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The Morning Edition
Peter Hartcher answers your questions about Iran, Trump and the state of the world
00:44:48
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, it's Samantha Salinger Morris here, and you're listening to a special episode of the Morning Edition. Regular listeners will know Peter Harcher. He is our international and political editor and a weekly voice on the podcast, helping us to dissect and process the extraordinary times that we're living in now. Every week we get a lot of comments from you, so we put the call out for the questions that you are dying to ask Peter Harcher about the state of the world and politics either here or abroad. Hey, Peter.
- [00:33]
B
Samantha, good to see you.
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A
We're very excited to have you.
- [00:36]
B
I'm very excited to be here.
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A
Okay. Well, I'm glad to hear that because we're going to start off with a big question, something of a moral one. Harriet Dodger has written, you say no right thinking person would want Iran to have nuclear capabilities. Don't you mean west thinking person? Others would argue that Iran has just as much right to have nuclear weapons as the US And Israel, who, who aren't exactly behaving like trustworthy or responsible international citizens right now. What do you say, Peter?
- [01:06]
B
Well, the first thing I'd say is that among those who think Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons is Iran itself. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty it signed in 1970 and has remained a signatory ever since. So it's committed in an international binding treaty, which it's ratified, not to acquire nuclear weapons. And they've consistently said that they don't intend to make nuclear weapons, that their uranium enrichment processes are for nuclear energy production, not for nuclear weapons. So that's the first point. The Iranians themselves have said they shouldn't have them and don't want them. That has started to change in the last few weeks. Late March, a group of legislators in the Iranian Parliament sponsored a new bill that would begin the process of withdrawing from the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. It's not yet gone anywhere, that bill. We don't know what will happen with that. But it is a sign of some in the Iranian power structure saying because of this onslaught from the Israelis and the Americans that they need to just lose all restraint and acquire nuclear weapons. Mind you, it would not be, well, two points. This regime is not a regime that I think has any moral equivalence with the Australian government, the US Or Israel. Those countries at least, at the very least, are all democratic with elected leaders. Iran is a dictatorial theocracy which butchers its own citizens when they dare speak out against the regime in the most horrid way. And we saw that in a large scale in January. So I don't accept that there's any moral equivalence, but there is the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and its obligations as a matter of international law that the Iranians have signed up to. And I would also add that there are consequences of any country acquiring a nuclear weapon, for example, India, Pakistan, one gets the bomb, the other gets it immediately if the Iranians get the bomb. And one of the reasons the US has been involved in trying to prevent them for so many years has been that it would be not only a threat to Israel, but also a threat to US Gulf allies who have been pleading with the US to contain and insofar as possible crush Iran. So if the Iranians did acquire the bomb, you'd see the Saudis acquire one within weeks. The UAE also, there would be a proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the Middle East. And finally, I'd say that we know from the long history of American custodianship of nuclear weapons that they have been a trustworthy and credible manager of that capability. And, and they use that capability on behalf of human liberty in the world. In prevailing over the Soviet Union. If they'd not defended, if they'd not extended what's called extended deterrence, otherwise known as the nuclear umbrella over Europe and other allies, including Australia, then the outcome of the Cold War would have been a very different one. So I'd just like to put that in a bit of context. We have good reason to be grateful for the functioning of the US Deterrence and in the functioning of so called MAD Mutually Assured destruction, which kept the planet safe and free of major international war longer than at any time in modern history.
- [04:49]
A
Well, thanks Peter, for that one. Now this brings us very neatly to a question sent in by Christine Vickers because she has mentioned that the UN just this week is discussing the non Proliferation Treaty that you've mentioned before. And she wonders if it's time for Australia to, to consider developing nuclear capacity in light of the changing world order and the emergence of what she calls, quote, potentially a rogue state in the form of the usa. All of which she says has brought about the need to rethink the concept of deterrence. So what say you, Peter? Is this a strong argument for us considering carefully developing our nuclear capacity? Because like you say there, yes, there is no moral equivalence between the United States and Iran. But obviously many would agree the US is behaving under Donald Trump in an incredibly erratic and sometimes frightening way.
