Tag Archive for: domestic politics

Australian politics needs clearer national security boundaries

We need to establish clearer political boundaries around national security to avoid politicising ongoing security issues and to better manage secondary effects.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) revealed on 10 March that the Dural caravan laden with explosives and an antisemitic note naming Jewish community targets, discovered 19 January, was a hoax orchestrated by criminal actors.

Political debates around national security have focused on the caravan since its discovery. The AFP’s revelation voided much of the rampant speculation, perfectly demonstrating the need to establish better political boundaries.

The AFP confirmed the caravan was essentially a ‘criminal con job’—an ‘elaborate scheme contrived by organised criminals, domestically and from offshore.’

The AFP believe that those responsible were trying to ‘change their criminal status’, likely attempting to leverage information about the plot in exchange for reduced sentences. In short, criminals sought to exploit security fears for personal gain. While police are clear that, for various reasons, there was never a real terrorist or mass casualty threat—there was no detonator, for example—it is important to acknowledge that the plot was convincing and created real safety concerns for Jewish Australian communities.

Despite a lack of formal designation, the caravan was initially presented as a terrorist plot, including by NSW Premier Chris Minns and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It followed months of hate crimes and December’s designated terrorist attack against the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne.

However, this quick political designation and ensuing discussions likely heightened community fears and enhanced criminal actors’ ability to exploit them.  The caravan was discussed repeatedly in federal and state parliaments and the media despite the ongoing police investigation, often alongside criticism of governmental responses to rising antisemitism.

Silence in the face of national security threats is a problem, and government messaging around the Dural caravan and other incidents has been lacking. But loud inaccuracies can be as bad or worse—particularly if they create secondary psychological effects that criminals are trying to exploit, such as public fear.

Clearer government statements would have better informed the public and managed fears. Delays in messaging also leave further room for misinformation. But the political handling of the Dural case is also defined by a heavily partisan approach and politicking at the expense of accuracy. Clearer messaging in the first instance is needed, but so are mechanisms to reduce the misinformation window of opportunity.

Partisan discussion of the Dural caravan was clear in Parliament. In February, Liberal member of parliament Julian Leeser, while discussing a motion to condemn antisemitism, said that the plot was evidence that Australia faces a ‘domestic terrorism crisis’ and criticised the government for failing to adequately support the Jewish community.

That same day, opposition foreign affairs spokesperson David Coleman raised the caravan while specifically criticising Albanese:

 … extraordinarily, a caravan packed with explosives, apparently targeting Jewish addresses, and a prime minister who was in the dark—oblivious. This is an extraordinary failure by a weak prime minister, and it is marking our national character.

Days later, Jason Wood, another Liberal MP, listed a series of antisemitic attacks, calling Dural ‘the big one’ before echoing Coleman’s sentiment:

the prime minister should have been very strong on this right from the very start, instead of trying to walk on two sides of the road at the same time.

While firmer leadership was needed, we now know there were complex factors to consider. Investigators suspected early in the process that the plot was a hoax. The operation was not straightforward, and there actually were a few sides of the road to walk—often the case with such investigations.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton raised the caravan matter with the media on multiple occasions, repeatedly criticising Albanese’s handling of the case. Speaking to the ABC, Dutton criticised Albanese for not being immediately briefed on the caravan incident, which he labelled ‘potentially the biggest terrorist attack in our country’s history’, and said the prime minister’s actions constituted ‘an absolute abrogation of his responsibility’. He also speculated that NSW Police may have had concerns the prime minister’s office would leak the information and that this may have been the reason Albanese wasn’t briefed.

In contrast, when pressed for particulars, the prime minister often noted that the Dural caravan was subject to ongoing investigation.

This discourse had flow-on effects. The caravan was repeatedly cited in debate relating to the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crime) Bill. Critics of the government were pushing for mandatory minimum sentences—an objective they eventually achieved.

Due to the incident’s recency, greater consideration should have been given to the investigation process. Misrepresentation of the incident was not intentional, but it was speculative and premature, affecting the integrity of debate and legislation.

Media should hold politicians to account. Law enforcement can better support this by more quickly and more directly making information available to reporters, even if limited only to reminders that investigations are ongoing, details are classified or claims are unsubstantiated. Importantly, this aligns with national security objectives by managing secondary effects and preventing social division.

In 2024, a global anti-incumbent election wave

In a year in which political incumbents around the world were either voted out of office or forcibly removed from power, one statement, repeated in various forms by Mohammad Al Gergawi, the United Arab Emirates’ minister of cabinet affairs, stands out: ‘The role of government is to design a future which gives citizens hope.’ Looking ahead to 2025, political leaders should take this message to heart and shift their focus from constant crisis management to crafting a bold, hopeful agenda.

The global anti-incumbent wave has been breathtaking. In March, Senegalese President Macky Sall was decisively defeated after trying and failing to postpone the presidential election. In June, the African National Congress, which had ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid, lost its majority for the first time in three decades, forcing the party to form a coalition government. The same month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party also lost its parliamentary majority.

