How will history regard the Albanese government?

On turning a blind eye to war crimes in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon

How will history regard the government of Albanese, Chalmers, Marles and Wong? It will record that after two and half years of genocide by Israel, Australia’s leadership invited Israel’s president for a state visit. Australia refused to condemn the raft of war crimes committed by Israel and supported by the United States, first in Gaza and then in Iran and southern Lebanon. In Gaza, these included the killing of tens of thousands of women and children, as well as the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, hospitals, universities, power and water utilities, bakeries, agriculture, holy sites and homes – deliberate acts motivated to destroy the conditions of life. The Hamas attack of October 7 may have been the inciting incident, but history will also place it in the context of Israel’s broader oppression of Palestinians. Genocide, by definition, is never justified.

Australia has said nothing while Israel has continued to assassinate journalists, medics, aid workers, diplomats, foreign and spiritual leaders across the Middle East. Worse, it has done nothing even to dissuade Israel – no sanctions, no calls for justice or statements of support for the ICC arrest warrants, not even stopping our arms trade to Israel. On the contrary, our government actively attempts to frame criticism of Israel as antisemitic. (Is it antisemitic to criticise Israel’s recent “quadruple tap” strike on Lebanese medics?)

Labor ministers have turned a blind eye as cultural institutions around the nation silenced, punished and purged themselves of pro-Palestinian voices. While Israel literally pursues total dominance of an ethno-nationalist Greater Israel “from the river to the sea”, including the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon, state governments here banned the use of this phrase even as a call for peace and justice. With no pushback from Albanese.

Then Israel initiated an illegal war on Iran, supported by the incontinent US administration. As has been reported elsewhere, although notably less in Australia, the war had no clear objective and was done without proper planning, ignoring all warnings about its consequences, which killed thousands and threatened to cripple the global economy. Albanese was the first foreign leader to support it.

By now, it’s obvious how stupid, unpopular and costly the Iranian misadventure has become, and Australia’s leaders are backsliding, but have still not put any significant conditions or limits on our alliance with the US or Israel. We have not withdrawn our early support.

There is disparity between what our leaders say and what they do, but it’s the latter that will survive on the public record. Penny Wong puts out statements of deep concern every few days, and Albanese reissues weak calls for everyone to stop fighting, but Australia quietly continues to provide staff, equipment and surveillance capacity to the US/Israeli war effort. US diplomatic efforts are now geared towards reaching a deal on Iran’s nuclear capacity similar to that which Trump tore up in his first term; towards re-opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war started; and to rejecting Iran’s control of the Strait, which it didn’t exert before the war.

It’s barely acknowledged in Australia that Iran’s regime is more entrenched than it was before the war, that its new spiritual leader is more hardline than the old one (his father). Or that the original Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons development; and that this died when he was assassinated, and his son has not reissued it. Any Iranians who believed the war was about rescuing them from the yoke of the evil regime were rapidly disabused of this notion, whether by the bombing of their schools and hospitals or by our government’s introduction of visa legislation to prevent them from seeking refuge here. If anything, the war has strengthened Iran’s hand, as well as that of its ally, Russia. In short, it’s a total disaster.

It’s also apparently a topic of global taboo that the only nation on earth that wants fighting to continue across the Middle East, and refuses to stop, is Israel.

Our allies, Israel and the US, are hostile and unhinged, their actions extremist and clearly illegal – yet we stand strong with them, albeit with an occasional eyebrow arched in disappointment. Strangely though, this disparity between what Australia supposedly supports, and it actually supports, remains relatively unexamined. Meanwhile, the Australian public opposes the war/s strenuously, not that anyone in the major parties cares about that. While political commentators point out ad infinitum that support for the major parties is sliding, they nevertheless ignore that it’s bipartisan rubbish like this that is further destroying public trust in our political systems.

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As a leader, Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist and megalomaniacal idiot without historical comparison. He lies with deranged commitment, is deeply corrupt, and is the image of loudmouthed incompetence. Every reasonable person knows this. But he’s also a product of American systemic failure – of its media, justice system, and politics. He’s a symptom as much as a cause, and the continued incapacity of anyone to hold him or his goons to account demonstrates that the failure is ongoing.

Albanese, in his stout efforts not to condemn, believes he is preserving a relationship between Australia and the US that is much larger than Trump. He dismisses criticism of Trump as if it’s all just about his provocative social media posts. Trump is not America, and our relationship will outlast him.

If that’s the case, though, why not criticise him? Why not send a signal about the kind of America we support? Does anyone believe that Democrats or American career diplomats would hold it against us in the future? The contrary is more likely, because whoever is picking up the pieces in the future will need allies, and need to prove America deserves them. In the unlikely event the Democrats can’t even defeat this lame duck, we definitely don’t want to be America’s great ally, because everything Trump’s MAGA movement touches turns to shit – and the only form in which MAGA rule exists is fascist, corrupt, authoritarian, isolationist, anti-science, anti-regulation, anti-immigration and aggressively white nationalist.

