The Fine Line Between Success and Failure

In times of crisis there is often a fine line between great leadership and inadequate leadership, which with regard to the latter can actually compound an existing disaster. Alternately, it is often out of disaster that great leadership comes to the fore because more than adequate leadership is required.

For better or for worse the post-2008 GFC world in which we live is one where there will be a fine line between great and disastrous leadership. In the following essay Dr. David Paul Bennett analyses the now vitally important theme of the distinct but still inter-connected dichotomy between disastrous and great leadership due to its contemporary relevance in a GFC world.

A 2013 GFC?

The so-called GFC world in which we live refers to the context created by the flow on effects of the collapse in the American real estate market with regard to sub-prime mortgages which adversely affected major US financial institutions. The developed world is now steadily and slowly climbing out of the debt crater by ironically borrowing more money to spur economic growth which will hopefully facilitates a non-destructive level of inflation which reduces the monetary value of debt owed over a period of time.

The above approach is generally sound except that the underlying causes of the original GFC could re-occur in the United States within the next six months!!! The structural cause of the 2008 GFC was that too many mortgagees could legally divest themselves of debt on homes on which they lived in but had not yet been paid off. The flow on effect of mortgaged homes going ‘under water’ could fatally undermine major lending financial houses leading to another the GFC!

The pressing contemporary problem is that too many post-war ‘baby boomers’ in the United States have houses which are 30% to 40 % below than what is owed on the mortgage. This widespread phenomenon combined with the legal right of house owners/occupants to walk away from ‘their’ homes creates scope for another GFC in the not too distant future.

Expeditious moves to make mortgagees legally liable for the debt on the houses they live in would however be ill-advised because a rush in divesting from mortgages could ensue. The immediate to long-term policy approach to avoid another GFC would involve the Obama administration in one way or another re-assuring over-leveraged baby-boomers to stay in their homes to avoid default.

An important reason why many baby-boomers may bring matters to a head is because they are approaching retirement age. The major asset that most people in developed countries often is their house or flat which they have a mortgage on. When an income ends with the onset of retirement the property which people possess should have increased in value over the years so it can be sold at a high profit.

The scenario of a considerable portion of American mortgagees not been able to sell their properties at a profit as they approach retirement is a ticking time bomb which requires an ironical combination of prompt action and long term redress.

Going by past performance the Obama White House is both the best and the worst administration to have in office to deal with this potentially impending mega-crisis. The major weakness of the Obama presidency is that too often the next policy step is not promptly taken to prevent or overcome a crisis. The counter-strong point of the Obama presidency is that broad policies are put in place which supports a trend which is effective in overcoming the vexing issue in the inter-mediate to long-term.

It is therefore vital that the Obama administration not allow a policy of benign neglect to have malignant ramifications so that a ‘baby-boomer’ induced sub-prime mortgage crisis occurs. A possible remedy could to offer impending retiree ‘baby-boomers’ financial assistance/incentives to stay in their houses to persist with their mortgages.

Tax deductibility for mortgagees of a certain age who have lived in or paid a mortgage for a particular period of time could be considered by the US federal government. Special grants which cover the gap between a property value and the rate of mortgage repayment could be provided by the federal government contributing to bonds that can be paid to institutions such as retirement homes.

The major objective of American federal government financial policy objective in the short to medium term should be behavioural in terms of policy outcomes. The consumer behaviour which needs to be affected is that of re-assuring a critical mass of baby-boomer aged mortgagees not to default.

The root cause of the 2008 GFC was essentially that of housing loans been made to mortgagees who could not repay their loans due to inadequate income levels. Furthermore, too many mortgagees at a particular time tried to sell to make a considerable financial gain. The issue of immediate concern regarding this potential upcoming mega crisis in 2013 is the problem of people approaching retirement age defaulting because of their home mortgages figuratively ‘going under water’.

A broader but closely related issue with regard to avoiding a second GFC is the need for American federal government fiscal reform. The resort to sequestration to address the massive federal budget deficit is not an ideal solution but in the context of executive- congressional gridlock an imperfect but necessary expedient.

A longer term solution would be to both raise taxes on those on the high tax brackets and rein in expenditures so that the expiation point is avoided where the American dollar will one day lose its value due to never ending federal government borrowing and the printing of money as part of quantitative easing.

For the contemporary United States there is no excuse for a budget agreement not to be eventually reached between the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress achieving a balance between increased taxation and reduced spending. This is because a sufficient number of Congressmen and staffers were once respectively associated with either of the former House Speakers *Tip O’Neil and *Newt Gingrich.

(*Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neal, (1912 to 1994) was House Speaker between 1977 and 1987. Newton ‘Newt’ Gingrich, (1943- ) was House Speaker between 1995 and 1999).

During the Reagan era Speaker O’Neal was at the forefront of budget negotiations with the administration over the budget. Many of the staffers on both sides of the negotiating table went on to become contemporary Congressmen. Similarly during the Clinton era when intense budget negotiation also occurred many of the then White House staffers and GOP congressional staffers progressed to become current legislators. The scope therefore exists due to previous personal experiences for an agreement regarding an appropriate balance between tax increases for the wealthy and spending restraint to be reached before it is too late between the Congress and the Obama White House.

In times of potentially impending fiscal crisis there is insufficient scope to quickly raise revenue unless those who can afford to pay are taxed at a higher rate. Advocacy of higher taxes is not an ideological approach in keeping with the populist left-way catchcry of ‘make the rich pay’. Rather this advocacy is made on the basis that the American federal government needs to quickly raise money fast so that preventative action can be taken to provide financial assistance to baby-boomer mortgagees to avoid home loan defaults on a massive scale.

Because economics is not an exact science there is scope for environmental factors to change for there to later be tax relief for the wealthy to help stimulate economic growth. However now is not the time due to the period of dangerously high debt and deficit that the United States is currently in. Modern French history of the 1780s shows that socio-political crisis is impending when those who can afford to refuse to pay high taxes as part of political manoeuvring and power positioning.

Mis-Guided Patriotism can Lead to National Division

Because the power of American patriotism is part of the phenomenon of what makes the United States great, serious domestic discord over contemporary taxation is potentially America’s Achilles ’ Heel. This was most vividly apparent during the American Civil War (1861 to 1865) when white southern secessionists fought for what they thought was their version of the United States. Consequently these secessionists refused to recognize that they were actually committing high treason.

The potential socio-political disaster that now confronts the United States with regard to a possible government shut down in March and a failure to lift the debt ceiling in May of this year. Disastrous socio-economic ramifications from public policy failures in these two vital fiscal areas could precipitate ethnic racial based divisions as reflected in the voting patterns of the 2012 national elections consolidating to potentially fatally undermine American national unity. This should be avoided at all costs because as the American Civil War demonstrated, Americans will ferociously fight against each other when they believe that their opponent is unpatriotic.

True, ethnicity and/or regional location have long been factors in American politics which have influenced party voting patterns. The historical impact of a particular president has often been measured by how he influenced voting patterns. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882 to 1945, president from 1933 until his death) gained the stalwart support of American *blacks for the Democrats. This was a substantial political achievement of FDR’s because an overwhelming majority of American blacks following the Civil War had been pro-Republican.

(*Too many blacks in the United States, particularly in the South, were prevented from exercising their democratic franchise until the passage of national voting rights legislation by Congress in the 1960s).

Ironically, staunch New Deal Roosevelt Democrat of the 1930s and 1940s named Ronald Reagan went on in the 1980s as a Republican to change American voting patterns. From a Grand Old Party (GOP, i.e. Republican Party) perspective the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981 to 1989) gave rise to the phenomenon of the ‘Reagan Democrats’ - lower middle class and many blue-collar voters moving away from Democrat presidential candidates to support the GOP presidential standard bearer. .

The Possible GOP Majority and the Clinton Emergence

It was probably a source of considerable frustration to GOP strategists in the 1980s that Reagan Democrats similarly did not transfer their voting allegiance to the Republican Party at state, congressional and local government levels. The Reagan and Bush ascendancies of the 1980s were also derived from middle class support that was crucially garnered by their delivering lower tax rates in the 1980s. Potential negative impacts of huge budget deficits were off-set by the economic growth and job-generation delivered by America’s stimulated private sector during this time period.

For all the economic prosperity that a supply-side economic public policy regime delivered in the 1980s, President George HW Bush (1924- , president from 1989 to 1993) knew that the time would eventually come when high levels of foreign debt and deficit could catch up to threaten the United States’ economic viability. President Bush therefore understandably reneged on his no new taxes pledge at the August 1988 GOP National Convention in New Orleans as part of budget deal with Democratic majority Congress in late 1990.

The risk that President Bush made seemed to have paid-off due to the stunning effectiveness of the American led military campaign to liberate the Arab Gulf sheikdom of Kuwait in the first quarter of 1991. Due to this success President Bush’s re-election seemed all but assured that front runners for the Democratic Party nomination such as then New York Governor Mario Cuomo (1932- ), then New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley (1943- ) and then Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen (1921- 2006) declined to seek their party’s presidential nomination for 1992.

Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party Political Centre

The opting out of the above cited Democratic Party heavy weights provided Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton with an opportunity to win his party’s presidential nomination in 1992. Governor Clinton’s capacity to win the 1992 Democratic Party nomination was also bolstered by his previous involvement in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC was formed in 1985 following the 1984 debacle when former vice-president, *Walter Mondale had lost his presidential bid to President Reagan in a landslide that year.

(*Had Walter Mondale won the 1984 presidential election and carried through on his promise regarding a nuclear weapons production freeze then the Soviet bloc would probably still exist).

The political backbone of the DLC was essentially incumbent centrist Democratic governors. Due to the lingering impact of the 1984 Reagan landslide there was a dearth of political talent of candidates seeking the presidential nomination in 1988 that the aspirants were dubbed ‘seven dwarfs’ by the media. The front runner for the 1988 Democratic Party presidential nomination was then Massachusetts governor, Michael Dukakis (1933- ). Due to the support of the DLC Governor Dukakis was the only one of the so-called ‘seven dwarfs’ who could maintain a national campaign which was crucial to his winning the Democratic Party presidential nomination that year.

Governor Dukakis selection of the comparatively conservative Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen as his vice-presidential running mate at the Atlanta Convention in July 1988 seemed to give the Democrats the edge in the presidential race. The avowed centrist positions of Governor Dukakis seemed to bolster his chances of winning as he left the Atlanta Convention with a formidable eighteen point lead.

The Massachusetts governor’s failure to counter the Bush campaign’s charge that he was a political liberal fatally undermined his credibility. Although, Governor Dukakis declared himself a liberal toward the end of the campaign this bolstered his political base but forfeited him the opportunity of winning the support of the deciding centrist vote that he had initially sought.

Governor Clinton was in a similar political position to what Michael Dukakis had been in 1988 as he entered the 1992 presidential race in that he was the only candidate out of the six aspirants for the Democratica Party nomination who could run a viable national campaign. This was mainly due to the support that Governor Clinton had from the DLC.

Indeed, if former Massachusetts senator, Michel Tsongas (1941 to 1997) had established a viable national political base because of his victory over Governor Clinton in the February 1992 New Hampshire primary. However, Governor Clinton’s national campaign capacity enabled him to declare his second place showing (following sleaze allegations against him) in New Hampshire a victory for him as the ‘come back kid’.

The candidate who was able to maintain a primary challenge against Governor Clinton was former California governor Jerry Brown (1938- ) who ran an amazingly adaptable grass-roots campaign. This was an achievement because Governor Brown was initially considered to be nuisance candidate when he entered the 1992 presidential race.

The former California governor could have denied Governor Clinton a delegate majority at the National Convention to be held in New York in July by winning the June primary in his home state, which was the last the last primary. Although Governor Brown garnered a respectable 41% of the vote in the California primary, his domestic connections were insufficient to overcome Governor Clinton’s status as front-runner. The Arkansas governor had in turn gained this competitive edge in what was a weak Democratic field of presidential aspirants due to the support of the DLC.

The July 1992 New York National Convention successfully generated momentum for Governor Clinton which helped him consolidate his party base. This was partly due to media hype which was outrageously biased toward the Democrats. The selection of Tennessee Senator Al Gore (1948- ) helped galvanize the ticket to win four of the eleven southern states. Potential problems with regard to a lack of regional balance were countered due to the Tennessee senator’s centrist outlook and relative youth gelling with Governor Clinton’s persona.

The Third Party Presidential Candidacy of Ross Perot

Nevertheless, the prospects for success for the Clinton-Gore ticket were then problematic due to the third party presidential candidacy of Texas billionaire Ross Perot (1930- ). Having declared on CNN’s Larry King Live in February his willingness to run for president, an amazingly spontaneous grassroots movement emerged which gave Perot the scope to actually win the presidential race. Between February and June it seemed that Perot could put either President Bush or Governor Clinton into third place.

The support base that Perot acquired was essentially derived from Reagan Democrats who were disillusioned with President Bush for reneging on his no new taxes pledge. It was therefore a potential political life preserver for the Republicans when just prior to the Democratic National Convention (18th to the 21st of July) Perot announced his withdrawal from the presidential race. Perot’s excuse for his withdrawal that the Republicans were planning to spoil his daughter’s wedding was that ludicrous that the subliminal message was conveyed by him that he was prepared to later re-enter the race to sabotage President Bush’s re-election.

At the Republican Convention in Houston in Texas in August President Bush failed to ‘plug the gaps’ that the Perot candidacy had brought to the fore. Although the president’s loyalty to his unfairly maligned vice-president, Dan Quayle (1947- ) was commendable he perhaps should have chosen his Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Jack Kemp (1935 to 2009) as his running mate.

Secretary Kemp as an ideological supply-sider was more than acceptable to GOP Reaganites. Furthermore, Secretary Kemp’s focus as HUD Secretary on attempting to overcome poverty by helping facilitate employment generation created the scope to endow the Bush campaign with a revived Progressive Republican tradition. This could have provided the 1992 GOP presidential ticket with a much needed narrative in a domestic context to support an argument for re-election.

Instead, the Bush-Quayle campaign attacked the personal character of Governor Clinton to bolster its base and to win over the undecided voter. This strategy was redolent of the 1988 GOP campaign against Governor Michael Dukakis. In the 1988 presidential race the personal attacks against the then Massachusetts governor were ideological and effective because they undermined Dukakis’s attempt to conceal his more liberal-left ideological positions. Consequently, the then Massachusetts governor ignominiously failed to gain the support of Reagan Democrats voters who held the balance of political power.

By contrast Governor Clinton adopted socially conservative policy stances, such as a condemnation of gang violence, which resonated during the 1992 election campaign with Reagan Democrat voters that the Bush campaign’s character attacks on the then Arkansas governor as ineffective. President Bush did toward the end of the campaign re-engaged with the electorate by running on the basis that he could be *trusted.

(* ‘Trust’ is a virtue that administratively competent but overall ineffective politicians often invoke. President Carter’s delegates at the 1980 Democratic Party’s New York Convention in August had posters declaring the Carter-Mondale team to be one that was ‘trusted’).

Perhaps President Bush’s sterling record of public service combined with doubts that his campaign had insinuated against Governor Clinton might have been sufficient to have tapped into a potential Republican presidential majority to have narrowly won re-election had Ross Perot not re-entered the race in early October 1992.

President Bush’s failed re-election placed him in a position analogous to President William Taft (1857 to 1930) in 1912 who as an incumbent had received a *low vote but whose powerful party network remained intact even after his electoral defeat. Had Ross Perot ran a serious presidential candidacy throughout 1992 he could either have actually won or have consigned one of the two major party presidential candidates to third position, as happened to President Taft in 1912.

(*President Bush received 37% of the popular vote in 1992 and President Taft gained 23% of the popular vote in 1912).

The GOP Grapples with Progressivism

The 1912 and 1992 presidential races were instances of disconnection occurring between within the Republican Party base. In the 1912 former President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt (1858 to 1919) disillusioned with the pro-big business policies of President Taft split from the Republican Party to form to Progressive Party so that he could run against his predecessor to either win the presidency or deny Taft a second term.

In running against Taft, Teddy Roosevelt invoked the Lincoln legacy by supporting equality for blacks, female suffrage and labour rights. These issues struck a negative nerve with enough Republican Party regulars that they tenaciously supported President Taft to deny Teddy Roosevelt (who garnered 27% of the vote) a viable prospect of winning the *presidency in 1912.

(*The victorious Democratic Party presidential candidate, Woodrow Wilson, 1856 to 1924, garnered 41% of the popular vote).

The potential for the United States having a three party system or the Progressive Party displacing the GOP was scotched by Teddy Roosevelt loyally supporting the Republican Party candidate Charles Hughes (1862 to 1948) in the 1916 elections. Nevertheless, the power of progressivism to be the spoiler for the GOP in those elections was manifested by Governor Hiram Johnson (1866 to 1945).

This progressive governor (Johnson) of California endorsed President Wilson at the last minute to deliver him victory over Hughes because of the president’s pledge to keep the United States neutral during the First World War. It was ironic that progressive division over neutrality would cost the Republicans victory in 1916. This irony was compounded by President Wilson reneged on his neutrality pledge to thankfully take the United States into the First World War in 1917 to prevent the triumph of Prussian militarism.

The death in early 1919 of *Teddy Roosevelt established Johnson as the leader of ‘progressivism’ within the Republican Party. This development also ensured that Progressives, the overwhelming majority of whom had returned to the Republican Party by 1920, would be isolationist. Indeed, it was international isolationism which reconciled the Taft Republicans and former Progressives with each other within the Republican Party which helped ensure GOP’s domestic dominance under the successive inadequate presidencies between 1921 and 1933 of Warren Harding (1865 to 1923), Calvin Coolidge (1872 to 1933) and Herbert Hoover (1874 to 1964).

(*Teddy Roosevelt had been the leading advocate of the United States entering the First World War on the Allied side between 1914 and 1917).

Progressivism Lives On In Pro-New Deal Republicans

The former Progressives and the Taft Republicans again essentially parted ways because of differences over the domestic policies of Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s government interventionist New Deal policies. The former Progressives even went so far to engineer the nomination in 1936 of Kansas Governor Alf Landon of Kansas (1887 to 1987) and newspaper publisher Frank Knox (1874 to 1944, who served as Navy Secretary between 1940 and 1944) as the respective GOP presidential and vice-presidential candidates. These two former Progressives, who were broadly pro-New Deal, helped ensure an eleven million vote margin of victory to President Roosevelt by maintaining a low profile during the 1936 election *campaign.

(* An area where the 1936 GOP election campaign was actively engaged, but was unfortunately unsuccessful, was with regard to gaining the black vote, which for the first time in American history overwhelmingly went to the Democrats. Had African Americans supported the Republicans in 1936 their consequent power within politics might have provided a basis for political partisan divisions to paradoxically help engineer national unity by inter-linking different communities).

President Roosevelt’s 1936 landslide re-election nevertheless illustrated that the Republican Party had a loyalist base which ensured that it would remain one of America’s two major parties. The Republican gains of over seventy House of Representative seats in the 1938 congressional elections in which GOP inclined voters returned to the fold following the self-inflicted debacle of 1936 consolidated the Republicans as the nation’s entrenched minority party.

The relatively weak position of the Republican Party in the 1930s crucially ensured the domestic dominance of the New Deal policy paradigm. However, foreign policy was another matter with regard to FDR’s presidency. Due the contempt with which British and French leaders had treated President Wilson at the 1919 Treaty of Versailles Conference by imposing a harsh ‘peace’ treaty on a defeated Germany, many Americans subsequently believed that it had been a mistake to have entered the First World War in 1917.

Consequent isolationism was that as powerful as FDR was as president he had to eschew an internationalist foreign policy due to domestic political settings. Ironically, the dichotomy between internationalism and isolationism was starker in the Republican Party than within the Democrats because President Roosevelt concealed his sentiment in favour of the former.

Divisions within between Progressives and Taft establishment supporters in the GOP in the late 19030s/early 1940s manifested with regard to foreign policy by the former predominately being internationalist while the latter were mainly isolationists. Thomas Dewey (1902 to 1971), a prosecuting District Attorney from New York, garnered a plurality of delegates at the Republican Party’s 1940 Philadelphia Convention by appealing to a growing minority internationalist sentiment within his party, particularly with former Progressives.

However, the pro-isolationist convention majority still could not actually bring themselves to nominate Ohio senator, Robert Taft (1889 to 1953) the leading isolationist because of his apparent indifference to the recent Nazi German conquest of France. Consequently, a convention majority coalesced round the Indiana businessman Wendell Wilkie (1892 to 1944). He was formerly a registered Democrat who changed his registration to Republican in the 1930s due to concerns over the implementation of the New Deal.

In articulating his concerns in radio interviews regarding the New Deal and opposing the United States entry into the Second World War (while advocating military aid for Britain) Wilkie established himself as a lateral thinker who acted on the merits of the situation. Such a prevaricating approach to politics is usually fatal but was tailor made to make Wilkie as the compromise candidate of both the isolationist and internationalist delegates at the nominating convention.

Nevertheless, Wilkie’s seemingly vacillating approach to crucial public policy questions, such as American entry into the war, *cost him votes during the ensuing election campaign to virtually guarantee President Roosevelt’s re-election.

(*Wilkie still gained considerable support among Republican Party regulars during the 1940 campaign that he might have won his party’s nomination in 1944 had GOP bigwigs not united to effectively undermine his campaign in the Wisconsin primary. Ill-health also might have hindered Wilkie’s 1944 campaign as he later died that year).

Former 1940 GOP presidential hopeful, Thomas Dewey, still has an established political base which helped clear the way for him to be elected governor of New York State in 1942. This election victory was partly; if not crucially, due to the support Dewey received from then New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (1882 to 1947). This mayor had been first elected in 1934 and had received the bloc votes of Italian and Jewish voters who in this instance had departed from FDR’s emerging New Deal coalition. La Guardia was the Progressive link within the Republican Party for Dewey who was too young and relatively inexperienced to have once belonged to this political movement within the GOP.

Internationalism Makes the Republicans Competitive Again

Because President Roosevelt’s re-election in the context of leading the nation was all but assured Governor Dewey’s 1944 campaign for the White House was considered to be a dry run for his run in 1948 as the GOP presidential standard bearer. The understandably rapid growth in internationalist sentiment across the United States following the nation’s entry into the Second World War in December 1941 had crucially contributed to Dewey’s nomination as the Republican presidential standard bearer in 1944.

Following the 1944 presidential election the Republican Party seemed to enjoy a resurgence as reflected by winning the 1946 mid-term congressional elections that the party seemed to be on track to winning the presidency in 1948.

The Republican 1946 congressional victory was partially due to the popularity of recently returned veterans who ran as GOP congressional candidates and public unease concerning President Harry Truman’s (1884 to 1972, who served as president between 1945 and 1953) determination to maintain wartime planning regulations. The potential to convert the first mid-term congressional election victory in over a generation into a new Republican Party political majority was subsequently squandered by the limited outlook of the new GOP House Speaker, Joseph Martin (1884 to 1968) of Massachusetts.

Crucial to President Truman’s improbable re-election in 1948 was his denunciation of the national legislature as ‘a do nothing Congress’ under Speaker Martin’s stewardship. Implicit in this presidential criticism was a warning that the socio-economic gains of the New Deal would be squandered should Governor Dewey be elected president.

President Truman’s success in winning the 1948 election was all the more impressive because he kept the New Deal coalition intact despite the respective threats from the respective Democratic Party break away candidacies of the far-right segregationist Southern Dixiecrat candidate Senator Strom Thurmond (1902 to 2003) of South Carolina and of former vice-president, Henry A Wallace (1888 to 1965) of Idaho, the presidential candidate of the recently founded pro-communist Progressive Party.*

(*These two polar opposite candidacies, respectively garnered just under 2.5% of the popular vote).

The shock 1948 presidential election victory of President Truman could have resulted in the GOP’s consolidation as the perpetual minority party because the Taft forces were greatly strengthened within the Republican Party. Therefore, Senator Robert Taft was the front-runner for the 1952 GOP presidential nomination. Had Senator Taft won his party’s nomination the Republicans could have been consigned to another generation in the political wilderness.

Senator Taft’s isolationism was an anthema to most Americans in the context of the Cold War and his anti-government approach similarly went against the then prevailing national sentiment. Governor Dewey accordingly utilized his political skills as a veteran of GOP presidential conventions to draft the former Allied Supreme Commander in Europe, General Dwight ‘Ike’ D Eisenhower (1890 to 1969) to be the 1952 Republican Party presidential nominee.

The Eisenhower nomination not only kept the Republicans in the national mainstream but helped them win the 1952 presidential election due to Ike’s massive personal popularity. Had Eisenhower not being the GOP candidate the presidential election probably would have been won by the popular and respected governor of Illinois, Adlai *Stevenson (1900 to 1965).

(*Governor Stevenson established himself as the custodian of the New Deal. Such was his personal prestige that despite losing again to President Eisenhower in 1956 he was still a strong contender for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1960).

To placate Taft supporters at the 1952 Republican National Convention in Chicago Eisenhower selected California Senator Richard Milhouse Nixon (RN, 1913 to 1994) as his running mate. RN’s selection had profound political implications because his anti-communism helped convert Taft supporters from isolationists into internationalists.

The longer term ramifications of RN’s selection were that the isolationism of the Taft Republicans virtually disappeared into the ether. Ironically, the major contemporary connection to Taftism was the Nixon protégé, Pat Buchan (1938- ) who served in RN’s administrations (1969 to 1974) as a speech writer, executive assistant and as White House Communications Director during part of the second Reagan administration.

Buchan was a throwback to Taft in that he was (and is) a foreign policy isolationist. Although a populist, Buchan singularly failed to win over Reagan Democrats during his bids for the GOP presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996 while alienating many undecided voters from the Republican Party. His disdain for the Bush family was such that Buchan ran as the presidential candidate of the Perot backed Reform Party in 2000 in a probable attempt to split the Republican vote.

The Improbable Emergence of Neo-Taftism

The surprisingly more successful neo-Taftist has been former Texas Congressman Ron Paul (1935- ). This politician is not only a foreign affairs isolationist but an advocate of returning the United States to the gold standard. These libertarian positions have an intellectual consistency to them which demonstrate the Congressman Paul has integrity no matter how misguided his public policy prescriptions are.

It has been said that Congressman Paul is the intellectual godfather of the Tea Party, even though many of his positions which were once associated the conservative right, such as isolationism, are categorized as left-wing. This analysis of Congressman Paul’s impact is also disputed on the basis that the groundwork for the Tea Party was derived from the grass roots passion that was generated by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s (1964- ) 2008 vice-presidential candidacy for the GOP.

Opposition to the notion of paying more taxes and populist memories of the Palin candidacy gave rise during the 2010 mid-term congressional elections to what became known as the Tea Party. The emergence of this new movement provided the Republicans with the necessary momentum to win the 2010 mid-term congressional elections.

There are now dangerous signs that Congressman Ron Paul’s previous endeavours are bearing fruit in that the Tea Party is now moving toward a neo-Taftist approach in both economic policy and foreign relations. The political progress made by the former Texas congressmen has made since 2008 has been impressive.

In 2008 Congressman Paul’s campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination was mainly supported by his extensive family network. Four years later due to the United States maintaining its commitments in Afghanistan combined with the relatively slow withdrawal of American troops from Iraq part of the American left ironically gave its stalwart support to Ron Paul even though he was seeking the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination!

This enthusiasm for Congressman Paul’s 2012 presidential candidacy encompassed college students, war veterans and families of armed forces personnel who were understandably anxious about America’s overseas military commitments. Ron Paul’s espoused libertarianism is now endowing the Tea Party with a sense of political direction that a viable neo-Taftist wing of the Republican Party under the leadership of his son, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky (1963- ) is now a distinct possibility.

