Matthew Knott

Defence spending is to soar to $100 billion a year within a decade — double current levels — as the Albanese government directly identifies China’s unprecedented military build-up as the biggest threat of conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

Pushing back on critics who have attacked the government for failing to boost short-term defence spending, Defence Minister Richard Marles announced the government would pump an extra $5.7 billion into the military over the next four years and an extra $50 billion over the next decade.

To help pay for nuclear-powered submarines, new warships, drones and long-range strike missiles, the government will make cuts to other defence projects, including by hitting pause on plans to add an extra squadron of joint strike fighter aircraft.

Marles described this as the biggest boost to defence spending since the Korean War as he released an unclassified version of the government’s 10-year rolling spending plan, known as the integrated investment program, and a new national defence strategy.

The national defence strategy finds that Australia’s strategic environment has deteriorated over the past year, with a rising risk of conflict in the Indo-Pacific as China rapidly builds up its military capabilities.

“The risk of a crisis or conflict in the Taiwan Strait is increasing, as well as at other flashpoints, including disputes in the South and East China Seas and on the border with India,” the strategy says.

It calls out China for employing “coercive tactics in pushing its strategic objectives, including forceful handling of territorial disputes and unsafe intercepts of vessels and aircraft operating in international waters and airspace in accordance with international law”.

“In line with its growing strategic and economic weight, China is improving its capabilities in all areas of warfare at a pace and scale not seen in the world for nearly a century,” the strategy says.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/warships-drones-missiles-defence-to-get-extra-50b-over-next-decade-20240417-p5fkig.html

In this series, I explore how US narratives on the ‘China threat’ have become entrenched in Western security communities and how a ‘China threat’ narrative has been constructed by Republicans and Democrats in the United States in an attempt to create a “rally round the flag” effect designed to internally unite a deeply divided America.

I outline seven reasons why China is not a threat, including because China has no imperial legacy, China’s foreign policy is not – like some other states – ultra-nationalist, China has no territorial ambitions, China is not exporting its ideology, China’s obsession is secession, China’s focus is driven above all by economic concerns, and finally, because China’s Military is built for defence, not to threaten others.

A war with China is avoidable because it is not looking for one. But if America isolates China by equating it with Russia, escalates every dispute into a make-or-break issue and recognises Taiwan as a sovereign state, tensions will rise until war seems inevitable. Anti-China hawks already envisage that.

Likewise Australia should stop treating China as its enemy and instead see it for what it is – a rising economic superpower that wants to engage diplomatically and commercially with the world, not ideologically or militarily.

https://johnmenadue.com/china-is-not-a-threat-debunking-the-us-narrative/

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On the same day it was reported that hundreds of Australian citizens were traveling to the Middle East to take part in jihadi-style terrorist attacks on Syria, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr used national television to suggest that the ‘assassination’ of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad might be a way out of the Syrian crisis.

‘This sounds brutal and callous’, he told the ABC, ‘[but] perhaps an assassination combined with a major defection, taking a large part of its military, is what is required’ [http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/10/04/3603727.htm]. Such vicious remarks are regularly heard in the USA, but rarely in Australia.

Carr’s words were carefully chosen. As an experienced (if currently unelected) politician he knew very well the comment would attract attention. But there are good reasons why foreign ministers rarely promote assassination: it violates diplomatic protocols, is against international law and probably constitutes a criminal offence under Australian law.

All of this raises the question of whether the Australian Foreign Minister, in openly backing more terrorism, is acting as an agent of Washington. There is no Australian interest in such outrageous behaviour.

The extraordinary comments come at a time when the Syrian ‘revolution’ has been progressively exposed as foreign funded and mostly populated by foreign Islamists. The myth of peaceful civilians being massacred by a brutal government is still in circulation, but has no credibility with those who have followed the detail of the crisis.

With the US reluctant to enter another war, the Syrian Army is regaining the upper hand. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) gangs have resorted to desperate measures in attempts to secure more direct NATO support, in particular a Libyan-styled bombing campaign. First the FSA massacred civilians, then blamed it on the government, prior to UN Security Council meetings. When that did not work, they tried shelling Turkish border areas. None of this, so far, has managed to incite direct NATO intervention and, without such backing, the foreign fundamentalists are going down. Some Libyan fighters have already returned to Libya.