- [05:40]
B
Yeah, I find it unlikely that Donald Trump will launch a nuclear war. He has said many times and People who've worked for him have told me privately that his greatest single fear is nuclear war. But we have to look at it now from a broader perspective. There is a case that Australia should look at the question of its nuclear protection, nuclear deterrence. Australia decided that it would move towards acquiring nuclear weapons in the 1960s, and to this day, there are concrete footings in the bush at Jarvis Bay on the New South Wales coast, where they started to build a nuclear reactor that was going to be manufacturing uranium and plutonium for that program. But the Australian government, in the end, accepted the good faith of the US in promising to extend the umbrella over us to protect us. So on that basis, Australia signed up to the policy of extended deterrence. Other US Allies submitted to the same. The only one that didn't is France. France kept. Oh, sorry. And the Brits. The Brits and the French both kept their nuclear weapon capability. That's based obviously on trust that the US Will defend us. And the concept is that if another country were to attack Australia with a nuclear weapon, then the US Would respond in kind by attacking the aggressor country. Now, does anybody think that Donald Trump would be prepared to risk a nuclear retaliation on the US in order to defend Australia in a nuclear war? I don't think so. He's shown a new level of disdain for US Allies and treaty obligations that we've never seen from the U.S. other U.S. allies think they do so. For example, in South Korea, there's a very active debate. About three quarters of the South Korean public have said they are in support of South Korea acquiring a nuclear bomb, because just across the border, of course, North Korea has the bomb. There's also an active debate underway in Japan now, which is pretty extraordinary given that Japan is the only country ever to have felt the full force of nuclear arms in war. It's not a popular concept. Only about a sixth of the public support the idea in, according to opinion polls. But the Takaichi government is a much more hawkish government than Japan has seen since Shinzo Abe and Take Ichi's people are said to be reconsidering the whole question of whether Japan needs nuclear weapons. Australia has to consider the same, the same question. We are not immune the country. The two countries that pose threat or potential threat are North Korea, which has the range as well as the nuclear capability developed, by the way, to perfection since Donald Trump went to meet Kim Jong Un and then dropped the whole thing and walked away, and China, which is engaged in the biggest nuclear expansion that we've seen. Since the Cold War and has somewhere between 3 and 400 nuclear warheads already in place and is estimated by the Pentagon to have about 1,000 in place by the end of this decade, in the next four years. This is obviously a very sensitive. It's a complete taboo and our political leaders, you will not hear discussing this, but defence planners and strategists do discuss this behind closed doors. The argument isn't that Australia wants to attack somebody with nuclear weapons or even that we really seriously fear a nuclear attack. The argument is that if we get into some sort of armed skirmish with China, which is entirely possible, if you have a look at the aggressive way that they repeatedly encounter Australian navy and air force assets in international waters, then it could escalate quite. You can quite easily imagine it could escalate into a conflict. In that conflict, no matter how good our forces are, no matter whether other countries come to our aid or not, you don't have the capacity to escalate as much as the opponent does. If the Chinese Communist Party has nuclear weapons, they will always be able to out escalate an Australia that doesn't. So the question is, do we need to get a nuclear capability just to make our conventional forces credible? That's the question which nobody has yet answered. But the way the world is developing, the way our allies are reacting and the way the Americans are behaving and with the threat building in China and North Korea, it is a serious, a very serious, very delicate and difficult question that a grown up country should be able to talk about.
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A
It's interesting in particular because I think that our armed forces have in recent years sort of struggled to attract enough people to join.
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B
Right, Peter, that's true, although that reversed in the last period. The government announced just in the last week or two that they'd actually achieved a net increase and achieved some of their targets. So that's improved. But we still have a small. It's essentially a piece, a defence force structured for peacetime, which the Albanese government is trying to expand and better equip, and that's underway. But it's still not the capable military that a country needs if it can't rely on the US which is what all of our defence planning was structured around.