This trend continued through the summer and fall. In July, the Labour Party won Britain’s general election in a landslide, ending the Conservative Party’s 14-year rule. In October, Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority for the first time since 2009. Then, earlier this month, Michel Barnier became the first French prime minister to be ousted by a no-confidence vote since 1962. A few days later, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence, paving the way for an early election, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired his finance minister, plunging his country into political uncertainty.

Other established leaders were ousted by popular uprisings. In August, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country aboard a military helicopter as protesters stormed her official residence. And Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was forced to flee to Russia after his regime collapsed in December.

Why are incumbents losing? One possible explanation is social media. Studies have shown that increased internet access often erodes trust in government and deepens political polarisation. In the United States, for example, Democratic and Republican-leaning voters have become increasingly polarised, with each side becoming more deeply entrenched in its partisanship.

Social media fosters connection between people who consume similar content, reinforcing their worldviews and amplifying the psychological effect known as ‘conformity’. Social media algorithms act as powerful megaphones for simple, emotionally charged messages, making these platforms fertile ground for conspiracy theories and fearmongering.

But while early evidence suggests that social media bolsters support for far-right populists, recent election results show that this is not always enough to gain power. In Mexico, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Britain, Japan and South Africa, incumbents or other mainstream parties won, albeit significantly weakened.

Consequently, one clear takeaway from this historic election year is that governments must learn to use social media more effectively. A good place to start is to engage directly with voters’ concerns. Earlier this year, two advisers to Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer visited the town of Grimsby in northeastern England and asked residents to describe the government in one word. The responses they received mirror what I have heard in many other countries: ‘irrelevant’, ‘authoritarian’, ‘distant’, ‘elitist’, ‘inaccessible’, ‘self-serving’, ‘unambitious’, ‘untrustworthy’, a ‘joke’.

Another major takeaway is that to restore trust, leaders should focus on economic growth and citizens’ empowerment. A comprehensive 2022 study of the political economy of populism highlights strong evidence that economic conditions, such as rising unemployment and cuts to social spending, have a profound impact on people’s views of government.

This helps explain why voters in Spain and Greece in 2023 and in Ireland this year chose to re-elect incumbent leaders, while French voters rejected the ruling party. In 2022, Spain’s economy grew by 5.7 percent and Greece’s by 6.2 percent. By contrast, in Germany, which will hold an early election after the government lost a parliamentary no-confidence vote, the economy shrank by 0.3 percent in 2023 and is expected to contract by 0.1 percent in 2024. France fared slightly better, with GDP projected to grow by 1.1 percent this year, after growing by 0.9 percent in 2023.

Beyond boosting short-term economic growth, political leaders must consider the future they are offering their citizens. Too many politicians’ and policymakers’ plans are limited to annual budget cycles and focused largely on cuts. Meanwhile, voters—grappling with rising living costs, post-pandemic austerity and a pervasive sense that they have lost control over their lives—need leaders who give them reasons for hope.

Budgetary constraints should not be an excuse for failing to envision a better future. Some of the boldest government initiatives have been conceived during times of economic hardship. Notable examples include US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, Britain’s postwar welfare state, Dubai’s post-1958 infrastructure boom and Singapore’s rapid development after 1959.

Political leaders must draw inspiration from these bold programs and be more ambitious in addressing the root causes of their citizens’ frustrations. The good news is that every country and community has creative individuals, in both the private and public sectors, whose work requires them to think ahead and plan for the future. Leaders must identify and reach out to such visionaries, who are rarely included in policy discussions, and leverage their expertise.

A politics of hope is essential to restoring faith in democratic institutions. In Grimsby, local residents said they longed for a politics that is ‘realistic’, ‘meaningful’, ‘passionate’, ‘hopeful’, and ‘empowering’. A government that can fulfill these aspirations will prove itself worthy of its citizens’ trust.

Pro-Palau v Pro-Palau: the Pacific state’s election was essentially domestic

Actually, there were two presidential elections with geostrategic implications on 5 November. While the US elected Donald Trump again, the Western Pacific island state of Palau handed a second successive term to President Surangel Whipps Jr. 

The geostrategically interested will mostly notice that Whipps was the most pro-US candidate. The other candidate, former president Tommy E Remengesau, was also pro-US, just less so. So, actually, not a lot was immediately at stake geostrategically. 

Palau, independent but closely associated with the United States, is 1700km from the South China Sea. US military presence there is therefore growing, and China is trying hard to gain influence over the country. A tilt away from the United States that Beijing might eventually engineer would have strong security implications. 

But the concerns of outsiders were not the concerns of Palauans as they voted. For them, the choice of president was based on local issues—as shown by what the candidates campaigned on. And both candidates are better understood as having been, first and foremost, pro-Palau. 

With nearly all locally cast votes counted, Whipps leads Remengesau, who is also his brother-in-law, with 58.1 percent of the vote. Absentee ballots won’ t be counted until 12 November, but Whipps cannot now lose. In a statement on broadcaster Palau Wave Productions, Remengesau congratulated him on victory. 

As with most elections anywhere, the outcome in Palau was driven by issues affecting Palau, such as taxation, inflation, environmental conservation, crime and drug use. Another was emigration, since locals worry that too many of them are leaving their country of 18,000 people. 

Palauans were aware of their country’s international importance and of foreign views of the election. Chinese influence is not hidden, but it was not a campaign issue.  

