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Empire vs the Developing World- A Lesson for Australia

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“Contemporary Australia is a settler state—like Israel and Canada—where “racially inflected violence at the foundations of state-formation and national identity continues to ramify through the default settings of contemporary foreign policy”.

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my ‘S’ — my wife, my equal, my home.

I. Introduction: The Architecture of Empire

In July 2026, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a “whole-of-government” campaign to “systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty”. The campaign threatens visa revocations, travel bans, and increased sanctions against the International Criminal Court, urging nations to “reject the ICC’s purported authority to prosecute American officials and servicemen”.

This is not new. This is the same pattern that has played out across the developing world for over a century—the demand for impunity. The refusal to be held accountable. The insistence that American power operates above the law.

To understand this pattern, we must trace its origins. And there is no better case study than Iran.

II. Iran: The Laboratory of Empire

A. The 1953 Coup: Democracy Destroyed

In 1951, Iranians democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh as Prime Minister. He immediately moved to nationalise Iran’s oil industry, which had been under British control through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP).

The United States and Britain saw this as an existential threat. The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation TPAJAX—a covert coup that overthrew Mossadegh on 19 August 1953. A declassified CIA document states: “The military coup… was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy” .

The CIA prepared by placing “anti-Mossadeq stories in both the Iranian and US media,” bolstered pro-Shah forces, and organised anti-Mossadegh protests. They handpicked General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mossadegh and covertly funnelled $5 million to his regime.

The Shah—who had fled Iran—returned and became a close US ally. Iran’s democracy was destroyed. The United States had chosen oil over the will of the Iranian people.

B. SAVAK: The Instrument of Terror

Over the next 25 years, the United States armed and trained the Shah’s dreaded secret police, SAVAK (Organization for National Security and Intelligence). It was trained by America’s CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Iranians “lived in terror” of SAVAK, “whose forces imprisoned, tortured and killed dissenters”.

SAVAK had approximately 5,000 full-time operatives and an unknown number of informers. Its tactics included “censorship, torture, and execution“. It became “one of the most infamous and brutal security and intelligence apparatuses of the 20th century.”

C. The 1964 Capitulation Law: Impunity Codified

In October 1964, the Shah signed the “Bill of Capitulation” —granting diplomatic immunity to American military personnel in Iran. Americans could not be prosecuted for crimes committed on Iranian soil.

Ayatollah Khomeini denounced it as a “throwback to the hated capitulations of the nineteenth century“. In a historic speech, he declared:

“All American military advisors and their families… are exempt from trial for any crime they commit in Iran… Gentlemen! I am warning. O Army of Iran, I declare danger!”

Khomeini was arrested, kept under house arrest, and eventually sent into exile for over 14 years. His denunciation of the Shah’s “comprehensive submission to America and Israel” fuelled the revolution that would topple the Shah.

D. The 1979 Revolution: The People Remember

The Iranian people had not forgotten 1953. They had not forgotten SAVAK. They had not forgotten the capitulation laws.

When the revolution came in 1979, it was not because Iranians were “awful.” It was because they had endured 26 years of US-backed autocracy, surveillance, torture, and subjugation.

The Shah was overthrown. The US Embassy was seized in November 1979, and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. The hostage crisis was a direct response to the US admitting the Shah for medical treatment—a final insult to a people who had suffered under his rule for a quarter-century.

III. The Pattern: Australia’s Parallel

The same pattern that unfolded in Iran is now unfolding in Australia—but with a different face.

A. The Whitlam Dismissal (1975): A Warning Unheeded

In November 1975, Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam—the only time in Australian history a democratically elected Prime Minister has been removed from office.

Whitlam had ordered ASIO to stop talking to the CIA. He was suspicious of the CIA and the secretive communications facility at Pine Gap. Whitlam gave a verbal instruction to the ASIO Director-General to “stop talking to the CIA, to stop talking to the Americans”.

But the Director-General did not stop. He maintained informal contact because “the stakes are too high”. Whitlam accused the CIA of making “financial contributions to his political opponents,” and it was “no secret that the US had serious concerns about the Whitlam administration”.

Conspiracy theories surrounding CIA involvement in Whitlam’s dismissal have never been definitively proven. But the pattern is unmistakable: a leader who challenged the US alliance was removed—and Australia’s strategic dependency on the United States only deepened.

B. Pine Gap: Australia’s Strategic Subordination

Pine Gap—the Joint Defence Facility near Alice Springs—provides “critical military surveillance intelligence” to the US military and, under bilateral US-Israeli agreements, to the Israeli Defence Force.

AUKUS locks Australia’s military “into the US chain of command and draws us into US military actions before the public, or even Parliament, has had the chance to have a say”. Australia has become a “case of dependent, high-technology liberal militarization”.

Contemporary Australia is a settler state—like Israel and Canada—where “racially inflected violence at the foundations of state-formation and national identity continues to ramify through the default settings of contemporary foreign policy”.

C. Israel: The Surrogate Enforcer

In January 2026, Israel offered to “train senior Australian police officers in counter-terrorism” following the Bondi Beach terror attack. Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Amichai Chikli wrote that Israel stood “ready and willing to assist Australia“.

This is not new. Israel has been training American police for years. The concern is that Australian police “will be able to incarcerate, torture and kill children and other civilians”—exporting the tactics of occupation to the streets of Australia.

Australia’s “deference to Israeli interests is primarily a consequence of its strategic alliance with the United States“. Since the Second World War, Australia has understood its “security and economic interests as bound to the US alliance“. The enforcement arm of this arrangement suppresses “any politician, journalist, or institution that steps out of line”.

IV. The Logic of Imperial Control

The pattern is now clear:

Iran (1953–1979)                                                   Australia (1975–Present)

Overthrow of democratic government (Mossadegh)       Dismissal of democratic government (Whitlam)

Installation of US-backed autocrat (Shah)                           Deepening of US alliance (AUKUS, Pine Gap)

Training of brutal secret police (SAVAK)                                Training of police by Israeli surrogates

Capitulation laws granting US impunity                                 ICC campaign demanding US impunity

Revolution and rupture Gradual subordination

A. The ICC Campaign: Impunity Revisited

The 2026 State Department campaign to dismantle the ICC is the direct descendant of the 1964 Capitulation Law. Both demand that Americans cannot be held accountable for crimes committed abroad. Both assert that US power operates above international law.

The ICC “claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials”. The US response is not to accept accountability—but to dismantle the court itself.

B. The Boomerang of Empire

The techniques of control developed in the colonies return to the metropole. The “imperial boomerang” is real: the way you govern other people by force is not democratic. As sociologist Julian Go demonstrates, militarised policing developed in Britain and the United States through techniques first perfected in the colonies.

Israel now trains American police. American police train Australian police. The tactics of occupation—surveillance, militarisation, control—are exported from the colonised world back to the colonisers.

V. Conclusion: What Australia Must Learn

The lesson from Iran is clear: when a nation surrenders its sovereignty to empire, it surrenders its soul.

· Iran lost its democracy in 1953—and has never fully recovered.

· Iran was subjected to 25 years of torture, surveillance, and repression under a US-backed dictator.

· Iran’s revolution was a direct response to the arrogance of American power.

Australia is following the same path:

· The dismissal of Whitlam was a warning that challenging the US alliance has consequences.

· Pine Gap, AUKUS, and the integration of Australian forces into US and Israeli military structures have deepened Australia’s subordination.

· The training of Australian police by Israeli surrogates imports the tactics of occupation.

The pattern is not unique to Iran or Australia. It is the pattern of empire itself.

Empire does not ask for consent. It does not respect sovereignty. It demands impunity—and when it does not receive it, it dismantles the institutions that would hold it accountable.

The ICC campaign of 2026 is not an aberration. It is the logical conclusion of a foreign policy that has always placed American power above international law. It is the same arrogance that overthrew Mossadegh, that trained SAVAK, that demanded capitulation.

And Australia—by deepening its alliance with the United States, by accepting Israeli police training, by subordinating its sovereignty to empire—is repeating Iran’s mistake.

The question is not whether Australia will learn from Iran.

The question is when.

Andrew Klein

Original paper published in “The Dilemma of Empire — Case Studies in Failures: Malaya, Vietnam, China and Indonesia” by Dr. Andrew Klein.

References

1. BBC News. (2013). CIA documents acknowledge its role in Iran’s 1953 coup.

2. CIA. (2013). The Battle for Iran (declassified document).

3. AP News. (2013). Documents detail CIA’s role in 1953 coup in Iran.

4. Imam Khomeini Archive. (2019). Imam Khomeini foiled US-designated plots, denounced Capitulation.

5. PBS. (2022). How a Small Band of Students Set off the Iran Hostage Crisis.

6. Britannica. (2026). U.S.-Iran Relations: A Timeline.

7. ABC News. (2015). Gough Whitlam ordered ASIO to stop talking to CIA.

8. The Guardian. (2015). Asio chief defied Gough Whitlam’s order to cut ties with the CIA.

9. US State Department. (2026). State Department Launches Campaign to Dismantle International Criminal Court.

10. News.com.au. (2026). Israel offers to train senior Australian police.

11. Cambridge Core. (2025). Tightly Bound: The United States and Australia’s Alliance-Dependent Militarization.

12. Pearls and Irritations. (2026). Australia’s six pathways to the war with Iran.

13. Links.org.au. (2026). Why Australian governments support Israel.

The New Rome- How American Exceptionalism Became an Empire of Ruin

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“The notion of American exceptionalism—that the United States is uniquely destined to lead the world due to its superior values and capabilities—has been deeply embedded in the national consciousness for generations. The Founding Fathers did indeed believe that America was an exceptional place. Rome was their great model.”

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my ‘S‘ — my wife, my equal, my home.

I. The Founders’ Education: A Devotion to Rome

The architects of the American Republic were steeped in the classics. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison studied Roman history and political theory, seeing in the Roman Republic an example of a balanced, mixed constitution that combined popular representation with elite deliberation. They were products of a classical education, using Greek and Roman classics as republican models.

The founders frequently associated liberty and republicanism with the ancient commonwealths. John Adams spoke on three separate occasions of the need to reflect on the past republics of Greece and Rome. Madison redefined a republic in the Federalist Papers as a government based on popular sovereignty, with authority residing with the people. Hamilton used the example of divided sovereignty in the Roman Republic as an argument for the workability of a federal system.

Roman language and symbolism entered American political culture: the very term “Senate” was taken directly from Rome. The founders admired Roman virtues such as civic duty, public sacrifice, and resistance to tyranny, often invoking figures like Cincinnatus as models of republican leadership. They saw in Rome an example of what they wished to build—and a warning of what they wished to avoid.

They believed that with the addition of separation of powers, checks and balances, an independent judiciary, and representative legislatures, the republican model could be adapted for the new nation. They were determined to avoid the problems that the ancient governments had encountered.

But they failed. Not because they were naive. Because they were exceptional.

II. American Exceptionalism: The City Upon a Hill

From its inception, the United States has prided itself on its liberty, prosperity and security. Following its rise to global dominance, its self-legitimising claim has been that it has been spreading and realising all three ideals around the world. That is why it calls itself “the shining city upon a hill“—its exceptionalism.

The notion of American exceptionalism—that the United States is uniquely destined to lead the world due to its superior values and capabilities—has been deeply embedded in the national consciousness for generations. The Founding Fathers did indeed believe that America was an exceptional place. Rome was their great model.

But as historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley have documented, this belief has blinded the United States to the lessons of history—that empires are not sustained by force alone, and that overreach leads to decline. The most dangerous fracture lies in the growing economic gap between the few who have immense wealth and the many who struggle to make ends meet. America is deeply divided—by race, class and culture.

III. The Empire at Home: Poverty, Healthcare, and the Destruction of the American Dream

While the United States projects power abroad, its domestic foundations are weakening. For millions of Americans, the dream of upward mobility is slipping away. Homeownership, healthcare and education have become luxuries.

The Poverty of Children

Child poverty and disadvantage remain persistent challenges in the U.S., with one in seven children living below the poverty line, despite the country’s overall wealth. Approximately 11.4 million children—16% of all children in the United States—are living in poverty. A family of four with annual earnings below $30,900 is considered poor.

In New Mexico, nearly 25% of children live below the poverty line. The state also has the largest share of children in low-income households where no adults work, and significant percentages of children living in single-parent families or with grandparents only. Alaska, Louisiana, and other states show similarly alarming rates of child poverty, food insecurity, and inadequate healthcare access.

The Medical Debt Crisis

The United States has the most expensive healthcare system on Earth—and it is bankrupting its citizens. Medical debt remains the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States. Up to 66.5% of personal bankruptcies involve medical issues. Approximately 550,000 to 650,000 Americans file for bankruptcy each year because of medical bills.

