Source — AITW Ep033 — US Leadership: Vision vs Reality; RCEP; Human Rights in China; Syria, the Kurds and US Credibility¶

Episode Metadata¶

Field	Value
Episode number	33
Title	Ep. 33: US leadership: vision vs reality; RCEP; human rights in China; Syria, the Kurds and US credibility
Publication date	2019-11-07
Recording date	Wednesday, 6 November 2019
Guests	None (Allan and Darren only)
Allan present	Yes
Format	Current events analysis: ASEAN/Bangkok summit; RCEP; Marise Payne's speech on technology and human rights; Syria/Kurds/US credibility; reading segment

Summary¶

Dense current-events episode recorded a week after the ASEAN meetings in Bangkok. Four topics: (1) Trump's absence from Bangkok and the strategic cost to US regional credibility; (2) RCEP finalised by 15 of 16 parties (India out); (3) Marise Payne's speech on technology and human rights, the UN third committee vote on Xinjiang, and the state of Australia-China diplomatic engagement; (4) US withdrawal from northeast Syria and implications for alliance credibility beyond Trump. Reading segment: Allan launches a book by a former ONA colleague — Meeting Saddam's Men by Ashton Robinson — confirming another ONA network connection.

Major biographical fragment: While discussing political diplomatic appointments, Allan identifies Bruce Grant — Gough Whitlam's ambassador to India — as "a lecturer of mine in international relations at Melbourne University in another century." This confirms Melbourne University as Allan's undergraduate institution, international relations as his subject, and Bruce Grant as a teacher, placing this in the 1960s.

Key Quotations¶

Trump snubbing ASEAN — "it was in fact the reverse"¶

"I would take issue first up with your line that the ASEAN leaders were snubbing the US. It was in fact the reverse. Trump was snubbing them and inviting them to come around to his place for me next year instead is really no substitute."

— [00:04:44.740 --> 00:06:28.740]

Characteristic precision: Darren frames the Bangkok meeting as ASEAN leaders "snubbing" the US delegation. Allan immediately reverses the framing — the snub ran the other way. The logical consequence of Trump not attending is that the regional states were the abandoned party, not the abandoning one. The compact inversion of Darren's language is Allan's standard move when a framing carries a hidden false assumption.

"Washington looks distant and preoccupied"¶

"The strategic consequence get back to the original question is that Washington looks distant and preoccupied and its impact on regional dynamics becomes ever more marginal. And meanwhile, the Chinese do manage to keep turning up regularly and making their presence felt as a permanent feature of the Indo-Pacific region."

— [00:04:44.740 --> 00:06:28.740]

The contrast is precise and structural: US absence vs. Chinese presence as diverging features of Indo-Pacific engagement. "Keep turning up" vs. "distant and preoccupied" — sustained presence as a diplomatic instrument, not just a summit variable. Allan's framing makes Chinese regional engagement a structural long-run advantage that US absence compounds.

Sovereignty replacing interdependence — "a very good master's thesis in there somewhere"¶

"Just listening to you quoting from the minister's speech. One of the things that I like about reading speeches by policymakers, and I absolutely do realise that this is a very niche interest. But one of the things about the times that they're speaking in so we're a week before when we're talking about Morrison's Lowy speech, and every speech we're talking about today is scattered with the word sovereign sovereignty all over the place. So Linda Reynolds, Marise Payne's... And five years before that, it would have been interdependence. This is an interdependent world, we would have said. So there's a change going on here. It's clearly about China, but there's a very good master's thesis in there somewhere for one of our listeners, Darren."

— [00:08:36.740 --> 00:10:24.460]

Allan has been tracking the vocabulary of Australian foreign policy speeches for decades — this is what "reading speeches by policymakers" means to him. The shift from "interdependence" to "sovereignty" as the organising keyword across policy speeches is a diagnostic observation with real analytical content: it captures the shift from a world-building posture to a defensive, boundary-asserting one. He identifies this pattern across three speeches in one week. The "niche interest" self-deprecation is genuine: he knows most people don't read speeches the way he does.

Bruce Grant — "a lecturer of mine in international relations at Melbourne University"¶

"Goff Whitlam sent the journalist and academic Bruce Grant, who is a lecturer of mine in international relations at Melbourne University in another century."

— [00:16:00.180 --> 00:18:00.740]

Context: Allan is discussing Gough Whitlam's counterintuitive diplomatic appointment of Bruce Grant — journalist and academic — as Ambassador to India. Allan adds, in passing, that Grant was "a lecturer of mine in international relations at Melbourne University in another century."

This is one of the most significant biographical fragments in the corpus. It confirms: 1. Melbourne University as Allan's undergraduate institution — not ANU, not Sydney. 2. International relations as his subject — studied it formally, not just absorbed it through career. 3. Bruce Grant as a teacher — Grant was a prominent Australian journalist, academic, and public intellectual. He taught IR at Melbourne in the 1960s and later became Whitlam's ambassador to India (1972–1975). 4. "In another century" — the same deadpan understatement as his "a few years ago" for 1969 (Ep011). He joined External Affairs ~1969 at ~21, so studying at Melbourne would have been approximately 1966–1969.

Bruce Grant was one of the formative Australian public intellectuals on Asia engagement — his 1964 book "A Shrug of Shoulders: America, Britain and Australia" was influential. Having Grant as a teacher in the late 1960s would have been a direct influence on Allan's interest in Australian foreign policy and Asia.

