To put the choice at its starkest: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is more valuable to Australia than is our relationship with India.

Diplomacy is devoted to avoiding such one-dimensional, zero-sum decisions. The aim is always to straddle and avoid choosing. Yet Foreign Minister Stephen Smith's visit to India this week is going to confront him with the costs involved in a complex set of issues stated in that blunt formula – India versus the NPT. Straddling always carries the risk of close contact with the barbed-wire fence. And having a foot on both sides is the stance Australia has adopted by endorsing the US-India deal in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, while maintaining the NPT-based policy of not selling uranium to India.

The Federal Opposition says the Rudd Government has been 'humiliated into supporting the US-India agreement' and should move on to approve uranium sales. To this claim of humiliation, Greg Sheridan adds the charge of mental instability.

Official Australian policy is that while it supports the deal and will engage in nuclear technology trade with India, it won’t supply uranium to the world’s biggest democracy because New Delhi is not a signatory to the NPT. This contradiction is, of course, madness.

Madness! Why such intemperate language from a chap who, in person, is both charming and cheerful? The answer is that, as a Pooh-Bay of Punditry, Greg knows that a columnist who avoids stating an opinion will suffer abhorrence in the same way nature deals with a vacuum. (I offer the first sentence of my column as a proof of this rule.) More...

In talking with China about investment, Australia wants to reverse the punch line of the giant gorilla joke:

Q: Where does a 500lb gorilla sit?

A: Anywhere it damn well wants!

With its administration of foreign investment guidelines, Australia is trying to tell China it must ask politely, then wait a long time before it might be given permission to sit.

This is shaping as a fascinating test of the Rudd Government’s ability to manage Asia’s new giant. So far, Canberra is not handling the test too well, according to two of Australia’s best in the Asia economic relationship business, More...

Beyond the golf versus swimming choice, former public servants and military officers can be divided into those who still hear the ring of the Minister’s phone call and those who don’t. Some can never abandon the closed-mouth habits of circumspection bred deep by years of service. Always, the old habits kick in for fear of that blast heralded by the ring from the Minister’s domain or the summons to the Secretary’s office.

Others, of course, realise they are free and start using their new freedom. It looks to be a question of character triumphing over habit.

My posts on the future of the Australian Army and Canberra leaks turned my thoughts to what appears to be an emerging trend — the number of ex-military officers embracing their freedom. The military tradition is to salute and shut up. The bookshelf shows that some now salute for the last time, then turn on their laptop. More...

Leaks can have many purposes – grudge, retribution, trial balloon, ego. Leaks are the currency of the political black market. And in Australia’s Parliament building, it’s a market everybody plays. Greg Terrill put it well in his book on secrecy and openness in Australian government: 'Leaks separate information from attribution. A useful tool, they are endemic to governments worldwide. They are the black market of official communication.'

The New York Times columnist James Reston spoke for all journalists when he observed that 'government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.' Forgive the journalistic self-interest when I assert that leaks are the sign of a properly-functioning polity. Leaks are a normal and proper part of the system, not some scandalous departure from the path of goodness and light.

When Ministers and their minders leak, it is a normal part of the spin cycle. That is why you so often read front page reports of what Cabinet has just decided. Often the 30-year law for release of secret Cabinet material is actually the three minute walk – the time it takes to get from the executive wing of Parliament to the press gallery. The normal operation of the black market in Parliament sees information as a tradeable commodity, used as part of the eternal struggle over politics and power. Call these insider or controlled leaks – the government using the black market to serve its own purposes.

This cosy system hits trouble when the leaks are uncontrolled – directed at the government, rather than used by the government. More...

The Rudd Government may have hit the ground reviewing (great line, that) but the national security results are starting to chug through the pipeline. Ric Smith’s review of Homeland Security is done, as is most of the detail of the National Security Statement with the creation of a new National Security supremo. The release of all this awaits the convenience of the Prime Minister.

Kevin Rudd shares with John Howard an intense focus on the news cycle and a determination to control the timing and tempo of announcements. In the age of spin, then, it’s nice to see Army dancing to its own deep organisational rhythms. Army has cogitated long and hard on the restructuring of its higher command and control structures. When the generals decide on the biggest shakeup at the top of the khaki castle in more than three decades, they do it when they’re good and ready.

So it was that the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, unveiled the Adaptive Army, a series of changes to the Functional Command structure that will take three years to implement. More...

The Pacific Way is waning slowly into the waves. By even threatening to expel Fiji from the Pacific Islands Forum, the annual leaders’ summit has effectively read the last rites over the traditional Forum way of doing business. It’s ironic that Fiji, the country which did most to call into existence the amorphous Pacific Way, is the country now causing it to unravel.

The Pacific Way shares several characteristics with the ASEAN Way. Both Ways (of doing things) are used by governing elites to focus on conversation and consensus, respect for sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of neighbours. And both Ways are declining in usefulness as they crash against hard cases: Burma for ASEAN and Fiji for the Forum. Moral persuasion loses its force when a member state refuses to be persuaded, or even agree on the moral basis of the argument. More...