Bashdar Ismaeel writes:

"The basis of any nationalist struggle is primarily ethnicity. … No nation has the right to submerge, rule-over or deny outright another nation."

Ismaeel seem to equate "ethnicity" with "nation".

So do different ethnicities have the right to their own states?

What of the Tibetans or the Uighars? Should we support their secession from China?

What of the people of West Papua? Should they have the right to secede from the Javanese Empire aka Indonesia?

How about the Sikh? Do they have a right to secede from India to form "Khalestan"?

Do the Tamils have the right to secede from Sri Lanka? Were the Tamil Tigers on the right side after all?

Should Chechnya be allowed to secede from Russia?

How about the Basques? Can they secede from Spain?

And of course there's Israel, a Jewish homeland. Should there be one?

The professed Australian ideal of "multiculturalism" notwithstanding, many ethnicities do seem to want their own states.

Could Australia declare itself a "White homeland" and limit immigration of non-Whites?

How far does this go?

Unfortunately Bashdar is mistaken, no case demonstrates the lack of international standards better than that of Indonesia. And the issue of self-determination is simple and consistent with the principle of territorial integrity.

The world in 1945 agreed to stop colonialism, decolonization (the American spelling) is required by the UN charter, and was formalised during December 1960 in UN General Assembly resolutions 1514 and 1541. 1514 states forces of repression must be immediately removed from every colony to allow self-determination. And 1541 states a COLONY is a subordinate territory which has not expressed it's free will, which is geographically separate and distinct ethnically and/or culturally from the country administrating it.

During 1961 the US national security adviser told Kennedy that South East Asia would befriend the Soviet Union unless Sukarno got West Papua, and the US coerced the Netherlands to sign an agreement trading the people of West Papua without their consent to Indonesia. The United Nations was rushed into endorsing the deal without benefit of legal advice whether it was legal. The West Papuan people have protested ever since August 1962.

This UN double standard has inflicted inhuman cruelty on our neighbours for 47 years as reviewed by the Yale Law School six years ago in it's report “Indonesian Human Rights Abuses in West Papua: Application of the Law of Genocide to the History of Indonesian Control”. We and the media have accepted the mining industry's description of the Papuan people as 'stone age primitives' or lesser humans as justification to remain silent. The West Papuan people I have known for ten years have displayed the best social skills I have ever witnessed, I do not believe Melanesian culture is primitive.

In June the Vanuatu Parliament voted unanimously to sponsor a motion at next month's United Nations General Assembly asking for the International Court of Justice to give it's advisory opinion about the legality of the New York Agreement in which West Papua was traded to Indonesia. Should Australia support such a motion?

Steven,

Well, Bashir does say 'The basis of any nationalist struggle is PRIMARILY ethnicity': clearly, one would think, it is not the whole story. If an ethnic group (by whatever name) more or less exclusively occupies a particular stretch of territory, then their claim would be far stronger, if they were to make one. The point surely is that people ought to have the right to choose, IF they occupy sufficient territory to exercise some sovereignty over. So, yes, if the people of Tibet or 'Xinjiang' or West Papua or Taiwan or Kurdistan had the power to choose self-determination, and they did so, then that would be their choice. Of course, the flooding of territories with outsiders from the imperial centre would confound this somewhat.

But otherwise, where do we stand on the rights of what Lenin called small nations to self-determination ? Would we oppose, say, Ireland's independence from English rule ? After all, there are, even now, fewer people in Ireland, and it is a much smaller territory, than Xinjiang or Tibet or Kurdistan or Taiwan. How much do we seek to preserve imperial rule (even de facto imperial rule, as in the case of Yugoslavia/Serbia) over subordinate territories ?

So what acts of self-determination would you oppose, Steven, assuming that the people in the cases here clearly expressed their choice for self-determination:

- Ireland from English rule ?

- the United States from British rule ?

- Argentina etc. from Spanish rule ?

