With Friends Like These (Who Needs Allies?) by Greg Maybury

Image by Greens MPs via Flickr

by Greg Maybury
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
Pox Amerikana
August 4, 2017

‘[For us] it is one thing to remain a good friend, but too close an embrace will lead Americans and others to resurrect the “deputy sheriff” tag. The Americans have always put their own interests first and will continue to do so; we should follow their example. American interests will not always be the same as Australian and vice versa. The bottom line, however, is the domestic political one. Australians are afraid of the outside world and convinced of their inability to cope with it. Any Australian government which suggested that we do without a great and powerful friend to look after us would have to consider the electoral implications.’ — Source: Cavan Hogue — fmr. Ambassador and Dep. Permanent Representative when Australia was last on the UN Security Council. He has also served as head of mission in Mexico, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow and Bangkok, along with other posts. He is an Adjunct Professor in International Communication at Macquarie University, Sydney.

The Rise and Rise of the Regime Renovators (Another Splendid Little Coup) by Greg Maybury

Image by Babak Fakhamzadeh via Flickr

by Greg Maybury
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
Pox Amerikana, June 26, 2017
June 27, 2017

‘It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that Fortune which loves the brave.’ US Secretary of State John Hay, defining the Spanish-American War of 1898, in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt, July 27 of that year, the war ushering in America’s Imperial era and unequivocally heralding its hegemonic ambitions.

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The Great American Perpetual Motion War Machine by Greg Maybury

Image by Robert F. W. Whitlock via Flickr

by Greg Maybury
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
Pox Amerikana, Jan. 16, 2017
February 13, 2017

Brief: The so-called ‘military-industrial complex’ ushered in by the passing of the 1947 National Security Act is a luxury America and the world can no longer afford. The unprecedented threat posed by the over-privileged belligerents infecting U.S. military doctrine with their unbridled hegemonic ambition is redolent of that of the British Empire in the years leading up to the Great War in 1914. With Donald Trump advocating massive upgrades of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and full-spectrum dominance likely to remain integral to American foreign and national security policy making, along with musing on how we arrived at this point, we ponder the here and now, and an unthinkable, yet, still avoidable future.