I’ve been waiting for someone to make the obvious point about John Howard’s defence of unilateral pre-emptive strikes on terrorists based overseas, but as far as I can see, no-one has. Howard could easily silence his critics in the region by announcing that they are welcome to mount attacks on individuals and groups operating in Australia that they regard as presenting a danger of terrorist attacks.

This need not be a merely hypothetical offer. There have been numerous instances of groups in Australia undertaking various forms of military training in preparation for terrorist/national liberation activities overseas (under the Howard doctrine, it’s the foreign government that gets to choose which is which). And, as Ken Parish pointed out recently, the High Court has granted refugee status to people who could reasonably be regarded as supporters of terrorism. More generally, potential terrorists have legal rights here that they might not have in their home, or target, countries.

To be serious, if Howard set out his doctrine by specifying circumstances under which our neighbours would be justified in intervening in Australian affairs, the list of qualifications would be so long as to make it obvious that there is no serious prospect of the doctrine being applied to any country with a functioning, and not actively hostile, government. Which raises again the question of why he is making these statements at all.

The same points apply to the ‘Bush doctrine’ insofar as it is presented as a general principle – imagine the reaction if some foreign country decided to apply Bush’s reasoning to US-based groups they regarded as presenting a terrorist threat. But in practice, everyone understands that the Bush doctrine is premised on the notion that the US, as the source of international law and order, is itself above the law. It would be better if this were stated clearly rather than being implied – then people like Howard would not suppose that the Bush doctrine applied to Australia.

Update For those who are still ignoring my admonitions to read the comments threads (the best part of the blog, honestly!) I’ll mention that Gummo Trotsky missed beating to this punch, even though he’d been given the tip by his reader (not the only one, he claims to have another), Ross M, who emailed

I’m old enough (that makes me one of those reviled boomers)…to remember shock horror stories and pictures of secret Ustashi training camps here in Oz…of course that was also before it was perfectly understandable that Yugoslavia could come in and take them out, and punish us for not exerting due diligence in rooting them out ourselves.

The BlogGeist strikes again!