De-risking Australia: separating our vital interests from America’s By Mike Gilligan 

Does it really matter that Australia’s defence policy has no moorings, and is created unaware of past pain, lessons and policy responses? By agents with unknown interests. And that American influence has been ushered into this void, most recently by Minister Marles? 

‘De-risking’ is the latest term in geopolitics. It mostly concerns China. European leaders made headlines with a pledge to de-risk from China, and to meet to discuss what that means.

De-risking is nothing new. Nor is it difficult conceptually. It first requires leaders to stand back dispassionately and identify, weigh and ameliorate risks. Dealing with the results is the difficult bit.

Hence, for Australia the United States has to be our start point. Identifying America as Australia’s largest security risk puts us in revered company. Recall Kissinger’s insight: “To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

But decades ago Australia’s leaders did not need Kissinger to alert them to the dangers of befriending America in a security pact. That became starkly evident with our experience of the Vietnam war. The United States fabricated a security threat to Australia, and effectively presented an ultimatum to join in forcefully reshaping Asian geopolitics to its liking. The ruthlessness in and around that experience transformed security thinking in Australia’s leaders. It evinced an elemental rethink of our security risk. Australia’s leaders, on both sides, concluded that Australia had to be self- reliant in its defence. And set out on a long de-risking path to achieve that objective. Which was successful.

I have covered this process before – it began under the Whitlam government and was accepted bi-partisanly in the first ever White Paper of 1976. The parallels with today’s strategic dilemma for Australia are uncanny. America is fabricating a military threat from China. Thereby walking back on four decades of acceptance that Australia chose to be self-reliant. It is now demanding integration of our defence forces into its planning against China on its south-east flank. To control China’s maritime supply.

That is a dagger at the throat of every economy in Asia. Particularly Australia’s.

America Flooding Into Policy Vacuum

It is remarkable that today’s security thought leaders have no awareness of Australia’s strategic rethink after the Vietnam debacle. Which resulted in an explicit strategy to de-risk from the United States. That is, the risk of America already has been weighed by our most serious strategic minds. Experienced diplomats with policy mileage -from the breadth of Arthur Tange to the meticulous intellect of his deputy Gordon Blakers. And worked through parliament painstakingly. Yet today’s “thought leaders” and influencers openly display ignorance of this seminal achievement.

Kevin Rudd, former PM and now ambassador to the US, recently met with a Washington think tank and observed :

“The truth is the evolution of Australian defence strategy and policy and doctrine in the post-Second World War era has gone through several phases. We went through a period of extended what we used to call forward defence, which was largely in partnership with the United States but others in the region, through the ’50s and the ’60s through – and ’70s of different organising principles. But, essentially, that was the principle and therefore a great emphasis on naval capabilities, of air capabilities capable of reaching deep into the region, but also over time let’s call it expeditionary forces on land to partner with the United States in multiple theaters. And the post-’45 history reflects how that worked.

Then, beginning in the mid-’80s, we began to transition towards what’s called in our part of the world a DOA doctrine, Defence of Australia. And starting probably with the Dibb Report of 1986, I think –“

Rudd’s knowledge is comprehensively deficient. Ignoring Vietnam shows that its influence is unappreciated. And Australia began to transition to “defence of Australia” a full decade earlier than Rudd knows. And it brought less, not “great”, emphasis on naval capabilities. The first ever Cabinet decision of the Hawke government was to retire the Navy’s aircraft carrier without replacement. Land-based air defence and strike capabilities being the most cost- effective foundation for our new posture.

And nothing significant started with the Dibb Report. It was little more than a ten-year update on progress since the founding White Paper of 1976, with the department’s tutelage. The Dibb thing really was to allow Minister Beazley to avoid addressing certain strategic nonsense from certain military stakeholders. That’s when the frailty of Beazley’s ticker was exposed. These days Beazley seems bent on reinventing history to his own acclaim, by eliminating the decade of innovation and progress which he inherited.

Australia’s public security intellectuals are similarly deficient. While also defined by America, overtly. Defence Minister Marles would have approved the choice of Peter Dean, an academic/think-tanker, to draft the Defence Strategic Review (DSR). Dean is on record expressing the same ignorance as Rudd of our strategic policy foundations. With his background strong on US influence and devoid of Australian policy pedigree, it is unsurprising that the thrust of the DSR dovetails with America’s military planning against China. Dean now works for the US Studies Centre.

Does it really matter that our defence policy has no moorings, created unaware of past pain, lessons and policy responses? By agents with unknown interests. And that American influence has been ushered into this void, most recently by Minister Marles?