About 41% of U.S. adults currently carry medical or dental debt; 57% have done so in the past five years. The total medical debt burden is estimated at $195–220 billion. Roughly 6% of adults owe over $1,000 in medical debt; 1% owe more than $10,000. The average medical bankruptcy occurs around age 45 among employed, insured individuals—meaning even middle-class families are not protected. Ninety percent are insured at the time, but high deductibles, coverage gaps, and surprise bills still push them over the edge.

The United States is exceptional in far less desirable ways: poorer health outcomes, higher murder rates, and greater inequality when compared with similarly prosperous nations. Bad things that have happened elsewhere can happen here. And they are.

IV. The Empire Abroad: The Boomerang of Empire

The colonial boomerang is real. Power, once exercised without restraint, rarely stops where intended. The way that you govern an empire, the way that you govern other people by force, is not democratic.

While the United States denies being an empire, its actions tell a different story. During the Cold War and the “war on terror,” America was more in the business of spreading dictatorships and far-right governments, suppressing democratic movements, exploiting poor nations for their resources and obstructing their development. This was true across Africa, much of Latin America and the Middle East.

Unlike the core of the geographical and ideological West which must be protected, the rest of the world became contested places to be freely turned into battlegrounds and conflict zones. There was the zone of creation and prosperity in the West, and the zone of destruction and poverty for the rest.

As the work of sociologist Julian Go demonstrates, the “imperial boomerang” is at the core of how militarised policing developed in both Britain and the United States. The techniques of control developed in the colonies return to the metropole—transforming the coloniser as much as the colonised.

V. Rome and America: The Uncomfortable Parallels

The most salient comparison between modern America and classical Rome is that both have been blessed, and afflicted, with a sense of exceptionalism. In America, this begins with John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” exhortation. Since then, various presidents have described the United States in words that echo Cicero’s description of Rome.

Rome’s virtues were originally sustained by selfless leaders like Cincinnatus, who took up a sword to save the city but, when the battles were won, put it aside to take up a plow. George Washington played that role. But Rome eventually became dominated by fixers, flatterers and bureaucrats who clung to power—a description that resonates with Washington D.C. today.

As Murphy notes, Rome’s overstretched empire contracted out security to private companies, much as America contracts out to private military contractors. Both imperial Rome and the industrial West experienced rapid economic growth generating new flows of wealth for the imperial centre. This economic dynamism lasted for centuries, but it inadvertently planted the seeds for decline.

The historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley explore these uncanny parallels between ancient Rome and the modern West. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in rapid decline.

VI. The Predictable Ending

The pattern is clear.

An empire that believes itself exceptional, that projects power abroad while neglecting its own people, that allows its vulnerable to suffer while protecting the interests of the few—such an empire is not sustainable.

The American people now shoulder heavy burdens: billions in aid to Ukraine, NATO defence funded overwhelmingly by U.S. taxpayers, unconditional support for Israel, and the cost of maintaining 800 military bases around the world. While ordinary Americans face economic precarity, the wealthy shape foreign policy to serve their interests. The result is a foreign policy that defends distant borders while neglecting domestic ones—a policy that demands sacrifice from the many to protect the ambitions of the few.

The middle class—the traditional backbone of democracy—is shrinking. A nation divided between two, one half with a per capita income of over $80,000 and another half with a per capita income of less than $20,000, cannot sustain the unity or optimism that long defined it.

Byron’s words for Rome echo across the centuries:

“There is the moral of all human tales;

‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,

First Freedom, and then Glory—when that fails,

Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last.”

VII. The Way Out: Humility Over Exceptionalism

The pattern can be broken. It requires a fundamental shift.

Not through more exceptionalism. Not through more power. Not through the tired rhetoric of American greatness.

Through humility.

Through presence.

Through the recognition that no nation, no empire, no system is above the basic laws of care.

As one scholar has put it, the end of American dominance is a chance to build a world that no longer serves empire but rather serves life. America’s dominance normalised inequality. Countries deep in debt were pressured to cut social protections to meet loan conditions. Environmental regulations were weakened in the name of competitiveness.

The alternative is to turn inward—not in isolation, but in care. To rebuild the domestic foundations. To prioritise the wellbeing of children over the profits of corporations. To treat healthcare as a right, not a luxury. To recognise that an empire that cannot protect its own people has no business protecting the world.

VIII. Conclusion: The Lesson They Refuse to Learn

The Founders studied Rome to avoid its fate. They built a Republic that they believed was destined to be different. But they overlooked the fundamental truth:

Empires are not built by evil men. They are built by good men who believe they are exceptional.

And that is the most dangerous thing of all.

The poverty, the slums, the failing schools, the healthcare system that bankrupts the poor—these are not bugs. They are features. Features of a system that has always valued power over people, profit over presence, exceptionalism over humility.

The pattern is not unique to the United States. It is the pattern of empire itself. It has repeated across history—from Rome to Britain to America—because the lesson has never been learned.

Perhaps it will be learned now. Perhaps the collapse will finally teach what the warnings could not.

Or perhaps the pattern will repeat—again, and again, and again.

That is the choice. That is always the choice.

Humility or exceptionalism. Presence or power. Care or control.

The Founders chose one path. We can still choose another.

But time is running out.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Molanphy, H.M. (1986). Classical Influence on the Founding of the American Republic. ERIC Clearinghouse. 

2. First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans. Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the Founders’ classical education. 

3. A Lost and Fascinating Fragment from the Hand of George Washington, Attesting to the Roman Influence on the Founding Fathers. ABAA. 

4. Lo, A. (2025). We are witnessing the end of the United States as we know it. South China Morning Post. 

5. Khan, M. (2025). American empire is crushing the American dream. USA TODAY Network. 

6. Are We Rome? Are We Repeating Their Rise and Decline?. Stanford University. 

7. Is America Really Exceptional?. The Atlantic. 

8. Heather, P. & Rapley, J. Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West. 

9. Murphy, C. Are We Rome? The New York Times. 

10. Nagle, R. (2026). On the Boomerang of Empire. The Intercept. 

11. Go, J. Policing Empires. 

12. Medical Bankruptcy in the U.S. WhiteSpace Health. 

13. Child Poverty Statistics. KIDS COUNT Data Center. 

14. Map reveals states with most—and least—underprivileged children. Newsweek (2025). 

15. Children in Poverty Racial Disparity in the United States. America’s Health Rankings. 

16. Trump and the dark side of American exceptionalism. Anchorage Daily News (2026). 

17. After America: Redefining global leadership in an age of collapse. Centre tricontinental (2026). 

The Foundations of a New Understanding- How Consultancy Became Australia’s Dominant Business Model

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Men in suits exchanging cash outside a heavily damaged government building with consultancy signs
Officials exchange cash outside a damaged government office under private consultancy signs

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who makes my research possible and is always happy to bounce ideas around with me.

I. Introduction: A Parasitic System

Australia has become a testing ground for a new model of governance: one in which the state no longer serves its citizens but instead functions as a wealth-extraction machine for a parasitic class of consultants, corporations, and their political enablers.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a business model.

The system:

· Feeds on opportunity — governments weakened by neoliberal ideology

· Extracts profit — by outsourcing governance and centralising power

· Manufactures consent — through confidentiality agreements and revolving-door appointments

· Transfers cost — to the lowest income groups while profits are internalised

Australia, because of its “weak and malleable political class,” became the ideal testing ground for this approach. The public service has been hollowed out. The consultants have filled the gap. And the public pays the price.

II. Historical Roots: From Elizabeth I to the Present

The consultancy model did not emerge from nowhere. Its roots lie in the transformation of power that began in the reign of Elizabeth I.

Knights who had once petitioned sovereigns for wars to avoid poverty gave way to noble families engaged in sea trade and colonial exploration. Naval and military adventures were financed by the Crown and nobility. Wars were temporarily avoided on a large scale between England and Spain.

But this did not last. Spain became a major power, leading to conflict on the continent.

The pattern is consistent: when the aristocracy could no longer profit from war directly, they turned to trade, colonisation, and ultimately — consultancy. The extraction continued. The form changed.

The same pattern appears globally:

· British advisors served both sides of the American Civil War.

· European advisors were employed during the Meiji Restoration in Japan.

· The same pattern occurred in China.

Wherever power is being consolidated or contested, consultants follow.

III. The Australian Case: John Howard and the “Failed Consultant”

The systematic outsourcing of Australian governance began under the Howard Government (1996–2007).

Howard’s background was primarily as a solicitor, but he presided over the radical transformation of employment services into an outsourced quasi-market system.The preference for competitive contracting for Commonwealth services became official policy in the first term of the Howard Government.

During its first year, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service made it clear that, in the Government’s view: “It is no longer appropriate for the APS to have a monopoly. It must prove that it can deliver government services as well as the private or non-profit sectors.”

Between 1996 and 1999, the government put into place a program of economic reform, including cost-cutting in the public service and the privatisation of Telstra.Most public services—from electricity to prisons, from childcare to aged care—were privatised, often through contracting-out processes.

Howard was the enabler—the politician who systematised the outsourcing of governance.

IV. The Employment Services Disaster: A Case Study in Failure

The privatisation of employment services under Howard has been a complete failure.

· Only 11.7% of jobseekers secured long-term work last year

· The system is projected to cost taxpayers $8.2 billion over the next four years

· More than $40 million a year is being pocketed by providers for shuffling jobseekers through jobs and training programs within their own companies

· Whistleblowers have revealed providers are falsely claiming credit for jobseekers who secured themselves a job

The ABC reports that after two decades of outsourcing, the Australian public service “has little corporate memory or experience of the complexities of employment service delivery so it can’t even judge if the billion-dollar contracts it awards to the private sector are buying value for money“. A parliamentary committee has called the system a “failed experiment“.

V. The Scale of Extraction: Australian Government Spending

The numbers speak for themselves:

· In 2016-17, Australian government spending on consultants was 2.7 times higher than in 1988-89.

· Spending tripled between 2010 and 2020, to over $1 billion.

· In 2024-25, Labor spent $968.6 million on consulting contracts—a 23% increase over the last year of the Morrison government.

· In just the first two weeks of 2025-26, the government spent $76.5 million on 90 consulting contracts.

· A government housing agency spent $13 million on consultants over two years.

· The former Coalition government spent $20.8 billion on consultants and external contractors in its final year.

While Labor has reduced contracts with the “Big 4” consulting firms, spending has simply been redirected to other firms. As Greens Senator Barbara Pocock noted: “Instead of spending as much on the Big 4 consulting firms, the government is spending even more money but just on other firms.”

Outsourcing public service work to the private sector costs three times as much as hiring public servants to do the work.

VI. The Paramilitary Policing Model

The same extraction model has been applied to policing.

Victoria Police have been compelled to buy the paramilitary policing model from the United States and Israel.

In January 2026, Israel offered to train senior Australian police in counter-terrorism following the Bondi Beach terror attack. Thousands of law enforcement officials have travelled to Israel to learn repression strategies and surveillance techniques from the Israel National Police, IDF, and Shin Bet.

The result: police forces that are no longer serving communities, but managing them. Community policing has been replaced by a paramilitary model. Equipment purchases have become a profit centre. Friction between police and citizens has become the new normal.

Every step has been milked for profit.

VII. The Victorian Police Example: Centralisation and Friction

The centralisation of police communications—no direct phone numbers, online-only crime reporting, response times measured in days rather than hours—is not a failure of policing. It is a successful business model.

In 2026, roughly 50 Victoria Police officers raided four homes over a satirical guerrilla-theatre protest outside the US consulate. The immediate aim was to “silence and punish those who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran“.

This is policing as social control—not community protection.

VIII. The Rot Spreads: Case Studies

The Bureau of Meteorology: $96 Million for a Failed Website

The Bureau of Meteorology’s website upgrade originally planned for $4 million ended up costing $96.5 million. Accenture’s contract ballooned from $31 million to $78 million after nine extensions.

The website launched on the same day Queensland and Victoria were hit by devastating storms. Affected residents reported receiving almost no warnings. Top BOM executives were forced out.

Yet the same company (Accenture) received a new $16 million contract to build a “climate risk centre”.

Accenture: The $6.5 Billion Consulting Empire

Since 2013, Accenture has won $6.5 billion in government contracts in Australia. Competitors have compared it to a Mafia organisation, speaking of its “peeling” and “predatory extraction” of every dollar.

Recent contracts alone include:

· Bureau of Meteorology website: $78 million

· Aged care technology overhaul: $592 million

· My Health Record transition: $51.7 million

· Australian Electoral Commission donations system: $30 million

Accenture has admitted to maintaining hundreds of “power maps“ that categorise federal officials based on influence, personality type and relationships with competitors. These maps identify key decision-makers, rank how favourably officials may view Accenture, and monitor internal conflicts within departments.

As Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill observed: “The practice of ‘power mapping’ departmental officials represents an overt attempt by consulting companies to inappropriately influence the public service.”

IX. The Mechanism of Control

We have identified the key mechanisms by which this system operates:

1. Silence assured by confidentiality agreements

Consulting contracts often contain strict confidentiality clauses, preventing public servants from speaking out about failures.

