Weekend Reading & Selected Links
Happy weekend! Here are some links to things I've been reading that you might also enjoy:
- My new podcast conversation, with retired Australian diplomat Richard Butler. At the bottom of this email, I've reprinted five excerpts from the conversation.
- 'What’s wrong with Britain’s economy?', transcript of a new FT interview of Sam Bowman.
- 'A new nuclear arms race is beginning. It will be far more dangerous than the last one', a recent article by Jessica Mathews.
- Warren Buffett's latest letter.
- 'The aim of maximising happiness is doomed to fail as a public policy', a new Substack essay by Lionel Page.
- 'Do Ten Times as Much': advice from Bryan Caplan.
- If you'd like to support my interview research, you can get access to my research notes for the Richard Butler interview (and future interviews) here.
Have a great weekend,
Joe
Excerpts from my podcast with Richard Butler
1. On Sergey Lavrov
RICHARD BUTLER: The last conversation I had with Sergey Lavrov—today, Putin's foreign minister; Sergey and I go back 40 years or so; we've known each other a long time—when he was a young diplomat, was in that reception room upstairs at the UN, and we'd come from a Security Council meeting where he and I had a fight inside that meeting. This is when I was in charge of the disarmament of Iraq.
And he accused me of misleading the council—indeed of lying. And I fought back and said that is simply untrue.
And he knew it was untrue. He wasn't getting what he wanted from me by way of a report to the council.
And we're upstairs at this reception. And there he was, smoking his inevitable Marlboro and drinking a very fat whiskey.
And he said, “Oh, Richard, how are you? You alright?”
And I said, “No, I'm pissed off. What happened down there in that council room... was completely…” (This was in the private session of the council, not in the public one.) “...it was completely unwarranted. I mean, I know what you're doing, but for goodness sake.”
He said, “Oh, Richard, Richard, come on. You're an adult. It's politics.”
I said, “I know it is, and I'm complaining about it. I don't like your politics.”
He said, “Oh, well, have a drink.”
2. On the diplomatic struggle to permanently extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, at the UN General Assembly in 1995
RICHARD BUTLER: ...The basic political deal to [permanently extend the NPT] was done around my dining table. I asked people to come for dinner with representatives of each of the main elements of opinion or groups such as Egypt—not Israel—to come have dinner and see if we could reach agreement on it. And we did. The night before the conference was to close. And this agreement was adopted the next day.
JOSEPH WALKER: I just want to dwell on this story for a moment. You got everyone to your apartment at I think at 2 Beekman Place in New York.
BUTLER: That's right.
WALKER: And I think you might have started a bit after 9pm, I read. Finished at about 2am.
BUTLER: Yes, correct. I remember those times. Yes.
WALKER: And I think you had about sixteen different parties there at your apartment.
BUTLER: I said about twelve, didn't I? Yeah, it was... Yeah, sixteen would be right.
WALKER: Something like that. I'm just curious how this—as the person, I guess, chairing that conversation, if you will—I'm curious how you manage that at a practical level. Because I know you had many of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, which principally includes countries from Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, South America. You also had the Iranians there. Did everyone speak fluent English or were there interpreters as well?
BUTLER: Yeah, I was in the chair because it was in my house. The chair, the president of the conference, was Jayantha Dhanapala. He was one of those present. Everything had to go through him in the end.
But I, in consultation with others, selected who should be asked and very carefully, in the manner that you've just suggested: key developing country or non-aligned country representatives; key, what shall we say, Middle Eastern representatives; permanent members of Security Council, not all of them present, but, you know, representatives of, say, the Russian point of view. It was a balanced group.
And what we did was ate and talked and drank. And it took as long as it took, which was many hours, as you pointed out. I think it was 2am by the time we finished. But all in English. No other staff present.
WALKER: So not even interpreters. Everyone spoke English?
BUTLER: No. All in English. And done at a studied, careful pace, hearing everyone's objections and arguments. And I think some amendments to the approach were made at what these documents should cover and what above all their status... What force would they have? They weren't treaty documents… Would anything be signed? Not really. It was all word of mouth, gentleperson's agreement.