America More the Danger 

Today, even more compelling reasons exist to treat America as our dominant security risk. The evidence is everywhere except in mainstream western media and political lexicon. The US proxy war in Europe against Russia is a fresh exemplar of the hapless fate of America’s friends and allies. Its tentacles reaching far beyond Ukraine. But don’t take my word for it. Knowledgeable American commentators are providing damning material online. Finkelstein’s strategic analysis is extensive and shows the facility with which America will see its European “friends” demolished. And here a sagacious US military officer, Col Douglas MacGregor, rips through the facade around the Ukraine conflict.

A superpower cannot bury nation states systematically without a modus operandi. Leaving fingerprints. This explanation by American Brian Berlectic coldly pulls the evidence together, directly relevant to China, and ourself. He starts slowly but stick with it.

Realities Ahead 

So now to the hard part – de-risking from the America of today. Fellow Pearls commentators Michael Keating and Mike Scrafton each have pointed to the tension between the Albanese government’s foreign policy, of peaceful strategic equilibrium in our region, and its defence posture to preserve American hegemony. It is obvious where change has to be wrought.

On assuming office Defence Minister Marles inherited a defence posture which was progressively coalescing our forces with America’s to attack China. Marles then enhanced it. This Minister is foremost a defence enthusiast, displaying no judgement on his ultimate responsibility. His immediate enthusiasm to prostrate himself before a key Washington think tank was telling. Not only did the Minister fail to recognise the nuclear submarine circus as primarily an outlandish LNP electoral wedge, designed to press buttons on traditional Labor nuclear and defence spending nerves, but then “improved upon” the absurdity by doubling its already unspeakable price. History suggests the cost will be near a trillion dollars.

Australia has no credibility in seeking regional equilibrium while it is embedded in American operations against China. Including assisting nuclear first strike from America, by hunting China’s counterforce submarines. This is the hidden bottom line of our defence posture and its crushing spending implications. The nuclear submarine wedge was not demanded by the US but confected secretly by the LNP. It should be unpicked similarly.

So, de-risking Australia’s security from America is primarily a diplomatic challenge. We have re-arranged Defence before in response to foreign policy, with practical and impressive outcomes. Today, once more, fresh self-centred thinking, structures and people transparently independent and accountable to government are the way back to a defence policy which separates our vital interests from America’s.

Finally, I must acknowledge that without the influence of my late friend Dennis Argall, once our ambassador to China, little of what I say would have been possible.

https://johnmenadue.com/de-risking-australia/

 

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An Asia-Pacific NATO: fanning the flames of war By Jeffrey D. Sachs 

My country, the U.S., is unrecognisable. I’m not sure who runs the country. I do not believe it is the president.”, says Jeffrey Sachs in a speech at a Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE) seminar, Melbourne, Australia. “U.S. actions are putting us on a path to war with China in the same way that U.S. actions did in Ukraine.”

 

Good afternoon to everybody. I want to thank you for inviting me and thank SHAPE for its leadership. I just had the privilege to listen to Alison Broinowski and Chung-in Moon, and these are brilliant statements that we’ve all been treated with, absolutely insightful. I absolutely agree with all that has been said. The world has gone mad but especially the Anglo-Saxon world I’m afraid. I don’t know whether there is any sense in our little English-speaking corner of the world. I’m of course speaking of the United States, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

There’s something profoundly disheartening about the politics of our countries right now. The deep madness, I’m afraid, is a British Imperial thinking taken over by the United States. My country, the U.S., is unrecognisable now compared even to 20 or 30 years ago. I’m not sure, to tell you the truth, who runs the country. I do not believe it is the president of the United States right now. We are run by generals, by our security, establishment. The public is privy to nothing. The lies that are told about foreign policy are daily and pervasive by a mainstream media that I can barely listen to or read anymore. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the main television outlets are 100 per cent repeating government propaganda by the day, and it’s almost impossible to break through.

What is this about? Well it, as you’ve heard, it’s about a madness of the United States to keep U.S. hegemony, militarised, dominated by the thinking of generals who are mediocre intellects, personally greedy, and without any sense because their only modus operandi is to make war.

And then cheerled by Britain, which is unfortunately, in my adult life, increasingly pathetic in being a cheerleader for the United States for this hegemony and for war. Whatever the U.S. says, Britain will say it ten times more enthusiastically, and it could not love the war in Ukraine more, which is the great second Crimean War for the British media and for the British political leadership.

