Australia - you're standing in it
Everyone needs to hand in their made in China or Taiwan phones .
I don’t know, I think that reasoning leads to us having to abandoned everything with any kind of electronics or semiconductor components and anything with internet connectivity - phones, computers, pads, cars, home security, TVs, everything.
For instance pretty well all iPhones are assembled in China and Apple is TSMC’s biggest client..
The horse has already bolted there.
gsco wrote:I don’t know, I think that reasoning leads to us having to abandoned everything with any kind of electronics or semiconductor components and anything with internet connectivity - phones, computers, pads, cars, home security, TVs, everything.
For instance pretty well all iPhones are assembled in China and Apple is TSMC’s biggest client..
The horse has already bolted there.
Yeah , I wasn’t serious, surprised dutton hasn’t raised concerns and asking for more details.
Watched a story yesterday on TV where a guy proved Chinese built cars not only use their computer systems to report all usage, data input and travel data back to China , but can actually send conversations within the vehicle as well to a third party and it’s a function that can’t be turned off….this includes brands we thought were not Chinese like MG and Volvo….creepy cars.
Wahahaha ;)
You watched a story on tv…
Some guy ‘proved’ something ;)
And it’s now a flopti fact ;);)
Same principle as the god surveillance concept - same assumption at play -someone said some shit so it must be true (proven)…
Better start praying it’s not !
Oh wait… There are also bugs in Chinese food ;) Don’t eat rice or noodles !
- Creepy china phobia ;)
I remember that story Optimist
https://engineersforum.com.ng/2019/12/27/hacker-reveals-how-car-industry...
I don't think they'd get much "intelligence" from conversations in my car.
But I wouldn't own one of those Chinese shitboxes if you gave it to me. I know a few people who've had some bad runs with them, mainly the Great Wall cars.
Apparently Chinese car sales in Oz are up to about 10% of the market , from less than 1% five years ago.
That article is a 3yr old story about a General Motors vehicle from the US.
Nothing about China.
It’s relevant to the auto manufacturing industry across the board - GM is now 50% Chinese owned, though.
So… as usual, everyone is doing it OR we are trying to call china out on something that we do ourselves ;)
China Built
Tesla 3 made in Shanghai and an MG SUV leading the charge, along with Volvos and a BMW with a six-figure price tag.
A Gold Coast bloke Tim Rigby, recently won a QCAT case over a Chinese lemon from LDV utes. The company claimed the vehicle was 'unsuited for use in coastal areas'.
This is a clip about it.
I can assure you the story was a day or two ago on sbs or sky…weirded me out that cars can be that insecure…..perhaps sing ….I like Chinese …I like Chinese ..they come from a long way overseas but they’re wise and they’re witty and they’re ready to please….when your in your Chinese made car…then you won’t get in the shit… ha ha.
.
Cheers for finding that Udo and tubeshooters video was a crack up ha.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/labor-superannuation-rules-shot...
So much for a transparent labor party hey.
The dismal science.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-11/inflation-price-gauging-are-busie...
Just watching NBN news and here’s labor’s Chris Bowen flogging a $90,000 chinese LDV electric dual cab 4 x4 ute . He looked so impressed with himself….hope everyone was listening including the ute…nice to see he is so in touch with reality….can’t wait to buy one….scary eh.
Optimist wrote:Just watching NBN news and here’s labor’s Chris Bowen flogging a $90,000 chinese LDV electric dual cab 4 x4 ute . He looked so impressed with himself….hope everyone was listening including the ute…nice to see he is so in touch with reality….can’t wait to buy one….scary eh.
Yeah, this stuff is pretty crazy. Most I paid for the car is $22k. I always drive 2nd hand, I could afford something new but I find it crazy to spend that much. There’s no way EV will take over with the current price point.
Great video tubeshooter! With the horn music it almost feels like the Mexican Hoon Cartel is making the vid.
His first video:
The most Australian thing ever made.
Haha VJ. Hes got some classic vids.
Long live the AU.
Haha, it's unkillable. MIL had one from new and it was just so good. The intech motor will do 500,000 easy, 1,000,000 if you try, so much better for the world than upgrading every 3 years. The styling means no one will steal it :)
$90K for a Chinese dual cab ute? Yeah, sounds exy, but all those dual cab utes go for a bomb these days. I’m pretty sure the main reason so many are around is that the tradies write them all off for tax in the first year. Basically a 30% plus discount for them right off the top.
Had a rental car for 3 weeks recently after my car was getting repaired. They gave me an MG mid size SUV, sort of comparable to my current car.
My impression? Goes sort of well, but it’s a shitbox. Door trims were glued on with what looked like blutack. Design was a large part on the side of crap, ‘climate control’ was hopeless, steering wheel buttons didn’t make much sense and the screen, which was a reasonable size, was so badly designed and non-intuitive, plus of course the android app didn’t work properly but at least Bluetooth worked.
Full tank, which I think was in the 40 litre range, estimated I would get 400 km and that was with ‘hybrid’ technology. My current car, non-hybrid, at 50 litres gives me 600 kms driving range.
Car was about the same size externally but had lots less space internally, and for the life of me I don’t think it came with a spare! Not even one of those wind up dinky tyres. Also the blinkers and wipers were on the euro side, and who likes that?
Can’t recommend them. Korean or Japanese for me. :-)
This is the debate Australia needs to be having.
Seems clear that the Labor party has woken up to the problem and is trying to find a way to manage it, although they're currently flip flopping back and forth: https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/us-is-preparing-a...
We need to regain our independence - economically, politically, militarily - from the US.
And this is the full statement by John Lander:
John Lander wrote:The United States is not preparing to go to war against China. The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China.
Thank you for inviting me to address the Salon. I am greatly honoured and somewhat daunted, given the long list of eminent scholars, analysts and writers who have preceded me.
I am not a “writer”, although I have written a lot during my thirty-year diplomatic career, much of it in relation to China. None of it published and most of it buried in government archives. All I can bring to the table is my personal interpretation of current developments regarding US and China, in the light of my past experience.
One of your previous speakers, Patrick Lawrence, advocated putting the main point first. So here goes:
The United States is not preparing to go to war against China.
The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China.
The ANZUS Treaty
A look at the ANZUS Treaty and the way it has been manipulated over time will explain why I have come to this conclusion.
Originally defensive in concept, the ANZUS Treaty was seen by Australia from its very beginning as a means to “achieve the acceptance by the USA of responsibility in SE Asia” (Percy Spender) to shield Australia from perceived antagonistic forces in its region. It has, however, developed into an instrument for the furtherance of US ability to prosecute war globally – previously in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently against Russia and potentially against China.
The ANZUS Treaty, usually referred to in reverential tones as “The Alliance”, has been elevated to an almost religious article of faith, against which any demur is treated as heresy amounting to treachery. Out of anxiety to cement the US into protection of Australia, the Alliance has been invoked as justification for Australia’s participation in almost every American military adventure – or misadventure – since WW II.
Unlike NATO or the Defence Treaty with Japan, the ANZUS treaty actually provides no guarantee of protection, merely assurances to consult on appropriated means of support in the event that Australia should come under attack.
On the other hand, the Alliance has facilitated the steady growth of American presence in Australia, to the point that it pervades every aspect of Australian political, economic, financial, social and cultural life. Australians fret about China “buying up the country”, but American investment is ten times the size.
They are unaware or uncaring that almost every major Australian company across the resources, food, retail, mass media, entertainment, banking and finance sectors has majority American ownership. Right now US corporations eclipse everyone else in their ability to influence our politics through their investment in Australian stocks.
The transfer of Australian assets to American ownership has continued unabated: In the second half of 2021 then Treasurer Josh Frydenberg approved the transfer of $130 billion of Australian assets to foreign private equity funds, benefiting Goldman Sachs who facilitated the transactions, by multimillions of dollars. Josh Frydenberg now is employed by Goldman Sachs:
Sydney Airport – Macquarie Bank led by a NY investment banker
AusNet (electricity infrastructure) $18 billion takeover by Brookfield – NY via Canada
SparkInfrastructure (electricity) $5.2 billion takeover by American interests
AfterPay financial transaction system $39 billion takeover
Healthscope, second-biggest private hospitals group (72 Hospitals) taken over by Brookfield and now controlled in the Cayman Islands.
The USA and the UK between them represent nearly half of all foreign investment. China plus Hong Kong represents 4.2%. The 4 big “Aussie” banks are dependent on foreign capital which dictate local banks’ policies and operations.Defence and military weapons manufacturing industries in Australia are now largely owned by US weapons corporations – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Thales, NorthropGrumman. The deep integration of Australia’s defence industries and economy into the US military-industrial complex greatly influences Australia’s foreign/defence policies.