And it was done and we had to rely on it holding overnight. I think it was later in the afternoon the next day that the conference adopted the review and extension documents.
Jayantha Dhanapala was under enormous pressure. I remember him asking me to see him urgently at one stage in a back room behind the General Assembly hall where he, you know, he had tears in his eyes. He was just… Tears not of sorrow, but of frustration at all the inward missiles that were hitting him on what to do and what not to do and so on. And I sat with him for a while and we talked it through and agreed that this could be done. Just stay the course, we'll get there. And we did, to his great credit.
3. Bob Hawke: "You're not to upset the Americans"
JOSEPH WALKER: You mentioned Bob Hawke might have had an unexpected reaction to your appointment [as Ambassador for Disarmament] by Bill Hayden?
RICHARD BUTLER: ... Hayden was set to become Prime Minister, but Hawke made a move on him. And Hayden was advised by John Button, among other senior ministers, that he probably should move aside and give it to Hawke. And in breathtakingly short time, Hawke was made Prime Minister.
Now, Hawke quite properly appointed Bill Hayden Foreign Minister of Australia. But obviously a lot of ill will had existed between them. And Bill went and gave the Evatt Memorial Lecture in Adelaide a few weeks or a month or so after his appointment. And in that lecture—he hadn't told Hawke in advance—he said that he would create the Office of Ambassador for Disarmament and he'd name me to it because of my background in this field.
And I was immediately brought home...
I was in Europe at the time, at the OECD mission. When I returned to Australia... Hawke, Prime Minister, asked to see me pretty promptly.
So there I was in his office in Parliament, the old Parliament House, Canberra, in the presence of the great man sitting behind his desk, looking very sternly at me. And it was brief, but he said straight away—I don't think I’ll break too many confidences, this is some time ago and it's past history, very much so… And I don't think I've said this elsewhere, so there you go.
He began the conversation by saying to me, "Hayden didn't consult me on your appointment." I'm mimicking his broad Australian accent.
WALKER: It's a good impression.
BUTLER: I said, "I'm sorry to hear that."
He said, "And I don't know if it's the right thing or not, but you're in the job. And so I'm going to tell you how you have to do it." And he then gave me… and I won't go into detail of this because that would be improper…
WALKER: You're allowed to swear on this podcast.
BUTLER: No. Do you think the Prime Minister of Australia was a man who swore?
WALKER: Bob Hawke may have been the exception.
BUTLER: No, he wasn't.
There was a bit of swearing. But he basically had one point to make to me: that whatever you do in this job—and yes, disarmament is important and so on, and you know, the party is against nuclear weapons, it's all that sort of thing—but you're not to upset the Americans. Just be careful in however you proceed with this, you don't upset the Americans.
And I steeled myself, summoned up vestigial courage, whatever, and I said, "Prime Minister, that may be difficult."
He said, "What?"
I said, "Prime Minister, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and existing arrangements, they are obliged—as are the Russians and the French and the British, the Chinese—to reduce their number of nuclear weapons. And this job is called disarmament. And I will be out there taking part in meetings and seeking to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. And they will very likely object to this activity. But that's surely okay. I mean, it's something we want to happen and if they object to it, well we’ll discuss it.”
“No, no, no,” he just said to me, “I'm telling you, don't you”—swear, swear, swear— “do anything to upset the Americans.”
4. When Australia nearly acquired nuclear weapons
WALKER: I'd like to start in the period between 1968 and 1970 because—and this came as a shock to me when I was researching for this conversation—for all of Australia's storied efforts in service of the cause of the elimination of nuclear weapons from the world, we refused to sign the NPT for two years under John Gorton's government. He sat on the signature of the treaty from 1968 to 1970. In fact, Australia was the second-last country to sign the treaty before it came into force in 1970.
And the reason Australia didn't want to sign the treaty was primarily to keep the option open of developing its own nuclear arsenal.
So, I want to start here, both because it's historically interesting, but also because I think it's a useful allegory for non-proliferation more broadly...
