re: michael corby visits schapelle/miles
briter, As with most real-life situations, if you appear to be weak or have weak alliances, those larger/stronger than you will likely see you as easy prey.
In the case of countries, that often translates into population size, size and weaponry of your army(and profile of the population) and miltary alliances.
What I see as a big plus to our current position,is that we have a very strong military and trade alliance with the US,UK etc and are an essential part of the US defence early warning system.
While we are quite strongly aligned with the big dog on the block, I doubt that anyone would consider attempting anything much except for some occasional sabre-rattling.
That seems to me to characterise the occasional noise we hear from and about the Indonesians now and in the past.
We do however, have an extremely large and increasingly valuable resource base that could become to look worth the effort to come and try to take from us if we appear very weak or our allies apear weak.
While I would not lose any sleepless nights worrying about an Indonesian attack on our shores right now, it does make sense to maintain our readiness and alliances so that it makes more sense to buy our commodities rather that attempt to take them from our small population.
Of course there are those people who think that we do not need military and trade alliances with countries such as the US to give us a firm base of security and prosperity.
As you can probably tell, I am not one of those people.