"Speaking at each other rather than to each other"¶

"It may be that we're speaking at each other rather than to each other. Now, that's not entirely our fault. Although for reasons we've discussed before, we're not blameless."

— [00:26:44.780 --> 00:28:00.880]

On the state of Australia-China diplomatic relations in late 2019. The distinction between "at" and "to" is exact: bilateral communication versus bilateral dialogue. "At" means statements are made through public channels without expectation of genuine reception; "to" means engaged exchange where the other party is the actual addressee. Allan acknowledges Australian blamelessness is not absolute ("we're not blameless") while not attributing the breakdown entirely to Australia.

"You can't take the politics out of human rights"¶

"The Belarusian request for a non-politicised debate on human rights is difficult to manage. Human rights are, in that sense, our politics, and you can't take the politics out of them."

— [00:31:14.780 --> 00:32:33.700]

The Belarusian call for "objective, transparent, non-selective, constructive, non-confrontational and non-politicised" human rights debate is named as incoherent. Human rights are political by definition — they are claims about what governments owe individuals, always contested, always embedded in political relationships. Allan's phrasing is compact: "our politics" collapses the abstraction into a concrete location. The non-political human rights debate is a category error.

"Australia has too few memoirs from our diplomats, soldiers and intelligence analysts"¶

"Australia has too few memoirs from our diplomats, soldiers and intelligence analysts about the practical work of statecraft. And this is a terrific addition to the genre."

— [00:37:10.660 --> 00:38:22.340]

Context: recommending Ashton Robinson's WMD memoir. Allan identifies a gap in Australian political literature — practice-knowledge goes undocumented. He values memoirs that show how statecraft actually works, not just what policies were decided. "The practical work of statecraft" is Allan's domain; the absence of such accounts is a loss for the policy profession and for historical understanding.

Biographical Fragments¶

Evidence type: Confirmed (new — major)

Studied international relations at Melbourne University in the 1960s; taught by Bruce Grant — "Goff Whitlam sent the journalist and academic Bruce Grant, who is a lecturer of mine in international relations at Melbourne University in another century." Confirms Melbourne University as undergraduate institution; IR as the subject studied; Bruce Grant (1925–2020) as a teacher. Given Allan's entry to External Affairs ~1969 at ~21, this places his Melbourne studies approximately 1966–1969. Bruce Grant was a significant figure — journalist, Asia engagement intellectual, Whitlam's ambassador to India. Being taught by Grant in this period would have been a direct formation. (Ep033)
"A former colleague of mine from ONA, Ashton Robinson" — Allan launched Robinson's book Meeting Saddam's Men: Looking for Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Robinson was an ONA colleague who worked on WMD verification after the Iraq invasion. Allan's description as "former colleague" confirms another ONA network member. (Ep033)

Style and Method Evidence¶

Framing reversal: "It was in fact the reverse" — Allan's immediate response when Darren's framing contains a hidden misattribution. He does this consistently throughout the corpus.
Vocabulary surveillance: tracking "sovereignty" displacing "interdependence" across multiple speeches in one week. He reads policy speeches as texts with diagnostic value — not just for their explicit content but for their word-choice patterns.
The "niche interest" self-deprecation: "I absolutely do realise that this is a very niche interest" — preemptive acknowledgement that reading speeches closely is not universal. He doesn't apologise for it, just marks it.
"Our multilateral diplomats tend to be world weary types": affectionate institutional knowledge — he has observed this species across decades and knows their register.

Reading, Listening and Watching¶

Allan — Ashton Robinson, Meeting Saddam's Men: Looking for Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction

"This is a really terrific account of the search for WMD after the invasion of Iraq and Australia's participation in it. Australia has too few memoirs from our diplomats, soldiers and intelligence analysts about the practical work of statecraft. And this is a terrific addition to the genre. And it's also a reminder that if Australia wants to affect standard setting in the way that Scott Morrison spoke about in his Lowy speech, we do need to build and preserve real technical expertise — nuclear arms control, or in this case, the control of chemical weapons. So it's a really good book for policymakers, particularly younger policymakers in Canberra to read, I think."

— [00:37:10.660 --> 00:38:22.340]

Dual recommendation: as a contribution to the under-populated genre of Australian practitioner memoirs; and as a policy argument for maintaining technical expertise in arms control. Allan launched the book — he was personally involved in its reception into the public. Ashton Robinson is named as "a former colleague of mine from ONA" — another confirmation of the ONA network's breadth and Allan's ongoing engagement with former colleagues' work.

Open Questions¶

Bruce Grant was teaching at Melbourne University in the late 1960s. What specific course or program was Allan enrolled in? Grant's main academic work at this period was in Asian studies and Australian foreign policy — the intellectual formation Allan would have received from him is directly relevant to the corpus.
Ashton Robinson's ONA placement — when did they overlap? Given Robinson's WMD work (post-2003 Iraq invasion) and Allan's confirmed ONA DG tenure (~2011–2014), Robinson may have been an ONA analyst during Allan's leadership. Or their overlap may have been earlier.
Allan says Morrison "should have brought himself to say more" than non-committal language about Trump's Bangkok absence. Does he develop this critique of Morrison's alliance management in later episodes?
Podcast milestone: Darren notes 25,000 downloads in 16 months at the opening of this episode.