Extreme measures have been discussed several times. One of the last plots between French President Sarkozy and the Saudis was to try incitement of US aerial attacks, so as to assassinate President Assad. President Obama refused such attacks; but that does not mean assassination is off his agenda.

At first glance the question of Carr as a foreign agent may seem a bit ridiculous or, better put, redundant. Australian governments, whether led by Liberals or Labor, have backed US military adventures and aggressions for more than half a century. The Gillard government’s diehard commitment to the moribund Afghan war is testament to that.

However let’s recall that Bob Carr was chosen by his party to fill a Senate vacancy left by factional colleague, Mark Arbib. That former Senator had been driven from office after Wikileaks revealed he had been ‘a confidential contact of the United States Embassy in Canberra, providing inside information and commentary for Washington on the workings of the Australian government and the Labor Party’ (The Age, 9 December 2010). Arbib was involved in the backroom coup which replaced Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard.

Labor’s links with the US government have a long history. John Grenville, former Assistant Secretary of Victorian Trades Hall, said ‘it was generally accepted that the US Labor Attaché was the station agent for the CIA’. The CIA gave money to various unions (in particular the Australian Workers Union and the Iron Workers Union) to ‘fight communism’ in the Labor Party and the unions. Many Australian unionists were taken to the US for training. The Arbib case shows such links remain strong in the post-cold war period.

Carr was drawn into the federal Labor government to shore up Labor’s faltering image with the mining-finance-media oligarchy. A closer ‘lock step’ with the US was surely part of this, and an important element of Carr’s new role.

Yet Labor has not always been dominated by Washington on all matters. There have been moments of partial autonomy, as in the current government’s attempts to craft some joint health programs with Cuba in the Pacific. US policy and law prohibits any such interaction with Cuba. However Cuba runs the largest and most effective health aid programs in the world and the Labor government, on this issue has decided to not stay loyal to the US.

Not so on Syria. And some things take Carr’s behaviour out of the ordinary ‘subservient’ category. He is putting in some extra effort.

First, there was his 180 degree turnaround on the new wars of ‘humanitarian intervention’. Before being appointed to the Senate he was a critic of the Libyan intervention. ‘The hasty [and] ill-thought out nature of the western commitment to Libya is clearer by the day', he wrote in his blog (May 4, 2011). ‘Will you please assure us [he asked the big powers] that there is no ally of Al Qaida in the rebel forces … [yet] by declaring it a battle for regime change, the Americans and the Europeans have now made a negotiated settlement unlikely.’

Nevertheless, as Foreign Minister Bob Carr has abandoned the idea of any ‘negotiated settlement’ and presents ‘assassination’ as the way forward for ‘regime change’. Yet in Syria the ‘Al Qaeda’ character of the ‘Free Syrian Army’ gangs has been better demonstrated than it was in Libya, mainly through the on-line video they have posted of their own multiple atrocities. As if that were not enough, the US Ambassador in Libya, Chris Stevens, who had been recruiting Salafi gangs to send to Syria, was murdered by those very same people.

Carr’s reputation as a studious person makes worse his lies about Syria. He claims the country has experienced: ‘decades of rule by one man’ (in fact Bashar has been President since 2000), that Bashar Al Assad is in an ‘inherited presidency for life’ (in fact, he was recruited by the Baath Party after the death of his father and voted in through a plebiscite; there will be a competitive election next year), that ‘normal political frustration is now being vent with a fury’ and ‘nobody knows’ the extent of Islamic extremists in the FSA.

In fact, Syria’s new constitution allows multi-party elections and competitive Presidential elections with fixed terms. Carr simply refuses to acknowledge any of this.

The fact that the violent ‘fury’ is coming mainly from Islamists, most of them foreigners, has been well documented in recent months by many European journalists and observers. These fanatics are not fighting for civil freedoms, but to overthrow a pluralist, secular state, which they despise. They want to set up a sectarian ‘caliphate’. They say this openly and there is hardly any shortage of evidence, even in the western media.