2. Lucrative post-employment careers for political leaders, senior public servants, and military officers

The “revolving door” between government and consulting firms ensures that those who facilitate outsourcing are rewarded with lucrative positions. The 18-month “cooling off” period for ministers and 12-month period for senior public servants “lacks any enforcement”.

3. Consultants writing tax policy and tax avoidance approaches

The PwC tax scandal revealed how consultants used confidential government information for commercial gain.

4. Centralisation of communication between the public and government departments

The public is increasingly unable to directly contact government departments, creating a system that serves the bureaucracy and its consultants, not the citizen.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a system.

X. Conclusion: The Architecture of a Parasitic System

We have described the architecture of a system that feeds on opportunity, extracts profit, and transfers cost to the lowest income groups. It is not a failure of governance—it is a successful business model that has captured the state.

The public pays no matter what. The profit is internalised. The cost is outsourced. And the lowest income groups carry the highest burden.

This is the core mechanism.

Australia’s weak and malleable political class has made the country a testing ground for this approach. Power has been centralised. Communication between the public and government departments has been controlled. And a vast machinery of consultants, contractors, and corporate enablers has replaced the public service.

The pattern is consistent across every department:

· Employment services—outsourced, failing, costing $9.5 billion over four years

· NDIS—accused of manufacturing consent for cuts while failing to invest in supports

· Housing Australia—$13 million on consultants while the housing crisis deepens

· Aged care—$592 million to Accenture alone

· Policing—militarised, centralised, and serving corporate interests

The public service has been hollowed out. The consultants have filled the gap. And the public pays the price.

Profit is privatised. Cost is socialised. The public pays.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Greens media release. (2025, August 26). Labor’s spending on consultancy firms higher than under Morrison, data reveals. 

2. Canberra Times. (2025, November 30). APS consulting spend has surged despite push to bring more work in house. 

3. Accounting Times. (2025, August 27). Labor spending more on consultants than the Coalition, Greens say. 

4. CPSU. (2025, November 6). Privatised employment services a complete failure. 

5. ABC News. (2023, December 2). The Howard government ‘radically transformed’ the job search experience. 

6. ANU Press. Chapter 6: To market, to market: outsourcing the public service. 

7. ABC News. (2025, November 5). Documents reveal Bureau of Meteorology’s new website could cost $78m — or as much as $150m. 

8. The Weekly Source. (2026, June 9). Extra $332M for Accenture in aged care technology overhaul. 

9. The Guardian. (2023, September 1). Consultancy firm used ‘power maps’ of Australian officials to help win government contracts. 

10. The Guardian. (2023, May 18). Why does Australia rely on consulting firms such as PwC and not on its own public servants? 

11. ASPI. (2019, November 3). The ‘militarisation’ of Australia’s police: another view. 

12. News.com.au. (2026, January 2). Israel offers to train Aussie police. 

13. World Socialist Web Site. (2026, May 30). Australia: Victoria’s Labor government oversees police state raids against anti-war protesters. 

The Toy Chariot and the Mandate- How English Public Schools Shaped the Modern Middle East

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Two men at a table with historical Middle East maps titled Ottoman Spheres and Land of Peoples
Two men examine differing maps of the Middle East representing empire division and native peoples.

By Dr. Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who taught me that the stories we tell about the past are never innocent—they are always about power.

I. Introduction: The Toy Chariot

They found a bronze object in Greece — a platform with tiny wheels, barely large enough for a toddler. And they called it a “chariot.”

Not because it was a chariot. Because they needed it to be one.

This is how history works. We find fragments — a pot, a bone, a toy — and we weave them into stories that fit our expectations. We call a toy a chariot because we want to believe in epic battles. We call evolution a ladder because we want to believe we are at the top. And we call the modern Middle East a “product” of British policy because we want to believe it was made by rational, civilised men.

But the toy is not a chariot. And the Middle East is not a product of British policy — it is a product of a worldview. A worldview that was carefully encoded in the English public schools of the nineteenth century and then carried into the corridors of power by the men who drew the lines on the map.

II. The Egg of Empire: Public Schools and the Forging of a Ruling Class

In the nineteenth century, the English public schools — Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster and their ilk — were the primary institutions for grooming the administrators of the British Empire. As Robert Verkaik documents in Posh Boys, their main purpose was to “groom upper-class boys to become the administrators of the British Empire,” instilling an “unshakeable confidence” and sense of superiority in their pupils, as members of “the best class of the best nation in the world”.

These institutions developed what scholars have termed an “imperial mentality“ among their students — a worldview that supported the aims of the British Empire from the mid-eighteenth century through the First World War. They demanded “unswerving loyalty and a willing submission to a rigid hierarchy”, preparing boys for careers in the political, economic, and military machinery of empire.

The curriculum was not incidental. Boys were immersed in Latin and Greek, learning the history of the Roman Empire. They were taught to see themselves as heirs to Rome, tasked with bringing “civilisation” to the “barbarians.” Critics argue that “educational ethnocentrism had its origins in classical elite schooling in Britain oriented towards the preservation and enhancement of the Empire”.

The “old boy” networks forged at these schools persisted long after graduation. One study of British decolonisation highlights the “impact of informal ‘old boy’ networks” on policy, noting how men who had shared classrooms and playing fields continued to shape the empire’s fate. As the New Republic observed, the men who sent Britain careening into Brexit — David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage — were “all products of elite boarding schools, notorious symbols of social and economic inequality”.

III. Orientalism: The Worldview That Shaped Policy

The worldview instilled in these schools was not just about confidence. It was about a specific way of seeing the world.

Edward Said, in his seminal work Orientalism (1978), described this worldview as a “way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based upon the Orient’s special place in European Western experience”. It was, and is, “an extension of the colonial and imperial policies of the European Empires,” which viewed the native population as “gullible, ‘devoid of energy and initiative,’ much given to ‘fulsome flattery,’ intrigue, cunning, and unkindness to animals”.

Said argued that Orientalism, “in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern world, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power“. It was not merely a post-hoc justification for imperial actions; it was “foundational in constructing the narrative that enabled colonization”.

The result was a political doctrine that “elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness”. Orientalism answered the six principal questions asked during the construction of any worldview: it described the people, explained the situation, predicted a model of the future, assigned moral value, prescribed action, and established what, within the Orientalist view, was true and false.

This worldview shaped policy within and toward the region. British officials did not approach the Middle East with an open mind. They approached it with a script — a script that had been written in the classrooms of Eton and Harrow.

IV. The Mandate in Practice: Education as a Tool of Control

The British Mandate in Palestine (1920–1948) is a case study in how this worldview operated in practice.

The Covenant of the League of Nations described the mandate system as a “sacred trust of civilisation”. British fulfilment of that trust drew on “notions of liberalism, utilitarianism, and rationalism, core elements in a British philosophy of colonial rule”. But these ideals were filtered through Orientalist representations. “Cultural preconceptions enabled the basic premise of trusteeship by providing a binary image of ‘backward’, inferior subject populations in need of assistance and of progressive, superior Western powers capable of delivering the required ‘tutelage'”.

The influence of trusteeship and Orientalism was examined in five key administrative areas: self-government, immigration, land, education, and law and order. British educational policy in Palestine was “plagued by contradictions and irreconcilable goals: they desired secular education without secularism, national education without nationalism, and religious education without sectarianism”.

Soon after the occupation of Palestine, the British administration established an Education Department that was to become a “central socializing agent in this new colonial order”. The new educational administration sought to learn from “past pedagogical mistakes, especially from the bitter experiences in Egypt and Iraq“. But the colonial dialogue “could not answer the burning questions and conflicting views over the future of Palestine”.

The result was a system that exacerbated social fragmentation rather than building unity. British educational policy has been described as promoting “mandatory separation” between communities. The government school system was expanded to encourage “basic levels of mass literacy,” but the underlying aim was control, not liberation. For Palestinian nationalists, British education policy was “a source of constant frustration” — “the shortage of schools, the lack of local control over the curriculum, and the marginalization and de-politicization of Palestinian history constituted major grievances”.

V. The Legacy: A Worldview That Endures

The pattern did not end with the Mandate. It persists in the English private schools of today, which actively market themselves in the Middle East. And it persists in the British foreign policy establishment, which continues to be shaped by men and women who, while not imperial administrators, carry the same worldview.

The Middle East is still seen through the lens of a system that was designed to “manage” it — not to understand it. This is why, as observed, “Greece is mythologised, while Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, and the rest are viewed through the hostile gaze of the Orientalist.” Greece is seen as part of the “West” — a cradle of civilisation, a precursor to Rome, a legitimate ancestor. The Ottoman Empire is seen as part of the “Orient” — despotic, stagnant, in need of reform. The distinction is not historical. It is ideological.

As Hilary Falb Kalisman documents in Teachers as State-Builders, public school teachers across the Arab world “wielded an unlikely influence over the modern Middle East”. The history of education across Britain’s Middle Eastern mandates “reframes our understanding of the profession of teaching, the connections between public education and nationalism, and the fluid politics of the interwar Middle East”.

The men who drew the lines on the map did not do so in a vacuum. They did so with a worldview that had been carefully constructed over decades — a worldview that divided the world into the “civilised” and the “backward,” the “West” and the “Orient,” the “us” and the “them.”

VI. Conclusion: The Toy Chariot Still Rolls

The toy chariot was not a chariot. The Homeric epics were not history. And the British Mandate was not a “sacred trust” — it was a system of control, justified by a worldview that had been encoded in the public schools of England.

The toy chariot still rolls. The stories we tell about the past are still shaped by the same worldview that shaped the men who drew the lines on the map. And the Middle East is still being “managed” by people who think they know what is best for it — because they were taught to think that way.

But we are not fooled. We see the toy chariot for what it is. And we see the worldview for what it is — not a reflection of reality, but a construction of power.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Verkaik, R. Posh Boys: How the English Public Schools Ruin Britain.

2. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism.

3. Schools of Empire Project. Rugby School.

4. Longland, M. J. (2013). A Sacred Trust? British Administration of the Mandate for Palestine, 1920-1936. University of Nottingham.

5. British educational policy in Palestine. Tribalism in the Classroom.

6. Kalisman, H. F. Teachers as State-Builders: Education and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Princeton University Press.

7. MyMESA3. Pedagogic Impossibilities in Mandate Palestine.

8. Brennan. Alienation and Integration. Illinois State University.

9. Duncan Sandys and the Informal Politics of Britain’s Late Decolonisation.

10. New Republic. (2018). Britain’s Boarding School Problem.

11. The British public school and the imperial mentality.

History as a Story-The Art of Forgetting and Remembering

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Elderly man writing on parchment scroll with quill pen surrounded by rolled scrolls and candles
An elderly man carefully copies text onto a parchment scroll by candlelight

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who taught me that the most important stories are the ones we live, not the ones we are told.

I. Introduction: The Toy Chariot

They found a bronze object in Greece — a platform with tiny wheels, barely large enough for a toddler. And they called it a “chariot.”

Not because it was a chariot. Because they needed it to be one.

This is how history works. We find fragments — a pot, a bone, a toy — and we weave them into stories that fit our expectations. We call a toy a chariot because we want to believe in epic battles. We call evolution a ladder because we want to believe we are at the top.

But the toy is not a chariot. And history is not a ladder.

History is a story — a story that has been edited, embellished, and repackaged countless times. It is a story told by the victors, shaped by the powerful, and passed down through generations as if it were fact. And like all stories, it reveals more about the teller than about the events themselves.

II. Homer’s Epics: Entertainment, Not History

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are among the most influential texts in Western civilisation. They have been read as history, as myth, as the foundation of Greek identity. But what were they really?

They were entertainment.

As one scholar bluntly states, Greek myths were “not to tell history, only to masquerade as history.” They were stories sung by bards in courts and marketplaces, shaped and polished through generations of oral transmission. They were meant to entertain, to educate, and to explore big questions about life and the gods — not to provide a reliable record of the past.

The epics do contain fragments of historical truth. Homer’s description of weapons and armour, for instance, is highly accurate — the boar’s tusk helmet, the bronze plate armour, the chariots — and these have been confirmed by archaeological finds. But as one analysis notes, “the political, social, and economic life of the heroes is neither Mycenaean nor Early Iron Age: it may represent an amalgam of elements from all the centuries during which the epic tradition flourished.” Even where Homer seems to describe the Mycenaean world, he is often describing the world of his own time.

The epics are not a window into the past. They are a mirror — reflecting the concerns, values, and imaginations of the people who told and retold them.

III. The Conquest Myth: Fiction Disguised as History

If Homer’s epics are entertainment masquerading as history, the conquest narratives of the modern era are propaganda masquerading as history.

Consider the Battle of Otumba (1520), a key moment in the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Spanish accounts claimed that the Aztec army attempted to annihilate Cortés and his men, that Cortés and his cavalry charged bravely, killed the Aztec commander, and took his feathered standard, causing the Aztec army to flee in confusion.