The above scenario is ironically reflective of an initially left-wing social movement in the Republican Party surviving by eventually absorbing the right-wing populist Tea Party movement. The interesting question is will the ‘Paulist’ social movement transform the Tea Party or will this neo-Taftist outfit be transformed by the right-wing populism of the Tea Party?

Who Has the Political Centre Will Win Power in the United States

To avoid the disaster of neo-Taftism the Republican Party needs an equivalent of a New Democrat Coalition (NDC) which can help ensure that centrists remain in the ascendancy in a GOP congressional context. Most of the Republican incumbents in the Congress and at state and local government levels are sensible but need a degree of protection from the increasingly powerful Tea Party movement with regard to fighting off nomination challenges.

Karl Rove (1950- ), a leading GOP strategist has already called for a support organisation to help the Republican Party maintain a mainstream political course. A phenomenon in US politics has been too many Americans are unaware of (with the notable exception of the Tea Party) are the existence of de facto inner political parties which operate within their two major parties.

The contemporary GOP can take heed from the successes and the failures of a de facto inner party/faction which almost changed the course of British politics for the better, the Campaign for a Labour Victory (CLV). The CLV was a centrist organisation formed within the British Labour Party in 1977 with the straightforward but very challenging agenda of ensuring the re-election of the moderate Labour government of Jim Callahan (1912 to 2005) in the 1979 general election.

The CLV almost saved the Callahan government by helping it nearly win the 1979 by appealing to disillusioned Labour supporters to not go over to the Tories. Had this occurred the future radical polarization of British politics might have been avoided. The formation of a secretariat/political movement within the American Republican Party aiming at securing the re-election, at both at the nomination stage and on voting day, of GOP incumbents who favour both tax increases and spending decreases could also help save the United States and the world from an economic catastrophe.

The paradox of American politics is that unexciting fiscal conservatives within both the GOP and the Democrats could in helping save the world from economic disaster ultimately determine which of the two major parties becomes the majority party in twenty-first century America. Currently, barring an economic cataclysm, the NDC is on course to establishing their party as the future dominant political force in America.

A possible future irony of a Democrat success could be to shift the GOP further to the right (or is it to the left) of neo-Taftism. American isolationism per se is a terrible phenomenon because it is reflective of withdrawal from making difficult decisions whether it is in foreign policy as well as domestic matters in regard to economic policy in an inter-connected global economy.

American presidential administrations simply cannot afford to withdraw from undertaking important decisions which affect a globalized economy for the risk of an international meltdown occurring. This could plunge over half the American people into horrendous poverty. Furthermore, should there ever be a President Rand Paul administration it would be interesting to see, even if not worth taking the risk, of whether the United States pulls back from engagement with the world with regard to international finance and military action abroad.

When and When Not To Intervene Abroad Militarily?

The Obama administration has been innately cautious with regard to taking military action or engagement abroad. This is understandable given the imbroglio that the United States became ensnared in, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. President Obama has treaded a careful line between non-intervention and an overall laissez-faire approach to foreign policy. The most vivid example of this fine line has been Syria.

Had the United States intervened in Syria the current bloody civil war could have ended by now along with the still distinct prospect that this nation, which is at the strategic crossways of the Middle East, will have an anti-western Sulfist government. Alternately, President Obama’s warning to Bashir Assad that the United States has drawn a ‘red line’ with regard to the use of chemical and biological weapons against the Syrian people has probably helped avert a colossal disaster.

The inherent danger of taking considered decisions is that there is a fine line between prudence and negligence. There is however little scope for the latter in American foreign policy when dealing with the Middle East when there is considerable potential for possibly fatal nuclear weapons proliferation.

Egypt’s Political Economy Will Determine Whether There is War or Peace in the Middle East

The area of immediate major concern for the United States is actually Egypt in addition to a nuclear armed republican Iran. This is because Egypt has been the lynchpin of the Middle East peace process since the signing of the 1979 Camp David Accords. If the Arab world’s most populous nation becomes an anti-American dictatorship then the prospects for world peace could be fatally undermined.

Since becoming Egyptian president in late June 2012 Dr. Mohamed Morsi (1951- ) has shown a distinct inclination toward establishing an anti-American dictatorship. He has however being cautious due to potential popular support for a military coup against him should he attempt to become a dictator.

The president’s Muslim Brotherhood is effectively the best organised political movement in the nation and probably has a committed support base of 30% of the population. The opposition, an assortment of various political liberals, Nasserite socialists and Coptic Christians can probably rely upon another 30% of the population with the remaining 40% sitting ‘on the fence’ or too apathetic to bother with politics.

The Egyptian military curiously and paradoxically, despite nearly sixty years of armed forces backed government, is still applying its post-1971 political doctrine of ‘ruling without governing’ in regard to the unfolding political situation. The major concern of the Egyptian armed forces is to secure military aid and resources. The National Defence Council (NDC), the armed force’s guiding executive body, would be prepared to allow Morsi to establish an outright ‘Islamist’ dictatorship if the necessary military aid and weapons could be secured from republican Iran.

Currently, it is a bridge too far for republican Iran to replace the United States as the major military and economic support for Egypt. This is not only because of limitations with regard to republican Iran’s economic capacity but also due to the effectiveness of contemporary American sanctions against Tehran. Nevertheless, should republican Iran gain nuclear weapons capability the ramifications for world peace would not only be dire but in a more particular context such a development could help transform Egypt into an anti-American dictatorship.

The question therefore emerges what is the United States to do with regard to its Egyptian policy to avoid an unmitigated diaster? The first point that needs to be made is that the Obama administration is taking the correct course of action by paradoxically selling weapons to the Egyptian military because it is still orientated but not necessarily committed to an alliance with the United States.

Why Opposition Participation in Elections is a Panacea for Democracy

At a more practical political level the Obama administration can activate the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a quasi-official agency that is partly funded by the US State Department by helping finance the provision of poll watchers for Egypt’s April 2013 parliamentary elections. The NED is not allowed by American law to fund political parties but its involvement in funding poll watching organisations and other Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) is legally permissible. Should this occur, the impetus for indirect American moral support for democratic forces would make a positive difference for Egypt and the world.

A wonderful precedent with regard to the NED promoting democracy were the Nicaraguan elections of February 1990. In these elections the predominately democratic but under-resourced disparate opposition was able to triumph over the corrupt and well-resourced Marxist Sandinistas due to there being domestic and international poll watchers being on the ground to prevent ballot tampering. This provided an invaluable psychological boost to most Nicaraguan voters who knew that they subsequently had the first real opportunity in their lives to vote in a clean ballot.

Taking precedents such as Nicaragua into account the decision by Egypt’s opposition umbrella organisation the National Salvation Front (NSF) to carry through with its recently announced election boycott this would be a grave mistake. A parliamentary election boycott could well enable President Morsi to establish an avowedly Islamist dictatorship.

Indeed, recent modern political history validates the golden rule opposition groups/parties must always participate in elections within an authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian political setting. To do so necessarily expands the potential scope for democracy and regime change.

The totalitarian dictatorship of Fidel Castro (1927- ) and of his brother Raul (1931- ) has never allowed anything approximating multi-party elections in Cuba because they know that to even give an inch a democratic mile could be taken. Similarly, an important reason that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is yet to progress toward approaching an embryonic democratic framework is because *direct elections at national and provincial level have never occurred since 1949.

(*Direct and quasi-competitive elections in which candidates are vetted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have occurred since the 1990s and offer the PRC a potential model to avoid a future disaster).

While opposition participation in elections can move semi-totalitarian regimes to authoritarian, (such as contemporary Burma), opposition party participation in elections conducted by authoritarian regimes can move a nation to fully-fledged democracy. The prime example of this peacefully and legally occurring was Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Philippines also had a transition from dictatorship to democracy because the opposition took advantage of President Ferdinand E Marcos (1917 to 1989, president of the Philippines between 1965 and 1986) allowing opposition participation in elections after he became a dictator in 1972. As much as the Marcos regime was de-stabilized by the national uproar following the assassination of Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino (1932 to 1983) prominent businessman and opposition advisor, Jose S Concepcion warned that a boycott of the April 1984 parliamentary elections would have enabled President Marcos to ride out the storm to remain in power indefinitely.

The participation of the major opposition parties in the April 1984 polls set the scene for a strong centrist opposition to effectively challenge President Marcos in the snap presidential election of February 1986 which subsequently precipitated a successful and largely peaceful regime changing ‘people power’ revolution.

South Vietnam under President *Nguyen Van Thieu (1924 to 1991) in the 1960s and 1970s was different to the Marcos Philippines in that it was not so much a dictatorship as an immature democracy where an authoritarian inclined president too easily dominated, partly because of an underdeveloped political party system. The ill-advised opposition boycott of the 1971 presidential election in retarding opposition party formation helped President Thieu to become a virtual dictator.

(*Nguyen Van Thieu was actually born in December 1924 but claimed that his birthday was in April 1923 because be believed tha this date was more astrologically auspicious).

For all President Thieu’s successes in consolidating his dictatorial power his position came under substantial challenge after the myriad micro-parties, political factions and once competeting Catholic and Buddhist social political movements coalesced into the Social Democratic Alliance (SDA) for the 1975 elections. The achievement domestic non-communist opposition unity was an important factor in President Thieu making the disastrously fatal mistake of ordering a military withdrawal from the Central Highlands so that an improved military situation would consequently bolster his threatened political position.

The constituent groupings within the SDA agreed that where a particular member party/grouping was strongest it would run candidates for legislative *elections scheduled for September 1975, the month preceding the presidential election. Where no one constituent group was predominant in a particular area, a panel consisting of local representatives from opposition groups then pre-selected a candidate with strong prospects, even if he or she did not have a party affiliation.

(*Elections scheduled for 1975 did not take place because all of South Vietnam was overrun by the North Vietnamese by the end of April that year).

The Sphinx Without a Riddle: Why Opposition Election Boycotts Lead to Dictatorship

In the contemporary Egyptian context the constituent parties of the NSF are not only forfeiting a golden opportunity to potentially win the nation’s April 2012 parliamentary elections but also setting the scene for an avowedly ‘Islamist’ dictatorship. Hopefully, a high priority of the Obama administration will be to insist that fair and clean elections will be held throughout the four stages of voting. For Egyptians who are disinclined to partake in party politics but still desire democracy, they can have an impact by supporting local poll-watching organisations.

The importance to the United States via the NED helping ensure that free and fair April 2012 Egyptian parliamentary elections are held cannot be overstated. For if Egypt becomes an ‘Islamist’ dictatorship aligned with republican Iran then the prospects for peace in the Middle East and the consequently the world could be fatally compromised. By contrast having a Morsi government operating in a context in which there is a democratically elected parliament could help facilitate political moderation on its part.

The Morsi government can either operate as a democratic regime or an avowedly ‘Islamist’ dictatorship depending on both institutional settings and political dynamics on the ground. Although the inclination of President Morsi is probably toward the latter he can still be denied the capacity of becoming a dictator should politically moderate forces participate and do well in this year’s parliamentary elections.

If Egypt has an Islamist government operating in a democratic context then a model can be established for other Middle Eastern countries to similarly have such regimes. Moves toward democracy throughout the Middle East will almost inevitably ensure the election in some countries of Islamist governments but this does not necessarily mean that the need for them to become dictatorships similar to republican Iran.

Lose-Lose:Republican Iran’s Nuclear Threat

Republican Iran is however a long established dictatorship which has set the template for ‘Islamist’ dictatorship in the Middle East. The acute danger that republican Iran poses to the world is not only been the model for ‘Islamist’ dictatorship but its potential acquisition and even utilization of nuclear weapons. Because anti-Americanism is so engrained in republican Iran’s leadership they conceptualize positive political outcomes in terms of win-lose vis a vis the United States, with American on the losing side.

Therefore any notion of the United States entering into negotiations with republican Iran over its nuclear programme should be discounted because Tehran will utilize talks as a means of undermining America as occurred during the 1979 to 1981 hostages’ crisis. Instead, the United States would be better served by annunciating clear red lines and deadlines by which republican Iran provides internationally verifiable proof that nuclear weapons are not being developed.

Because there is no scope for a win-win scenario without the United States effectively pressuring republican Iran to terminate its nuclear weapons programme credible threats of military action will need to be made by the Obama administration. This will mean that the US defense department and the CIA will have to, if they are not already doing so, analyse America’s inherent military capacity to permanently destroy republican Iran’s nuclear weapons programme by a short and sharp military action within a specified time frame.

Once it has been worked by the US military how effective military action against republican Iran’s nuclear weapons programme can be undertaken the Obama administration will hopefully give Tehran sufficient leeway to show genuine good faith. If there should not be forthcoming the United States will have no real choice except to take preventative maintenance by undertaking appropriate military measures to stop republican Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Military intervention against Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme will not constitute an outright invasion and occupation republican Iran akin to Afghanistan and Iraq. Such an intervention would be of a specific pre-determined duration which would leave Tehran’s existing leadership in place but without the capacity to threaten the world by threatening the use of nuclear weapons.

Let a republican Iran be shorn of its nuclear weapons capacity face to then wrath of over seventy percent of its population who loathe the Tehran regime. The ruling coalition between the Mullahs and the military will be sorely tested should republican Iran be denied a nuclear weapons capacity.

Why Policy Abstention Will Lead to Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

Should the Obama administration allow republican Iran to develop a nuclear weapons capacity then the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the crucial help of a nuclear armed Pakistan, could well acquire nuclear weapons. Nuclear armed non-democracies on the Arabian Peninsula overly dependent upon oil as its economic resource is a recipe for horrific disaster.

By contrast, nuclear weapons proliferation on the sub-continent on the part of India and Pakistan has not yet led to nuclear Armageddon because both nations having always been relatively rationally ruled and in the case of India usually (except during the emergency period between 1975 and 1977) been a democracy. There is however scope Pakistan to go awry should the Pakistani Taliban launch a full-scale insurgency to take power in its own right.

That there is a Pakistani Taliban is an irony because this movement is a derivative of the Afghan Taliban which in turn was essentially created by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency in the early 1990s. For historical and geographical factors Pakistan is still allied to the United States even if its intelligence-military agencies, as opposed to its governments, have covertly supported the Afghan Taliban despite their fighting against US led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The Karzai government in Kabul in order to survive might very well go into the Pakistani military’s sphere of influence after the bulk of coalition forces withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014. Indeed, the major factor which would prevent a post-2014 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan would be for the ISI opposing its one-time creation so that the Pakistani Taliban does not become the monster that consumes Pakistan which is a nuclear armed nation.

It therefore goes without saying that a high foreign policy priority for the Obama administration is to arrive an encompassing modus operandi with the Pakistan government and autonomous military agencies. This could help avoid both nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and disaster in Central Asia by preventing the Taliban from coming to power in Kabul after 2014.

Because power politics in international affairs can often be a zero-sum game the United States may have to resort to brief but targeted military action against republican Iran’s nuclear weapons programme to impress important allies such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, even though the PRC is not an ally of the Untied States international co-operation between these two nations will be needed to prevent nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula.

Again, as with republican Iran, North Korea has a national leadership that has a win-lose approach toward the United States which will all but inevitably result in a lose-lose scenario. The PRC may not be democratic but its leadership is rational in that it appreciates the inherent dangers of there being a nuclear armed North Korea. Military action by the United States might be undertaken with PRC approval to prevent North Korea from using its nuclear weapons capacity. Again as with republican Iran such American military intervention would have to be brief and precisely targeted.

An American military action to pre-empt use of North Korean nuclear weapons could lead to an outbreak of outright war between the two Koreas. However, the only scenario than a Korean war is that of North Korean missiles been fired on Seoul, Tokyo or New York. Such a scenario can be avoided should Beijing apply pressure on Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear missiles and desist from developing any nuclear weapons.

The contemporary challenges which confront the Obama administration are of grave importance which often call for careful discernment in when to and when not to take prompt action. The Obama administration has shown a degree of skill in maintaining a steady approach to ward off disaster in regard to foreign and economic policy in a globally precarious environment. However the White House’s at times effective prudence has also been a form of benign neglect which in a context of potential catastrophe can make Barack Obama (1961- ) either one of the worst or one of the greatest American presidents in history.

The Continued Importance of the Nixon Presidency

With regard to US presidential assessments even RN’s harshest political critics conceded that he was one of the United States’ most important twentieth century politicians. Most scholarly critics now inaccurately categorize RN as a failed president. His achievements, such as the American opening up to the PRC in 1972 and the initiation of the still on-going Middle East peace process in 1973 have since stood the test of time.

A source of RN’s greatness, but an important reason why he later fell as president in August 1974, was that he was prepared to take unpopular decisions and stances because he consistently prepared to pursue what he regarded as America’s national interests.

RN was also an important leader in his own right because he helped define the nature of American politics before, during and after his presidency. Such was the political impact of RN’s 1952 vice-presidential selection that the dichotomy between Taft Republicans and Progressives essentially disappeared. Accordingly, whether RN realized it or not, an important ramification of his 1952 vice-presidential selection was that the Republicans between the 1950s and 1980s became a centre/centre-right party which accepted much of the New Deal orthodoxy which then reflected majority national sentiment.

The Republicans might have been able to hold off against an inherent Democratic national majority by winning the 1954 congressional elections had Speaker Martin had provided the GOP with a distinct sense of ideological coherence that the public could support. His failure to do so was crucial to the Democrats winning a majority in the House of Representatives in the mid-term 1954 congressional elections which they enjoyed for the next forty years.

An important reason why the Democrats maintained their political ascendancy at a congressional level was due to the Speakership of Sam Rayburn (1882 to 1961) who returned to the speakership in early 1955 having previously held that position between 1940 and 1946. The widespread personal integrity of Speaker Rayburn endowed him with the moral authority to help keep the New Deal Democratic Party majority coalition intact while paradoxically contributing to a GOP acceptance of their minority position within the House of Representatives due to the respect that House Republicans accorded him.

The Democrats’ congressional linkage to the New Deal legacy was also maintained by Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ, 1908 to 1973) who served in that position between 1955 and 1961. Senator Johnson initiated legislation in keeping with the New Deal spirit which the Eisenhower administration generally supported. This helped inaugurate an unprecedented period of executive-legislative co-operation (1955 to 1961) between a president and a congress with a majority from the ostensibly opposing party.

The virtual ideological consensus which marked the Eisenhower presidency helped create the paradox of the close and bitterly contested presidential election of 1960 between RN as outgoing vice-president and Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK, 1917 to 1963). The intensity of this presidential race was partly derived from the appreciation of key leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties that whichever candidate won could subsequently set the nation’s future ideological direction.

Had the votes of the very close 1960 presidential election been accurately counted to result in an RN victory then it would have been interesting to have seen if a Nixon presidency could have subsequently established a new Republican majority at a congressional level and with regard to party registration. The importance of RN in affecting Republican Party ideological formation was still manifested by his unsuccessful bid for California governor in 1962.

RN’s 1962 defeat and his public sourness at losing inadvertedly contributed to an ideological vacuum in the Republican Party which enabled Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to win the Republican Party nomination in 1964. A Goldwater presidency would probably have been politically unviable because his stalwart southern and mid-western supporters foolishly mis-perceived his libertarianism for conservatism.

Even though Senator Goldwater was essentially in accord with President Johnson’s foreign and defence policies the Democrats mis-portrayed the 1964 GOP presidential candidate as an extremist who could not be trusted with his finger on the nuclear button. This very effective scare campaign not only helped deliver a landslide *popular vote for President Johnson but helped deliver 36 House of Representative seats to the Democrats.

(*President Johnson received over 61% of the popular vote which is highest level to date in an American presidential election. A paradox of Senator Goldwater’s massive defeat was that there was still a shift in southern white votes to a Republican presidential candidate for the first time since the GOP’s foundation. This helped set the scene for many southern white voting Republican in subsequent national and state elections).

LBJ interpreted his landslide election victories in the popular vote and at congressional level as a mandate to implement the policies of his Great Society programme. Great Society legislation was passed in the 1960s concerning Medicare, social security and the protection of voter registration rights for blacks which were socio-economic consolidations of the New Deal.

The impressive domestic achievements of the Johnson administration might have been entrenched had it not been for LBJ trying to also fund the American military commitment in Vietnam. The president was not only fiscally challenged in balancing the domestic programmes of the Great Society and the Vietnam commitment but correspondingly keeping his political base from splintering.

A strong anti-Vietnam War movement emerged between 1965 and 1968 which undermined LBJ’s domestic base among existing and potential Democratic Party voters. This phenomenon was reflected by the quote of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jnr (1929 to 1968) famously saying that the struggle for the Great Society was being lost in the battlefields of Vietnam.

Divisions within the Democratic Party over the Vietnam War helped the Republican Party to gain forty-seven House of Representatives seats in the 1966 mid-term elections. The GOP may not have made these gains had it not been for RN leading the Republican charge during the 1966 campaign. The former vice-president utilized his encyclopaedic political knowledge of on the ground situation across the nation to extensively but judiciously campaign for GOP candidates so that the Republicans regained much of their base which had been ceded in 1964.

National Political Divisions Emerge in the 1968 US Presidential Election

RN’s impact in helping his party regain much of its base almost perfectly positioned him to easily win his party’s presidential nomination in 1968. This incredible political come-back may still not have been enough for RN to win the presidency had the Democrat’s New Deal majority coalition probably remained intact with President Johnson running for re-election.

That the president did not stand again was due to the disconcerting impact of Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy’s (1916 to 2005) strong showing in the March 1968 New Hampshire primary in which he garnered 41% of the vote to LBJ’s 49% . Although this was notionally a victory for the president the relatively narrow margin was actually a terrible political defeat for a White House incumbent.

Ever the political realist President Johnson knew that Senator McCarthy as a stalking horse for Senator Robert F Kennedy (RFK, 1925 to 1968) had actually cleared the way for the New York senator to enter (which RFK did on the 16th of March, four days after the New Hampshire primary) to ultimately win the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Ironically, RFK’s major avowed opponent for the Democratic Party presidential nomination was Senator McCarthy.

RFK’s narrow victory in the June 5th California presidential primary over Senator McCarthy provided him with the probable momentum to win the Democratic presidential nomination but he was assassinated on the 6th of June. This assassination placed the presidential selection open at the August Democratic Convention in Chicago where Senator McCarthy was denied the nomination by a swag of ‘favourite son’ presidential candidacies.

These favourite son candidates subsequently rallied to ensure that the presidential nomination went to Vice-President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota (1911 to 1978). The success of Democratic Party bigwigs ensuring the vice-president’s nomination alienated McCarthy delegates and many of the supporters of the late RFK. The discontent within the convention was a pale version of the violent demonstrations outside instigated by young anti-war activists outside the Chicago Democratic National Convention.

The television images in and immediately outside the Chicago Democratic National Convention conveyed the image that the Democrats were a party in turmoil whose candidate was therefore incapable of effectively leading the nation. The July 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami by contrast, was disciplined, that RN’s election victory in November almost seemed a certainty.

That the 1968 presidential victory was to be one of closest in American history was due to Vice-President Humphrey’s courage in clawing back the New Deal coalition by specifically repudiating the anti-war demonstrators. As vocal, well organised and prominent as these protesters were, their political bases within the Democratic Party did not necessarily reflect as broad a level of support within American society.

Indeed, Vice-President Humphrey’s success in reclaiming his party’s base was reflective of an application of what could later be called a *Lasch political strategy. The vice-president’s courageous campaigning almost won him the presidency by facilitating his re-assembling of the New Deal coalition.

(*Christopher Lasch, 1932 to 1994, was an American social commentator who recognised the innate social conservatism of many blue collar Americans. His insights established a basis for political operatives on the right to win over economically less well of Americans by attacking the often left-libertarian socio-political outlook leaders of the political left).

Ironically, Vice-President Humphrey very narrowly lost the election to RN due to the defection of a southern white vote to the third party candidacy of *Governor George Wallace of Alabama (1919 to 1998). Wallace’s inaugural speech as Alabama governor on the January 14th 1963 in which he stated ‘segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever’, helped establish a strong power base southern among southern whites that his third party candidacy garnered 13% of the national vote in the 1968 presidential election.

(*George Wallace by Alabama standards was initially a relatively politically liberal on race matters. He had established this reputation as an elected state judge that he then applied to run for his party’s gubernatorial nomination in 1958, which was tantamount to being elected governor. Having consequently lost the 1958 nomination, Wallace snared the state Democratic Party’s nomination four years later by running on a brazenly racist election platform, a diabolical feat which he repeated in 1970.

Wallace as governor of Alabama between, 1963 and 1967; 1971 and 1979 and from 1983 to 1987, was however actually careful to ensure that blacks similarly enjoyed the benefits of the economic and educational reforms that he introduced as governor. He accordingly won election again as governor in 1982, after apologizing for his previous racist rhetoric, to win over eighty percent of the black vote that year!

The political career of George Corley Wallace is testament to the ultimate dangers of intelligent people losing out in the long term by trying to be something that they really are not for the sake of short-term political advancement).

Had Governor Wallace won a higher popular vote he might have denied both RN and Vice-President Humphrey a majority in the National Electoral College that the election of president would have gone to the congress to decide. A Democratic Party majority congress might have elected Vice-President Humphrey and his running mate Edmund Muskie of Maine as the respective president and vice-president of the United States or perhaps made Wallace the vice-president as part of a political deal.

RN was therefore relatively fortunate to have won the 1968 presidential election with the Republican Party’s committed but still minority electoral support base. The RN presidential first term was successful in terms of domestic and foreign policy achievements but presidential re-election in 1972 was still problematic because of Vice-President Hebert Humphrey’s relative success in re-establishing the Democrats’ New Deal coalition majority.

RN Establishes Identifies the Silent Majority in 1970 to Achieve a Republican Presidential Majority in 1972

A consummate politician such as RN was still aware of his scope as national leader to win over key constituent voting blocs to the Republican Party such as blue collar workers. The president’s ‘silent majority’ speech in 1970 in which RN in defending his administration’s phased withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam articulated the insight that only the United States could defeat itself.

This presidential attack on the so-called ‘anti-war movement’ was part of strategy of realizing the potential of winning over previously stalwart Democratic bloc votes to secure re-election in 1972. Indeed, RN undoubtedly would have lost his 1972 re-election bid if a mainstream Democratic politician such as Senator Muskie had won his party’s presidential election.

Incredibly enough, the Democrats obliged RN by nominating the far left Senator George Mc Govern (1922 to 2012) of South Dakota at their national convention in Miami Beach in Florida in July 1972. Senator Mc Govern had a tactical advantage because he helped draw up new rules for delegate selection at the 1972 Democratic nominating convention. Even with this in-built advantage Senator Mc Govern probably would have lost the nomination to Senator Muskie because of the widespread respect he enjoyed within the Democratic Party and amongst the general public.

The beginning of the implosion of Senator Muskie’s presidential campaign after he was mis-perceived as shedding terms, which were actually water ice drops on his face. This had occurred just before New Hampshire’s March 1972 presidential primary when the Maine senator responded to the scurrilous accusation by that state’s mis-named Manchester Union Leader newspaper that his wife had a drinking problem. Senator Muskie’s underwhelming victory in the New Hampshire primary fatally undermined his candidacy that the two front runners consequently became Senator Mc Govern and Governor Wallace.

A Mc Govern-Wallace contest for the Democratic Party nomination would have challenged Democratic Party unity, if not party viability, to say the least. This polarizing show-down was averted by Governor Wallace being paralysed below the waist after been shot in an assassination attempt while campaigning in Maryland in early May. The contest for the Democratic presidential nomination then became a struggle between Senator Mc Govern and former Vice-President Hebert Humphrey who almost denied his rival by forming a near successful Anyone but Mc Govern (ABM) coalition at the Miami Convention.

