Australia: Loyal to the End

May 18th, 2015

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Reginald Little (nsnbc) : The Age Newspaper of 15 May 2015 carried a story headlined “Australia urged to send military to counter China’s control over sea lanes”, with the following opening paragraphs.

Australia should prepare to send military aircraft and ships to the South China Sea to stop China from asserting territorial control across some of the world’s most important trading lanes, says a leading defence planner.

The recommendation by Peter Jennings, who chairs the Abbott government’s advisory panel for drafting the upcoming Defence white paper, followed vehement denials by both Canberra and Washington that the US plans to put long-range bombers in Australia to deter China.

Those denials came in response to a remark by a top Pentagon official David Shear that “we will be placing additional air force assets in Australia as well, including B-1 bombers and surveillance aircraft”, though the denials from both sides left the door open to an increased military presence in Australian in future.

Mr Jennings’ recommendation, meanwhile, raises the unprecedented prospect of Australian defence personnel facing off against the armed forces of Australia’s largest trading partner.

No report could better illustrate the positive and negative character of Australia’s place in a rapidly transforming global environment.

On the positive side, if it can be called that, it is possible to see this report as evidence of continued confidence in the way in which Australia has preserved a type of serene prosperity by cocooning itself in the certainties of American defined global order. There remains a profound conviction in the minds of those charged with the nation’s future security and welfare that this can be guaranteed by a close identification with the United States, its superior military technology and its declared priorities.

Accordingly, it is important to respond positively to US rhetoric about its “pivot to Asia” and its concern about Chinese policies and actions in the East and South China Seas. Australia’s geo-commercial dependence on Asian markets is seen as secure within an American defined order that has now lasted 70 years.

On the negative side, the situation is less reassuring. There is, however, little awareness of this amongst the Australian population and, it seems, amongst Australian leaders. This is best explained by the reality that it is professionally perilous for those with media, academic, official or political occupations to display any serious knowledge of a wide range of critical developments.

These manifest themselves in diverse but mutually reinforcing areas.

They include America’s economic decline, financial indebtedness and currency vulnerability, America’s military and political loss of authority in a series of small unsuccessful wars and America’s strategic misjudgements in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the latter of which is eroding the coherence of NATO and the Atlantic Alliance.

They include the surging emergence of China as the world’s largest economy, the increasing alignment of Chinese and Russian interests as a result of American clumsiness in Ukraine, the rapid emergence of a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) encompassing more than half the world’s population and the steady advance of the BRICS and SCO members in building new international institutions as alternatives to the post 1945 United Nations system. The EEU seems likely to marginalize the English speaking maritime powers (US, UK and Australia) as Chinese infrastructure, including high speed rail, links Asia, Europe and all in between.

One could also include the unique and rigorous standards of educational excellence in China and Russia and the mounting evidence of Chinese and Russian advance in military, space and related technology to the point where America seems to be falling behind in a number of critical areas..

Effectively, Australian policy makers have preserved their innocence in the midst of these unsettling developments. Their trust in Anglo American loyalties has long delivered them many privileges and advantages. However, a rhetoric of engagement with Asian neighbours has had little substance outside the area of trade and investment. Even more serious, there is little awareness of the manner in which American and Australian vulnerabilities have been fostered by a simple, non-strategic focus on short term gain in trade and investment.

Having long been maintained militarily, politically, intellectually, culturally, economically and financially as an outpost of Empire (first British, later American), Australia seems likely to continue to have its fortunes determined far from its own shores. Accordingly, it needs to pay much closer attention to developments at the centre of that Empire, namely America, and the manner in which that centre seems to be being constantly disadvantaged by more subtle and considered strategies.

There is mounting evidence of concern at the centre of Empire, Washington, that many present policies are no longer viable and need serious reconsideration. The accumulation of negative developments detailed above are, of course, at the heart of this concern. There seems, however, to be no more capacity in Washington than in Canberra to develop coherent and comprehensive strategies that can match those coming out of Beijing and Moscow.

Washington’s declining financial and other resources, weakening alliances and accumulation of past misjudgements are consequently eroding confidence that the Anglo American global order that emerged after 1945 can be preserved far into the future. As is common at such End of Empire periods past privileges and certainties are much more powerful and definitive than any sense of how to recover lost glories.

In this context, an Australian Defence white paper prepared “to send military aircraft and ships to the South China Sea to stop China from asserting territorial control across some of the world’s most important trading lanes” should surprise no one. It may display an appalling lack of understanding of the cultural, political, strategic and technological realities and dynamics of the region but this is contemporary Australia. After all, until very recently, there was much talk of India choosing American allies over the seductions of BRICS, SCO and EEU.