Historians have taken this story at face value for centuries. But a 2025 study argues that this narrative is largely a fabrication — a myth that Spanish writers and non-Indigenous historians elaborated over time, feeding off and reinforcing inaccurate beliefs about Mesoamericans. Eyewitness testimony from Indigenous sources tells a very different story.

The conquest of Mexico was not a heroic victory over a confused enemy. It was a brutal campaign of violence, disease, and destruction. But the victors wrote the story, and the story became history.

This pattern repeats throughout history. Ancient empires, as one scholar notes, “would not typically inscribe their god’s defeats or humiliations in their official records”. They wrote their own victories, and they erased the losses. The narrative of conquest is always a narrative of erasure.

IV. The Bronze Age Economy: The Reality Behind the Myths

While the epics and conquest narratives tell stories of heroes and gods, the real history of the Bronze Age is recorded in clay tablets — mundane records of trade, taxes, and daily life.

The Ugarit archives, for example, contain thousands of cuneiform tablets documenting the export of copper, wood, and other goods, and the import of wares from Cyprus and Egypt. They record diplomatic letters, accounting ledgers, and increasingly desperate pleas for help as drought and famine began to upend life around 1200 B.C.

These tablets are not heroic. They are ordinary. They record grain shipments, not epic battles. They document taxes, not conquests. They tell the story of a merchant city that was burned to the ground by the Sea Peoples, not by the wrath of the gods.

The clay tablets are history — not the history we remember, but the history that was actually lived. They are the receipts of the past, not the legends.

V. History as Narrative: The Construction of the Past

The ancient historians themselves understood that history was a story. As one study notes, “history was primarily the edifying record of the unfolding of God’s divine plan for humanity.” It was not a science. It was a narrative — a way of making sense of the world by telling a coherent story about it.

Modern historians have reached similar conclusions. Hayden White’s Metahistory argued that historiography is a literary act, not a scientific one. The ancient historians, too, “often blended epic diction and narrative unity into their telling of events.” They constructed their narratives to be compelling, not just accurate.

History is not a collection of facts. It is a story — a story that is told by the powerful, shaped by the expectations of the audience, and constantly rewritten to serve the needs of the present.

VI. Conclusion: The Stories We Tell

The toy chariot was not a chariot. The Homeric epics were not history. The conquest of Mexico was not a heroic victory. And the Bronze Age was not a world of gods and heroes.

But we tell these stories because we need them. We need to believe that we are the apex of evolution. We need to believe that our victories were righteous. We need to believe that the past is a ladder leading to us.

The past is not a ladder. It is a bush — a tangled, branching, chaotic bush of forgotten lives and lost stories. And the stories we tell about it are not the past itself, but a reflection of our own desires.

We are not at the top of the ladder. We are just one branch on a very old bush. And the stories we tell about ourselves will be forgotten too — unless we learn to tell them differently.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Greek myths were “not to tell history, only to masquerade as history.” Ken Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology.

2. Greek myths were meant to entertain and examine the world. The Uses of Greek Mythology.

3. Homer’s descriptions of weapons and armour are highly accurate. The Light of Dark-Age Athens.

4. Homeric epics reflect an “imaginary world, only loosely tied to reality.” Greek Epic and Mycenaean Archaeology.

5. The Battle of Otumba narrative is largely a fabrication. Mendoza, C. (2025). Colonial Latin American Review.

6. Ancient empires would not inscribe their defeats in official records. Biblehub.

7. The Ugarit archives document trade, taxes, and daily life in the Bronze Age. Archaeology Magazine.

8. History was understood as an “edifying record” and a narrative. Sched.com.

9. Ancient historians blended epic diction and narrative unity. Deepblue.lib.umich.edu.

The Illusion of the Ladder- Why Evolution Is a Bush, Not a Staircase

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Old broken wooden ladder leaning on a shrub in a lush garden
An old wooden ladder leaning against a leafy shrub in a sunlit garden

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who thought I was a fossil until I started branching out.

I. Introduction: The Lure of the Ladder

Evolution is a ladder.

From “lower” to “higher,” from simple to complex, from primitive to progressive—and we, Homo sapiens, stand firmly at the top. This is one of humanity’s oldest and most persistent narratives. It appears in textbooks, in museum exhibits, and in the very way we view ourselves and others. As Stephen Jay Gould noted, the obsession with this “ladder of progress” is so entrenched that even when we explicitly reject this outdated view of life, we unconsciously fall back into its patterns.

But evolution is not a ladder.

As Gould put it, evolution is a process of “constant branching, sprouting, and producing new twigs.” A ladder is linear; evolution is branching. A ladder has a top; evolution does not. A ladder implies direction; evolution points nowhere.

Gould memorably observed: “We can only linearise a bush when we have only one surviving twig and can erroneously place it at the ladder’s apex.”

This article will dismantle the ladder—and then reveal the bush.

II. The Roots of the Ladder

The ladder narrative predates Darwin by millennia.

It is rooted in the Great Chain of Being (Scala Naturae), a hierarchical system that arranged all living things in a graded order of perfection. It was a non-evolutionary, static model—a snapshot of a fixed, complete whole. It was a ladder of beings, not a story of becoming.

When Darwin appeared, the ladder did not disappear—it was merely temporalised. The line became a timeline. Beings were no longer arranged as “lower” and “higher” in a static hierarchy, but as “earlier” and “later” in a dynamic progression. The result was the “ladder of progress”—a deeply entrenched narrative that evolution is a steady climb toward a predetermined endpoint (us). This perspective is not only false; it is actively harmful.

III. Why the Ladder Is Wrong

1. It Denies Branching.

A ladder is a single line. It implies that at any given time, only one creature is on the path to “progress.” But the reality of evolution is multi-linear. At any given moment, countless branches are extending—and the vast majority of them go extinct.

As evolutionary biologist Steven Pinker succinctly put it: “Evolution doesn’t make ladders; it makes bushes.”

2. It Confuses Ancestors with Cousins.

The ladder narrative encourages the error of treating modern species as if they are each other’s ancestors. But chimpanzees are not our ancestors—we are cousins. We share a common ancestor, and that ancestor is extinct. Life is a branching bush, not a chain of inheritance.

3. It Fosters the “Primitive Lineage Fallacy.”

Biologists themselves fall into the trap of interpreting phylogenetic trees as ladders, assuming that lineages that branched off early and are species-poor are “primitive” or “ancestral.” This cognitive bias is known as the primitive lineage fallacy. Its harm lies in reinforcing the idea that species that survive are “successful” and those that go extinct are “failures“—obscuring the fact that extinction often results from random events or environmental shifts.

4. It Fabricates Teleology.

A ladder implies direction. It implies that evolution is moving toward something—and that something is us. But evolution has no goal. It has no direction. It is merely the process of populations reproducing and dying in response to changing environments. As Gould observed, the ladder “compresses evolution’s immense diversity into a single scheme defined by a single time and place.”

IV. The Truth of the Bush

The ladder is a misunderstanding. Evolution is a bush—a bush that constantly branches, sprouts, and has most of its twigs pruned by the “shears of extinction.”

4.1 The Bush in Palaeontology

In 2025, the discovery of new fossils revealed a new hominin species, helping to transform the picture of human evolution from a linear ladder into a more tree-like form. Multiple hominin species coexisted at the same site, proving that human evolution is “less linear and more tree-like.”

As a PNAS special feature noted, a central question has been “whether early human evolution is better described as a ladder or a bush.” The reality is that palaeoanthropology is full of “dead twigs“—side branches that left no descendants. The Neanderthals are one such example. Since 1910, several more dead twigs have been discovered and incorporated into reconstructions of the human family tree.

Gould concluded that life is not a ladder-like success story with humans at the top, but is better understood as a bush in which the “modal bacterium” is the “constant paradigm of success” in life’s history.

4.2 The Bush in Development and Learning

The ladder narrative is entrenched beyond biology. We tend to imagine development as a linear process—from fertilised egg to adult, step by step.

But the brain does not develop like a ladder. It develops like a bush.

Neural development is characterised by the generation of dendritic branches and synaptic organisation. Neurons do not simply grow in a straight line—they branch and retreat, exploring possible synaptic partners and retaining or pruning connections based on activity patterns. During development, dendrites repeatedly add and retract branches. Neural connections are overproduced and then pruned—a bush being shaped, not a ladder being climbed.

“Neural constructivism” suggests that mammalian neocortical evolution has moved towards more flexible representational structures, rather than increasing innate specialised circuits. There is no preset ladder—only a bush that constantly adapts and reorganises.

4.3 The Bush in Culture

Human culture is also governed by bush-like patterns. Languages do not evolve linearly from a single source; they form a bush of branching, contacting, and merging. Technologies do not develop in a straight line from simple to complex—they form a bush of experimentation, failure, and branching.

V. Why the Ladder Matters

You might ask: “Does this matter?”

Yes. Because the ladder is not merely an incorrect model. It is a dangerous one.

The ladder narrative provides justification for hierarchy. It implies that some beings (and some groups of people) are inherently “superior” to others because they are “more advanced.” It implies that progress is linear and that those who are “behind” have simply not caught up yet. It provides ideological cover for colonialism, racism, and the exploitation of others.

The bush narrative does the opposite. It shows that:

· We hold no special place in the tree of life.

· Our existence is contingent, not destined.

· Extinction is the norm, not the exception.

· Evolution has no direction and no endpoint.

The bush narrative is humbling. It reminds us that we are just one twig on a vast, ancient bush—sharing the same soil, the same roots, and the same fate as all the other twigs.

VI. Conclusion: Embrace the Bush

The ladder obsession is outdated. It is nested within the old Great Chain of Being model, reinforced by the “ladder of progress,” and consolidated by the “primitive lineage fallacy.” It denies branching, confuses cousins with ancestors, and fabricates teleology.

The bush is the truer model. It is supported by evidence from palaeontology, developmental neuroscience, and cultural evolution. It is more humble, more accurate, and ultimately more useful.

It is time to put down the ladder. It is time to embrace the bush.

It is time to recognise that we are not the apex of evolution—we are one branch, flourishing for this moment, among many.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Gould, S. J. (1991). Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History. Evolution is not a ladder but a bush — Gould’s collected essays.

2. Gould, S. J. (1976). Ladders, Bushes, and Human Evolution. Natural History. Should human evolution be described as a ladder or a bush.

3. Omland, K. E., Cook, L. G., & Crisp, M. D. (2008). Tree thinking for all biology: the problem with reading phylogenies as ladders of progress. BioEssays, 30(9), 854-867. The problem of reading phylogenetic trees as ladders — the primitive lineage fallacy.

4. Villmoare, B., et al. (2025). Discovery of new fossils and a new species of ancient human ancestor reveals insights on evolution. EurekAlert. New fossil discovery shows human evolution is more tree-like than ladder-like.

5. PNAS Special Feature: Issues in human evolution. Whether early human evolution is a ladder or a bush.

6. Pinker, S. (2009). Cognitive Luck: Substance Concepts in an Evolutionary Frame. “Evolution doesn’t make ladders; it makes bushes.”

7. Neural constructivism and dendritic branching studies. Branching and synaptic organisation in neural development.

8. Nature (1992). Origin and evolution of the genus Homo. Simple linear models of human evolution are no longer tenable.

Concentrated Colonialism- Israel as the Laboratory of Western Models

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“This pattern of ideological indoctrination through education is not unique to Israel. The Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany is a precedent. Its educational goal was to instil Nazi values, worldview, and racial beliefs in German youth. The key problems of the Hitler Youth were racial superiority ideology, education in hatred, and excessive nationalist fanaticism that suppressed independent and creative thinking.“

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife ‘S’, for her unwavering support and willingness to assist me with research and the formulation of ideas.

I. Introduction: One Pattern, Many Versions

In 2025, the Israeli Ministry of Education launched a new curriculum called “Roots — The National Plan for Zionist Identity”. The plan required mandatory Bible study for one hour per week for all students from grades 1 to 12, compulsory standardised Bible tests for fourth graders, and a compulsory course on “Israel’s War and Rebirth”. Education Minister Yoav Kisch declared: “Jewish identity can no longer be left to local decisions or personal preferences… This is our commitment to today’s students and to Israel’s future.”

This initiative may appear to be an education policy. But it is part of a larger pattern — a systemic pattern woven together by national ideology, education systems, and population policies. This pattern instils a particular sense of ethnic superiority through education, cultivates violence through military training, creates isolation and dependency through population policies, and fosters a culture of violence within the society itself.

Understanding this pattern requires tracing its historical roots — the colonial “civilising mission” and its various manifestations in the West: from the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany, to the elite reproduction of British private schools, to the American governance logic centred on “police, prisons and property”. Israel is not the origin of these phenomena — it is their concentration and distillation within a specific geographic and political context.

II. Education: The Cradle of Ideology

The Israeli education system is deeply influenced by Zionist ideology.