Now, how Australia and New Zealand fall for this idiocy is really a deep question for you. Because people should know better. But I’m afraid that it is the Five Eyes and the security establishment that told the politicians, to the extent that the politicians are involved in this, ‘well this is how we have to do it’. This is our Security State and I don’t think our politicians necessarily have much role in this. By the way, the public has no role in U.S. foreign policy at all. We have no debate, no discussion, no deliberation, no debates over voting the hundred, now 113 billion, but in fact much more money spent on the Ukraine War.

So far there’s not been an hour of organised debate even in the Congress on this, much less in the public, but my guess is that your security establishment is really the driver of this, and then they explained to the Prime Minister and to the others: ‘you know this is the utmost National Security, and this is what America has told us. and let me explain what we’re seeing, and, of course, you cannot divulge this to the broader public, but this is at the essence of the struggle for survival in the world’.

Everything I see myself, I’m 43 years in this activity as an economic advisor all over the world, suggests that this is nonsense. And one thing that would be interesting for people to look at, to understand these developments, is a very telling article by a former colleague of mine at Harvard, Robert Blackwell and Ashley Kellis, written for the Council on Foreign Relations about eight years ago now. I just want to read a couple excerpts from it because it laid out the whole plan of what’s happening right now pretty directly, which is how things work in the U.S., and which is through the establishment media.

You’re basically told, in not necessarily completely explicit terms, what’s going to happen because what is unfolding right now is really part of a longer term planned agenda, it’s not ad hoc. So here’s what Blackwell and Kellis wrote in 2015. First, “since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals. First on the North American continent, then in the Western Hemisphere, and finally, globally.” And then argues that “this goal of primacy ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the 21st century.” So what’s the goal? The goal is very straightforward, it is primacy of the United States globally. Blackwell and Kellis lay out the game plan for China. So they tell us what to do. Here’s the list, I’m only excerpting: “Create new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China.”

Okay, this is the game that already Obama started with TPP, he couldn’t get it through but I’ll go on and then I’ll comment. “Second, create a technology control regime to block China’s strategic capabilities.” To build up “power political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China’s periphery and strengthen U.S. military forces along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition.” What I find remarkable about this is this was a list made in 2015. It’s exactly the step-by-step plan of action. This is repeated in recent history, in 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski in an article in Foreign Affairs laid out exactly the timeline for NATO enlargement and the intention to include Ukraine in NATO enlargement because this was already the security establishment plan.

Of course it’s led us directly to the Ukraine War which is a war over NATO enlargement. Now the friends and the geniuses that have brought the world the Ukraine War, are to bring the war to your neighbourhood with the, as Professor Moon said, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation starting to open its offices in Asia, which is not exactly the North Atlantic.

So this is where we are. It’s not absolutely simple to see through for one main reason, at least in the U.S., I don’t know what its like in Australia but I expect that it’s the same, we have no honesty or discussion at all about this. The policies are owned entirely by the security establishment, the military-industrial complex, the network of “think tanks” which are non-think tanks in Washington, every one of which is funded by the military-industrial complex.

They’ve taken over the East Coast universities entirely where I teach. I taught 20 years at Harvard, I teach at Columbia University. This is our milieu right now and the silent coup happened in essence. No debate, no public politics, no honesty, no documents revealed. Everything secret, everything confidential and mysterious moves; and, since I happened to be an economist that engages with the heads of state around the world, I hear a lot of things and so I’ve seen and heard a lot of things directly which helped me to understand the lies every day.

But you will not find any of this in our public discourse. Just a word about the Ukraine War: completely predictable, and part of a plan of action that goes back to the early 1990’s to essentially bring Ukraine into the U.S. military orbit and Brzezinski again in 1997 in The Global Chess Board, his geopolitical book, laid it out completely. Russia without Ukraine is nothing, Ukraine is the geographical pivot for Eurasia, and basically go get it. Interestingly Brzezinski said in 1997 in the book, but the one thing absolutely American policy makers need to ensure is that they don’t push Russia and China into an alliance together, but then he says that’s pretty much unthinkable, you know don’t worry, about that. But that would be the craziest thing in the world and its exactly what these crazy people have done.

I happen to have been an advisor to Gorbachev, to Yeltsin and to Kuchma in the early days of both the late days of perestroika and the early days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I watched very closely what was happening. I saw that the United States was absolutely uninterested in any way in helping Russia to stabilise.

The idea from the start was unipolarity, keep Russia down and take steps already decided in 1992 basically in direct contradiction to what had been told to Gorbachev and Yeltsin to start expanding NATO. So this is a game plan with a long horizon, when it comes to China.