Mc Govern’s presidential nomination by the Democrats all but assured RN’s 1972 re-election that the only question was that of how wide the president’s popular vote victory margin would be. The president’s landslide re-election with just over 60% of the popular vote reflected the shift of Democratic bloc votes such blue collar workers to RN. However such shifts in voting bases did not mean a transfer of support to the Republicans at either a local or congressional level. This was due to the desire of most Democrat voters who supported RN to ensure that the New Deal legacy was protected.

The New American Revolution Gives Way to the Watergate ‘Scandal’ (sic)

President Nixon planned to win over Democratic voters to the Republican Party per se in his second term by unveiling what he termed the ‘New American Revolution’. This programme was to be based on the concept of voluntarism went back to before America’s War of Independence (1775 to 1781). Voluntarism was, and is, an approach in which individuals and communities undertake action to advance the public good of their own volition without government/state input.

The most famous practitioner of voluntarism was one of the most the illustrious of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin (1706 to 1790). Benjamin Franklin’s impact on the social, political and technological spheres on what became the United States are too numerous and profound to be adequately overviewed. Indeed, his ideas and scientific insights also impacted on the world.

Benjamin Franklin social impact in relation to voluntarism encompassed founding the world’s first fire brigade and public library. An important reason why colonial rule became unviable was because British officials did not understand the importance of voluntarism in promoting self-sufficiency in relation to local community organisation. Indeed, the success of the American military struggle for independence was the ultimate manifestation of voluntarism.

The approach to voluntarism in a second Nixon term would have been one where individual and collective action would have been fostered to complement and ultimately supercede but not abolish the American equivalent of a welfare state that the New Deal had bequeathed.

President Nixon believed that by promoting voluntarism he could engineer a massive shift in electoral support from the Democrats at local and congressional levels to the Republican Party. The high importance that RN placed on achieving this political outcome was reflected by his determination, if not obsession, that he be succeeded by former Texas governor (1963 to 1969) and his Treasury Secretary (1971 to 1972), John Connally (1917 to 1993).

Governor Connally was a one time stalwart Democrat who had headed the very effective ‘Democrats for Nixon’ organisation in 1972. His success in helping prise away stalwart Democrat votes over to the GOP presidential incumbent set the scene for Governor Connally to take the dramatic but predictable move of becoming a registered Republican in 1973.

The dream that President Nixon had of been succeeded by his former Treasury Secretary was destroyed along with his voluntarist New American Revolution by the Watergate conspiracy which was primarily engineered by Massachusetts Senator Edward (‘Ted’) Kennedy, (1932 to 2009). The utilization of the Kennedy family’s political network to help assemble a Senate legal team and engineering the appointment of Archibald Cox (1912 to 2004) as special prosecutor all created the necessary institutional legal framework for RN to become ensnared in a legal context that destroyed his presidency.

The Watergate ‘scandal’ (sic) paralysed RN’s domestic political capacity and limited but not fatally undermined, his foreign policy capacity, as the expeditious despatch of American military hardware to Israel in October 1973 following the outbreak of the Yom Kipper War demonstrated. RN’s foreign and defence policy capacity was however fatally undermined with regard to Indo-China due to the impact of military aid cutbacks to South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos at the initiative of *Ted Kennedy.

(*This Massachusetts senator was proud of his role in fatally cutting military aid to the then non-communist states of Indo-China that it was too much to expect that Kennedy would have faced up to the consequences of his actions, particularly with regard to the holocaust in Cambodia between April 1975 and late 1978).

Kennedy demonstrated his ultimate political prowess by crucially helping to ensure that President Nixon resigned in August 1974. Gerald R Ford (1913 to 2006) as RN’s successor as president was fatally undermined by his courageous decision to pardon his predecessor so that he could avoid a life of legal persecution and possible imprisonment. The subsequently weakened position of President Ford crucially helped Senator Ted Kennedy to ride rough shod over him, most adversely with regard to the American denial of adequate military aid for South Vietnam and Cambodia which led to their fall to communist military forces in April 1975.

This Massachusetts senator’s comparatively strong political position in 1975 vis a vis President Ford made his presidential nomination by the Democratic Party all but his for the taking. Even a supportive 1976 front cover story profile in Newsweek magazine was not enough to entice Kennedy to run for president that year.*

(*This reluctance may have been due to questions of character concerning the Chappaquiddick incident of 1969)

The Aftermath of Watergate Spawns the Presidency of Jimmy Carter

The Kennedy refusal to run cleared the way for former Georgia governor, James, ‘Jimmy’, Earl Carter (1924- ) to snare the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination to subsequently narrowly win the presidential election that year. Governor Carter’s upset victories in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary established a then virtual national political unknown as the presidential front runner.

These early election upsets were due to meticulous organisation by the Carter campaign. Governor Carter’s ‘Mr. Smith’ goes to Washington’ persona consolidated his front runner status by being as he seemed to be the opposite of the unfairly Watergate tainted RN. The former Georgia governor’s convincing victory in the 1976 April Wisconsin virtually secured his nomination against a swag of better known politicians such as Washington State Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ *Jackson (1912 to 1983).

(*The Washington State Senator unfortunately failed to win the Democratic Party nomination in 1972 and 1976. A President Scoop Jackson would have achieved a balance between effectively opposing the Soviets and ensuring that the positive aspects of the New Deal legacy were protected, such as union labour rights).

Ironically, left-liberals within the Democratic Party galvanized behind Arizona Congressman Morris ‘Mo’ Udall (1922 to 1998) to attempt to deny Governor Carter the presidential nomination. This opposition was ironic because the future President Carter’s foreign policy between 1977 and late 1979, would in essence be a liberal-left anti-anti-communist one. As such the Carter administration’s foreign policy perspective was one of the United States accepting the ‘reality’ of Soviet power and that America was too often on the wrong side of history by opposing communism as a progressive force in the world.

However, the naiveté of the Carter’s administration’s foreign policy markedly changed after the Christmas 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).

With over 70% of the delegates at the July 1976 New York Democratic National Convention committed to Governor Carter, powerful national politicians, such as his unsuccessful presidential aspirant, Senator Frank Church of Idaho (1924 to 1984) had to acquiesce to a political outsider winning his party’s nomination. Left-liberal politicians such as Senator Church may have unnecessarily feared that Governor Carter as a white Southern Baptist from the ‘Deep South’ would initially pursue an anti-communist foreign policy.

To placate the Democratic Party’s liberal establishment Governor Carter choose Minnesota Senator Walter ‘Fitz’ Mondale (1928- ) as his running mate. This selection was still a good one in that Governor Carter and Senator Mondale were personally compatible and this would establish a basis for their forming an effective presidential/vice-presidential team.

At the time of the 1976 Democratic National Convention, Governor Carter seemed poised to win a landslide election victory in November. His personification of virtue (‘I will never lie to you’) in the wake of the Watergate beat-up combined with the in-built electoral advantages of coming from the ‘Deep South’ were political assets that President Ford would apparently be hard pressed to overcome. This was reflected Governor Carter having a 35% lead in opinion polls over *President Ford at the time of his presidential nomination.

(*Gerald Ford was in a comparatively weak position as president having not been previously elected as vice-president. He had assumed this position in 1973 his congressionally approved appointment following the resignation of Spiro Agnew, (1918 to 1996) for tax evasion when he was governor of Maryland. Gerald Ford’s non-election to either the vice-presidency or the presidency denied him a degree of political legitimacy that many Americans regarded him as an effective caretaker president as opposed to being an elected chief executive).

The Reagan Emergence

President Ford’s prospects of winning election were seemingly undermined by the strong challenge that former California governor, Ronald Reagan (1911- 2004) made for the 1976 Republican Party nomination. Governor Reagan, despite being an effective two-term governor of California (1967 to 1975) was initially not considered to be credible threat to win the Republican presidential nomination due to his been considered a conservative extremist which had been reflected y his previous support for Senator Barry *Goldwater (1909 to 1998).

(*Senator Goldwater ironically supported President Ford for the GOP presidential nomination).

Governor Reagan’s near winning the February 1976 New Hampshire primary roused President Ford’s supporters within the Republican Party out of their complacency that they countered with a devastating counter-offensive advertising blitz. Indeed, had Governor Reagan not won the North Carolina primary his candidacy would have effectively ended. Not only did the future president win this primary but the momentum he gained from doing so enabled him to wing a string of future primaries that had President Ford not won the primary in his home state of Michigan he probably would have lost the nomination to his rival.

The August 1976 GOP National Convention in Kansas City was an historic political event of high drama in that neither Ford or Reagan had sufficient delegates to immediately secure the nomination. President Ford resorted to a ‘rose garden’ strategy of wooing uncommitted delegates which probably may not have worked had Governor Reagan not made the tactical blunder of pre-emptively announcing that his running mate would be the liberal Republican Senator Richard Schweiker (1926- ) of Pennsylvania. This action alienated a sufficient number of conservative GOP delegates while *ignominiously failing to win the intended liberal support that President Ford was able to narrowly win the nomination.

(*Senator Schweiker, realizing that his pre-emptive vice-presidential selection was counterproductive, offered to withdraw which Governor Reagan graciously refused to allow him to do).

The drama at the Kansas City GOP Convention ironically benefited the Republican Party. In a political precedent President Ford invited his defeated rival onto the convention platform. The impromptu speech that Governor Reagan gave endorsing President Ford not only helped generate much needed party but left many delegates, including some Ford supporters, with the belief that the former California governor should have been nominated.

Nevertheless, the aggregate impact of the failed Reagan 1976 candidacy was to ironically to unite and broaden the Republican Party’s base that President Ford became politically competitive as the campaign progressed. This development also reflected the impact of RN’s 1972 landslide re-election in that millions of former Democrats were still prepared to support a GOP presidential candidate four years later.

Indeed, a retrospective concerning the unsolicited advice that RN provided President Ford with through personal intermediaries showed that had his counsel been headed then the Republicans would have retained the White House in 1976. RN uncannily advised the president on which to states to focus campaigning in and the GOP political contacts to utilize. President Ford’s failure or refusal to heed RN’s strategic and logistical advice cost him victory in the 1976 presidential election.

President Ford’s selection of Senator Bob Dole (1923- ) as his running mate was however shrewd.* The Kansas Senator was a noted civil rights liberal on racial matters and had been a consistent supporter of America’s Vietnam commitment that he was acceptable to both GOP conservatives and liberals. Even though Senator Dole’s acerbic performance in the vice-presidential debate was not helpful in a close election his deserved reputation as a party loyalist was ultimately helped unite the Republicans to bring them close to presidential victory in 1976.

(*RN had lobbied President Ford to choose Governor Connally as his running mate).

The Republican capacity for catch up in the 1976 campaign was vitally assisted by the increasingly apparent dilettantism of the Carter campaign. In this regard Governor Carter as president would show as president that there can be a fine line between innovative and creative thinking and outright amateurishness when conventional wisdom is foolishly disregarded.

The 1976 Election Result: The Electoral Re-Alignment that did not Occur

The Carter campaign was saved from defeat by his carrying all but two southern states and all of the so-called ‘Deep South’. This was due to lingering regional sentiments going back to the Civil War (1861 to 1865) in which many voters there supported a fellow southerner. This may not have eventuated had Governor George Wallace not given Jimmy Carter a tepid endorsement.

Ironically, Governor Wallace in 1976 was in a weaker political position than he had been in either 1968 or 1972 to respectively undertake a potential balance of power presidential candidacy or a mount a viable challenge for the nomination of one of the two major parties*. The former Alabama governor was still able to influence a sufficient number of whites to vote for Governor Carter even though there would and could be no real direct political benefit to him.

(*Governor Wallace had run for the Democratic nomination in 1976 but public and party attitudes had changed too much for his campaign to be remotely viable. Perhaps had he not been partially incapacitated as a result of the previous assassination attempt he may have had the capacity to politically re-invent himself to wage a stronger campaign for the 1976 Democrats presidential nomination).

Governor Carter’s success in carrying all but two southern states belied the fact that the margins he often won by were often narrow. This was particularly in the vital state of Texas where former governor, John Connally’s political base as a former Democrat narrowly failed to deliver victory to an incumbent Republican president.

The Carter Presidency: When Smart Ideas Do Not Work

President–elect Carter in expressing is relative regret at winning such a narrow victory after having such a massive lead in the opinion polls pledged that he would be a better president than presidential candidate. This would not be the case due to President Carter failing to implement his policies. During the Carter term (1977-1981) lateral policies concerning energy conservation were devised but were not effectively implemented due the administration’s dilettante approach to governance which too often bordered on the politically inept. This was reflected by President Carter’s terrible relations with Congress despite his party being in the majority.

A paradox of the strained relations between the president and the congress was that most Democrat incumbents were returned in the 1978 mid-term congressional elections. Indeed, it might have been the case that the narrow 1976 Carter victory had restored a Democrat national majority which had been in place since *1932 and that the 1972 Nixon landslide threatened had threatened. All that was essentially required to maintain a New Deal majority was for a Democrat president to provide a modicum of administrative and political competency as a mediocre president.

(*The 1952 and 1956 Eisenhower presidential victories were arguably due to his massive personal popularity. The closeness of RN’s 1960 candidacy was due to his personal prestige in transforming the role of vice-president and his victory in 1968 was due to Governor Wallace splitting the New Deal coalition vote).

President Carter was not so much a mediocre president but a lateral leader whose ideas were ahead of their time, such as in the area of energy policy. A mystery of the Carter presidency was why Vice-President Walter Mondale failed to effectively utilize his skills and connections as a Washington political insider to ‘plug the gaps’ concerning White House relations with Capitol Hill so that the administration’s policies could be implemented.

Failure to apply far-sighted domestic policies was an important reason for the failure of the Carter presidency but its foreign and defence policies between 1977 and later 1979 were ineffective in their own right. Media and political commentators stated that the Brezhnev regime in Moscow preferred a Ford election victory in 1976 because Carter’s emphasis on human rights was too unsettling, particularly with regard to supporting Jewish refusniks in the Soviet Union.

Any unsettledness that President Carter’s human rights orientated foreign policy caused was soon cancelled out for Moscow by the strategic ground that the Soviet Union made against the United States in the then Cold War context. During the Carter presidency Ethiopia (1977), South Yemen (1978) and Nicaragua (1979) became Marxist. Perhaps is unfair to blame the president for the first two mentioned nations falling Marxist (where the dye had already been cast) but with regard to Nicaragua the mis-application of US power provided the Soviets with an invaluable bridgehead in the Americas.

The tragic Carter foreign policy outcomes of virtually ensuring the succession of totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian regimes by undermining their pro-American authoritarian regimes predecessors was most disastrously manifested in Iran in January/February 1979. For all the faults and the positive attributes of the regime of His Imperial Majesty, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (1919 to 1980, reigned 1941 to 1979) the Carter administration should not have counter-productively pressured the Shah to liberalize at such a dangerous juncture.

The rise to power of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902 to1989) in February 1979 thwarted any prospect of the United States exercising its power to help usher in an Iranian democracy where human rights were respected. Instead, the world gained an ideologically virulently anti-American regime which still gauges its success by weakening the United States. The negative impact of republican Iran on the United States since 1979 has been profound.

It was Ayatollah Khomeini who effectively destroyed the presidency of Jimmy Carter. A distinguishing aspect of Khomeini’s personality was the deep antipathy that he felt towards opponents. The Shah of Iran was hounded by the republican regime until President Anwar Sadat (1918 to 1981) mercifully gave him asylum in Egypt shortly before his death from cancer in July 1980. A major reason why Khomeini waged a bloody war against Baathist Iraq between 1980 and 1988 was his determination to personally destroy President Saddam Hussein (1937 to 2006) for initiating the war in the first place by invading Iran in 1980.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s obsessive determination to destroy President Carter was probably derived from the American president despatching a military rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw, in April 1980 to save the 52 diplomatic staff that had been held in the American Embassy since been seized by militant university students in November 1979. This military mission was aborted because of a desert sandstorm which caused the crash of one of the despatched military helicopters.

From that point, it became Khomeini’s personal determination that President Carter be personally humiliated in the process of been politically brought down. The hostages were therefore not released until the day (20th of January 1981) that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president of the United States. For all Khomeini’s political nous he did not realize that the United States eventually stood to gain in domestic and foreign policy by having someone as formidable as Ronald Reagan as president.

The probable but sad truth is that without the Iranian hostages crisis, particularly in the context of Khomeini’s post- Operation Eagle Claw vendetta against President Carter, is that he probably would have won re-election in 1980. A 1980 Carter re-election without the Iranian hostages’ crisis was not an inevitability but rather a probable outcome. Such a scenario concerning a Carter re-election was another disastrous by-product of the Watergate beat-up in which Americans were prepared to resuscitate the New Deal majority due to the discrediting of the GOP.

The relatively recent aftermath of President Nixon’s resignation and President Ford’s pardon of his predecessor had not only thwarted any GOP prospect of voting transference from RN’s 1972 landslide re-election in the 1974 mid-term congressional elections which the Democrats won in a landslide. The electoral strength of the Democrats was such that a Democrat White House incumbent had a distinct advantage when facing re-election in 1980.

Another disastrous legacy of the Watergate beat-up was that a majority of Americans were prepared to endure the United States being ‘second best’ to the Soviet Union in the Cold War. An very detrimental consequence of Watergate was a revival of neo-isolationism in the form of the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ in which there was a widespread belief amongst the American public that the United States could not effectively oppose Soviet power in the world.

Cambodia:The Worst Victim of the Watergate Beat-Up

The strength of the Vietnam Syndrome was such that there was no clamour in the United States to despatch American military forces to Cambodia to end the genocidal Pol Pot regime (1975 to 1979). Ironically, in a probable pang of conscious for having previously opposed military aid to the preceding Khmer Republic, Senator Mc Govern called for an international military force to be assembled to end the Cambodian genocide.

The Khmer Rouge regime was ended in early January 1979 by the communist Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in late 1978. Hanoi’s objective was to de facto absorb its eastern neighbour as it betrayed its former ally the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by unambiguously aligning with Moscow.

The Vietnamese communist regime however blundered by not restoring Prince Sihanouk (1923 to 2012) to power sometime in 1979. Had this been done Hanoi could have maintained its balancing act between Beijing and Moscow, gained international credibility for ending the Pol Pot regime and the gratitude of the Cambodian people, which probably would have been grudging due to their long-standing historical antipathy toward Vietnam for having previously appropriated much of the territory of the old Khmer Empire.

Instead, by installing an initially tightly controlled puppet regime and occupying Cambodia, communist Vietnam understandably incurred the wrath of the PRC and alienated the Cambodian people. The majority of Khmers were throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s were orientated toward the anti-communist guerrilla forces, the unfortunately predominately republican Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF) and the unambiguously monarchist Armee Nationale Sihanoukiste (ANS).

The collapse of the impending collapse of the Soviet Union precipitated yet another Indo-China Paris peace conference, which occurred in November 1991, where communist Vietnam acquiesced to future United Nations (UN) supervised elections been held in Cambodia. From Hanoi’s perspective the overriding importance of the 1991 Paris Peace Conference was to seek a rapprochement with Beijing. It is therefore now ironic that Hanoi is again attempting to double-cross the PRC, this time by enticing the US into an anti-Chinese military alliance.

Ironies again abounded with regard to Cambodia in that it was a Democratic congressman, Stephen Solarz (1940 to 2010) who led the charge in 1985 to allocate non-lethal aid to the KPLNF and the ANS. Had there been more Democratic congressmen similar between 1973 and 1975 to Stephen Solarz, the non-communist states of Indo-China would have survived and Cambodia’s holocaust been avoided.

Avoiding foreign policy engagement in countries such as Cambodia while helping the Carter administration to avoid potentially frustrating challenges, paradoxically undermined the scope for the United States to internationally promote human rights. Nevertheless, even with the energy crisis and widely perceived ineffective foreign policy President Carter probably had a sufficiently strong domestic base in 1979-80 to win re-election. This changed as a result of the Iranian hostage crisis causing a widespread perception amongst the American people that their nation was in a state of ‘malaise’.

The 1980 Presidential Election Result: The American People Break with the Watergate Legacy

Even though President Carter had comfortably won a majority of delegates against Ted Kennedy there was still a strong ‘dump Carter’ sentiment at the Democratic National Convention in New York in August 1980. The president’s convention managers therefore had to be careful that a motion allowing delegate to have a free vote to select a presidential candidate from the floor was not moved. The precariousness of President Carter’s position at the convention reflected the deep antipathy that most senior Democratic national leaders now felt toward him.

A renominated President Carter probably still felt he could win the 1980 presidential election because of his contemptuous attitude toward his GOP presidential opponent. Indeed, a strong feeling of national malaise which the Iranian Hostages Crisis and an economic recession had brought to the fore, most Americans were probably inclined toward re-electing Jimmy Carter by a narrow but still distinct margin because of the majority support that the Democratic Party enjoyed.

The above scenario was plausible due to the enduring strength of the New Deal coalition which the Watergate beat-up had helped revive. That Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911 to 2004) went on to win in a landslide was probably due to the impact on the voting public of his televised debate against Jimmy Carter on the 28th of October 1980. Most media analysts predictably showed their bias by declaring that President Carter had won the debate.

However, Ronald Reagan’s riposte of ‘there you go again’ to the underlying pessimism of Jimmy Carter’s personal attacks on him in the presidential debate, resonated with millions of viewers. An overwhelming majority of Americans recognised in candidate Reagan a person whose optimist outlook reflected a personal strength that could harness the inherent capacity of the United States to overcome the profound problems that were then afflicting their nation.

The shift to Ronald Reagan may have been secured as a short-term consequence of the late October presidential debate but there were long term political ramifications of his landslide election victory. Southern states, with the understandable exception of President Carter’s home state of Georgia, for the second time since 1972, voted overwhelmingly for a GOP presidential candidate. In contrast to the 1972 elections, where there was deep antipathy toward Senator Mc Govern, millions of white southerners in 1980 manifested a shift regarding historically motivated voting patterns by supporting a GOP presidential candidate against a presidential incumbent from the ‘Deep South’.

The in-roads that the Republicans made in the South helped them win control of the Senate for the first time in over a quarter of a century. Ronald Reagan as a presidential candidate also picked up the bloc votes of many blue collar voters across the nation which gave rise to the phenomenon of the Reagan Democrats. The impressive success of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 candidacy was reflected by his carrying 44 of 50 states with the latter being traditional Democrat strongholds.

The 1980 Reagan victory was nevertheless, similar to the 1972 Nixon victory in that there was an overwhelming elected Republican presidential candidate facing a nation which was still aligned to the Democrats as reflected by their majorities in the House of Representatives and in the nation’s governor’s mansions and state legislatures despite GO in-roads. Consequently, president-elect Reagan advanced his equivalent of RN’s New American Revolution to create a new Republican majority, the ‘Reagan Revolution’.

The Reagan Revolution: American Renewal

The domestic cornerstone of the Reagan Revolution was supply-side economic inspired tax cuts to stimulate economic and employment growth. Because the effect of the 1981-82 tax cuts had not yet taken effect to generate this growth, the United States was in an economic recession which resulted in the Democrats more than recovering the ground in the November 1982 mid-term congressional elections that they had lost that Ronald Reagan then looked as though he would be a one-term president.

A strong economic recovery in 1983 (despite the dire projections of most American economists) provided President Reagan with the re-election edge as he entered 1984. The other important factor (beside economic recovery) which helped President Reagan successfully seek re-election was a renewal in American strength in international affairs. This was facilitated by the Reagan administration defying the Soviet backed ‘peace campaign’ between 1982 and 1987 in which much of the mainstream media around the world and peace protesters opposed the deployment of nuclear weapons in Western Europe.

The United States also began to hold its own in the then so-called ‘Third World’ against Soviet power. This was reflected by the Reagan Doctrine where the United States provided military aid to anti-communist guerrilla insurgents in Third World nations, most notably Afghanistan and Nicaragua. Indeed, although the military aid that the Reagan administration sought from Congress to allocate to the Contra rebel freedom fighters in Nicaragua was relatively modest but a massive left-wing social protest movement was generated to oppose such aid.

Opposition to Contra aid was a manifestation of the virulence of the *Vietnam Syndrome that the United States under President Reagan who was more successful in stopping the spread of Soviet power in the Third World and the Middle East as opposed to precipitating regime change against anti-American governments.

(*The potency of the Vietnam Syndrome was then such that after the Untied States led a military force of Commonwealth Caribbean nations to liberate Grenada in October 1983 from the Marxist New Jewel Movement, ten Democrat Congressmen attempted to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Reagan for allegedly violating the 1973 War Powers Act).

For the Cold War to be won against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), victory had to be achieved in Eastern and Central Europe against Soviet power. This however seemed to be an impossibility because the USSR’s nuclear arsenal apparently afforded protection for its empire that Moscow seemingly had the power to maintain its ascendancy over nations that it had conquered at the end of the Second World War.

Nevertheless, the impact of both America’s nuclear weapons build up and the application of the Reagan Doctrine challenged the Soviet Union to the extent that the way was cleared for the ascension in March 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev (1931- ). He was a relative reformist whose principal aim was to rejuvenate Soviet military and political power in the wake of the Reagan challenge as opposed to liberalizing the political system he inherited.

President Reagan’s refusal to fall for Gorbachev’s trap at their Reykjavik Summit in Iceland in October in October 1986 of ending research into developing a space shield under the aegis of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or Star Wars) in return for eliminating nuclear weapons in Europe was a milestone. This was because a clear message was sent by President Reagan to Gorbachev that the USSR would have to contend with a United States which could and would press its inherent scientific military advantage to effectively counter Soviet power.

For the United States to counter Soviet power was distinct from America utilizing its military nuclear advantage to bring down the Soviet empire. However, President Reagan instinctively sought to achieve this because he was consistently focused on how American foreign policy domestically impacted on the USSR.

The president’s capacity to discern the impact of American and foreign policy on Soviet domestic politics was partly due to the insights he was provided with by the writer Suzanne Massie (1933- ). She served as President Reagan’s unofficial adviser on Soviet politics/society and his emissary to Mikhail Gorbachev.

President Reagan was therefore intuitively aware that by his signing in December 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that to be ‘reformer’ in a Soviet and Eastern European context would then mean political liberalization in addition to reaching a modus operandi with the American led West.

The Importance of Neo-Cons in Helping America Win the Cold War

President Reagan’s insights into how to undermine the Soviet empire were also derived from his assembling a team of neo-conservatives (‘neo-cons’) within his administration. Because neo-cons were very prominent during the presidency of George W Bush (2001 to 2009) there has been a tendency to overlook their origins and initial importance during the Reagan presidency.

The neo-cons were the ideological children of the late Senator Scoop Jackson who had died in 1983. That is, they were anti-communist social democrats who began to align themselves with the Republican side of politics due to their disillusionment with the Democrats succumbing to the infliction of the Vietnam Syndrome.

It was the ill-effects of the Carter presidency in undermining American power in the world that the set the groundwork for the neo-cons to come into their own during the Reagan presidency. Perhaps the archetypal neo-con was Dr. Jean Kirkpatrick (1926 to 2006) who had been an anti-communist youth member of the Socialist Party of America and who as an academic was a staunch supporter first of Senator Humphrey and then of Senator Scoop Jackson.

Having previously read Dr. Kirkpatrick’s November 1979 article in Commentary magazine in which she condemned the Carter administration’s counter-productive failure to realize that undermining authoritarian regimes could lead to communist totalitarian takeovers, President Reagan tapped her to become UN ambassador during his first term.

