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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Beer With Bella: Malcolm Turnbull

You can learn a lot about someone from an interview. But can you learn more over a drink? The Australia Letter introduces “Beer With Bella,” in which one reporter who hates beer but loves chatting meets interesting Australians over a beverage.

________

First Impression

Earlier this month, I clicked into a Zoom call, drink in hand, with Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s 29th prime minister.

Malcolm was speaking from his Point Piper home in a crisp white shirt and blazer, looking unflappable. (My Zoom background was a scenic bamboo forest.)

A former investment banker known for his wealth, intellect and moderate conservative positions, Mr. Turnbull has written a book, “A Bigger Picture,” that is a meticulous, feud-by-feud accounting of his years in public life. It recounts his triumphs but also touches on the ideological factions among conservative lawmakers that ultimately led him to be the third leader ousted over climate change policy in recent years.

Over a lengthy call, we explored his thoughts on the relationship between Australia and China, the “terrorism” of the right wing and his exercise routine.

________

The Order

Mr. Turnbull favors Longjing tea from the Chinese city of Hangzhou — a taste, he notes in the book, that he shares with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, though he had forgotten his drink the day we chatted. Come on, Malcolm!

I made do with a green tea that I purchased from a cafe downstairs.

________

The Chat

In your early days, you read as relentlessly ambitious, from Rhodes scholar to barrister. Where does that ambition come from?

I’m not great at psychoanalyzing myself. I don’t think I was unusually ambitious, but I was possibly unusually persistent. I’ve never been afraid of failure. That’s probably the most important thing, because a lot of people are scared of falling at the first hurdle. They don’t even bother to start.

History is made by those who turn up. And unless you are prepared to have a go, you’ll never find out. You’ll never fail, but you’ll never try to do anything.

Let’s dive right into something recent: Australia’s relationship with China. How have you seen China’s diplomacy changing? And what’s the path forward for Australia to manage frictions that are emerging?

China has become more assertive, aggressive in its regional foreign policy.

We came under a lot of pressure at different times, but I took the view that you have to be courteous, obviously. But don’t be bullied — by anyone, frankly, certainly not by China.

Australians have got to recognize that China does not trade with us because they want to do us a favor. They’re trading with us because it’s in their interests. And we should have the confidence to believe in ourselves.

Our region in particular is not a series of spokes going into hubs in Beijing and Washington — more like a mesh. A key part of my foreign policy was to build stronger relations, in particular, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan. Just being mesmerized by the two superpowers, I think, is a very risky approach.

That’s right. We had a very rowdy call over the Obama refugee deal. He wasn’t happy about doing that. But he agreed not to put tariffs on our steel or aluminum.

I have decided to give him credit for having listened thoughtfully to the case that I put. If you want to have fair trade, from his point of view, you cannot get a better trade deal than you have with Australia, where you have low tariffs, no quota.

I’ve dealt with big bullying billionaires all my life. Sycophancy and sucking up to people, it won’t get you what you want. The way to deal with those big personalities is to be respectful and persuasive.

Do you see the relationship between Australia and the U.S. continuing forward as it has for much of this century as allies?

The Australian-American relationship goes well beyond the president and the prime minister. It’s millions of people, it’s families, it’s businesses, shared culture.

Trump’s deliberate unpredictability generates fear rather than respect, anxiety rather than certainty. America may be stronger in economic and military terms, but its influence is diminished. In fact, under Trump, America seeks less influence, not least by rejecting many of the global institutions created after the Second World War.

Nature abhors a vacuum. And China will gladly fill that vacuum.

What I wanted to do, and still do, is ensure that the countries in the region take up the mantle and build greater trust between each other.

If you look at East Asia, you’ve got the third-largest national economy in Japan and G-20 members South Korea, Indonesia, Australia. Vietnam is a growing powerhouse. The idea that China has got some right to dominate our hemisphere is simply wrong.

