What can Americans do? What should Australia do?

A few weeks ago, I drew up a flowchart to estimate the probability that Trump would establish a dictatorship in the US, which looked, at the time, like an even money bet.

We don’t need to speculate any more. Trump has announced the dictatorship, and there is no sign of effective resistance. The key elements so far include

• Extremists announced for all major positions, with a demand that they be recess appointments, not subject to Senate scrutiny
• A state of emergency from Day 1, with the use of the military against domestic opponents
• Mass deportations, initially of non-citizens and then of “denaturalised” legal immigrants
• A third term (bizarrely, the nervous laughter that greeted this led to it being reported as a joke).
• A comprehensive purge of the army, FBI and civil service

It’s clear that Trump will face no resistance from the Republican party. There’s an outside chance that the Supreme Court will constrain some measures, such as outright suppression of opposition media, but that won’t make much difference.

It’s possible that Trump will overreach in some way, such as carrying out his threat to execute political opponents before the ground is fully prepared. Or, his economic policies may prove so disastrous that even rigged elections can’t be won. But there is no good reason to expect this.

I can’t give any hopeful advice to Americans. The idea of defeating Trump at the next election is an illusion. Although elections may be conducted for some time, the outcome will be predetermined. Street protest might be tolerated, as long as it is harmless, but will be suppressed brutally if it threatens the regime. Legal action will go nowhere, given that the Supreme Court has already authorised any criminal action Trump might take as president.

The models to learn from are those of dissidents in places like China and the Soviet Union. They involve cautious cultivation of an alternative, ready for the opportunity when and if it comes.

For Australia, the easy, and wrong, course of action will be to pretend that nothing has happened. But in reality, we are on our own. Trump is often described as “transactional”, but this carries the implication that having made a deal, he sticks to it. In reality, Trump reneges whenever it suits him, and sometimes just on a whim. If it suits Trump to drag us into a war with China, he will do it. Equally, if he can benefit from leaving us in the lurch, he will do that

Our correct course is to disengage slowly and focus on protecting ourselves. That means a return to the policy of balancing China and the US, now with the recognition that there is nothing to choose between the two in terms of democracy. We need to back out of AUKUS and focus on defending ourselves, with what Sam Roggeveen has called an “echidna” strategy – lots of anti-ship missiles, and the best air defences we can buy, from anyone willing to supply them.

I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on all this.

The Great War continues, more than 100 years later

Yesterday was November 11, the anniversary of the armistice which ended fighting on the Western Front of what was then called the Great War. It’s always an occasion for sad reflection on my part, thinking about the pointlessness of the massive sacrifices of the War, which achieved nothing except to set the scene for worse disasters to come.

But it’s particularly sad in a year when the forces unleashed by the War have come back to cause more death and destruction. In one respect, I have a personal link, as my maternal grandfather served in the Australian Light Horse, which played a leading role in the capture of Beersheba and Gaza in 1917. The ensuing partition of the Ottoman Empire set the stage for a century of conflict, still continuing with the brutal destruction of Gaza today.

Great War cemetery in Gaza, now destroyed by Israeli bombing

The end of the Great War also led to the annulment of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk under which the Soviet Union ceded vast territories, including Ukraine, to Germany. With the defeat of the Germans, the Ukraine Peoples Republic sought independence, but was defeated in the Soviet-Ukraine War a defeat which led, under Stalin’s rule to the genocidal Holodomor famine. The Russian claim to Ukraine is being brutally asserted once again.

For much of the world, the decades following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 were some of the worst in history. Those times may be returning. The most comforting thought I have is that our parents and grandparents managed to defeat the forces of evil unleashed by the War and to leave us a society that, while imperfect, was more prosperous, free and equal than any that had gone before. I hope we can find a way to save it.

Back in 1947, the standard Australian working week was reduced from 44 hours to 40. In 1983, 36 years later, the working week was reduced to 38 hours. That was more than 40 years ago, and there has been a lot of technological progress since then. It makes sense to take some of the benefits of that progress in the form of shorter working hours.

I’ve been an active supporter of the movement for a Four-Day week, but progress has been slow. Some of the moment has been dissipated by the availability, for most office workers, of the option of remote work. This option, backed up by the right to disconnect, has greatly improved work-life balance for many of us.

One notable result of remote work has been that lots of offices are just about empty on Fridays, and particularly on Friday afternoons. Office workers stay home, or go home early, then knock off when they’ve wrapped up their work for the week.

But remote work isn’t feasible for everyone. Around half of all jobs have to be done entirely, or mostly, in person. And, there hasn’t been any real adjustment in relative wages to compensate for this. This is a significant economic injustice.

But the shift away from Friday work at the office provides a way to address this injustice and deliver the long overdue 35 hour week at the same time. The idea would be to begin the weekend at Friday lunchtime, with most workplaces closing, and overtime rates applying for those that remained open.

The costs of this change would be modest in the case of office workers, given the unofficial advent of early weekends and the potential efficiency gains from the arrival of AI. For other workers, it would largely offset the decline in real wages since the arrival of the pandemic.

