Pearls and Irritations

From our Minister for Foreign Affairs Australians must expect ever more duplicity, more smoothing the path to war orchestrated by America, for America’s ends. It’s a struggle for words to convey the enormity of what we face. It is beyond our politicians. Australia is being dragged into war. No doubt.

The full horror of the Albanese government’s national security policy is now revealed. Australia has been betrayed by its leaders. How? Technically, by embracing an agreement with the United States which destroys our sovereignty – enabling US military forces to operate from our territory against China under U.S. command and control. Thereby Australia becomes a target for China’s missiles. And unimaginably more. Our governments have simply accepted the imposition of this horrendous risk. There is no American quid pro quo. No US guarantee to intervene with armed force in our defence. Nothing. Our sovereignty, and choices on security, have been handed to the United States, gratis.

Many Australians feel doubly betrayed by their Minister for Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong. Her immediate LNP predecessors were complicit also (Bishop and Payne), though who would expect better of them? But few of us could have conceived of a prolonged affront to Australia’s sovereignty and security by Penny Wong.

At the outset, let’s be clear that war with China is not some hypothetical defence planning exercise. American security policy has set itself on the path to attacking China. That is expressed in US Defence Department reports to Congress. America’s own intelligence reports shows that China’s chief priority for its own forces is countering US attack on China’s territory. That is China is struggling to deal with a US pile-onto China. The US political pressure to rapidly rearm Japan, Korea, Australia and Philippines, focussing on Taiwan as a proxy, substantiates the reality.

Could Wong have been certain of this American road to war with China? Surely. Because she is intelligent enough to know what drives American geostrategy. That is simple. The US believes its global superiority requires it to find and eliminate rivals. With no exception. Its many more nuanced strategic thinkers have now fallen away. Albert Wohlstetter’s influence has held sway and been refined for decades now. He had five precepts for the primacy of the United States:

1. liberal internationalism, with its optimistic expectation that the world will embrace a set of common norms to achieve peace, is an illusion. To indulge it further constitutes sheer folly.
2. the system which replaces liberal internationalism must address the ever-present (and growing) danger. Remember Pearl Harbour. Imagine something orders of magnitude worse — a nuclear attack from out of the blue.
3. the key to averting or at least minimising surprise is to act preventively. Action holds possibility of safety, whereas inaction reduces that possibility to near zero. Eliminate the threat before it materialises. In statecraft, that is the standard of excellence.
4. the ultimate in preventive action is dominion. The best insurance against unpleasant surprises is to achieve unquestioned supremacy.
5.  transforming the nature of war, information technology — an arena in which the United States has historically enjoyed a clear edge — brings outright supremacy within reach.

This mindset prevailed once the USSR invaded Afghanistan. Its premiere act was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. That was in gestation before President GW Bush was elected in December 2000. Dignified only by the lie of weapons of mass destruction, the real objective was never articulated. The attack on the Twin Towers of September 11, 2001, nine months later, was entirely unconnected with Iraq. It could have caused reflection. Instead the paranoia intensified, and has dominated national security in every US administration since.

Penny Wong must be aware that the world’s greatest superpower is driven by this culture. That the US by identifying China as its geostrategic rival is seeking war with it. And Australia is relevant to the US only in how we can be “induced” into that conflict. Ever since the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia”, and the standing ovation for the Presidential address to our Parliament, US pressure has been pushing us in that direction.

What doubly damns Wong is that she has been aware of the US violation of our sovereignty since 2016. As Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs she would have been well aware of the Abbott government’s signing of the Force Posture Agreement which enables US military operations from our territory.

The opportunity has been there for all these years, to raise issues which she knew would impact Australians profoundly. The opportunity to deal with the downward spiral in our security, crafted by the US, was never taken up. Australia’s defence priorities were prostituted for America’s. Our children are being lined up for battles in Asia again, concocted in Arlington and Foggy Bottom. The whole grubby apparatus has been submerged, unnoticed by Australians.

Hence, from our Minister for Foreign Affairs Australians must expect ever more duplicity, more smoothing the path to war orchestrated by America, for America’s ends. It’s a struggle for words to convey the enormity of what we face. Australia is being dragged into war. No doubt. Paul Keating’s term of “Austral American” is apt for a Minister for Foreign Affairs who lubricates our slide to war. But it is too kind. Australia is being f**ked over. Poor fella my country.

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