Bob Carr, former foreign minister and longest-serving NSW premier, recently penned a potent critique of Albanese’s inability to rescue Julian Assange from the clammy clutches of the Anglo-American imperium. Carr recalls that as opposition leader, Albanese said, ‘enough is enough!’ What is served by keeping him incarcerated? As prime minister, he made his position clear to the Biden administration.
Carr points out that Australia has made an immense compromise to our sovereignty and national security by hosting US bases and committing to purchase nuclear submarines under the AUKUS agreement, in support of America’s march to war with China. Bob notes that this ‘clinches Australia’s reputation as a deliriously loyal, entirely gullible US ally’.
If Australia’s sacrifice in support of America’s geopolitical ambition is not sufficient to garner some reciprocal willingness on the part of Washington to indulge our prime minister’s wishes with regard to Assange, what does that say about the relationship between Australia and the US?
Bob Carr concludes that if Assange ends up extradited to the US, ‘then making ourselves a more likely target has conferred no standing at all. We are a client state, almost officially’.
We are a target in any future Pacific war, no matter who we hitch ourselves too. Yes, even if we take no side at all.
Neutrality is a nice idea, but the course of history shows those that don’t pick a side have a side chosen for them.
China will seek to neutralise us as a basing and staging area. America will seek to preserve us as such. Neither side can afford not to.
The BRICS nations would be tied up dealing with the west. You don’t spread your resources thin by bugging neutral nations out on the fringe of the map. It would be akin to invading Antarctica. Why would anyone bother in a world war that is primarily in the Northern Hemisphere. Your logic doesn’t make sense. Why do you keep making this paranoid fear dream assertion? Make an arguement!
My argument is that we are not neutral and even if we were, it wouldn’t save us because historically, neutrality never protects nations. “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.”
Australia is not on the fringe of anything. We are a valuable staging and base area for any Indo Pacific war in the future. Given that, Neither China nor America can afford to not factor us into their war plans.
And CVS, I know Australia is nearly impossible to invade. I know that, you know that, why are you assuming China doesn’t know that? They are a lot of things, stupid isn’t one of them. Within the next decade or two, they’ll have the air and sea power needed to cut off access to our eastern ports.
That’s my argument CVS.
If all you are saying is that neutrality would not prevent trade disruptions in a global war, then I agree, of course. I keep advocating protectionist trade policies to promote making our own stuff again, so that we can be self-sufficient. If you are implying that we are strategically located like Japan is, that is of course ridiculous. We are not particularly close to anywhere the combat would be. Being far from the action make us low priority. Being neutral would make us even less important. Being heavily armed moves us further on the spectrum of undesirable target. There are no absolutes, but the bad end of the spectrum works more often than not. Sun Tzu pointed this out. Both China and the US use his work as training material for their officers. We are not ‘Contentious Ground’, we are ‘High Ground’.
We’re not far from the conflict zone, it’s directly north of us. And as I’ve said over and over, we’re a valuable staging area. That cannot be ignored by either side, and it won’t be ignored.
If you don’t think Chinese war plans don’t detail how to neutralise our utility to the Americans, regardless of our political stance, you’re dreaming.
The shortest path from the US to China, is via Russia. Why would China expend resources on us, if we have already ‘neutralised our utility to the Americans’ by becoming neutral. Those who expend resources unnecessarily during a war….loose.