OxBlog

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

# Posted 6:05 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THAT'S NOT A KNIFE. Australian PM John Howard has announced that the UN Charter should be amended to recognize the legitimacy of preemptive attacks against terrorists. Unsurprisingly, Australia's neighbors have begun to accuse Howard of being a unilateralist. While Crocodile Dundee may not be the ideal representative of Australian political culture, I think that no one should be surprised by the "cowboy side" of Australian foreign policy. When Dundee pulled that massive knife and scared off a NY mugger, that was preemption. Britian has a similar side to it's personality as well. While commentators have often fallen into the habit of describing America vs. its allies on issues of war and peace, the fact is that the real divide is between the English-speaking democracies and the rest. The language divide does not correlate exactly with the current political divide, but it does reflect a cultural difference that has significant political implications.
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