Another important neo-con that President Reagan recruited was Elliot Abrams (1948- ). He had been Democrat, who as a Jew had become concerned that the affliction of the Vietnam Syndrome adversely affected the United State’s willingness and capacity to support small nations, such as Israel, against Soviet power. As Assistant Secretary for Human Rights between 1981 and 1985 during the first Reagan term Elliot Abrams achieved a brilliant balance between orientating pro-American dictatorships toward reform to improve human rights while relatively defending them by positively contrast to Soviet backed regimes.

Too many *anti-anti-communists simply did not understand Elliot Abrams helping to safeguard authoritarian regimes against totalitarian threats while still promoting human rights. Such anti-anti-communists therefore could not understand Elliot Abrams (who was Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs, 1985 to 1989) welcoming the defeat in a 1988 plebiscite of the right-wing military regime of General Augusto Pinochet (1915 to 2006) of Chile after having previously opposed the pro-communist component of that nation’s left-wing.

(*Anti-anti-communism as a concept was critically formulated by Dr. Jean Kirkpatrick. This perspective referred to the belief held by many so-called American liberals that it was inherently wrong in American foreign policy to oppose communism because it was too entrenched and that it even had a degree of ideological legitimacy).

Stopping Communism from Coming to Power: The Reagan Administration’s Policy of Constructive Engagement in South Africa

Although he was not a neo-con as such, Chester Crocker (1941- ) who served as the Reagan administration’s Assistant Secretary for African Affairs between 1981 and 1989 had a lateral approach to public policy in his area of public policy which achieved positive outcomes despite vehement condemnation by the left. Under-Secretary Crocker formulated the policy of constructive engagement.

The policy of constructive engagement encouraged the white minority apartheid regime in South Africa to reform its racial policies instead of internationally isolating Pretoria. The government of P.W Botha (1916 to 2006, who led South Africa between 1978 and 1989) received due praise from the Reagan administration for abolishing petty apartheid and promoting racial integration in sport.

Botha first ruled as prime minister between 1978 and 1984 and then as executive president until his National Party (NP) effectively deposed him in 1989. He had a hectoring bullying personality though he was still capable of great personal charm when the mood took him. Despite his gruff personality Botha was an intelligent man who realized too late that apartheid was a mistake because it made a pro-communist revolution a distinct possibility.

To safeguard against a possible communist revolution and in keeping with his authoritarian personality Botha ushered in a new constitution in 1984 which created a strong executive presidency. The new president hoped that by granting coloureds and Asians citizenship with their own legislatures that this would contribute to an anti-African National Congress (ANC) majority. To help gain such a majority the NP forged a de facto alliance with the overwhelmingly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

The IFP had the overwhelming support of rural based Zulus which included tribal chiefs. This support was insufficient to ensure apartheid’s survival because Zulus living in urban areas overwhelmingly supported the South African Communist Party (SACP) which was, and still is, closely aligned with the ANC. The promulgation of South Africa’s new constitution in 1984 inaugurated a virtual civil war within the Zulu community which were, and are, the nation’s single largest racial grouping.

The Xhosa people, the second biggest black racial grouping staunchly supported the anti-apartheid struggle. The only plausible prospect of indefinitely preserving the essence of white minority rule was for the NP regime to give its full military backing to the IFP crushing both the urban Zulus and Xhosas. Such a scenario would have led to a bloodbath that the political polarization which would have ensued would have been sufficient for enough of the Afrikaner electorate to consequently transfer their support to the 1982 NP breakaway white supremacist Conservative Party (CP).

The prospect of political polarization precipitating the end of NP rule had become a distinct prospect when the CP became the major opposition party following the minority national elections in May 1987. The NP would have lost the September 1989 elections had the popular Foreign Minister Pik Botha (1932- ) not persuaded a sufficient number of Anglos and white liberals to shift over to the National Party from the liberal and predominately white Democratic Party.

Ironically, the prospect of apartheid actually ending increased when F.W. de Klerk (1936- ) succeeded P.W. Botha as president (initially on an acting basis in August 1989). In the context of NP politics and ideology P.W. Botha was a political liberal whose strategic objective was to make life more bearable for the black majority so that the government’s alliance with the IFP would be sufficient to maintain white minority rule.

By contrast F.W. de Clerk was a centrist (in a National Party context) who had previously been an unenthusiastic supporter of Apartheid reform but who pragmatically saw that the only way to avoid a pro-Soviet revolution was to eventually concede to black majority rule. The South African president recognised in the ANC national president, Nelson Mandela (1918- ), whom he released in February 1990 from nearly twenty-seven years imprisonment, a statesman with whom a political settlement could eventually be arrived at.

Nelson Mandela as a Xhosa had never belonged to SCAP. This fact combined with his immense prestige meant that he was in a position to both bolster the moderate forces within the ANC while still maintaining party unity. From the time that Mandela commenced secretly negotiating with the NP regime in 1987 while in prison with French President Francois Mitterrand (1916 to 1996) being the go-between.

President Mitterrand had utilized the insights he had gained as the Colonial Affairs Minister during the time of the Fourth Republic in the 1950s of drawing African leaders represented into the National Assembly from being pro-communist to moderate nationalists. Mitterrand’s successful endeavours were an important reason why Francophone Africa was subsequently ruled by a generation of pro-western moderates.

A similar eventual outcome for South Africa almost went awry in March 1994 when a communist inspired overthrow the regime of President Lucas Mangope (1923- ) in the supposedly independent homeland government of Bophuthatswana almost precipitated a nationwide white led right-wing military coup and subsequent black supported violent revolution as a popular re-action.

The overthrow of the Mangope regime was a signal that the South African Communist Party (SACP) next intended to overthrow the IFP Kwu Zulu homeland regime of Chief Mangosthu Buthelezi (1928- ). This was an overthrow that the then still predominately white South African Defence Force (SADF) would not accept. For the upper echelons of the SADF a SCAP takeover of Kwu Zulu would have effectively eliminated the IFP as the nation’s chief black anti-communist force.

SACP’s white Stalinist leader Joe Slovo (1926 to 1995) intended that the fall of the Mangope regime would trigger IFP support for an SADF military coup which in turn would precipitate a popular revolution thereby aborting the April 1994 multi-racial elections. This scenario did not come to pass because the retired SDAF General Constand Viljoen (1933- ) registered a new political party the Freedom Party, to participate in the national elections as Mangope grudgingly accepted his removal from power.

By registering the Freedom Front electoral party, General Viljoen effectively unravelled the alliance of far-right Afrikaner groups and black homeland governments whose support for an SADF military coup would have been vital for its success.

General Viljoen’s action of entering the April 1994 multi-racial simultaneous national and provincial elections not only prevented a possible military coup from occurring but also prompted the IFP to enter these elections with its election symbol been placed on the national and provincial ballot papers at the last minute. Furthermore, the probable rigging of the vote for the provincial government of the new province of Kwu Zulu Natal in favour of the IFP and Mandela’s acquiesce to this ensured that a relatively peaceful and generally fair democratic national poll took place.

The holding of democratic national elections in South Africa in April 1994 marked this nation crossing the rubicon of avoiding a bloody revolution to become a true democracy. Due to the intensity of the anti-apartheid struggle a sense of collective purpose has been maintained by the ANC which has enabled the ruling party to avoid the scourge of tribalism.

The contemporary problem of government corruption has been mitigated by the existence of a free press and an independent judiciary. Furthermore, because South Africa has a viable civil society, community groups have often been at the forefront in overcoming the extensive problems that apartheid bequeathed such as urban poverty that the nation’s future is not as bleak as many still believe.

Nevertheless, an issue of urgency that the government of Jacob Zuma (1942- ) has to address is that of developing an effective industrial relations system. The August 2012 Marikana massacre of mine workers illustrates that South Africa needs an enterprise bargaining system with sectoral award union coverage to ensure that there is just financial remuneration and decent working conditions not only in the vital mining sector but for all the South African workforce so that the nation’s first world economy encompasses the entire nation. This is not a grandiose expectation when considering the previous miracle of South Africa advancing to majority rule in 1994.

The intention and long-term impact of Crocker’s constructive engagement policy was to broaden the scope for inter-racial interaction so that the political parameters would later be sufficiently broad enough to circumvent a bloody revolution. This later scenario came to pass during the de Clerk presidency (1989 to 1994); thereby avoiding a Stalinist dictatorship in South Africa that many anti-anti-communists around the world had been inadvertedly been previously preparing the groundwork for.

The Reagan Administration Prepares the Groundwork for Bringing Down Communist Regimes

The role that Chester Crocker fulfilled in South Africa helped avoid a very important nation from going communist, other Reagan administration officials helped set the scene for the later fall of Marxist-Leninist regimes. *Caspar Weinberger (1917 to 2006) as the Reagan administration’s Defense Secretary between 1981 and 1987 undertook the greatest build-up in American peace time history of the armed forces. His support for SDI was crucial in taking the fight up to Moscow by challenging the Soviet Union’s military resource capacity.

(*Caspar Weinberger was succeeded as Defense Secretary on his retirement in 1987 by Frank Carlucci (1930- ) who as American ambassador to Portugal between 1974 and 1977 had fulfilled a vital role in preventing that nation from going communist. Ambassador Carlucci covertly helped resource the Portuguese Socialist Party rather than remnants of the recently fallen Caetano regime to save Portugal from going communist).

As vital as it was for the United States to undermine the USSR’s resource capacity this of itself did not facilitate regime change in the Soviet empire. To support this happening the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) supported dissidents in Soviet bloc nations, most notably with the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) free trade union movement in Poland. The figure who masterminded American support for dissidents in Soviet bloc nations was the CIA Director William Casey (1913 to 1987).

William Casey was an agent during the Second World War for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA, and following the war he became a corporate lawyer. It seemed that William Casey’s career had reached its pinnacle in the 1970s in the Nixon administration when he served successively as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.

However in 1980 William Casey’s organisational skills were utilized to save the Reagan campaign for the Republican nomination from self-inflicted defeat when Ronald Reagan’s front-runner status was challenged by a surprisingly formidable challenge from George H W Bush (1924- ). Due to deep internal discord within his camp between his veteran California supporters and campaign manager John Sears (1940- ) Ronald Reagan undoubtedly would have lost the vital New Hampshire primary to George Bush had he not convincingly won a televised debate in Nashua between the Republican candidates, which George Bush had unwisely boycotted.

Following the commencement of voting for the New Hampshire primary it was announced that William Casey had replaced John Sears as the Reagan campaign’s manager. The new Reagan campaign manager often came across as ‘bit of a duffer’ with his dishevelled manner and apparently disorientated persona. This belied the fact that William Casey had a sharp mind which endowed him with an exceptional capacity to achieve planned strategic objectives.

Under the Reagan administration, William Casey was unquestionably the most successful CIA Director in American history. Not only did the CIA under his stewardship vitally help organise the supply of military aid to the Mujadeen in Afghanistan, UNITA rebels in Angola and the Contra rebels in Nicaragua but very importantly covertly provided to the Polish free trade union Solidarity with aid throughout the 1980s.

Poland Leads the Way in the Fight Against Communism

The Reagan administration’s covert support for Solidarity challenged the post-war orthodoxy that it was impossible to end communist rule in Eastern and Central Europe. William Casey did not accept this orthodoxy and his refusal to recognise the legitimacy of the artificial division of Europe was shared by Pope John Paul II (1920-2005, reigned 1978 to 2005). This Polish Pontiff believed that communist rule in Eastern and Central Europe could be brought down in his lifetime with the help of the CIA.

Although the Vatican is the world’s *second smallest nation state it is therefore overlooked that the Holy See has its own secret intelligence service. An organised and disciplined network of clergy in the Soviet bloc acted as a Vatican secret service. Their support was crucial in judiciously ensuring that American capital resources, such as printing presses, were supplied to people on the ground who would effectively utilize them.

(*The Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of St. John which has a lease of Fort St Angelo in Malta is the world’s smallest sovereign state).

Even amongst the strongest anti-communist American policy makers there was probably a belief that the most that could be achieved from supporting dissidents in European Soviet bloc nations was to support a substantial segment of society being free from Communist Party control instead of actually ending Marxist-Leninist rule per se. In actual fact, nations such as Hungary and Poland in the aftermath of de-Stalinization in the 1950s and Czechoslovakia paradoxically after the 1968 Soviet invasion had established essentially independent civil societies but advancement to democracy seemed to be a bridge too far.

Following the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia there was a begrudging tacit acceptance by a probable majority of people of hardline communist rule in return for them being granted private space free from Communist Party encroachment in non-work hours. Many Czechoslovaks had country dachas, holiday homes, which they retreated to on the weekends where they could talk freely and be involved in informal associations, such as folk and jazz music groups.

Therefore the scene was set for the people to come together once they knew there was no prospect for military and political oppression. Nevertheless, the Czechoslovak people might not have been able to do this in November 1989 had there not been a Charter 77 network previously been in place.

The above cited dissident movement was founded in 1977 ostensibly as a Helsinki watch group to ensure that the Prague regime of Gustav Husak (1913 to 1991) adhered to the international human rights covenant that was signed in the Finnish capital in 1975. The reality of Charter 77 was that it was a shrewd alliance of disparate individuals ranging from reformed communists of the former Dubcek regime to anti-communist Catholics who determined to eventually end Marxist-Leninist rule.

Anti-communist Czechoslovak Catholics often had close links to the Dominican order of priests who helped ensure that Charter 77 was a coherent organisation instead of a loose grouping bound by broad common principles. The Dominican priests and associated laity often undertook secret courier work and basic grunt work which endowed Charter 77 with the long-term organisational capacity that was needed to transform into Civic Forum in November 1989 which became the political movement that Czechoslovaks rallied around to end communist rule.

Solidarnosc (Solidarity): The Polish Trade Union That Helped Bring Down Communism

In the Polish context it was the free trade union Solidarnosc (Solidarity), which emerged following the shipyard strike in the port city of Gdansk in August 1980, which was the locus of an alternate non-communist civil society. Between 1980 and late 1981 a Solidarity backed political social movement emerged which encompassed over 80%, perhaps 90%, of the population. The imposition of martial law in December 1981 compelled Solidarity to adapt to become an underground political movement which was led by Zbigniew Bujak (1954- ).

Under Zbigniew Bujak’s leadership, Solidarity activists disseminated underground literature as part of ‘information warfare’ to help sustain a counter-civil society. There were occasions, such as the 1984 May Day Parade, where the extent of Solidarity support was manifested by mass demonstrations which conveyed the message that the people had not been cowed by the imposition of martial law which had been lifted the previous July. Zbigniew Bujak was captured in 1984 and then amnestied later that year to convey that Solidarity would be tolerated even though the regime had not yet reached a modus operandi with this free trade union movement.

The effectiveness of the 1981/1982 clampdown and subsequent oppression in the 1980s undermined Solidarity’s capacity to again be a social movement which was still actively supported by an overwhelming majority of Polish society. The 1984 capture and then release of Bujak signified the implicit social contract between the regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923- ) and the population that Solidarity could act as the representative of the overwhelming majority in return for refraining from seeking to become the dominant force in Polish politics.

General Jaruzelski was himself, on the balance of probabilities, a Polish patriot of sorts, who played a double game with the Soviets. This is a controversial thesis which can be disproved if the claims of the KGB station chief in Warsaw, General Vitaly Pavlov (1914 to 2005) can be verified that General Jaruzelski unsuccessfully implored the Soviets to military intervene in December 1981 to help his regime enforce martial law. Nevertheless, the alternate Jaruzelski scenario is sufficiently plausible that the Soviets were going to invade Poland unless martial law was imposed when the Hungarian and Czechoslovak precedents are taken into account.

Due to Jaruzelski’s important but controversial role in contributing to the 1989 political miracle of the Warsaw Pact’s first non-communist government been formed his life is overviewed to help establish a context to assess how Poland broke with communism.

Wojciech Jaruzelski was actually born into wealthy land-owning family in eastern Poland where he received a Jesuit school education. His father had served in the officer corps of the quasi-authoritarian military backed Sanacja (‘purification/sanitation’) regime which ruled Poland between 1926 and 1939. Following the Nazi German-Soviet partition of Poland in 1939 the Jaruzelski family was deported to Soviet Siberia where his father died.

Nevertheless, due to the personal kindness that Wojciech Jaruzelski encountered in Siberia he developed a love of the Russian people instead of a hatred which might have been expected. Following the Nazi German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 Wojciech Jaruzelski maintained that he tried to enlist in the forces of the Polish government in exile commanded by *General Wladyslaw Anders (1892 to 1970).

(*General Anders following his retirement from the military became one of the principal exile leaders of the émigré anti-communist Polish Socialist Party, PPS).

Due to an apparent failure to gain exit papers to leave the Kazakh Soviet Republic in Central Asia where he moved in 1940, Wojciech Jaruzelski eventually enlisted in the pro-Soviet ‘Union of Polish Patriots (sic)’ which was established in 1943 as opposed to the Anders commanded forces.

The future Polish leader asserted that there was paradox in that men with aristocratic backgrounds such as himself joined a pro-Soviet force instead of the army of the Polish government in-exile. While the ‘Union of Polish Patriots’ (sic) was ultimately a Soviet creation its troops fought heroically against the Nazi Germans between 1943 and 1945 that their positions in the future People’s Republic of Poland was assured.

Ironies continued in post-war Poland continued in that a pathologically suspicious Stalin considered that the Polish army to be the ultimate guarantor of Soviet domination rather than the ostensible ruling communist Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP). This was reflected by the appointment in 1949 of the Polish born but Russian raised Marshal Constantine Rokossovsky (1896 to 1968) as commander of the armed forces and as defence minister and deputy premier in 1952. Marshal Rokossovsky was essentially the Soviet proconsul in Poland.

This marshal might have become Poland’s new ruler following the outbreak of riots in Poznan in July 1956 following price rises had the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894 to 1971) given his approval. That Khrushchev vetoed such a military clampdown and a Rokossovsky takeover was probably due to his wariness of strengthening domestic Stalinist forces within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

The relatively liberal and nationalistic Wladyslaw Gomulka’s ascension to power in October 1956 in Poland and his subsequent dismissal of Rokossovsky were substantial de-Stalinization measures. Under Gomulka collective farming was ended, an independent Catholic University in Lublin was established the party controlled press and television made subtle criticisms of the political system. As leader, Gomulka was more accessible than most communist rulers which endowed him with a degree of genuine popularity then unrivalled in the Soviet bloc.

Nevertheless, Gomulka was genuinely loyal to the USSR which went against the desire of over 90% of his people for genuine independence and the adoption of a democratic system. Fissures between Gomulka the majority of the Polish people were reflected by tension between the state and the Catholic Church in May 1966 when the latter held independent celebrations to commorate the millennium of the Polish nation coming into being with its conversion to Catholism.

Tensions between Gomulka and the public became a chasm after June 1967 when his regime gave its support to the Arab side during the Six-Day War. There was considerable sympathy for Israel in Poland due to this nation being a small country surrounded by hostile neighbours. Gomulka exacerbated the situation by entering into an alliance with his anti-Semitic Interior Minister Mieczlaw Moczar (1913 to 1986) which contributed to the outbreak of student led riots in March 1968. Although Gomulka removed Moczar as interior minister later in 1968 he could not reverse the erosion of his credibility amongst the public.

The then Polish leader’s stature was also undermined by Poland’s participation in the Soviet led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. As Defence Minister, General Jaruzelski was the overall commander of Polish troops who participated in the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia.

General Jaruzelski’s previous appointment as defence minister earlier that year in place of the respected *General Marian Spychalski (1906 to 1980) was partly due to his tacit acceptance of the official anti-Semitic campaign. The general later expressed regret for his acquiesce of the anti-Semitic campaign. Jaruzelski’s appointment as defence minister was also due to Gomulka’s need to have an able armed forces commander to participate in the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

(*General Spychalski upon relinquishing the position of defence minister in 1968 became titular president, a post he held until Gomulka’s fall in December 1970).

As loyal as General Jaruzelski may have been to Gomulka he apparently refused to order troops to suppress workers demonstrations in Gdansk in Christmas 1970 after food price rises. This defiance reportedly led to General Jaruzelski’s house arrest in 1970 but this was of short duration because Gomulka was replaced as communist leader with the backing of the USSR by Edward Gierek (1913 to 2001).

The Gierek regime literally purchased a degree of social stability in Poland by encouraging the availability of consumer goods by borrowing from western, particularly West German, financial institutions. When time eventually caught up with Gierek when austerity measures had to be introduced to rein in Poland’s massive foreign debt popular demonstrations occurred which gave rise to the emergence of Solidarity in August 1980.

The economically and politically discredited Gierek gave way in early September 1980 to the relatively moderate Stanislaw Kania (1927- ) who had been the regime’s security chief. Kania and General Jaruzelski had previously worked in alliance in 1971 to purge Moczar supporters from the secret police. Consequently there was an initial reluctance, if not capacity on the communist regime’s part in 1980 to impose harsh repression in the wake of the emergence of Solidarity.

The ramifications of Solidarity’s impact on Polish society were such that probably a majority of the PUWP’s rank and file membership were supportive of the free trade union. Even the hardliners within the ostensibly ruling party were of no help to the Kania-Jaruzelski leadership team because they had generally supported an unsuccessful leadership challenge at the PUWP’s July 1981 Congress by a surprisingly resurgent Mieczlaw Moczar.

The weak position that Kania was in led to his yielding the leadership of the PUWP to General Jaruzelski in October 1981, making him not only party general secretary but also defence minister and prime minister, a position which he had assumed in February that year. General Jaruzelski’s 1981 assent to power was almost unique in terms of military takeovers in that it was a case of the apparatus of a ruling party in a single-party state progressively giving way to the military as its capacity to function broke down.

Poland’s Self-Coup of 1981 Avoids Catastrophe

Having assumed the nation’s leading government, party and military leadership positions, the USSR expected General Jaruzelski to utilize his recently acquired power to impose martial law to crush the Solidarity union which was then led a political social movement which encompassed over 90% of the nation. General Jaruzelski did this in December 1981 by carrying out a self-coup in which martial law was imposed. This action was not a conventional military coup against a government but rather against the Polish people who then overwhelmingly supported Solidarity.

This Jaruzelski led action is now considered to be a text book example in how to undertake a military coup. Important opposition leaders were pre-emptively arrested and communication sites, such as television stations, were secured so that potential opposition could be thwarted before it could be organised. Care was also undertaken to ensure troops were deployed who were not locals and that a minimum time period was given in issuing orders to the possibility of leaking.

In undertaking what was essentially a coup General Jaruzelski emphasised in his national December 1981 national address that his action was in keeping with the 1952 constitution under which a Military Council for National Salvation (WRON) was formed composed of military officers to administer martial law. Therefore the parliament, (the Sejm), the PUWP Politburo and the existing Council of Ministers, most of whose members were not informed of the self-coup, remained in place.

The imperative for this unusual coup undoubtedly came from the USSR and in this respect the December 1981 imposition of martial law was not unusual in Polish history in that external power of another nation was been exercised over domestic events. Be that as it may, had General Jaruzelski not staged his self-coup then Poland would have been de facto partitioned by its Warsaw Pact neighbours, with the probable exception of Roumania.

In contrast to Czechoslovakia in August 1968 where its armed forces betrayed their nation by deliberately remaining in barracks, Polish officers and troops undoubtedly would have linked up with the people to heroically but forlornly resisted a Soviet led invasion. The undoubted participation of East German troops in such an invasion would undoubtedly have inflamed passions which probably would have continued by there being a subsequently being a Polish guerrilla insurgency which over time would have been brutally suppressed.

The ensuing international uproar around the world against a Soviet invasion and occupation of Poland would have destroyed the scope needed for a thawing of Cold War tensions that the reforms of the Gorbachev era could not have been undertaken. The resources required for the Soviet state to have effectively applied direct military oppression in Poland would have in turn strengthened a political economy in the USSR and the Soviet bloc which would have constituted a form of neo-Stalinism that could have perpetuated Marxist-Leninism in Europe for at least another generation.

Indeed, under the by then sclerotic rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1906 to 1982) the USSR still had the military capacity and inclination to invade Poland and actively regiment the Jaruzelski regime. Therefore Jaruzelski’s political position was boosted in November 1982 by Brezhnev’s death and the succession of Yuri Andropov (1914 to 1984). The former KGB chief was ironically and acutely aware of the failings of the Soviet system that he favoured a pragmatic approach to politics so long as the basic tenets of a Marxist-Leninist regime were maintained, such as one-party rule.

With Andropov in power General Jaruzelski had the latitude to dissolve WRON and lift martial law in July 1983. These events were not as profound as they might have seemed because the now overriding power of the military in Polish politics carried over from the 1981 imposition of martial law. Nevertheless, the scope for future liberalization or at least to avoid a possible future bloody popular uprising had been expanded by the lifting of martial law that General Jaruzelski’s political position was enhanced instead of weakened.

The support that General Jaruzelski still had within the Polish military was still the main source made of his power. This made it difficult, but not necessarily impossible a proposition for the USSR to instigate his removal as Poland’s leader. The removal option was advocated by the then Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko (1909 to 1989) who distrusted General Jaruzelski as a covert Polish nationalist who would break with the Soviet bloc should international conditions ever be favourable.

Gromyko had reached the zenith of his power during the rule of the ailing and ineffective Constantine Chernenko (1911 to 1985) who became Soviet leader in February 1984 following Andropov’s death. It is possible that during the Chernenko interregnum that three members of the Polish security forces believed they had the Soviet imprimatur to kill the very popular Catholic priest, Father Jerzy Popieluszko (1947 to 1984) to fatally undermine any possibility of General Jaruzelski ever breaking with the USSR.

The succession of Mikhail Gorbachev to the leadership of the USSR in March 1985 brought to power an ally for General Jaruzelski who could ensure that he remained in power for the immediate future. Although General Jaruzelski was considered to be a reformer he did not undertake any innovative political or administrative reforms during Gorbachev’s first two years in power.

The most that General Jaruzelski undertook in the period between 1985 and 1987 was to appoint was to appoint an economist, Zbigniew Messner (1929 - ) prime minister after he (Jaruzelski) was ‘elected’ chairman of the presidium, i.e. president by the Sejm in November 1985 following a carefully controlled parliamentary election the preceding month. The retired general in assuming the presidency also relinquished the position of Defence Minister to General Florian Siwicki (1925- ), who along with the Interior Minister General Czesslaw Kiszcak (1925- ) ensured continuing military influence within the government.

Ironically, the senior echelons of the Polish armed forces while genuinely supportive of General Jaruzelski were hostile toward political reform fearing that it would entail granting Solidarity an official role within the regime’s structures. The PUWP was similarly supportive of General Jaruzelski remaining in office but hostile to any rapprochement with Solidarity because this communist party had organisationally revived as a thoroughly corrupt power institution.

The best that Jaruzelski could hope in terms of political acceptance for was apparently achieved by the mid-1980s: a stagnant regime facing off against a popular Solidarity which was bereft of its mobilization capacity due to the previous impact of martial law. Although nearly all Poles sceptically disregarded the official media, particularly the pronouncements of the regime spokesman the jug eared Jerzy Urban (1933 - ), a propaganda success of sorts was achieved when extensive publicity was given to criticism Solidarity leader Lech Walesa (1942 -) buying a mansion in 1987 from the royalties of his memoirs which had sold well overseas.

For all the regime’s ‘success’ in helping create an apathetic national malaise to underpin its rule, President Jaruzelski and the communist nomenklatura knew that the potential for a social upheaval could not be avoided because the weakness of the national economic system necessitated that price rises eventually occur. Previous respective price rises in 1956, 1970 and 1980 had precipitated regime changing social unrest.

