Leading us off is Chickenhawk Peter Dutton:
Defence Minister Peter Dutton has defended the federal government after Labor’s Penny Wong slammed China’s security pact with the Solomon Islands as the “worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific since the end of World War Two”.
“It is not a stuff up at all and I think this language and Penny Wong in the last 24 hours has been ridiculous,” Mr Dutton told Channel 7’s Sunrise. “They are damaging us and for whatever reason, taking China’s side (not) Australia’s side.”
The only thing ridiculous about this is Peter Dutton sitting on his arse while he declares:
Defence Minister Peter Dutton is warning China will not waste any time expanding its presence in the South Pacific, after signing its controversial security pact with Solomon Islands.
…”You can expect the Chinese to do all they can now that they’ve got this agreement signed,” Mr Dutton told Sky News.
“President Xi looked President Obama in the eye and said that the 20 points of reclaimed islands on the South China Sea would not be militarised.
“Today they are militarised.”
In effect, Dutton is describing the slow-motion invasion of the South Pacific while he blames Labor, who is not in power, instead of actually doing something. I mean, is he a crackpot?
I will make a prediction. I’ll bet that China does send some military presence before the election just to make the point that the Morrison Government is its bitch. Revenge is a dish best served with Chinese characteristics.
Peter Jennings of ASPI wasn’t much better:
The real test for the Australian government is to develop a strategy ensuring that a Chinese military base isn’t built and that Honiara decides by itself to embrace a closer security relationship with us. Securing that outcome will be difficult because Beijing will move quickly to create “facts on the ground”. Probably before our federal election is over, PLA cargo aircraft and ships will arrive in Honiara with material to provide the “logistical replenishment”, “stopover and transition in Solomon Islands” and to carry out the “major projects” described in the leaked draft agreement.
…Australia’s policy failure is not that we failed to disrupt a Chinese covert operation. It’s broader: for decades we have over-estimated our influence in the Pacific; under-invested in promoting our security; and failed to appreciate China’s strategic intent.
Australia’s defence policy, released in 2020, sets three fundamental goals: to shape Australia’s strategic environment; deter actions against our interests; and respond with credible military force, when required.
We have failed in all three aims. We are not shaping the views of our neighbours and we have failed to deter Chinese adventurism in any practical sense. Our “credible military force” is as busy as a defence force could be doing disaster relief and helping with the Covid response, but when it comes to operating in the region Defence is slow, hesitant, late and limited.
After the election, the Solomons’ lesson should force an urgent rethink about how to add grunt to the “shape, deter, respond” mantra. The starting point should be to act with focused intensity to shore up our threatened strategic interests. We need to stop wringing our hands about China’s money politics in the region and accept that the leadership we claim will cost money.
This week the Prime Minister announced an extra two patrol boats will be built for the navy. Defence Minister Peter Dutton should go to Honiara and offer to base them there in a shared Australia-Solomon Islands base.
…Solomon Islands can be persuaded to shelve the China deal. It will take focused effort on our part and more money than we would like to spend, but we have been short-changing Defence for decades – another achievement of the great Australian bipartisan project to be asleep at the wheel of our own security.
Two new patrol boats and a bit of cash are not going to shift Honiara. China has not just deployed soft power assets in the South Pacfiifc. It is delivered a step change to hard power deployment which fundamentally alters everything. If we can’t foment a coup in four weeks then we need to be planning to turn the entire island into a quagmire that China wishes it never set foot upon.
Or, we could do what Hugh White suggests. Sink into defeat for no reason other than our own black fantasies:
“If there’s a war it is significant that China would have a base as close to us as the Solomons but that is a challenge for our defence planners because they would have to make sure we have the capacity to neutralise such a base,” White said.
“That can be done with the right kind of investments in missiles and that’s the challenge, rather than to spend too much money on tanks, for example.
“Could we have prevented it? I don’t think we can prevent China becoming substantially more influential in the south-west Pacific because China will simply become too big and too rich and too important for these countries to ignore.”
We’re losing the neighborhood because we’ve done nothing to keep it. White’s black fantasy of irresistible Chinese power is the kind of fait accompli rhetoric that Beijing has spent decades investing in. It is as ridiculous as it is paralysing.
Then there’s Barnaby Joyce who labels the problems accurately then does nothing as well:
While Mr Morrison appeared to put a lot faith in Mr Sogavare’s claim the agreement would not lead to a Chinese military base, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said Australia does not want “our own little Cuba off our coast”.
Former foreign minister Julie Bishop said Senator Payne “should be on the next plane to the Solomon Islands to talk with the government to see what’s actually being agreed”.
“This could well mean there would be Chinese military bases on Solomon Islands and that really changes the dynamic and environment in our area in our region,” Ms Bishop said.
Sogavare has proven he will double-deal. We need to be planning his removal by all means available. Once Chinese troops are on the ground then any attempt to do so will be met with greater Chinese deployment.
Unbelievably, this is lockdowns, stimulus, vaccines, RATS, and natural disaster responses all over again. The Morrison Government has sat on this intel for eight months and done nothing but spin until it’s all too late to fix.
We need a wartime PM that is prepared to act and we’ve got the cowards of Canberra instead.