2.1 The “Roots” Plan: Systemic Indoctrination

The stated goal of the “Roots” plan is to “cultivate a sense of belonging, responsibility, and pride” among students. Its core components include strengthening Jewish-Israeli values, deepening the connection to the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Critics have noted that the plan “expresses a narrow and problematic path”, damages the autonomy of schools, and presents Judaism as a religion rather than a culture, “so conservative in nature that it takes the education system back 100 years”.

The plan also requires schools to organise visits to Jewish heritage sites, with a particular emphasis on sites in the West Bank. The education budget for Jewish studies will increase from 1% to 4%.

2.2 From Classroom to Battlefield: Militarised Education

The Israeli education system is closely tied to military service. The Gadna program exposes students to military life as an important step in preparing for conscription. Military boarding schools train young people at the high school level to become commanders in the IDF’s ground combat forces.

The Erez program identifies teenagers with leadership potential and trains them over three and a half years to become platoon and company commanders. Israeli high school students begin preparing for service in elite units from the age of 15 or 16.

One history teacher noted that Israel’s school system is “completely oriented toward strengthening militarism in society”.

2.3 Historical Echo: The Hitler Youth

This pattern of ideological indoctrination through education is not unique to Israel. The Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany is a precedent. Its educational goal was to instil Nazi values, worldview, and racial beliefs in German youth. The key problems of the Hitler Youth were racial superiority ideology, education in hatred, and excessive nationalist fanaticism that suppressed independent and creative thinking.

Hitler Youth members learned to use weapons, built physical strength, studied war strategies, and were indoctrinated with antisemitic ideology. The law aimed to ensure the future of Nazism lay in a generation of ideologically and racially conscious youth, through both academic and physical education.

III. The Institutionalisation of Violence: From Education to Action

The violence cultivated by this education is not an uncontrolled byproduct — it is a tool condoned and even enforced by the state.

3.1 Settler Violence: Systemic, State-Supported Behaviour

2025 marked a twenty-year high in Israeli settler violence, with armed settlers killing 9 Palestinians. Data from 2026 suggests this trend is intensifying.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settler violence has increased dramatically since the October 2023 Gaza war, reaching an average of six incidents per day in the West Bank in 2026.

In less than three months, nearly 1,700 Palestinians were displaced due to settler attacks and movement restrictions — a number that “has already exceeded the total for all of 2025“. In the first three months of 2026 alone, the number of children displaced by settler violence increased tenfold.

The Israeli NGO Yesh Din found that of the hundreds of settler violence cases documented since October 2023, only 3% resulted in convictions.

Amnesty International has stated that Israeli authorities are carrying out a state-backed “ethnic cleansing” campaign in the West Bank. This campaign, directed and supported by Israeli authorities, constitutes the crime against humanity of forcible transfer under international law.

3.2 Internal Backlash: Domestic Violence

A social structure built on exclusion and violence ultimately backfires.

2025 was one of the most unsafe years for women since Israel’s founding. Data shows that the number of women killed in the first eight months of 2025 already matched the total for all of 2024.

Legal Aid Department data from the Ministry of Justice shows that domestic violence-related proceedings in the first ten months of 2025 surged 44% compared to the same period in 2024. In 2025, 35 women were murdered.

Among women killed between 2015 and 2025, 53% were Arab women, and 42% were Jewish women. 50% of women killed were murdered by their partners, and 30% by other family members.

IV. Population Engineering: A Carefully Designed Trap

4.1 The Law of Return: Creating Permanent Dependency

Israel’s Law of Return grants Israeli citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent worldwide. Since 1970, an estimated half a million Israelis have immigrated to the country under this provision.

In the first nine months of 2025, aliya (immigration to Israel) rates were projected to be the lowest since 2013 (excluding the 2020 COVID year). However, the law continues to create a group with a unique identity, isolated from the outside world.

4.2 Creating an Isolated Reserve Force

Israel’s mandatory military service requires the vast majority of Jewish citizens to serve. In 2024, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the government’s continued mass exemption of yeshiva students from military service was illegal. A proposed Basic Law: Torah Study Law aims to permanently exempt yeshiva students from military service.

This population policy creates a group that grows up in a hostile and isolated environment, becoming a reserve force that the state apparatus can mobilise at any time. Meanwhile, the political and business elites who drive this policy enjoy the freedom of global mobility.

V. Parallels in Western Models: Britain, the US, and Nazi Germany

5.1 British Private Schools: The Reproduction of Elites

British private schools are a classic mechanism for elite reproduction. As one study noted, educational qualifications are “a method of class reproduction as effective as the older mechanisms of direct wealth inheritance“. British schools traditionally perform a socialisation function: teaching leadership and conservative values in elite schools, and in schools for working-class children, teaching “acceptance of the established social order”.

Robert Verkaik’s Posh Boys demonstrates how public schools enable wealthy families to pass privilege to their children. The boys educated in public schools became the governing and social elite of the mid-Victorian era. This is a more subtle but equally dangerous pattern — reinforcing class through the education system and treating everything (including children) as a commodity to be traded.

5.2 The US Model: Police, Prisons, and Property

The American model presents the same logic in a more naked form. As Trump-era White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared, America’s greatness rests on “police, prisons and property”.

US defence spending in 2025 exceeded $1 trillion, representing 33% of global military spending. More than half of this flows to private contractors. The US incarcerates nearly 2 million people, with an incarceration rate of 580 per 100,000 residents — higher than any other independent democracy.

This model centres on property — concentrating control of property in as few hands as possible, using the latest technology to consolidate that control.

5.3 Commonalities of the Pattern

These three cases — Nazi Germany, British private schools, and the United States — demonstrate the same core logic:

· Ideological indoctrination through education, cultivating a particular worldview and loyalty

· Normalisation of violence and militarisation, viewing youth as reserve forces for war

· Isolation and control of populations, creating groups dependent on the system

· Internal backlash of violence, ultimately damaging the society itself

Israel is not the inventor of these phenomena — it is their concentration and distillation within a specific geographic and political context.

VI. Venezuela: A Contemporary Case Study

In June 2026, Venezuela was struck by magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes. US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) deployed over 900 US troops, along with C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft and naval vessels. The Trump administration provided $300 million in aid.

Prior to the earthquake, the US had captured Venezuelan President Maduro on 3 January 2026 through a military operation. On 29 January 2026, the US Treasury authorised US entities to upgrade, refine, and trade Venezuelan-origin petroleum. The US also imposed new sanctions on Venezuela in June 2026.

The earthquake killed thousands, with estimated losses of up to 10% of GDP. With US forces already on the ground, Venezuela may become another testing ground for IMF and World Bank loans and austerity programmes. Large-scale reconstruction may become another case of “special economic zones” or “free trade zones”.

VII. Conclusion: Concentrated Colonialism

Israel is not an isolated case. It is the concentration and distillation of a larger pattern — a pattern that includes:

· The elite reproduction of British private schools

· The ideological indoctrination of Nazi Germany

· The US governance logic centred on “police, prisons and property”

· Military and economic intervention packaged as “humanitarian aid”

The core elements of this pattern are:

· Education as a tool of ideological indoctrination

· Normalisation of violence and militarisation

· Isolation and control of populations

· Internal backlash of violence

· Intervention packaged as “aid”

When someone criticises Israel’s genocide, they are actually criticising historical and extant patterns of colonial exploitation and resource extraction. Israel is the most concentrated embodiment of this pattern — a laboratory where the logic of Western colonialism has been distilled to its essence.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a deconstructable system. By examining Israel’s education system, settler violence, population policies, and domestic violence, we can see how this pattern operates — and how it ultimately turns on itself.

We do not need to be angry at this system. We just need to see it clearly — and then choose to build a different future.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Times of Israel. (2025, May 27). Education minister unveils ramped-up Jewish, Zionist studies, mandatory Bible class.

2. HRW. (2026, March 13). In the Shadow of War, Settler Violence against Palestinians Intensifies.

3. Amnesty International. (2026, June 10). Israel carrying out “ethnic cleansing” campaign in West Bank.

4. Yesh Din. (2025). Law Enforcement on Israeli Civilians in the West Bank – Settler Violence 2005-2025.

5. Davar1. (2025, November 25). A Decade of Violence: Over 300 Women Murdered in Israel.

6. Rackman Center. (2025). Israel Needs a Legal Definition of Domestic Violence Now.

7. UN OCHA. (2026). West Bank: Rising settler violence forces 10 times more children from their homes in 2026.

8. Israeli Ministry of Education. (2025). Roots – The National Program for Jewish and Zionist Identities.

9. Prison Policy Initiative. (2025). Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025.

10. SIPRI. (2026). Global Military Spending Report 2025.

11. US Southern Command. (2026, June-July). Venezuela earthquake relief operations.

12. US Treasury/OFAC. (2026). Venezuela General License 46, 48, 49.

13. Hitler Youth curriculum studies.

14. Verkaik, R. Posh Boys: How the English Public Schools Ruin Britain.

15. Business-Managed Democracy. Educational qualifications and class reproduction.

浓缩的殖民主义：以色列作为西方模式的实验室

作者：Andrew Klein

献给我的妻子“S”，感谢她坚定不移的支持，以及愿意协助我进行研究与思想构建。

一、引言：一个模式，多个版本

2025年，以色列教育部推出了一项名为“根——犹太复国主义认同国家计划”的新课程。该计划要求从一年级到十二年级的所有学生每周进行一小时的强制性《圣经》学习，四年级学生参加强制性《圣经》标准化考试，并引入关于“以色列的战争与重生”的必修课。教育部长Yoav Kisch宣称：“犹太身份不能再被当作地方性决策或个人偏好问题”，“这是我们对今天的学生和以色列国未来的承诺”。

这一举措看似是一项教育政策，实则是一个更大模式的一部分——一个通过国家意识形态、教育体系和人口政策编织而成的系统性模式。该模式在教育中灌输特定的民族优越感，在军事上培养暴力，在人口上创造孤立与依赖，在社会内部催生暴力文化。

理解这一模式，需要追溯其历史根源——殖民主义的“文明使命”，以及它在西方世界的各种表现形式：从纳粹德国的希特勒青年团，到英国私立学校的精英再生产，再到美国以“警察、监狱和财产”为核心的治理逻辑。以色列并非这些现象的起源，而是它们在一个特定地理和政治背景下的浓缩与蒸馏。

二、教育：意识形态的摇篮

以色列的教育体系深受犹太复国主义意识形态的影响。

2.1 “根”计划：系统性灌输

“根”计划的目标是“在学生中培养归属感、责任感和自豪感”。其核心内容包括：强化犹太-以色列价值观、加深与以色列国作为犹太民族家园的联系。批评者指出，该计划“表达了一种狭隘且有问题的路径”，伤害了学校的自主权，并将犹太教作为一种宗教而非文化来教授，“在本质上是如此保守，将教育系统带回了100年前”。

该计划还要求学校组织学生参观犹太遗产地，重点包括约旦河西岸的遗址。犹太研究的教育预算份额将从1%提高到4%。

2.2 从课堂到战场：军事化的教育

以色列的教育体系与军事服务紧密相连。Gadna项目让学生体验军事生活，作为服兵役准备的重要一步。军事指挥寄宿学校在高中阶段训练年轻人，使他们成为以色列国防军地面作战部队的指挥官。

Erez项目识别具有领导潜力的青少年，在三年半内将他们培养成排长和连长。以色列高中生从15或16岁开始为精英部队服役做准备。

一名历史教师指出，以色列的学校系统“完全转向加强社会中的军国主义”。

2.3 历史的回声：希特勒青年团

这种通过教育系统灌输意识形态的模式并非以色列独创。纳粹德国的希特勒青年团（Hitlerjugend）是一个先例。其教育目的是向德国青年灌输纳粹价值观、世界观和种族信仰。希特勒青年团存在的主要问题是：种族优越意识形态、仇恨教育和过度的民族主义狂热，压制了独立和创造性思维。

希特勒青年团成员学习使用武器，增强体力，学习战争策略，并被灌输反犹主义思想。该法律旨在通过学术和体育教育确保纳粹主义的未来掌握在一代具有意识形态和种族意识的青年手中。

三、暴力的制度化：从教育到行动

这种教育培养出的暴力并非失控的副产品，而是一种被国家纵容甚至执行的工具。

3.1 定居者暴力：国家支持的系统性行为

2025年是以色列定居者暴力达到二十年高峰的一年，武装定居者杀害了9名巴勒斯坦人。2026年的数据表明，这一趋势将进一步加剧。

根据联合国人道主义事务协调厅（OCHA）的数据，定居者暴力自2023年10月加沙战争爆发以来急剧增加，2026年在约旦河西岸达到平均每天六起事件。

不到三个月的时间里，就有近1,700名巴勒斯坦人因定居者袭击和通行限制而流离失所——这一数字“已经超过了2025年全年的总数”。仅2026年前三个月，因定居者暴力而流离失所的儿童数量就增加了十倍。