Albanese often cites our deep defence ties with America as the reason to maintain them. But surely defence ties should work in service of our national interests, rather than as an excuse for betraying them. We’re writing cheques that too often get cashed for illegal wars.

America under Trump is no longer the guarantor of our security, our trade, or the international rules-based order, and has demonstrated it will be disloyal to even its closest allies. Are we so naive to think we would be treated better? It’s no longer to our global advantage to be regarded as a close US ally.

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Markets have forgotten how to price Trump’s stupidity, because based on his track record traders keep thinking he’ll reverse course when things get bad. Trump takes this as affirmation to keep putting out mixed signals, and on we roll, slowly degrading with each turn. The media relays his absurd boasts as if they’re true – it’ll be over in two days; two weeks; we’ve virtually won; we have achieved regime change. And this is the dynamic that is destroying America’s standing in the world – everyone knows he’s nuts, let’s just humour him.

On the other hand we have Israel, a nation that now believes itself to be unbound from international rules and moral norms, entirely reconciled to its own unceasing aggression, uninterested in diplomacy, and committed to its own impunity regardless of the consequences to the rest of the world. Critics of its war crimes are all antisemites, and its own soldiers are innocent despite their well-proven crimes. Netanyahu is not popular, but there are smashing levels of support for the many wars he leads. Recent polling in Israel had two thirds of the population opposing a ceasefire.

Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza has become the playbook for its invasion of southern Lebanon. Its security services have given the green light to ever-more-brazen violence by illegal settlers in the West Bank. It has re-invaded the Golan Heights, bombed numerous other neighbours unprovoked, and has hit civilian infrastructure in Iran as if the Geneva Convention never existed. As a thought experiment, would Israel have invaded Lebanon and attacked Iran if the world had stood up to it over Gaza?

Polls, voting patterns and diplomatic relations across the world demonstrate how quickly the US and Israeli regimes are losing support. As fuel, fertiliser and chemicals start running out around the world, the contempt and anger will only accelerate. Yet neither regime will reform itself without external pressure. What’s more, American support for Israel is rapidly sliding, both for its ongoing military assistance and in terms of general approval ratings.

But while other Western leaders – across Europe and notably in Canada – are starting to find their voices, the Albanese government remains locked into its position of empty rhetoric, appeasement and quiet acquiescence, with not a thought for independence or independent action. Leaders are what leaders do, and Albanese leads nothing.

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If there is one thing the Iran war has proved, it’s that global supply chains are too fragile to bear the insanity and aggression of the American and Israeli governments. They are stretched to breaking point, and they are now breaking.

Before Trump did his best to undermine the global rules-based order, the US was its greatest beneficiary. In the mistaken belief that being a giant gorilla smashing things would make America great again, Trump’s tariffs and assorted threats against friends, enemies, trade agreements and multilateral organisations undermined every element of America’s standing – its investment attractiveness, reliability, even its soft power. International trade relies on stability and predictability, and Trump delivers the opposite. He’s mentally incapable of acting responsibly or predictably, or of running a serious government.

To make matters worse, the war on Iran has birthed an extreme version of asymmetric economic warfare at the very moment the world’s leadership is least capable of dealing with it. When Netanyahu travelled to the White House to make his habitual pitch to American presidents to join Israel’s attack on Iran – for decades Iran was apparently weeks away from developing nuclear weapons – neither leader took the likely consequences seriously. Strategic analysts knew that Iran’s first move, if placed under existential pressure, would be to block the Strait of Hormuz. This alone was enough to disrupt the global economy. When Trump took the bait from Netanyahu, the Iranians demonstrated that some mines and a fleet of cheap drones was all you needed to block the Strait. Shipping insurance brokers would do the rest. Drones could also strike refineries, power plants, oil export facilities, data farms, embassies, airports, whatever. The US also realised that its anti-missile systems were both much more expensive and harder to produce en masse – and America was paying Israel’s bills.

Albanese and co will spend the next six to twelve months minimum scurrying around to manage the shortages and economic fallout. A ceasefire tomorrow won’t change this, because the supply crisis is already baked in, courtesy of at least six weeks of stalled ships, not to mention the damage to energy infrastructure throughout the Gulf. The Australian government didn’t cause this mess, but they supported it. Things will get worse, and public sympathy is waning for a stance which amounts to “Why do the terrible things we support keep having such terrible consequences?”. So if Albanese cares about his legacy as much as I believe he does, he must realise that unless he changes course, history will remember him as a supporter of Trump, and Netanyahu, and all the chaos they caused.