A 'messy' world requires rhetorical care

Indeed.

There's a certain idiocy in simply repeating old narratives and tropes. Sure they might have served politicians and nationalists well for a couple of hundred years, but what about the rest of us? We get war, division, and big tax bills for all 'the toys' testosterone driven defence departments want..

Or we could try dialogue, cultural respect, sovereign respect, and actually getting on with solving some planetary problems which will clearly require global cooperation..

Make no mistake, the 21st century is no time to tolerate 'territory and treasure' wars like Putin has embarked on.. But as Katherine points out, using that spectre as the basis to ramp up fictional rhetoric based on past historical themes is simply political polemics, not facts.

Australia, in particular, should really keep its rhetoric to a minimum. It is entirely commercially reliant on China, entirely security apparatus reliant on the US, and has a defence capability which would have a hard time stopping an invasion of penguins from Antarctica..

buggered if I know 😛