‘I’m proud of what we did in less than 24 hours.’ That was Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s 4 March comment this year on the time he took back in 2021 to decide on supporting the then Liberal government’s startling AUKUS agreement. (more…)
Category: Defence
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Taiwan: two journeys, two roads, war or peace?
Despite all the determined, and well-funded, efforts of Greg Sheridan, his mates at ASPI and in the media to beat the war drums and the legal shenanigans around the role of the Governor General in declaring war, it is by no means inevitable that Australia will go to war against China. (more…)
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Japan on the path to becoming a Military Great(er) Power
Promising to double its “defence” expenditure over the coming five-year period and placing huge orders for US military equipment to help it to do so, the sometime “peace state” of Japan is moving into high gear on militarisation. (more…)
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Buying and building Korean AIP submarines: a bargain for Australia
Australia has several very viable options for not buying AUKUS nuclear submarines. All of them are much cheaper in the medium to short term and vastly cheaper and much less political in the long term.
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AUKUS and Australia’s national sovereignty
The value of AUKUS depends critically on how far it increases the chances of Australia being dragged into an unnecessary and potentially catastrophic war at the behest of the US. (more…)
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Wong’s two card trick on Australians
Minister Wong’s speech to the National Press Club demonstrates that when she lays her cards on the table they do not present truly. A mathematician would advise to multiply her claims by minus one. Australia is well along on a path to make, not avert, war with China. Peace holds no weight with this government. Australians must count on failed leadership from our leaders, henceforth. (more…)
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Australia adrift and a foreign minister all at sea
On Monday, Penny Wong delivered her much awaited address to the National Press Club. What a disappointment! So many words, and so little substance. One could dismiss the episode as just another case of a minister who’s not up to the task. Unfortunately, the speech points to a deeper ailment – a government oblivious to the dangers ahead, and incapable of steering the ship to safer waters. (more…)
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War preparations extend to legislative amendments
War preparations began with the U.S. Force Posture Agreement providing a gateway for U.S. military build-up in the Northern Territory and giving them unimpeded access to our seaports and air bases. War preparations have continued with huge expenditures on military acquisitions topped with $368 billion on nuclear -powered submarines. Now there are legislative amendments on the way to make it easier for the U.S. to support and launch hostile actions from Australian territory. (more…)
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Anti-China witch hunt intensifies with Csergo arrest
In the Csergo case the big question is: does the prosecution have any evidence of a real crime and not just a breach of the ridiculous Reckless Foreign Interference law? (more…)
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Malcolm Fraser would have agreed with Paul Keating on AUKUS
Like so many Australians, I am very worried by our commitment to AUKUS. I agree strongly with many other critics that we have been placed in peril by our government’s submarine agreement with the US and the UK. (more…)
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A tainted Defence Strategic Review
P&I Editorial:
Conflicts of interest at the heart of AUKUS and the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) – including the principal author of the DSR benefitting from US State Department funding designed to build support for AUKUS and the US alliance – demand independent investigation. (more…)
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Scorched Earth: Anti-reunification forces use Taiwan to subvert China
US and British arms industry companies and their little mentioned but crucial support cast of Taiwanese military, lawmakers and government official counterparts are opposed to China-Taiwan reunification, because the current situation acts as their ATM, generating billions of dollars in profit. (more…)
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Safe travels in no-go zones
The countries where it’s not safe for Australians to travel have multiplied, but not because of COVID. They include the places where we fought the war on terror. (more…)
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Never before has a Labor Government been so bereft of policy ambition
In facing the great challenge of our time, a super-state resident in continental Asia and an itinerant naval power seeking to maintain primacy – the foreign minister was unable to nominate a single piece of strategic statecraft by Australia that would attempt a solution for both powers.