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A
Very interesting. Now this one is about the Iran war, but in particular about how Donald Trump fits into it. So this is by Lynne Morhan and she asks is Donald Trump gaining financially from the war with Iran or from the Middle east wars? Who else benefits financially from the wars in the Middle East?
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B
I've maintained that Trump has two overriding aims in this presidency. Number one is his personal enrichment, and number two is the consolidation of authoritarian power insofar as he can possibly manage it in these years. So as part of that, what we see is Trump's negotiating team that he sends everywhere. He sends to Russia, to Ukraine, he sends to, tries to send, attempts to send to Islamabad to negotiate with the Iranians. Wherever there's a peace talk, he sends Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Kushner is not a member of the US Administration. He's not a government official. He calls himself a volunteer. Steve Witkoff has been signed up as an official of the administration. Witkoff is not a diplomat. He was a New York. He is and was a New York real estate billionaire and pal of Trump's. This is not a traditional American diplomatic negotiating team. This is the family and the crony. Kushner is the family. Witkoff is the crony. As far as we can tell, wherever they go and hold negotiations, there are always some sort of sideline negotiations over business deals and profits. Now, to get a full picture of how much the Trump family, that Trump Organization, Trump personally is making out of the Iran war and the Lebanon war, it'll take longer to tease out all of the details and entanglements. We do know, though, that before the war started, according to Trump's own financial disclosures, last year he made more than $20 million personally from his Arabian Peninsula Gulf Arab investments and projects. The value of the projects in which he's invested is a total in that region in the Gulf Arab states of 17 billion US dollars. And he' looking for more deals. We know that Jared Kushner, he runs a big investment fund called Affinity. Affinity has some US$6 billion in it. Almost every dollar of that is from one of the Gulf Arab states investing in his projects or Trump related projects. And Trump has a raft of other business and financial interests which he has been feeding as a part of his presidency. There's the crypto ventures which he's indulged in at the same time as he's deregulated the crypto industry. There's the drone businesses. Just in the last couple of months, his sons Eric and Donald Jr. Have invested, have bought three companies that manufacture drones. At the same time, Trump has passed a new regulation stipulating that no foreign companies are allowed to sell drones to the US Anymore, because quite a few were. So this will assist his sons in tendering to the Pentagon. And Trump's also announced another one billion US dollar emergency drone top UP fund, and they will be tendering for that business. So we'll see how that goes. And those drones will be sold to the Pentagon. So it's not necessarily a direct relationship to the Iran war, but it's certainly a direct relationship to Trump's military decisions and his family business ventures.
- [14:58]
A
Now, Peter, I imagine a lot of listeners might be listening to that and hearing that and thinking, as I am, that, of course, that smacks of the sort of corruption that you might hear from a impoverished nation elsewhere in the world. So is that. And I know I'm asking a broad question, and each deal would have its own complications, but is there corruption there? Is this legal? Is it unlawful? Are these the sorts of things that are gonna be poured by legal experts for years and could potentially lead to charges later down the path?
- [15:32]
B
It's possible. There are House and Senate committees that scrutinize this stuff. The Democrats are all over it. Some of the businesses are entirely legitimate. Some of the conflicts of interest are not. Jared Kushner, he hasn't been shy about this when he was asked by an interviewer, is this a conflict of interest for you to be carrying on all these investments with the countries and companies with whom you're negotiating? And his answer was, some people call it a conflict of interest, but Steve Witkoff and I call it the benefit of experience and relationships. What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world. If Steve and I didn't have these deep relationships, the deal that we were able to help get done, that freed
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A
these hostages would not have occurred.
