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Source — AITW Ep098 — A (Very) Busy First Few Weeks

Episode Metadata

Field Value
Episode number 98
Title Ep. 98: A (very) busy first few weeks
Publication date 2022-06-20
Recording date Friday, 17 June 2022
Guests None (Allan and Darren only)
Allan present Yes
Format News episode reviewing the Albanese government's first diplomatic weeks: Shangri-La Dialogue, Marles-Wei meeting, Albanese in Indonesia, Wong's Pacific trips, AUKUS/French compensation. Reading segment at close.

Summary

An episode with a modest biographical yield that nonetheless delivers one sharp new fragment: Allan reveals he visited PACOM (US Pacific Command HQ, Honolulu) in 1986 on a free afternoon and saw the original Top Gun in a cinema "full of Americans at the height of the Reagan era." In 1986 he was a Soviet analyst at ONA — an intelligence liaison visit to PACOM in that year places him in the Five Eyes professional network at a very specific historical moment, and is the clearest evidence of direct personal contact with US military intelligence structures during his ONA analyst period.

The episode also delivers two small character notes. First, he follows through on his Ep097 promise about The Girl from the North Country ("it is. It's great."), confirming that he went to Melbourne as planned and that his pre-endorsement was vindicated. Second, asked to contextualise the new government's diplomatic sprint, he opens with a wry joke about his own book — "Having written a book about the history of Australian foreign policy since 1942, Fear of Abandonment. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, Darren" — to which Darren plays along with mock forgetfulness. The joke confirms the new edition is now published, and does so in a manner entirely consistent with how Allan handles his own credentials: never seriously self-promoting, but using self-deprecation as a vehicle for the reference.

Analytically, his verdict on the Albanese government's first weeks is the most unqualified endorsement he has given any government in the corpus: "I'm impressed by speed of action and clarity of purpose. The messaging to the outside world has been consistent across all the ministers and those messages have been packaged effectively." His structural explanation — "one of the great advantages of democracy is that it makes it so much quicker and easier to cut the thread on thorny problems and start afresh" — generalises this into a comparative argument about democratic versus authoritarian systems.

Key Quotations

The 1986 PACOM visit — "a theatre full of Americans at the height of the Reagan era"

"Back in 1986, which I know is a very long time ago, I happened to be in Honolulu where I was visiting PACOM and I had a free afternoon just before catching my flight back to Australia. The original Top Gun movie had just been released. So I spent a couple of hours in a theatre full of Americans at the height of the Reagan era, patriotism and confidence soaking it all up. And I loved it."

— [00:38:54.740 --> 00:41:13.220]

"Visiting PACOM" is the key phrase. PACOM — US Pacific Command, headquartered at Camp H.M. Smith in Honolulu — is the primary US military command for the Indo-Pacific, and a central node for Five Eyes intelligence liaison. In April 1986, Allan was a Soviet analyst at ONA (confirmed from Ep026: Chernobyl). A visit to PACOM in that year, in his capacity as an ONA analyst, is almost certainly an intelligence liaison trip — the kind of regular bilateral contact between ONA and US military intelligence that is part of the Five Eyes architecture. He describes it casually, as background to a film recommendation, which means it does not feel exotic to him; it was normal professional travel. "Catching my flight back to Australia" — Honolulu as a transit stop for an Australia-Washington route is consistent with an ONA analyst visiting Washington-based intelligence partners and stopping in Honolulu. The Top Gun detail is vivid and personally felt: "soaking it all up... and I loved it" — the admission of genuine pleasure in Reagan-era American confidence is a rare moment of unironic self-disclosure. He is not pretending to be above the film; he was a thirty-eight-year-old intelligence professional who spent his afternoon loving it.

"Our old friend human agency" — the Marles-Wei meeting

"This does seem to be a genuine case of our old friend human agency, Darren. I've seen no reports that this was something stitched up in advance by officials, but it is good news, albeit just a restoration of relations to the point other American allies are at."

— [00:13:37.940 --> 00:14:25.980]

The phrase "our old friend human agency" is deployed with evident pleasure — a callback to the long-running corps debate between Allan (more agency, more contingency) and Darren (more structure, more constraint). The Marles-Wei meeting — two defence ministers seated next to each other at a dinner, agreeing spontaneously to meet on Sunday — is offered as evidence for the agency side: no officials pre-arranged it, no protocol locked it in, two individuals made a decision. "Albeit just a restoration of relations to the point other American allies are at" is the practitioner's calibration: he welcomes the breakthrough without inflating it. He has been here before; he knows what a genuine breakthrough looks like and what merely catching up looks like.

On the advantages of democracy — "cut the thread on thorny problems"

"One of the great advantages of democracy is that it makes it so much quicker and easier to cut the thread on thorny problems and start afresh. We're seeing that clearly now, not just in the rapprochement with France, but the new approach to the South Pacific with climate change, the different tone in references to China... I'm impressed by speed of action and clarity of purpose."

— [00:36:24.980 --> 00:37:33.980]

His structural argument is comparative: democratic systems can repudiate the errors of predecessors more easily than authoritarian ones, because elections create clean accountability moments. Darren extends this to the CCP's difficulty admitting error, and Allan's framing provides the theoretical grounding. What is revealing here is his willingness to offer a positive verdict on a Labor government so early — he is not hedging ("so far so good" is his qualifier), but "speed of action and clarity of purpose" is an unusually direct commendation. Having spent his career inside the system, Allan knows that incoherent messaging, siloed ministers, and strategic drift are the default; a government that "packages messages effectively" across all ministers is, in his experience, exceptional.