Over the years, Whipps has often discussed the pressure China has put on Palau to cease recognising Taiwan. (Palau is one of only 12 countries that do so.) But he did not make the issue part of his campaign.

In conversations with Palauans during the campaign, I usually heard them say that the biggest issue was the high cost of living. Remengesau told voters it was caused by the 10 percent goods and services tax that Whipps introduced last year.  

Whipps pointed to international oil-price rises that followed Russia’s attack on Ukraine. He tried to explain the structure and effects of the tax. 

Whipps has proposed increasing the minimum wage to stem emigration. He wants to reduce the national marine sanctuary from 80 percent of its exclusive economic zone to 50 percent. That would address high fish costs, he says. 

Transnational crime and drug trafficking have been an especially prominent domestic issue, following two drug-related deaths in the past year, one of them a murder. 

Many of these issues have a foreign component: rising prices from Russia, foreign fishing in Palau’s waters, transnational drug trafficking, and emigration to affluent countries. However, that is not how Palauans look at these issues. They see prices they can’t afford, decreasing fish stocks, people leaving their homes and family members addicted to drugs.  

This domestic perspective is evident in Whipps’s longtime campaign slogan: ‘a kot a rechad er Belau,’ meaning ‘Palauans First.’  

This contrasts with most international media coverage of the election, which focused on its possible international consequences, such as the US losing one of its footholds in the Western Pacific. 

Still, the US and China do come up as political issues in Palau. Whipps is sometimes asked about increasing US military presence. His frequent response has been, ‘Presence is deterrence’—meaning that US forces being in Palau does not increase the likelihood of an attack by China but, rather, decreases it. 

In Palau, China is associated with domestic problems. Increasing tourism from China may again threaten Palau’s pristine environment. Malign actors from China have been intermingled with tourists, worsening Palau’s drug crisis and engaging in other criminal pursuits. Chinese investors have bought 50- or 99-year leases on much of Palau’s prime real estate, locking out commercial development. 

‘Presence is deterrence’ is equally relevant domestically. The US is helping with fighting crime and influence operations emanating from China. It has increased its diplomatic, national security, cybersecurity and law enforcement presence in Palau, with some success against those domestic threats. 

That’s very good for the US’s standing among Palauans. In the future, as in their presidential election, they’ll be thinking of Palau. 

Nitazenes threaten to unleash a new Australian opioid crisis

Nitazenes, a group of potent synthetic opioids, are fuelling a global overdose crisis, with rising fatalities across Europe and North America. In Australia, nitazenes are only just making their mark, from hip inner-city nightclubs to needle exchanges. Australia faces an urgent threat that has the potential to fuel organised crime, increase overdoses, destabilise communities and create a new generation of people with an addiction.

The government must take decisive action to safeguard public health and take harm-reduction measures.

Understanding the nature of opioids is crucial to grasping the potential implications of a rapid take-up of nitazenes in Australia.

Natural opioids, derived from the opium poppy, interact with the brain’s receptors to block pain and elicit euphoria. Opioid abuse affects the brain’s limbic system, leading to a reliance on these drugs for emotional regulation, as well as increased risks of overdose and death.

Developed in the 1950s, nitazenes were never approved or marketed for medical use due to their extreme toxicity. Their reemergence can be traced back to the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan. The Taliban first cracked down on opium production in 2000, implementing a strict ban that drastically reduced poppy cultivation. This ban led to a shift in the global heroin supply chain. Opium production in Myanmar rose in response, and so too did production of synthetic opioids in China. After the Taliban returned to power in 2021, they again cracked down on opium in 2022. This time the gap is being filled almost exclusively by a surge in Chinese production of synthetic opioids production, particularly nitazenes.

Over the past three years, nitazenes have surfaced on the streets of major cities in North America and Europe. In Britain, an estimated two people die each week from nitazenes overdoses, and the crisis is worse still in the US, where thousands of Americans are dying from overdoses each year.

In Australia, the precise scope of nitazenes use remains difficult to determine. Though the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has yet to find substantial evidence in wastewater analysis, a small number of cases have emerged since 2021. Coronial data reveals at least three overdose deaths linked to nitazenes in Victoria alone. In the same period, the Australian Federal Police and Australian Border Force have intercepted shipments. It is clear that this threat is no longer a distant concern.

Australia’s illicit drug market doesn’t always follow global trends. The North American crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s devastated communities, where this cheap and highly addictive form of cocaine fuelled a crime and health crisis. The idiosyncrasies of Australia’s drug markets, law enforcement approaches and geographic isolation helped to limit the spread of crack cocaine. Its relatively strong public health policies and lower demand for cocaine further limited negative effects.

The danger of nitazenes may be due to unintentional consumption. Globally, dealers often mix nitazenes with heroin and counterfeit pills, creating lethal cocktails. They do so because nitazenes, being strong, are imported by organised crime groups in much smaller quantities than other drugs. They’re harder to detect and offer larger profits. Substitution of non-opioid drugs by nitazenes dramatically increases risk of accidental overdose.

At the same time, many dealers may be unaware of what they are selling, and users often don’t know what they’re taking.