And by the way the U.S. was deeply implicated in the overthrow of Ukraine’s president in 2014, it was a coup. It was, to an important extent, a regime change operation of the United States, not entirely, but to a very significant extent. I happen to see part of it, a very weird way, up close, and I know how U.S. money poured into supporting the Maidan and it was incredibly disgusting and very unnerving and who noticed that the U.S. contributed to the overthrow of a friendly government next door within the context of the explicit intention of expanding NATO, by the way, not only to Ukraine but also to Georgia. When one looks at the map it’s Brzezinski’s idea – surround Russia in the Black Sea region. Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia would all be members of NATO. That would be the end of Russian power projection in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. So go these geniuses, and Putin gave many opportunities for negotiation out of this.

The Minsk Agreements endorsed by the U.N security council in 2021 December 17, he put on the table a perfectly reasonable document for negotiation, the draft U.S. Russia security arrangements which called for an end to NATO expansion –  the U.S. blew it off. I called the White House after that was put on the table, spoke to one of our top security officials and said “Negotiate. Stop the NATO enlargement, you have a chance to avoid war”. But the United States’ formal response to Putin was: NATO is non-negotiable. This is something only between the U.S. and Ukraine and Russia has no say in NATO enlargement to Ukraine.

It’s a mind-boggling way to pursue foreign affairs because it is a direct road to war as you know. I hope everybody understands this war in Ukraine was close to ending in March 2022 with a negotiated agreement a month after Russia invaded on February 24th – with an agreement between Ukraine and Russia that the United States stopped because the U.S. said “fight on, fight on, don’t negotiate, don’t accept neutrality” and so here we are in a war that continues to escalate towards possible nuclear war.

Which is what would happen if Russia were to suffer deep defeats on the battlefield. It’s not doing that right now. It’s not experiencing that, but if it did it just escalates to nuclear war. Russia is not going to be defeated, pushed out of Crimea and go home meekly and saying, “we’re sorry we did that”. It’s going to escalate if it needs to escalate. So, we are right now in a spiral that is extremely dangerous. Japan plays utterly into this. And Australia, it’s so sad to watch Australia accepting to be used in this reckless way. To pay a fortune to be used in this reckless and provocative way.

And U.S. actions, by and large till now with very few exceptions, U.S. actions are putting us on a path to war with China in the same way that U.S. actions did in Ukraine. Only this war, well either war could end everything, but the whole idea of the U.S. and its allies fighting China is mind-boggling in its implications, in its stupidity, in its profound dangers and in its utter divorce from real security interests and from reality because China is not a threat to Australia. It is not a threat to the world.

And last time I looked, correct me because there’s some experts in the room, many more than I, but I don’t know of a single overseas Chinese invasion in its history, by the way, other than on the borders. I don’t know in its whole history except when the Mongols briefly ruled China and tried to invade Japan. Other than the Mongol invasion defeated by a typhoon. Other than that I don’t know of another single case in 2,200 years of Chinese statecraft.

So this is not exactly at the top of my worry list. What worries me about the world is a deeply neurotic United States that aims to be number one, that can’t be number one in the way that it self-believes to be number one. That has a pathetic and, I’m sorry to use the term but it is pathetic, cheerleader in London everyday saying how wonderful it is. Empire is great, you should go try it, we love it.

I’m gonna stop here, sorry to go on and on, but let me, just if I could take one minute to say what should be done.

The war in Ukraine could end the day after Biden steps up and says NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine. Believe it. The basis for negotiation has been there for 20 years and rejected by the U.S.

Second, the idea of opening NATO offices in Asia is mind-boggling in its risk and its stupidity and please tell the Japanese, stop this, it’s reckless.

Third, the U.S. approach to Taiwan, except in a glimmer of reality of Blinken last month, is profoundly dangerous, provocative and deliberately so.

Fourth, what is needed is regional dialogue in Asia. In Asia, among Asians and among the Asia Pacific.

Fifth, use RCEP [Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement]. Because RCEP is actually the correct concept for the region to bring together China, Korea, Japan, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand in a coherent framework especially around the climate challenge, energy policy, trade policy, investment policy. This would do a world of good, not only for the 15 in the Asia Pacific but for the entire world.

Sorry to have run on so long but it’s so important what SHAPE is doing. You’re completely on the right track and all best wishes to your efforts.

 

Watch the full seminar featuring Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Dr Alison Broinowski, Professor Chung-in Moon, Professor Victor Gao, Professor Richard Falk, Professor Chandra Muzaffar and Professor Joseph Camilleri.....

