Crikey hates everything to do with Scott Morrison, including JAUKUS. I hated ScoMo as a leader, but I recognise he is the man who led Australia’s great pivot away from China. A mighty legacy.
Bernard Keane took a mighty cringe at JAUKUS yesterday:
Trump’s return to the White House would represent the greatest opportunity in generations for those who want to see greater distance between Australia and the United States — whether of the anti-American left, advocates for a more independent Australian foreign policy or those opposed to specific elements of the US-Australia relationship, such as AUKUS.
…the greater threat from Trump to AUKUS lies in his possible embrace of it, and if he clearly states what AUKUS is really about, which is the subordination of Australian sovereignty to the American strategy to militarily contain China. Our government is naturally reluctant to say this aloud, as its predecessor was.
…Once Trump brings AUKUS into his more bluntly Sinophobic worldview, there’s a clear risk that AUKUS will become associated with him, undermining it in the eyes of Australians. To this end, it’s been interesting to watch the reaction to US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell saying the quiet bit loud about AUKUS last week — that its purpose was to bring Australian submarines into a war with China, something the astute Financial Review international editor James Curran nailed on the weekend.
The response from the US lobby has been amusing: Richard Fontaine of the defence contractor, Democrat-aligned defence think tank Center for a New American Security — whose interview with Campbell prompted the remarks — was quickly corraled by the Sinophobes of the Fairfax media to correct the record and tell us that Campbell hadn’t actually said what we’d heard him say. Dubbing Fontaine “one of America’s leading foreign policy thinkers”, Fairfax told us he thinks there’d been a “naive reaction” (the words of the journalist concerned) to Campbell letting the cat out of the bag, and that Campbell was merely saying “submarines could be relevant in a variety of contingencies”.
In fact, Campbell explicitly said AUKUS would mean submarines “from a number of countries operating in close coordination” could attack (“deliver conventional ordnance from long distances … including in cross-strait circumstances”).
Now, imagine Trump delivering the same message, but in his own particular way. How long will Australian support for the extravagant and implausible AUKUS project last under Trump? It’s enough to give the armchair admirals at Fairfax, and the AUKUS cheer squad, nightmares.
Bernard conveniently forgets the largest and most powerful interest group that will pursue this agenda are the China apologists comprising AFR, big exporters etc.
In short, any attack upon JAUKUS will be another whacko alliance of the far left and far right. Hardly the stuff of solid logic, even if it also represents a sovereign contradiction.
Despite Trump’s isolationist and autocratic leanings, it is likely JAUKUS will be embraced. The US has too much to gain from allowing allies to contain China on its behalf. It defrays costs, lowers body counts, and keeps the enemy engaged far, far away.
In the end, it may not even be subs, given the entire notion of the navy is being drawn into question by drones, which are winning dramatic asymmetric wars in the Black and Red Seas.
I also think that whatever JAUKUS becomes would survive a local assault. Australians already know their role in the US liberal imperium is subordinate and have always fulfilled requests from Washington within it.
Even dubious missions such as the Iraq War, which garnered huge popular resistance, were accepted failures. Aussies also understand the power of the US nuclear umbrella and intelligence.
The reason is simple and is unchanged from a century ago.
Aussies are pragmatists.
They know their liberal system is isolated in a region where Confucian paternalism most regularly delivers autocracy.
Freedom is only guaranteed historically by large and like-minded foreign powers (and yes, I am describing the British Empire as “liberal” for its time, with the US a post-colonial upgrade over time).
They also know that subordination to the CCP would be a sovereign, political, cultural, and social catastrophe far greater than any demand the US could ever make.
What the jingoistic Keatingeqsue weirdos never get is that, rightly, Aussies know and like their “subordinate” place.