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B
So that's his response to that accusation, which is reminiscent. I don't know, you're probably not old enough, Samantha, to remember when Joby Elkie Peterson was the premier of Queensland and notoriously corrupt premier, and there was a satirical sketch about his. One of his ministers, Russ Heinz. Russ Hinds, rather. And in the satirical sketch, the reporter is interviewing Rashinz and he says, minister, you own racehorses and you're the minister for racing, which in real life, he really was. To which the fictitious Russians replies, that's right, son. The reporter then says, and Mr. Hinz, you own gravel pits and you're the minister for roads, which was also true in real life. And then the fictitious minister says, that's right, son. And then the reporter says, well, isn't that a conflict of interest, Minister? To which the fictitious Russ Hinds replies, no, son, that's a confluence of interests.
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A
Amazing.
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B
I was reminded of that listening to Jared Kushner's answer about whether he was indulging in conflicts of interest. The House, one of the House committees in the US Looking at Trump's business, personal enrichment has put the figure at around US$3 billion so far. The New York Times puts it at over $4 billion so far. But he's only about a third of the way through this term. So the term is young.
- [17:44]
A
That's extraordinary. Okay. Well, Chris from South Yarra in Melbourne has a really interesting question about a political factor that might or might not determine when the war in Iran ends. So he wants to know if you think the Iranians will wait out the Trump presidency and allow his successor the victory that he craves so much. So I think here Chris might be asking if the Iranians will perhaps agree to a diplomatic end to the war or open the strait, maybe even curb its nuclear activity, but only to Trump's successor. What do you think, Peter?
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B
I don't know that they conceive of it in those terms. We have to remember that the people of Iran are suffering horribly in this war. And even before the war, the reason that there were all those street protests in January was because the economy was in such a shocking mess with inflation, even on the official measure, no doubt understating the problem, 50% inflation. Just imagine living with 50% inflation. So the people leading those protests were shopkeepers, business people were spread to ordinary families. And since then, they've had this continuous bombardment from the US And Israel raining down on their cities and towns, horrible suffering. Now their oil revenue is being cut off even further than it was before through this interdiction operation by the U.S. conditions for ordinary Iranians, most of whom haven't been able to leave the house in recent months, are absolutely dire. The regime itself isn't in a very happy condition. They can't move about normally. They're expecting Israeli or American missiles through the ceiling at any moment. So it's not as if, I mean, they're enjoying the appearance of defiance that they are generating, but they are not enjoying their daily lives. I would submit to you, I think the moment that they can negotiate an acceptable end to the war, they will accept it. Whoever the US President is and whoever the Israeli prime minister is, Trump has talked about infighting in the Iranian leadership that can't decide what their negotiating priorities should be. Not everything Trump says is a lie that is actually true. We've seen that borne out in Iranian state media just in the last few days, where there's emerged a factional war within the power group, where one ultra Conservative faction says that the negotiating team that Iran has sent to talk to the Pakistanis and the Americans has exceeded its brief, has crossed a red line set by the previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, by even discussing nuclear capability with the interlocutors and with the Americans, and therefore undercutting the credibility of the Iranian negotiators. So they're under pressure and the pressure is showing. So it's not, I don't think it's a, it's such a clinical, comfortable and planned venture as that question implies. I think it's, it's messy, painful. The Iranians would like to get an end to it as long as they can do it on dignified terms. After the break, the countries that can afford, and rich countries can afford to buy hyper expensive oil will continue to be able to bid for it and obtain it on the world market using cash, trade, leverage and other means. It's a tough reality that when there's a problem in the world, the poor countries always suffer more.
- [21:31]
A
This is from our social media accounts. This is one podcast listener didn't give their name, but has asked if Australia, or more pointedly the Albanese government, quote, doesn't have the guts to support the USA in freeing Iran, why should they have a say along with a bunch of other hypocrites in anything to do with Iran's future? End of quote. Now, I'll just couch this by saying that you and I have discussed that Australia has provided limited defence military support, deploying a wedgetail aircraft to help protect Australians and other civilians in the uae. But what do you say, Peter, to that one?