The priority for any government response should be harm minimisation. The government should consider expanding access to the life-saving medication naloxone and providing comprehensive training on its use. Naloxone rapidly reverses opioid overdoses by blocking opioid receptors in the brain and thereby preventing fatal respiratory failure. Its wide distribution is crucial to public health because it provides immediate, accessible intervention during overdose emergencies.

Drug testing and screening services are also critical in addressing nitazenes. Such services allow users to identify dangerous substances in their drugs, helping to prevent accidental overdoses. Users can make safer choices, and the public health risks associated with unintentional exposure to highly toxic substances is reduced.

The Australian government should implement broad drug testing and screening services to safeguard public health and effectively mitigate the risks posed by these emerging threats.

Implementing comprehensive education on safer drug use practices, alongside personalised treatment options for those with opioid use disorders, will be essential in mitigating the risks associated with these potent synthetic opioids. Furthermore, fostering improved public communication that is free from stigma can encourage individuals to seek help and raise awareness about the dangers posed by nitazenes.

Without swift and comprehensive action, we risk plunging into a nitazenes-driven overdose epidemic.

Myanmar’s junta implosion, revolution and national balkanisation

The extraordinary arc of failure of Myanmar’s military has gone from coup and crack-down to the brink of regime crack-up.

When seizing power in February 2021, the military expected to consolidate power and crush resistance. Instead, the junta’s violence pushed popular opposition to become revolution and civil war. The military’s hold on Myanmar shrinks as it suffers a ‘succession of humiliating defeats’.

The spreading authority of rebel groups mean Myanmar’s government no longer controls most of the country’s international borders. The military dictatorship holds less than 50 percent of the country.

As the centre’s grasp on the country weakens, one possibility is that the centre collapses. The implosion prospect is about more than battlefield defeats but goes to the junta’s internal cohesion and vanishing legitimacy.

The junta head, Min Aung Hlaing, will be keeping a Caesar-like ‘et tu’ eye on his fellow generals. The daggers may not be plunged into his toga, but defeat makes any strongman disposable. This is not the coup Min promised. The shock and awe effects are on the military.

Southeast Asia has shifted from apprehension about what Myanmar’s junta would do to astonishment at its ebbing control.

In her new role as the United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, the former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop must deal with a loathsome regime that is losing. And a weak government can be as dangerous, in different ways, as a government confident in its power.

The experience of the envoys that have gone before her shows Bishop has little immediate chance to get the military to reduce violence or to get a serious dialogue, as the veteran diplomat Scot Marciel observes:

The Myanmar military, in addition to being xenophobic, misogynistic, dishonest, and brutal, is by nature uncompromising and absolutely committed to maintaining political power. This is true even in the face of significant resistance gains, a worsening economy, and a severe humanitarian crisis. For its part, the broad resistance—and arguably the population at large—is dead-set on removing the military from power and unlikely to accept anything short of that.

Bishop shares with countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations an excruciating dilemma of diplomacy: does Myanmar’s regime still have the capacity to act as a normal government, to negotiate in good faith, to change policy if needed and even offer concessions to strong opponents? A failing government battered by military defeats is so focussed on the struggle it has little capacity for much else. The military’s draft of men between the ages of 23 and 31 is the action of a scrambling government—more grim desperation than resolute determination.

To maintain lines to the junta, Bishop and ASEAN must be relatively polite. For a blunt call on what the region sees unfolding, turn to ASEAN’s ‘in principle’ 11th member, Timor-Leste. Its president, Jose Ramos-Horta, no stranger to popular resistance and military struggle, judges: ‘This is the first time in the history of Myanmar when the military are not winning and will not win. They are losing.’

Ramos-Horta says a junta facing collapse must crawl to the negotiating table:

Efforts have to be intensified to mediate this conflict. Otherwise, it gets out of control. It spirals out of control. And then it will be far more difficult to bring back law and order and a solution. Thus, because the military is very, very weak, on the point of implosion, there is an incentive for them to talk. Someone has to bring all the parties together. No preconditions.

Ramos-Horta’s ‘implosion’ call is more description than prediction. The centre has already lost much. Balkanisation is no longer a possibility; it’s what has happened to Myanmar. The Oxford dictionary of politics describes balkanisation as ‘the division of a state into smaller territorial units. The term tends to imply a policy of “divide and rule”, whereby the strength of a united country is diluted by the creation of internal division.’ Myanmar’s balkanisation sees lots of divide and limited rule.

Even the junta is talking about the country being ‘split into various parts’. Myanmar’s reality today is revolution and balkanisation. The military cannot win; its task is not to lose. The dark forecast is for more years of war. The Crisis Group’s Richard Horsey sees a fragmented Myanmar becoming a confederation of autonomous ethnic zones:

Even in some Burman-majority regions, the idea of de facto self-rule is gaining momentum, and local communities, organizations, and armed resistance groups are starting to put the administrative building blocks in place. All this threatens to leave Myanmar as a collection of statelets, with a rump state at the centre.

Deep into the wars they willed, Myanmar’s junta and Russia’s Vladimir Putin vie for the dreadful honour of committing the worst strategic blunder of this decade. Both were revisionist efforts at resurrection: seeking to remake the Soviet empire or recover the military’s traditional control of Burmese life. Putin’s delusional megalomania and the junta’s delusional desperation were back-to-the future gambles that turned to war. Reaching for the old historical role instead turns into historic blunder.