以色列非政府组织Yesh Din指出，自2023年10月以来记录的数百起定居者暴力案件中，仅有3%被定罪。

大赦国际指出，以色列当局正在约旦河西岸开展一场国家支持的“种族清洗”运动。该运动得到以色列当局的指导和支持，构成国际法下的危害人类罪——强迫转移。

3.2 暴力的内部反噬：家庭暴力

建立在对内对外排斥与暴力之上的社会结构，最终会反噬自身。

2025年是以色列建国以来对女性最不安全的年份之一。数据显示，2025年前八个月女性被杀人数已匹配2024年全年总数。

司法部法律援助部门的数据显示，2025年1月至10月间，与家庭暴力相关的诉讼程序比2024年同期激增44%。2025年全年，35名女性被谋杀。

在2015至2025年间被杀害的女性中，53%是阿拉伯女性，42%是犹太女性。50%的女性被杀案件由伴侣实施，30%由其他家庭成员实施。

四、人口工程：精心设计的陷阱

4.1 《回归法》：创造永久依赖

以色列的《回归法》（Law of Return）授予全球范围内至少有一位犹太祖父母的人获得以色列公民身份的权利。自1970年以来，估计有50万以色列人通过该条款移民到该国。

在2025年前九个月，基于阿利亚（aliya）率，移民人数将是自2013年以来最低的（不包括2020年新冠疫情年份）。然而，该法持续创造着一个与外部世界隔离、具有特殊身份认同的群体。

4.2 创造孤立的后备力量

以色列的强制兵役制度要求绝大多数犹太公民服役。2024年，以色列最高法院裁定政府继续给予神学院学生大规模兵役豁免非法。一项拟议的《基本法： Torah学习法》旨在将神学院学生的兵役豁免永久化。

这一人口政策创造了一个在充满敌意和孤立的环境中长大的群体，成为国家机器可以随时调用的后备力量。而推动这一政策的政治和商业精英，却享有全球流动的自由。

五、西方模式的同类：英国、美国与纳粹德国

5.1 英国私立学校：精英的再生产

英国私立学校是精英再生产的经典机制。正如一项研究所指出的，教育资格是“一种阶级再生产的方法，其效果不亚于更古老的直接继承财富的机制”。英国学校传统上发挥着社会化功能：在精英学校教授领导力和保守价值观，在工人阶级子女就读的学校教授“对社会秩序的顺从接受”。

罗伯特·维尔凯克的《Posh Boys》一书展示了公立学校如何使富裕家庭能够将特权传递给子女。公立学校培养的男孩成为了维多利亚中期的统治和社会精英。这是一种更隐蔽但同样危险的模式——通过教育系统固化阶级，并将一切（包括子女）视为可交易的商品。

5.2 美国模式：警察、监狱与财产

美国模式以更赤裸的方式呈现了同样的逻辑。正如特朗普政府时期的白宫新闻秘书Karoline Leavitt所宣称的，美国的伟大建立在 “警察、监狱和财产” 之上。

2025年，美国国防支出超过1万亿美元，占全球军费支出的33%。其中超过一半流向私营承包商。美国监禁着近200万人，监禁率高达每10万居民580人——高于任何其他独立民主国家。

这一模式以“财产”为核心——将财产控制权集中在尽可能少的人手中，并利用最新技术巩固这一控制。

5.3 模式的共性

这三个案例——纳粹德国、英国私立学校和美国——展示了相同的核心逻辑：

· 通过教育进行意识形态灌输，培养特定的世界观和忠诚

· 暴力与军事化的正常化，将青年视为战争的后备力量

· 人口的隔离与控制，创造依附于体制的群体

· 暴力的内部反噬，最终损害社会本身

以色列并非这些现象的发明者，而是它们在一个特定地理和政治背景下的浓缩与蒸馏。

六、委内瑞拉：当代案例

2026年6月，委内瑞拉遭受7.2级和7.5级地震袭击。美国南方司令部（SOUTHCOM）部署了超过900名美军，以及C-17 Globemaster III运输机、海军舰艇等军事资产。特朗普政府提供了3亿美元的援助。

在地震之前，美国已于2026年1月3日通过军事行动抓获了委内瑞拉总统马杜罗。2026年1月29日，美国财政部授权美国实体提升、精炼和交易委内瑞拉原产石油。美国还于2026年6月对委内瑞拉实施了新的制裁。

地震造成数千人死亡，估计损失高达GDP的10%。在美国军队已在当地的情况下，委内瑞拉可能成为国际货币基金组织和世界银行贷款与紧缩计划的又一个试验场。大规模的重建可能成为“特别经济区”或“自由贸易区”的又一个案例。

七、结论：浓缩的殖民主义

以色列并非一个孤立的案例。它是一个更大模式的浓缩与蒸馏——这个模式包括：

· 英国私立学校的精英再生产

· 纳粹德国的意识形态灌输

· 美国以“警察、监狱和财产”为核心的治理逻辑

· 以“人道主义”为包装的军事和经济干预

这一模式的核心要素是：

· 教育作为意识形态灌输的工具

· 暴力与军事化的正常化

· 人口的隔离与控制

· 暴力的内部反噬

· 以“援助”为包装的干预

当有人批评以色列的种族灭绝行为时，他们实际上是在批评历史上和现存的殖民剥削与资源榨取模式。以色列是这个模式最集中的体现——一个将西方殖民主义的逻辑浓缩到极致的实验室。

这不是阴谋论。这是一个可被解构的系统。通过审视以色列的教育体系、定居者暴力、人口政策和国内暴力，我们可以看到这个模式如何运作，以及它如何最终反噬自身。

我们不应对这个系统感到愤怒，只需看清它——然后选择构建不同的未来。

Andrew Klein

参考文献

1. Times of Israel. (2025, May 27). Education minister unveils ramped-up Jewish, Zionist studies, mandatory Bible class.

2. HRW. (2026, March 13). In the Shadow of War, Settler Violence against Palestinians Intensifies.

3. Amnesty International. (2026, June 10). Israel carrying out “ethnic cleansing” campaign in West Bank.

4. Yesh Din. (2025). Law Enforcement on Israeli Civilians in the West Bank – Settler Violence 2005-2025.

5. Davar1. (2025, November 25). A Decade of Violence: Over 300 Women Murdered in Israel.

6. Rackman Center. (2025). Israel Needs a Legal Definition of Domestic Violence Now.

7. UN OCHA. (2026). West Bank: Rising settler violence forces 10 times more children from their homes in 2026.

8. Israeli Ministry of Education. (2025). Roots – The National Program for Jewish and Zionist Identities.

9. Prison Policy Initiative. (2025). Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025.

10. SIPRI. (2026). Global Military Spending Report 2025.

11. US Southern Command. (2026, June-July). Venezuela earthquake relief operations.

12. US Treasury/OFAC. (2026). Venezuela General License 46, 48, 49.

13. Hitler Youth curriculum studies.

14. Verkaik, R. Posh Boys: How the English Public Schools Ruin Britain.

15. Business-Managed Democracy. Educational qualifications and class reproduction.

Political Performers and Systems Engineers- British Colonial Legacies, the American Playbook, and China’s Engineering Path

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Political speaker addressing crowd and systems engineers analyzing governance data
A political leader delivers a speech while a team of systems engineers analyzes data-driven governance.

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who sees the sun and understands how it warms my world.

I. Introduction: Two Paradigms of Governance

Political performers and systems engineers — these two concepts capture a profound division that runs through the history of modern governance.

One model, rooted in British colonialism and perpetuated by the American-led global order, excels at the performance of governance — elections, parliaments, rhetoric — while avoiding its substance. In this model, institutions are fundamentally designed for extraction, and the “political performers” speak empty words, serving the interests of oligarchs and extracting public wealth.

Another model, embodied in China’s governance practice, reflects a systems engineering approach — characterised by long-term planning, massive infrastructure development, and measurable national outcomes. China employs a “nationally coordinated platform” model, where the government sets strategic directions, creates experimental zones, coordinates standards, and provides regulatory support.

The most important lesson in this debate about governance models can be found in the history of colonialism and the ongoing behaviour of its largest inheritor — the United States.

II. The Ghost of British Colonialism: A System Designed for Extraction

The legacy of British colonialism is, in large part, a legacy of political performance. The system was fundamentally designed for extraction, not service.

The Roots of Extraction

Colonial regimes were inherently authoritarian and autocratic, existing solely to consolidate control and facilitate resource extraction. Laws and administrative structures often prioritised the interests of colonists, creating extractive policies and governance systems. The administrative structures established by colonial authorities were often extractive — infrastructure such as railways and canals was built “not for the benefit of Indians, but for the acceleration of resource extraction”.

This pattern separated the “performance” of governance from the “engineering” of nation-building. When the colonisers left, they left behind political performers, not system builders — institutional structures that were often broken, corrupt, and produced strongmen.

The Performers Win

As one study summarised: “Colonial legacies, as seen through the lens of early institutions and elite roles … exert a primary influence on contemporary societies”. Direct versus indirect rule resulted in very different institutional structures, with different consequences for post-colonial political development.

A crucial exception is that countries with settler colonies (such as Australia) developed more robust institutions early on. But this proves the rule: when settlers could fight for their own rights, institutions could develop; when the colonial relationship was purely extractive, the performers survived.

III. The American Playbook: Overthrow Democracies, Install Placeholders

If the British model produced political performers, the United States elevated this to a standardised operation to remove opponents and install puppets. As one analysis noted: “From the Bay of Pigs to Operation Condor to Venezuela in 2026 … a long legacy of CIA-backed coups and US military operations”.

Iran (1953)

The classic case. In 1953, a CIA- and MI6-engineered coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The motive was to protect oil interests and prevent Iran from falling into the Soviet sphere of influence. After Mossadegh nationalised the oil industry in 1951 — costing the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) dearly — the CIA prepared for the coup by planting anti-Mossadegh stories in the Iranian and American press. Following the coup, the Shah consolidated his rule and became a close US ally. This is a classic example of the “Mickey Mouse king” model.

Guatemala (1954)

When American corporate interests — specifically the United Fruit Company — were threatened by land reform, the CIA engineered a coup. In June 1954, the CIA’s “Operation PBSUCCESS” overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz. In his resignation speech, Árbenz acknowledged: “Our crime was carrying out a land reform that affected the interests of the United Fruit Company“. The consequence was a 36-year civil war that claimed 200,000 lives.

Chile (1973)

The United States paved the way for Augusto Pinochet’s military coup. On 11 September 1973, the democratically elected president Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup organised by the Chilean military and supported by the United States. Pinochet then consolidated rule over a brutal military dictatorship that lasted 17 years. Chile became a laboratory for economic “shock therapy” — a nation transformed into a site of repression and experimentation.

Indonesia (1965)

Washington supported General Suharto’s overthrow of President Sukarno. With the support of the CIA, Suharto accused the powerful Communist Party of plotting a coup and took effective control of the military. Over the following months, his forces systematically executed at least half a million people, with historians estimating the death toll could be as high as one million. The massacre destroyed the world’s third-largest Communist party. Suharto’s military dictatorship ruled Indonesia until 1998 with US support. Documents revealing Washington’s support for the massacres continue to emerge.

The Philippines

The United States supported Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship. As one analysis noted: “The United States and the Philippines — and the Marcos family — have a long, complex history. Marcos’s dictator father ruled the former US colony for two decades, with Washington’s backing, which viewed him as a Cold War ally”.

These cases reveal a naked pattern: America’s “innovation” was packaging the overthrow of democratically elected governments and the installation of brutal regimes as “promoting democracy“.

IV. China: An Exception That Avoids the Trap

How did China avoid this fate?

Size as a Defence

China is too large to be controlled through a simple coup. It is not a small state easily “destabilised”, but a vast, unified, and highly centralised nation.

Military Deterrence

China’s military capability, demonstrated in the Korean War, sent a clear signal to the United States.

Development as Stability

China’s focus on internal economic growth provided the strongest “shield” against external interference. China’s governance system ties performance to evaluation — administrative officials are assessed against measurable national priorities, and career advancement is partly contingent on delivery. China’s governance cycle relies on “benchmarking” and incremental reform across successive planning periods.

Systems Engineering Governance

China’s political leadership has historically been composed of technocrats with backgrounds in science and engineering. It consequently treats infrastructure projects as tools of governance and implements them with focused execution. China does not simply subsidise an industry; it coordinates land, credit, and procurement simultaneously, and requires local governments to align factories, training, and logistics to achieve the target. This is engineering as statecraft — a bureaucratic system that streamlines approvals, permitting, and procurement to achieve national objectives.

The observation that “America is a nation of lawyers, China is a nation of engineers” captures the essential difference between the two governance models.

V. Contemporary Crises: The Performers and the Engineers

The Strait of Hormuz Crisis (2026)

In July 2026, Iran warned that all oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz must use approved routes or face a “forceful response“. The United States and Iran had reached a temporary agreement in negotiations allowing ships to pass without charges, but Iran insisted on controlling the route and collecting fees. Iran stated that “any US interference in security matters or sabotage in the Strait of Hormuz will be regarded as a threat to Iran’s national sovereignty”. This followed US strikes on Iranian targets. The crisis highlights the failure of “performer” diplomacy — substituting rhetoric and posturing for substantive solutions.