 

https://johnmenadue.com/an-asia-pacific-nato-fanning-the-flames-of-war/

 

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Biden's fiery, profane outbursts revealed in new report: 'Old Yeller'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyq3w-oIdPk

 

--------------

 

President Joe Biden presents a calm and kindly image image in public, but lashes out in anger at his subordinates in private, Axios reported on Monday. From senior aides to junior staffers, “no one is safe," one White House official claimed. 

So notorious is Biden’s temper, Axios claimed, that some aides actively try to avoid meeting with him. Among the choice phrases hurled at them by Biden are "God dammit, how the f**k don't you know this?!," "Don't f**king bulls**t me!" and "Get the f**k out of here!" current and former officials said.

Some of Axios’ sources were defensive of the president, arguing that he fiercely grills his aides in order to ensure that they are providing him with accurate information, a process they reportedly refer to as "stump the chump" or "stump the dummy."

Others said that he verbally accosts only those in his circle that he respects. “I'll know we have a really good, trusting relationship when you yell at me the first time,” former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki once said to Biden, according to author and Biden biographer Chris Whipple.

https://www.rt.com/news/579487-biden-angry-abuse-aides/

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DCR7jcWn9I

 

WE'VE KNOWN JOE HAS BEEN A NASTY GUY FOR YEARS..... 

 

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LUFT CHARGED AS AGENT OF CHINA

The leader of a US think tank has been charged with acting as an unregistered agent of China, as well as seeking to broker the sale of weapons and Iranian oil, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Monday.

Gal Luft, a citizen of the United States and Israel, is accused of recruiting and paying a former highranking US government official on behalf of principals based in China in 2016, without registering as a foreign agent as required by law.

Prosecutors did not identify the former official, but said he was working as an adviser to the then president-elect Donald Trump at the time. Luft is accused of pushing the adviser to support policies favourable to China, including by drafting comments in the adviser’s name published in a Chinese newspaper.

A Twitter account bearing Luft’s name, with more than 15,000 followers, said in a February 18 tweet that he had been arrested in Cyprus ‘‘on a politically motivated extradition request by the US.’’

‘‘I’ve never been an arms dealer,’’ Luft wrote. He did not respond to a direct message seeking comment.

Luft, 57, was arrested in February in Cyprus on US charges, but fled after being released on bail while awaiting extradition, prosecutors said. He is not currently in US custody.

Luft is co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, which describes itself as a Washington, DCbased think tank focused on energy, security and economic trends. The think tank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors said Luft brokered a deal for Chinese companies to sell weapons to countries including Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Kenya, despite lacking a license to do so as required by US law.

He is also accused of setting up meetings between Iranian officials and a Chinese energy company to discuss oil deals, despite US sanctions on the Middle Eastern country.

Last week, the New York Post published an editorial calling Gal Luft ‘‘a key would-be witness on Biden family corruption’’. The News Corpowned Post wrote Luft ‘‘alleges that he provided evidence of Biden family misdeeds to the FBI in 2019’’. Reuters

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vOyrnu_foM

Hannity: The FBI didn’t want this document public

 

Fox News host Sean Hannity breaks down what was inside the FBI-generated FD-1023 form on 'Hannity.' #foxnews #fox #hannity

 

NOW, WHEN FOX NEWS IS DOING THE WORK THAT SHOULD BE DONE BY CNN, ABC AMERICA, MSNBC, NPR, DemocracyNow!, WAPO, NYT, WHATEVER, WE'RE IN AN UPSIDE DOWN WORLD. JOE IS CORRUPT. WE KNOW. WE HAVE EXPOSED HIS ANTICS (SOME OF WHICH WERE CORRUPT) SINCE HE BECAME A SENATOR, 327 YEARS AGO. NOT ONLY THIS, JOE IS PROTECTED BY A CORRUPT DoJ AND THE FBI. 

"CORRUPTION BY JOE BIDEN ON A SCALE NEVER SEEN IN THIS COUNTRY" SAYS HANNITY.

HOW HAS THE USA COME TO THIS?

SIMPLE: AMERICA SO FAR HAS BEEN A SUCCESS BECAUSE OF DECEIT AND CORRUPTION AT THE CORE OF THE HIGH ECHELONS OF SOCIETY — AND BECAUSE THIS CORRUPTION AND DECEIT ALLOWS FOR AN EVER EXPANDING BLOATED MILITARY COMPLEX...

TIME TO CLOSE THE LID ON THE COFFIN...

 

SEE ALSO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4w2B9fvIHQ

 

 

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