That, plus US capture of Australia’s intelligence and policy apparatus through the “Five Eyes” network and ASPI (which has lobbyists from American arms manufacturers on a Board headed by an operative trained by the CIA) means that the US is able to swing Australian policy to support America in almost all its endeavours.
Despite the fact that it contains no guarantee of US protection of Australia, the Treaty and further arrangements under its auspices, such as the 2014 Force Posture Agreement and now AUKUS, have greatly facilitated US war preparation in Australia. This has accelerated exponentially in the past few years. The US now describes Australia as the most important base for the projection of US power in the Indo-Pacific.
Indicators of war preparations
* 2,500 US marines stationed in Darwin practicing for war with the Australian Defence Forces, soon to include the Japanese Defence Forces
* Establishment of a regional HQ for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Darwin
* Lengthening the RAAF aircraft runways in Northern Territory at our expense for servicing US fighters and bombers
* Proposed stationing of 6 nuclear weapons-capable B52 Bombers at RAAF Tindal in NT
* Construction of massive fuel and maintenance facilities in Darwin NT for US aircraft
* Proposed acquisition of eight nuclear-propelled submarines at the cost of $170 billion for hunter-killer operations in the Taiwan Strait
* Construction, at the cost of $10 billion, of a deep water port on Australia’s east coast for US and UK nuclear powered and nuclear missile-carrying submarines
* The long-established satellite communications station known as Pine Gap in central Australia has recently, and is still being, expanded and upgraded. It is key to the command and control of US forces in the Indo-Pacific (and even as far afield as Ukraine)
The Government and right wing anti-China analysts and commentators, whose opinions dominate main stream media, accept the Defence Minister’s contention that this militarisation enhances Australia’s sovereignty by strengthening the range and lethality of Australia’s high-end war-fighting capability to provide a credible deterrent to a potential aggressor.
Many analysts and commentators outside the governing elite, including myself, argue that these arrangements effectively cede Australian sovereignty to America. This is especially because of the provisions of the Force Posture Agreement of 2014, entered into under the auspices of ANZUS.
I understand that a paper has been circulated to the Committee, expounding the details of the FPA, so in summary, it gives unimpeded access, exclusive control and use of agreed facilities and areas to US personnel, aircraft, ships and vehicles and gives Australia absolutely no say at all in how, when where and why they are to be used.
All Australian analysts, whether sympathetic or antipathetic to China, agree on one point. That is, that if the US goes to war against China over the status of Taiwan, or any other issue of contention, Australia will inevitably be involved.
The Threat
All these preparations are justified by the false premise that China presents a military threat. China has not invaded anywhere. It has never proposed use of force against other countries. It has enshrined in its Constitution the ‘Three No’s – No military alliances; No military bases; No use, or threat to use, military force. China has, however, reserved the right to use force to prevent secession by Taiwan.
It has recently rapidly increased its defence capability in response to the fearsome US naval presence and war-fighting exercises just off its coastline. Its defence budget is one third that of the US and the bases that it has constructed in the South China Sea pale into insignificance compared to the hundreds of bases that the US has ranged all around China.
So, if China is not a military threat, why is it designated as the primary systemic threat of the collective West, led by the US? The answer lies in the word “systemic”. China has expressed a determination to revamp the global financial system to make it fairer for developing countries. Kissinger is reputed to have said: “If you control money, you control the world”. The US currently controls world finance and China (with Russia) is out to change that.
The US, which played the leading part in the establishment of the post-World War II institutions, has become a leading revisionist, abandoning the UN for “coalitions of the willing”. The US has declined to join important Conventions like those on the Law of the Sea and on Climate. It has refused to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and has exempted itself from the Genocide Convention. It has played a leading part in the weakening of the World Trade Organisation by imposing trade restrictions on other countries, while not agreeing to new appointments to the WTO’s appellate tribunal, so preventing that body from functioning.
China is the second-largest (or by some calculations, the largest) economy in the world. It is the major trading partner of over 100 countries, mainly in the global south, but including Australia and a number of other Western countries. Hence China has the clout to undermine the “international rules-based order” set up by, and for the benefit of, the West.
China has already established an alternative to the Anglo-American international financial transaction system: – the Cross-border Interbank Payments System CIPS, (in which, ironically a number of Western banks are shareholders). In collaboration with Russia and within the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa) China is creating an alternative to the almighty dollar as the preferred currency for trade and for national reserve holdings.
It seems that the US has concluded that, since it can’t constrain China economically, it will have to get it bogged down in a long-drawn-out war to hinder its economic growth and hamper its infrastructure development cooperation with other countries. On 25 March 2021 President Biden vowed to prevent China from overtaking the US as the most powerful country in the world – “not on my watch” he said.
Nevertheless, the latest CSIS computer modelling, like previous modelling by the Rand Corporation, indicates that all involved in a Sino-US war would lose.
Proxy War
All of these analyses overlook one significant point. US determination to pursue the Wolfowitz doctrine of preventing the rise of any power that could challenge US global supremacy (neither Russia, nor Europe, nor China) has not diminished, but has morphed into a strategy of fighting its adversaries by proxy.
This has been clearly demonstrated by the war in Ukraine. A White House press briefing on 25 January 2022, before the Russian intervention, stated that “the US, in concert with its European partners, will weaken Russia to the point where it can exercise no influence on the international stage”.
Political leaders from Biden, through Pelosi and on to Members of Congress have told Ukraine that “your war is our war and we are in it for as long as it takes”. Congressman Adam Schiff put it bluntly that “we support Ukraine… to fight Russia over there, so that we don’t have to fight it over here”.
In the case of China, defined in the NDS as the principal threat to the US, the proxy of choice is clearly Taiwan. The strategy envisages:
• a world-wide media campaign (going on for several years already) to portray China as the aggressor;
• goading China into taking military action to prevent Taiwan’s secession;
• leaving Taiwan to conduct its own defence, with constant resupply of arms and equipment from the US, at great profit to the military/industrial complex;
• sustaining Taiwan sufficiently to keep China ‘bogged down’, thus hampering its economic development and its infrastructure cooperation with other countries;
• avoiding direct military engagement, in order to maintain the full capacity of US forces, while China’s would be significantly depleted; Although Biden has publicly re-affirmed adherence to the ‘One China’ principle, the US has been goading China by;
• stationing the bulk its naval power off the coast of China;
• ‘freedom of navigation’ and combat exercises in the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits;
• visits by senior US officials using US military aircraft;
• creation of a putative ‘Air Defence Identification Zone’ (ADIZ) extending well over mainland territory and then alleging Chinese violation of it;
• secretly providing military training personnel (whilst denying it);
• including Taiwan in the Summit for Democracy (9-10 December 2021), implying it is a separate country;
Many Australian politicians, (although not the present government), joined in goading China, by encouraging Taiwan to consider the possibility of declaring independence, which would trigger military action by China.
If Australia were to make good on its promise to ‘save Taiwan’, it would be devastated:
• The Australian navy would be obliterated, given the disparity between China’s and Australia’s forces;
* command/control centres (and possibly cities) in Australia could be wiped out by Chinese missiles. Australia has no anti-missile defence;
• To preserve its own assets, and to forestall the descent into nuclear conflict, the US would not engage directly in defence of Australia;
• US ‘support’ would be through massive arms sales to replace our losses – just as in Ukraine – at further profit to the US military/industrial complex;
• ASEAN is unlikely to support Australia. It has renewed and up-graded its Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with China. Each member country has infrastructure projects under China’s BRI, which they would not want to jeopardise in a ‘no-win war’;
• Support from India is unlikely, despite its membership of the Quad – which is nothing more than a consultative dialogue. India has security commitments to China under the SCO and gets its arms from Russia, which has a “better than treaty” relationship with China.
• Australia relies heavily on China for many daily necessities. In a war, deliveries from China would be severely disrupted.
Australians generally are more than happy for the material benefits of a trading relationship with China, which constitutes more than one third of Australia’s export earnings. But, any attempt by China to improve Australians’ understanding of China’s historical, social, cultural and scientific achievements, let alone its political systems or foreign policy, are instantly feared as nefarious attempts to infiltrate Australian politics and undermine the ‘Australian way of life’.
The increasing size of China’s economic (and, by extension military) strength, to which Australia contributes important resources and from which it derives so much benefit, is portrayed as a threat to Australia’s security. This has Australia trapped in the absurd policy paradox of preparing to go to war against China to protect Australia’s trade with China.
Recent developments in Taiwan, particularly the county and municipal elections, which caused the President, Tsai Ingwen, to resign her leadership of the pro-Independence Party, suggest that Taiwan prefers the status quo and is unwilling to be the proxy of the US in a war with Beijing.
Australia thus becomes the potential proxy.
In the name of the Alliance, American service personnel (active and retired) are now embedded in Australian defence policy making institutions and in command and control positions within the ADF. All of the American military assets installed in Australia under the Alliance and the AUKUS deal, are now “interchangeable” with the ADF, making it possible to use them as putative Australian forces against China, while the US stands aside and maintains the same pretence of “no engagement”, as it is doing in Ukraine.
