Australians are getting pretty fed up with walking on eggshells every day because they’re worried about upsetting people – Scotty from Marketing earlier today.
The distance between Honiara (the capital of the Solomon Islands) and Canberra (Australian capital) is 3,074 kilometres. Because a mile is roughly 1.6 km, that distance is equivalent to about 1,900 miles.
But Australia is a big place and there are cities and towns much closer to Honiara. Cairns, for instance, in northern Queensland, is 1,745 km (1,084 mi) away.
In fact, Oz is a continent island as well, which means that to reach Australia you need to cross the sea (see the picture above?). Seas are formidable natural barriers, as the Nazis discovered during the Battle of Britain: the English Channel at its narrowest is 33 km (20 mi).
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I’ve written about that “pact” between the Solomons and China. Not much is known about it here, but what little is guessed has caused much concern among locals involved in international relations and defence (it has also caused concern among American policy-makers, by the way).
More cautious experts say this may “destabilise the region”, but offer little concrete details about how that destabilisation would happen. As John Barron, hosting today the ABC’s The Drum, put it: “The Solomon Islands signs a pact with Beijing prompting concerns over China's growing influence in the South Pacific.”
Others, less cautious and apparently less familiar with maps, seem to believe that would allow China (our largest trade partner!) to block Australia’s international trade routes (?). Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce: “We don’t want our own little Cuba off our coasts.”
Anyway, Aussie experts consider it perfectly reasonable to worry about Australian national security: for them even the possible (not certain, not even necessarily likely, but merely possible) presence of the military of a potentially hostile nation that close to home (1,745 km), constitutes a serious threat requiring urgent diplomatic actions. (The crazies, on the other hand, are already clamouring for an outright invasion of the Solomons).
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The distance between Kiev and Moscow is 843.5 km (524 mi).
Is not just roughly half the distance between Honiara and Cairns. Is that there are no real natural barriers between the two cities.
In fact an American man in his late eighties, with early stages Parkinson, could easily walk that distance in four to six months, without any change in his daily routine. It’s simply a matter of clocking the distance covered in his daily morning walks (or “constitutionals”, as former PM John Howard used to call them).
And yet, experts in international relations and defence – particularly Australian and American ones – almost to the last man deny Russia ever had any legitimate security concerns with NATO’S eastward expansion, concerns that the Yanks and their European allies deliberately ignored with obtuse recklessness. Indeed, even that very real American man in his late eighties.
And yet, experts in international relations and defence – particularly Australian and American ones – almost to the last man deny Russia ever had any legitimate security concerns with NATO’S eastward expansion, concerns that the Yanks and their European allies deliberately ignored with obtuse recklessness. Indeed, even that very real American man in his late eighties.
The Ukraine-Russia war is a tragedy, but the blood of the innocent is on the hands of many people.
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At any event, Scotty from Marketing has been giving the Aussie public the whole song and dance about the existential threat that “pact” constitutes (on this, they have been greatly aided by Labor: the Yellow Peril v2 is a bipartisan thing). And in their narrative, only themselves can assure us of our safety.
So you would have thought Scotty sent a heavyweight to try and persuade Solomons PM Manasseh Sogavare not to sign the “pact”. And nobody heavier, literally and figuratively, than federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne: a member of Cabinet.
You would have been wrong. Payne was too busy attending a fundraiser which apparently takes precedence over otherwise all-important matters of “national security” (this is an election campaign, people). Instead Scotty had to send some loser named Zed Seselja, who screwed things up and the “pact” got signed. Not a member of Cabinet, he’s been given a minister title because the pay is much better than the already considerable pay ($200k plus a year, not counting 12% super and allowances) a rookie MP ordinarily gets.
So you would have thought Scotty sent a heavyweight to try and persuade Solomons PM Manasseh Sogavare not to sign the “pact”. And nobody heavier, literally and figuratively, than federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne: a member of Cabinet.
You would have been wrong. Payne was too busy attending a fundraiser which apparently takes precedence over otherwise all-important matters of “national security” (this is an election campaign, people). Instead Scotty had to send some loser named Zed Seselja, who screwed things up and the “pact” got signed. Not a member of Cabinet, he’s been given a minister title because the pay is much better than the already considerable pay ($200k plus a year, not counting 12% super and allowances) a rookie MP ordinarily gets.
The Yanks will have to step in, again, to try and clean the mess Scotty left behind.
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Let me put it this way: either Scotty and his gang are stupider, more inept and irresponsible than we thought or this whole Solomons-China thing is nothing but a rich, English-speaking nation’s mass hysteria, with little real substance to it: a nothingburger deliberately hyped to provide Scotty some credibility as “national security leader”. (You should read Trita Parsi’s piece for MSNBC to learn how the Global South sees the West).
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Incidentally, someone please tell that returd (yes, that’s not a typo, I’m fed up with walking on eggshells every day because I’m worried about upsetting imbeciles) calling himself Deputy PM that the distance between Havanna and Miami is 367 km (228 mi): their bigger Cuba is only one fifth away and the Yanks eventually learned to live with it in their doorsteps. If they could, so can we.
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