Pearls and Irritations

‘Worried about Australian sovereignty? Don’t bother, it’s gone.’

Michael Pascoe, a few days ago, in the New Daily, in an article titled ‘Worried about Australian sovereignty? Don’t bother, it’s gone.’ drew together what Paul Keating, I and others have been saying recently about Australia becoming a proxy even a patsy for the United States.

The signs are ominous on numerous fronts.

Kishore Mahbubani from Singapore has pointed out that Australia looks like a spear-carrier for the United States.

North Australia is becoming a US military colony. It started with Julia Gillard agreeing with Barack Obama for the stationing of marines in Darwin. It followed last year with the Morrison government at a US/Australia Ministerial meeting committing us to ‘high end war- fighting and combined military operations in the region’ with the United States.

The enormously expensive AUKUS nuclear submarines are not to defend Australia but to be fused with the United States naval forces to contain Chinese submarines on the Chinese coast in the South China Sea. We are paying for a submarine to oblige the Americans rather than to defend Australia. We are choosing the wrong submarine.

The Minister for Defence Richard Marles talks not only of Australian forces being ‘inter-operable’ but also ‘interchangeable’ with US forces! He is very much part of the Washington defence consensus.

We keep obliging the US time and time again – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria- in the death, maiming and dislodgement of millions of people in wars that have little or nothing to do with the defence of Australia or our national interests. We have joined with the US in the goading of China over Taiwan. We keep obliging the Americans with their sense of moral superiority.

We parrot the US on an ‘international rules based order’ which is really an endorsement of the American imperial view of the world. The US only abides by international rules when it suits.

China is not a military threat to Australia or the US. But it does challenge the American Empire with its 800 military bases around the world, many of them ringing China.

The US is the most aggressive and violent country in the world. As Malcolm Fraser warned us, the United States is a dangerous ally. As Paul Keating put it last week ‘the US does not want thinking allies, it wants dummies’. And that is what we have become. Even patsies!

We are being deliberately frightened again about the ‘yellow peril’. Our fear is exploited by the media at almost every step. After Malcolm Fraser the rot started in the Liberal Party with John Howard warning us about foreigners and outsiders – Tampa and refugees, dog-whistling on Asian migration, pandering to Pauline Hanson, attacking those with a ‘black armband view of history’, sabotaging the Republic referendum and committing us to the illegal and criminal war in Iraq. Instead of leadership on difficult issues he appealed to the darker angels of our nature.

Much of our ‘leadership’ – politicians, public officials, and journalists have been on the Washington drip-feed for so long that they have rendered themselves and the community almost incapable of informed decision-making in our own interests. The Washington Club wins every time. Our colonial mindset continues. When will we grow up?

There is little sign that the Albanese government is determined on a new course in our foreign affairs and defence policies. After becoming Prime Minister he rushed to QUAD and NATO to join the anti China band wagon.

We are still stuck in a political cul-de-sac and refusing to come to terms with our own region and China’s role within it. As Paul Keating said, ‘we must seek security within our region and not from our region’.

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