This is why I said at the beginning that the US is preparing to send Australia to war against China.
Whilst these are the dangers that the ANZUS Alliance poses for Australia if the US instigates a war against China, there are risks for the US also.
1. There would be crippling expense that further exacerbates the US wealth divide and related domestic political breakdown. Supplying the weaponry and everything else required for a proxy war with China would be a bigger drain on the US budget than the Ukraine conflict. The expenditure would flow back to the military industrial complex, constituting a further massive transfer of wealth from the ordinary taxpayer to the plutocrat billionaires. It would blow out the already unsustainable national debt, and either take away from expenditure on essential services and infrastructure, or, if they print money, further blow out inflation. The political and social breakdown that the US is already suffering as a consequence of its real economic decline and widening wealth gap could only intensify to breaking point.
2. The slide into a direct war would probably be inevitable. Planning a proxy war is all very well as an academic exercise, but sticking with those plans when the fighting starts will be very difficult. There are already lunatic politicians and “experts” in the US who think American can win a direct war, so when China starts bombing Australia, and good old Aussie “mates” are dying in massive numbers, the voices of those in the US advocating direct engagement will be amplified. Combined with the already extreme polarisation of US politics in which ONLY war is bipartisan, the risk that extremists will take the US into direct conflict, and a nuclear showdown with China, is very serious.
3. The folding in of Japan into the AUKUS arrangements will increase the risk that Japan would be obliged to assist Australia in any military conflict with China. The US, because of its Defence Treaty with Japan, would then be obliged to join in the fighting, vitiating its plan to avoid direct military engagement.
A point of historical irony:
I’ll wind up with a bit of historical irony, in which I was personally involved:
In the early 70’s, we had been kept completely in the dark about the secret Kissinger visits to China, until the plan for Nixon to visit was announced. Feeling blindsided by a momentous change in US policy towards China, we produced Policy Planning Paper QP11/71 of 21 July 1971.
It recognised.. “political disadvantage resulting from the manner in which the United States conducts its global policies” and argued that this would mean that. “The American alliance, in a changing power balance, will mean less to us than it has in the past.”
It went on:
“If anything, this argument has been strengthened by recent United States actions and America’s failure to consult us on issues of primary importance to Australia. Accordingly, we shall need, now more than ever, to formulate independent policies, based on Australian national interests and those of our near neighbours…”
This is even more true today than it was in the 1970’s. For example, Australia was not consulted in the precipitate US withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite our role as ‘loyal’ supporter of the US in that ill-advised conflict. Our indignant protestations were met with Biden’s statement that “America acts only in its own interests”.
Our present predicament is due largely to the failure of a succession of Australian Governments to take this analysis to heart and act upon it. Prime Minister Fraser, who replaced Whitlam, ironically came to a very similar view towards the end of his life, which he set forth in detail in his book ‘Dangerous Allies’, but too late to do anything about it. He identified the paradox that Australia needs the US for its defence, but it only needs defending because of the US.
A couple of pertinent quotes, first from the late Jim Molan:
“Our forces were not designed to have any significant independent strategic impact. They were purely designed to provide niche components of larger American missions.”
We were, in his view, abdicating our own defence and cultivating complete dependence on the Americans.
And from Chris Hedges:
“Finally, the neo-cons who have led the U.S. into the serial debacles of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine, costing the country tens of trillions of dollars and even greater amounts of destroyed reputational capital, will claim their customary immunity from any accountability for their savage failures and cheerily move on to their next calamity. We need to be on the lookout for their next gambit to pillage the treasury and advance their own private interests above those of the nation. It will surely come.”
Edit: there's a lot that may factually incorrect in the above. The US stationing the bulk of it's naval forces off the Chinese coast? Bullshit. It is as simple as following the CBG positions with Stratfor to note that the bulk of the 11 groups are deployed at home/refit; advance stations are 1 based at Yokosuka and then Pearl. More forward-deployed than in October 1941? Yes. The bulk of the navy - no. A single CBG might go through the SCS on occasion, but they know well the threat of the Chinese A2/AD missile complex and it's doubtful they'd be off the Chinese coast in event of a conflict. No mention of the reef terraforming and military installations on man made islands in the SCS, or the island chain concept. If Australia were to go 180 on it's course, and go it alone, one superpower would fill the vacuum the US would leave. That is how great power geopolitics works. I'd argue given the scale of investment, that won't happen. Also of note in the video posted above, the Defence response does consider that in event of a conflict, we would go it alone for a period of time (say a month or two, to give the allies chance to deploy force in scale) and thus, having our own A2/AD systems in place with deep strike and early identification is something we are developing, and fast.
gsco wrote:This is the debate Australia needs to be having.
Seems clear that the Labor party has woken up to the problem and is trying to find a way to manage it, although they're currently flip flopping back and forth: https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/us-is-preparing-a...
We need to regain our independence - economically, politically, militarily - from the US.
And this is the full statement by John Lander:
John Lander wrote:The United States is not preparing to go to war against China. The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China.
Thank you for inviting me to address the Salon. I am greatly honoured and somewhat daunted, given the long list of eminent scholars, analysts and writers who have preceded me.
I am not a “writer”, although I have written a lot during my thirty-year diplomatic career, much of it in relation to China. None of it published and most of it buried in government archives. All I can bring to the table is my personal interpretation of current developments regarding US and China, in the light of my past experience.
One of your previous speakers, Patrick Lawrence, advocated putting the main point first. So here goes:
The United States is not preparing to go to war against China.
The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China.
The ANZUS Treaty
A look at the ANZUS Treaty and the way it has been manipulated over time will explain why I have come to this conclusion.
Originally defensive in concept, the ANZUS Treaty was seen by Australia from its very beginning as a means to “achieve the acceptance by the USA of responsibility in SE Asia” (Percy Spender) to shield Australia from perceived antagonistic forces in its region. It has, however, developed into an instrument for the furtherance of US ability to prosecute war globally – previously in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently against Russia and potentially against China.
The ANZUS Treaty, usually referred to in reverential tones as “The Alliance”, has been elevated to an almost religious article of faith, against which any demur is treated as heresy amounting to treachery. Out of anxiety to cement the US into protection of Australia, the Alliance has been invoked as justification for Australia’s participation in almost every American military adventure – or misadventure – since WW II.
Unlike NATO or the Defence Treaty with Japan, the ANZUS treaty actually provides no guarantee of protection, merely assurances to consult on appropriated means of support in the event that Australia should come under attack.
On the other hand, the Alliance has facilitated the steady growth of American presence in Australia, to the point that it pervades every aspect of Australian political, economic, financial, social and cultural life. Australians fret about China “buying up the country”, but American investment is ten times the size.
They are unaware or uncaring that almost every major Australian company across the resources, food, retail, mass media, entertainment, banking and finance sectors has majority American ownership. Right now US corporations eclipse everyone else in their ability to influence our politics through their investment in Australian stocks.
The transfer of Australian assets to American ownership has continued unabated: In the second half of 2021 then Treasurer Josh Frydenberg approved the transfer of $130 billion of Australian assets to foreign private equity funds, benefiting Goldman Sachs who facilitated the transactions, by multimillions of dollars. Josh Frydenberg now is employed by Goldman Sachs:
Sydney Airport – Macquarie Bank led by a NY investment banker
AusNet (electricity infrastructure) $18 billion takeover by Brookfield – NY via Canada
SparkInfrastructure (electricity) $5.2 billion takeover by American interests
AfterPay financial transaction system $39 billion takeover
Healthscope, second-biggest private hospitals group (72 Hospitals) taken over by Brookfield and now controlled in the Cayman Islands.
The USA and the UK between them represent nearly half of all foreign investment. China plus Hong Kong represents 4.2%. The 4 big “Aussie” banks are dependent on foreign capital which dictate local banks’ policies and operations.Defence and military weapons manufacturing industries in Australia are now largely owned by US weapons corporations – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Thales, NorthropGrumman. The deep integration of Australia’s defence industries and economy into the US military-industrial complex greatly influences Australia’s foreign/defence policies.
That, plus US capture of Australia’s intelligence and policy apparatus through the “Five Eyes” network and ASPI (which has lobbyists from American arms manufacturers on a Board headed by an operative trained by the CIA) means that the US is able to swing Australian policy to support America in almost all its endeavours.
Despite the fact that it contains no guarantee of US protection of Australia, the Treaty and further arrangements under its auspices, such as the 2014 Force Posture Agreement and now AUKUS, have greatly facilitated US war preparation in Australia. This has accelerated exponentially in the past few years. The US now describes Australia as the most important base for the projection of US power in the Indo-Pacific.