- India and Pakistan from British rule ?

- African nations from British, French, Portuguese and Spanish rule ?

- Czechoslovakia from Austrian rule ? The Czech Republic and Slovakia from each other ?

- Poland from Russian, Austrian and German rule ?

- The Philippines from US rule ?

- Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro from Serbian diktat ?

- The Basque country from Spanish and French rule ?

- West Papua from Indonesian rule ?

- the thirty million Kurds from Turkish, Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian control ?

- Xinjiang/East Turkestan, Tibet and Taiwan from Chinese imperial control ?

[TBC]

[continued]

Do, or should, these groups have the right to determine their own future, over the territory that they occupy, and have occupied as a majority population, as the more or less exclusive population there, for an historical stretch of time, say hundreds of years ?

Empires, and the imperial impulse, don't seem to die quickly or quietly. I'm sure that there are still English people who think that Ireland should still be part of an 'indissoluble' United Kingdom, and perhaps Americans who think they should still control the Philippines. The new Tsarists seem to have trouble thinking of parts of the old USSR going their own ways.

But what do we support - imperialism or self-determination, power or democratic choice ?

Joe

Daeron asks whether Australia should support Vanuatu against Indonesia at the UN.

Let's see.

On the con side:

The Javanese Empire, aka Indonesia, is our most important neighbour. It is a Muslim country with 10 times our population. We depend on their cooperation in controlling the flow of boat people. Do we really want to get them angry at us? Do we really want to give the anti-Australian Islamic parties a casus belli?

The United States, our most important strategic ally and an important trading partner, has made it clear that they want to build a strategic partnership with Indonesia. Do we want to get the US angry at us too?

The last time we worked to detach a piece of territory, East Timor, from the Javanese Empire we became a target for Muslim terrorists. Do we want to do that again?

On the pro side:

Justice for the West Papuans.

DO THE MATHS.

Of course it is not in Australia's interest to support Vanuatu. And however the government of the day dresses it up, whatever spin the government puts on it, Australian foreign policy, like that of every other country, is guided by self-interest.

Of course we always CLAIM we are following "international law" and acting from the highest principles. But this is taurine fertiliser. We ALWAYS act from self-interest.

So don't be daft Daeron.

Australia is not going to support Vanuatu against the Javanese Empire. The West Papuans should face up to the fact that they and their culture are doomed.

And Aborigines should look at West Papua and reflect on the fact that if the Europeans had not arrived first they would now be part of the Javanese Empire. Would they prefer that?

Perhaps you're right, Steven, we should just think about ourselves, even if it means selling other people down the river. I'm a little uneasy with that sort of realpolitik.

But in a more equitable world, would we - as we did in the case of East Timor - stand up on our hind legs and support the right of people, even just on paper, to make their own choices ? Or is that just too difficult and dangerous ? Might we lose more than we can gain by sticking up for the human rights of other people ?

Yes, perhaps you're right, some people will never have the freedoms that we take for granted and that's how it is, period. It's not our problem, so let's just shut our eyes to it all.

Joe Lane

Joe,

Here's the thing. Australia is powerless.

Let me repeat that in caps.

AUSTRALIA IS POWERLESS.

We do not have the power to influence events in the Javanese Empire aka Indonesia. We have even less ability to persuade the Javanese elite to respect the human rights of West Papuans than the Americans have to keep the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan indefinitely.

In fact let's discuss Afghanistan.

Should the coalition leave?

Most people on the Left will say an emphatic "yes!" Just as they said "yes!" to leaving Vietnam 4 decades ago.

Both times I agreed with the Left

Trouble is the Left was dishonest about the consequences. The communist victory in the South caused untold misery and a million refugees. This was foreseen by anybody not blinded by ideology. But I still thought we ought to leave because we did not have the power to bring about a happy ending in Vietnam and, in the end, it was of little strategic value.