The bloody prize of the greatest strategic disaster of the decade is the only achievement in sight for Myanmar’s military. Putin’s war does not yet threaten his hold on Russia. Myanmar’s junta has smashed the country as the regime staggers towards its own ruin.

Macron’s foreign policy is likely to survive parliamentary upheaval

France’s foreign policy is likely to hold steady, at least in the short term, despite the surprising outcome of its elections finalised in a second round on Sunday, 7 July.

The failure of the National Rally, a far right party close to Russia and Hungary, to gain a majority in France’s lower house of parliament comes as a major relief for the country’s partners in the European Union and NATO. Founded in 1972 by nationalists and ex-members of the Waffen SS, the party, led by Marine Le Pen, has done its best to make itself presentable in the past decade, but many in France still see it for what it truly is: Vladimir Putin’s stooge.

The lower house, the National Assembly, will be fractured, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition, Ensemble, will be unable alone to choose a new ministry. But the constitution gives Macron great influence over foreign policy, and, in any case, his approaches to some of the biggest international issues have widespread support among the various parties.

The National Rally seemed poised to win a majority in the National Assembly after the election’s first round on 30 June, but in the end it got only 143 seats out of 577, still a huge rise from its former tally of 89 in 2022 and yet more from its mere seven in 2017. Many French voters could not stomach a party that had repeatedly received as much as $17 million in loans from Russian banks, had found redeeming qualities in Bachar El-Assad, the Butcher of Damascus, and until February 2022 had openly supported Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.

Ensemble surprisingly resisted National Rally’s populist wave, coming second with 168 members of parliament in the lower house, far from its 2022 result of 250 but much better than anyone had expected. With 182 representatives, the unlikely winner of Macron’s gamble in calling the election was the New Popular Front. Formed in less than three weeks, this alliance of four left-wing parties is a diverse yet very dissonant coalition, including the France Unbowed (LFI) party, which alone has 70 MPs.

So the National Assembly is now divided into three major political blocks. This configuration is unprecedented in a nation that since 1958 has been used to governments dominated by one or the other of two very large, moderate parties: the centre-right Republicans and the centre-left Socialist Party.

The 7 July results were the latest in a series of tectonic political shifts triggered by Macron’s surprise 2017 presidential victory. Since no party has an absolute majority in the lower house, France is headed for a very bumpy ride until the next presidential election is held in 2027.

Under the 1958 Constitution of the Fifth French Republic, the country has a semi-presidential system of government in which the president and the parliament share power. Every five years, the president is elected by popular vote and cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. The president appoints a prime minister and, on the PM’s recommendation, cabinet ministers. The resulting government must also secure the support of most MPs in the National Assembly to stay in office and pass bills.

So the new make-up of the National Assembly revives memories of the Fourth French Republic, of 1946 to 1958, a period of constant crisis amid minority rule and the rise and fall of 22 governments. No French politician wants to see that again.

Two key points now seem clear after the election. First, the French are expressing a profound dissatisfaction towards their political class that they have felt for 20 years. The result is the dramatic rise of the National Rally. France’s very generous social model is in open crisis, unable to answer the demands of many people for better healthcare, education and salaries.

These deep-running structural issues are unlikely to find a political resolution soon and will keep alive the possibility of a National Rally victory in 2027. They may also produce an outburst of street violence like the Yellow Jackets unrest of 2018 and 2019.

The conclusion from the election is that French foreign policy will probably remain unchanged. The constitution gives the president de jure broad powers in defence (he is chief of the armed forces) and strong influence in foreign affairs, a portfolio that has in fact been seen as the sole prerogative of the presidency since Charles de Gaulle occupied the position from 1958 to 1969.

Macron’s support to Ukraine, his commitment to EU strategic autonomy and his relatively moderate stance on Gaza are more or less shared by other political parties, with the notable exception of France Unbowed , which has been hostile to NATO and Israel and has called for immediate peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

Although Macron seems set to maintain his great influence over French foreign policy, his MPs will need to work collaboratively in a divided National Assembly. Unlike other mature democracies, such as Germany, Belgium and Italy, history has shown that French governments do not work well in coalitions. The country is better known for its political volatility.

On 18 July, MPs will secretly elect the president of the National Assembly (the third highest office of the state), its managerial bureau and the presidents of the nine legislative committees. This occasion will test whether French parties can work together or whether they revert to sectarism and status quo.

Opposition’s nuclear-energy policy would increase defence risk

The Australian Liberal-National opposition’s proposal to build nuclear power stations on the sites of old coal-fired plants is misguided. The policy would perpetuate Australia’s concentration of electricity generation and worsen our vulnerability to air and missile attack.

Renewable-energy installations, by contrast, are numerous, dispersed and therefore much less profitable for an enemy to destroy. They’re also far easier and quicker to fix. And energy storage capacity, another source of resilience, necessarily grows as they’re built.

The current concentration of large slabs of generation capacity in coal-fired stations is already a vulnerability. They’re attractive targets. A single attack by a few strike missiles might knock out a plant and its large chunk of power supply.