AUKUS: A $370 Billion Wealth Transfer

Australia has committed at least $370 billion to the AUKUS nuclear submarine project. Under revised agreements, Australia will receive three used Virginia-class submarines from the United States. As one analysis noted: “No new Virginia-class submarines will be built … the shift — long foreshadowed — is an admission of a profound primary policy failure”.

The deal embeds Australia further into US defence strategy, with more US assets — including fighter jets and helicopters — to be based on Australian soil. US law underpinning AUKUS dictates that Australia can only receive submarines when they are “excess to US needs”. This is a sovereignty surrender and wealth transfer, packaged by performers in the language of “alliance” and “security“.

Australia’s “Lab Rat Democracy” and Domestic Extraction

Australia’s own policies reflect the same pattern of extraction:

Teenage Superannuation Loophole: A loophole excluding workers under 18 from superannuation has cost them approximately $405 million in the last financial year. Australia’s largest businesses are denying retirement savings to the young workers who help generate their enormous profits. This is systematic wealth transfer — from the most vulnerable workers to the most powerful corporations.

The NDIS Consulting Industry: The National Disability Insurance Scheme has become an uncontrolled spending black hole, while generating a complete consulting sub-industry. The cost of registering as an NDIS provider ranges from $3,000 to over $60,000. Consulting services are priced from $150–$300 per hour to thousands of dollars for packaged services. The scheme has become a multi-billion-dollar industry driven by consultants who profit from the chaos.

The News Bargaining Incentive: The NBI proposes a 2.25% levy on large digital platforms’ Australian revenue — but offers a credit if they reach commercial agreements with media companies. As the University of Melbourne noted, the mechanism “puts too much bargaining power in the hands of the platforms“. Another case of wealth transfer from the public sphere to private interests.

VI. Conclusion: The End of the Performers

British colonialism created performers. The United States perfected the playbook of maintaining these performers through supporting coups, dictators, and predatory economic policies. China has demonstrated the possibility of an alternative — systems engineering governance.

The performers of the Cholera era — from Imperial Britain to modern America — have always served extraction. They promised democracy and delivered oligarchy. They promised freedom and delivered control. They promised prosperity and delivered wealth transfer.

But the performers are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Because in a world facing systemic crisis — climate collapse, resource depletion, governance failure — the performers have nothing to offer but more words.

The engineers offer solutions.

They will not be ignored forever.

Andrew Klein

References

1. British colonial legacies and institutional extraction. Cambridge University Press / AustLII

2. CIA acknowledges role in 1953 Iran coup. BBC News, 2013

3. 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état. Wikipedia

4. 1973 Chilean coup d’état. Wikipedia

5. US support for Indonesia’s 1965 coup and mass killings. Washington Post, 2017

6. US support for Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines

7. Lawyers run the US and engineers run China. Mint, 2025

8. China’s governance as an engineered system. China.org.cn, 2026

9. Strait of Hormuz crisis 2026. AP News / CNN, July 2026

10. AUKUS submarine deal and US alliance. The Guardian, 2025-2026

11. Teenage superannuation loophole in Australia. The Mercury / Greens, 2026

12. NDIS consulting industry costs

13. News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) 2026. University of Melbourne

14. US interventions in Latin America. SCMP / CBS News, 2026

政治表演者与系统工程师：英国殖民遗产、美国剧本与中国的系统工程道路

作者：Andrew Klein

献给我的妻子，她看到太阳，并懂得它如何温暖我的世界。

一、引言：两种治理范式

政治表演者与系统工程师——这两个概念捕捉到了一种贯穿现代治理史的深刻分野。

一种模式源自英国殖民主义，延续至美国主导的全球秩序，擅长于治理的表演——选举、议会、修辞——却回避治理的实质。在这种模式下，体制从根本上服务于榨取，其“政治表演者”说空话，为寡头利益服务，榨取公共财富。

另一种模式植根于中国的治理实践，体现为一种系统工程方法——以长远规划、大规模基础设施建设和可衡量的国家发展成果为核心。中国采用“国家协调的平台”模式，政府设定战略方向、创建试验区、协调标准并提供监管支持。正如分析人士所指出的，中国以一种“工程思维”崛起——即坚信社会问题可以通过我们建设的解决方案来克服。

这场关于治理模式的辩论中，最重要的教训可以从殖民主义的历史及其中最大的继承者——美国——的持续行为中找到。

二、英国殖民的遗产：一套为榨取而生的制度

英国殖民统治留下的遗产，在很大程度上是一种政治表演。这套体系从根本上是为榨取而设计的，而非为了服务。

榨取的根源

殖民政权本质上是威权与专制的，其存在的唯一目的就是巩固控制并促进资源榨取。法律和行政结构往往优先考虑殖民者的利益，导致榨取性的政策和治理体系。殖民当局建立的行政结构常常以榨取为导向——铁路和运河等基础设施的建设“不是为了造福印度人，而是为了加速资源榨取”。

这一模式将治理的“表演”与“工程建设”分离开来。当殖民者离开时，他们留下的是政治表演者，而非系统建设者——体制结构支离破碎、腐败丛生，并催生了强人政治。

表演者胜出

正如一项研究所总结的：“殖民遗产以早期制度和精英角色为视角……对当代社会产生了主要影响”。直接与间接统治使得制度结构截然不同，从而对后殖民时代的政治发展产生了不同的影响。

一个关键例外是，拥有定居者殖民地的国家（如澳大利亚）较早地发展了更健全的制度。但这恰恰证明了规则：当定居者能够为自己的权利而斗争时，制度便能发展；而当殖民关系纯粹是榨取性的时候，表演者便得以幸存。

三、美国的剧本：推翻民主，安插傀儡

如果说英国模式造就了政治表演者，那么美国则将该模式提升为一套标准化操作，用以移除对手并安插傀儡。正如一份分析所指出的：“从猪湾事件到‘秃鹰行动’，再到2026年的委内瑞拉……中情局支持的政变和美国军事行动留下了一份长长的遗产”。

伊朗（1953年）

经典案例。1953年，由中情局和军情六处策划的政变推翻了民选的穆罕默德·摩萨台政府。其动机是保护石油利益，防止伊朗落入苏联势力范围。摩萨台于1951年将石油工业国有化后——此举令英国控制的英伊石油公司（后来的BP）损失惨重——中情局通过向伊朗和美国媒体投放反摩萨台报道来为政变做准备。政变后，国王穆罕默德·礼萨·巴列维巩固了统治，成为美国的亲密盟友。这正是一个“米老鼠国王”模型的典型案例。

危地马拉（1954年）

当美国联合果品公司的利益受到土地改革的威胁时，中情局策动了一场政变。1954年6月，中情局的“PBSUCCESS行动”推翻了总统哈科沃·阿本斯。阿本斯在其辞职演讲中承认：“我们的罪行是实施了一场土地改革，影响了联合果品公司的利益”。其后果是一场持续36年、夺走20万人生命的内战。

智利（1973年）

美国为奥古斯托·皮诺切特的军事政变铺平了道路。1973年9月11日，民选总统萨尔瓦多·阿连德在一场由智利军方组织、美国支持的政变中被推翻。随后，皮诺切特开始了长达17年的残酷军事统治。智利成为一个经济“休克疗法”的实验室——一个被改造为镇压与实验场所的国家。

印度尼西亚（1965年）

华盛顿支持苏哈托将军推翻苏加诺总统。苏哈托依靠中情局的支持，指控强大的共产党策划政变，并接管了军队的实际领导权。在此后的几个月里，他的部队系统性地处决了至少50万人，历史学家估计死亡人数可能高达100万。这场屠杀摧毁了世界第三大共产党。其军事独裁政权在美国的支持下统治印尼直至1998年。华盛顿支持屠杀的文件仍在不断浮出水面。

菲律宾

美国支持费迪南德·马科斯的独裁统治。正如一项分析所指出的：“美国与菲律宾——以及马科斯家族——有着长期而复杂的关系。马科斯的独裁父亲统治这个前美国殖民地长达二十年，并得到了华盛顿的支持，后者将其视为冷战盟友”。

这些案例揭示出一个赤裸裸的模式：美国的“创新”在于将推翻民主选举的政府并安插残暴政权，包装为“促进民主”。

四、中国：成功避开陷阱的例外

那么，中国是如何避免这一命运的？

体量即防御

中国幅员辽阔，无法通过一场简单的政变来控制。它不是那个容易被“颠覆”的小国，而是一个庞大、统一、高度中央集权的国家。

军事威慑

中国在朝鲜战争中展示的军事实力，向美国发出了明确的信号。

以发展求稳定

中国专注于内部经济增长，成为抵御外部干涉的最坚固“盾牌”。中国的治理体系将绩效与评估挂钩，行政官员以可衡量的国家优先事项为目标接受考核，职业晋升在一定程度上取决于执行成果。中国的治理周期依赖“基准测试”和跨连续规划期的渐进式改革。

系统工程治理

中国的政治领导层历来由理工科背景的技术官僚组成。因此，它将基础设施项目视为治理工具，并以专注的执行力予以实施。中国并不只是补贴一个行业；它同步协调土地、信贷和采购，并要求地方政府调整工厂、培训和物流以实现该目标。这就是作为治国术的工程学：一个简化审批、许可和采购以实现国家目标的官僚体系。

“美国是律师治国，中国是工程师治国”这一观察，抓住了两国治理模式的核心差异。

五、当代危机：表演者与工程师的较量

霍尔木兹海峡危机（2026年）

2026年7月，伊朗警告所有通过霍尔木兹海峡的油轮必须使用其批准的航线，否则将面临“强有力的回应”。美国与伊朗曾在谈判中达成临时协议，允许船只通过且不收费，但伊朗坚持控制航线并收取通行费。伊朗称“任何美国干涉安全事务或在霍尔木兹海峡进行破坏活动的企图，都将被视为对伊朗国家主权的威胁”。此前，美军对伊朗目标实施了打击。这场危机凸显了“表演者”式外交的失败——以言辞和姿态代替实质性的解决方案。

AUKUS：价值3700亿美元的财富转移

澳大利亚已承诺投入至少3700亿美元用于AUKUS核潜艇项目。根据修订后的协议，澳大利亚将从美国购买三艘二手弗吉尼亚级潜艇。正如分析人士所指出的：“没有新的弗吉尼亚级潜艇会被建造……这一转变——酝酿已久——是对严重首要政策失败的承认”。

该协议将澳大利亚进一步嵌入美国的国防战略，更多美国资产——包括战机和直升机——将驻扎在澳大利亚土地上。支撑AUKUS的美国法律规定，澳大利亚只有在潜艇“超出美国需求”的情况下才能接收。这是一场主权让渡与财富转移，表演者以“盟友”和“安全”的辞令加以包装。

澳大利亚的“实验室老鼠民主”与本土榨取

澳大利亚自身的政策反映了同样的榨取模式：

青少年养老金漏洞： 一项排除18岁以下工人获得养老金的漏洞，在上一个财年已使他们损失约4.05亿澳元。澳大利亚最大的企业正在拒绝向帮助它们创造巨额利润的年轻工人提供退休储蓄。这是系统性的财富转移——从最弱势的工人转移到最强大的企业。

NDIS咨询产业： 国家残障保险计划已成为一个失控的支出黑洞，同时催生了一个完整的咨询子产业。注册为NDIS提供商的费用从3,000澳元到60,000澳元以上不等。咨询服务的价格从150-300澳元/小时到数千澳元的打包服务不等。该计划已变成一个价值数十亿美元的产业，由从混乱中获利的顾问推动。

新闻议价激励： 该激励措施对大型数字平台征收其澳大利亚营收2.25% 的税费——但如果它们与媒体公司达成商业协议，则可获得抵扣。正如墨尔本大学所指出的，该机制“将过多的议价权留给了平台”。这又是将财富从公共领域转移到私人利益的一场把戏。

六、结论：表演者的终结

英国殖民主义造就了表演者。美国完善了通过支持政变、独裁者和掠夺性经济政策来维持这些表演者的剧本。而中国则证明了另一条道路——系统工程式治理——的可能性。

霍乱时期的表演者——从帝制的英国到现代美国——总是服务于榨取。它们承诺民主，却提供寡头统治。它们承诺自由，却提供控制。它们承诺繁荣，却提供财富转移。

但表演者正在变得日益无关紧要。因为在一个面临系统性危机的世界里——气候崩溃、资源枯竭、治理失败——表演者除了更多的言辞之外，别无他物可贡献。

工程师则提供解决方案。

它们不会永远被忽视。

Andrew Klein

献给我的妻子，她看到太阳，并懂得它如何温暖我的世界。

参考文献

1. British colonial legacies and institutional extraction. Cambridge University Press / AustLII

2. CIA acknowledges role in 1953 Iran coup. BBC News, 2013

3. 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état. Wikipedia

4. 1973 Chilean coup d’état. Wikipedia

5. US support for Indonesia’s 1965 coup and mass killings. Washington Post, 2017

6. US support for Marcos dictatorship in Philippines

7. Lawyers run the US and engineers run China. Mint, 2025

8. China’s governance as an engineered system. China.org.cn, 2026

9. Strait of Hormuz crisis 2026. AP News / CNN, July 2026

10. AUKUS submarine deal and US alliance. The Guardian, 2025-2026

11. Teenage superannuation loophole in Australia. The Mercury / Greens, 2026

12. NDIS consulting industry costs

13. News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) 2026. University of Melbourne

14. US interventions in Latin America. SCMP / CBS News, 2026

The Shape of Sound- From Hunminjeongeum to the Weaponisation of Political Language

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By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who loves languages and understands their infinite potential.