Paul Keating’s response to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s speech at the National Press Club, 17 April 2023. (more…)
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AUKUS and the rupture in Australian civil-military relations
When a senior officer in the Australian Defence Force assumes political positions that are in the realm of the overtly political, and is not disciplined for having done so, the government is derelict in its duty to maintain the firewall between the civil and the military. Worse, it constitutes an offence against democratic theory and practice. (more…)
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AUKUS as cultural cringe
There are many cogent arguments against AUKUS, and Pearls and Irritations has featured most of them. For me the most galling is the re-emergence of the images of the Anglosphere, and the photos of Australian Prime Ministers beaming between the US President and the UK Prime Minister, as if nothing had changed since Sir Robert Menzies invoked our great and powerful friends. (more…)
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AUKUS and militarising Australia’s universities
In a recent piece by Guardian Australia’s higher education reporter, an academic, who preferred to remain anonymous fearing institutional retribution, likened the modern Australian university to a supermarket. Students were the customers filing through the self-checkout counters; the staff, increasingly rendered irrelevant, were readily disposable. (more…)
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The dark dark secret
Fascism is in the news again, with the nazi salute being banned. Fascism is much more insidious than a few extremist adherents. With careful rebadging it has begun to pervade some of our institutions. (more…)
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The dangerous one is the U.S.
The implication of AUKUS is that China constitutes a danger to Australian security. It borders on official Australian policy that China is an aggressive power bent on domination. But the history of the People’s Republic suggests its military is for defence, not aggression and that the cases where it has used external military force are very few. Under Xi Jinping it may be assertive and keen to extend influence, especially economic, but it shows no signs of political/military aggression. On the contrary, it is the U.S. that constantly uses external military force and is bent on maintaining domination at all costs. (more…)
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We are being groomed for war with China
Orchestrated components are coming together to enable the US to recruit Australia in future wars of choice. Our media must begin to ask questions about the crude but successful ways the Australian people are being groomed to provide passive or enthusiastic consent. (more…)
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Depleted Ukrainians
Fighting in Ukraine continues, sometimes fiercely, sometimes spasmodically. So do the unending appeals from Vladimir Zelensky for more and better weapons from the West. He is now to get from Britain anti-tank shells made from depleted uranium, which will increase radiation and chemical pollution where they are used. (more…)
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Can the West move beyond the business of war and work with China, other nations for global peace?
Instead of focusing on building bridges and finding common ground for peace, the West has increasingly sought to shore up support among its allies and castigate or demonise its enemies. (more…)
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NATO and Australia: vital partners in a new world war?
Two recent news stories say it all. On the 4th of April the Sydney Morning Herald carried a report of an interview with Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, in which he claimed that Australia was a vital partner in the organisation’s campaign to confront the security challenges posed by China and in particular NATO’s plans to defend Taiwan. Quite clearly this came as a surprise to many Australians. (more…)
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The minefields that could sink AUKUS SSNs
The most consequential aspect of AUKUS is it embeds the UK and the US firmly into Australia’s Indo-Pacific strategy. But what if the secret US calculation behind AUKUS is to goad China into war before China’s superiority outpaces US and allied capabilities? A war that China does not want and will likely lose? (more…)
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AUKUS designed to remove public resistance to Australia stationing US nuclear submarines
The real reason for the AUKUS submarine deal might well have been the U.S. wish for a port and base in Australia from where it can send its own nuclear submarines to harass China. The offer to Australia to buy nuclear submarines was likely only made to remove Australian public resistance to the stationing of nuclear submarines (with nuclear weapons) on the continent. (more…)
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Is Australia currently at war?
Historically, it used to be clear when one country was at war with another. Not so today. Indeed, that is one of the Department of Defence’s objections to war powers reform, where it stated in its submission to the Armed Overseas Conflict Inquiry that “the growth of grey-zone activities and offensive operations in the space and cyber domains [challenge] traditional concepts of ‘conflict.’“ (more…)
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What would you choose: a strategic battery industry, or AUKUS?
Australia has only a few months of fuel reserves and we are on the edge of a technological revolution in transport. So in a strategic sense anything we could do to secure our fuel reserves or find alternatives to petroleum based fuels would make us more secure. (more…)
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The United States is in decline, with AUKUS, so too is Australia
It is all but finalised. Australia has handcuffed itself, essentially in perpetuity, to the United States. As a result, Australia’s future is inextricably intertwined with the future of the United States. (more…)
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Let parliament make Australia’s war decisions
Australia is an advanced parliamentary democracy, but the Prime Minister and cabinet members decide whether Australia is to go to war. Parliament is like the ghost of Cinderella with no formal voice in it. This is a historical hangover, a part of the “royal prerogative,” passed on from the monarch to the government of the day. It is a political custom not enforceable as law. Yet, on that flimsy basis, Australia has been joining the USA in many unlawful wars and invasions. (more…)
