Is Mise- Nukes or Dirty Bombs are the only way for Australia to fight China as far as I can tell. But I agree with you that if war comes to you- you have to fight.

Machiavelli in The Prince from memory said that warfare is only delayed to the enemies advantage- the implication being that we shouldn't wait for it to come.

Sadly the reason that China can threaten is essentially from irresponsible population growth- Australia with more constrained responsible population growth is more vulnerable- in such a universe it seems that life is paradoxically doomed to destroy itself. The China situation indicates that a good nation that treats it's population well isn't necessarily a stable one. It's a Hollywood myth that bad things happen to bad people- Bromide politics- Brave New World.

Hopefully we can think our way out- rather than fight our way out- I don't like our chances- paraphrasing Thomas Wayne- "people fall down so they can get up". Maybe this too is procrastination.

Hi Issy,

When all peacful means fail, you take up arms and move to the next step of failure. As a pacifist I see war as the ultimate point of failure. War begins long before the first shot is fired.

Now a little hypo for you;

If you were a young bloke in the Russian Army today, Pr Issyski 3rd class, and you were ordered to invade Ukrainian and kill civilians with Gen Cmski's dirty bombs, what would you do, simply follow orders, or take some other course of action?

Paul,
Follow orders of course, because I’d be a thoroughly indoctrinated good little Russian soldier.

Dear Paul and Is Mise,

«If you were a young bloke in the Russian Army today, Pr Issyski 3rd class, and you were ordered to invade Ukrainian and kill civilians with Gen Cmski's dirty bombs, what would you do, simply follow orders, or take some other course of action?»

«Follow orders of course, because I’d be a thoroughly indoctrinated good little Russian soldier.»

We all like to believe that we would face such difficult tests better, and pray that we would should the need arise. I can only relate to what I actually did in similar circumstances, though I only give myself partial marks for it and wish I had the courage to do more at the time:

One thing I definitely DID NOT, was to allow myself to be indoctrinated as a good little soldier and while I obeyed orders out of fear, I never sided with these orders. My resolution, and fortunately I never had the opportunity to test my resolve, was that should I be ordered to shoot others, I would deliberately "miss" my targets and if no other option remained available then I would instead shoot back at my commanders. In effect, I did only the minimum, kept myself aback as best I could and so I managed to extract myself from combat role into kitchen duties - even an army has to eat... it then reached a point when they were shooting all around me, but I just remained alone in the kitchen tent and shakingly continued to wash the dishes.

As we were withdrawing in a long convoy, I was on the kitchen truck, kitchen equipment in the back and us three in the cabin. As we passed, on one side-window, the cook and the driver made dirty gestures to the local civilians while on other window, I blew them air-kisses.

There's little doubt which side Paul1405 is fighting on- when the war starts he should be interned at an appropriate location in the desert somewhere where he can't do any harm.

mhaze....
I think we all noticed errors like those you have pointed out so wisely.
Provided these errors don't degrade, seriously, the ideas and thrust of the article overall, readers tend to 'gloss' over such faults?
They 'read between the lines' as it were.
The same with spelling errors, and/or words missed out.
Articles I read in other places on line are rife with such 'omissions'.
Relatively well known journalists are prone to these failings.
Thank you for enumerating those you have drawn to our attention.