Unlike the Lefties I simply said we have to abandon the Vietnamese to their fate. I did not kid myself it would be a pleasant fate.

In the same way, unlike the Left, I don’t kid myself about the consequences of leaving Afghan women to the tender mercies of the Taliban. Life for Afghan women now is pretty miserable; once the coalition has pulled out it will become hell on Earth. See for example:

Afghan widow given more than 200 lashes before being shot dead by Taliban for adultery was PREGNANT

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1301487/Bibi-Sanubar-Afghan-widow-shot-dead-Taliban-adultery-pregnant.html

But I think the coalition ought to leave because it is not in our power to change anything in Afghanistan. It was an excrement-hole before the coalition went in, it is still an excrement-hole and it will likely be an excrement-hole for many years.

Sad but there it is.

This is not "Realpolitiek"

This is realism.

AUSTRALIA IS POWERLESS

We should not waste our time and treasure or the lives of our soldiers in pursuit of the unattainable.

Hi Steven,

Afghanistan is a pretty unique case, at least for the time being. For the Yanks, there is something of a Greek tragedy about it: IF there is such a thing as al-Qaida, and IF it was responsible for flying planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and IF the Taliban harboured al-Qaida, then the US had the right - and the obligation - to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban regime. IF the Taliban came back to power and IF they gave sanctuary to al-Qaida, then they would keep promoting their shared ideology of converting the world, by force or otherwise, to their literal form of Islam, the Caliphate, the rule of the Book, which would justify the most brutal means to do it.

As it happens, I do believe all of those IFs and as far as I am concerned, I am on the Left: to me, the Wahabis, the Taliban, al-Qaida, al-Shabbab, Basjir et al. represent an attempt to impose the rule of the Book on all temporal societies, much like the attempt a thousand years ago by the Catholic Church to impose religious rule over Europe (a time that we now know as ? The Dark Ages). In other words, the Wahabists by whatever name would impose a new Dark Ages on however much of the world that they can bring under their control - which would be, as long as they exist and if they had their way, ALL of the world. To me, they represent the most extreme form of reactionary Right-wing ideology that the world has experienced for a thousand years. I wouldn't have liked it the first time around, and I wouldn't survive it this time around, and neither would you.

The Left, or sections of it, seem to have a simple rule - US: bad, therefore whatever not US: good. They will sit back and watch all those Afghan women who lifted their heads being butchered and feel very holy that, at least, they didn't support the US. The gutlessness and bankruptcy of that approach will never be forgotten.

Thanks Steven for being the first to try and poke a stick.

You may not be aware of this but you've attempted manipulation, in your response by using fear to scare the audience out of rational thought. You tell us that Indonesia is the scary 'Muslim' with 'times our population' and 'Do we really want to get them angry at us?' Hysterically funny, what are they going to declare war? NOP. They couldn't even if they wanted to.

Next you use misinformation, you tell use "it clear that they want to build a strategic partnership with Indonesia". What you forget to mention is that the Republican US Congress majority five years ago voted for a Foreign Relations Authorisation bill which required their Sec. of State to provide a detailed report on conditions in West Papua and about the alleged 1969 'Act of Free Choice'; that bill was only halted in the US Senate by the combined efforts of the Freeport, Bechtel and Exxon corporations. Just last week fifty Congressmen signed a letter asking Obama to make West Papua a high priority. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats support the colonisation of West Papua any more than they did East Timor.

Do the MATHS, an independent West Papua is a better security and trading partner for Australia. Self interest.

Daeron,

I'm aware of everything I've said and why I've said it.

The US sees Indonesia as being of strategic importance for two reasons:

--it is a RELATIVELY democratic Muslim country

--it could be a useful ally in containing China which the US views as an emerging strategic rival

The requirement of the Secretary of State to report on West Papua is the sort of political theatre the US indulges in from time to time to appease human rights activists. It means little. The US like every other state will put its own perceived vital interests ahead of protecting a powerless minority group within the Javanese Empire. And the Javanese Empire is deemed far too important to let the little matter of slow genocide in West Papua upset relations.