Arnhem Land — "I visited that site"

"Just before the COVID lockdowns began a couple of years ago, I visited that site in Arnhem Land and was able to see that extraordinary rock art. It really is a remarkable story."

— [00:27:02.980 --> 00:27:19.980]

A brief aside, but biographically informative: Allan visited the Makassar-Yolngu rock art site in Arnhem Land in early 2020, just before COVID. The spontaneity of the disclosure — Albanese's speech described the art, Allan chimes in — suggests it is a genuine personal memory, not a prepared talking point. It places him as a domestic traveller within Australia, interested in Indigenous history and willing to make the trip to a remote site. That he mentions it almost without elaboration — "it really is a remarkable story" — implies he assumes Darren knows the site; it is not a display but a shared reference.

Biographical Fragments

New

  1. PACOM visit, 1986 — "I happened to be in Honolulu where I was visiting PACOM" — a professional visit to US Pacific Command in 1986, when Allan was a Soviet analyst at ONA. Almost certainly an intelligence liaison trip within the Five Eyes network. Consistent with ONA's bilateral contact architecture with US military intelligence. (Ep098)

  2. Arnhem Land visit, early 2020 — visited the Makassar-Yolngu rock art site in Arnhem Land "just before the COVID lockdowns began" — confirms domestic travel and personal interest in the history of Indigenous-Indonesian contact. (Ep098)

  3. Fear of Abandonment new edition now published — confirmed out from La Trobe University Press (following in-progress mentions in Ep058 and Ep064). (Ep098)

Reinforcing

  1. Follow-through as character trait — delivers on his Ep097 promise about The Girl from the North Country in the very next episode; the commitment was real, not rhetorical. (Ep098)

  2. "Our old friend human agency" — the phrase appears again, signalling it has become a stable in-joke/shorthand for the ongoing structural vs. agency debate with Darren. (Ep098)

  3. Self-deprecating book references — uses mock-forgetfulness to slip in the Fear of Abandonment mention: "I don't know if I've mentioned this before, Darren." The same register as "wildly optimistic" and other self-deflating closers. (Ep098)

Style and Method Evidence

  • Follow-through as professional ethic: the Ep097 theatre promise is redeemed first thing in the reading segment, before any other content — he treats the commitment as a real obligation.
  • Contextualising with historical precedent: "you do have to go back to Gough Whitlam's election in 1972 to see anything comparable" — immediate reach for the relevant historical comparator.
  • Calibration against inflation: "good news, albeit just a restoration of relations to the point other American allies are at" — refuses to let the Marles-Wei meeting be bigger than it is.
  • Democracy as structural argument: not partisanship, but a comparative institutional claim about error-correction capacity.
  • Wry wit about diplomatic logistics: "the memoirs of Penny Williams, our ambassador in Jakarta, will be interesting when they come out in many years' time" — dry acknowledgement of the organisational heroism required of the post.

Reading, Listening and Watching

Allan — Top Gun: Maverick (via James Crabtree, FT) and follow-up: The Girl from the North Country

"Back in 1986... I happened to be in Honolulu where I was visiting PACOM... The original Top Gun movie had just been released. So I spent a couple of hours in a theatre full of Americans at the height of the Reagan era... And I loved it. So I really wanted to see the unlikely sequel Top Gun Maverick... Tom Cruise is in great shape at 60 and it's a terrific entertainment... But the film doesn't need my recommendation... What I wanted to do instead was to point to an article in the Financial Times by James Crabtree... [who] draws interesting geopolitical conclusions from the contrast between the 1986 film and this year's sequel, which he sees as 'a rather anxious kind of blockbuster filled with doubts about the durability of American power and functioning in many ways as an elegy for relative American decline.'"

— [00:38:54.740 --> 00:41:13.220]

He loves the original but routes his recommendation through an analytical article rather than the film itself — "the film doesn't need my recommendation" at $750 million gross. This is characteristic: he meets cultural content where it intersects with geopolitical analysis and uses that intersection as the entry point. The Crabtree reading — America as "heroic fighter pilot hanging on in an age of drones" — is exactly the kind of pop-culture-as-structural-argument that Allan finds intellectually generative. His 1986 viewing situates him as someone who experienced American cultural power from the inside (a Honolulu cinema, professional travel) and can now read its 2022 sequel as evidence of American anxiety. The loop from personal memory to geopolitical analysis is completed in a single recommendation.

Open Questions

  1. The 1986 PACOM visit — was this a routine ONA analyst liaison trip to Washington that stopped in Honolulu, or was it specifically a PACOM visit? Does Allan mention any other US intelligence liaison travel in the corpus that might help triangulate his 1986 movements?
  2. "Our old friend human agency" — at what point in the corpus does this phrase originate? Tracking its first appearance would help date when the agency-vs.-structure debate became a named recurring feature of the podcast.
  3. Allan describes the Albanese government's messaging as "consistent across all the ministers and packaged effectively." Does he sustain this positive assessment in later episodes, or does it erode as the government encounters difficulties?
  4. The new Fear of Abandonment edition is now confirmed as published by La Trobe University Press. Does Allan discuss the content of the new edition — what did he add? — in any later episode?