Australia spruiking for a major war against Russia

I do not know where this reporter heard all of this crying out, or whether he was mistaking crying and lamentations for demands for vengeance. Or whether campaigning for war is now a part of the BBC charter. The Netherlands, like Australia and Britain, is geographically located well away from the Eastern Front.

By "justice", presumably, the reporter meant the speedy trial, conviction and execution (not necessarily in that order) of those persons who fired a missile at Flight MH17. And of everyone in their chain of command all the way up to Vladimir Putin, who, as leader of Russia has been inciting and arming ethnic and linguistic Russians in eastern Ukraine to revolt against rule from Kiev and to live instead in a self-governing Russian-leaning new state, alongside another fresh one, based on the Crimean peninsula.

Here in Australia, only a few journalists working with News Ltd seem to be actually spruiking for war, or at least direct confrontation with Russia and its leadership, as a result of the shooting down of MH17, although there are any number of expressions of anger and fury based on the idea that responsibility for the disaster ultimately rests with Putin, and that the type of responsibility that can be fixed on is some war crime, or crime against humanity.

Tony Abbott is having a marvellous time in the limelight representing a country which, with the Netherlands, is leading the international outrage. He might not have willed the circumstances, but shit happens, and he has jumped on to a bus that takes his leadership, local and world-wide on to a level high up above mere politics, and his Lilliputian rivals. He is on a world stage, with bigger players such as the United States and Britain happy to thrust him forward as the voice of anger and common sense. He represents victimhood, and outraged virgins everywhere.

Meanwhile, in domestic politics, the nature of the disaster is such that no-one can make partisan remarks about the event, and those who say anything cynical about Abbott's role or do anything but dutifully echo Abbott are the ones who will be accused of playing politics or being "inappropriate". Yet there was hardly ever an occasion, unless it was at Suez in 1956, when Australia was dumbly playing pig in the minefield, essentially as the tool of other nations' interests, and without much thought to our own.

The phrase is about a military tactic of sending in mobs of milling pigs (or, sometimes sheep or cattle) into the no man's land one plans to attack, in the hope that their weight will trip off any mines laid in the ground, so that dauntless humans, sometimes in tanks, can follow without being blown up. The tactic is not thought to be approved by the RSPCA. In political argot, a pig in the minefield is someone thrust forward to take the attention, and possibly the flak, with an apparently pure cause whilst others, with less noble motives, can push their real agendas behind the scenes. At Suez, an unwitting Australia was sent to negotiate with Colonel Nasser to distract attention from a plan to have Israel invade Sinai, then British and French troops intervene to "keep the peace".

The US has a real agenda against Russia, its expansionism, its increasing belligerence, surliness and its sabotage of US interests. The rivalry, still warm from the cold war, has origins long before Flight MH17 or tensions over the Balkanisation of Ukraine. When the USSR collapsed in 1990, Russia became somewhat insular, inward-looking and focused on its own reconstruction. In recent times, it has become more confident, assertive and ready to resume a role as a great power.

Vladimir Putin represents an aggressive defiance of any idea that the US is the one great superpower, or the world's benevolent policeman. He has taunted the US about its impotence about Russian interference in the affairs of Georgia and other former Soviet republics, in Crimea and other areas inside the traditional Russian sphere of influence. American, or Western European sanctions against Russia have not achieved anything likely to moderate Putin's stridency. Indeed sanctions may have fortified Putin's domestic political position.

To American fury and frustration, Europe, particularly the Europe geographically closest to Russia, has not been much of a practical ally in bringing Putin to heel. For one thing, most of continental Europe is dependent, and increasingly so, on access to Russian energy, and a lot of European gold is going to Russia as a result. For another, the appetite for confrontation, or for solidarity with Western-looking Ukrainians, stops well short of willingness to go to war. Particularly with Russia. Particularly into Russia. Apparently there's some sort of dim clan memory about the unwisdom of doing such a thing.

The world, generally, was displeased and worried when Russia began mischief-making in the murky and very corrupt world of Ukrainian politics earlier this year. Ukraine, heavily in debt to Russia, primarily for energy, began more openly flirting with the European Union, with whom it had an association agreement, even discussing joining NATO.

The West was dismayed when anti-Russian protests were brutally put down by the administration. The administration was then replaced by a Western-leaning coup containing some serious wide boys. This caused (no doubt Russian-inspired) revolts by ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern parts of the Ukraine. But apart from ineffective sanctions, Europe had no appetite for action or anything other than consoling words. Few Europeans felt that the Ukrainian government was so pure and good as to be worth the expenditure of a single foreign life. Nor that Putin's adventurism was so erratic and dangerous, or so out of his own front or back yard, that slapping him down was worth one either.

