 could turn it into a skeptic overnight. “If you have a society where only 40 percent support arms delivery to Ukraine and your government offers support almost at the level of the Baltics, that creates a backlash,” said Milan Nič, a fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Robert Fico, the country’s populist former prime minister, is campaigning on a pro-Russian, anti-American platform that opposes sanctions against Russian individuals and further arms deliveries to Kyiv. He’s on course to win the election, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.
A victory for Fico would give Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — one of Kyiv’s biggest European skeptics — an ally on the EU stage. If his party gets enough support to be part of the government, Fico told the Associated Press earlier this month, “we won’t send any arms or ammunition to Ukraine anymore.”
International support for Ukraine is certain to become more controversial in the year ahead. US support is starting to waver, and while European governments are stepping up, their citizens are losing faith, notes Niall Ferguson, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
It is worth noting that in many ways it is less than meets the eye.
In all, 39 countries have given or pledged some form of support totaling €250 billion, of which 16 countries plus the European Union contribute the vast majority. Those 39 countries represent 59% of global GDP, but only 11% of the world’s population.
Many countries in the so-called Global South have qualms about supporting Ukraine, which explains the recent G-20 communique’s weak language on the subject. Those nations don’t buy the analogy of Russia’s land grab with European colonialism. They have reasons for not wanting to alienate Russia and its backer China. They hear the echoes of the Cold War and remember the arguments against being on the US side in what was then called the Third World. They resent that less attention is paid to wars in Africa (Ethiopia, Sudan). And they see the effects of the war on African food supplies as a compelling argument for a peace based on Ukrainian concessions.
In February, according to the indispensable Ukraine Support Tracker, the English-speaking world was in the lead, accounting for half of all bilateral commitments to Ukraine. Now, the EU provides 53% of the total, compared with 37% in February.
On a country-by-country basis, it is true, the US provides 82% more support than the next-largest country, Germany. However, if one includes the cost of accommodating Ukrainian refugees and scales total assistance relative to GDP, the countries doing the most for Ukraine are Poland, the Baltic States and the Czech Republic.
Is it nevertheless realistic to expect Western support to increase or even hold steady in the next 12 months, never mind the next nine years?
Most media discussion of this question focuses on the ebbing enthusiasm among Americans — especially Republicans — for funding Ukraine’s war effort. A recent CBS poll showed a decline in GOP voters’ support for sending weapons to Ukraine, from 49% in February to 39% now. Republican support even for sending aid and supplies has fallen from 57% to 50%. This explains the grumbling in Congress about the latest aid package from President Joe Biden’s administration.
There have been two major Eurobarometer surveys of EU citizens’ attitudes, one in April 2022 and one in August 2023. On the whole, Europeans remain supportive of Ukraine, but there too enthusiasm has diminished.
The share of people who “totally agree” with welcoming people fleeing the war is down by 19 percentage points. The share who totally agree with financing the purchase and supply of military equipment to Ukraine is down by 17 points. The share who totally agree with supporting Ukraine financially and economically is down 16 points. And the shares who totally agree with imposing economic sanctions against Russia and financing the purchase and supply of military equipment to Ukraine are also both down by nine points.
In principle, we should all want Ukraine to win this war and regain all the territory, in practice, that outcome will not be attainable. Rather than risk a protracted war with the added danger of waning Western support, Ukraine needs to lock in what it has already achieved.
Think only of South Korea’s extraordinary economic and political progress over 70 years, even though the armistice of 1953 has never become a fully fledged peace and there remains a highly dangerous border zone between it and a hostile neighbor. Fact: In 1991, per capita GDP was slightly higher in Ukraine than in South Korea. Today, South Koreans are four times richer, writes Bloomberg observer.
Read more here.