In political terms [3], advocacy of a 35 hour week{2] could be a winner for Labor. Improvements in working conditions, like the right to disconnect, have been among the few positive achievements of the Albanese government, but they’ve been too modest to overcome the general (and correct) impression of pointless drift.

In this context, it’s worth looking at Queensland Labor and Steven Miles’ introduction of 50 cent fares for public transport. This proposal was originally put up by the Greens and seemed way outside the realms of political possibility. But it proved so popular that it pulled Labor back from what seemed likely to be a wipeout, and forced the LNP into copying it. Labor still lost, but not nearly as badly as they might have.

As things stand, Labor is likely to end up with 30 per cent of the national vote, or even less, at the next federal election. Playing it safe, and talking about the “cost of living” is unlikely to change that. What we need, above all, is hope for a better future and a shorter working week will be a step in that direction

fn1. As I’ve mentioned in various posts, I’m not going to do any day-to-day political commentary for a while. Rather, I plan to focus on longer term issues including the climate transition and the future of work.

fn2. In practical terms, Labor could either seek to legislate a 35-hour week or commit to supporting it on a case-by-case basis at the Fair Work Commission. I’ll leave the details of that to Industrial Relations experts/

fn3. Slightly contradicting fn1 here, but I want to make the case that this is a practical idea in the political scene as we find it.

I spend a lot of time these days thinking about what I, and Australia as a nation, should do if the US ceases to be a democracy. But, it doesn’t seem as if lots of other people are thinking this way. One possibility is that people just don’t want to think about it. Another, though, is that I’ve overestimated the probability of this outcome.

To check on this, I set up a flowchart using a free online program called drawio. Here;s what I came up with

I hope it’s self-explanatory. The bold numbers next to the boxes are the probability of reaching that box. The numbers next to arrows coming out of decision nodes (diamonds) are the probability of that decision.

I also apologize in advance if there are any arithmetic errors – my degree in pure mathematics doesn’t insulate me against them.

If the US were remotely normal, every entry on the left-hand edge ought to be equal to 1. Harris should be a sure winner, Trump shouldn’t find any supporters for a coup, the MAGA Republicans in Congress should be unelectable and the moderate program proposed by Harris should be successful enough that Trumpism would be defeated forever.

But that’s not the case. There are two end points in which US democracy survives, with a total probability (excessively precise) of 0.46, and one where it ends, with a probability of 0.54. By replacing my probabilities at the decision nodes with your own, you can come up with your own numbers. Or you may feel that I’ve missed crucial pathways. I’d be interested in comments on either line.

Note: Any Thälmann-style comments (such as “After Trump, us” or “Dems are social fascists anyway”) will be blocked and deleted.

Via Peter Hartcher in the Nine papers, I learned the other day that Albanese snubbed President Prabowo of Indonesia to meet King Charles.

The immediate decision before the Albanese government was how to deal with two important heads of state asking for attention at almost exactly the same time. The prime minister had a long-standing invitation to the inauguration of the new president of Indonesia in Jakarta on Sunday, and a request for a visit by the British monarch to begin on the same weekend.

This ought to be have been a no-brainer. As PM of Australia, Albanese should have been able to set the dates for a visit from Charles in his capacity as King of Australia. And, as Hartcher points out, he could have fitted in both engagements with a flying visit to Jakarta. Instead, he sent Richard Marles.

Here’s where Hartcher’s piece gets interesting. He makes the point that, thanks to AUKUS, our relationship with the UK has gone from being a sentimental relic to a central strategic commitment. As Hartcher mentions, this brings to mind the longstanding struggle over whether Australia is really an Asian nation, a claim firmly denied by Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohammed. He doesn’t mention, though it would have amplified his point, the view expressed by George W. Bush and John Howard, that Australia should act as a US “deputy sheriff” in the region.

Hartcher ends optimistically, saying that since Prabowo (in his previous capacity as Defence Minister) signed a defence agreement with Marles, the attendance of the latter at a major ceremonial event would not be a problem.

So Australia finds itself in the fortunate position of being able to draw on both its history and its geography, forming intensified strategic arrangements with both Britain and Indonesia, simultaneously. Not torn in two directions, but strengthened by each.

This strikes me as massively over-optimistic. The governments of ASEAN countries, including Indonesia, have generally been negative about AUKUS, and popular feeling is almost certainly more hostile still. Ostentatious preference for our former Imperial overlords over our neighbours in the region is unlikely to be helpful.

Perhaps none of this would matter if AUKUS had a clear strategic rationale, with demonstrable benefits for the region as a whole. But for Morrison, it was much more a matter of loyalty to the Anglosphere than of any coherent analysis. Now that Albanese has followed suit, as part of what Hartcher describes as a “remedial post-Voice effort to persuade the electorate that he does, in fact, identify with the Australian mainstream”, the racial overtones of this exercise are undeniable.

AUKUS was bound to be an economic disaster. It looks likely to become a diplomatic and strategic disaster as well.