Indicators of war preparations
* 2,500 US marines stationed in Darwin practicing for war with the Australian Defence Forces, soon to include the Japanese Defence Forces
* Establishment of a regional HQ for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Darwin
* Lengthening the RAAF aircraft runways in Northern Territory at our expense for servicing US fighters and bombers
* Proposed stationing of 6 nuclear weapons-capable B52 Bombers at RAAF Tindal in NT
* Construction of massive fuel and maintenance facilities in Darwin NT for US aircraft
* Proposed acquisition of eight nuclear-propelled submarines at the cost of $170 billion for hunter-killer operations in the Taiwan Strait
* Construction, at the cost of $10 billion, of a deep water port on Australia’s east coast for US and UK nuclear powered and nuclear missile-carrying submarines
* The long-established satellite communications station known as Pine Gap in central Australia has recently, and is still being, expanded and upgraded. It is key to the command and control of US forces in the Indo-Pacific (and even as far afield as Ukraine)
The Government and right wing anti-China analysts and commentators, whose opinions dominate main stream media, accept the Defence Minister’s contention that this militarisation enhances Australia’s sovereignty by strengthening the range and lethality of Australia’s high-end war-fighting capability to provide a credible deterrent to a potential aggressor.
Many analysts and commentators outside the governing elite, including myself, argue that these arrangements effectively cede Australian sovereignty to America. This is especially because of the provisions of the Force Posture Agreement of 2014, entered into under the auspices of ANZUS.
I understand that a paper has been circulated to the Committee, expounding the details of the FPA, so in summary, it gives unimpeded access, exclusive control and use of agreed facilities and areas to US personnel, aircraft, ships and vehicles and gives Australia absolutely no say at all in how, when where and why they are to be used.
All Australian analysts, whether sympathetic or antipathetic to China, agree on one point. That is, that if the US goes to war against China over the status of Taiwan, or any other issue of contention, Australia will inevitably be involved.
The Threat
All these preparations are justified by the false premise that China presents a military threat. China has not invaded anywhere. It has never proposed use of force against other countries. It has enshrined in its Constitution the ‘Three No’s – No military alliances; No military bases; No use, or threat to use, military force. China has, however, reserved the right to use force to prevent secession by Taiwan.
It has recently rapidly increased its defence capability in response to the fearsome US naval presence and war-fighting exercises just off its coastline. Its defence budget is one third that of the US and the bases that it has constructed in the South China Sea pale into insignificance compared to the hundreds of bases that the US has ranged all around China.
So, if China is not a military threat, why is it designated as the primary systemic threat of the collective West, led by the US? The answer lies in the word “systemic”. China has expressed a determination to revamp the global financial system to make it fairer for developing countries. Kissinger is reputed to have said: “If you control money, you control the world”. The US currently controls world finance and China (with Russia) is out to change that.
The US, which played the leading part in the establishment of the post-World War II institutions, has become a leading revisionist, abandoning the UN for “coalitions of the willing”. The US has declined to join important Conventions like those on the Law of the Sea and on Climate. It has refused to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and has exempted itself from the Genocide Convention. It has played a leading part in the weakening of the World Trade Organisation by imposing trade restrictions on other countries, while not agreeing to new appointments to the WTO’s appellate tribunal, so preventing that body from functioning.
China is the second-largest (or by some calculations, the largest) economy in the world. It is the major trading partner of over 100 countries, mainly in the global south, but including Australia and a number of other Western countries. Hence China has the clout to undermine the “international rules-based order” set up by, and for the benefit of, the West.
China has already established an alternative to the Anglo-American international financial transaction system: – the Cross-border Interbank Payments System CIPS, (in which, ironically a number of Western banks are shareholders). In collaboration with Russia and within the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa) China is creating an alternative to the almighty dollar as the preferred currency for trade and for national reserve holdings.
It seems that the US has concluded that, since it can’t constrain China economically, it will have to get it bogged down in a long-drawn-out war to hinder its economic growth and hamper its infrastructure development cooperation with other countries. On 25 March 2021 President Biden vowed to prevent China from overtaking the US as the most powerful country in the world – “not on my watch” he said.
Nevertheless, the latest CSIS computer modelling, like previous modelling by the Rand Corporation, indicates that all involved in a Sino-US war would lose.
Proxy War
All of these analyses overlook one significant point. US determination to pursue the Wolfowitz doctrine of preventing the rise of any power that could challenge US global supremacy (neither Russia, nor Europe, nor China) has not diminished, but has morphed into a strategy of fighting its adversaries by proxy.
This has been clearly demonstrated by the war in Ukraine. A White House press briefing on 25 January 2022, before the Russian intervention, stated that “the US, in concert with its European partners, will weaken Russia to the point where it can exercise no influence on the international stage”.
Political leaders from Biden, through Pelosi and on to Members of Congress have told Ukraine that “your war is our war and we are in it for as long as it takes”. Congressman Adam Schiff put it bluntly that “we support Ukraine… to fight Russia over there, so that we don’t have to fight it over here”.
In the case of China, defined in the NDS as the principal threat to the US, the proxy of choice is clearly Taiwan. The strategy envisages:
• a world-wide media campaign (going on for several years already) to portray China as the aggressor;
• goading China into taking military action to prevent Taiwan’s secession;
• leaving Taiwan to conduct its own defence, with constant resupply of arms and equipment from the US, at great profit to the military/industrial complex;
• sustaining Taiwan sufficiently to keep China ‘bogged down’, thus hampering its economic development and its infrastructure cooperation with other countries;
• avoiding direct military engagement, in order to maintain the full capacity of US forces, while China’s would be significantly depleted; Although Biden has publicly re-affirmed adherence to the ‘One China’ principle, the US has been goading China by;
• stationing the bulk its naval power off the coast of China;
• ‘freedom of navigation’ and combat exercises in the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits;
• visits by senior US officials using US military aircraft;
• creation of a putative ‘Air Defence Identification Zone’ (ADIZ) extending well over mainland territory and then alleging Chinese violation of it;
• secretly providing military training personnel (whilst denying it);
• including Taiwan in the Summit for Democracy (9-10 December 2021), implying it is a separate country;
Many Australian politicians, (although not the present government), joined in goading China, by encouraging Taiwan to consider the possibility of declaring independence, which would trigger military action by China.
If Australia were to make good on its promise to ‘save Taiwan’, it would be devastated:
• The Australian navy would be obliterated, given the disparity between China’s and Australia’s forces;
* command/control centres (and possibly cities) in Australia could be wiped out by Chinese missiles. Australia has no anti-missile defence;
• To preserve its own assets, and to forestall the descent into nuclear conflict, the US would not engage directly in defence of Australia;
• US ‘support’ would be through massive arms sales to replace our losses – just as in Ukraine – at further profit to the US military/industrial complex;
• ASEAN is unlikely to support Australia. It has renewed and up-graded its Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with China. Each member country has infrastructure projects under China’s BRI, which they would not want to jeopardise in a ‘no-win war’;
• Support from India is unlikely, despite its membership of the Quad – which is nothing more than a consultative dialogue. India has security commitments to China under the SCO and gets its arms from Russia, which has a “better than treaty” relationship with China.
• Australia relies heavily on China for many daily necessities. In a war, deliveries from China would be severely disrupted.
Australians generally are more than happy for the material benefits of a trading relationship with China, which constitutes more than one third of Australia’s export earnings. But, any attempt by China to improve Australians’ understanding of China’s historical, social, cultural and scientific achievements, let alone its political systems or foreign policy, are instantly feared as nefarious attempts to infiltrate Australian politics and undermine the ‘Australian way of life’.
The increasing size of China’s economic (and, by extension military) strength, to which Australia contributes important resources and from which it derives so much benefit, is portrayed as a threat to Australia’s security. This has Australia trapped in the absurd policy paradox of preparing to go to war against China to protect Australia’s trade with China.
Recent developments in Taiwan, particularly the county and municipal elections, which caused the President, Tsai Ingwen, to resign her leadership of the pro-Independence Party, suggest that Taiwan prefers the status quo and is unwilling to be the proxy of the US in a war with Beijing.
Australia thus becomes the potential proxy.
In the name of the Alliance, American service personnel (active and retired) are now embedded in Australian defence policy making institutions and in command and control positions within the ADF. All of the American military assets installed in Australia under the Alliance and the AUKUS deal, are now “interchangeable” with the ADF, making it possible to use them as putative Australian forces against China, while the US stands aside and maintains the same pretence of “no engagement”, as it is doing in Ukraine.
This is why I said at the beginning that the US is preparing to send Australia to war against China.
Whilst these are the dangers that the ANZUS Alliance poses for Australia if the US instigates a war against China, there are risks for the US also.