Chinese bombers, submarines and carrier-launched aircraft could attack them using guided bunker-busting bombs, regular air-to-ground missiles or hypersonic ones with tungsten penetrators. Russia is indeed targeting power stations in its war against Ukraine, typically hitting them with missiles and drones.

If a big power station’s energy comes from nuclear reactors instead of boilers burning fossil fuel, a strike could cause an environmentally devastating release of radioactive material. If we had nuclear power stations, they would in fact be things that an enemy could use against us.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster resulted in radioactive contamination of about 150,000 square kilometres reaching as far as 500km from the plant. It released more radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. In 2007 the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies reported: ‘a nuclear power plant contains more than 1000 times the radiation that is released in an atomic bomb blast’. The Chernobyl experience suggests that destruction of a large nuclear station on the site of the Eraring coal-fired plant in New South Wales might render the port of Newcastle inoperative and perhaps force the evacuation of 800,000 people in the city and Central Coast.

Most of Australia’s coal-fired power stations are in NSW, Victoria and Queensland. Replacing at least some with nuclear plants, as the opposition suggests, would therefore expose much of the population to frightening wartime risk. Attacks could result in long-term crippling of the economy by rendering cities uninhabitable. They would raise the cost to Australia for continuing any war.

Fixing a coal-fired power station that had suffered war damage would be hard enough and would take many months, at least. Fixing a nuclear one would be a lot harder and take much longer. For all that time, the economy would be deprived of the plant’s generating capacity.

Wide distribution of electricity generation to hundreds of wind and solar farms avoids such risks. Collateral damage from strikes on them would be small, not least because they are usually in remote places.

Because renewable generation capacity is economically divided among many installations each with modest capacity, they raise an enemy’s cost of knocking down supply. Eraring’s capacity is 2880 megawatts, concentrated in a 400-metre-long line of four generating units, each of which might be disabled by a single hit.

The Macintyre wind farm in Queensland, to be completed this year, will have 180 wind turbines, a site area of 36,000 hectares and a rated capacity of 1026 megawatts. Average output of a typical Australian windfarm, allowing for variation in wind strength, is only about 35 percent of rated capacity. But destroying such an installation would require a great many munitions.

Similarly, the solar farm at Coleambally, NSW, has more than 565,000 solar panels spread over 513 hectares and a rated capacity of 150 megawatts. At the time of completion, its output was expected to average 45 megawatts.

Moreover, generating farms are complemented by homes and businesses that are partly or entirely independent of grid supply thanks to their own solar generation and battery storage.

In World War II, Japan had a dispersed electricity-generating system, which was one reason why the United States did not try to knock out supply. The system consisted of too many targets and would have been too hard to debilitate.

Repairability enhances the inherent robustness of renewable generation. Critical parts that are not made domestically would need to be stockpiled, something that Japan did in preparation for World War II. The federal government’s Future Made in Australia strategy will help. If Australia builds wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and distribution gear, it will have plenty of skills and fabrication machinery for fixing them. Recovery times would be far shorter than for a damaged or destroyed nuclear plant.

The opposition’s nuclear power proposal would lead us into far greater vulnerability in a war with a major adversary. It’s much better to stay on our current course. Every time a new piece of the renewable energy system is switched on, we become a little less vulnerable.

Now an opposition split worsens Fiji’s political instability

Fijian politics, already suffering from a risk that the governing coalition could fall apart, now faces the further danger that the opposition party, which would lead an alternative government, is also suffering a severe split.

Leaders of that party, FijiFirst, rather than reconciling with 17 disobedient MPs and thereby preserving the party as an alternative government, are trying to get rid of them so they can be replaced with loyalists.

A dispute over a pay rise for members of parliament is threatening the three-party coalition led by Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and his People’s Alliance party. His treasurer and deputy prime minister, Biman Prasad, who leads the National Federation Party, opposed the rise. The People’s Alliance needs Prasad’s party, but Rabuka’s uncompromising dealings with it are raising the risk of a split.

The opposition party, FijiFirst, should be well placed to take over, since, with 26 MPs, it is only two short of a majority in parliament, but it is split by the same issue. The 17 MPs disobeyed a leadership instruction to vote against the pay rise. If the leadership fails in trying to throw them out of parliament, the party will be split and in no position to achieve a majority.

Frank Bainimarama, instigator of a 2006 military coup and prime minister of the post- coup government, founded FijiFirst in 2014 with a platform of ethnic inclusiveness. Rabuka’s government has leant towards Fijian indigenous nationalism since coming to power, reminiscent of his agenda when he led a coup in 1987.

Bainimarama is at a serious disadvantage in preserving his legacy as he is serving a one-year jail sentence for perverting the course of justice, although he remains a member of the party’s powerful Leadership Committee, which has the final say on party policy.

Fiji’s constitution and related legislation give a privileged position to political party machinery, even letting party apparatchiks regulate membership of parliament.

The party has two means of ejecting the 17 disobedient MPs from parliament so it can replace them with 17 obedient ones and preserve itself as a unified bloc. Under the constitution, MPs can lose their seats either by failing to follow a party direction or by losing their party memberships. The FijiFirst leadership seems to be trying to use both grounds, but it is likely to have to go through some appeal process before finally succeeding, if indeed it can succeed.