To prepare the way for a public acceptance of price rises the Jaruzelski regime took the unprecedented step in holding an honestly conducted plebiscite in November 1987 on proposed political and economic reforms. Although the asked questions were approved by the voters, the results were officially deemed to have failed because a majority of the eligible electorate had not sanctioned the government proposals by turning out to vote.

This referendum was really a safety valve for the regime to prepare the way for price rises in 1988. It was the prospect of such price rises that large public demonstrations occurred in April/ May of that year at the instigation of a Solidarity split away organisation, *Fighting Solidarity, which was allegiant to the London Polish government in-exile. For all the effective brutality with which the security forces under the direction of the Interior Minister General Kiszcak crushed these demonstrations, further labour protest instigated and led by a tenacious Fighting Solidarity broke out in November 1988.

(*Fighting Solidarity’s historical connection to the nation’s pre-communist past was reflected by its name. The Sanacja regime established a new ruling party in 1937, the Camp of National Unity, Ozon. Military supporters of the former regime in 1942 formally formed the Camp of Fighting Poland, OPW, which in turn joined the newly formed Home Army, AK, in 1943 which became the major resistance organisation to the Nazi German occupation.

The Sanacja regime could not have come to power had it not been for a Socialist Party supported rail strike preventing government troops from been transported to Warsaw to crush the May 1926 military coup. It was therefore ironic that the military backed Sanacja evolved from initially being a centre-left regime in the 1920s to a quasi-authoritarian nationalist one by the 1930s. By establishing Fighting Solidarity the 1980s neo-Sanacja supporters had returned to the inter-war regime’s labour traditions).

Jaruzelski Short-Circuits A Cyclical Revolutionary Fuse

To prevent the cycle of repression and unrest leading to a possible bloody revolt President Jaruzelski expressed his willingness to enter into negations with Solidarity about the nation’s future following the outbreak of Fighting Solidarity instigated labour unrest in November 1988. Lech Walesa effectively re-asserted his leadership capacity by going to centres of labour unrest to personally persuade workers to end strike and protest activity so that Solidarity could enter round table negotiations with the regime.

Lech Walesa shrewdly utilized leaders of the Solidarity movement’s intellectual wing to participate in the 1989 round table negotiations. The Solidarity negotiating team at these talks was led by the Catholic intellectual Taduesz Mazowiecki (1927- ) while regime’s delegation was led by a hardliner, General Kiszcak. The government’s participation in the round talks had previously been paved by the Sejm taking the unprecedented move in a Soviet bloc nation of passing a vote of no-confidence at the instigation of President Jaruzelski in September 1988 against the Messner government.

The ouster of the Messner government constituted President Jaruzelski breaking with the model that many military or military backed regimes adopt of working in close alliance with technocrats. In the Polish context a military/technocrat alliance had not worked well because the system of central planning had led to gross economic distortions which greatly undermined the quality of life everyday people, particularly with regard to food and housing shortages.

Messner’s fall apparently saw the transition toward an alliance between the military and politically shrewd elements within the PUWP with the appointment in September 1988 of Mieczyslaw Rakowsi (1926 to 2008) as the new prime minister. Rakowsi had once had the reputation as a political liberal as the editor of the Politiyka newspaper. He had therefore led the communist regime’s delegation in talks with the newly emerged Solidarity in 1980 which led to the signing of the accords that briefly legalized this free trade union.

Rakowsi’s reputation as a political liberal took a fatal blow in 1981 when he supported the imposition of martial law in December that year and subsequently advocated that Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders never be released from custody. Paradoxically, Rakowsi’s new reputation as an opportunist made he seem to be the ideal candidate in 1988 for regime hardliners, such as General Kiszcak, for him (Rakowsi) to be the Janos Kadar (1912 to 1989) of Poland.

Similar to Kadar, who led Hungary between 1956 and 1988, Rakowsi was thought to have the political skills to negotiate with Solidarity without forgoing power due to personal animosity between him and Solidarity leaders. For hardliners, such as Rakowsi and Kiszcak, the Round Table talks that were initiated by General Jaruzelski in November 1988, offered an opportunity by which to co-opt Solidarity into accepting the painful austerity measures that economic necessity dictated to avoid an approaching social upheaval. The major concession that Rakowsi and Kiszcak were prepared to concede to Solidarity was its re-legalization.

With the support of Jaruzelski loyalists within the regime’s Round Table delegation, such as Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz (1950- ) and Aleksander Kwasniewski (1954- ), an agreement was reached in April 1989 that went further than initially anticipated. It was agreed that 35% of lower house seats and a 100% of seats for a newly created senate would be open to multi-party contest. These talks also agreed in the creation of a new position of an executive presidency and that all parliamentary seats would be contested in free parliamentary elections in 1993. Such fundamental concessions were tempered by Solidarity acquiescence that Poland’s alliance with the Soviet Union not been altered.

The partially free elections that were held on June 4th 1989 saw Solidarity, which acted as an umbrella group for a range of political persuasions, win all the minority of contested seats and all but one of the senate positions. Following this overwhelming repudiation of communist rule President Jaruzelski announced that he would not stand for the new position of executive president and that he would step down as general secretary of the PUWP in favour of Rakowsi.

President Jaruzelski’s apparent departure from power seemingly reflected the fate of a failed reformer, a leader who gone too far that the elite was antagonised but not far enough to win sufficient popular support. Regime hardliners moved into the apparent void not only with Rakowsi succeeding as the new PUWP general secretary but with General Kiszcak becoming the party candidate for election by the Sejm as Poland’s new executive president. A Kiszcak-Rakowsi leadership team offered the option for regime hardliners to gain political ascendancy during a period of radical change.

However there was to be no such Kiszcak-Rakowsi leadership team because the general (Kiszcak) failed to win election to the presidency. This was because the Solidarity parliamentarians, the Citizen’s Club, in conjunction with parliamentary members of the two satellite parties, the Polish Peasants Party and the Democratic Party voted against Kiszcak. To break this impass General Jaruzelski moved into the breach to be narrowly elected president by Solidarity deputies abstaining from the presidential vote.

As compensation for General Kiszcak in missing out on the presidency, General Jaruzelski as Poland’s new executive president, commissioned him to be the new prime minister. But there was also to be no Kiszcak government because the Solidarity parliamentarians and those of the Democratic and Peasant parties voted against his nomination. Lech Walesa then advocated that a Solidarity-led government be formed. That this remarkable suggestion was accepted by President Jaruzelski was in part due to Gorbachev’s support for the Walesa suggestion.

The Polish Jigsaw Puzzle Piece and the Unravelling of the Soviet Empire

The reason(s) why Gorbachev’s supported for the formation of a Solidarity led government in September 1989 headed by Taduesz Mazowiecki is interesting to analyse because they reflected his strategy with regard to undertaking political reform within Soviet bloc nations. The then Soviet leader believed that his domestic position and prospects for internal reform would be greatly strengthened by engineering the instillation of Dubcek type Marxist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe.

Gorbachev had been very taken with the Prague Spring of 1968 in which there was apparently a popularly accepted communist regime in power because it based itself on a system of law within a socialist framework. This was reflected by relative freedom to criticize government policy within the parameters of accepting the Communist Party’s overall political dominance. The paradox of the August 1968 invasion was that had this not occurred Alexander Dubcek’s massive popularity might have been undermined by his ‘socialism with a human face’ having to contend with demands for political pluralism which would fundamentally challenged the viability of communist rule.

Positive theoretical analysis as to what Dubcek’s ‘socialism with a human face’ might have been and how it still offered a model for socialist renewal was propounded by Gorbachev’s former close friend Zdenek Mlynar (1930 to 1997) from his days in the early 1950s as a law student at Moscow University. Mlynar had been the Dubcek regime’s leading political theorist and his prestige was such that the successor Husak regime did not banish him to his Vienna exile until 1977 after he joined Charter 77. From his Austrian exile Mlynar continued to write as to how ‘socialism with a human face’ could still be applied in Central and Eastern Europe.

Gorbachev intended to install Dubcek style regimes in Warsaw Pact nations to help consolidate his domestic position and to help renew socialism within the USSR. The Soviet leader correctly realised that for the USSR to maintain its position in Central and Eastern Europe it was necessary to keep Czechoslovakia within Moscow’s orbit. Accordingly, a university student, who was actually a KGB agent, supposedly disappeared in November 1989 to precipitate massive anti-government demonstrations so that Mlynar could return to Prague to become the new reformist communist leader of Czechoslovakia.

The fundamentally strategic importance of control of Prague had previously been recognised by none-other than the great geo-politician, the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815 to 1898) who declared that who controlled Prague Castle controlled the strategic gateway to Europe. Chancellor Bismarck appreciated that the faltering Hapsburg Empire still remained a formidable power so long as the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia remained within its realm. Hitler would not have been in a position to win a war against Britain and France in September 1939 had his forces not taken Prague without opposition in March that year due to the naiveté of the then president of Czecho-Slovakia, Emil Hacha (1872-1945).

Consequently it was vitally important to the miracles that occurred in 1989 in the soon to be former Soviet bloc nations that Mlynar instead temporized with the Soviets in Vienna so that an anti-communist such as playwright Vaclav Havel (1936 to 2011) could move into the breach to end communist rule. Had Mlynar actually taken power Gorbachev intended to act in alliance with him to help facilitate the installation of reformist communist governments in the Soviet bloc and in doing so perpetuate the artificial division of Europe.

A co-operative Mlynar regime in Prague would have been crucial to maintaining the division of Germany by respectively undermining anti-communism within the two Germanys. With regard to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) there were next to no Gorbachev type reformers with the notable exceptions of the party boss in Dresden Hans Modrow (1928- ) and the brilliant Stasi spymaster Markus Wolf (1923 to 2006). Gorbachev intended that a Mlynar leadership in Czechoslovakia would have the knock on effect of Modrow becoming the new East German leader.

A successful *Modrow leadership of East Germany in conjunction with a Mlynar led Czechoslovakia might have been fatal to German unification had anti-anti-communists to come to power in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). It is now too often forgotten that due to the effectiveness of East Germany’s Stasi secret police in infiltrating West German political parties, trade unions and the media that nation had a virulent and highly effective anti-American political movement.

(*Modrow was Chancellor of East Germany between November 1989 and April 1990 but inspite of his personal prestige he lost his nation’s first free elections in March that year).

West German anti-Americanism had helped give rise to the phenomenon of ‘Gorbymania’ where many, if not most West Germans, then regarded the USSR under Gorbachev as a benign force in world affairs that there could have being a neutral Germany. The Soviet potential to manipulate West Germany was reflected by the anti-anti-communism by the tragic transformation of Wily Brandt (1913 to 1992) from being a symbol of anti-communism as mayor of West Berlin (1957 to 1966) to a ‘useful idiot’ for the USSR during and following his time as West German Chancellor between 1969 and 1974.

Brandt’s metamorphis provided a model for other powerful Social Democratic Party (SPD) politicians to become anti-anti-communist, most concerning of all been the far-left stance of Saarland minister-president Oskar Lafontaine (1943- ) who had opposed the deployment in the 1980s of Pershing II nuclear missiles. Such was Lafontaine’s anti-anti-communism that in 1989/1990 he publicly opposed German unification. His opposition was an important reason why voters in the former East Germany strongly supported the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany’s December 1990 national elections which occurred two months after German unification.

There might not have been all German national elections in December 1990 had the recently formed (October 1989) East German SPD won the German Democratic Republic’s (sic) first and only democratic poll in March that year. The East German SPD was led by human rights dissidents but the effectiveness of this party was undermined by the fact that too many human rights groups had been thoroughly infiltrated by the Stasi secret police that they effectively operated as de facto spy units to keep tabs on genuine dissidents.

Accordingly, the East German SPD leader Ibrahim Bohme (1944 to 1999), despite his vehement denials was later found to have been a Stasi agent. Had the East German CDU-led Alliance for Germany coalition not won the March 1990 national elections a Bohme led government undoubtedly would have perpetuated the division of Germany which the West German SPD would have abetted due to its anti-anti-communism been predominant in that party.

A still divided Germany with a Mlynar led Czechoslovakia would have created a scenario for reformist communists to maintain their ascendancy in Bulgaria and Roumania as continuingly avowed pro-Soviet Marxist-Leninists. The most important factor which had long sustained Todor Zhivkov’s (1911 to 1998) thirty-five year rule in Bulgaria between 1954 and 1989 –his nation’s submission to the USSR- actually brought him down when Moscow decreed that the politburo of the Bulgarian Communist Party dismiss him.

Zhivkov’s successor, the Gorbachev endorsed Petar Mladenov (1936 to 2000) probably would have ruled Bulgaria as a relatively liberal Marxist Prague Spring type of state had Czechoslovakia in late 1989 not unambiguously thrown off communism and the two German states re-united in 1990. These historical events conveyed to the peoples of Bulgaria and Roumania that Soviet power would not be utilized to prop up Marxist-Leninist rule. Roumania was similar to Bulgaria in that Soviet induced change led to an end to Marxist-Leninist rule as opposed to the continuance of communism in a more liberal form.

The entrenched nature of the Ceausescu regime (1965 to 1989) in Roumania with its near ubiquitous Securitate secret police could not have been overcome for all the heroism of the Roumanian people, particularly its Hungarian minority in Transylvania, had it not been for Soviet assistance. It was the KGB that co-ordinated contact between current and former members of the Romanian Communist Party, the armed forces and even elements of the Securitate to ensure that there could be a successful popular uprising against the reviled Ceausescus in December 1989.

The executed Nicolae Ceausescu’s (1918 to 1989) successor Ion Illescu (1930- ) conveyed that he was still a communist by addressing a crowd as ‘comrades’ shortly after he took power. The hostile reception he received conveyed to him that the maintenance of a communist system was unviable that he re-adapted to become an avowed social democrat within a soon to be multi-party Roumania.

The one Warsaw Pact nation where Gorbachev had sufficient clout to relatively smoothly engineer a transition to a more liberal type of communist rule was Hungary. This was due to the USSR previously under Khrushchev supporting the Hungarian communist leader Janos Kadar promoting former members of the *Social Democratic Party within the ruling Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, (HSWP) to prevent former Stalinists from been restored to power in the 1950s and 1960s.

(*The Social Democratic Party had been coerced in 1948 to merge with the communists to form the Hungarian Working People’s Party which later under the opportunistic leadership of Kadar, declared itself to be anti-Stalinist by adopting the name the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, HSWP just before the October 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary).

The relatively strong position of former Social Democrats and their descendants within the HSWP was utilized by a deputy minister and respected party apparatchik, Imre Pozsgay (1933- ) to help the Soviets ease out Kadar as party leader in May 1988 so that the ruling party could declare itself to be the social democratic Socialist Party at its October 1989 party congress. Mr. Pozsgay might not have had the courage or capacity to have engineered this party transition had external political events, particularly those in Poland not conveyed that it was relatively safe to break with communism.

The 1989-1990 Polish Political Miracle

In Poland itself, there had been little scope for Gorbachev to engineer a transition to liberal version of Marxism due to overwhelming public hostility toward communism, the corruption of the PUWP and the hostility of the armed forces and security forces toward any substantial political reform. The best that Gorbachev could hope for ironically was for a Solidarity led government with Jaruzelski as executive president serving as the guarantor of Soviet interests.

The Soviet leader in September 1989 personally rang Rakowsi, who was now PUWP general secretary, to urge that he support the formation of a Solidarity-led cabinet. To sweeten this bitter pill and to help ensure that Poland remained within the Warsaw Pact, it was arranged that Generals Kiszcak and Siwicki respectively continue as interior and defence ministers.

Indeed, the continuance of these two aforementioned ministers in office gave rise to speculation as to how much power Prime Minister Mazowiecki would really exercise. General Jaruzelski and Gorbachev probably intended that the most profound ramification of the formation of the Mazowiecki cabinet was to precipitate change within the PUWP by a transition occurring to a reformist faction associated with the party’s youth wing led by Aleksander Kwasniewski and Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz to become ascendant at the foundation congress in January 1990 of the PUWP’s successor party, Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (SdRP).

It was possibly envisaged by General Jaruzelski and Gorbachev that a Solidarity led government hamstrung by an economic malaise could see a reformed communist party win fully fledged multi-party elections in 1993. Even if liberal communists lost future democratic elections the difficult position which a Solidarity government would find itself in at least would have ensured that reformist communists remained sufficiently influential to keep Poland within the Soviet orbit. Continuing communist control of the armed forces and of a still active secret police, the formidable Security Service (SB), were also guarantors that the interests of Poland’s communist nomenklatura being protected.

As it was, the political miracle of a Solidarity government been formed in September 1989 was crucial to the chain of causation where the Berlin Wall fell and Czechoslovakia throwing off communism in November of that year. These two events in turn strengthened Prime Minister Mazowiecki to help enable him to dismiss generals Kiszcak and Siwicki respectively as interior and defence ministers in December 1989 and to officially change the nation’s appellation from the ‘Peoples’ Republic of Poland’ (sic) to the Republic of Poland.

For all the criticism which Taduesz Mazowiecki was subjected for allowing former communists to exploit their control of resources to make lucrative business arrangements in return for forgoing power, his government very successfully and peacefully purged communist organisation within the armed forces and dismantled the SB. In this regard the so-called issue of lustration, i.e. the removal of former communists from the bureaucracy was very effectively undertaken by the Mazowiecki government (1989 to 1990) that it was one of its principal achievements.

In a general context communist rule was generally ended when elections by a popular vote for president were held in November 1990. Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz as a presidential candidate of the post-communist party, the SdRP, garnered a respectable 9% of the vote in the 1990 presidential election to come fourth out of the six candidates. This provided the groundwork for the SdRP to form a configuration of parties in 1991, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) which became a unified political party in 1999.

The SLD in coalition with the People’s Party, formerly the Peasant’s Party, won government following the 1993 *parliamentary elections which saw PUWP era politicians return to power for the first time since 1989. Aleksander Kwasniewski as the SLD presidential candidate defeated President Walesa in the second round of presidential elections in 1995 and won a comfortable re-election in 2000 in the first round of voting.

(*Previously fully democratic parliamentary elections had been held in October 1991 in which the SLD became the principal opposition party by coming second).

The SLD had lost the 1997 parliamentary elections to the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) alliance of political parties but re-gained power in the 2001 parliamentary elections. This now centre-left party, the SLD, was consigned to probably permanent opposition following parliamentary and presidential elections held in 2005 in which the Solidarity descended Law and Justice (PiS) and Civic Platform (PO) parties came a respective first and second.

Even though Poland now essentially has a two-party model with a conservative-liberal dichotomy, as opposed to a broad political division between capital and labour, the previous successes of the SLD indicated that the possibly intended Jaruzelski/Gorbachev strategy of containing Solidarity might have been viable had not the Polish political miracle of 1989 precipitated the collapse of communist regimes in other Soviet bloc nations later that year.

Why Poland Has Probably Reached its *Fukuyama End of History Point

The alliance between Jaruzelski and Gorbachev constituted the former as a national leader taking into account existing geo-political realities to avoid a political disaster. This contrasted with Polish leaders in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries failing to adopt a pragmatic approach that their nation was plunged into horrific turmoil.

(* Francis Fukuyama (1952- ) is an American academic who formulated the concept of the end of history where liberal democracy around the world becomes the norm).

The third and final partition of eighteenth century Poland in 1795 was partially due to the short-sightedness of Polish nobles supporting an elective monarchy as opposed to an hereditary monarchy that Poland might have permanently disappeared from the map of Europe. This outcome was eventually overcome due to the strategic and political/military leadership genius of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski (1867 to 1935) between 1914 and 1921 in which he re-established and brilliantly defended a resurrected nation.

A Papal Segue

Pilsudski’s achievement in resurrecting Poland as a fully independent nation was temporarily forfeited between 1939 and 1989 but was thankfully to be redeemed leading to the historical discrediting of Marxism-Leninism on an international basis. This historical development was partially reflective of the tremendous impact of the pontificate of the Polish pope, Karol Wojtyla who reigned as John Paul II.

John Paul II was undoubtedly one of the great popes of modern history for helping bring down communism but his historical impact in discrediting communism should not negate the crucially importance of the pontificate of Giovanni Montini (1897 to 1978) who reigned as Paul VI from 1963 until his death. It was Paul VI who patience and discipline that ensured that the Second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965) actually functioned and its decisions were subsequently implemented according to his interpretations which aligned with both Catholic teachings and pragmatic assessment of the on the ground realities so that the legitimacy of the Church was not compromised.

Paul VI’s Vatican II achievements were, particularly after his death, respectively attacked by Church conservatives and liberals. The former attacked His Holiness for going too far in terms of allegedly straying from orthodoxy while the latter criticised him for not going far enough. Even though many Catholics were disappointed that Paul VI did not go further, particularly with regard to accepting artificial birth control, the Church’s moral authority consistently remained intact.

In essence Paul VI achieved a balance between reform and conservation of original Church teachings which placed Catholism in the mainstream of public and private spheres of human existence. The great achievement of Paul VI was that in having the Church adapt to modernity His Holiness helped defined what that modernity was so that religious Catholism remained a very powerful force for good in a predominately secular world.

As invaluably important as John Paul II’s role was in helping bring down communism it is difficult to envisage that such an accomplishment would have occurred in a socially and technologically rapidly changing world had institutional reform not been undertaken such as having mass in the relevant vernacular language. The great threat to the viability of the Church is that of jansenist integralism where Catholism isolates itself from social change and people it deems to have rejected its morality.

Unfortunately, following the fall of communism, the Church under John Paul II, moved in a direction which too closely approximated jansenist integralism. Paradoxically, there seemed to be a hope in the very limited quarters that under John Paul II’s successor *Benedict XVI that there would be a reversion to the era of Paul VI. That is, a bureaucratically inclined pope who would paradoxically achieve a balance between tradition and progress.

(*Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (1927- ) reigned as Benedict XVI between 2005 until His Holiness’s 2013 February abdication).

Joseph Ratzinger was in many ways a creature of the Second Vatican Council in that he approved of the fundamental reforms to Church processes while strongly supporting that underlying and long-standing values be retained. As a theologian Father Ratzinger wrote cogently arguing that a balance between Vatican II inspired reform and retention of underlying values occur. For a time in the mid-1960s Father Ratzinger seemed to have achieved the practically perfect balance in a Church context of being a conservative’s conservative and a liberal’s liberal.

As Paul VI was placed in a context by popular opinion of being liberal-conservative following his issuing of Humanea Vitae in 1968, Father Ratzinger seemed to be in that ideological/theological category. That is, Father Ratzinger as a clergyman supported new liberal institutional processes within the Church and engagement with interested parties within and outside of Catholism while still defending core Church teachings which were at times seemingly at odds with modernity.

For a while it seemed that John Paul II would be a ‘liberal-conservative’ pope but by the mid-1980s His Holiness appointed conservatives, if not integralist arch-conservatives, as bishops and arch-bishops. This tendency commenced as an understandable papal re-action to the dangerous heretical threat of Catholic Marxism which took the form of so-called ‘Revolutionary Theology’(sic).

However the move against a potential Marxist threat within the Catholic Church became a purge of liberals from the upper echelons of the Church hierarchy. Cardinal Ratzinger probably was probably inclined toward the Paul VI approach of agreeing to disagree with comparatively liberal bishops and arch-bishops so that a balance was retained between tradition and progress.

Nevertheless, Cardinal Ratzinger as a loyal supporter of John Paul II gained a reputation of as an overall Church conservative (the ‘pope’s Rottweiler’) as the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith between 1981 until his papal ascension in 2005. It has been too often overlooked that in this position Cardinal Ratzinger genuinely sought alternative opinions when upholding Church teachings.

However, the institutional processes via the operation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were put into place which in effect purged many Catholics from their Church. Cardinal Ratzinger’s reputation as an arch-conservative was reinforced by his conservative inclinations been vented in his published works such as the Ratzinger Report. Such publications were more lateral than they were given credit for but the relative lack of theological diversity at a Vatican level placed Cardinal Ratzinger’s writings in an arch-conservative category.

The transition of Cardinal Ratzinger from a liberal-conservative to an arch-conservative was facilitated by John Paul II appointing conservatives or arch-conservatives as Cardinals that Cardinal Ratzinger was effectively co-opted into being one when he was appointed the Dean of Cardinals in 2002.

As John Paul II declined in health with the terrible onset of Parkinson’s decease Cardinal Ratzinger moved into the fray to assume many of His Holiness’s duties that Vatican watchers and insiders respectfully dubbed him ‘John Paul III’. It would be wrong to categorize Cardinal Ratzinger as a Svengali type figure who manipulated an infirm John Paul II as the increasing conservative if not arch-conservative context in which the German Cardinal operated had been set by his pope via the appointments of bishops, archbishops and cardinals.

In fact Cardinal Ratzinger was more appropriately compared to the Austrian statesman Prince Klements von Metternich (1773 to 1859) than the fictional and sinister Svengali character. Prince Metternich was the leading non-royal political figure in the Austrian Hapsburg Empire serving as Foreign Minister and later as Chancellor. His Highness was at heart a liberal-conservative or even a liberal who presided over a conservative empire. The prince also became the leading political figure in a post-Bonapartist Europe between the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna and the liberal revolutions of 1848.

In the crucial year of 1848 Prince Metternich was the prime hate figure even though he was ironically sympathetic to the liberal aims of the revolutionaries. The Metternich tragedy is akin to a hypothetical scenario of a shrewd Leniod Brezhnev making the Czechoslovak liberal communist leader Alexander Dubcek the main trouble shooter in the Warsaw Pact to maintain the essence of Marxist-Leninist rule.

The prince’s liberalism had crucially helped sustain the essentially conservative and mis-named Metternich System before time caught up leading to the revolutions of 1848. Even though Prince Metternich happily accepted his exile in Britain, which had the type of liberal-conservative constitutional monarchy he envisaged for continental European empires and nations, he correctly believed that the 1848 revolutions had not gone far enough that the former Chancellor feared that the conservative Hapsburg imperial dynasty would eventually fall.

Prince Metternich essentially fell because his failure to reform the conservative settings he operated under facilitated a liberal revolution from below which perhaps unfairly targeted His Highness. Benedict XVI similarly failed to modify the institutional settings in which he operated in. However, the major cause of his fall was that the arch-conservatives who effectively put Cardinal Ratzinger in as pope in 2005 really brought him down in February 2013 so that one of their own, an arch-conservative, could replace of the German theologian.

If an arch-conservative succeeds Benedict XVI as pope the equivalent of an 1848 revolution will occur in the form of societal disengagement around the world from the Catholic Church and its social teachings. Catholic Church arch-conservatives may triumph in the short to medium term by having one of their own as pope but the Church’s transformation into an institution which mainly appeals to jansenite integralists will lead to counter-productive outcomes to say the least.

Jansenist integralists within the College of Cardinals should also be aware that should they follow through on their game plan to put one of their own in as pope that he will not necessarily have the legitimacy to be effective. Benedict XVI’s action in being the first pope in over six hundred years to abdicate has set a precedent whereby cardinals, archbishops, bishops, clergy and laity can call for an integralist pope to abdicate. Furthermore, disgruntled Catholics could manifest their dissatisfaction with having an integralist pope by forming the equivalent of inner churches now that papal authority has been undermined by Benedict XVI’s abdication.

A conservative aspect of Benedict XVI’s outlook which that paved the way for integralism was his belief that it was better that the Church be orthodox by being, if necessary, numerically smaller. Such a mindset conveys a dangerous acceptance of Catholics either leaving or splitting from their Church which fatally undermines the liberal-conservative legacy of Paul VI.