Tell me what you remember of the debate about nuclear weapons within the Australian government in the late '60s. And how plausible was it that Australia might actually have gone ahead with building nuclear weapons of its own?
BUTLER: What an interesting question. It was a very difficult time and I think in the end Australia made the right choice. But as you point out, the choice to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty came late and that caught very negative attention in the world of states interested in controlling the spread of nuclear weapons. We weren't supposed to be that kind of country.
So your question is right on point: How was that possible? Was it John Gorton or what was going on? And I think there's a very simple answer, which is that the Australian Atomic Energy Commission was substantially in the control of a person called Philip Baxter. In fact, in the old days when old titles were still in currency, he was Sir Philip Baxter. He had worked as a young scientist in the Manhattan Project that developed the nuclear weapons in the United States.
There were four or five Australian scientists on that project. Another famous one was Sir Ernest Titterton. But Baxter wasn't actually an Australian, he was from the United Kingdom—I’m not even sure that he was Welsh, but he was from the United Kingdom. And he came to Australia and found his way into important jobs and became chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. And he got the ear of John Gorton.
It was all around Jervis Bay: the idea was that we would build a reactor in Jervis Bay where we would make weapons-grade fissionable material and then, of course, make nuclear weapons. Baxter's outlook was that we white folk—sorry if that sounds rough, but he was that kind of fellow—we white folk have a right to develop the weapons that we need to keep the hordes away from harming us. You could say that there are some echoes of that today. But anyway, that's how it was then.
He got Gorton's attention. And there was a very severe argument in Canberra, in the bureaucracy, in the department that I then worked for, in the Atomic Energy Commission, of course, in the defence community about whether or not we should move towards getting nuclear weapons.
The argument in the end came down to joining where the whole world was going, which was to establish this truly important treaty that was designed to put an end to the development of nuclear weapons and of course stop their proliferation.
As you point out, President Kennedy had predicted that we faced a pretty disastrous world unless we did a treaty such as this one.
And in the end we joined it, but we entered reservations.
WALKER: Oh really?
BUTLER: We were one of the only states in joining it that expressed—I can't even remember the weasel words that were used to express this reservation—”in extremis we might want to withdraw”. The treaty has in it a withdrawal clause for any member of the treaty if they felt their supreme national interests justified that. We came in, but we had to sort of make this little reservation, I guess a sop for the right wing of the Liberal Party—a sop for Philip Baxter, I'm not sure.
WALKER: I think you wrote an article for The Bulletin in maybe the late '60s where you compared Philip Baxter to Dr. Strangelove.
BUTLER: Yes. And I don't know how I escaped punishment for that. I have no idea how I got away with that. But I remember being deeply upset the day I heard in the department in Canberra that Gorton's decision initially was that we would not sign that treaty. I couldn't believe it. And, yes, I hit the typewriter—as it probably was then, a typewriter in those days, but that's how old I am. But, yeah, I submitted a piece to the Bulletin and God bless them, they published it. And I thought, well, I can kiss my career goodbye. But I thought it was so important to stand up and be counted on this and point out where the influence was coming from, namely Baxter. And, as I say, I don't know to this day how I got away with it.
WALKER: When I was preparing for this conversation, someone drew to my attention these cables that Dean Rusk, the then US Secretary of State, sent back to Washington after he met with Gorton in 1968. And they're pretty extraordinary. I've got the main one here.
Rusk says:
"Gorton is deeply concerned about giving up the nuclear option for a period as long as twenty-five years when he cannot know how the situation will develop in the area. He sounded almost like de Gaulle in saying that Australia could not rely upon the United States for nuclear weapons under ANZUS in the event of nuclear blackmail or attack on Australia."
And then he goes on:
"I will not recount what I said to him but I opened up all stops."
BUTLER: How interesting.
WALKER: These were declassified by the National Security Archive.
