AUKUS and the drive to war with China: Special Issue

Mar 15, 2023
epa10521428 (L-R) Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hold a press conference at the Naval Base Point Miramar in San Diego, California, USA, 13 March 2023. The three leaders announced that Australia will purchase nuclear-powered attack submarines from the U.S. EPA/ETIENNE LAURENT

A Labor government has puts guns before butter… how extraordinary! Today, Pearls and Irritations has taken the unusual step of devoting our issue line up entirely to articles on the drive to war with China and the disastrous commitment of $368 billion dollars of Australia’s public funding to nuclear submarines.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced an extraordinary commitment of $368 billion dollars to purchase nuclear submarines designed for an aggressive war against China under the AUKUS arrangement. The submarines are not designed to defend Australia. They are designed to cooperate with the Americans off the China coast.

In return, Australia will receive submarines on the ‘never never’, some old hand me downs from Uncle Joe.

This follows an unprecedented propaganda drive in Australia’s major media outlets over the past year by American and Austral-American lobbyists to manipulate public opinion. The intent has been to manufacture fear and soften the public up for a commitment of tax payer funding for massive weapons purchases from US arms industries, followed by an Australian participation in a US led war with China.

This fear of China has been manufactured in Washington to protect its hegemony. The US is not militarily threatened in any shape or form by China and neither are we. But the US keeps goading China at every opportunity in the hope of China responding.

The US has a record of almost always being at war. It has overthrown countless governments and interfered in numerous countries. It wants us to join it again in yet another disastrous war.

Not since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the 20th anniversary of which will occur on the 20th of March 2023, has a US led disinformation campaign been so blatant, so openly misleading, and so successful as we now see.

For this reason, Pearls and Irritations has taken the unusual step of devoting our issue line up to articles focused on AUKUS and Australia’s drive to war with China.

This topic is far from the most, or the only, important topic in either Australian policy or geopolitics.

For our Australian audience however, it is we believe the most pressing.

The commitment of taxpayer funds to war with China will lock in our pathway and constrain our public spending choices for a generation of parliaments. Even should a future government realise the full extent of the bipartisan policy to cede our independence in foreign policy and our sovereignty in defence and try to correct course, the financial, diplomatic and capability exit costs will be severe.

What could $368 billion in funding – $12 billion per annum for the next 30 years – fund for Australia and Australians?

That is the question Australian media must ask.

With Australia facing the most severe housing crisis in our history, rising cost of living, increasing inequality, the pressing need to reform our schools, health, disability  and aged care systems, and the critical need to transform our energy systems and reduce our carbon emissions to net zero, we face a choice.

Do we buy guns in support of an American led war of aggression? Or commit that funding to the wellbeing of our people?

What, could $368 billion dollars achieve in developing relations with our close neighbour, Indonesia, and the Association of South East Asian Nations?

Do we forget that any possible aggression – and there is absolutely no sign of it – from China, would be first experienced by our ASEAN neighbours?

It may well be expected that the Labor government, fearing to be wedged by the Coalition on national security issues, is taking decisions now on the basis that they might be braver in a second term and correct Australia’s course.

If Labor gives up on its values and chooses to impoverish the nation for an American cause, it will in time bring shame to us all and risk the future of our children.

Australia is becoming unhinged about the so called China threat.

Tom Uren was Anthony Albanese’s mentor. Tom would be appalled at what he sees a Labor Government doing.

 

For more on this topic, P&I recommends:

China has neither the intent nor the capability to attack us

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