If you require proof of this consider that the US has recently renewed its military cooperation with Kopassus.

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/world/asia/23military.html?src=mv

So what do you think is a better indication of US intentions? A five year old gesture in the US Congress? Or the renewal of relations with Kopassus?

Joe

I share your dislike of the Taliban. I just don't think the US has the ability to keep it out of power in Afghanistan.

Steven,

What you write is fair enough, as far as it goes, but the world insists on imposing problems on all of us. If the Yanks did leave Afghanistan, not only would everybody who opposed them, and the poor women who only wanted to live a more human life, not to mention the Hazaras, be pretty quickly killed off, but the various ratbag groups dedicated to a Khalifate would have a clear run to initiate terrorist acts, as they have done in Bali and Madrid and London and Pakistan and Yemen and Uganda and god knows how many other places, in order to impose their Divine Rule on all of the rest of us. Even on the Left, not that they would exist for much longer.

Sometimes in history, hard decisions have had to be made. How would you have advised Lincoln on going to war against the Confederacy and, by the way, freeing the slaves ? How would you have advised Neville Chamberlain in the face of an immensely powerful Nazi Germany ? What would have been the alternatives in both cases ?

Surely, we have to stand up for what we think is right, even if such decisions are uncomfortable and dangerous. Eventually, those decisions are forced on us belatedly, as in the case of the anti-Nazi forces, at even greater cost than might otherwise have been.

Surely you don't expect other people to live on their knees just so that you and I can have relatively problem-free lives ? Aren't we all better than that ?

Joe Lane

Joe writes:

"Aren't we all better than that ?"

No. We aren't. Maybe we should be. It would be nice if we were. But we aren't.

Let's take a closer look at the two examples you mentioned.

Lincoln did not go to war with the Confederacy. The Confederacy went to war with the Union. The war was not about slavery but about keeping the Union in one piece.

In other words it was a good old fashioned battle for territory.

As for Chamberlain, he went on appeasing Hitler when even blind Freddy could tell that Hitler was unappeasable. It was only when Chamberlain realised that Hitler could not be appeased that he decided to go to war BEFORE Germany's power become overwhelming.

Note that very carefully.

The Brits and the (reluctant) French did not declare war in September 1939 because they were champions of human rights. They did it because they were afraid that they'd better get in before Hitler got too powerful.

As William Shirer has documented in "The Collapse of the Third Republic", in terms of men and material the Anglo-French and German forces were about equal at the time of the Battle for France in 1940. Since the attacking side needs an advantage in military capacity, the Nazis should not have won.

So what happened?

Hitler had better generals. Period.

After the war the allied generals – especially the French – concocted the myth of overwhelming German military superiority in order to excuse their shortcomings.

I know this is hard for people to understand. But it's true. The myth of an invincible German juggernaut in 1940 is well entrenched. But it is a MYTH.

What is more, once on a war footing, the French and British between them were capable out-producing the Germans. If the war had gone on it is the allies who would have gained in strength relative to the Germans. Hitler understood this which is why he gambled on an attack 1940.

Either way, Steven, Lincoln did the right thing and Chamberlain dithered, I'm sure you would agree. My point was that we often have very difficult dilemmas, between two or more painful alternatives. Perhaps you are right, humans are basically selfish and don't give a toss about other people far away or 'different' in some way.

But to get back to the topic, Kosovo, is a stretch of territory with 90 % Albanian Kosovars, who were barred from public positions and from speaking their own language at the university in Pristina, among other injustices. Should they have the right to choose like, say, the Irish, to get out from under the oppression of others ? Yes, the US probably has some ulterior motive for supporting their democratic rights (just as the Germans may have given support to the leaders of the Easter Uprising), but that really is neither here nor there: should they have the right to choose ?

