I'm personally not impressed with the article. The author's position is full of contradictions - he's against China's meddling with Australia, but he also doesn't like Trump's (exceptionally...
I'm personally not impressed with the article. The author's position is full of contradictions - he's against China's meddling with Australia, but he also doesn't like Trump's (exceptionally clumsy and hamfisted) attempts to limit China's presence on the world stage, including in Australia. He doesn't like the Trump administration's ridiculous attempts to claim COVID came from a Chinese lab, yet by his own admission, Australia's Prime Minister was the one who initiated the probe. He complains about how China is in a position to severely wreck Australia's economy by holding back its foreign exchange students and refusing to trade with it, but he doesn't want a US relationship to limit these impacts
(though Australia's biggest economic issue is that they're a resource exporting country, in a world where raw material imports are limited to only a few large countries with huge manufacturing bases. They're in a fundamentally weak position).
He complains that a small number of Australian forces were forced to particpate in very low risk positions in the Iraq war, but expects the US to commit tens of thousands of troops and our full military might to protecting Australia. He says that Trump's values of isolation and hyper-partisanship disgust him, so Australia should become an isolationist country that only looks out for its own interests!
I'm not in a very good mood tonight so maybe it's just grumpiness speaking, but it reads very hypocritical to me. For someone who writes about how much Trump's self-centeredness and isolationism disgust him, the author sure doesn't seem to have a problem with those same policies if they center around him instead.
I think you're missing the nuance. Yes. We're trying to manage a tricky relationship with China, and the USA is barging in and stuffing everything up. It's like trying to have a delicate...
The author's position is full of contradictions
I think you're missing the nuance.
he's against China's meddling with Australia, but he also doesn't like Trump's (exceptionally clumsy and hamfisted) attempts to limit China's presence on the world stage, including in Australia.
Yes. We're trying to manage a tricky relationship with China, and the USA is barging in and stuffing everything up. It's like trying to have a delicate conversation with a friend who's overstepping their boundaries and not respecting personal space, while another friend stands behind you, making a running commentary on that conversation and abusing the first friend. That's not helping!
He doesn't like the Trump administration's ridiculous attempts to claim COVID came from a Chinese lab, yet by his own admission, Australia's Prime Minister was the one who initiated the probe.
The probe is intended to find out how a virus which started in one wet market (not a lab!) was allowed to become a global pandemic. There's a difference between investigating how China messed up the management of this pandemic, and trying to prove that the virus came from a lab. Noone (except for a few loonies) thinks the virus came from a lab. Lots of people think that China had the opportunity to stop this pandemic at its origin, but threw away that opportunity.
He complains about how China is in a position to severely wreck Australia's economy by holding back its foreign exchange students and refusing to trade with it, but he doesn't want a US relationship to limit these impacts
Right. This isn't the USA's problem to fix. We need to sort out, with China, how to maintain our trade with China. We don't want the USA sticking its nose into our business.
so Australia should become an isolationist country that only looks out for its own interests!
No. Australia should stop relying on the USA to sort out our problems for us. This used to work, but now it doesn't. The USA used to be our friend, but now it's not. The current administration of the USA does not have our best interests at heart - and it's time we woke up to that fact.
Imagine you have a bully. But you also have a friend who's bigger than you, who keeps the bully away. But then the bigger friend goes crazy, and is just as likely to punch you as the bully. What do you do? Keep the big friend around, risking getting punched by them and the bully? Or tell them their services are no longer required and try to deal with the bully directly?
We're trying to balance two very difficult relationships here. And the point of the article is that we used to think one of those relationships was easy and beneficial, but now we're discovering that it's not.
I'm personally not impressed with the article. The author's position is full of contradictions - he's against China's meddling with Australia, but he also doesn't like Trump's (exceptionally clumsy and hamfisted) attempts to limit China's presence on the world stage, including in Australia. He doesn't like the Trump administration's ridiculous attempts to claim COVID came from a Chinese lab, yet by his own admission, Australia's Prime Minister was the one who initiated the probe. He complains about how China is in a position to severely wreck Australia's economy by holding back its foreign exchange students and refusing to trade with it, but he doesn't want a US relationship to limit these impacts
(though Australia's biggest economic issue is that they're a resource exporting country, in a world where raw material imports are limited to only a few large countries with huge manufacturing bases. They're in a fundamentally weak position).
He complains that a small number of Australian forces were forced to particpate in very low risk positions in the Iraq war, but expects the US to commit tens of thousands of troops and our full military might to protecting Australia. He says that Trump's values of isolation and hyper-partisanship disgust him, so Australia should become an isolationist country that only looks out for its own interests!
I'm not in a very good mood tonight so maybe it's just grumpiness speaking, but it reads very hypocritical to me. For someone who writes about how much Trump's self-centeredness and isolationism disgust him, the author sure doesn't seem to have a problem with those same policies if they center around him instead.
I think you're missing the nuance.
Yes. We're trying to manage a tricky relationship with China, and the USA is barging in and stuffing everything up. It's like trying to have a delicate conversation with a friend who's overstepping their boundaries and not respecting personal space, while another friend stands behind you, making a running commentary on that conversation and abusing the first friend. That's not helping!
The probe is intended to find out how a virus which started in one wet market (not a lab!) was allowed to become a global pandemic. There's a difference between investigating how China messed up the management of this pandemic, and trying to prove that the virus came from a lab. Noone (except for a few loonies) thinks the virus came from a lab. Lots of people think that China had the opportunity to stop this pandemic at its origin, but threw away that opportunity.
Right. This isn't the USA's problem to fix. We need to sort out, with China, how to maintain our trade with China. We don't want the USA sticking its nose into our business.
No. Australia should stop relying on the USA to sort out our problems for us. This used to work, but now it doesn't. The USA used to be our friend, but now it's not. The current administration of the USA does not have our best interests at heart - and it's time we woke up to that fact.
Imagine you have a bully. But you also have a friend who's bigger than you, who keeps the bully away. But then the bigger friend goes crazy, and is just as likely to punch you as the bully. What do you do? Keep the big friend around, risking getting punched by them and the bully? Or tell them their services are no longer required and try to deal with the bully directly?
We're trying to balance two very difficult relationships here. And the point of the article is that we used to think one of those relationships was easy and beneficial, but now we're discovering that it's not.