Tag Archive for: anglosphere

America’s own goal

What it means to be part of the Anglosphere (or, more precisely, what it means to be outside the Anglosphere) has apparently become very clear in the last week, following the revelation of America spying on European countries. Mind you, that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. The Washington Post published large extracts of the classified US Intelligence budget almost two months ago, and one of the more interesting items was a table of language proficiency payments for analysts at the CIA, NSA and other agencies. Here’s the list:

Language Civilian linguists
Spanish

2,725
Arabic (all dialects)

1,191
Chinese (all dialects)

903
Russian

736
French

827
German

521
Korean

490
Persian (Farsi) – Iranian

357
Portuguese

295
Other (71 in total)

1,639

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Anglosphere Ways of War and the Asian Century (part 1)

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill in Quebec, Canada, 12 September 1944Consider this definition of the ‘Ways of War of the Anglosphere’ as the workings of a military and maritime mindset, powering a methodology that has fundamentally shaped the globe:

The Anglosphere, the group of countries where English is the native language of a substantial majority of the population and where social values and culture are largely shaped by Anglo-Saxon values, remains an important fact of world politics. Canada, Australia and New Zealand fought alongside Britain in both world wars from start to finish; all the English-speaking nations fought in the Cold War as well. Australia is the only country in the world which sent military forces to fight side by side with the Americans in the Korean War, the Vietnam conflict and the two wars with Iraq. Read more

The Anglosphere and Oz

Chinese New Year, Sydney 2008.

Australia’s referendum tick for the monarchy and constant opinion poll support for the US alliance suggest the voters are happy with both the traditional and treaty elements of the Anglosphere. The temperature of popular sentiment must carry weight in The Strategist‘s discussion of the significance of the Anglosphere, but I suspect that few Australians would reach for ‘The Anglosphere’ as their preferred term to describe our present situation or future strategic choices.

Sentiment always counts, and often glitters on the surface, but it can conceal a much larger seam of pragmatic Oz self-interest. The hard-headed view of self-interest is one constant in an Australia that’s changed dramatically since Elizabeth II took the throne in 1952. Looking back, it’s legitimate to observe—in the words of Tony Abbott’s former Jesuit teacher—that in the earlier versions of the Australian nation, ‘the English made the laws, the Scots made the money, and the Irish made the songs’!

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