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B
Well, Samantha, I suppose there's a matter of having the guts to do something and then there's having the brains of whether to do it or to refrain. Australia is unique among US allies. We're the only country that has fought alongside the US in every war since and including World War I. This is the first one where we have not participated directly in the conflict. As you say, Australia has deployed some defensive assets to help protect the uae, which is a military partner of Australia and hosts a military air force base which Australia uses. And the reason that we have not participated? Well, I would suggest there's a couple. One is Trump launched into this war without asking Australia or any other ally apart from Israel. There was no consultation whatsoever. Second, this war and the way he's conducted it is inimical to Australia's interest, is very, actually very harmful to Australia's interest. First, the war was launched without warning in a region where There are hundreds of thousands of Australians, tens of thousands in Dubai and Abu Dhabi alone, living and working, as well as the tourists and holiday makers, all of whom were put at risk. All those Australian citizens were put at risk by this outbreak of hostilities without warning from our great ally. Not to mention the oil effect, the economic effect, the fact that inflation in Australia is now running high. The Reserve bank is going to have to crank interest rates higher than it was. Economic growth will suffer. We may run out of fuel and fertilizer depending on how long this thing goes on, plastics and bitumen. This is a major crisis that our supposed ally has imposed on us without consultation. Now, in those circumstances, put that aside and then say, well, what about the goal itself the Americans are trying to achieve in Iran? Well, we could make a better assessment if we knew what the American goals were. Trump, as we've discussed before and is widely recognized, wanders all over the place, contradicts himself almost daily on what his objectives are and what might satisfy those objectives. So are we supposed to support a war waged against. And one of the other consequences for Australia, of course, is that the US by running down all its own missile and weapon stocks quite dramatically, is not only producing shortfalls in its own armory, but its ability to resupply. Australia and other allies when we are buying their equipment and munitions through US Defense companies, that's impaired. Impaired our defense readiness. It's taken a lot of hardware and attention away from what we consider. And the US had long considered the primary threat, which is China, and tied up all these assets, expended all these munitions in a war in which we were not consulted and in which we have no interest. Now, there could be an interest if we knew what the interest was. There could be a cause, if we knew what the cause was. But the Australian government has taken the same position that other allied governments have taken, and that is we will help clean up the mess. We will help with escorting oil shipments to and commercial shipping through the Gulf after the hostilities. But we're not going to risk our citizens, our defense forces, in pursuit of a war that is conducted on such an impulsive and unexplained basis, distracting from our primary national interests in defending our own country and our own region and our own munition supply against a crisis which could, which could and may well occur directly affecting our own territorial and commercial interests.
- [25:57]
A
Aside from that. Peter. No, I'm just kidding. That's fair. Aside from that, great idea. Okay, so this next one is about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his highly publicized trip overseas to procure extra oil and fuel than what can be procured through the normal channels. So Ken has asked, if this is extra oil and fuel that he's procured, does that mean that Australia is obtaining a more than equitable share of global supply? And if that is the case, who loses out as a result? This was something of concern or of interest to a number of listeners and viewers and readers. Another listener, Mark Spartacus, has also raised the issue of whether Albo has outbid poor countries for this extra fuel. So what's going on here, Peter?
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B
Well, I'd make a couple of points, Samantha. One is that he goes on these shopping trips, which is just an extraordinary state of affairs, that you have to have your national leader shopping around the region to secure such a basic, fundamental essential.
- [26:55]
A
Wait, Peter, I'm going to interrupt you there because the reason why we love having you on weekly or having you on at all is, of course, you have been reporting for, you know, four decades in some. So in your reporting career, have you ever seen one of our leaders have to do this, have to go shopping for our basics?
