_The Albanese Labor Government is actively making plans to take Australia into a future US war with China.

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Apart from climate change, this is the most serious security issue facing Australia. Saying it plainly makes the risk real, so at the risk of repetition here it is again: Labor is, right now, making plans to take Australia into a future US war with China.
War with China would be disastrous, for Australia, China and the world and we need to remember it is very far from inevitable.

While war is far from inevitable, the Albanese Government’s boots and all commitment to AUKUS, and its surrender to Trump’s war-making plans, risks fuelling a foolish and dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy. Under the guise of AUKUS, Labor is inviting a major US military build-up on our shores. Far from keeping us safe, this escalates regional tensions with China, leading in turn to more US military build-up. This is a non-virtuous military spiral where Australian security is the biggest loser.

Multiple war games have shown that the war Labor is making plans for will most likely produce one of two outcomes. First, the US loses. Second, everyone loses, due to catastrophic civilian, military and economic losses.

This is the war that the Albanese Government is diverting hundreds of billions of public dollars to join, to fight alongside the US military. What makes it worse is when you then realise that it will be Australia, not the US, that will be on the new front lines of this future war.
Australia is not part of the frontlines of this war by accident. It’s by design, one that’s approved by (and largely paid by) our own government.

For the past decade, the US has begun to accept that many of its existing forward military bases in Japan, the Northern Marianas and other Pacific islands are incredibly vulnerable to Chinese military reach if the US initiated a war in the Pacific.

This has led the US to seek more and larger bases in Australia that, while still in the Asia Pacific, are currently less vulnerable.

What does that expansion of US bases look like?

It can be seen in the building of an $8 billion US nuclear submarine attack base at HMAS Stirling, at Garden Island off Perth. Right next to this is the expanded $25 billion defence precinct in Henderson.

It is hosting nuclear weapon-capable US Air Force B-52 and B-2 bombers at Royal Australian Air Force Base in Tindal, a military airbase 300km south of Darwin.

It is allowing the US to pre-position 2500 US Marines in Robertson Barracks in Darwin.

It is expanding Pine Gap, the US spy base near Alice Springs, with 10 new satellite antennas and dishes, linked into the US’ global war machine.

Across Australia, we are seeing the rapid expansion of US bases and forces, almost all of which is paid for by the Australian public.

Of course, it is not just bases, the whole $375 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine project is designed to commit Australia to the US alliance for another half-century.

Most informed observers agree it is highly unlikely AUKUS will deliver any nuclear submarines for Australia because of US and UK production constraints. From the US side, that hardly matters.

For the US, AUKUS is less about submarines than it is about real estate and sending a signal to the rest of the world that Australia is part of US war-fighting plans in the Pacific.

Talking US real estate, let’s look a little more closely at the $8 billion Albanese is spending on the Henderson nuclear submarine base off Perth. This will be operational in 2027, well before Australia is even scheduled to have nuclear submarines.

This base is not for Australia, it is plainly a US forward operating base. The cover story for this gift to the US military is that the new US base might eventually also be used for Australia’s future fleet of nuclear submarines.

Our generosity to the new US submarine base does not even end there. In a remarkable start to this new Parliament, Labor rushed through legislation to allow Defence Housing to build 500 standalone homes, and even more on-base accommodation units, for the thousands of US military personnel and defence contractors who will staff the new US submarine base. Labor has refused to explain who will pay for this, using national security as a smokescreen for transparency.

At the same time, there are aggressive efforts to make Australia’s entire military “interoperable” with the US so that we can be slotted into overall US command in whatever conflict the US wants us to join.

This applies to our navy, our air force and our army, none of which is able to operate or sustain itself without ongoing US logistical and operational support.

All of this explains why the now-retired chair of the US Congress’s foreign affairs committee, Michael McCaul, said last year that Australia had ­become America’s “central base of operations” in the Indo-Pacific.

This explains why Defence Minister Richard Marles told a war-loving News Corporation-sponsored conference in June that Australia would be inevitably drawn into a US-China war.
Let us be clear, the US is not here to defend Australia. The US is here because they see us as an expendable base from which to attack China.

From a geostrategic point of view, the only reason Australia would ever become a target in a US-China war is because we host so many US bases. Every US base makes us far less safe.

What do we get for all this risk, cost and military adventurism? No one really believes it’s about protecting “the rules-based international order”, especially under Trump. No one honestly thinks China has ever had an interest in territorial claims here, so it’s not to defend Australia. We, meaning the Australian public, don’t get anything.

But US defence companies and retired politicians will get a lot, billions even. Australian defence careers are built on links to Washington and connections with US generals and admirals. These links are going to be solidified through AUKUS and fuelled with hundreds of billions in public funds.

All that money also supports the post-political careers of retired Labor and Coalition MPs who can join the boards of US and global weapons makers, just like former ministers such as Kim Beazley, Christopher Pyne and Scott Morrison have all done. In short, we get danger not security, dependence not sovereignty and we get to join someone else’s war with our major trading partner. We get all of this for the budget price of $375 billion, together with our independence and self-respect.

Right now, the Australian Greens are the only party in Parliament willing to even speak about these cooked national security settings. We are the only party in Parliament calling to end AUKUS, close US bases and develop an independent defence and foreign policy, based on human security.

Putting aside all the other benefits, like the billions in public funds we can reinvest in things we actually need, it is also how we derail the march to war. De-escalation and winding down the US build-up will signal to the region that war is not inevitable and that Australia is acting for peace.

At times like this, planning for peace, standing up to militarism and backing ourselves is not only the principled thing to do, but it’s also how we keep ourselves safe. That, after all, is what a defence policy is meant to be about.

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The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.