Containing /Confronting China, AUKUS & the Australian Defence Strategic Review

Opinion/analysis – by Sasha Uzunov – Editor, Alternate Comms

The long awaited Australian Defence Strategic Review, cunningly released by the Australian federal government on the eve of Australia’s national holiday ANZAC Day, caters more to US strategic interests than Australian defence needs. It positions Australia as a cog or supporting role in the overall US war machine to take on China in a potential future war in the Asia Pacific region with Taiwan as the fuse. But above all it leads to dangerous game of brinksmanship that could result in nuclear armageddon.

The rationale of China being a serious threat to Australia is pure nonsense, cooked up by Washington and its Australians proxies, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Defence Minister Richard Marles, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Stephen Smith, one of the authors of the Review. The blunt truth is the US, as a hegemon, is envious of China’s growing economic power and wants to take it down a few notches.

The UK is now a US puppet and fights wars for its once rebellious offspring. The last war the British fought for Britain was the Falklands in 1982. UK stayed out of the US war in Vietnam (1962-72), which Australia was involved in. The last war Australia fought for the UK was the Confrontation with Indonesia (1962-66) which wanted to destabilise the newly independent Malaysia. Australia since Vietnam has fought wars for the US in Iraq I and II, Afghanistan and the US proxy war in Ukraine between Ukraine and invading Russians.

Since the fall of the British Empire in 1956, precipitated by the Suez Canal crisis, Australia is no longer under the British thumb but its new master is the US, which has taken over the mantle of the once mighty British Empire as world policeman. The recently formed AUKUS alliance, which consists of Australia, United Kingdom and United States, has been put together by the US as way of confronting China in the Asia-Pacific region.

What we are seeing is dangerous brinksmanship being played by Australia on behalf of the US, deliberately antagonising the Chinese in the belief that it will bow to US pressure and do as they are told. China drawing closer to Russia, because of the Russian war against Ukraine, whose allies are the US and UK, no doubt has come into the calculations.

China has nuclear weapons. If cornered it will most likely use them. One of the immediate targets would be the US spy base, Pine Gap, near the town of Alice Springs, in the middle of Australia. Pine Gap is important to the US as it connects its network of global intelligence gathering and electronic eavesdropping with its satellites in space, thereby able to watch and listen to anything that moves around the world.

The Review vaguely describes China as a potential threat but paradoxically claims China is not likely to invade Australia:

“remote possibility of any power contemplating an invasion of our continent”

The Review calls for nuclear submarines, long range missile/rocket strike systems, such as the US’s HIMARS 

The Australian Defence Force is made up of the Army, Navy and Air Force. The Army will be forced to give up some if its projects, such as armoured vehicles, to fund the Navy’s nuclear submarines.

The emphasis on long range strike capability by the ADF at the expense of the Australian Army sends out a signal, telegraphs punches, to the Chinese that Australia and by extension the US are not planning an invasion of the Chinese mainland using Taiwan as a springboard but will limit the conflict to Taiwan. This then makes Pine Gap the centre of US gravity and would have to be taken out by Beijing.

In this war by remote control, by unmanned aerial vehicles/drones, long range missiles and rockets linked to space satellites the very room in which the buttons are pushed becomes the nerve centre not some makeshift headquarters out in the field somewhere.

Is this deliberate so as to increase the US presence in the top north of Australia and further militarise Australia’s space program because of a China threat, which largely exaggerated if not non existent?

China is an authoritarian state with serious human rights issues and just because it is an economic superpower does not mean we should know tow to it or remain silent about human rights abuses. But at the same time why provoke it when there is no need to over Taiwan, an island close to the Chinese mainland, largely populated by ethnic Chinese who long ago dispossessed the indigenous inhabitants.

But the cynicism and opportunism of the US is breathtaking. Have you ever heard any US President or for that matter any Australian Prime Minister willing to fight to “liberate” Tibet from Chinese rule? No. Why? Because the US couldn’t care less about Tibetans or Taiwanese. It’s about global economic supremacy and arresting the decline of US power in an ever increasing multi-polar world