The shooting down of Flight MH17 was a much more black and white incident, much more capable of stirring up unambivalent outrage and anger. Against the Ukrainian rebels, and against Putin, who is assumed to closely control their activities. No one spoiling for "justice" has hesitated to say that Putin is responsible. And that "something" must be done as a result.

If it were Barack Obama and David Cameron saying it, (as they are, in the background of Tony Abbott and the Dutch) a very generous discount would be made about their calls for action. People would remember that they have long been urging that something be done about Russia, particularly by the neighbours.

This is where Australia, or the Dutch, come in so handy.

One can, presumably, assume that Putin had no advance knowledge of any plan to shoot down aircraft, let alone a civilian aircraft 10 kilometres up. Indeed, there is no evidence, so far, that the rebels had any intention of doing so either, or were aware that the aircraft in question was other than a Ukrainian warplane. That does not prevent people from saying that Putin is responsible.

Assuming that he can direct the rebels, he probably is too. It is in a sense not much different from the way that responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza ultimately rests with Benjamin Netanyahu, or the deaths of internees in our Manus Island concentration camps rests with Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd. They did not will such deaths, but they are a predictable and foreseeable consequence of words, deeds and policies of those at the top of the chain of command.

Indeed, if those who actually pressed the button on the missile launcher are accountable, so, in principle, ought to be every officer or administrator in the chain of command between them and Putin, or between Netanyahu and the air force pilot, or Abbott and the person striking the head of the detainee.

If as some are now insisting, Putin cannot disclaim responsibility even if he did not plan, intend or want plane-loads of complete innocents shot down, and had no idea that a few members of a local militia group were, unwittingly doing it, I cannot see why those in the chain of command can use such an excuse. In many cases, such as with air strikes over Gaza, or riots at Manus, those on the ground, or those in Canberra pooh-poohing warnings, are or ought to be better informed of risks and outcomes than easily distractable politicians.

Tony Abbott, and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, have made a number of general expostulations of anger against Russia, and demonstrated disgust and outrage at efforts by Putin to disclaim ultimate responsibility. But both have resisted suggestions, from home and abroad, that Australia should immediately withdraw any invitation to Putin to participate in October's G-20 talks, although they have left open the possibility of this happening should Russia not play ball with an inquiry, the securing of the crash site, and decent and respectful dealings with the dead. Nor have Australian leaders or diplomats called for any crusade or jihad against Moscow, or military action in support of Ukraine in the various civil wars Russia has been instigating.

Yet Australia is playing a very important role - as leader of the outraged virgins - for those who would like to see some decisive action by the Western alliance, preferably primarily Western Europe - against Russia.

On the face of it, and, mostly in fact, our anger is pure and righteous. The 38 people who called Australia home were not enemy combatants, even by the loose American definition. They were completely innocent tourists travelling without any form of provocation or menace home from Europe. We are not the only ones. Dutch, Malaysian, British, German, Indonesians, Filipinos and (counting dual citizenship) 17 nations in all had citizens on the casualty lists; our place, such as it is, as unofficial representative of all who have suffered owes something to our temporary membership of the UN Security Council, and the willingness of other countries to let us lead the response.

But it did not come as a matter of deference or particular regard for Tony Abbott or Julie Bishop, ably as they have played the role assigned to them. It was equally a reflection of the fact that both Australia and the Netherlands are essentially sound, if very junior players in the Western alliance, far more reliable, say, than Malaysia. Mostly, of course, not leaders but followers, with a presence so unobtrusive that most people hardly ever think of us in geopolitical terms.

For a good deal of the world, indeed, we are a complete innocent - a country full of kangaroos on the other side of the earth, peacefully going about our business when violence is unexpectedly and undeservedly brought on us. Abbott does not even have to represent only victim nations. Most of the world is appalled at what occurred, just as they have been about earlier catastrophes in which soldiers have fired on civilian targets. Of course, a good many people in the world are rather more used to visitations of extreme, irrational and undeserved acts of violence, sometimes from Western sources, than most Australians are.

A friend, then a senior Defence bureaucrat, was once sent on a exchange to the Pentagon, with remarkable access to the centre of the Western alliance and US military thinking. At one stage, joking with American colleagues, he asked what they thought of Australia. A few immediately used phrases of the sort we are used to hearing from American presidents, secretaries of state and senior military officials: words like old friends, steady and reliable allies, close companions who have stood alongside us in tough times etc, etc.

My friend said, "Yes, I've heard all of these statements. But what do you really really think?''

There was a silence, and then one of the gang said: "We think you are an easy lay.''