1. There would be crippling expense that further exacerbates the US wealth divide and related domestic political breakdown. Supplying the weaponry and everything else required for a proxy war with China would be a bigger drain on the US budget than the Ukraine conflict. The expenditure would flow back to the military industrial complex, constituting a further massive transfer of wealth from the ordinary taxpayer to the plutocrat billionaires. It would blow out the already unsustainable national debt, and either take away from expenditure on essential services and infrastructure, or, if they print money, further blow out inflation. The political and social breakdown that the US is already suffering as a consequence of its real economic decline and widening wealth gap could only intensify to breaking point.
2. The slide into a direct war would probably be inevitable. Planning a proxy war is all very well as an academic exercise, but sticking with those plans when the fighting starts will be very difficult. There are already lunatic politicians and “experts” in the US who think American can win a direct war, so when China starts bombing Australia, and good old Aussie “mates” are dying in massive numbers, the voices of those in the US advocating direct engagement will be amplified. Combined with the already extreme polarisation of US politics in which ONLY war is bipartisan, the risk that extremists will take the US into direct conflict, and a nuclear showdown with China, is very serious.
3. The folding in of Japan into the AUKUS arrangements will increase the risk that Japan would be obliged to assist Australia in any military conflict with China. The US, because of its Defence Treaty with Japan, would then be obliged to join in the fighting, vitiating its plan to avoid direct military engagement.
A point of historical irony:
I’ll wind up with a bit of historical irony, in which I was personally involved:
In the early 70’s, we had been kept completely in the dark about the secret Kissinger visits to China, until the plan for Nixon to visit was announced. Feeling blindsided by a momentous change in US policy towards China, we produced Policy Planning Paper QP11/71 of 21 July 1971.
It recognised.. “political disadvantage resulting from the manner in which the United States conducts its global policies” and argued that this would mean that. “The American alliance, in a changing power balance, will mean less to us than it has in the past.”
It went on:
“If anything, this argument has been strengthened by recent United States actions and America’s failure to consult us on issues of primary importance to Australia. Accordingly, we shall need, now more than ever, to formulate independent policies, based on Australian national interests and those of our near neighbours…”
This is even more true today than it was in the 1970’s. For example, Australia was not consulted in the precipitate US withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite our role as ‘loyal’ supporter of the US in that ill-advised conflict. Our indignant protestations were met with Biden’s statement that “America acts only in its own interests”.
Our present predicament is due largely to the failure of a succession of Australian Governments to take this analysis to heart and act upon it. Prime Minister Fraser, who replaced Whitlam, ironically came to a very similar view towards the end of his life, which he set forth in detail in his book ‘Dangerous Allies’, but too late to do anything about it. He identified the paradox that Australia needs the US for its defence, but it only needs defending because of the US.
A couple of pertinent quotes, first from the late Jim Molan:
“Our forces were not designed to have any significant independent strategic impact. They were purely designed to provide niche components of larger American missions.”
We were, in his view, abdicating our own defence and cultivating complete dependence on the Americans.
And from Chris Hedges:
“Finally, the neo-cons who have led the U.S. into the serial debacles of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine, costing the country tens of trillions of dollars and even greater amounts of destroyed reputational capital, will claim their customary immunity from any accountability for their savage failures and cheerily move on to their next calamity. We need to be on the lookout for their next gambit to pillage the treasury and advance their own private interests above those of the nation. It will surely come.”
Update to that vid above,
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-05/australia-america-himars-missile-...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-31/government-weapons-facility-guide...
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-is-getting-the-long-range-mi...
"The 2020 defence strategic update, and accompanying force structure plan, mark a decisive shift in approach from the 2016 defence white paper. The update recognises that Australia must respond to a more adverse strategic outlook, characterised by an assertive China, and highlights the risk that strategic competition between Beijing and Washington could escalate into a major conflict in our region.
The key message is that Australia must deter threats from major-power adversaries far away from our shores. "
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/09/australia-to-procure-tomaha...
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/australia-has-china-brain-so-it...
so you can see a variety of systems to defend the country, as the nature of military threats has evolved. We've been light on the anti-ship missiles previously.
VJ apologies but I can't quite work out the point you're arguing for.
And SL I can't find your comments in your post.
Anyway, my take on the current state of things is (not identical to but) very similar to say Professor Hugh White's (youtube vid below).
Australia is at a crossroads, a choice point, and Penny Wong and the Labor Party know it.
The US seems hellbent on going to war with China, likely another proxy war this time played out on Taiwan's soil. The US seems to be doing absolutely everything in its power to make it happen.
We've now been roped into the US's proxy war in Ukraine - we're now basically also at war with Russia - and the the US is now also trying to not just rope us into a potential proxy war against China in Taiwan, but we along with Japan and South Korea seem to be getting set up to spearhead it.
Even remotely considering the idea of going to war with China is complete and utter absolute lunacy, madness and insanity. It seems that the US has gone completely insane beyond repair.
Going to war with China is not in Australia's interest.
gsco wrote:This is the debate Australia needs to be having.
Seems clear that the Labor party has woken up to the problem and is trying to find a way to manage it, although they're currently flip flopping back and forth: https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/us-is-preparing-a...
We need to regain our independence - economically, politically, militarily - from the US.
And this is the full statement by John Lander:
John Lander wrote:The United States is not preparing to go to war against China. The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China.
Thank you for inviting me to address the Salon. I am greatly honoured and somewhat daunted, given the long list of eminent scholars, analysts and writers who have preceded me.
I am not a “writer”, although I have written a lot during my thirty-year diplomatic career, much of it in relation to China. None of it published and most of it buried in government archives. All I can bring to the table is my personal interpretation of current developments regarding US and China, in the light of my past experience.
One of your previous speakers, Patrick Lawrence, advocated putting the main point first. So here goes:
The United States is not preparing to go to war against China.
The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China.
The ANZUS Treaty
A look at the ANZUS Treaty and the way it has been manipulated over time will explain why I have come to this conclusion.
Originally defensive in concept, the ANZUS Treaty was seen by Australia from its very beginning as a means to “achieve the acceptance by the USA of responsibility in SE Asia” (Percy Spender) to shield Australia from perceived antagonistic forces in its region. It has, however, developed into an instrument for the furtherance of US ability to prosecute war globally – previously in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently against Russia and potentially against China.
The ANZUS Treaty, usually referred to in reverential tones as “The Alliance”, has been elevated to an almost religious article of faith, against which any demur is treated as heresy amounting to treachery. Out of anxiety to cement the US into protection of Australia, the Alliance has been invoked as justification for Australia’s participation in almost every American military adventure – or misadventure – since WW II.
Unlike NATO or the Defence Treaty with Japan, the ANZUS treaty actually provides no guarantee of protection, merely assurances to consult on appropriated means of support in the event that Australia should come under attack.
On the other hand, the Alliance has facilitated the steady growth of American presence in Australia, to the point that it pervades every aspect of Australian political, economic, financial, social and cultural life. Australians fret about China “buying up the country”, but American investment is ten times the size.
They are unaware or uncaring that almost every major Australian company across the resources, food, retail, mass media, entertainment, banking and finance sectors has majority American ownership. Right now US corporations eclipse everyone else in their ability to influence our politics through their investment in Australian stocks.
The transfer of Australian assets to American ownership has continued unabated: In the second half of 2021 then Treasurer Josh Frydenberg approved the transfer of $130 billion of Australian assets to foreign private equity funds, benefiting Goldman Sachs who facilitated the transactions, by multimillions of dollars. Josh Frydenberg now is employed by Goldman Sachs:
Sydney Airport – Macquarie Bank led by a NY investment banker
AusNet (electricity infrastructure) $18 billion takeover by Brookfield – NY via Canada
SparkInfrastructure (electricity) $5.2 billion takeover by American interests
AfterPay financial transaction system $39 billion takeover
Healthscope, second-biggest private hospitals group (72 Hospitals) taken over by Brookfield and now controlled in the Cayman Islands.
The USA and the UK between them represent nearly half of all foreign investment. China plus Hong Kong represents 4.2%. The 4 big “Aussie” banks are dependent on foreign capital which dictate local banks’ policies and operations.Defence and military weapons manufacturing industries in Australia are now largely owned by US weapons corporations – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Thales, NorthropGrumman. The deep integration of Australia’s defence industries and economy into the US military-industrial complex greatly influences Australia’s foreign/defence policies.
That, plus US capture of Australia’s intelligence and policy apparatus through the “Five Eyes” network and ASPI (which has lobbyists from American arms manufacturers on a Board headed by an operative trained by the CIA) means that the US is able to swing Australian policy to support America in almost all its endeavours.
Despite the fact that it contains no guarantee of US protection of Australia, the Treaty and further arrangements under its auspices, such as the 2014 Force Posture Agreement and now AUKUS, have greatly facilitated US war preparation in Australia. This has accelerated exponentially in the past few years. The US now describes Australia as the most important base for the projection of US power in the Indo-Pacific.
