Canberra is as soon as once more serving, and paying for, Washington and London’s regional ambitions
Final week, amidst quite a lot of pomp and ceremony at a San Diego, California naval base, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed off on the AUKUS submarine cope with the US and the UK.
Below this extraordinary association, Australia agreed to pay $368 billion for eight nuclear-powered submarines to be manufactured largely in America and Britain. The staggered supply dates stretch a long time into the longer term.
The AUKUS pact, nonetheless, isn’t just in regards to the buy of some over-priced submarines that could be technologically out of date by the point they’re constructed. The pact additionally firmly binds Australia to the wheels of the US and UK in respect of safety points in Southeast Asia. Extra importantly, this week’s submarine deal represents an necessary shift in Australia’s international coverage settings in direction of craven dependence on the US and UK, and away from its latest rapprochement with China.
Footage of Prime Minister Albanese gazing in admiration at President Biden and Rishi Sunak in San Diego displays completely the subservience that now characterizes Australia’s relationship with the US and UK. “I’m so honored to face alongside you each,” he stated.
Albanese described the AUKUS deal in his characteristically mangled prose as follows: “The sum of the three is multiple plus one on this case. And I believe that the cooperation we’ve had is absolutely thrilling.” No point out of abandoning Australia’s international coverage independence, disturbing regional stability, alienating China or changing into depending on two waning world powers, one among which hasn’t had a army presence in Southeast Asia because the Seventies.
China responded to this week’s occasions by reiterating its characterization of the AUKUS pact as being knowledgeable by a “typical chilly struggle mentality which can solely encourage an arms race, and hurt regional peace and stability.”
From an historic perspective, Albanese’s obsequious capitulation to the international coverage and financial pursuits of the UK and US ought to come as no shock. Australia stays a member of the British Commonwealth, and King Charles III, in his regal capability as King of Australia, is the nation’s head of state. In contrast to different British dominions, Australia has by no means opted to change into a republic. Till the Whitlam Labor authorities got here to energy in 1972, Australian Prime Ministers inevitably supported the UK on international coverage points. Prime Minister Menzies defended Britain in the course of the Suez disaster, and was dispatched by his British masters to Cairo to lecture President Nasser on the error of his methods.
When Australia did briefly break away from British domination throughout World Struggle II, it merely changed one colonial overlord with one other – this time the US. Australia’s ill-advised involvement in wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan adopted, along with a long time of wasted alternatives to cement higher relationships with neighboring nations in Southeast Asia – most significantly China and Indonesia. And who can neglect Prime Minister Holt’s stirring “All the way in which with LBJ” speech delivered on the peak of the Vietnam struggle – one more ode to Australian subservience.
Moreover with out precedent is the spectacle of Australia being lumbered with overpriced American army {hardware} in change for help for unwise American international coverage goals. Within the early Nineteen Sixties when the Menzies authorities urged President Kennedy to escalate the struggle in Vietnam, a part of that disastrous pact concerned Australia buying the costly and trouble-plagued F-111 plane from its (little doubt very grateful) US producer.
This brings us again to the AUKUS deal itself. It’s, in fact, the brainchild of former conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison – who Albanese soundly defeated on the polls in Could final 12 months.
In September 2021, in usually duplicitous style, Morrison reneged on a $90 billion deal brokered by former Prime Minister Turnbull to buy numerous submarines from France – and, on the similar time, proudly unveiled the AUKUS safety pact. This unprincipled act of diplomacy resulted in a severe breach in Australian-French relations that has nonetheless not been remedied.
Albanese instantly supported the AUKUS pact, regardless of its far reaching penalties – partially to keep away from a political battle in respect of international coverage within the lead as much as the 2022 election, but in addition – as this week’s occasions have made clear – as a result of he craves dependence on the UK and US simply as a lot as Menzies, Holt and Morrison ever did.
It grew to become apparent this week that Albanese – for all his allegedly left-wing radicalism – adheres to precisely the identical irrational international coverage world-view that unreconstructed chilly struggle warriors like Morrison, and people conservative Prime Ministers that preceded him.
Not solely does the AUKUS pact, like most disastrous Australian international coverage stances, have bipartisan help from each main political events, but it surely has additionally been endorsed by the entire main media organizations in Australia – together with the so-called left wing ABC and Channel 9 newspapers, and the undoubtedly right-wing Murdoch press and Sky Information.
Within the circumstances, critics of the AUKUS pact have been very skinny on the bottom in Australia.
Earlier within the week, nonetheless, former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, in an tackle to the Nationwide Press Membership in Canberra, had the audacity to ship a devastating critique of the AUKUS deal and the Albanese authorities. Keating made the next factors:
- the AUKUS deal is “the worst deal in all historical past” and “irrational in each dimension”
- the San Diego assembly was a “kabuki present”
- the AUKUS trilateral partnership is all about “searching for to take care of US strategic hegemony in Asia” by containing China
- Australia is “shunning safety in Asia for safety in and throughout the Anglosphere”
- the UK is “wanting round for suckers… (to create a) … international Britain… after that idiot Johnson destroyed their place in Europe” and reminded his viewers that the UK had “dumped Australia all by way of the 20th century”
- “Australia is locking in its subsequent half century in Asia as subordinate to the US” and Albanese is “a Prime Minister with an American sword to rattle”
- Albanese’s choice to ally Australia with the US “to attempt to comprise China as an financial rival” may have “lethal penalties for Australia” and that the “incompetent” Albanese authorities had “launched into a harmful and pointless journey”
- Joe Biden “couldn’t string three phrases collectively … however needs to go to struggle”
- he reiterated his beforehand expressed view that China didn’t pose a safety menace to Australia and that Taiwan was “a manufactured downside”
- Albanese is being been duped by the “dopes” within the protection and nationwide safety institutions
- Albanese may have bought 40 to 50 standard submarines for a similar cash as he’s spending on the 8 AUKUS submarines
He additionally claimed that “there was just one payer at San Diego” – specifically Australia – and that the AUKUS deal was structured to help the US financial system and “bail out British firms.”
The responses of Albanese and his protection and international affairs ministers to Keating’s assault have been predictable. They’ve resolutely prevented coping with the problems raised by Keating and easily declare he had “diminished himself” by attacking them personally, in addition to criticizing him for being “nasty” to the international affairs minister, who occurs to be a girl.
This type of all-too-common petty advert hominem assault, primarily based on confected outrage or offense – which allows the actual points to be utterly prevented – is, in fact, what passes for political debate within the West today.
Paul Keating’s iconoclastic speech final week was each well timed and welcome. He single-handedly tried to provoke a needed debate on a problem of elementary significance to Australia’s future and the safety of your entire Southeast Asia area.
Whether or not a severe public debate will occur or not – it appears unlikely for the time being – Keating, who left workplace in 1996, has finished Australia an awesome service by drawing consideration to the deeply problematic and troubling nature of the AUKUS pact.
Keating has additionally obliquely reminded Australian voters – a minimum of those that are sufficiently old to recollect it – of a time when just a few politicians of stature and precept nonetheless sat in parliament, and when real public debate befell, as a matter in fact, in respect of problems with nationwide significance.
Sadly – if Prime Minister Albanese and his protection and international affairs ministers are any indication – that point appears to have lengthy since handed.
The statements, views and opinions expressed on this column are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially symbolize these of RT.
Supply hyperlink