You positioned yourself as a socially progressive Liberal leader, with some of your voters looking for faster movement on climate change. Could you have been stronger on it?

The problem is that for the populist right of politics, climate change has become an ideological issue.

There remains this denial of the science. It is supported here by essentially the right-wing media, mostly belonging to Rupert Murdoch and obviously the vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby.

The right in the Liberal party no longer accept the fundamental premise of being in a political party.

The premise is that you get your members in a room, you debate issues, you come to a consensus.

What the right says is that on issues that matter to them, like climate policy and energy policy, they will not go along with the majority and they will blow the joint up if they don’t get what they want.

This is essentially the tactics of terrorism. I hasten to add, they’re not using guns and bombs. But a terrorist says to society, I will keep blowing things up until you give in, and if you want me to stop blowing people up, you do what I want.

That’s the tactic that they used against me in August 2018. And it was backed ferociously by the right-wing media, particularly Murdoch. It was a corrupt and degrading parody of democracy.

The only thing that will make them change is if they feel that the policies they have will result in electoral defeat.

You wrote that there are some people in government that would never vote for a female prime minister.

It’s getting better, but it’s got a long way to go. The culture in Parliament is still very blokey. It reminds me of the corporate culture of the 1980s. There are many men there who are very uncomfortable about women in positions of authority.

The ideal would be to have a Parliament that was half men and half women.

How do you think Prime Minister Morrison is going right now?

I think he’s going pretty well, actually. The hardest part is yet to come dealing with the economic consequences. It’s been a collective effort. Overall, they have managed better than many other countries, in particular the U.S. and the U.K.

Australian media is one of the most concentrated in the world. What do you think of the polarized landscape?

The media’s problems are much bigger than Rupert Murdoch. The media space has become much more competitive. Much of what we used to call the mainstream media is now utterly partisan and has very little regard for the facts.

Sky News in Australia, particularly in the evenings — total propaganda. That’s why I think it is fair to describe Murdoch’s news empire now as a political organization.

You can now make a living with an audience that is very narrow. You can make stuff up. You can use the media to defend your friends and attack their enemies.

A Fox News relationship with Trump is like the relationship of state-owned media in an authoritarian regime. Fox will defend the president, attack his enemies. I mean, what’s the difference between Fox News and the Global Times?

Have you achieved what you set out to do?

I would have loved Australia to have become a republic. I wished we could have had an integrated energy and climate policy, but no one can say I didn’t give that my best shot on several occasions at a great cost. Same-sex marriage, I wanted to legalize that. I had to go about it a rather unusual way. It was Bismarck who said the public should not be able to see the way sausages or laws are made. At the end of the day, we’ve got the sausage.

So what keeps you up at night these days?

I’ve always slept pretty well. When you’ve got a big job like being prime minister of Australia, it’s important to sleep and exercise.

What’s your preferred exercise?

Well, living on Sydney Harbour, as I do, I like kayaking. I walk most often with Lucy. I try to do 100 push-ups a day — I was quite religious about that when I was prime minister — not all in one hit, I hasten to add.

Well, there we have it.

I’ve never done 100 push-ups in one hit.

We will make sure to clarify that.

I don’t want people challenging me to push-ups.

___

The Drink Verdict

“I’ve had nothing to drink here. This has been very abstemious,” Malcolm said, promising to do the real thing with me one of these days. “So now I’ll go and have a cup of tea.”

My green tea was pretty good but I wondered: What does Longjing tea taste like?

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Asked point-blank by a Reuters journalist, “Do you hold Russia at all accountable for anything in particular” that has contributed to the decline in the US-Russia bilateral relationship, President Trump delivered the defining answer of his foreign policy: He does not.

Having offered earlier in the week scathing, specific indictments of the European Union’s immigration policy, of the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 election, of the United Kingdom’s efforts to negotiate a “soft” version of Brexit, and of Germany’s energy infrastructure policies, Trump had no specific criticisms of Vladimir Putin’s domestic or international policies.