Indicators of war preparations
* 2,500 US marines stationed in Darwin practicing for war with the Australian Defence Forces, soon to include the Japanese Defence Forces
* Establishment of a regional HQ for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Darwin
* Lengthening the RAAF aircraft runways in Northern Territory at our expense for servicing US fighters and bombers
* Proposed stationing of 6 nuclear weapons-capable B52 Bombers at RAAF Tindal in NT
* Construction of massive fuel and maintenance facilities in Darwin NT for US aircraft
* Proposed acquisition of eight nuclear-propelled submarines at the cost of $170 billion for hunter-killer operations in the Taiwan Strait
* Construction, at the cost of $10 billion, of a deep water port on Australia’s east coast for US and UK nuclear powered and nuclear missile-carrying submarines
* The long-established satellite communications station known as Pine Gap in central Australia has recently, and is still being, expanded and upgraded. It is key to the command and control of US forces in the Indo-Pacific (and even as far afield as Ukraine)
The Government and right wing anti-China analysts and commentators, whose opinions dominate main stream media, accept the Defence Minister’s contention that this militarisation enhances Australia’s sovereignty by strengthening the range and lethality of Australia’s high-end war-fighting capability to provide a credible deterrent to a potential aggressor.
Many analysts and commentators outside the governing elite, including myself, argue that these arrangements effectively cede Australian sovereignty to America. This is especially because of the provisions of the Force Posture Agreement of 2014, entered into under the auspices of ANZUS.
I understand that a paper has been circulated to the Committee, expounding the details of the FPA, so in summary, it gives unimpeded access, exclusive control and use of agreed facilities and areas to US personnel, aircraft, ships and vehicles and gives Australia absolutely no say at all in how, when where and why they are to be used.
All Australian analysts, whether sympathetic or antipathetic to China, agree on one point. That is, that if the US goes to war against China over the status of Taiwan, or any other issue of contention, Australia will inevitably be involved.
The Threat
All these preparations are justified by the false premise that China presents a military threat. China has not invaded anywhere. It has never proposed use of force against other countries. It has enshrined in its Constitution the ‘Three No’s – No military alliances; No military bases; No use, or threat to use, military force. China has, however, reserved the right to use force to prevent secession by Taiwan.
It has recently rapidly increased its defence capability in response to the fearsome US naval presence and war-fighting exercises just off its coastline. Its defence budget is one third that of the US and the bases that it has constructed in the South China Sea pale into insignificance compared to the hundreds of bases that the US has ranged all around China.
So, if China is not a military threat, why is it designated as the primary systemic threat of the collective West, led by the US? The answer lies in the word “systemic”. China has expressed a determination to revamp the global financial system to make it fairer for developing countries. Kissinger is reputed to have said: “If you control money, you control the world”. The US currently controls world finance and China (with Russia) is out to change that.
The US, which played the leading part in the establishment of the post-World War II institutions, has become a leading revisionist, abandoning the UN for “coalitions of the willing”. The US has declined to join important Conventions like those on the Law of the Sea and on Climate. It has refused to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and has exempted itself from the Genocide Convention. It has played a leading part in the weakening of the World Trade Organisation by imposing trade restrictions on other countries, while not agreeing to new appointments to the WTO’s appellate tribunal, so preventing that body from functioning.
China is the second-largest (or by some calculations, the largest) economy in the world. It is the major trading partner of over 100 countries, mainly in the global south, but including Australia and a number of other Western countries. Hence China has the clout to undermine the “international rules-based order” set up by, and for the benefit of, the West.
China has already established an alternative to the Anglo-American international financial transaction system: – the Cross-border Interbank Payments System CIPS, (in which, ironically a number of Western banks are shareholders). In collaboration with Russia and within the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa) China is creating an alternative to the almighty dollar as the preferred currency for trade and for national reserve holdings.
It seems that the US has concluded that, since it can’t constrain China economically, it will have to get it bogged down in a long-drawn-out war to hinder its economic growth and hamper its infrastructure development cooperation with other countries. On 25 March 2021 President Biden vowed to prevent China from overtaking the US as the most powerful country in the world – “not on my watch” he said.
Nevertheless, the latest CSIS computer modelling, like previous modelling by the Rand Corporation, indicates that all involved in a Sino-US war would lose.
Proxy War
All of these analyses overlook one significant point. US determination to pursue the Wolfowitz doctrine of preventing the rise of any power that could challenge US global supremacy (neither Russia, nor Europe, nor China) has not diminished, but has morphed into a strategy of fighting its adversaries by proxy.
This has been clearly demonstrated by the war in Ukraine. A White House press briefing on 25 January 2022, before the Russian intervention, stated that “the US, in concert with its European partners, will weaken Russia to the point where it can exercise no influence on the international stage”.
Political leaders from Biden, through Pelosi and on to Members of Congress have told Ukraine that “your war is our war and we are in it for as long as it takes”. Congressman Adam Schiff put it bluntly that “we support Ukraine… to fight Russia over there, so that we don’t have to fight it over here”.
In the case of China, defined in the NDS as the principal threat to the US, the proxy of choice is clearly Taiwan. The strategy envisages:
• a world-wide media campaign (going on for several years already) to portray China as the aggressor;
• goading China into taking military action to prevent Taiwan’s secession;
• leaving Taiwan to conduct its own defence, with constant resupply of arms and equipment from the US, at great profit to the military/industrial complex;
• sustaining Taiwan sufficiently to keep China ‘bogged down’, thus hampering its economic development and its infrastructure cooperation with other countries;
• avoiding direct military engagement, in order to maintain the full capacity of US forces, while China’s would be significantly depleted; Although Biden has publicly re-affirmed adherence to the ‘One China’ principle, the US has been goading China by;
• stationing the bulk its naval power off the coast of China;
• ‘freedom of navigation’ and combat exercises in the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits;
• visits by senior US officials using US military aircraft;
• creation of a putative ‘Air Defence Identification Zone’ (ADIZ) extending well over mainland territory and then alleging Chinese violation of it;
• secretly providing military training personnel (whilst denying it);
• including Taiwan in the Summit for Democracy (9-10 December 2021), implying it is a separate country;
Many Australian politicians, (although not the present government), joined in goading China, by encouraging Taiwan to consider the possibility of declaring independence, which would trigger military action by China.
If Australia were to make good on its promise to ‘save Taiwan’, it would be devastated:
• The Australian navy would be obliterated, given the disparity between China’s and Australia’s forces;
* command/control centres (and possibly cities) in Australia could be wiped out by Chinese missiles. Australia has no anti-missile defence;
• To preserve its own assets, and to forestall the descent into nuclear conflict, the US would not engage directly in defence of Australia;
• US ‘support’ would be through massive arms sales to replace our losses – just as in Ukraine – at further profit to the US military/industrial complex;
• ASEAN is unlikely to support Australia. It has renewed and up-graded its Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with China. Each member country has infrastructure projects under China’s BRI, which they would not want to jeopardise in a ‘no-win war’;
• Support from India is unlikely, despite its membership of the Quad – which is nothing more than a consultative dialogue. India has security commitments to China under the SCO and gets its arms from Russia, which has a “better than treaty” relationship with China.
• Australia relies heavily on China for many daily necessities. In a war, deliveries from China would be severely disrupted.
Australians generally are more than happy for the material benefits of a trading relationship with China, which constitutes more than one third of Australia’s export earnings. But, any attempt by China to improve Australians’ understanding of China’s historical, social, cultural and scientific achievements, let alone its political systems or foreign policy, are instantly feared as nefarious attempts to infiltrate Australian politics and undermine the ‘Australian way of life’.
The increasing size of China’s economic (and, by extension military) strength, to which Australia contributes important resources and from which it derives so much benefit, is portrayed as a threat to Australia’s security. This has Australia trapped in the absurd policy paradox of preparing to go to war against China to protect Australia’s trade with China.
Recent developments in Taiwan, particularly the county and municipal elections, which caused the President, Tsai Ingwen, to resign her leadership of the pro-Independence Party, suggest that Taiwan prefers the status quo and is unwilling to be the proxy of the US in a war with Beijing.
Australia thus becomes the potential proxy.
In the name of the Alliance, American service personnel (active and retired) are now embedded in Australian defence policy making institutions and in command and control positions within the ADF. All of the American military assets installed in Australia under the Alliance and the AUKUS deal, are now “interchangeable” with the ADF, making it possible to use them as putative Australian forces against China, while the US stands aside and maintains the same pretence of “no engagement”, as it is doing in Ukraine.
This is why I said at the beginning that the US is preparing to send Australia to war against China.
Whilst these are the dangers that the ANZUS Alliance poses for Australia if the US instigates a war against China, there are risks for the US also.