Splits within organisations which are supposed to be broad based- ‘Catholic’ actually means universal- are to be avoided because a key rationale for their existence is by definition lost. Daniel Mannix (1864 to 1963) the Irish Arch-Bishop of Melbourne between 1917 and 1963 was associated with what was known as the Mannix Tradition. This approach envisaged that Catholic laity would proactively promote Catholic Social teachings in the broader community for the common good. It was envisaged under the Mannix Tradition that clergy would fulfil a supportive role as the running would be left to lay people.

The eventual and unfortunate reality of the Mannix Tradition was that it counter-productively promoted integralism because the narrow minded jansenist prejudices of too many arch-conservative Catholics were affirmed that they later retreated from the secular world thereby leaving too many people who had relied upon them in the lurch.

The tragedy of the Mannix Tradition reflected both the personal strengths and failings of Archbishop Mannix. His call to Catholics to engage in the secular world also coincided with promoting political polarization which helped lead to splits within the Labor Party in 1916 and 1955. Australian society up until the 1916 Split was remarkably free of sectarianism which was reflected in the Labor Party then essentially being a coalition between working class Methodists/Presbyterians and working class Catholics.

In many ways this admirable inter-religious unity had the potential to be converted into a basis for a party split which in turn precipitated wider sectarian divisions in a broader society. This is exactly what came to pass over the issue of conscription during the First World War. Although Archbishop Mannix was entitled to oppose conscription, His Grace was not unaware that ensuing passionate emotions could lead to those Catholics who had previously been inspired by the Mannix Tradition to join trade unions and the Labor Party to consequently become intensely sectarian in their outlook.

The strong integralist sentiment that many, but by no means all Catholics, had within the Labor Party and the trade union movement was crucial to an insular approach to politics been adopted when they split from the Labor Party in 1955 rather than remain within its ranks to fight communist infiltration. The ramifications of this integralist inspired action resulted in a strong pro-communist left been formed within the Labor Party and a vicious reinforcement of vicious anti-Catholic prejudice within Australian society which still persists.

What religious Catholicism now needs is unity derived from a pope that has legitimacy. The selection of a pope that was not associated with the centralization of power with John Paul II and Benedict XVI of the Vatican bureaucracy is a must if the Catholic Church is to avoid a future profound crisis. The personal morale of Benedict XVI himself was undermined by the conflict that this bureaucratic centralization that was causing for many Vatican based clergy which was essentially been undertaken by his avowed loyalists.

The arrest of Benedict XVI’s personal butler Paolo Gabriele in May 2012 vitally contributed to the campaign to have His Holiness abdicate in favour of an arch-conservative by undermining his personal morale. Due to the virtually unprecedented nature of papal abdications there is no guarantee that an arch-conservative pope would be elected by the College of Cardinals. To increase the probability of this occurring however, vile sexual innuendo is being used to undermine Italians in the Vatican so that an arch-conservative pope is chosen.

Because Italian Cardinals are the most powerful bloc within the College they must close ranks to help crucially ensure that an Italian pope is elected or a Cardinal from the Third World who in Church terms is a liberal-conservative. Such a selection would mean that the diabolical politicking that is going on to secure the election of an arch-conservative pope will have been to no avail.

An Italian or Third World liberal-conservative pope in the mould of Paul VI who will have a commitment to reign for life will help ensure that an arch-conservative pope does not carry out purges of cardinals and bishops around the world. Fundamental mistakes can always be avoided with the benefit of hindsight which frustratingly comes after the event.

However, foresight can be gained in lieu of hindsight by analysing how contemporary trends can lead to particular outcomes. The challenges of applying foresight are in making lateral and correct connections and then having the courage to act on the deductions that have been arrived at, even though they cannot be verified before the action is undertaken.

The stakes are high with regard to electing Benedict XVI’s successor that courage is needed to do what is ethically correct. If the Catholic Church cannot do what is ethically correct when it comes to electing a pope then this great institution will deserve the horrendous consequences which will ensue.

Modern Polish History Overviewed

Poland alas lost its independence in 1939 due to the lack of foresight of its foreign minister, Jozef Beck (1894 to 1944) making the colossal mistake participating in the carve up of Czechoslovakia in September 1938 which cleared the way for a complete German Nazi takeover of that nation the following month. Had Poland supported Czechoslovakia, instead of supporting revisionist nations such as Horthy’s Hungary, then Poland would have had a militarily strong ally to vitally assist in supporting the maintenance of Polish independence regardless of Anglo-French military assistance.

Even with the very unfortunate consolidation of Poland’s overall loss of its independence in 1944-45 there was still scope for further terrible disasters to befall this nation. Had the Russophile Marshal Rokossovsky come to power in 1956 opposition to his regime probably would have been so strong that the stability of the Soviet bloc may have been undermined.

As it was, Khrushchev’s relatively good sense, even if selfishly motivated by domestic concerns, helped avoid a disaster by withdrawing Soviet support for Rokossovsky ruling Poland in 1956. The then Soviet leader’s subsequent acquiesce in October 1956 to Gomulka coming to power helped Poland avoid the disaster that same month which befell Hungary when the Soviets brutally crushed an heroic attempt the following month by the latter nation to break free from the Soviet orbit.

Poland under the pragmatic but genuinely pro-Soviet Gomulka seemed to have engineered a modus operandi between the Polish people and the USSR according to the model of the so-called ‘*Polish Road to Socialism’. This model was a mutual delusion between the Polish people and the USSR which paradoxically worked for a while. There was a pretence that under Gomulka, Poland had gained genuine autonomy, if not independence, vis a vis relations with Moscow and that the Polish people supported socialism so long as their nationalist sensibilities were accommodated.

(*The Polish Road to Socialism phrase gave rise to other variants of terminology for describing socialist rule, such as ‘The Burmese Road to Socialism’ under the military dictatorship of General Ne Win between 1962 and 1988 and Dubcek’s ‘Socialism with a Human Face’ in Czechoslovakia in 1968).

The reality was that communist rule in Poland could not endure without ultimate Soviet support and the overwhelming majority of Poles despised the Marxist socialist system that they lived under. Nevertheless, the ‘Polish Road to Socialism’ offered a compromise by which Poles could adjust to the strategic reality of Soviet power to avoid a bloody catastrophe by trying to forlornly break free from the Warsaw Pact.

The internal contradictions of the Polish Road to Socialism came to the fore in late 1970 due to the socio-economic inadequacies of Gomulka’s rule when riots broke out in Gdansk following food price rises. Moscow had the relative good sense to opt for a pro-Soviet pragmatist in Edward Gierek rather than a doctrine Marxist with a strong nationalist streak such as Mieczlaw Moczar.

Brezhnev for a ten year period of time (1970 to 1980) by going with the Kadar option as opposed to a Ceausescu one for Poland, avoided an upheaval in Central and Eastern Europe by taking into account Polish domestic realities. The Gierek regime did not adopt innovative market reforms such as Kadar’s 1968 New Economic Mechanism *(NEM) but instead purchased a degree of social stability by utilizing privileged access to West German financial institutions to fund a consumer boom.

(Kadar’s NEM eventually ‘came a cropper’ by the mid-1980s due to the massive debt that Hungary incurred which was owed to western financial institutions).

The internal contradictions of the Gierek regime taking out western loans which Poland’s socialist economic system eventually could not finance led to the rise of Solidarity in 1980. The emergence of a strong force in Polish society which could not overcome the dominance of external power(s) was a phenomenon which Poland had often experienced in its modern history. Unsuccessful uprisings were undertaken in 1794, 1830-31, 1848 and 1863 which were driven by strong and well organised domestic forces but which failed due to unfortunately stronger external counter-intervention.

The major reason why Poland regained her real independence in November 1918 was because Jozef Pilsudski correctly read the strategic situation. Jozef Pilsudski predicted shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 that Poland would regain her independence if Russia was defeated on the eastern front by Germany and Austria-Hungary but that these two empires would ultimately lost the war on the western front.

Determined to help bring about the above cited scenario, Pilsudski’s Polish Foreign Legions fought on the Russian front until 1917. Pilsudski’s break with the Central Powers consequently enabled him to move into the void in November 1918 in the wake of their defeat re-establish a genuinely independent Poland.

By contrast, Foreign Minister Jozef Beck miscalculated in 1939 that Britain and France would launch an immediate invasion of Poland with the outbreak of war in early September that year. Had this occurred all Poland had to do, and indeed did do, was to have been to hold out for two to three weeks as Britain and France’s combined military forces overwhelmed a distracted Nazi Germany. Colonel Beck, who had served as Poland’s military attaché to France in the early 1920s, did not realize that the respective Anglo-Franco national moods by the 1930s were no longer conducive to fighting Germany to undertake an expeditious invasion.

Fifty years later (1989) the calculated combination of domestic daring, tempered with an acute appreciation of Soviet politics, enabled Lech Walesa and Wojciech Jaruzelski to steer Poland to full independence and full democracy the following year. This colossal domestic achievement in Polish affairs in turn precipitated a chain of events which brought down Soviet backed communism.

The relevance of reviewing Polish modern history is to emphasize that national leaders and/or elites should base their decisions on realistic assessments which take into account objective realities to avoid disaster. A realpolitik approach to national decision making usually results in positive outcomes because the realities of a situation are taken into account over and above narrow selfish interests.

Why Balance is Needed For Australia to Remain the ‘Lucky Country’

Due to a traditional balance between national and foreign interests been achieved Australia has had a relatively positive socio-economic history. In contrast to Poland which has historically been wedged between two powerful empires and been too often internally divided, Australia has indeed been the ‘lucky country’. The Australian continent is too geographically distant that a prompt invasion and occupation of the nation by a foreign power is untenable.

Internally, Australia has historically had relative domestic harmony because the nation’s abundance has not been controlled by a local oligarchy. In this respect Australia is very different from an archetypal so-called South American ‘banana republics’ where domination of local natural resources has been crucially facilitated by collusion with external business interests so as to perpetuate poverty.

The original Australian colonies may have had a ‘South American’ socio-economic model had the New South Wales army (Rum) corps succeeded in deposing the colonial governor, Vice-Admiral William Bligh (1754 to 1817) in the so-call ‘Rum Rebellion’ of 1808. The British government’s wise decision to re-call the Rum corps and appoint General Lachlan Macquarie (1762 to 1824) as the new New South Wales governor in 1810 were vitally positive actions which established the basis for modern Australia.

Governor Macquarie’s overriding achievement was to convert New South Wales from a penal settlement into a viable colony. This was accomplished because most of the convicts who came to Australia were not really criminals as the transportation policy was really a de-population programme to relieve massive social pressures in Britain which came from industrialization causing a massive internal migration of country people to the cities.

By dis-regarding the previous status of previous convicts, and even allowing many current convicts to participate in civic and government affairs, Governor Macquarie engineered the creation of a new society in which people could advance according to their merit. The colony of New South Wales therefore became one of the few places in world history where former ‘criminals’ could socially and economically advance due to their settlement in a new land.

The opportunities for former convicts in the colony of New South Wales were reflected by the emergence of the so-called ‘squiretocracy’ which referred to settlers who had established massive pastoral properties. The impact of Governor Macquarie’s policies was such that having once been a convict was no impediment to joining this caste of land-owners.

The major driver of social advancement in Governor Macquarie’s New South Wales was economic success and it was the pursuit of this objective which drove the then colony’s many ‘movers and shakers’. Elizabeth Macarthur’s (1766 to 1850) achievement in developing the Merino breed of sheep led New South Wales to become the world’s most important wool producer and exporter. Wool induced prosperity spurred the growth of a new middle class and generated a sufficiently broad range of goods and services that most white settlers were able to enjoy a standard of living that was then higher than in Britain at the time.

Due to economic opportunity in the colony of New South Wales the *major political issue was that of other geographical parts of the Australian continent administratively separating to form new colonies. White settlement in then northern New South Wales in the 1820s led to the establishment of Brisbane which by the 1830s had become an important city. Brisbane’s consolidation as a city underpinned the separation of much of northern New South Wales to form the colony of Queensland in 1859.

(* Continuing transportation of convicts to Australia by the 1840s, was also an important political issue before the onset of before the 1850s gold rushes. This was because the Australian colonies had by then had become viable and British society had stabilized that the actual convicts who were being transported had actually committed real crimes that transportation was no longer a paradoxically positive policy. Public opposition to convict transportation in Australia was such that this policy was ended in the eastern colonies by the early 1850s and in Western Australia by the late 1860s).

Similarly, the foundation of Melbourne in 1837 and this city’s consolidation by the late 1840s underpinned the conversion of the Port Phillip District in southern New South Wales into the Colony of Victoria in 1851. With regard to the southern island of Van Diemens Land (renamed Tasmania in 1856) which had been settled by hardened convicts and military personnel in 1803, this territory separated from New South Wales in 1825 to become a colony in its own right.

In contrast to the other Australian colonies, South Australia never had any convicts. This colony was not formed by local settlers successfully lobbying to separate from New South Wales but was instead founded by the British government in 1836 which had instigated establishment of Adelaide earlier that year. As such, South Australia was to be the only Australian colony that never had any convict settlement. Similarly, Western Australia (which was originally called the Swan River Colony) was initially settled by non-convicts following the establishment of Perth in 1829 but convicts were later transported to this colony.

This western colony due to a then relatively sparse population and the wide distances between population settlements lacked a sense of political formation until an influx of immigrants following the outbreak of gold rushes in the 1880s. The socio-economic changes that these gold rushes precipitated led to Western Australia becoming a self-governing Westminster parliamentary democracy in 1890.

Similarly, the influx of settlers in the 1850s gold rushes in eastern Australia caused political change which was manifested by the granting of Westminster parliamentary self-government. Even though there were members of the squiretocracy of convict descent this elite opposed expanding suffrage so that they could continue to ensure their political and socio-economic dominance. This was reflected by squiretocracy domination of colonial legislative councils which had narrow land-owning based voting bases.

Governor Sir Charles Hotham (1806 to 1855) of Victoria originally instituted a prohibitive prospecting gold not only as a revenue raiser but as a social control mechanism by which the squiretocracy could maintain their ascendancy in the context of the massive gold-rush induced population influx. Victoria might have had a left-wing polarizing radical political tradition which told the story of immigrant miners fighting against a land owing elite which invoked the power of the British Crown to maintain its ascendancy.

The above scenario was not to be because the Hotham administration wisely reformed the licensing system and prepared the way for Victoria to become a self-governing Westminster democracy in 1856 following the public outcry against colonial troops storming the miners’ Eureka Stockade in the goldmining town of Ballarat in December 1854. The Victorian precedent led the way for the other eastern colonies to become Westminster democracies in which the Crown was regarded as an impartial reference point which protected the public good.

This post-1850s high regard for the Crown followed on from the legacy of Governor Macquarie of New South Wales establishing institutional state power being a force which served the public good rather than narrow sectional interests.

The high quality of Australian colonial democracy and societal egalitarianism been paradoxically facilitated by institutional linkage to the British Crown complemented the high standard of living because economic power was not concentrated with an oligarchy. Even though the availability of gold had petered out the Australian colonies still achieved and maintained a high living standard due to population expansion facilitating economic diversity where there was a range of employment generating goods and services.

The credit worthiness of colonial banks created the financial conditions by which money could be lent to spur small, medium and big business development. The strength of currencies that colonial banks issued in addition to the British pound sterling was derived from the value of Australian wool which well into the twentieth century would be Australia’s most important export.

That Australian prosperity was based on ‘wool off the sheep’s back’ became painfully apparent in the 1890s when the floor price for wool collapsed. The 1890s economic depression was the worst socio-economic crisis that has ever yet confronted Australia, surpassing the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The socio-economic repercussions of the 1890s depression were such that they underpinned the conversion of Australian colonies into states of an Australian federation which came into being on January Ist 1901. The positive impact of federation first became apparent in 1904 with the passage of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act (the 1904 Act) which established the basis for a federal system of industrial relations based upon arbitration.

Because Australia’s system of arbitration was conducive to the growth of small craft based unions due to their recognition by the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, (the Commission, which was established in 1907 under the auspices of the 1904 Act) to represent employees on a sectoral basis, it is too often overlooked that employers were initially strongly supportive of arbitration.

The basic (minimum) wage for a worker to be paid to support a family was set by Justice Sir Henry Bourne Higgins’ (1851 to 1929) famous 1907 Harvester Judgement. This Commission decision had the flow on effect of crucially boosting consumer spending which was conducive to economic growth which business welcomed. Business was also generally supportive of arbitration because of the social stability it generated ensuring that unions by utilizing institutional arbitral supports could effectively represent their members’ interests to achieve wage justice and to protect and/or improve employee working conditions.

The boon that the 1904 Act was for Australian trade unions helped them provide crucial support which helped the aligned Australian Labor Party (ALP) become one of the nation’s two major political parties following the respective federal and New South Wales state elections that were held in 1910. Therefore whether the federal ALP under the leadership of John Watson (1867 to 1941) realized it or not, it did the *labour movement an immense favour by utilizing its then parliamentary balance of power to ensure the passage of the 1904 Act.

(*The ‘labour movement’ refers to the close links between the ALP and trade unions).

Although, the Labor Split of 1916 over conscription severely undermined the ALP, this party still maintained its position as one of Australia’s two major parties. This was partly been as a result of the support the ALP has received from of a strong union movement. The nation’s two-party system- despite major non-ALP parties metamorphosing until the foundation of the contemporary Liberal Party in December 1944- itself has remained a constant in Australian politics since the two non-ALP political groupings, the Protectionists and Free Traders, first ‘fused’ in 1909.

Australia and the World

The relatively stable party system that had emerged in the late 1900s and general political stability that had emerged since the granting of parliamentary self-government in the 1850s could have led to a complacency in which all Australians negated the importance of international relations, but this was not the case.

The influx of Chinese to the gold fields in the 1850s precipitated a racist re-action which reflected a broader concern that the resource rich but sparsely populated Australian continent could be taken over by foreign (i.e. non-British powers).

There was little fear of Imperial China invading and occupying Australia due to internal weaknesses and foreign interference in Sino affairs. However, the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 in which Britain fought against Russia gave rise to widespread fears in Australia of a future Russian invasion of the continent.

There was also a fear of German expansion in the Pacific threatening Australia that the Queensland premier Sir Thomas Mcllwraith (1835 to 1900) instigated the occupation of southern New Guinea in 1883 to pre-empt a German takeover of that territory. The British acquiesced to Mcllwraith’s unilateral action the following year to establish *British Guinea as Germany proclaimed the establishment of German Guinea at about the same time to the north.

(*British Guinea was transferred to Australian sovereignty in 1904 and Australia took the German territory during the First World War. At the 1919 Treaty of Versailles the territory of what became Papua New Guinea was recognised as a League of Nations’ mandate entrusted to Australia).

The fear that Australia had of European expansionism gave way to concern regarding Japanese military power following Japan’s comprehensive victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Prime Minister Alfred Deakin (1856 to 1919) demonstrated amazing foresight by helping instigate a visit of an America flotilla of navy ships to Australia in 1903 as he foresaw that the United States as a Pacific power was the nation that would ultimately safeguard Australian independence.

Japan’s entry in 1915 into the First World War as an Entente ally allayed Australian fears concerning possible Japanese aggression. Japan’s aggressive expansionism in China, which led to the outbreak of outright war in 1937, similarly placated Australian fears that Japan might invade Australian. Furthermore, there was always the seeming re-assurance that so long as Britain had its naval base in Singapore that Australia’s security interests was assured.

It was due to this Australian attitude that British power would always safeguard Australia that precipitated a paradoxical form of Australian nationalism that Australians had to prove their worth to the British Empire. During the Boer War of 1899 to 1902, troops from the *Australian colonies effectively won the world’s first modern guerrilla war for Britain.

(*The Australian colonies each had their own armies which led to the peculiar position of each of them remaining in being in South Africa for over a year between 1901 and 1902 after Australian federation in January 1901. The colonial armies came together in 1902 to form the Australian army).

Australia also demonstrated its worth to the British Empire during the First World War by fighting in France and the Middle East. The high casualty rates from that war are still evident today in Australian country towns where there are memorials commemorating the local war dead. The decimation of a generation of Australians in the First World War was considered by most Australians to be a noble sacrifice which had safeguarded the nation against possible external aggression. This attitude was reflective of the Australian doctrine which later became known as ‘Forward Defence’.

The Importance of Forward ‘Defence’ to Australia

Forward Defence was, and is, an approach in which Australia will pre-emptively fight against a power which one day might threaten the nation before they are in a position to do so. Integral to Forward Defence is the forging of alliances with powers which could be called upon to repay the favour by militarily protecting Australia. It was therefore a profound shock to Australia when Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942 because this potentially signalled that Britain could not militarily protect Australia.

As it was Australia fought of a potential Japanese invasion of the continent by stopping the Japanese military advance on the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea in 1942. The *American naval battle victories later that year in Midway and the Coral Sea removed the threat of a Japanese invasion of Australia which served to vindicate the correctness of Forward Defence.

(*The 1942 radio speech by Prime Minister John Curtin (1885 to 1945) in which he declared that Australia looked to the United States as its main ally has too often been invoked to discredit his predecessor Robert Menzies (1894 to 1978). Sir Robert Menzies as an anglophile has been mis-portrayed as indignant that Australia was breaking with Britain even though the ‘mother country’ was then not in a position to be of practical assistance following the Fall of Singapore.

In fact Sir Robert Menzies approved of Curtin’s military alliance with the United States. The non-ALP side of Australian politics were popularly perceived as been incurably wedded to Britain due to former prime minister, Billy Hughes (1862 to 1951) adopting a pro-Churchill stance during the 1943 election campaign. This bolstered the belief that Hugh’s disintegrating United Australia Party (UAP) supported the proposition that Australia to the north of the Queensland capital of Brisbane be abandoned to the Japanese so that priority could be given to fighting the war against Nazi Germany).

Belief in the importance of Forward Defence was reinforced by the fall of mainland China to communism in 1949. To induce the United States to be a Pacific power which would counter a possible mainland Chinese communist threat Australia and New Zealand entered into the 1951 Australian New Zealand United States Treaty Organization (ANZUS) alliance. The ostensible purpose of ANZUS was for the United States to re-assure Australia and New Zealand that they would be protected against Japan regaining full independence with the end of the American led occupation of that nation in 1951.

The reality was that Australia and New Zealand wanted to utilize the United States as an ally against mainland China (the People’s Republic of China, PRC) at a time when the priority in American foreign policy was to oppose the USSR. The Aussie-Kiwi concern regarding the PRC was not necessarily based on paranoia due to the threat of Indonesia becoming a pro-Chinese communist dictatorship.

The One-Time Communist Threat in Indonesia

The people of Indonesia gained independence in 1949 after a four year war against the return of Dutch rule after the nationalist leader Sukurno (1901 to 1970) had proclaimed the establishment of an Indonesian republic following Japan’s surrender in August 1945. There was nothing inherently wrong with Indonesia gaining her independence, as indeed the *Chiefly government went out on a limb to oppose the resumption of Dutch rule.

(*The United States by 1948 opposed the Netherlands attempt to resume control of Indonesia regarding this undertaking as counterproductively helpful to the PKI).

However, the major Australian concern was that the well-organised Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) could become a threat to Australia’s vital security interests should it take power in an independent Indonesia. The PKI was a well-organised and resilient party which by 1957 was the most important political party despite having come fourth in national elections in 1955.

The rise of the PKI was due to the breakdown in Indonesian democracy between 1955 and 1957 which was engineered by Sukurno who went from a titular head of state to an executive president/dictator by reinstating the 1945 Constitution to create a so-called ‘Guided Democracy’. The two forces which Sukurno utilized to undo Indonesian democracy were the armed forces led by an Islamist general, Abdul Haris Nasution (1918 to 2000) and the PKI. By balancing these two forces which were hostile toward each other Sukurno was able to maintain his political ascendancy between 1957 and 1965.

As important as the PKI was in underwriting Sukurno’s powerbase it is still something of a mystery as to why the Indonesian president relied upon the communists, which by the 1960s had the third largest communist party in the world after the PRC and the USSR, when he had his own party, the Indonesian National Party (PNI). The answer to this mystery was that Sukurno was a communist himself even though he was a Muslim.

The Indonesian leader had immersed himself in both Islamic philosophy and communist ideology in the 1920s to become an intellectual
hybrid – a Marxist Islamist. By the late 1950s Sukurno had become a leading international figure in his own right as the embodiment of a chic anti-American third world leader. His pro-PRC orientation was reflected by the Indonesian president giving support to PKI backed guerrillas undertaking military action against the Malay Federation in 1964 in a policy known as Confrontation.

The Sukurno regime was probably emboldened to back an insurgency against a neighbouring nation because of the success of the PKI policy of successfully pressuring the Dutch to leave West Papua in 1962 without allowing the people of that territory to decide whether they wanted to join Indonesia or opt for independence. The Indonesian success in taking West Papua concerned much concern in Australia that the ALP federal Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell (1896 to 1973) tried to induce a small number of coalition MPs to bring down the Menzies government which then had a one seat majority.

The Menzies government however resolutely rallied to support Malaysia against Indonesian communist aggression with the support of other Commonwealth nations such as India. Australian military support for Malaysia between 1964 and 1965 in opposing Confrontation was a manifestation of Forward Defence par excellence.

Malaysian and Commonwealth success in opposing Confrontation was a contributing factor to the Indonesian military moving against the PKI after a communist coup attempt to purge the army of its leading anti-communist generals was thwarted by General Suharto in late September 1965. Had the PKI led coup succeeded Sukurno undoubtedly would have adapted to preside over an open communist dictatorship.

A Marxist-Leninist regime in Indonesia would have been a major threat to Australia, particularly because sea lanes vital for Australian trade could have been cut off. A communist Indonesia probably would have strengthened a PRC capacity to engage in an aggressive/expansionary foreign policy in the Pacific region that China might not have become a Soviet counter-weight to the USSR following RN’s historic visit to Peking in February 1972.

At the very worst Australia could have been confronted by a future PRC backed invasion by a communist Indonesia. At the very least, a communist led Indonesia would have escalated Confrontation to an all out war with Malaysia which would have embroiled Australia.

Suharto’s New Order: 1966 to 1998

General Suharto’s elimination of the PKI not only saved Australia from potentially its most formidable foreign policy crisis but created a basis for sound Australian- Indonesian bi-lateral relations. It was therefore a foreign policy imperative for a now President Suharto (1921 to 2008) to visit Australia in 1968 and 1972 as part of his establishing cordial relations with the continent to the south of his nation.

President Suharto’s determination to maintain proper relations with Australia was reflected by his virtually seeking permission from then Prime Minister Whitlam in 1974 to invade the Portuguese territory of East Timor to prevent the PKI from re-establishing a base of operations as leftist colonial authorities in Deli moved to cede that new nation to the Marxist Fretilin Party. Indeed, President Suharto initially envisaged a condominium arrangement where Australia and Indonesia jointly ruled East Timor until independence elections (which probably would have excluded Fretilin) were held.

Whitlam may have declined to participate in the administration of East Timor as a jointly administered condominium but he gave Suharto the understanding that Australia at the very least would not object to an invasion. The Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which was still officially a Portuguese territory, occurred in December 1975 and was welcomed by local residents who were supporters of the anti-communist Union for a Democratic Timor (UDT).

There were probably other East Timorese, beside Fretilin supporters, by contrast opposed the Indonesian takeover. In April 1975 Prime Minister Whitlam met with President Suharto in the Queensland city of Townsville where an undoubted issue of discussion was a possible Indonesian invasion of East Timor and subsequent joint Indonesian-Australian administration of that territory. Given Australia’s role in previously helping successfully defend Malaysia during the 1964-1966 Confrontation period against pro-communist Indonesian guerrillas, Australian acquiescence for am invasion of East Timor would have been considered a pre-requisite by President Suharto.

