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Category: Defence

On Ukraine and Taiwan we are not using diplomacy; we are using weaponry

We are taking exactly the same tactics in East Asia that led to the war in Ukraine. We’re organising alliances, building up weaponry, trash-talking China, having Speaker Pelosi fly to Taiwan, when the Chinese government said, “Please, lower the temperature, lower the tensions.” We say, “No, we do what we want,” and now send more arms. This is a recipe for yet another war. And to my mind, it’s terrifying.

A new database that Tufts is maintaining has just shown that there have been more than 100 military interventions by the United States since 1991. It’s really unbelievable. (more…)

Sep 5, 2022
What is it with pollies, tanks and defence waste?

What is with politicians and tanks and other armoured vehicles? (more…)

Sep 4, 2022
Donald Rothwell: Is Australia in danger of becoming the US’s ‘deputy sheriff’ in the South China Sea?

Recent comments by Defence Minister Richard Marles about Australia, China and the international law of the sea raise the spectre of Australia acting as an Indo-Pacific “deputy sheriff” for the United States, enforcing the rules-based international order. (more…)

Sep 4, 2022
Jon Richardson: NATO and Ukraine: once more into the breach…

Professor Graeme Gill has written a detailed response to my own article in P and I on NATO and the origins of war in Ukraine. I argued the latter were to be found in Russia’s post-imperial angst and domestic authoritarianism rather than in any threat presented by NATO expansion or Western policies. (more…)

Sep 4, 2022
Terrorist-preoccupied Israel issues latest license for thuggery

While the world was distracted by brutalities in Ukraine, Yemen, Myanmar, Somalia and by a threatening US, China conflict, Israeli forces raided the offices of six Palestinian human rights organisations, and after stealing equipment and documents, soldiers welded doors shut. (more…)

Sep 1, 2022
Caitlin Johnstone: US invades Syria, kills people, claims self-defence

The US is an occupying force who is there without the permission of the Syrian government, without having been attacked by Syria, and without any valid claim to be defending itself from anyone in Syria. (more…)

Aug 30, 2022
Sixty years and twenty-seven days ago Australia sent 30 advisors to Vietnam

That war has lessons for us today. (more…)

Aug 30, 2022
War is evil. Prevention is better than cure

It is so sad for our humanity that our so-called civilised world political leaders are still not able to find a way of preventing war and achieving PEACE regardless of what excuses the leaders have to start a war. (more…)

Aug 29, 2022
Our Air Force is already ‘operating against China’

Australia is seemingly as eager as ever to be pushed out on a plank by our American friends, professionally. Ever the faithful “patsy”. (more…)

Aug 26, 2022
The west’s false narrative about Russia and China

The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an attempt to manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and pressing diplomacy. (more…)

Aug 24, 2022
Everett Bledsoe: The US military empire. How many US military bases are there in the world?

The Pentagon does not know how many bases it has around the world so it relies on academics to tell it. The US bases are gated communities which replicate US suburbs, shops and amenities to the exclusion of local people. (more…)

Aug 23, 2022
Jon Richardson: No, NATO expansion didn’t cause the war in Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has met with opprobrium in most quarters. At the same time, commentators of diverse stripes still argue that Western policies, particularly NATO expansion, should bear part or much of the blame for these events. (more…)

Aug 23, 2022
Jessica Corbett: Pentagon contractors in Afghanistan pocketed $108 billion over 20 years

Military contracting “obscures where and how taxpayer money flows,” and “makes it difficult to know how many people are employed, injured, and killed,” said the Costs of War Project report’s author. (more…)

Aug 23, 2022
Bill Armstrong: National security through community engagement. Fail to honour people and they will fail to honour you. (Lao Tsu 2000 years ago)

We are living through a change of era on planet earth. Huge changes are ongoing. There is no doubt that the recent federal election gave a mandate to the incoming Government to RESET the way we do business at many levels. (more…)

Aug 20, 2022
The rise of China- the biggest shift in our international environment since Europeans settled on this continent

We cannot simply rely on the US to keep Asia “safe” in future. Is our Prime Minister really aware of this? (more…)

Aug 19, 2022
Why is Australia conducting provocative intelligence flights and activities off the China coast in support of the US?

