RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/laugh-at-the-u-n-not-with-it-1538002997

Oh, how they laughed.

When President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” the delegates of the world couldn’t contain themselves. “I didn’t expect that reaction,” Mr. Trump responded to the laughter ringing through the hall, “but that’s OK.”

Mr. Trump’s boast merited an eye roll, but I’d laugh right back at the U.N. It deserves it.

Who but the U.N. would elect some of the world’s leading human-rights abusers—Saudi Arabia, China, Venezuela, Pakistan and others—to run a Human Rights Council and lecture the rest of us? In 2016 many of these members even tried to silence Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, in midsentence as he exposed their hypocrisy.

Who but the U.N. would elect the Islamic Republic of Iran to the executive board of its agency “dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women”? The World Economic Forum ranks Iran 140th out of 144 nations in parity between the sexes for a reason. Its regime arrests and beats women who peacefully protest for their rights. It imprisons and tortures women for removing their headscarves. Discrimination is written into every area of Iran’s civil code, from marriage and divorce to employment.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2018/09/three-false-waves-australian-history/

The divisive myth that modern Australia is the result of three sequential ‘nations’ — Aboriginal, European and post-war immigrant — has seduced many, most recently Paul Kelly, who believes it ‘true and inclusive’. There has been only one nation, brought into being at Federation.

Morrison should reference the best recent formulation of Australian identity and history, courtesy of Noel Pearson, who argues the nation embodies three traditions: the first Australians, who roamed this continent for 65,000 years, long before the ages of Babylon, Athens and Rome; the British inheritance dating from the voyages of James Cook, the initial colony at Sydney Cove, the rise of British-derived laws, values and institutions; and the immigrant tradition, the arrival of people from many nations that so enriched the culture and led to a multicultural nation. Pearson’s concept is true and it is inclusive. It should appeal to the entire nation, from conservative to progressive.
—Paul Kelly in The Australian, September 26, 2018, on Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s call to retain Australia Day on January 26 but also observe a new public holiday to commemorate indigenous people.

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There are a number of problems with this proposal from journalist Paul Kelly. For a start, it is wrong to say the concept originated with Noel Pearson; second, it provides a seriously mistaken view of the formation of the Australian nation; and third, it is not hard to show the notion fosters division not inclusion.

Nonetheless, Kelly is right to say the idea should appeal to both conservatives and progressives, since it has already done so for almost twenty years now. John Howard used the same terminology in 1999 when he sought to include in the preamble of the Constitution the words ‘honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation’s first people’. I have heard both John Howard and Tony Abbott repeat this terminology several times since then, providing the same ‘Three Waves’ version of what they call the ‘national story’, though without knowing its real origins.

The idea that Aborigines are the nation’s first people is a version of Australian history devised not by Noel Pearson but the left-wing economist Herbert Cole ‘Nugget’ Coombs in 1982. As president of the Aboriginal Treaty Committee, he addressed the National Press Club on Australia Day that year, giving a speech titled ‘The Three Waves and Australian Identity’. Coombs said Australian history was defined by three distinct human migrations: the Aborigines who arrived some 40,000 years ago; the Anglo-Celtic migrants from the British Isles who came in 1788 and thereafter; and the third wave, the more ethnically mixed migrants of the period after the 1939-45 world war.

Coombs did not go to the National Press Club to lecture his audience about Australian demography. His aim was to score moral and political points, and he laid down a narrative that many people have found compelling ever since.

On the one hand, he described the continent when Aborigines dominated it as a paradise where people were in harmony both with nature and one another.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/china-naval-power-growing-new-doctrines-new-missions/

Over time, the expanded navy will push China to new doctrines and new missions.

With the launch of its second aircraft carrier, China has enhanced its position in the front ranks of military powers and prompted questions as to the ultimate purpose of its navy. The Chinese navy, formally known as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), is expanding and will be doing so for years — decades — to come. Some of this is the natural consequence of being the navy of a country in economic ascendancy. Some of this is bureaucratic politics; the PLA is represented on the Communist Party Central Committee, and the PLA answers to the Chinese Communist Party, not the Chinese government. But some of this, the interesting part, is what’s left after one accounts for normal economic growth and institutional self-interest. We might not just be seeing an updated navy or a more potent navy; we might be seeing a different navy, with a different mission.

The axiom here is that in the short run, doctrine determines capabilities, but in the long run, capabilities determine doctrine.

So in the short run, the PLAN will acquire the navy it needs to do its job, already expanding to resupply and safeguard the growing Chinese base structure in the South China Sea. And with one eye on the United States, the PLAN will advocate internally for more ships, bigger ships, better ships, along a new generation of ballistic missiles, all with enhanced range, speed, and lethality. The U.S. military terms the Chinese strategy A2/AD, for “anti-access/area denial.” In other words, China need not match the U.S. ship-for-ship or weapon-for-weapon; it can still throw quite a punch. None of this should surprise military analysts. As countries grow, they seek to project power.

But in the long run, this new navy will itself push the PLAN to new doctrines and new missions. No longer just territorial defense. No longer just Sea Lines of Communication, those maritime arteries that facilitate commerce and military access. No longer just to intimidate or defeat countries in its near abroad, the “first island chain” in PLAN lexicon. Over the next few decades, China will increasingly discover that it has a broader mission.