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B
No, no. The system of international trade which the US Presided over, creating, of course, establishing the gatt, which became the World Trade Organization and enlarge that system over the years of most notable expansion was when China was added in the year 2000, has worked really well. The free trade globalization system worked for those decades. It's come apart because both China and the US have decided they want it to come apart to serve their own political interests. And as part of that, Trump's impulsive, very badly conducted war on Iran, together with Israel and Iran, of course, has now created this unprecedented in our modern history threat to an essential, I should say, since World War II was the last time that our supplies of essentials were at risk because the Japanese establishing massive military bases in PNG and the Solomons was in the process of trying to interdict, to completely sever our lifelines to the world. So that was the last time there was a threat to Australian fuel supplies in any really meaningful way. When Albanese goes on these shopping trips to try to get guarantees that they will continue to supply us, he's giving them guarantees that we will continue to supply them. Because Australia is the world's second sometimes biggest, sometimes second, sometimes third biggest exporter of lng, which they rely on very heavily. All those countries, Japan, Korea, the Malaysians, the Indonesians, China, they all buy large quantities of Australian lng. So Albanese is giving them security of supply. At the same time, they're promising security to us. So it's not a one way street. But there is a serious risk though, that as this war progresses, if this is perpetuated much longer, that some countries will be unable to get oil, petrol, fuel at all and they will be the poorest countries because the world oil supply is not going to stop altogether. There's still a fair amount of oil swishing around in the world system. It will be a question of price. So the countries that can afford and rich countries can afford to buy hyper expensive oil will continue to be able to bid for it and obtain it on the world market using cash, trade, leverage and other means. It's the poorest and weakest countries, as usual, that will suffer if this continues. Australia has already acknowledged the suffering, potential suffering of the Pacific island states, which are among the poorest, as well as the smallest countries in the world import all of their fuel and those countries have turned to Australia to ask for help. Penny Wong has said Australia is cognizant of that and will help. But we've yet to see how that help will or might materialize. But yeah, it's a tough reality that when there's a problem in the world, the poor countries always suffer more.
- [30:22]
A
Okay. Well, speaking of tough realities, I want to turn to a question brought to US by Andrew McKenzie. He says the US economy, particularly the stock market, appears little damaged by Trump, neither by his tariffs nor his war in Iran, the skyrocketing health costs in the US and so forth. So Andrew asks, why are all the economic consequences of the Trump regime decision so easily passed to the rest of the world? At what point will the US Public feel some consequences for their choice of leadership?
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B
Well, I'd make two points. First is that there is some pain being felt, some considerable pain being felt in the US already, 55% of Americans in a Gallup poll I saw a couple of days ago said that their personal financial situation was getting worse. That's a record high. The price of petrol is in the US about $4.20 a gallon, which is regarded as exceptionally high. 77% of Americans said in a poll last week that they thought that the high cost of fuel was a real concern for them. And 78% rather, and 77% blamed Trump, at least in part, for that. So there is pain. Inflation is rising. Ordinary people are paying higher prices, not just for petrol. But that's spilling through together with his genius tariff plans into higher prices for American consumers across the board. So that's not great. And of course, it's especially Bad, especially unhappy if you're a poor American because Trump's so called big beautiful bill has severed a lot of assistance programs to low income people while redistributing wealth to billionaires and the rich. So there is some pain. But the second point I'd make is he's right about the stock market. The US stock market is booming in spite of all of that. It seems to be a paradox. The explanation is that most of that boom is fueled by the frenzy over data centers and AI. That's where hundreds of billions of dollars is going in capital expenditure on the ground to build facilities and many many hundreds of billions more are chasing that investment and potential returns on it through shares in the share market. Now does that mean that they've discovered the nirvana of economic of stock market and investment success and we're the poor cousin? Well before we leap to conclusions, I just say Samantha, that we've seen this before. When the so called when the tech bubble was running in the US in the late 90s and up to 2000, that was the assumption. The conclusion at that time was only America can have a profitable future like this. The rest of you are also rands because we dominate all of the tech. The dot com boom, right? And there was a huge boom going on in those stocks. Australia was regarded as a real dud left behind country because what did we have? We had a bunch of rocks under the ground. Who cares? Now that was the case until that bubble burst. Then the dot com frenzy turned into the tech bust. The tech bubble became the tech bust overnight and investment returned big time to hard commodities. So suddenly countries with resources were back in fashion. So commodities, iron ore, coal, oil, lng, tungsten, copper, all of these things suddenly became fashionable again. I can't see the future Samantha, but I would strongly suspect that we are going to see something similar potentially when the US monetary policy cycle turns and interest rates start to go up in the US but maybe from some market based shock, maybe another Trump genius initiative, we don't know. But I wouldn't yet conclude that this is a permanent new condition of the world.