1. There would be crippling expense that further exacerbates the US wealth divide and related domestic political breakdown. Supplying the weaponry and everything else required for a proxy war with China would be a bigger drain on the US budget than the Ukraine conflict. The expenditure would flow back to the military industrial complex, constituting a further massive transfer of wealth from the ordinary taxpayer to the plutocrat billionaires. It would blow out the already unsustainable national debt, and either take away from expenditure on essential services and infrastructure, or, if they print money, further blow out inflation. The political and social breakdown that the US is already suffering as a consequence of its real economic decline and widening wealth gap could only intensify to breaking point.
2. The slide into a direct war would probably be inevitable. Planning a proxy war is all very well as an academic exercise, but sticking with those plans when the fighting starts will be very difficult. There are already lunatic politicians and “experts” in the US who think American can win a direct war, so when China starts bombing Australia, and good old Aussie “mates” are dying in massive numbers, the voices of those in the US advocating direct engagement will be amplified. Combined with the already extreme polarisation of US politics in which ONLY war is bipartisan, the risk that extremists will take the US into direct conflict, and a nuclear showdown with China, is very serious.
3. The folding in of Japan into the AUKUS arrangements will increase the risk that Japan would be obliged to assist Australia in any military conflict with China. The US, because of its Defence Treaty with Japan, would then be obliged to join in the fighting, vitiating its plan to avoid direct military engagement.
A point of historical irony:
I’ll wind up with a bit of historical irony, in which I was personally involved:
In the early 70’s, we had been kept completely in the dark about the secret Kissinger visits to China, until the plan for Nixon to visit was announced. Feeling blindsided by a momentous change in US policy towards China, we produced Policy Planning Paper QP11/71 of 21 July 1971.
It recognised.. “political disadvantage resulting from the manner in which the United States conducts its global policies” and argued that this would mean that. “The American alliance, in a changing power balance, will mean less to us than it has in the past.”
It went on:
“If anything, this argument has been strengthened by recent United States actions and America’s failure to consult us on issues of primary importance to Australia. Accordingly, we shall need, now more than ever, to formulate independent policies, based on Australian national interests and those of our near neighbours…”
This is even more true today than it was in the 1970’s. For example, Australia was not consulted in the precipitate US withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite our role as ‘loyal’ supporter of the US in that ill-advised conflict. Our indignant protestations were met with Biden’s statement that “America acts only in its own interests”.
Our present predicament is due largely to the failure of a succession of Australian Governments to take this analysis to heart and act upon it. Prime Minister Fraser, who replaced Whitlam, ironically came to a very similar view towards the end of his life, which he set forth in detail in his book ‘Dangerous Allies’, but too late to do anything about it. He identified the paradox that Australia needs the US for its defence, but it only needs defending because of the US.
A couple of pertinent quotes, first from the late Jim Molan:
“Our forces were not designed to have any significant independent strategic impact. They were purely designed to provide niche components of larger American missions.”
We were, in his view, abdicating our own defence and cultivating complete dependence on the Americans.
And from Chris Hedges:
“Finally, the neo-cons who have led the U.S. into the serial debacles of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine, costing the country tens of trillions of dollars and even greater amounts of destroyed reputational capital, will claim their customary immunity from any accountability for their savage failures and cheerily move on to their next calamity. We need to be on the lookout for their next gambit to pillage the treasury and advance their own private interests above those of the nation. It will surely come.”
Frightening reading! Australia really is just a vassal state of USA.
What a farked up world we live in.
Love him or hate him, you cannot say he doesn't have balls! Fark....
https://m.
love him, but often don't have the attention span for his vids
that was quite the history lesson!
the airbnb thing... pure genius (for one of the parties)
and ballsy, yes!
sypkan wrote:love him, but often don't have the attention span for his vids
that was quite the history lesson!
the airbnb thing... pure genius (for one of the parties)
and ballsy, yes!
Not many real journalists in Australia, he is definitely the most courageous. I really do fear for his welfare how he is taking on some powerful nasty people.
He's not a great journalist, but what FJ does is highlight the gaps in our public life where crooks like Barilaro et al set up shop, afforded protection by institutions like parliament, divisions of the police, and even the media.
His smarmy schtick drives me the wrong way, but at shining a light on corruption and malfeasance he's utterly brilliant.
It's great to see him back and I hope like hell the authorities act on some of his work.
Parts of Pilbara expected to nudge 50 degrees on weekend (foick that):
https://www.9news.com.au/wild-weather/temperatures-set-to-soar-above-50-...
Sensationalism, or a real chance? I know the old weatherzone forums would be cheering every 0.1 increment on the way up to a record. Record is 50.5 at Mardie in 1998 apparently.
Should asterisk the "not a great journalist" line. His research is top notch and appears to pass all the legal and ethical requirements, it's the colourful delivery that detracts.
The same work in the hands of someone like Kate McClymont would be devastating.
stunet wrote:He's not a great journalist, but what FJ does is highlight the gaps in our public life where crooks like Barilaro et al set up shop, afforded protection by institutions like parliament, divisions of the police, and even the media.
His smarmy schtick drives me the wrong way, but at shining a light on corruption and malfeasance he's utterly brilliant.
It's great to see him back and I hope like hell the authorities act on some of his work.
I understand how some can get rubbed up the wrong way with his delivery style, I'm an old prick, but I at times I find him quite funny and gives some of the topics he is covering a bit of humour, could be too dry otherwise for his target audience. When he sits down and does a proper interview such as with KRudd or Michael West, he comes across as very intelligent and extremely well read.
At the end of the day his humour is being aimed at a young demographic and not for people in their 50's or older, if he is getting some of the younger generation to question things then he is doing a good job in my book.
Imagine if there was a proper media organisation with all the accompanying resources covering the stories he has, it would be a game changer. Anyway hope he keeps chipping away at these stories until they can no longer be ignored. Come on 4 Corners, follow one of them up!!
I thought maybe Avi would make the list of suspects, Shanks made little Avi look pretty stupid on more than one occasion. I’ve always thought Shanks was playing with fire and he’s definitely courageous in what he exposes . I can’t watch all his vids but some are definitely worth a look, he’s different.
Shanks’ reporting has grown on me. I watched that last ‘recap’ video in full, and it does make me laugh that many of Barilaro’s current troubles might actually be a result of his thin-skinned response to the original FJs videos.
Barilaro and his ilk make my skin crawl. Self-serving, system-gaming, low-life crooks masquerading as members of parliament. I wouldn’t be surprised if ICACs investigation of the LNP of recent years turns out to be as damaging as MacDonald / Obeid et al was for the Labor brand.
VJ - spot on in calling out the hyperbole in the defence posture articles above. So many factual errors about capability, posture, etc dressed up in quasi-official language.
It’s interesting; the current shift in Australia’s defence force structure is exactly what some experts have been calling for since the 80s - more focus on maritime and air defence of our northern approaches, capacity to generate sustained presence in the choke points out of the Indonesian archipelago and PNG, supplemented now with land-based anti-ship and anti-air missiles. Less focus on expeditionary land capabilities designed to operate in the Middle East.
Will be interesting to see what the DSR report actually says. Maintenance of sovereign capability will be an important element. Part of the challenge is that we’ve undermined our industrial base so much that we’re a long way behind on this. Attempts to reduce dependency on US equipment have, in many cases, led to acquisition of European platforms that have failed (at enormous cost) such as the MRH90 and Tiger helicopters.
So if we can’t build them here, and we don’t have faith in European suppliers, what else do we do?
etarip wrote:VJ - spot on in calling out the hyperbole in the defence posture articles above. So many factual errors about capability, posture, etc dressed up in quasi-official language.
It’s interesting; the current shift in Australia’s defence force structure is exactly what some experts have been calling for since the 80s - more focus on maritime and air defence of our northern approaches, capacity to generate sustained presence in the choke points out of the Indonesian archipelago and PNG, supplemented now with land-based anti-ship and anti-air missiles. Less focus on expeditionary land capabilities designed to operate in the Middle East.
Will be interesting to see what the DSR report actually says. Maintenance of sovereign capability will be an important element. Part of the challenge is that we’ve undermined our industrial base so much that we’re a long way behind on this. Attempts to reduce dependency on US equipment have, in many cases, led to acquisition of European platforms that have failed (at enormous cost) such as the MRH90 and Tiger helicopters.
So if we can’t build them here, and we don’t have faith in European suppliers, what else do we do?
I would have thought one of our main defence priorities would be getting our emergency fuel reserve based in Australia, rather than USA and even develop the capability to produce our own rather than relying on imports. Can have all the best machinery and weaponry available, but I would think this would be of little use if our borders were closed off and we could not import any fuel to operate these machines whether aircraft, tanks or trucks etc.....
Totally agree a-m. It’s a balance though. Fixed storage sites are vulnerable as well.
I think there is a degree of comfort that supply could be maintained by shifting the routes further south. Maritime blockades are VERY hard to achieve.