German Rainer Hermann for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), along with Russian journalist Marat Musin and fellow German Alfred Hackensberger, documented FSA complicity in the massacres at Houla. John Cantlie, British photojournalist (The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, the BBC) was kidnapped by ‘foreign jihadists’ in Syria. Robert Fisk for the Independent reported on the numerous foreign jihadis in Aleppo. The Catholic News Agency reported on 50,000 Christians being ethnically cleansed from Homs by fundamentalists. The New York Times, Time magazine and many others have reported on Al Qaeda-style groups carrying out atrocities in Syria.

Yet the Australian Foreign Minister hides behind the routine media lies that draw exclusively on opposition sources (like the London-based one-man band the ‘Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’) to deny foreign funded terrorism and blame all atrocities on the Syrian Government. Melkite nun Mother Agnes Mariam recently told a Sydney audience that an overwhelming majority of opposition fighters in Syria were foreigners and that the most egregious sin of the current crisis was precisely those lies: saying ‘black was white and white was black’.

As part of the Washington-aligned stance taken by Minister Carr, we can expect to find a parallel money trail. A fair portion of the $200 odd million pledged by the US for ‘humanitarian’ support for Syria (hospitals, refugee camps) has been directed into FSA controlled camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Here they also access their NATO and Israeli weapons. The rockets recently fired into Turkey were NATO munitions. (And by the way, there have been huge demonstrations in Turkey against their own government’s hosting of the FSA and its aggression towards Syria.)

What does this lead us to believe about Australia’s $24.5 million in ‘Syrian humanitarian aid’? AAP says this makes Australia the ‘largest national contributor to the conflict behind the United States and the United Kingdom’. Carr says the money is for ‘medical aid’, ‘emergency food’ and ‘shelter and health care in refugee camps’. But who is administering this money? The jihadis are calling for food and medical aid, as well as weapons. There is little reason to believe that a foreign minister who openly advocates terrorism would have any real scruples about funding it.

We are entitled to draw reasonable conclusions based on this evidence. I say that Bob Carr, in betrayal of his trust as an Australian Minister, is either an agent of Washington or is acting much the same as one. Further, it seems likely that Australian aid money, said to be for humanitarian purposes, is being directed to groups under the control of the same terrorist gangs carrying out repeated atrocities against the Syrian people.

If there were an independent media in Australia it would expose and shame Bob Carr. If there were independent legal officers he would be prosecuted for his shameless advocacy of terrorism.

About the author: Tim Anderson has degrees in economics and international politics, and a doctorate on the political economy of economic liberalisation in Australia. He has been published in a range of academic journals, most recently in: Health and Human Rights, the Pan-American Journal of Public Health, The International Journal of Cuban Studies, the Australian Journal of Human Rights, Latin American Perspectives, the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, Critical Public Health, the Journal of Australian Political Economy and Pacific Economic Bulletin.

Bob Carr: An Agent Of Washington?

Bob Carr has once again shown that he is totally unfit to represent Australia’s foreign interests & in doing so, has further demonstrated that Australia’s aspirations to take-up a seat on the UN Security Council are simply beyond its current capabilities.

In calling for the assassination of President Assad of Syria, contrary to international law, some might argue that our Foreign Minister is guilty of criminal negligence, whilst many would see his behaviour as clumsy, inept, irresponsible & certainly politically reprehensible at the very least.

Given the readiness of some of our political leaders to promote such behaviour, doubtless most Australians will hardly be surprised when the shoe finds the other foot?

Bob Carr is not a Foreign Minister’s fantasy.

• By John Richardson at 11 Oct 2012

Last Wednesday Defence Minister Richard Marles blustered his way through a speech and Q&A at the National Press Club. He presented the National Defence Strategy (NDS) to the nation – a document laden with the jargon of new defence priorities, AUKUS and a plan for our military to ‘project power’. 

The publicity pitch laid it out like this:

“The NDS sets out the Government’s approach to address Australia’s most significant strategic risks based on the concept of National Defence.

The adoption of National Defence will see a Strategy of Denial become the cornerstone of Defence planning and means the Australian Defence Force (ADF) will transition to an integrated, focused force.

