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National Observer No. 69 -Winter 2006National Observer No. 63 - Summer 2005

 

In This Issue

 

National Observer
(Council for the National Interest, Melbourne),
No. 69, Winter 2006.

 

The present issue of National Observer includes a wide range of articles, each of which is pertinent in some sense to Australia’s national interest.

While this journal is not invariably uncritical of particular aspects of American foreign policy, it strongly supports the Australian-American alliance and generally endorses the global influence of what has become known as “the Anglosphere”, of which we in Australia are a part. The powerful cultural influence exercised by the United States and Britain over the past hundred and more years has not been forced upon the rest of the world, but generally accepted enthusiastically from China to Peru. Soccer is just one example. Equally impressive has been the effective and generally benevolent use of political and military power by the Anglosphere, not just throughout the twentieth century but even and perhaps especially today.

Professor Claudio Véliz is recognised in the United States as amongst the foremost theoreticians of “the Anglosphere”, particularly by way of his book The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America (1994). In his article in this issue of National Observer, he examines the pathology of anti-Americanism and its relationship to industrial modernity. This is a significant contribution to its field and first appeared in the Hedgehog Review (University of Virginia). The article deserves to be more widely known here and we re-publish it with much pleasure.

John Stone is a regular contributor to National Observer and in this issue he critically analyses the 2006 Howard/Costello budget. Although in some respects a sound budget, it is by no means as “generous” as it has been depicted by the media. In fact, it unjustifiably withholds from the public much of the surplus moneys forced from the public by way of wildly excessive taxation. The budget was expected by the Government to lift its ratings considerably in the opinion polls, but failed to do so. It is a long way from being the best Howard/Costello budget and its flaws are fully analysed here.

Sharif Shuja’s article on the United States and India examines the new, close relationship between these two countries, which includes enhanced defence links and the effective recognition by Washington that India has a sovereign right to its nuclear deterrent, and, moreover, that nuclear trade with India (which includes the sale of Australian uranium to that country) is an acceptable fact of life. In return, India puts civilian nuclear reactors under international safeguards and stiffens its anti-proliferation resolve. India’s political stability, based on a secure democracy, and its burgeoning economic power give added justification for this newly cosy relationship, one that will not, however, prevent India from pursuing an independent foreign policy based on a desire to see the emergence of a multi-polar world rather than one dominated by a single power (and here India is probably on the side of the future; claims made by some observers just a few years ago that the United States would be the one and only “hyperpower” of the twenty-first century look increasingly hollow since the invasion of Iraq). India is another example of how an acceptance of globalisation so often goes hand in hand with a strong nationalism, as we see also in China. Globalisation works in the interests of national power, not against it.

In an extremely interesting and myth-shattering article that will be hard to stomach for any Greens that may read it, Walter Starck exposes the false claims so often made about the state of the Great Barrier Reef and the sustainability of fishing in its waters. He shows very clearly that “Although reefs in many other parts of the world have indeed been damaged by human activities, the Great Barrier Reef is among the most pristine of reef areas”. Very few of the reefs in the huge complex are ever visited, “and the total annual fish harvest per square kilometre is less than one per cent of what reefs elsewhere commonly sustain”. The restrictions that have been imposed on fishing in the region of the Great Barrier Reef are unnecessary and ineffective. Walter Starck offers an extensive and powerful critique of Australian fisheries management, and the article concludes by pointing to a better way forward. We publish this article in the interests of an important Australian industry that is currently being damaged by official policies that display, in many respects, ignorance, wilful misrepresentation of the facts, and the imposition of theory and “philosophy” completely out of touch with the scientific realities.

Brian Coman’s essay on “The Uneasy Alliance: Liberalism, Conservatism and Religious Belief” is important not only for its incisive contribution to the understanding of the terms “liberalism” and “conservatism”, which are often used in a confused and confusing way, but for its exploration of the contested place of religious belief in modern western democratic societies. We publish this essay as a counter to the increasingly dominant assumption that western democratic societies should be (or simply are) entirely secular. If we swallow this, we will do our cause in the “clash of civilisations” the greatest possible harm. A society or set of societies (the West) that upholds belief in nothing beyond the material world and a few ideas derived from Locke, Jefferson or whoever (and this is the “belief system”, in essence, of modern liberalism) will never win in the battle against those who believe, above all, in the existence of God. The sacred has an important part in the polity of the Christian West and we allow the “great liberal dream” to prune back that part to zero at our peril.

 

 

 

 

National Observer No. 69 - Winter 2006