So, a mix between domestic capacity for production, increase reserves and a ability to ensure supply. Seems easy enough…
etarip wrote:Totally agree a-m. It’s a balance though. Fixed storage sites are vulnerable as well.
I think there is a degree of comfort that supply could be maintained by shifting the routes further south. Maritime blockades are VERY hard to achieve.
So, a mix between domestic capacity for production, increase reserves and a ability to ensure supply. Seems easy enough…
Yep, hope it never comes to that, but just for general sovereignty, I think we should have our emergency reserved stored somewhere where they could be used for an emergency, natural or man made. :)
Yes Andy M, it's mind numbingly brainless that we don't have more storage at home. (Or a car industry that can be re-tooled if needed). That line of defence US West Coast - Pearl - Solomons/Fiji - Brisbane was sorely tested in last conflict. I would think Chinese war planners would be wanting to disrupt it as much as possible in event of conflict - hell, I would if in their position. Hence Solomons diplomacy etc. These days it's if you can get missile facilities in place with the range, and not just air bases.
So I'll do a picture show to show how important it was last time, because ship nerd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lexington_(CV-2)
Choose CV2, Scroll down for battle pic - it won't post up as a direct link. It shows the USS Lexington fighting and dying to save Australia and this line of supply, Battle of Coral Sea 8 May 1942
https://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=18486
Here's USS Saratoga and HMS Victorious holding the line, New Caledonia 1943. The Brits sent Victorious to help keep the supply lines to Australia open, even though they could hardly spare her, because every other US fleet carrier had been sunk or put out of action at this stage, and the large numbers of US 'Essex' class had yet to arrive on scene. Bet you didn't know that. I expect the Brits would help again if the chips were down and it came to it.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/531fdb48e4b0e8fbe6259952/1...
Happier days. Lexington and Saratoga prewar on Oahu's south shore, with Diamond Head and the breaks of Waikiki in the background.
Cheers etarip, it's only an interest in ships and the sea that has seen me read up on strategy. I see it geopolitically ie who has influence/power/can project power, where. Power abhors a vaccuum. Mahan was right.
gsco, my point is that the threat environment is getting more precarious, so Defence seems to be upping to meet the threat. Retired diplomats saying stuff is all well and good, but any country would be responding to increased threats from powers in their region if they could, this is on the historic record time and time again. Eg Neville Chamberlain gets a bad wrap, but it was on his watch that much of Britain's WW2 rearmament began, once he realised the threat Nazi Germany really was.
And so, next post, what is that threat to us today? The Chinese have built something really quite extraordinary, hats off to them, it's a magnificent achievement - but it has implications for us.
And so what have they built? "The Modernisation of the Chinese Navy: The Rise of a Great Naval Power"
When planning a response, I would argue look at the capability, and respond to that, rather than the politics or what is said.
It's a no-brainer for a country to have a solid, sovereign, independent military capability.
But, and I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I think that China is only a military threat to Australia if we keep going down the path of:
- backing and indeed spearheading the US's aggression and provocation of China,
- turning Australia into a US military base with all guns pointed towards China and whose specific purpose is to enable the US to launch a military offensive at China,
- continuing to support and back the US's economic and trade war and sanctions against China,
- continuing to support and back the US's technological undermining and strangling of China,
- and overall continuing to back and support, and indeed spearhead, the US's not just containment strategy of China but now strategy of political, economic, technological etc rollback, etc.
I genuinely believe that if we behave as an actual sober adult - an independent, sovereign and respectful country focused in positive, respectful and mutually beneficial win-win bilateral political, technological, economic, trade, cultural and diplomatic etc relations with China - then China will not be a threat to us.
In fact, China is - it still is - a huge opportunity for Australia.
When it comes to China, the biggest thread to our sovereignty and military wellbeing and safety is our relationship to the US.
gsco wrote:It's a no-brainer for a country to have a solid, sovereign, independent military capability.
But, and I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I think that China is only a military threat to Australia if we keep going down the path of:
- backing and indeed spearheading the US's aggression and provocation of China,
- turning Australia into a US military base with all guns pointed towards China and whose specific purpose is to enable the US to launch a military offensive at China,
- continuing to support and back the US's economic and trade war and sanctions against China,
- continuing to support and back the US's technological undermining and strangling of China,
- and overall continuing to back and support, and indeed spearhead, the US's not just containment strategy of China but now strategy of political, economic, technological etc rollback, etc.I genuinely believe that if we behave as an actual sober adult - an independent, sovereign and respectful country focused in positive, respectful and mutually beneficial win-win bilateral political, technological, economic, trade, cultural and diplomatic etc relations with China - then China will not be a threat to us.
In fact, China is - it still is - a huge opportunity for Australia.
When it comes to China, the biggest thread to our sovereignty and military wellbeing and safety is our relationship to the US.
Yep, my thoughts also.
Why would China want to have a conflict with Australia when trade etc is mutually beneficial?
Scares me how we seem to be following the USA down this path, at the moment their society is hardly one you'd wish to look up to.
andy-mac wrote:gsco wrote:It's a no-brainer for a country to have a solid, sovereign, independent military capability.
But, and I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I think that China is only a military threat to Australia if we keep going down the path of:
…
- continuing to support and back the US's economic and trade war and sanctions against China,
- continuing to support and back the US's technological undermining and strangling of China,
- and overall continuing to back and support, and indeed spearhead, the US's not just containment strategy of China but now strategy of political, economic, technological etc rollback, etc.I genuinely believe that if we behave as an actual sober adult - an independent, sovereign and respectful country focused in positive, respectful and mutually beneficial win-win bilateral political, technological, economic, trade, cultural and diplomatic etc relations with China - then China will not be a threat to us.
In fact, China is - it still is - a huge opportunity for Australia.
.Yep, my thoughts also.
Why would China want to have a conflict with Australia when trade etc is mutually beneficial?
Gents, appreciate the tone of this discussion!
I think this article sums up how the US (and, increasingly the EU and others) are seeing the benefits and risks of trade with China based on the experience of trade practises.
https://tnsr.org/2022/12/chinas-brute-force-economics-waking-up-from-the...
It’s a long article, but very sobering. we’re not operating on a level playing field at all. The sentiments above might be worth reconsidering with this in mind.
It’s a curious dilemma, and one that Australia is relatively exposed to.
Trade = win/win as long as both sides are playing the same game. Do we really think that a diplomatically and militarily isolated Australia will be able to dictate favourable trade terms with a regionally dominant China, who have expressed an intent to break down the existing order, demonstrated consistent non-compliance with WTO norms, and already exerted economic coercion against Australia?
This isn’t to say that our current frameworks shouldn’t be questioned critically, but it does invite whether our optimism re China is, and has been, misplaced.
etarip wrote:andy-mac wrote:gsco wrote:It's a no-brainer for a country to have a solid, sovereign, independent military capability.
But, and I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I think that China is only a military threat to Australia if we keep going down the path of:
…
- continuing to support and back the US's economic and trade war and sanctions against China,
- continuing to support and back the US's technological undermining and strangling of China,
- and overall continuing to back and support, and indeed spearhead, the US's not just containment strategy of China but now strategy of political, economic, technological etc rollback, etc.I genuinely believe that if we behave as an actual sober adult - an independent, sovereign and respectful country focused in positive, respectful and mutually beneficial win-win bilateral political, technological, economic, trade, cultural and diplomatic etc relations with China - then China will not be a threat to us.
In fact, China is - it still is - a huge opportunity for Australia.
.Yep, my thoughts also.
Why would China want to have a conflict with Australia when trade etc is mutually beneficial?Gents, appreciate the tone of this discussion!
I think this article sums up how the US (and, increasingly the EU and others) are seeing the benefits and risks of trade with China based on the experience of trade practises.
https://tnsr.org/2022/12/chinas-brute-force-economics-waking-up-from-the...
It’s a long article, but very sobering. we’re not operating on a level playing field at all. The sentiments above might be worth reconsidering with this in mind.
It’s a curious dilemma, and one that Australia is relatively exposed to.
Trade = win/win as long as both sides are playing the same game. Do we really think that a diplomatically and militarily isolated Australia will be able to dictate favourable trade terms with a regionally dominant China, who have expressed an intent to break down the existing order, demonstrated consistent non-compliance with WTO norms, and already exerted economic coercion against Australia?
This isn’t to say that our current frameworks shouldn’t be questioned critically, but it does invite whether our optimism re China is, and has been, misplaced.
Cheers for posting. I guess a lot of what is written is correct. However, while reading it I just had the feeling that it's a bit of the case that the USA and its corporations now have some serious competition for dominance on the world stage and are not prepared to let it go. A lot of the trade deals mentioned in my understanding generally favour the USA over the other member country's. I don't think the USA has really ever acted purely altruistically, but always for its own national interest, as any country should.
Anyway hope the power that be work out their differences!
The "I can't believe it's not politics" thread.