Together, the NDS and IIP provide a blueprint to deliver an ambitious transformation of the ADF to ensure it is positioned to safeguard Australia’s security and contribute to regional peace and prosperity for decades to come.”

One might be prompted to ask what the ADF has been doing all these years if it is not now an ‘integrated, focused force…positioned to safeguard Australia’s security’. Nothing in the speech inspired confidence that the mooted ‘Strategy of Denial’ would in fact work against the main strategic (read military) threat. This time China has been named.

Predictably, Minister Marles and many in the commentariat were preoccupied with the big budget outlays and the new weapons systems we are zealous about procuring. Important matters, yes, but surely secondary to the big strategic questions underlying the government’s willingness to put defence procurement before sensible statecraft and diplomacy.

I was struck by the mantra the Minister frequently intoned: “The strategic cat we are trying to skin is to resist coercion and maintain our way of life”. Surely that PR line, loaded with assumptions, is worthy of interrogation. For example, China was easily able to ‘coerce’ us by imposing trade sanctions on Australia in 2020 – with plenty of room to really make a difference to our way of life if they chose to go harder. No expanded navy or fresh array of missiles would have prevented that – or could in the future. It is disingenuous to pretend to the Australian people that raising defence expenditure from 2% to 2.4% of GDP over the next decade will stave off the claimed threat to our way of life. Disappointingly, none of the journalists at the NPC saw that issue as worthy of a question.

Even more important was another one-liner that none in the gallery seemed to notice. Early in his speech, Marles said Australia wanted a geo-political situation of “strategic equilibrium where no state was militarily predominant in the Indo-Pacific”. Penny Wong often uses a similar line – but without mentioning the military.

Last week, the prominent US journal Foreign Affairs published an opinion piece by two senior Republican hawks. The article lays out the Republican case rejecting a détente between the US and China – arguing instead for the fantasy of a total ideological victory against China. In the article, titled ‘No Substitute for Victory’, Trump advisors Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher put their polemic for confrontation this way:

“For U.S. forces to actually deter China, they need to be able to move within striking range. Given the maritime geography of the Indo-Pacific and the threat that China’s vast missile arsenal poses to U.S. bases, the State Department will need to expand hosting and access agreements with allies and partners to extend the U.S. military’s footprint in the region. The Pentagon, meanwhile, will need to harden U.S. military installations across the region and pre-position critical supplies such as fuel, ammunition, and equipment throughout the Pacific.

…Generations of American leaders understood that it would have been unacceptable for the Cold War to end through war or U.S. capitulation. If the 1970s taught Washington anything, it is that trying to achieve a stable and durable balance of power—a détente— with a powerful and ambitious Leninist dictatorship is also doomed to backfire on the United States. The best strategy, which found its ultimate synthesis in the Reagan years, was to convince the Soviets that they were on a path to lose, which in turn fuelled doubts about their whole system.”

This is scary stuff, and not just in the event that Trump wins. The thread of that Cold War thinking already drives US foreign policy, precisely because the Americans believe they should maintain their military dominance in the Indo-Pacific. Even Bill Clinton has said that America will one day have to get used to sharing power with China. That said, US foreign policy demonstrably undercuts Marles’ (and Wong’s) claim that we want ’strategic and military equilibrium’ in our region. Clearly we are supporting the imbalance that the US imposes – and that China so resents and is determined to change. This is the great fault line in Australia’s foreign and defence policy. The glossy National Defence Strategy document devotes a single paragraph to ‘Integrated statecraft’. Lamentable – and dangerous.

Right on cue the former Secretary of the Home Affairs department Mike Pezzullo has called for Australia to adopt a comprehensive national plan for war – a “war book” – to coordinate civil and military roles and “focus the national mind” on the possibility of future conflict. He might have lost his job, but the madness of talking up war with China has clearly infected our polity. He is not alone.

As a long-standing member of the ALP, I am concerned that the Albanese government seems unable to balance a sensible defence policy with the vital national interest that is the peace and prosperity of our region. As former Foreign Minister Bob Carr described our dilemma in January: “It’s not possible to continue to play war games with the Americans and trade games with China and hope to live on in blissful prosperity.”

https://johnmenadue.com/the-national-defence-strategy-a-fatal-fault-line-in-australias-security/

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