The constitution says ‘if the member votes or abstains from voting in Parliament contrary to any direction issued by the political party’ his or her seat becomes vacant. But this takes effect only when the speaker has received written notification signed by both the party’s leader and its secretary.

FijiFirst’s party constitution doesn’t create a position of ‘leader’, though it does provide for a president, a general secretary and a parliamentary leader.

The party’s notification to the speaker was signed by Acting General Secretary Faiyaz Koya and by Bainimarama—who doesn’t have any of the formal positions. Koya and his predecessor have asserted that Bainimarama is still the ‘leader’, but on what legal basis?

FijiFirst President Ratu Joji Satakala might be regarded as the leader, and he supported the expulsion, but he didn’t sign. The parliamentary leader, Inia Seruiratu, obviously wouldn’t sign, because he’s one of the targeted MPs.

So this matter is likely to go to the High Court of Fiji in its capacity as the Court of Disputed Returns, with the meaning of ‘leader’ as the key issue.

As for cancelling party membership—the second means of expelling the MPs from parliament—the constitution requires that the process to be ‘in accordance with the rules of the political party’. The rebellious MPs dispute that party rules have been followed.

The public record is not clear as to what Speaker Naiqama Lalabalavu has done beyond receiving the party notification—in particular, whether he has notified the Electoral Commission of the vacancies, as would be the responsibility of a speaker in other countries. The commission has, however, received a copy of FijiFirst’s notification to Lalabalavu.

For the moment, the 17 MPs are still in parliament. If the speaker does declare their seats vacant and they appeal to the Court of Disputed Returns, they will be deemed suspended from parliament, not expelled, until the case is resolved. That would take up to three weeks.

If they are ultimately not expelled, FijiFirst will be permanently split, with only nine remaining MPs acting as part of it. And if that’s its condition when or if Rabuka’s coalition falls apart, no one in parliament is likely to have a clear way of forming a stable replacement government.

American exceptionalism in 2024

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, three broad camps are visible in America’s debate over how the United States should relate to the rest of the world: the liberal internationalists who have dominated since World War II; the retrenchers who want to pull back from some alliances and institutions; and the ‘America firsters’ who take a narrow, sometimes isolationist, view of America’s role in the world.

Americans have long seen their country as morally exceptional. Stanley Hoffmann, a French American intellectual, said that while every country considers itself unique, France and the US stand out in believing that their values are universal. France, however, was limited by the balance of power in Europe, and so couldn’t pursue its universalist ambitions fully. Only the US had the power to do that.

The point is not that Americans are morally superior; it is that many Americans want to believe that their country is a force for good in the world. Realists have long complained that this moralism in American foreign policy interferes with a clear analysis of power. Yet the fact is that America’s liberal political culture made a huge difference to the liberal international order that has existed since World War II. Today’s world would look very different if Adolf Hitler had emerged victorious or if Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union had prevailed in the Cold War.

American exceptionalism has three main sources. Since 1945, the dominant one has been the legacy of the Enlightenment, specifically the liberal ideas espoused by America’s founders. As President John F. Kennedy put it, ‘The “magic power” on our side is the desire of every person to be free, of every nation to be independent … It is because I believe our system is more in keeping with the fundamentals of human nature that I believe we are ultimately going to be successful.’ Enlightenment liberalism holds such rights to be universal, not limited to the US.

Of course, Americans always faced contradictions in implementing their liberal ideology. The scourge of slavery was written into the constitution, and it was more than a century after the Civil War before Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Racism remains a major factor in American politics to this day.

Americans have also differed over how to promote liberal values in foreign policy. For some, the universalist project became an excuse to invade other countries and impose friendly regimes. Racism undoubtedly played a role in US interventions in places like Mexico, Haiti and the Philippines. For others, however, liberalism was the impetus for creating a system of international law and institutions that protect domestic liberty by moderating international anarchy.

A second strand of American exceptionalism stems from the country’s Puritan religious roots. Those who fled Britain to worship God more purely in the new world saw themselves as a chosen people. Their project was less crusading in nature than anxious and contained, like the current ‘retrencher’ approach of fashioning America as a city on a hill to attract others.

The founders themselves worried about the new republic losing its virtue, as the Roman republic had done. In the 19th century, European visitors as diverse as Alexis de Tocqueville and Charles Dickens noted the American obsession with virtue, progress and decline. But this moral concern was more inward- than outward-looking.

The third source of American exceptionalism underlies the others: America’s sheer size and location have always conferred a geopolitical advantage. Already in the 19th century, Tocqueville noted America’s special geographical situation. Protected by two oceans, and bordered by weaker neighbours, it was able to focus largely on westward expansion, avoiding Europe-centric struggles for global power.

But when the US emerged as the world’s largest economy at the beginning of the 20th century, it began to think in terms of global power. After all, it had the resources, the leeway and ample opportunities to indulge itself, for good and for ill. It had the incentive and capability to take the lead in creating global public goods, as well as the freedom to define its national interest in broad ways. That meant supporting an open international trading system, freedom of the seas and other commons, and the development of international institutions. Size creates an important realist basis for American exceptionalism.