BUTLER: How very interesting. I must say that's perhaps the only issue on which I might have found myself in agreement with John Gorton. I don't think we could then—or can now—rely upon... And why should we—we'll get into this, I'm sure, in this wonderful conversation—but why should we rely upon a nuclear weapon state to protect us? And why do we think that they would do that when a decision to protect us with the threat of use of nuclear weapons simply attracts retaliation to them? Anyway, interesting declassified cable you've got there.
WALKER: Yeah. I want to come back to the possibility of nuclear breakouts and horizontal proliferation in the final part of our conversation. But that Australian anecdote was just fascinating because it shows how—before the NPT—how real the possibility of nuclear breakouts were, if even Australia was considering obtaining the bomb.
BUTLER: I think you've made a good point and I want to emphasise the possibility that we would have accepted Baxter's advice and started a nuclear weapons program was—I want to emphasize this—by no means small. It was line-ball that we got to the decision that we did. The influence of Baxter and other sources in the Australian bureaucracy towards us becoming a nuclear weapons state was very strong.
5. On working as Chief of Staff to former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam
RICHARD BUTLER: ... Your writing had to be with crystal clarity. He was absolutely fastidious about expression in writing and orally, in what you said or sought to project about a given thing. A precision in working, an attachment to the facts.
Yeah. I mean, those are the two most important things I learned, and I had to learn those quickly and more thoroughly than I'd ever known them before. And it's never left me.
And take risks, like the risk I took on CTBT. Take risks. If something is right, take the risk that might get it done. As against saying it's too hard.
Gough didn't do "too hard". Not very often. It was always: let's get it done by assembling the data, correct analysis, and then take a decision. And certainly don't shrink from something. If it's right, don't shrink from it because it's hard.
JOSEPH WALKER: It's interesting, these lessons are not intellectually difficult to comprehend, but it feels like you don't really internalize them deeply and viscerally until you actually work alongside someone like that. And you can kind of just see the standard they set for what good work looks like. You can see that intensity. You don't get that through reading about it. You really have to work with them...
BUTLER: No, and you have to be thrown out of the office from time to time. You know, “Get out of here.”
WALKER: Did that happen to you?
BUTLER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. “Get out of here. This is ridiculous. Come back when you've got the facts.” Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
And yeah, we had a couple of fights about things.
I'll tell you this one. I know stories are interesting to people, but I don't want to tell any... There are lots and lots of stories I could tell about Gough, which are naughty and hilarious. I don't mean naughty morally, but I mean wicked and wicked sense of humor. His sense of humor had no equal. And some of them are already out there in the literature and some of them involve four letter words and some...
But I'll tell you a story about him and me, which was a kind of turning-point story.
About three or four months after I joined him, there was something involving a Foreign Affairs matter and he didn't approve of my advice on it in some way. I don't remember exactly what it was, but he got stuck into me and said, you know, "You bastards from Foreign Affairs, you all take so much notice of that stinking department. You’ll do whatever they say, you know, you live in this diplomatic world of courtesy and graces. It's just rubbish." I mean, you know, "Get out of here. I'm not going to go to that reception or whatever it is. It's just a waste of my time." And he said something like, "You still haven't shed your Foreign Affairs attitudes. It's sick." And, you know, "Out of my office."
So I went... My office was adjoining his. There was a side door. I went through the side door into my office and I thought, this is serious. He can't really think that about me, so I'm going to have this out.
So after about 10 minutes, I knocked on the door and walked in.
He looked up and said, "Yes, what is it?"
And I said to him, "Don't you ever talk to me like that again."
And he nearly fell off his chair.
He looked at me. Just blinked and looked at me, and I said, "I gave up everything to serve you. Everything. I have no future beyond this. But we're going to get this job done, restore Australian democracy, and we're going to do it together. And don't you ever accuse me of having some kind of divided loyalty. My loyalty is to you." And I walked out.
He came into my office through that side door four minutes later and said, "Comrade, I'm truly sorry. You are right."
I said, "Thank you, Gough."
And that happened. And to me, that shows the quality of the man. His temperament. But his quality... he was prepared to say, “Well, I screwed up there. I made a mistake there.”