New Australia

Global Affairs

UN Member States (Image: Wikipedia)

First Priority: Saving the Biosphere

Trying to reduce the damage being done to the Earth's biosphere should take precedence over all other matters.

Trying to harass giant nuclear-armed superpowers with a long list of environmental, trade and human rights issues is completely pointless and counter productive for a small nation like Australia.

The main focus should be on:

• Climate: See New Kyoto.
• Population: Encouraging zero or negative population growth.
• Biodiversity: Preservation of remaining areas of natural habitat.

Secondary Priorities

Here are some other issues that may be worth pursuing:

• Defensive-Only Armed Forces: This does not need to be a global agreement to be effective. (See Peace page for details.)
• Improved Human Rights: Sanctions have been ineffective in encouraging Burma, North Korea and others to improve human rights. Another approach may be to agree to lift sanctions in exchange for these nations agreeing to a new minimum level of human rights including the right to criticise the policies of the government.

  Note: This is a pragmatic agreement that would not try to impose 'democracy' in these nations. The current rulers will never accept democracy and we don't support invading these countries to implement regime change.

Foreign Aid

We support increasing the aid budget to at 0.7% of GDP. All aid should be targetted to eliminating poverty, not fund major projects for Australian companies to bid for.

Self Determination

As a general rule NewAustralia supports self-determination.

This leads us to:

• Support the decision of Ossetia and Abkhazia to succeed from Georgia.
• Supports the independence of Kosovo from Serbia
• Suggest the partition of Afghanistan. (more....)

Partition of Afghanistan

Afghanistan has never functioned as a single nation. (Maps from Wikipedia)

At present there is no exit-strategy from this war and it is likely to continue indefinitely.

Partition of the county may present produce a less-unacceptable outcome. In this scenario an election would be held to see who wants their province to separate from Afghanistan. It would be expected that the Taliban would win this election is the southern provinces while Uzbek & Turkmen elements may win control of some north-west provinces.

The Taliban would presumably keep trying to take over the whole country - but they would be handicapped by having something to lose in the South. North Afghanistan and allied forces could respond to continued Taliban attacks on the north by striking 'Talibanistan' in the South to discourage further attacks. Aid could be provided to the South in reward for no attacks occurring.

Pakistan

Much of Western Pakistan is already under Taliban control and would effectively merge with any new Taliban run state in Afghanistan due to cultural and religious links - as they are now anyway.

Creating a homeland for the Taliban in Afghanistan may reduce the risk of them taking over the major Pakistani population centres, the government and of course the nuclear arsenal.

Israel - Palestine Solutions

NewAustralia believes time is running out for Israel to come to a reasonable and just settlement with the Palestinians.

We believe it is highly likely that the various groups opposed to the existence of Israel will soon be able to deploy much more advanced weapons such as:

• Precision Guided Missiles, using commercial off the shelf technologies instead of the current crude un-guided missiles.
• Chemical Weapons, such as those developed and deployed by the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo sect in 1995.
• Nuclear Weapons, possibly obtained from Pakistan if that nation has been taken over by the Taliban. (See Age Article on this.)

Israel's nuclear deterrent will be useless as these weapons will be utilised by irregular forces...although Israel may still nuke 'the likely suspects' anyway if attacked.

Once any of these weapons have been deployed any settlement that Israel then reaches with the Palestinians is likely to be less favourable to Israel than one that it negotiates now from a position of strength.

Solutions may involve:

• Autonomy for Jerusalem within Israel under the control of Christian, Muslim & Jewish clerics.
• Formalising and improving the access arrangements to Jerusalem for non-Israeli citizens to almost the same levels as those granted to Israeli's.
• Exchange of some settlements in 'Palestine' for some Arab majority sections of Israel.
• Allowing Jewish settlers to remain in Palestinian areas such as Hebron just as Arabs remain in Israel.
• Granting the Gaza strip to Egypt, which may be more feasible than resolving the PLO - Hamas conflict.

Afghanistan for 30 years?

13^th Jun 2010: "We stay in this 'unwinnable' war only because of our alliance with the US." more...

Taliban run Pakistan?

8^th Oct 2008: "Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al-Qaeda sitting in two-thirds of the country which the Government does not control." more...

The Afghan End-Game?

8^th Oct 2008: "US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said negotiating with moderates in the Taliban was a "key long-term solution".
That followed the warning from the British military commander, Brigadier Mark Carleton- Smith, that a military victory in Afghanistan was neither feasible nor supportable. The veteran commander told The Sunday Times in London there would be no peace until a political accommodation was reached with the Taliban and "we're not going to win this war". more...