Either Albo’s cowards either have no idea what they are doing or they are liars:
Defence Minister Richard Marles says Australia’s fleet of nuclear-powered submarines will help deter a foreign adversary from launching a shipping blockade which could cut off the country’s trading routes from the rest of the world.
What balderdash. How will eight lousy subs do this? Half will be dry dock half of the time.
If we wanted to protect trade routes, we should have built 50-60 conventional subs for the same money.
Eight nuclear subs built and manned by the US are, in fact, the complete opposite of protecting trade routes. They are a downpayment on US protection in the event of China wars. They are allied force integration, not sovereign force projection.
And what will be the first trade route blockaded by US allies the moment hostilities break out? Australian commodities to China.
My own view is the sellout of our sovereignty is worth it because it is a fantasy that Australian liberal democracy can survive a China-dominated Asia.
We have already seen the CCP’s favoured tactics and goals. It wishes to occupy Australia with a bribed elite that silences dissent and gives up its freedoms for commodity cash.
We already know the method. It will involve large-scale Chinese emigration to Australia, the occupation of enough federal seats to control all election outcomes, the control and muzzling of parliament and press, and, ultimately, the forced silence of dissenters via “re-education” camps in the Pilbara.
You may be a little shocked to realise that we have been willing collaborators in most of this “plan” for twenty years. That is why, when it became too obvious in 2017, we broke from it, and Beijing tried everything from trade coercion to the 14 conditions to end democracy to get us back on course.
In this context, AUKUS is not so much a muscling out of Australian power as it is our last desperate attempt to save our freedoms via an enormous military bribe to the Americans.
Will it work? There’s a good chance. I am not overly concerned by this:
President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 should have been a warning to take a step back, rather than towards, greater military alignment with the United States. It is now unnervingly clear that we survived four years of erratic, uninformed, ego-driven leadership only because of the haphazard efforts of underlings to remove documents from the president’s desk, create informal back channels with military rivals and slow-walk his worst edicts.
There was no sense whatsoever that the Trump presidency wanted to abandon Asia. On the contrary, it focussed everything upon it and made it very clear that it sees the Pacific as its key strategic asset.
Trump’s transactionalism should not be confused with the basic reality that the US is much better off ensuring that any superpower conflict remains off China’s coast and not its own.
I am more concerned about this, articulated by Gareth Evans:
Love Paul Keating or loathe him, admire or abhor his invective, he has raised questions about the Aukus deal which are hugely important for Australia’s future and demand much more compelling answers than we have so far received from government ministers past or present.
The big three for me are whether, for all the hype, the submarines we are buying are really fit for purpose; whether an Australian flag on them really means we retain full sovereign agency in their use; and if it does not, whether that loss of agency is a price worth paying for the US security insurance we think we might be buying.
The question that matters most is whether or not AUKUS is buying Australia extra influence in Washington. And will that translate into a higher chance of preventing war over Taiwan?
A war that is incalculably destructive, that we might lose, and does not need to be fought at all given the better option of using it to boot China out of the global economy.
Will AUKUS aid in that end? Who knows? The economic moves are afoot:
The Biden administration is set to unveil tight restrictions on new operations in China by semiconductor manufacturers that get federal funds to build in the US.
The $50 billion CHIPS and Science Act will bar firms that win grants from expanding output by 5% for advanced chips and 10% for older technology, according to officials at the Commerce Department, which will disburse the funds.
The department on Tuesday will outline the new restrictions, which will include a $100,000 spending cap on investments in advanced capacity in China, as well as other measures, said the officials, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t yet public.
Is Albo stupid or lying about AUKUS?