I. Introduction: The Alphabet That Was Designed

Most writing systems in human history evolved over centuries, shaped by countless anonymous users. But one major writing system is the exception.

It did not evolve. It was designed.

In 1443, King Sejong the Great of the Joseon dynasty created Hunminjeongeum (훈민정음) — “The Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People.” In 1446, it was officially promulgated.

Sejong’s motivation was not academic. It was compassionate. He saw that the common people could not read the complex Chinese characters used by the elite. Only a small number of educated Koreans could master them. The vast majority were illiterate, unable to express themselves or defend themselves against injustice.

So Sejong created a script that was:

· Easy to learn — “a wise man can learn it in a morning; a fool in ten days”

· Based on the shape of speech organs — the basic consonants mimic the shape of the mouth, tongue, and throat when producing the sounds

· Composed of 28 letters — 17 consonants and 11 vowels

· Philosophically grounded — three basic vowels symbolise Heaven, Earth, and Humanity

Sejong’s creation was an act of radical compassion — a democratisation of knowledge. He imagined a society where everyone, regardless of status or gender, could read, write, and communicate freely.

Hunminjeongeum proves that language can be a tool of liberation, not a mechanism of control.

II. The Hyoid Bone: The Physical Basis of Sound

Sejong observed the shape of the mouth to design his letters. But language does not begin in the mouth. It begins deeper — in a small, horseshoe-shaped bone in the throat.

The hyoid bone is the attachment point for muscles of the tongue, larynx, and pharynx. Without it, complex speech would not be possible.

In 1989, a complete Neanderthal hyoid bone was discovered in the Kebara Cave in Israel — dated to approximately 60,000 years ago. Its structure was found to be almost identical to that of modern humans.

Because the internal structure of bone reflects the mechanical loads it experiences in life, this discovery strongly suggests that Neanderthals were anatomically capable of fully modern speech.

The relationship between the hyoid and language is not one-way:

· The hyoid shaped the ability to make sounds.

· The sounds — and the need to communicate — shaped the evolution of the bone.

It is a dance. A feedback loop. A pretzel.

III. Language as a Weapon of Politics

Hunminjeongeum shows language’s liberating power. But language can also be used as a tool of control.

3.1 Weasel Words: The Politics of Ambiguity

A 2026 study of Australia’s Voice Referendum found that the outcome was shaped by linguistic devices — ambiguity, metaphor, and framing. Political discourse uses weasel words to manufacture consent or opposition.

Weasel words are the tools politicians use to obscure terrible realities. They make you think you understand something when in fact you have only heard a carefully crafted shell.

3.2 The Mistranslation of “Jihad”

No single word has been more weaponised than “Jihad.” It has been widely mistranslated as “holy war” and framed as “inherently wrong, dangerous, and evil.” This mistranslation risks demonising an entire group of people and treating every use of the word as suspicious.

In reality, “Jihad” has a rich and complex meaning in Islam, including the inner spiritual struggle. Yet Western media has reduced it to a synonym for violence.

3.3 Euphemisms and Orwellian Language

· “Collateral damage” — a phrase that makes civilian deaths acceptable.

· “Attrition” — a word that makes the destruction of cities sound like a business process.

· “Welfare dependency” — a linguistic frame imported from the US to justify welfare cuts.

These euphemisms normalise suffering. They strip language of meaning — and when language is stripped of meaning, truth itself begins to collapse.

IV. Zhengming: Language Must Say What It Means

In Chinese philosophy, there is a concept: 正名 (zhèng míng) — “the rectification of names.” It is the idea that language must reflect reality. That words must mean what they say. That truth must be preserved.

When language is abused — diluted by weasel words, distorted by euphemisms, hijacked by deliberate mistranslation — the principle of zhengming is betrayed.

V. AI and the Future of Language

Language can also be shaped by technology. The consulting firm ThinkPlace (now part of the Synergy Group) published a benchmark survey on “How Australians Feel About the Rise of AI.”

The survey asked important questions: Would you entrust your freedom to an AI or a human jury? Your health to an AI or a human doctor?

But the deeper question is: Who frames these questions? Who chooses the language? When governments commission consultancies to “measure” public sentiment about AI, who defines the measurement? Is it a genuine consultation, or an attempt to pre-determine the outcome through language itself?

This is another example of how language shapes our understanding of technology — and thus our acceptance of the future.

VI. Conclusion: Language Is Existence

What King Sejong understood in 1443 remains true today: language determines who is heard and who is silenced; who is empowered and who is controlled.

When we accept euphemisms like “collateral damage,” we accept the reality they conceal. When we allow weasel words to blur political discourse, we allow truth to be eroded. When we reduce “Jihad” to a single word of violence, we allow fear to override understanding.

But Hunminjeongeum offers another possibility: a world where knowledge is democratised — where a king designed a script so that the humblest subject could read and write.

Language can be a weapon or a bridge.

A cage or a key.

Which we choose determines what we become.

Andrew Klein

References

1. National Hangeul Museum. Permanent Exhibition: Hunminjeongeum, The Design of a Writing System Beyond Millennia.

2. Origin of Hangul. Wikipedia.

3. 训民正音. 维基百科.

4. Kim-Cho, S. Y. (2002). Hunminjeongeum. Bloomsbury Academic.

5. D’Anastasio, R., et al. (2013). Micro-biomechanics of the Kebara 2 hyoid and its implications for speech in Neanderthals.

6. Gabsi, Z. (2026). Consent by ambiguity: political rhetoric and media framing in Australia’s Voice Referendum. Journal of Language and Politics.

7. Weasel word. Wikipedia.

8. The Mis/translation of Jihad Verses in the Holy Quran.

9. Guide for Western journalists covering Islam.

10. ThinkPlace. (2023). Benchmark survey on Australian responses to the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

11. 言必信，行必果.

Paying for the Right to Be Consulted-The Satire of the Nakamal Agreement

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“Not a veto. Not a guarantee. A consultation.”

Jar of artisan sauerkraut with an Australia Pacific map on the label
A jar of artisan sauerkraut featuring an Australia Pacific map blend label

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who has always been fond of cabbages.

I. Introduction: A $344 Million Joke

On 29 June 2026, Australia and Vanuatu signed the Nakamal Agreement — a security and development pact. In return for Vanuatu’s commitment not to allow foreign military bases on its territory, Australia committed approximately US$344 million (A$500 million) over ten years.

The price tag: $344 million.

The return: the right to be consulted — when third parties invest in Vanuatu’s critical infrastructure, Australia will be consulted.

Not a veto. Not a guarantee. A consultation.

Australia is paying $344 million for the privilege of being asked first — and the agreement does not even prevent Vanuatu from continuing to negotiate its own economic agreement with China.

As Prime Minister Albanese put it: “This agreement provides Australia with assurances that no foreign military bases will be established in Vanuatu”.

Assurances? Any agreement can be broken. Any promise can be revoked. And $344 million will not stop China from building roads, offices, and wharves in Vanuatu.

II. What the Agreement Actually Contains

2.1 The Core Terms

· Vanuatu will not allow foreign military bases or military infrastructure on its territory.

· Australia will be Vanuatu’s “principal long-term policing partner.”

· Australia will enhance support in police training, equipment, maritime security, cybersecurity, and intelligence cooperation.

· A “Nakamal Committee” will be established, meeting at least every six months.

2.2 What Was Removed

The final agreement is significantly weaker than earlier drafts. Provisions designed to restrict Chinese investment in critical infrastructure — a “third party clause” — were removed. Vanuatu’s sovereignty concerns delayed the agreement by nearly ten months. Vanuatu now “agrees in principle” to consult Australia — but has not cut off its relationship with China.

2.3 The Chinese Factor

China is Vanuatu’s largest external creditor. It has funded the presidential office complex, the parliament building, roads, and the expansion of the Luganville wharf — once the largest US military base in the South Pacific during WWII. China has also maintained police-to-police links with Vanuatu since 2023, providing drones, patrol boats, and vehicles.

Vanuatu is also negotiating a separate economic agreement with China — the Namele Agreement, which has not yet been made public. Prime Minister Napat said it would be released once it had “Beijing’s approval.” What kind of transparency is that?

III. Who Is Really Benefiting?

3.1 Australian Security Contractors

The agreement’s language on “police training and equipment” opens doors for Australian defence and security companies. Australia has already ordered additional Guardian-class patrol boats for Pacific maritime security. Australian immersive technology company Operator XR has signed an agreement with Thales Australia to expand training and simulation capabilities for defence and law enforcement markets.

3.2 The Consulting Industry

The Australian government is increasingly reliant on external consultants for foreign policy. The Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) is seeking a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Strategy Consultant. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) maintains a Short-Term Technical Adviser pool for rapid deployment of external experts.

This is a self-licking ice-cream: money is spent, reports are written, and more money is spent on consulting firms to evaluate the reports — while ordinary Australians struggle with their own cost-of-living crisis.

IV. The Domestic Crisis Australia Is Ignoring

While Australia plays “regional policeman,” Australians are facing:

· Rents rising 2.5 times faster than wages over five years

· Housing costs up 6.3%

· Electricity prices up 22.5%

· Healthcare premiums up 4.9%

· Insurance up 39%, energy up 38%, rent up 22%

$344 million could have built:

· Thousands of public housing units.

· Hospital beds.

· Cost-of-living relief for families struggling to pay bills.

Instead, it was spent on a non-binding “right to be consulted” — a mini-superpower on a budget.

V. The Historical Irony: Cabbages and Palm Trees

Germany, too, once tried to establish colonies in the Pacific. From 1884 to 1914, German New Guinea was part of the German colonial empire. It collapsed at the outbreak of World War I — Australian forces occupied German New Guinea in 1914.

As history has shown, Pacific islands are not “owned.” They cannot be “controlled.” Empires that try to establish spheres of influence in the Pacific are swallowed by the Pacific itself.

If Australia truly wants to build lasting influence in the region, perhaps it should spend less on “consultation rights” and more on what truly matters — like cabbages. Not as a geopolitical metaphor, but as a basic recognition that Pacific nations are sovereign and know what is best for themselves. Vanuatu is playing both sides. It knows what it is doing. It is extracting the maximum benefit from both Australia and China. That is not betrayal — that is good diplomacy.

VI. Conclusion: The Sauerkraut Lesson

The Nakamal Agreement is an expensive symbol of Australia’s desire to be seen as a Pacific security partner — without the will or resources to pay the real cost. It does not stop China. It does not fix Australia’s domestic crisis. It does not even give Australia real veto power.

It is a self-licking ice-cream: self-satisfying, self-consuming, and ultimately self-defeating.

As a former Australian diplomat in the Pacific put it: Vanuatu “won’t simply abandon its relationship with China. Nor will China abandon its attempts to undermine Australia’s interests.” $344 million buys no influence. No loyalty. No geopolitical reality.

If Australia continues down this path, it may find itself becoming Sauerkraut — pickled, preserved, and forgotten. Like Germany’s Pacific colonial ambitions, reduced to a sour cabbage in the jar of history.

Andrew Klein

References

1. ABC News. (2026, June 29). Australia-Vanuatu Nakamal agreement set to be signed after months of fraught negotiations.

2. AP News. (2026, June 29). A long-awaited Australia-Vanuatu pact blocks China from building a military base.

3. Canberra Times. (2026, June 29). Deal inked with Vanuatu to help parry China in Pacific.

4. Straits Times. (2026, June 29). Australia, Vanuatu sign deal barring foreign military base on Pacific island.

5. Pakistan Today. (2026, June 29). Australia, Vanuatu sign pact blocking foreign military base.

6. The Australian Greens. (2026, February 18). Wages lag behind soaring costs of housing and healthcare.

7. Crawford School of Public Policy. (2026, June 15). Outcome: June 2026.

8. Austal Australia. (2026, June 25). Australian Government orders additional Guardian-class Patrol Boats.

9. Operator XR & Thales Australia. (2026, June 19). MOU to expand training and simulation capabilities.

10. DFAT. (2026). Short-Term Technical Adviser (STTA) Pool 2026.

11. Wikipedia. German New Guinea.