Isolationism was America’s answer to the 19th-century global balance of power. The relatively weak American republic could be imperialistic towards its small neighbours, but it had to follow a cautiously realist policy vis-à-vis European powers. Though the Monroe Doctrine asserted a separation between the western hemisphere and the European balance, such a policy could be maintained only because it coincided with British interests and the Royal Navy’s control of the seas.

But as America’s power grew, its options increased. An important turning point came in 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson broke with tradition and sent two million Americans to fight in Europe. Although the liberal League of Nations that Wilson created at the end of the war was repudiated by his fellow Americans, it laid the basis for the United Nations and the liberal order after 1945.

Today, President Joe Biden and most Democrats say they want to maintain and preserve the existing order, whereas Donald Trump and the America firsters want to abandon it, and retrenchers in both parties hope to pick and choose among the remains. Ongoing conflicts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East will be strongly affected by whichever approach prevails in next year’s election.

Mixed signals from Germany’s traffic-light coalition

The policy bottlenecks that many people thought would impede Germany’s Ampelkoalition (‘traffic-light coalition’) have materialised, well into its second year in power. The country’s first three-party government since the 1950s, comprising the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, took office with an ambitious agenda and high hopes for far-reaching reform. The almost 200-page coalition agreement promised to ‘dare more progress’, signalling a break from the complacency that characterised the last years of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship.

Presenting a raft of policy proposals in an orderly, rational fashion, the coalition agreement gave the impression of a government willing and able to implement reforms. The results so far suggest otherwise. Some, like the electoral reform bill, have been poorly designed, while others, including a recent meeting convened to address the country’s ailing education system, ended in failure.

Policymakers have reneged on promises. Whereas the coalition agreement placed public transportation, especially improvements to the country’s ageing railways, at the top of the agenda, Transport Minister Volker Wissing has successfully advocated for building more highways. He also opposed a previously agreed European Union ban on internal combustion engines, forcing member states to settle on a much-criticised last-minute compromise.

Likewise, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s party, the Greens, included the concept of a feminist foreign policy in the coalition agreement, and she reiterated Germany’s commitment to this values-based approach to diplomacy and development work in September 2022. Yet Baerbock was criticised for not speaking out sooner and louder in support of the women-led protest movement in Iran.

The list goes on. With Chancellor Olaf Scholz remaining aloof, the coalition risks losing its way. Ministers are going in different directions and increasingly facing off, heightening the likelihood of policy failures. Plans to establish a German national security council were dropped, for example, because of political deadlock: the chancellery and the foreign ministry couldn’t agree on where the council would be located and who would be responsible for its governance.

An open conflict between the Ministry of Finance, led by the Liberal Democrats’ Christian Lindner, and the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, led by the Greens’ Robert Habeck, has blocked badly needed reforms, with each minister pointing the finger at the other. For example, Habeck wants to ban almost all new oil and gas heating systems in Germany from 2024 and fast-track their replacement with heat pumps. To be sure, it’s a pie-in-the-sky proposal. But it has also fuelled a budget spat with Lindner’s ministry, exacerbating uncertainty.

Of course, one could argue that coalition agreements amount to little more than expressions of intent. But in Germany, they usually carry more weight because a powerful coalition committee monitors implementation and balances interests. This inner circle, too, is beset by partisan wrangling, with the next state elections eclipsing proposed reforms. While a recent three-day retreat resulted in the committee reaching some painful compromises, the bickering continues.

A key factor underlying the coalition’s drift is the Zeitenwende—the ‘epochal shift’ in Germany’s defence and foreign policy, which Scholz proclaimed a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There was no way to anticipate the massive challenges implied by this watershed when the coalition agreement was concluded in late 2021. National security and defence don’t feature prominently in the document; now they are front and centre. But the response has been woefully lacking. The government has spent very little of the €100 billion allocated for beefing up the armed forces, owing to the administrative inefficiencies of outdated, overregulated procurement processes.

What applies to security is also the case for infrastructure, digitalisation, energy, the environment, administrative reform, social security and migration. The urgent need for reforms, combined with the imperative to respond quickly to new geopolitical realities, has overloaded an already fragile coalition in which three quasi-chancellors—Habeck, Lindner and Baerbock—operate alongside Scholz. Collectively, they give the impression of an unmoored government with too many veto players catering to their constituencies.

One hopes that Scholz will do more to rein in the coalition partners’ infighting. Yet even if he’s successful, it won’t be enough to prevent the government from working at cross purposes. The only chance for meaningful reforms is to go back to the drawing board and reformulate the coalition agreement: version 2.0 should have a slimmed-down agenda, clear priorities and reasonable timelines.

The next German federal election is only two years away, and a resurgent Christian Democratic Union, the largest opposition party, is polling at 30%, whereas the Social Democrats—the leading partner in the coalition government—is at 18%, down significantly from the 26% of the vote it received in the 2021 election. Based on current polling, the Ampelkoalition would not win a majority.

To stave off a political debacle, the government parties need to revamp their muddled reform efforts—and fast. Daring more progress remains a noble vision. But unless the current government delivers results, figuring out how to survive the next election will soon become the more immediate goal.