Pearls and Irritations

Almost the first thing Anthony Albanese did after becoming PM was to jump on a plane for a QUAD meeting in Tokyo. He  was accompanied by Andrew Shearer, the head of the Office of National Intelligence. Ever since, Albanese has been in the grip of our intelligence services which have been effectively colonised by the CIA and other US agencies. Diplomacy has been put in the freezer.

The QUAD has a confusing history:

• Biden could not make it to the QUAD meeting in Sydney last year.
• It was a very rushed non meeting in Delaware last week, mostly memorable for the “hot mic” moment with Biden warning Albanese about an aggressive China and Albanese nodding his head in full agreement.
• Albanese travelled 16,000 km to see Biden, but was too busy to fly on to New York for the UN General Assembly.
• There was not enough time for Albanese and Narendra Modi to have a meeting.
• In a few months neither Joe Biden nor Fumio Kishida will be in office. So it was a nice farewell party.
• They again talked about values, but seemingly avoided how those values were being upheld by the US  in the Gaza genocide.

QUAD may go the way of SEATO – a paper tiger that lasted from 1954 until its inglorious end in 1977.

The QUAD was launched in 2007 in Tokyo by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. It made little progress, but was resuscitated when Abe returned to power in 2017.

Some comedians have described the QUAD as Abe’s great achievement and Albanese has described Abe as a giant on the world stage. But was he?

Abe and his faction was known for its anti-Chinese stance. That hostility to China was no surprise. Abe inherited that view from his grandfather, Noboru Kishi, a former prime minister of Japan who was indicted for war crimes for his activities during WWII in Manchuria. The monster of Manchuria.! Yet Kishi became prime minister despite his record!

With the US at his back, Japan, through Abe and others, has been able to indulge the country’s anti-China sentiment. Japan is the spear-carrier for the US in North Asia like Australia is becoming in the South. Japan is often described as an unsinkable US aircraft carrier.

So Japan, under the influence of Abe and others in Japan, has been a keen supporter of the anti-China QUAD “alliance”.

Another member of QUAD is India which, unlike Japan, has had a long tradition of non-alignment. It is close to Russia. Last year, Modi and Putin signed 28 agreements, covering investment, technical transfer, energy and defence. India intends to purchase copies of Russia’s S-400 missile defence system.

India has joined with Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa in BRICS. India has not joined the sanctions against Russia over Ukraine. It has abstained from voting on several UN resolutions criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Against that background, India looks an odd member of an anti- China alliance. As Paul Keating has put it, it’s hard to see the Indian navy confronting China in the South China Sea. He described the QUAD as “strategic nonsense” and “a waste of time”.

The key member of QUAD is the US which projects its military power against China in the numerous military bases in Japan, ROK and Diego Garcia that ring China. No wonder China feels threatened.

Almost always at war or provoking another, there has been no country in history as aggressive as America. Violence is as American as cherry pie.

The QUAD has a very mixed membership and like SEATO it has some very serious problems.

It does not include most Asian countries and ASEAN, in particular. Indonesia is not a member.

Despite the inclusion of India, it gives the impression of the developed Western world telling Asian countries what is best for them. The US preaches rules and values and persistently breaches them. China is more likely to deliver than preach.

And the countries of our region and the Global South know that.

As James Curran has pointed out in the AFR, “ISEAS poll respondents felt that US engagement with South-East Asia has decreased significantly over the course of Biden’s term in office, and more South-East Asians express little to no confidence in the US as a strategic partner and provider of regional security. Biden’s presentation of the global struggle as one between democracies and autocracies goes down well in the salons of Europe, and no doubt warms many hearts here, but in South-East Asia it clearly does not”.

The QUAD is more a reflection of fear of China than anything else and US fear of losing its pre-eminence to China. It doesn’t do anything to bridge or diminish gaps or differences.

If the QUAD does anything useful, it should be seeking to do it in collaboration with China and not in opposition to it.

SEATO was established at the behest of the US in 1954. It was designed for the containment of China and communist influence in South East Asia, but the Philippines and Thailand were the only South East Asian countries to join. Pakistan was the only other Asian country. SEATO was dominated by outsiders – the US, UK, France, New Zealand and Australia. Those outsiders contributed 75% of SEATO’s civilian and military budget.

The QUAD looks to have many of the features of the failed SEATO. It doesn’t include significant South East Asian countries. It looks more and more like the paper tiger that SEATO turned out to be. The QUAD lacks regional support and a common purpose. It has a lot of meetings, but little substance.

There is a pattern in all this – our loss of sovereignty to the US. The QUAD is  another example of our “vassal” status. James Curran in the AFR tells us that Albanese in more American than the Americans themselves. Gareth Evans commented that Richard Marles’ dewey eyed love affair with the US is beyond parody

The United States Studies Centre authored our tainted Defence Strategic Review. Our Department of Defence secretly employed US admirals. We learned about it in US media and not from our craven MSM.

Our vassal status can be well judged by the US bases at Pine Gap, Darwin and Tindal, the Force Posture Agreement, AUKUS and much more including “interoperability and interchangeability” of our militaries. Perth is to have nuclear powered and presumably nuclear-armed US submarines based  there. We won’t ask, of course, and the US won’t tell us if they are nuclear armed. Or if the US B52s operating out of Tindal are carrying nukes!

These US bases put us at great risk even more than AUKUS which is so absurd it will probably never happen. US submarine construction is way behind schedule and way ahead of budget. And who in their right minds would be confident of UK shipbuilding by BAE at Barrow-in-Furness?

These key US bases would be under attack if the US provokes war with China over Taiwan. China would not attack mainland America for fear of massive retaliation. As a staunch US ally, we would be very much at risk.

If there was any consolation in the Delaware non-event, at least we were not asked to cede more bases to the US. That is well in hand. The Deputy Secretary of State, Kurt Campbell, has boasted that the US “has locked Australia in for the next 40 years”.

What was that about Australian sovereignty? Stop laughing, this is very serious.

This is an updated article from May 18, 2023

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