How would Australia react if Chinese ISR (Intelligence ,Surveillance,Reconnaissance) planes were similarly operating off its coast probing its defences and dropping sonobuoys to detect its submarines? (more…)

Aug 18, 2022
Northern Australia is becoming a US military colony

Julia Gillard delivered a gushing speech to the American Congress in March 2011. Then eight months later she agreed to US Marines in Darwin. (more…)

Aug 17, 2022
The goading of China continues day after day. Pelosi was just the most recent deliberate provocation

The path to war in Asia – crossing the Rubicon. (more…)

Aug 16, 2022
Would Australian defence of Taiwan amount to the crime of aggression?

The Defence Minister’s Cabinet colleagues must be able to rely him on to provide authoritative guidance on the legal use of military force. The public has a right to expect his statements on international law to be meaningful and correct. Richard Marles has not demonstrated that capacity. (more…)

Aug 16, 2022
Pelosi’s visit has brought the day of reckoning over Taiwan much closer

Australia’s most strenuous diplomatic efforts should be directed not at improving relations with China but at urging the US to pursue a different course. (more…)

Aug 15, 2022
Peace needs to be waged!

Thank you, Bob Carr, for reminding us of the difference between a diplomacy of peace and a diplomacy of war (P&I, Aug 6, 2022). (more…)

Aug 14, 2022
Learning the right nuclear lessons from Ukraine

The Hiroshima gathering affirms the importance of nuclear arms control and disarmament. (more…)

Aug 13, 2022
Defence reviews; what are they good for?

It is essential that the new Defence review not degenerate into the usual ritualistic orthodoxy. In these perilous times it cannot be allowed to become a narrow, jargon-laden, orthodox military consideration but must situate Australia’s strategy and military posture in the context of the important foreign policy issues. (more…)

Aug 12, 2022
Australia’s defence strategic review – facts and fallacies

In preparation for the Defence Strategic Review the government has not informed Australians of any threat which challenges our security, much less a spectrum of them up to “most concerning”. (more…)

Aug 11, 2022
John Menadue: The Ukrainian / Zelensky propaganda war

Amnesty International has just released a report that drew attention to Ukrainian violations of International Law in its war with Russia. It quickly became a footnote in the propaganda war. (more…)

Aug 11, 2022
Diego Garcia: Stealing a nation and how ‘international rules’ don’t apply if it is the US or UK

One of John Pilger’s most remarkable documentaries, bringing a little-known story to a wide audience, is Stealing a Nation, about how British governments ruthlessly expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, a crown colony in the Indian Ocean, in the late 1960s and early 70s to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island. (more…)

Aug 11, 2022
Ausmin and Aukus: It’s even worse than you think. Australia is now openly a cog in America’s war plans

Nothing exemplifies the loss of national sovereignty, and the abandonment of strategic autonomy, like handing the war decision over to the US. The submarine issue is simply a blind. AUKUS is just a distraction. (more…)

Aug 10, 2022
The United States, in decline but still able to kill us all…

The global dominance of the United States, in so many fields, from space, to science, to entertainment, to sport, to novelty in the development of the English language, has been taken for granted, is part of our fabric of Australian existence. (more…)

Aug 10, 2022
Andrew Bacevich: American Imperium – Untangling truth and fiction in an age of perpetual US wars (Repost from 1/1/2018)

‘Republicans and Democrats disagree today on many issues, but they are united in their resolve that the United States must remain the world’s greatest military power. In its most benign form, the consensus finds expression in extravagant and unremitting displays of affection for those who wear the uniform. Considerably less benign is a pronounced enthusiasm for putting our soldiers to work “keeping America safe.” This tendency finds the United States more or less permanently engaged in hostilities abroad, even as presidents from both parties take turns reiterating the nation’s enduring commitment to peace.’

(more…)

Aug 7, 2022
US military colonisation continues —- To be updated—JM

The UK is preparing to transfer the sovereignty of Diego Garcia to the US and we are preparing Cocus Keeling for US military use.

(more…)

Aug 5, 2022

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