Whitlam’s implicit endorsement of the 1975 Indonesian invasion but refusal to have Australia participate in provisionally administering East Timor ensured that the territory had to endure nearly twenty-four years of Indonesian rule instead of moving toward independence within two to three years. The former prime minister’s acceptance of the Indonesian action was reflected his petitioning the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in November 1982 to remove East Timor as a matter for deliberation. This was the act of some-one who wanted to cover his tracks and was reflective of Whitlam’s personal weaknesses often being paradoxically concealed by bold action.

Punching Above its Weight: Australia’s Long-Standing Role in the Asia Pacific Region

The Australian leader who made amends for Whitlam’s short-comings with regard to East Timor policy was John Howard. His threat to despatch Australian troops to militarily intervene in East Timor in late 1999 after local pro-Indonesian militia carried out massacres in reaction to an internationally supervised referendum, which overwhelmingly endorsed independence, was crucial to ensuring a subsequent Indonesian withdrawal. Although Howard may not have known it at the time, his action in saving East Timor was one of the major positive achievements of his blighted anti-states and anti-union government that he has a right to be proud of.

The Australian role in rescuing East Timor in 1999 reflected the respect that Australia has been held in South East Asia since the Confrontation era. This widespread is a vindication of the Forward Defence Doctrine and negates the perspective that former Australian prime ministers Bob Hawke (1929- ) and Paul Keating (1947- ) have that their nation had neglected Asia before their coming to office.

As previously mentioned the Menzies government had shown great skill in drawing the United States into the Asia Pacific region by helping instigate the formation of ANZUS in 1951 and as a leading member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The strong bond of kinship that Australia had with the member nations such as India, Malaysia and Singapore helped facilitate co-operation which helped effectively counter pro-communist Indonesian aggression during the Confrontation period.

Australia was also able to punch above its weight in international affairs as a leading member of the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) which was formed in 1955. Anti-communism was the major interest which drove SEATO that most of its members militarily strongly supported South Vietnam between the mid- 960s and the early 1970s. The Fall of Saigon in April 1975 undermined the raisin detre of SEATO that this organisation was closed up in 1977.

Important factors which led to the closure of SEATO were the by then anachronism of British and French membership and the absence of important Asian nations such as Indonesia. That Indonesia was not a SEATO member was not surprising because an important reason for the organisation’s initial formation was to counter the malign influence of President Sukurno.

Suharto enticed the SEATO members of Thailand and the Philippines into joining with Indonesia to form the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967. This new international association was also initially joined by Malaysia and Singapore whose previous non-membership of SEATO had undermined that organisation. Malaysian and Singaporean membership of ASEAN denoted that these nations had reconciled with Indonesia due to Suharto terminating the failed Confrontation military engagement.

(*Suharto became acting president in 1967 and was formally elected to a five year term by the Indonesian National Assembly, the People’s Consultative Congress in 1968).

ASEAN effectively superseded SEATO as an anti-communist internationalist force which was reflected by its staunch opposition to the Vietnamese communist occupation of Cambodia between 1979 and 1989. Ironically, due to changing international power shifts Vietnam joined ASEAN in 1995 partly as a counter to PRC power in the Asia Pacific region even though Hanoi had supposedly reconciled with Beijing.

The formation of ASEAN was testament to the foreign policy achievements of the Suharto administration whose domestic accomplishments in the wake of the Sukurno catastrophe were considerable. Alas, Suharto was not able to resist the temptation to utilize his political domination to establish an economic empire that was eventually centred round his family which had become apparent by the mid-1980s.

Suharto might have escaped the opprobrium of the corruption of his ‘New Order’ regime had his intelligent and respected wife *Siti Hartinah (1947 to 1996) not pre-deceased him. The Indonesian president nevertheless demonstrated shrewdness by resigning in 1998 to help avoid a socio-political upheaval in the context of the Asian currency crisis and in doing so preserve his family’s massive financial empire.

(*Siti Hartinah might have deserved the nickname Madame ‘Tien Percent’ that the international press gave her for allegedly receiving kickbacks for business deals. However she was generally respected by the public which had contributed to the overall viability of the Suharto regime).

Due to both genuinely positive achievements and undeniable massive corruption Suharto’s legacy since his 1998 resignation and death ten years later have led to understandably conflicted analysis concerning his resignation which will probably continue for the foreseeable future.

A non-Indonesian apologist for Suharto is former Australian prime minister, Paul Keating. Such was Keating’s regard to Suharto that to his way of thinking John Howard did not have a legitimate right to lead Australia because he supposedly did not have Suharto’s personal respect. It is therefore difficult to envisage that Australia under Keating’s leadership would have fulfilled such an important role in rescuing East Timor.

For Whitlam, Hawke and Keating, their ALP governments had opened up Australia to Asia and in doing so broken with the public policy retardation caused by coalition governments supposedly having an Anglo-Saxon mindset which scored their neighbours to the north. This was not the case as Australia was respected for its role between the 1950s and 1970s by Asian leaders for the nation’s stalwart anti-communism. In this context, the rational of the Australian doctrine of Forward Defence was understood and endorsed by Asian leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew (1923- ).

Anti-Anti Communism Internationally Discredits Australia

The Singaporean statesman’s high regard for Australia was converted into utter contempt because of the anti-anti-communism of the Whitlam government between 1972 and 1975. The major manifestation of this government’s anti-anti-communism was its diplomatic recognition of the PRC in early 1973. A realpolitik approach to international affairs is understandable in that the reality of communist rule on mainland China had to be *accepted.

(*The anti-communist social democratic government of Clement Atlee had reluctantly given the PRC diplomatic recognition in early 1950 just of the Republic of China (ROC) government had re-located to the island of Taiwan in late 1949).

However, in the context of the Whitlam government diplomatic recognition of the PRC was motivated by a trendy anti-anti-communism which infected may social democratic parties round the world in the 1960s and 1970s as a spin-off for opposing the United States support of South Vietnam. In all probability in Whitlam’s heart of hearts he would wanted to have broken Australia’s alliance with the United States to pursue an anti-western neo-non-aligned foreign policy.

Such a disastrous policy direction was fortunately unviable due to the international complications that would have been generated. Domestic considerations also dis-inclined Whitlam from breaking with the American alliance as a powerful anti-communists within the ALP such as Lance Barnard (1999 to1997) and Kim Beazley Snr (1917 to 2007) would not have allowed such a policy developed.

(*Even though Kim Beazley Snr was possibly the best leader Labor never had he could have changed the course of Australian history for the better by been present at the 1955 ALP Hobart Conference. Even though this conference was illegally convened, had Beazley been present his balance of power position would have prevented the outrageous anti-industrial grouper motion been passed by a pro-communist left).

For all the domestic and international impediments for the Whitlam government to pursue an outright anti-American foreign policy it came as close to doing so as it practically could. Not only did Australia also grant diplomatic recognition to North Vietnam and East Germany in March 1973 but in early 1975 the Whitlam government announced that it was allowing the Hanoi front government, the ‘Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam’ (PRG) to open an office in Canberra.

Australia still remained formal diplomatic relations with the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) but this was just that a formality. The embassy that Ambassador Geoffrey Price presided over in Saigon had a skeletal staff. Although President Nguyen Van Thieu coolly received Ambassador Price upon his accreditation in 1974 the ambassador was personally very sympathetic to South Vietnam and as such was disgusted by the Whitlam government’s refusal to take South Vietnamese refugees for fear that they would become ‘Asian Balts’, i.e. anti-communist voting immigrants.

The Whitlam government also disgraced Australia internationally by being the only western democracy to recognise the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states. Accordingly, Australia’s Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian communities understandably loathed the Whitlam government. Australian Croats also had reason to despise this government due to its unprovoked hostility toward them by stupidly equating the anti-communism of Australian Croatians with Utase fascism.

The raid that then federal attorney general, Lionel Murphy (1922 to 1986) personally led on the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s (ASIO) office in March 1973 on the incorrect premise that information on supposed terrorist Utase cells in Australia was near fatal blow for the international credibility of Australian intelligence.

Up until the 1973 Murphy led raid ASIO had been one of the most respected western intelligence agencies. Murphy’s raid on ASIO headquarters on the supposed basis of ensuring the protection of the soon to be visiting Yugoslav prime minister was a pretext by the then attorney-general to effectively destroy ASIO by fatally compromising its international security links. Murphy’s hatred of ASIO was reflective of his hostility toward anti-communist (‘grouper’) trade unions, the partial strength, of which he believed was derived from their supposed links to domestic and international intelligence services.

The Hawke government helped restore Australia’s international reputation in intelligence circles by expelling the Soviet diplomat Valery Ivanov in 1983 for trying to unduly cultivate the former ALP National Secretary and then Canberra lobbyist, David Combe (1943- ). The latter was exonerated by the 1983-84 Hope Royal Commission into espionage. Combe himself had been an open critic of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and as such reflected a strong anti-anti-communist streak within the left of the ALP.

The anti-anti-communism of the Whitlam government had endowed Australian foreign policy with a naïve assumption that international communism was a strong force in international affairs which belonged to a flow of historical inevitability with regard to its success been assured. In the case of the PRC, even though Whitlam would not have intended it to be, the establishment of diplomatic relations with one time anti-communist powers such as Australia reflected a re-positioning of a future post-Maoist China toward adopting a pragmatic anti-Soviet foreign policy.

Indeed, that the PRC was transitioning toward an non-ideological anti-Soviet foreign policy was reflected even before Mao’s *death when then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s official July 1976 visit to Beijing was treated with great fanfare due to his publicly warning against the expansion of Soviet military power in the Pacific.

(*Mao died in September 1976).

The Kangaroo and the Dragon

That the PRC was adopting a pragmatic non-ideological approach to its foreign policy supported an analysis that this shift was reinforced by or reflective of a dramatic reformation of the Chinese economy as it moved toward a market economy. In actual fact the amazing economic reforms that the PRC’s paramount leader Deng Xiao-ping (1904 to 1997) initiated after late 1978 maintained a strong state directed underpinning which meant that terminology of mainland China having a ‘socialist market economy’ was more than just rhetoric.

Crucial to the maintenance of state controls was the creation of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in which the PRC state has poured financial resources into partially private enterprises to maintain a strong but flexible impact of statist power. Similarly, with regard to international trade relations a post Maoist PRC has pursued a mercantilist approach to trade so that domestic controls can be maintained.

Australia as a national resource rich is regarded by the PRC’s senior leadership as an important nation for which raw materials can be secured to help ensure the success of long-term planning objectives. The PRC’s transition from a centrally economically planned Marxist state to a socialist market economy was reflected by broadening the nation’s trading prospects, particularly with regard to establishing supply-line flows to natural resources.

In 1983 the then Chinese premier, Zhao Ziyang (1919 to 2005) toured Africa as part of a strategy securing future resource flows as the PRC’s economy was liberalized. Premier Zhao also visited Australia in May 1983 in which it was announced that Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) would enter into a joint venture with the Chinese state to promote valuable Sino-Australian trade concerning the importing and exporting iron and ore.

Premier Zhao was a political liberal who probably wanted to see the PRC eventually become a juridical state with a multi-party system in which labour and capital could be independent actors with a strong state helping maintain national unity and economic cohesion for such a vast nation. Due to Premier Zhao’s market orientation a mistake might have been made by foreign trading nations that they were helping transform the PRC into a market economy without realizing that the transformation which was been affected on them. This was the case with regard to Australia.

Self-Inflicted Decline: Australian ‘Economic Rationalism’ (sic) and Rent-Seeking

Australia’s expanding trading links with the PRC in the 1980s and 1990s were commercially beneficial to Australia even the nation went economically backwards during the Hawke-Keating era (1983 to 1996) due to unnecessary tariff cuts and the high levels of public foreign debt that were accumulated as part of ‘economic rationalism’ (sic). The virtual disappearance of sections of the manufacturing sector helped engineer a transition to part time and casual employment that adversely affected the ALP’s voting base. Had it not been for internal dis-unity within and between the coalition parties and their own move to the extreme right then Labor rule would have ended earlier than in March 1996 when John Howard (1939- ) was elected to lead Australia.

Those in the ALP who claim that the Hawke-Keating era was a golden age for Labor overlook that disenchantment with this period gave rise to the extremist One Nation Party whose support base was amongst disillusioned Labor Party voters. In differing ways the One Nation Party cost the ALP election victory in the 1998 and 200l federal elections. By 2004 the coalition under Howard was in its stride to win the federal election that year and it would have also won the 2007 poll had internal sabotage in pursuance of a rent-seeking strategy not brought an end to federal Liberal rule.*

(*The how and why of the factors which brought Howard down in 2007 have been analysed in previous Social Action Australia articles).

Due to the Howard government’s draconian industrial relations agenda and its hostility toward Australian states the end of coalition rule was an overall positive development. There were to be however to be tremendous costs since 2007 because rent-seeking elements within the federal ALP have engineered high public foreign debt levels and moves towards effectively dismembering Australian states.

A cause of rent-seeking in Australia has been the influence of a mercantilist PRC on the nation’s economic and political affairs. The previously cited economic links which were established between the PRC and Australia with regard to the former accessing mineral resources consolidated during the Howard era (1996 to 2007). To be relatively fair to Howard the so-called ‘China boom’ was of great benefit because he and his Treasurer Peter Costello (1957- ) handled it so well.

They (i.e. Howard and Costello) established the necessary economic settings for there to be a China mining boom. This was achieved by the coalition government paying off Australia’s public foreign debt, adroitly utilizing the revenue bonanza from a non-inflationary/non-regressive Goods and Services Tax (GST) the savings that were made by the Commonwealth by allowing the states to reap this tax.

The Howard era might have been another version of the Menzies golden age had it not been for the powerful mining interests which had developed links to a mercantilist PRC. Mining interests within the Liberal Party had often manifested their power by their hostility toward the very existence of trade unions and contempt for industrial arbitration. Traditionally the *Western Australian branch of the Liberal Party was the depository of this anti-union/anti-arbitration sentiment before the rise of the New Right following Malcolm Fraser’s unfortunate election defeat in March 1983.

(*Ironically, the Western Australian Liberal government of Colin Barnett (1950- ) is at the forefront of resisting rent-seeking by opposing GST clawbacks and attempts to abolish state mining royalties).

The corporate political power of the mining sector was concentrated in Western Australia due to the importance of mining in that state. The departure of Malcolm Fraser and Andrew Peacock’s (1939- ) attempt to project himself as an economic ‘dry’ allowed the New Right to expand its influence on a national basis beyond Western Australia. This was reflected by the foundation of the HR Nicholls Society in 1985 which was a networking group of businesspeople, lawyers, members of employer associations, academics, journalists as well as Liberal Party branch members and MPs.

The prime objective of the HR Nicholls Society was to destroy Australia’s arbitration system to undermine the interests of wage earners so that Australia had a ‘competitive’ and ‘flexible’ neo-liberal economy. Even though the Hawke and Keating governments had helped implement aspects of the HR Nicholls Society’s objectives they had still not pursued an outright *anti-union agenda due to links between the ALP and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

(*Inadvertedly, the Hawke government had undermined Australian trade unionism by promoting the de-unionising process of union amalgamation which was able to take off in the early 1990s after John Maynes (1923 to 2009) lost control of the Federated Clerks Union to the Socialist Left of the ALP. Union amalgamation was supported by Hawke as political payback to the hard left of the Australian union movement for acquiescing to his government’s neo-liberal economic reforms.

Advocates of industry unionism instead of achieving a concentration of union power that they desired instead helped precipitate a steep decline in union density in which union membership more than halved in just over ten years between 1990 and 2000!

Furthermore, the Keating government effectively endorsed de-unionisation due to its neo-liberal ideological orientation. This was reflected by the Keating government introducing non-union stream of enterprise bargaining in 1993).

Rent-Seeking and the Threat of a Mining Oligopoly

The political corporate power of Western Mining Limited, WMC, which is now a subsidiary of BHP Billiton, was such that a strong New Right ethos within the Liberal Party was promoted in the 1980s and 1990s. Howard as prime minister mistakenly believed that his association with the New Right would help secure his base to remain in prime minister. Indeed, Howard had every right to expect mining corporate giants such as WMC to support him as he had delivered on anti-union/anti-arbitration industrial relations ‘reform’.

However, the mega big mining companies of BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Xstrata as well as the respectively privately owned mining empires of Gina Rinehart’s (1954- ) Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd and Clive Palmer’s (1954- ) Mineralogy Pty Ltd wanted more of Howard than what he could deliver. What was desired of the mega big mining corporations was that Australia becomes a rentier state for their own benefit.

The mega mining corporations and the two privately owned mining companies actually desire a dud super profits taxation regime to establish a mining oligopoly via tax minimization been facilitated by links to a mercantilist PRC. In this context the abolition of mining royalties and of tax write offs for paying these state taxes under the Minerals Resource Rent Tax (RSPT) would help facilitate a PRC linked mining oligopoly which will create an overdependence of Australia’s mining sector on mainland China.

The avowed denunciation by the three mega big mining companies and of Rinehart and Palmer of the RSPT and advocacy that state mining royalties remain tax deductible should not be believed. These corporate mining interests know that a super-profit mining tax regime and the elimination of tax deductions of mining royalties will make next to impossible for smaller mining companies, such as Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’s Fortescue Metals to compete.

The role of the Australian Greens Party in currently advocating an RSPT at 40% rate (up from 22%) without deductions for state royalties raises the questions as to whether they are useful idiots, ideological zealots or a combination of the two? Do the Greens understand that smaller mining companies that do not have special arrangements with the PRC will not be able to minimize or even eliminate the profits that they have to declare which are taxable?

It is true that the MRRT in the second quarter of 2012-2013 did raise $126 million in revenue but indications are that this low figure was mainly derived from profit declarations made by the BHP-Billion subsidiaries/partners Mitsui & Co Pty Ltd and Sinosteel Australia Pty Ltd. Their profit declarations were in effect mercy donations which enabled the federal Treasurer Wayne Swan to save face by allowing the MRRT to raise just a little bit of revenue in relative terms.

A more calculated dividend that could be gained from these taxed profits could be to create a pretext for the abolition of state mining royalties by claiming that more revenue could be raised if they were abolished. The abolition of corporate tax deductibility for state mining royalties will create a scenario of double taxation in the mining sector which the relatively smaller companies could not pay for. Furthermore, the ultimate objective of abolishing state mining royalties, which the Gillard government is unfortunately seemingly moving toward, will consolidate the power of the three mega big mining companies and respective business interests of Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer.

The maintenance of state mining royalties supports the valid principle that minerals belong to the public and that as such the privilege, as opposed to the right, to mine them must be paid for. In keeping with the principles of a market economy where the rule of law prevails corporate (i.e. company) tax should be paid. Once taxation requirements and labour obligations, including the payment of appropriate remuneration, have been met then companies should be allowed to keep all the profits that they make. This encourages genuine competition which is necessary for economic diversity.

The above scenario has been the norm in Australian mining since the Eureka Stockade incident of 1854 and should remain so if Australia is to avoid becoming a rentier state. Paul Kelly, (1947- ) The Australian newspaper’s editor at large is therefore wrong to write that mining super-profits taxation is sound in principle but that it has been inadequately designed by the Labor government. Super-profits taxation in its own right violates the fundamentals of a genuine market economy which a medium economic power such as Australia simply cannot afford.

Kelly claimed in the commentary section of The Australian (page 12, Wednesday the 27th of February 2013) that the RSPT, the devised precursor to the MRRT, would have had ‘real teeth’ could have raised nearly $100 billion revenue ‘across nine years’. This senior journalist describes the RSPT by inference to Kevin Rudd’s interview with Australian Agenda as having ‘revenue teeth’ with the MRRT by contrast being a ‘toothless tiger’.

The overall inference from Kelly’s article is that a more encompassing RSPT taxing at a 40% rate constituted defiance on the part of Kevin Rudd as prime minister against the three big mining companies while Julia Gillard as his successor capitulated to corporate interests by adopting a watered down MRRT as devised by the major miners. This perspective is wrong and hopefully in the course of a Coalition-Greens instigated senate enquiry into the transition from the proposed RSPT to the MRRT the record would be set straight.

The RSPT itself served the interests of the three big mining companies as well as the respectively privately owned companies of Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer. The capacity of these companies to minimize/fudge their tax by claiming the costs of operations off-shore in collusion with a mercantilist PRC created the scope for a mining monopoly that was locked into with a specific trading power. In this context the aforementioned mining companies stood to gain from a super-profits tax, including the abolition of state mining royalties.

The essential reason that there was a leadership transition from Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard in June 2010 was due to concern that after the former had won the next federal election as a result of Abbott allowing this to occur so that there could be a later transition to then Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner as prime minister. The dividend for the Abbott Liberals of a Tanner government would have been implementing the policy of ‘regionalization’ (sic). Abbott Liberal Party interests with regard to ‘regionalization’ (sic) would have been accommodated by the New South Wales Liberal Party branch having by 2011 have won a landslide state election victory.

To avoid a Tanner transition and the factors which would have precipitated such a leadership change the ALP federal caucus opted for Julia Gillard over Kevin Rudd. . Part of securing AWU support for the leadership change was to move from an RSPT which Gillard supporters did not want a bar of as a dud tax to the MRRT.

The underlying continuity between the two mining taxes was that the power of the mining corporate giants was exercised in the ALP via its powerful influence over AWU federal parliamentarians such as Treasurer Wayne Swan. The smarter approach by the big mining companies would have been to have dropped their covert agenda for a super-profits tax regime in favour of the public stance of opposing this type of taxation. The scope for political instability causing the potential for sovereign risk could have since been averted.

The big mining companies still want at this relatively late stage a transition back to Rudd so that under his recycled leadership the proposed RSPT, which they initially desired, as well as state mining royalties can be abolished. Such policy ‘reforms’ cannot be undertaken by an Abbott government due to avowed policy positions. Nevertheless, once a returned transitionary Rudd government has fulfilled its purposes then there can be a transition to an Abbott-Sinodinos government which can consolidate a transition to a rentier state.

The ironic tragedy if such a scenario was to transpire is that the Ruddites and the Greens might actually believe their own propaganda that introducing an RSPT and abolishing state mining royalties would somehow actually constitute standing up to rent-seeking mining companies. Furthermore, the environmental degradation that eventually would be wrought on northern Australia by creating economic zones controlled by selected mining companies will be an outcome that the Greens should face now rather than later if they are really sincere about the environment’.

The Greens and rent-seeking sections of the two major parties should also appreciate that the narrowing of competition in the mining sector will create an economic oligopoly which will be underpinned by a grossly disadvantageous integration with a mercantilist PRC. For mainland China such an arrangement could also rebound by encouraging the maintenance of a political economy which is conducive to future dangerous social unrest and political instability because domestic property and labour rights are not be respected.

PRC domination of Australia’s mining industry could also lead to other malevolent ramifications, such as with regard to the nation’s vital agricultural sector. The recent acquisition of a major stake in Australia’s largest cotton plantation of Cubbie in southern Queensland by a Chinese SOE could signal that too many privately owned farms could give way to becoming agribusinesses which eventually service a mercantilist PRC.

The relentless onset of coal seam mining at the expence of Australian farms could well mirror a struggle which will determine whether Australia’s agricultural sector can withstand a shift towards Australia becoming a rentier state overly dependent on a resource hungry mercantilist PRC.

An Abbott Government and Rent-Seeking

There is often a danger in making predictions such as the above cited scenario of dire outcomes of coming across as an extremist or a panic merchant. Quite often demands are made of predictors of disasters that they substantiate their claims by reference to tangible evidence. Alas, tangible evidence cannot be produced. However in lieu of empirical verification, current trends can be identified and placed in a context to establish a plausible scenario in which caution against horrendously bad public policy can be realistically advocated.

It is credible to allege that Gina Rinehart has substantial influence with the Abbott-led federal coalition. Ideas of Rinehart align with general policy positions that Abbott has advocated. The overall thrust of Rinehart’s ideas are encapsulated in her proposal that special economic zones be established in the relatively sparsely populated north of Australia taking in the northern parts of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Abbott’s advocacy of reform the federal-state relations is in keeping with ‘regionalization’ (sic) which has been warned of in previous Social Action Australia articles. Rinehart’s vision of special northern economic zones can be facilitated in a regionalized Australia which an Abbott government would be committed to. Rinehart’s advocacy of the importation of guest workers as *cheap labour to work in northern special economic zones can only really be facilitated if the power of Australian trade unions are irrevocably broken to engineer an overall low wage economy.

(*After all, according to Rinehart, miners in Africa are ‘happy’ to work for two dollars a day. It is probably for similar reasons that Abbott supports the extensive use of 457 working visas as a way of undercutting the wages of existing Australian domestic employees. His advocacy of widespread use of 457 work visas is a probable manifestation of Abbott sharing the Rinehart ‘vision’ for northern Australia and the associated ramifications for the rest of the nation).

An Abbott led government despite the Opposition Leader’s denunciation of Work Choices will still be anti-union. The opposition employment relations spokesman Senator Eric Abetz (1958- ) is known to be stridently anti-union and not adverse toward a return to a Work Choices industrial relations scheme.

Abbott is himself is a declared opponent of Work Choices having claimed that he opposed this legislation in the Howard cabinet. However, a network of industrial and political operatives associated with Peter Reith (1950- ) the former Employment and Workplace Relations in the Howard government has been established within the federal coalition.

The anti-union strategic approach of an Abbott government will be to target the financial resources of trade unions, such as superannuation funds. A populist campaign portraying trade unions as corrupt organisations with an abundance of financial resources but bereft of sufficient membership could well be undertaken by an Abbott government. A future Abbott government will probably not make the mistake of attacking the award safety wages net so as to help create a strong public reaction which is ultimately favourable to trade unions.

The undermining of wages and work conditions can be undertaken later by an Abbott government after *unions have first been fatally undermined a populist campaign. The driving down of wages and work conditions can come later as a by-product of the importation of guest workers in special zones in northern Australia.

(*A trade union which is particularly vulnerable to industrial annihilation under an Abbott government will be the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU). This industrially constructed trade union has long since evolved from initially representing wool shearers in the early twentieth century into a catch all trade union which gains industrial coverage across different industries due to the support of employers eager to prevent more militant union representation.

The AWU has escaped becoming a total tame cat trade union due to its important impact on Australian politics in helping supply moderate MPs to federal and state parliaments and ministers in ALP federal and state governments. Therefore in a future Abbott era an environment could be created in which employer support for the AWU is withdrawn as part of destroying political moderation within the ALP to help ensure long time coalition rule.

Care should therefore be taken by the AWU that it does not convert its current political leverage as a bailiwick of support for Prime Minister Julia Gillard into a basis to subsequently defect over to the Rudd camp for a return of the former prime minister will inevitably secure the ALP’s defeat at the 2013 federal election).

Special Northern Rent-Seeking Zones

Rinehart’s advocacy of northern economic zones could be dismissed as wishful thinking if it was not reflective of public policy advocated by organisations associated with the Liberal Party such as the *Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). The IPA is advocating special economic zones for northern Australia which is indicative of the considerable extent to which that rent-seeking is now prevalent within the coalition.

(*The great C.D Kemp founded the IPA in 1943 to represent business interests within public policy. This think-tank became an important source of ideas to the new Liberal Party to help this party remain free from the control of big business. The role that the IPA is now fulfilling in supporting rent-seeking goes against the life work of the late C.D Kemp).

Such special economic zones could extend beyond mining to encompass agribusinesses in lieu of traditional family owned farms so that a mercantilist PRC, which has its own experiences with special economic zones as market socialist economy, can gain access to cheap but reliable supply lines of food. Overall, special economic zones will undermine the aggregate economic capacity of Australia’s existing agricultural and mining sectors to help engineer an over-dependence on a mercantilist PRC.

