Would it help with Australian foreign policy if we weren’t automatically obligated (by the ANZUS treaty) to send troops into the Middle East and instead pursue armed neutrality?
Armed neutrality is military preparedness without commitment, with readiness to counter with force an invasion of rights by any belligerent power.
There is the need for both nationalist and internationalist solidarity, particularly showing solidarity to exploited workers at home and abroad. A strong nationalist-internationalist movement could lead to substantial universal demilitarisation. This should be the overarching priority, and is the ideal situation. But, say, if a proletariat party won an election in Australia, armed neutrality, which would include nuclear armament1, would definitely be a positive outcome.
Also opposing war by masses of ordinary people around the world hasn’t stopped the Middle Eastern wars. What is the most needed is international (in each nation state) workers organisations and social justice political parties to change dominant capitalist institutions. Then the people will determine foreign policy, not politicians who serve the capitalist state (above the masses of ordinary people)!
See Dr. Saleam herein discuss eloquently on the potential and exigency for armed neutrality in Australia, inter alia other political ideas of Dr. Saleam’s as Party Leader of Australia First. Caveat: other ideas outside of the narrow nationalist concept of armed neutrality enunciated are the speakers own, and not a precise reflection of my own (as author of this blog-post); I believe armed neutrality is entirely politically necessary for all nations, not just Australia, to break with the hegemony or imperialism of super-power politics and their geopolitical allegiances.
(Australia First Party Videos, September 20 2019, “Jim Saleam on Australian Independence and Armed Neutrality”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uItBzyqtPQ)
Noteworthy also is left-wing nationalist conceptions of the Australian Marxist-Leninist Communist Party in armed neutrality to break with U.S. imperialism. Whilst I consider myself as politically left, I do not endorse Leninism, see: https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2023/03/21/what-went-wrong-with-the-russian-revolution/
I am also skeptical of the Trotskyist idea of the (excessively) internationalist permanent revolution which entails the undermining of national sovereignties. Would this entail a centralised world government? I personally believe in nation states as the authentic political sites of proletariat power. For a rationale thereof see: https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2020/10/17/against-abolishing-nation-states-as-the-authentic-sites-of-proletariat-power/
Once all nation-states have been captured by nationally-sited proletariats, then we can not only purse nuclear disarmament(s), but demilitarization(s) too. In the long-run, in this manner, military spending is economically and environmentally wasteful.
- Whilst in the long-term I am passionately for synchronous internationalist nuclear disarmament, I believe in the short-term benefits of militarily weaker nation states becoming nuclear powers to act as a break the super-power politics of intimidating non super-power nations and the ensuing phenomenon of satellite states as a result of this geopolitical intimidation. Whilst I have some reservations of excessively theocratic states becoming nuclear powers, supporting the need for these states to enact separation of church and state in governance architecture is also concurrently dire. See my analysis on how the Ukraine war might have been avoided through Ukraine becoming a nuclear power (or if it had become a NATO member country not just a NATO partner): https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2022/11/09/an-abyssal-tragedy-of-war-in-ukraine-some-lessons-to-heed/. ↩︎
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