He did not object to Putin’s domestic repression, to Russia’s 2008 effort to dismember the former Soviet republic of Georgia, to Russian-backed forces shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17 and killing hundreds of civilians, to Russia’s invasion of Crimea or subsequent invasion of Eastern Ukraine, to Russia’s apparent use of a deadly nerve agent in the UK, or (of course) to the computer hacking associated with the 2016 election.

Trump’s staff keeps trying to cover for him, by leaking to the press various versions of a story in which Trump has basically normal policy views but happens to not be fired up about the election hacking, but Trump’s words say otherwise. It’s true, of course, that he’s not bothered by Russians committing crimes to help him win the election. But he’s also not bothered by anything Putin does at all, which is why he was worth helping in the first place.

via @jonathanvswan – President Trump no longer doubts the basic intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election — he just seems incapable of taking it seriously, and tells staff that is simply what nations do. https://t.co/0pAIIMUcGp

— Jim VandeHei (@JimVandeHei) July 15, 2018

That’s unusual, it’s troubling, and it’s worth taking seriously.

But most of all, it’s worth taking Trump on Russia literally, not as the offhand ramblings of an ignorant celebrity candidate but as reflecting essentially the closest thing to a considered policy view that we are going to get from Trump.

It’s worth reading Trump’s full answer to the question about whether he holds Russia accountable for anything in particular just to see how long the answer is — how much time he had to think of something, and the extent to which the only specific wrongdoing he can name is on the part of the FBI for conducting an investigation of Russian crimes (emphasis added):

Yes, I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think the United States has been foolish. I think we have all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago, a long time, frankly, before I got to office. I think we’re all to blame. I think that the United States now has stepped forward along with Russia. We’re getting together and we have a chance to do some great things, whether it’s nuclear proliferation in terms of stopping, we have to do it — ultimately, that’s probably the most important thing that we can be working on.

I do feel that we have both made some mistakes. I think that the probe is a disaster for our country. I think it’s kept us apart. It’s kept us separated. There was no collusion at all. Everybody knows it. People are being brought out to the fore. So far that I know, virtually, none of it related to the campaign. They will have to try really hard to find something that did relate to the campaign.

That was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily and, frankly, we beat her. And I’m not even saying from the standpoint — we won that race. It’s a shame there could be a cloud over it. People know that. People understand it. The main thing — and we discussed this also — is zero collusion. It has had a negative impact upon the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world. We have 90 percent of nuclear power between the two countries. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous what’s going on with the probe.

Later, asked specifically about Russian-backed hackers stealing Americans’ private correspondence, Trump said, “My people came to me, [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me, and some others, and said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server. But I have confidence in both parties.”

That’s the president of the United States saying he has equal confidence in the president of Russia and the American intelligence community. It’s a politically baffling thing to say — so baffling that I don’t buy the common hot take that Trump’s slipperiness on this question merely reflects resentment at having the legitimacy of his election win challenged. After all, all he’s doing with this kind of rhetoric is undermining his own position.

Fox’s Kilmeade explains that Trump sees every Russian interference question as an accusation that his victory wasn’t legitimate. So he can’t say: Yeah, they interfered. I am quite sure this is exactly right.

— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) July 16, 2018

The simplest explanation for why a president who happily outsources his domestic policy to Paul Ryan and his judicial nominations to the Federalist Society insists on freelancing around Russia is that there is a genuine meeting of the minds between Trump and Putin across a broad range of issues.

Russia hawks in the United States and Europe have long been concerned about German plans to build a natural gas pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, that would give Russian fossil fuels more access to the European market. Trump, who often likes to criticize Germany but rarely likes to criticize Russia, surprised many observers by criticizing this pipeline at the NATO summit in Brussels late last week.

It seemed, superficially, like Trump was finding a way to integrate his passion for making trouble for German Chancellor Angela Merkel with something resembling a normal American foreign policy. But such hopes were quickly dashed by his performance in Helsinki.