- [34:31]
A
Okay, well question about a permanent condition or not. This one comes from Michael McClellan and this is about the United States. This is a biggie. He asks is Donald Trump the cause or just a symptom of the US decline into becoming a failing empire and is it recoverable?
- [34:49]
B
I think Donald Trump isn't the cause, but he is the accelerator. He's a culminating point of trends that we've seen going on in the US for decades. It's now, what, 28 years since the US Congress was able to pass a normal national budget on time and in whole a dysfunction which no other developed country suffers. It's been 10 years since that intense, hateful political polarization created a really noticeable nastiness. And what I think has resulted over long period in a change to really the American Persona, which was always upbeat, positive, confident, generous, and now is much more fearful and angry than I've seen in my life. And I think Trump is a product of all of that. For example, he didn't create Fox News. We can thank Rupert Murdoch for that. But Fox News incubated Trump. His style, his politics suited that larger, angry, divisive right wing project that was already underway in America. He's carried it to a new high or a new low, depending on your viewpoint, and has accelerated the underlying collapse of any sort of unifying policy practices and the traditional upholding of the American place in the world. So yeah, I think he's it's late stage imperial collapse when Trump is back at the, at the control stick and who knows just how far he'll take it and whether the US can recover. I assume the US can recover because these problems are man made, therefore the solutions are also man made. There's no inevitable or predetermined outcome here. But I would point out that some of the damage he's done is not easily reversed. Trust is a hard won commodity. He's done enormous damage to trust in the US Especially among allies. The virtual empire which the US built up, in which countries cooperated with the US not because they were militarily occupied or economically coerced, but because they wanted to be U.S. allies. That was the genius of the American virtual empire, is that countries queued up to become friends and allies of the US that empire is now obviously in tatters and is very hard to recover, especially when rivals, most notably China, are building their own alliance systems and partnerships. We talked just last week, Samantha, in the podcast about the Krinks alliance. It's not a formal alliance, but it's a battlefield cooperative that has emerged. So the allies are getting. The US alliance based structure is getting weaker at the time when the autocratic allies are getting stronger. So very hard for a quick recovery from all of that, I think.
- [38:03]
A
Interesting timing as well. We're recording this on Wednesday, not long after King Charles has visited the United States and gave a speech to the joint sitting of Congress. This was the first by a British monarch in 35 years. And I think many found it notable that he spoke about the value of remembering friends and fostering compassion and fostering peace. And I know many politicians globally have sort of been tearing their hair out at all the alliances that Trump has torn up. Apparently Trump has reverence for King Charles, so don't know how much that will sink in, Peter, that message.
- [38:37]
B
Well, look, the Brits have got this diplomatic card. They're playing it, they're playing it hard, and good luck to them. They need it because of Trump's hostility. But can I just say, it might be nice optics, but it's not really working because at the very same time that this visit is on, just in the last couple of days, Trump has said that if the British persist in taxing American, the big tech, Internet companies, social media companies that are extracting revenue without paying tax, if they continue to impose a 2%, propose a 2% tax on these U.S. companies, the U.S. will retaliate. They call it foreign coercion. And they're going to put what Trump said. He said we might put a big tariff on Britain if they keep doing that. Now, just in the last 24 hours in Australia, the Albanese government has announced not the same thing, but a similar imposition on those same companies where they use the proprietary material of Australian media news companies, where they use it without compensation. The federal government will demand that they pay compensation at a rate somewhere between 1 and 2%, 2 and a half percent, depending on the details here. So maybe we'll be the recipients of the same treatment quite soon. So, yeah, you can, you can play nice, you can produce your king. This, of course, helps expose the claim that the British monarch is also, which he is in a legal, constitutional sense, the King of Australia, because he's not there representing Australian interests. He's representing, he's essentially a diplomatic and trade asset for the uk. He's not doing us any diplomatic or
- [40:20]
A
trade favors, although I believe he gave a nod to Aukus and supported that. So I think he did.