Yes, obviously, if the Kosovars have that right, so too should the Uighurs in 'Xinjiang', the Tibetans, the Taiwanese, the Catalans, the Basques and the West Papuans.

Certainly, submission and independence should not be the only alternatives for dominated populations: one way that imperial or dominating powers can head off a 'yes' vote for independence would be to treat people properly, not to flood their territory with their nationals, not to tear down their cities or treat their territory as if it were an occupied country, not to drive them into the mountains and destroy their houses and farms.

The suffering of others should not be set against our own comfort and safety, as if there is some sort of trade-off. Eventually, and the Lincoln and Chamberlain examples demonstrate, we have to stand up for the same rights for others as we expect for ourselves.

Joe Lane

Joe

Do I personally think the Uighars and Tibetans should be allowed to break away from Chinese rule?

Yep.

Do I think the Kurds should be rid of the Turks, Iranians and Iraqis?

Absolutely.

Do I think the the West Papuans should gain their independence from the Javanese Empire aka Indonesia?

Certainly.

Now what do you suggest I do about it?

What do you suggest the Australian Government do about it?

Do you honestly believe there is ANYTHING effectual the Australian Government CAN do about these issues?

And if we cannot do something EFFECTIVE then what is the point of doing anything

No Steven,
the US forms it's Indonesia policy on the advice of the US Indonesia Society (formed by Freeport, Bechtel, Exxon, etc.) and fear.

The concept of Indonesia being important as a 'Muslim' country is based on the silly concept that other Islamic nations will be so impressed that they be more favourably disposed towards US diplomacy. But the truth is that it only demonstrates that they too can extort US support for colonial and other abuses in their regions.

"Could be a useful ally in containing China" as a rival, again this plays on fear rather than rational judgement.

I don't disagree that these are, among arguments which the USINDO.org and it's predecessors have used to manipulate US policy; I only point out that it's not actually been in the US or our interest for the US to have been funding the Indonesian military since 1949. And I point out that various US politicians including a majority of Congress in 2005 have decided that it was in the best interest of the US to end the colonisation of West Papua, a process which needs admission of the colonisation as the first step. The bill five years ago and the letter last week were not gestures but were US support for ending the colonisation.

It is Australia which will benefit more from the decolonization of West Papua, it is also Australia and PNG who fear Indonesia most. PNG for good reason, Australia less so because Indonesia is not currently a real security threat. Neither boat people nor the TNI can over-run the ADF but Indonesia is building military capacity with benefit of colonial mining including in West Papua. It is better to bring the rule of International law to bear while it can still reset national boundaries rather than trying to bargain with a bully - appeasement was not good for Chamberlain and is not a good strategy for us.

Steven your last comment is to the point, and is the SAME illusion which has driven Australian Indonesian policies ever since 1962.

Australian politicians in 1962 and 1975 believed we were powerless, but they were mistaken. The simple truth is that the 1975 invasion moved East Timor's oil from control of Portugal Oil to Conoco Philips, and the 1963 occupation moved West Papua's mineral wealth from the newly elected New Guinea Council to Freeport's friend General Suharto (under Sukarno at time).

IF Australia had protested at the UN Assembly in 1962 it would have revealed that the US drafted deal was illegal, and almost certainly President Kennedy would have discovered that his adviser McGeorge Bundy had family vested interest in his advice about West Papua.

VERY often there is simple MONEY behind international affairs, and if we expose the nature of the Indonesian claims on Papua and East Timor we would have world / UN support for the decolonization of Papua as well as East Timor. Indonesia could no doubt get a deal similar to it's East Timor deal for the UN to pretend that East Timor was not a Indonesian colony; it would be a shame if Jakarta had to re-pay the Papuans for the $billions which have been looted despite Indonesia's agreement in 1960 (UN resolution 1514) that colonisation (alien subordination) is morally and internationally unacceptable.