Trump repeatedly railed against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany, asking why the US should protect Germany from Russia when Berlin purchases so much gas from Moscow. Putin won’t like that line one bit. Interesting to see if it comes up in Helsinki pic.twitter.com/j019Mi4lJl

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) July 11, 2018

Asked by a Russian journalist about both the pipeline and how he would characterize the US-Russia relationship, Trump made it clear that his concern about the pipeline isn’t that it would give Russia undue political leverage over Germany but simply that it would be bad for American fossil fuel interests:

I called him a competitor, and a good competitor he is. I think the word competitor is a compliment. I think that we will be competing when you talk about the pipeline. I’m not sure necessarily that it’s in the best interests of Germany or not. That was a decision that they made. We will be competing. As you know, the United States is now, or soon will be, but I think it is right now the largest in the oil and gas world. So we’re going to be selling LNG. We’ll have to be competing with the pipeline. I think we will compete successfully. Although there is a little advantage locationally. I wish them luck.

I discussed with Angela Merkel in pretty strong tones. But I also know where they’re coming from. They have a very close source. We will see how that all works out. But we have lots of sources now. The United States is much different than it was a number of years ago when we weren’t able to extract what we can extract today. So today, we’re number one in the world at that. I think we will be out there competing very strongly. Thank you very much.

Trump’s view on the relationship of NATO to Nord Stream is so stupid that it’s almost hard to believe this is what he’s saying, but it’s consistent with his overall worldview.

While a normal US leader might worry that Russo-German energy ties would undermine Germany’s ability to lead an independent Europe on a political level, Trump’s objection is clearly backward — he doesn’t think it’s worth America’s while to contribute to Europe’s defense via NATO if Europe is going to turn around and buy Russian gas. He defines Russia as a “competitor” to the United States exclusively in the commercial sphere rather than the geopolitical one.

That’s why he called the European Union a “foe” in much stronger terms — on the level of competition for export markets, Europe really is a bigger competitor than Russia.

If you view world affairs through an exclusively mercantilist lens, as Trump does, then America’s closest allies (mostly rich democracies) are our biggest enemies and deterring Russian expansionism is a waste of time and money. It’s time to accept that this is what Trump really thinks and that he is governing accordingly.

It’s easy to forget now, but Trump entered the White House with an unprecedentedly low level of support from his own party.

A dozen Republican senators and a gaggle of vulnerable House members refused to say that they were voting for him, while Speaker Ryan said he would no longer defend or campaign with Trump. And Trump as a candidate was personally hostile to a number of established GOP figures, and expressed heterodox views on a wide range of policy issues. In theory, that could have set up an unusual political dynamic in which congressional Republicans subjected Trump to an uncommonly stringent level of oversight for a same-party president, and Trump engaged in an uncommonly high level of policymaking that cut across established party lines.

Instead, Trump and GOP leaders rather quickly reached a tacit compromise — no restraint whatsoever on Trump’s personal corruption or financial conflicts of interest, and no attempt by Trump to pursue the heterodox agenda on infrastructure, health care, antitrust, etc. that he promised on the campaign trail.

The deal has worked well on domestic issues, culminating in the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. But on foreign affairs, it’s begun to fall apart after a mostly successful 2017. Coats, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and others with conventional conservative Republican views hold the key advisory jobs in the Trump administration, but Trump is clearly not interested in actually taking their advice because he thinks that advice is wrong.

He is acting to unravel America’s global trading relationships, doing what he can to undermine NATO and the European Union, trying to find an excuse to wriggle out of defense obligations to South Korea, and otherwise implement the mercantilist vision he articulates over and over again.

It’s time to stop psychoanalyzing Trump’s statements — and time for congressional Republicans to stop issuing toothless statements denouncing them — and take this seriously as the president’s governing agenda.

Original Source -> It’s time to take Trump both seriously and literally on Russia

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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