There will also be massive environmental degradation should northern economic zones be established because environmental safeguards will be discarded so that unfettered mining can be undertaken. This prospect should alarm the Greens to motivate this party to oppose rent-seeking. Instead, the Greens are calling for a more extensive super-profits mining regime and the elimination of state mining royalties which will only consolidate the power of the three mega mining corporations and the private mining empires of Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer.

It should not be forgotten that the original carbon tax proposal encompassed one thousand big companies and charge for the use of petrol. The reduction of the applicability of the carbon tax to five hundred companies and the elimination of the charge on petrol prevented this tax from having more immediate devastating impact.

Nevertheless, energy prices for consumers have increased by an average of 10% and the long term viability of important Australian manufacturers, Important employers such as Amcor have already been adversely affected as a result of the carbon tax as opposed to the high value of the Australian dollar.

Furthermore, it should be remembered that mega big mining companies such as BHP Billiton avowedly accepted the imposition of a carbon tax on the supposed basis that this safeguarded the company against legal liability for the adverse affects of carbon induced pollution. However, executive leaders of important industrial concerns such as BHP Billiton, may have thought, similar to the Greens leadership, that the undermining of small to medium sized businesses by a carbon tax could lead the way for Sovereign Wealth Funds *(SWFs) becoming the new determinants of economic and political power in Australia on whose boards they would have representation.

(*SWFs have been defined and analysed in more particular detail in other Social Action Australia articles).

The Struggle for Government Independence from Rent-Seeking Forces

The Gillard government since the 2010 federal election has been relatively successful in that the reduction in the scale of the applicability of the carbon tax has prevented an economic disaster that the ALP is still competitive for the 2013 federal election. This is an ironic turn of events because Abbott allowed the Gillard government to win the 2010 federal election so that the groundwork for rent-seeking could be put in place for after the coalition won the subsequent federal election by implementing adverse rent-seeking measures such as the carbon tax.

However, there are still rent-seeking measures that Abbott expects either Prime Minister Gillard or a reinstated Kevin Rudd to undertake before the next federal election. These will include abolishing state mining royalties and clawing back GST revenue from the states so that an Abbott government will not have to undertake such tasks in it establishing a rentier state.

The election of an Abbott federal government could almost be an inevitability unless the Gillard government fully asserts its independence from inter-party rent-seeking forces. Nevertheless, the Gillard government since it came to power in June 2010 has been fighting to throw of the power of a would-be rentier elite. This struggle has had its ups and downs but it now seems that the critical juncture is being reached as to whether the Gillard government will be independent of rent-seeking forces.

That the federal government is struggling to chart its own course is reflective of the fact that the ALP first came to office in 2007 and held on after the 2010 federal election was due to the coalition deliberately losing those elections. As such the ALP since 2010 has taken actions which have not necessarily been in the nation’s genuine national interest because of the power of internal rent-seeking forces that often collude with similar elements in the Liberal Party.

Rent-seeking actions that the federal ALP has undertaken since 2007 include the unnecessary stimulus spending which gravely in-debted the nation, initiating a clawback of GST revenue from the states and moving to adopt a dud super-profits tax regime for the mining sector. Associated measures aimed at assisting the transition to rent-seeking have also included providing special work visas for guest workers on particular mining sites. This is in keeping with Rinehart’s ‘vision’ of a imported labour working in special northern economic zones to help undercut the pay and working conditions of local employees throughout Australia.

Within the constraints of minority government Prime Minister Julia Gillard has done extraordinarily well to be a highly administrative competent national leader who has maintained focused on her policy passions such as education. Due to the adversity in which Prime Minister Gillard has operated under she probably has not harboured any delusions as to the political security of her position.

John Howard (1939- ) in contrast to Julia Gillard (1961- ) probably deluded himself with regard to his political ascendancy having won three federal elections as prime minister and having virtually scotched Treasurer Peter Costello’s intended succession. The then prime minister’s sense of power was such was that he helped engineer the election defeats of state Liberal Party branches in state elections. This was instigated by Howard, most notably in New South Wales in March 2007, on the basis that the Australian people would vote for divided government by returning the coalition on a federal level to prevent across the board ALP governments.

The then Australian prime minister did not realize that elements in the Liberal Party were going to return the favour by sabotaging his re-election in 2007 to establish a future rentier state. Despite massive clangers with regard to the coalition’s 2007 federal election campaign, Howard probably would have held on had it not been for four Liberal Party members caught three days before election day (November 24th) distributing false pamphlets in the western Sydney electorate of Lindsay.

This scandal was enough to tip the federal election in favour of the ALP and ensure that Howard lost his seat of Bennelong. Without this scandal Howard might have scrapped back as prime minister.

At a Friday press conference the day before the election Howard projected a demeanour which conveyed that he expected to lose the federal election. It was probably at this point that the soon to be former prime minister realized that he had not been sufficiently in control of his own campaign that he would subsequently fall from power.

The Paradox of Julia Gillard: An ALP Loyalist Who Serves the Broader Genuine National Interest

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is probably politically wiser than Howard in that she will ensure that if the ALP loses the next federal election it will not be because of internal sabotage. Indeed, if a prime minister maintains has a loyal national campaign he or she can actually win an election.

If the ALP were to return to Kevin Rudd before the 2013 federal election he would not have the sufficient capacity to prevent rent-seeking elements within his party from sabotaging Labor’s national re-election campaign. There may be Labor MPs who believe that a Rudd return will boost their party’s electoral stocks that they could hold their seats. However, it should be pointed out to ALP MPs that they will be getting no free kicks in the 2013 federal election as some previously did in 2007 and 2013.

Every winnable House of Representatives will be vigorously contested by the coalition parties. Already resources are been poured into marginal seats around the country by the Liberal Party and local branches are also being mobilized to win seats from Labor and to hold existing seats. Because the carbon tax has not yet had hit hard Liberal Party attempts to recruit thousands of previously non- party people to help out in the 2013 campaign have so far fallen flat.

Nevertheless, the overall point needs to be made that a Rudd return cannot facilitate inter-party collusion that would mitigate the extent of a coalition landslide. There still may be elements within the ALP who think, and will be conned into thinking that a Rudd return can facilitate a return to inter-party collusion determining who wins particular seats but this just is not going to occur. The federal Liberal Party has been in opposition for nearly six years, it is not going to throw any more elections or mitigate the extent of a coalition victory by doing any favours for ALP MPs.

The point that inter-party collusion is unviable in the 2013 federal election can be countered that Rudd could win that poll for the ALP in his own right. No he can’t! The Liberals have already prepared a sludge file on Rudd which will blow him and his party out of the water should he return as prime minister. The former prime minister also lacks a sufficient loyalist base within his party’s machine to establish a viable campaign infrastructure that he could now win the next federal election.

Rent-seeking elements within the ALP may believe that they can re-coup after a coalition 2013 landslide via the introduction of ‘regionalization’ (sic). This will not necessarily be the case because an Abbott government is going to pursue de-unionising strategies with a gusto that trade unions may not be able to assist the ALP in establish regional bailiwicks. Furthermore the pursuit of a *Lasch political strategy by the coalition operatives could ensure that rival parties, such as the purported Democratic Labor Party (DLP), prevent the ALP from establishing power bases at a regional level.

(*A Lasch political strategy has been analysed in other Social Action Australia articles).

To Win An Election A Political Party Has to be Independent from its Opponent

The best hope for the ALP to win the 2013 federal election is to stick with Prime Minister Julia Gillard. In contrast to Howard in 2007, Julia Gillard has the organisational capacity to ensure that the ALP national campaign does not counterproductively collude with the coalition parties and thereby gives Labor a competitive capacity to win the 2013 federal election.

The policies that the Gillard government are pursuing are expanding the prospects for the ALP to maintain its voting base and win over undecided voters. In contrast to the Hawke, Keating and Rudd governments, the Gillard government is promoting manufacturing to safeguard existing blue collar jobs while creating the scope for new jobs to be created.

The above cited policy direction goes against the previous Labor Party approach where the manufacturing sector was virtually scorned as an impediment to employment flexibility. There are also promising signs that the Gillard government recognises the importance of food/agricultural exports and the supporting a food processing industry as new source of comparative trading advantage for Australia.

The Gillard government’s industrial relations policy of bolstering individual employment rights at a workplace level is promoting a balance between employee rights and legitimate employer prerogatives. This government’s ‘big ticket’ items regarding implementing the Gonski education review and adopting a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) are reflective of a determination to improve the quality of life and opportunities for those who might be disadvantaged. This policy mindset cannot harm the ALP prospects of maintaining its support base and winning over undecided voters.

The ALP under a disciplined and focused Julia Gillard still has the capacity to win the 2013 election. Despite the long predicted 2011 landslide against the ALP in that year’s state election occurring, Labor remains competitive in New South Wales because voters critically distinguish between federal and state contexts. Australia’s most populous state has traditionally been a stronghold for the ALP. This combined with the current federal government’s determination to ensue service delivery, such as hospital services, should help Labor in crucial parts of the state such as western *Sydney.

(*It is noteworthy that elements of the media which still want to engineer a transition back to Rudd are using the prime minister’s stay at the Rooty Hill Hotel in Sydney as a pretext to cite allegedly credible opinion polls indicating a near ALP wipe-out under Julia Gillard’s leadership in Labor’s heartland).

Although the ALP is in opposition in Victoria the margin in the State Parliament between the two parties is very small and the coalition state government of now led by Dr. Denis Napthine (1952- ) who assumed office in March 2013 in succession to Ted Baillieu (1953- ) will probably remain shaky in relation to its electoral standing. Consequently, so long as the ALP has a focused and competent federal government led by Julia Gillard Labor could actually holds its Victorian federal seats and gain coalition held seats in that state.

The ALP is also still competitive in Queensland, particularly in Brisbane, due to public unease concerning the steep public service and service cuts undertaken by the National Liberal Party (LNP) government of Premier Campbell Newman (1963- ). In the states of South Australia and Western Australia the ALP brand name has not been tarnished by recent existing or previous state governments that Labor can hold its own if it is perceived to be providing a competent federal government.

Tasmania will be a difficult state for the ALP to do well in the 2013 federal election because Labor has yet to be forgiven for having gone into coalition with the Greens at a state level. Consequently all five Tasmanian federal seats could go to the Liberal Party.

The ALP’s federal vote in the Northern Territory should remain constant, particularly as the Labor National Executive’s pre-selection of someone as personally determined as Nova Peris (1971- ), a former Olympian champion who has competed in both hockey and athletics. The preselection of an indigenous Australian such as Nova Peris also indicates that the ALP is not going to take Aboriginal voters in the Northern Territory for granted as they once did.

With regard to the Australian Capital Territory, should the ALP return to Kevin Rudd it is possible that Labor orientated public servants, who constitute a majority of the territory’s electorate, will vote for the coalition despite the threat of retrenchments under an Abbott government. Canberra is a ‘small town’ in that the administrative chaos that Rudd inflicted upon the Commonwealth public service as prime minister is not going to be quickly forgotten.

In general terms the 2013 federal election is winnable for the ALP should they keep their move by supporting Julia Gillard who while having a strong sense of being Labor is also determined to serve all Australians. It can be argued that the personal virtue of a leader alone cannot guarantee victory but in the current context the ALP needs a leader who can be clearly distinguished from Tony Abbott (1957- ).

The ALP not only needs to clearly distinguish itself from the Abbott Liberals but to also refrain from policies which clear the way for rent-seeking. Indeed, why should the Gillard government encourage ALP rent-seekers to sabotage their side of politics in the 2013 federal election by implementing counter-productive measures?

The Rent-Seeking Threat of ‘Regionalization’ (sic)

‘Regionalization’ (sic) is the key policy approach which immediately threatens the Gillard government. Traitors within Liberal Party ranks in 2007 helped bring Howard down because they believed (and still believe) that regional bailiwicks can be established for their own selfish benefit.

The December 2012 appointment of former Victorian Premier John Brumby (1953- ) as Reform Chairman of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) is an ominous sign that ‘regionalization’ (sic) is still a distinct prospect. COAG is supposed to be a purely administrative institution which facilitates interaction between federal and state governments for the purposes of national co-ordination.

Having a so-called COAG Reform Council could well facilitate an interactive process where anti-states governments, such as the New South Wales administration of Premier Barry O’Farrell (1959- ), link up with centralist elements within a federal government, particularly if there is to a transitionary government led by Kevin Rudd, to initiate an interactive process in which states are dismembered. Dismemberment actions against the states that could be initiated at COAG could include GST clawbacks, abolition of state mining royalties and centralizing the current state responsibilities that states have for education and health with Canberra.

It should not be forgotten that in June 2010 the then Premier Brumby went to Canberra to oppose federal clawback of GST revenue from the states to the Commonwealth only to concede to such a give away on the basis of signing up to a hospital funding deal which would have also facilitated a federal takeover of the states’ hospitals system. Furthermore, John Brumby, also as the current co-chairman also of the GST Distribution Review Panel-former New South Wales Liberal premier, Nick Greiner (1947- ) is the other co-chairman- is well placed to engineer another attempt having the Commonwealth claw back GST revenue from the states.

Empowering actions which the Gillard government could undertake with regard to federal-state relations and which could also bolster its chances for re-election in 2013 would be send a clear signal that there will be no GST clawback or abolition of state mining royalties would be to abolish the COAG Reform Council and the GST Distribution Review Panel to simply have a co-opted COAG administrative secretariat.

The above actions might leave John Brumby high and dry but it should not be forgotten that he won and lost the premiership of Victoria in 2010 based on inter-party wheeling and dealing which is now laying the groundwork for rent-seeking. Indeed, the contemporary dynamics of Victorian politics could well determine whether rent-seeking occurs.

Safeguarding State Rights: In Fulfilling This Role Why Victoria is Now the ‘Premier’ State

Victorian state politics have had a staid quality, with the exception of the seven year Kennett interregnum (1992 to 1999), after the ALP’s John Cain (1931- ) was elected premier in March 1982. His trendy but still strangely phlegmatic government impressed many Victorians as competent until revelations of financial ineptitude caught up with it that he resigned as premier in August 1990. The successor government of Joan Kirner (1938- ) was assailed for its living beyond its means even as it sold off Victoria’s State Bank to try to keep the state financially solvent.

The financial mess that Victoria was in enabled Jeff Kennett (1948- ) to lead the Liberals to a landslide victory in October 1992 state elections. Premier Kennett embarked upon hefty financial cuts and aggressively promoted investment strategies to spur economic recovery. Kennett’s successes in attracting investment actually resulted in a strong economic recovery but the scale of public expenditure cuts and draconian industrial relations laws cuts he undertook alienated too many Victorians despite many still having a grudging respect for him.

Jeff Kennett’s major political failing was that in contrast with Queensland Premier Sir Johannes ‘Joh’ Bjelke-Petersen (1911 to 2005, premier of Queensland between 1968 and 1987), that he (Kennett) did not harness passionate support for him to adequately protect against his legion of intensely hostile opponents. Furthermore, in contrast to Bjelke-Petersen, Premier Kennett lacked as well oiled a political machine and sufficient control of his party to ensure that factional from opponents from within did not bring him down.

The coalition lost the September 1999 Victorian state election because insiders within the coalition government collaborated with elements of the ALP to pursue a strategy where regional discontent was utilized to help deliver a shock victory to Labor in that state election. The importance of engineering a situation where regional independents in conservative seats won the balance of power was not only the formula which brought Kennett down but was used again in and after the 2010 federal election to facilitate rent-seeking policies to help put the Gillard government on a rent-seeking course.

The internal divisions which precipitated Kennett downfall were reflected by the Victorian Liberal branch’s division into a Kennett and Kroger factions, the latter referring to the leadership of Michael Kroger (1960- ) who served as party state president between 1987 and 1992. There was is no discernable ideological dimension to the Kennett-Kroger factional division but this still does not negate its intensity.

The Victorian Liberal Party branch seemed doomed to perpetual opposition not so much because of factional divisions but because of its decimation in the 2002 state elections when the party lost nineteen of its thirty-six seats. This was mainly due to its Treasury Spokesman Robert Dean (1952- ) failing to re-enrol to vote after the seat he had previously lived in was abolished. This administrative oversight led to a potential clean out of the Liberal Party because mostly Kennett supporting MPs lost their seats.

The Kennett faction did not however disappear because it maintained its position in the party branches. This faction in reality is in actuality more anti-Kroger than pro-Kennett. The continued inability of Kroger to infiltrate ‘Kennett’ Liberal Party branches resulted in factional balance been restored within the partyroom when the Liberals clawed back many of the seats in 2006 that they had unnecessarily lost in the 2002 state election.

In the 2010 state elections not only was the Kennett faction slightly between positioned than its Kroger rivals but it was further bolstered by the Liberals narrowly winning that state election. This turn of events was primarily due to younger elements within the Socialist Left and Labor Unity factions within the ALP allowing the Brumby government to lose to engineer generational leadership change within the state Labor Party.

The current leader of the Victorian ALP Daniel Andrews (1972- ) belongs to the SL faction. He is associated with a sub-grouping within the Victorian SL which once belonged to the Monash University Labor Club. Leaders of this campus club later established a political dominance in the municipality of the City of Port Phillip, south of Melbourne’s Central Business District (CBD). This local government dominance helped members once associated with the Monash Labor Club to develop a formidable power base within the Victorian branch of the ALP.

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that SL control of the City of Port Phillip will be used to help promote ‘regionalization’ (sic) on a national level. Even though the ALP is in opposition in Victoria the margin, as previously mentioned, is narrow which reflects that the prospects for Victorian Labor are actually even better than where the party holds office in South Australia and Tasmania.

The scope for Victoria to be the base to promote ‘regionalization’ (sic) is also increased by the strong links that the Kroger faction of the Liberal Party has with the Australian Liberal Students Federation (ALSF). While the National Organization of Labor Students (NOLS) and the ALSF* were arch-rivals in student politics they was still paradoxically scope for post-university collaboration due to the shared political experiences that involvement in student politics can bring.

(*Even though the ALSF and NOLS were supposedly rivals this did not prevent their affiliates at the Clayton campus of Monash University in the 1990s often co-operating with each other to undermine politically moderate students).

The scope for post-university collaboration between Victorian MPs who are Kroger Liberals and SL members concerns engineering a transition to ‘regionalization’ (sic). Integral to this transition was the recent deposition of Ted Baillieu in favour of Dr. Napthine

The prerequisites for Napthine’s elevation were the stalwart support he has from former premier, Jeff Kennett and his friendship with the Planning Minister Matthew Guy (1974- ). Minister Guy has close links to both the Kroger Liberals and the Kennett faction. His links with the former are derived from his been a stalwart supporter of ALSF as an active member of the La Trobe University Liberal Club in the 1990s. The Planning Minister’s links to the Kennett faction are also sound because he amazingly endured serving the personally demanding Jeff Kennett as secretary when he was premier.

As planning minister, Matthew Guy has the requisite technical skill and necessary political connections to vitally assist Premier Napthine implement ‘regionalization’ (sic). The replacement of Ballieu by Napthine really should not be a mystery because the deposition campaign followed a text-book pattern for a leadership change.

Firstly, rumours were circulated that due to dissatisfaction with Premier Baillieu, that it would be best that he be replaced by the generally well regarded Matthew Guy. These rumours were then publicly countered by ministers denying that there was any move to depose the incumbent premier and in doing so declaring their satisfaction with and loyalty to Ted Baillieu. This sequence of actions essentially legitimized the moves to depose the premier and to replace him with the touted successor or a dark horse candidate.

The campaign to replace Baillieu then reached a crescendo in late February/early March with reports in the media of turmoil within his personal staff and the announced departure of Liberal backbencher Geoff Shaw (1967- ) to the cross-benches were all part of a pre-set plan to facilitate a Victorian leadership change. This could not have happened had Jeff Kennett in essence conveyed his approval for a leadership change by publicly ostensibly criticising Ted Baillieu’s communication skills.

The mystery in this scenario is why the Kennett faction deposed undermining one of its own as premier? The Kennett faction could have taken the sweetest revenge for the internal party sabotage which caused the Liberals to lose the 1999 state election and for the 2002 decimation to thwart the introduction of ‘regionalization’ (sic) by sticking with Ted Baillieu as premier. Too many ALP and coalition MPs have been conned into thinking that ‘regionalization’ (sic) will lead to a financial and political re-configuration of politics to their benefit.

It would have been much better for the state coalition to have retained Ted Baillieu as premier because he had excellent business connections which could have been utilized to generate state prosperity by attracting and retaining business investment in Victoria. It is still far better to have regular investment channels maintained then have nouveau riche upstarts utilize ‘regionalization’ (sic) to unhinge the Victorian economy by pursuing rent-seeking agendas.

Even though Premier Napthine is friends with Matthew Guy he and Premier Kennett A long lasting and stable Baillieu government with revamped transparent governance procedures in place would profoundly change Victorian Liberal Party factional dynamics for the better.

Furthermore, the speculation about Matthew Guy becoming premier was just that-speculation. The Planning Minister as an upper house member of parliament could not have been expeditiously transferred to the lower house to become premier. Public canvassing of a Guy premiership served to convey unity between the Kennett and Kroger factions concerning their joint intention to depose Ted Baillieu as premier in favour of Denis Napthine.

Due to Premier Napthine’s and Matthew Guy’s friendship inter-factional co-operation can be facilitated to introduce ‘regionalization’ (sic) after an Abbott government is elected. Although the ALP is will poised in Victoria to win the next state election traitorous elements within the state branch of the party could help secure a coalition victory by resort to internal sabotage during the September 2013 federal election campaign so that ‘regionalization’ (sic) can be introduced by an Abbott government.

The recent transition from Ted Baillieu to Dr. Napthine is a potential wake-up call to the Gillard government to ensure that a tight federal election campaign is waged which precludes internal sabotage as occurred to the Howard government in the 2007 federal election.

Why the Gillard Government will Hopefully Oppose Rent-Seeking

Australia’s overall capacity to resist rent-seeking will depend upon the Gillard government defeating an Abbott-*Sinodinos led coalition in the 2013 federal election. Were this to occur the establishment of a rentier state would be thwarted. This would be an incredible achievement on the part of the ALP given that Abbott has achieved implementing the groundwork for rent-seeking since become Opposition Leader in late 2009.

(*New South Wales Senator Arthur Sinodinos, (1957- ) is effectively the intellectual co-leader of the federal coalition given his very impressive political nous).

Indeed, mis-placed praise has actually been given to Abbott in the context of his having a profound impact on public policy as Opposition Leader. While Abbott has probably been the most powerful Opposition Leader in Australian political history in terms of affecting government policy, such praise must be qualified by emphasising his overall detrimental impact.

Rent-seeking by its very nature deliberately restricts access to resources to a narrow minority at the expence of the greater public good. Current Liberal Party campaign literature convey the opposite of rent-seeking with slogans such as, ‘Real Solutions for all Australians’ and ‘Hope. Reward. Opportunity’.

The above slogans are redolent of Howard’s 1996 election slogan ‘For All of Us’. The implicit message in the 1996 Liberal Party campaign was that there would be a break from the political correctness of the Keating era and from governing in favour of sectional interests at the expence of the public good.

The Howard government’s introduction of Work Choices in 2005 was an effective repudiation of the Liberal Party’s 1996 election campaign theme which was a source of legitimacy after winning power that year. That the Liberals under Abbott will again rule in favour of a selected minority has already been illustrated by the Opposition Leader’s success in promoting rent-seeking.

Nevertheless, in relative fairness to the former federal coalition government neo-liberals such as then Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello had to a certain extent overcame the destructive ‘economic rationalism’ (sic) of the Hawke-Keating era by paying off the public foreign debt and creating a new GST revenue stream which in turn crucially created the conditions to favourably manage the ‘China boom’. This is why it took elements within both the major parties associated previously with ‘economic rationalism’ (sic) to bring the Howard government down so that Australia could be placed on a rent-seeking course under Kevin Rudd.

An Abbott defeat in the 2013 federal election would therefore also be the circuit breaker that would finally terminate the destructive public policy stream of ‘economic rationalism’ (sic) that is now leading to rent-seeking. Furthermore an Abbott election defeat would thwart the Rinehart inspired ‘vision’ of special economic zones in northern Australia undercutting wages and workplace conditions for all Australian employees.

With regard to thwarting the Rinehart ‘vision’ there are already promising signs that with recent senior management changes at BHP-Billiton and Rio Tinto that these two important corporations are moving away from Rinehart and Palmer’s rent-seeking course. Indeed, it was fundamentally wrong and stupidly counter-productive for multi-nationals to create sovereign risks for themselves by supporting rent-seeking policies.

It is wrong of BHP-Billiton to support a carbon tax because the real intended impact of such an impost was (and is) to undermine the vital services sector of the economy so that an over-dependence on the mining sector could be established. Even though senior the three big mining companies along with Rinehart and Palmer’s privately owned companies were avowedly opposed to super-profits taxation for the mining sector, the reality was different.

Trying to create a mining oligopoly integrated with a *mercantilist PRC was a fundamental mistake on the part of the above cited companies. The socio-economic dislocation that such an oligopoly would (and still can) inflict on Australia’s political economy will create serious sovereign risk investment threats. A multi-national company involved in a developed nation such as Australia should always respect its political stability ad existing socio-economic and political structures. Such an approach is not only in keeping with sound business ethics but it ultimately makes good pragmatic sense.

(*Another aspect of rent-seeking that is being pursued and which an Abbott-Sinodinos government will consolidate is undermining the traditional family owned farm by helping convert too many of them into agribusinesses in the service of a mercantilist PRC).

Abbott’s Rent-Seeking Agenda

Even though the corporate mining sector is showing signs of moving away from rent-seeking this trend could be reversed should the shrewd Abbott win the next federal election. He is currently utilizing his political skills to re-assure his party colleagues that a government he leads will be a collegiate Westminster type of regime. However, the calculated ruthlessness and superlative skill with which Abbott and his supporters deposed Malcolm Turnbull in 2009 indicate that they have the intense determination to achieve their objectives that an honourable government will not necessarily come to pass should the coalition win the 2013 federal election.

Alternately, if Abbott was to lose the 2013 federal election, the socio-political contract that has been in place since the positive aftermath of the 1808 Rum Rebellion would be vitally re-affirmed. This social contract precluded the nation being ruled by a narrow elite whose power was derived from control of natural resources. The resultant economic diversity that ensured consequently generated a high standard of living, social harmony and relative political stability which are still the envy of the world.

As important as it is that Abbott loses the 2013 federal election it should not be forgotten that Australia has a prime minister in Julia Gillard who is an independent political actor inherently dis-inclined toward rent-seeking. Julia Gillard’s achievements since the ALP returned to office in 2007 such as restoring a pluralist industrial relations system align to the mainstream of Australian political tradition which is antithetical toward rent-seeking.

There will be major challenges that a Gillard government will face should it be retained after the 2013 federal elections. These will include paying off Australia’s massive public foreign debt and expeditiously transitioning from the carbon tax to a ‘fair dinkum’ interactive domestic market based ETS which actually lowers carbon emissions. A prompt transition after the 2013 federal election to a genuine ETS will also enable the Gillard government to end carbon tax compensation packages which imperils the nation’s long term financial position by chalking up an unsustainable level of public foreign debt.

Such policy outcomes will be challenging to achieve but at the very least Australia will hopefully still have such as Julia Gillard who has broad knowledge base and the courage of her convictions to fight for the nation’s genuine national interest.

Dr. David Paul Bennett is the Director of Social Action Australia Pty Ltd.