- [40:25]
B
He did. And of course, that's British equity. They're one of the three partners. So he's there, he's advocating for the British interest as well. It's great TV to watch, but it's at core where the fundamentals apply. It doesn't seem to be helping the British with their, with their arguments with America.
- [40:44]
A
Indeed. Now, Peter, I just want to wrap up with what I'd call a wild card. And this is about your writing. Now, a number of listeners and viewers and readers wrote in just to say, don't have a question, just love Peter's writing. Like Lindsay Armstrong said, no questions, just great. Congratulations to Peter for outstanding reporting. Karen also said, I don't have a question. Just wanted to say how much I truly appreciate Peter's insights. But Ashley Berry, who also says she enjoyed your writing, she thinks you're at the top of your game. But she wonders why such short paragraphs? Peter, is it because we have such short attention spans?
- [41:19]
B
Well, I never really realized that I wrote short paragraphs. This is what we must say. I'm flattered by all those very kind, very generous, undeserved comments. I did see a statistic in, I don't know if you see Harper's magazine, they have that Harper's index, that one page of astonishing, generally astonishing statistics every month. I did see one recently that said that the average number of words in a sentence in a New York Times best selling selling book now is 16. A century ago it averaged 22. So our sentences are getting shorter along with our attention spans. Maybe I've been an unwitting perpetrator of this abbreviation of attention spans. I do. Look, one conscious thing I do remember is early in my career I read that style classic called the Strunken the Elements of Style, how to Write. And I remember one of their iron rules was if you can say it in four words, don't use five. So for somebody as verbose as me, it's been a struggle, but I try to keep to that at some level, at least when I'm in print. And finally, I'd say whether it's long, broad brush strokes on the, on the canvas or, you know, aboriginal style dot painting, you can make a beautiful picture either way. Matter of style.
- [42:45]
A
Ah, love that, Peter. Well, I've got lots of thanks today because I really want to thank all the viewers, listeners and readers they sent in. So many questions, so many great ones. And if we didn't get to your question, we plan on doing another one of these with Peter sometime down the track. So thank you so much, so much to all of you and of course, Peter, thank you so much to you. I don't know how you keep this all straight in your head, but so much appreciation for your time.
- [43:10]
B
Well, yeah, and thank you to everybody for the questions, some of which give the old gray cells a bit of a run around the paddock. Much appreciated.
- [43:18]
A
Love that. Thanks, Peter.
- [43:19]
B
Thanks, Samantha.
- [43:27]
A
In other news today, Colleen Lamar, the mother of Beau Lamar Condon, the police officer accused of the double murder of couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, has been charged by police. She was arrested yesterday morning and is accused of allegedly attempting to influence a key witness to change their evidence. The City of Sydney is investigating avenues to ban property investors from using their second homes as short term rentals, and this will likely provoke debate. But we have named the best 50 Australian films of all time with the aid of 24 experts, including directors, actors, critics, curators and authors. The full list is on our websites and you can add your recommendations. So far, the Castle is topping the list of reader recommendations. You can read more at theage.com or smh.com Today's episode was produced by Chi Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow the Morning Edition and leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening. Hey, Free spins are waiting for you in Cash Avalanche Casino Slot. Jump into a world of exciting spin wheels, vibrant visuals and rewarding surprises. Earn sweepstakes coins through gameplay, join thrilling competitions and explore a variety of themed experiences. With smooth performance and helpful support anytime, every moment feels exciting. Ready to begin your adventure? Download Cash Avalanche Casino Slot on the App Store and claim your bonus.