Talk of war with China has been mounting over recent years. The current Labor government, and the Coalition before it, have been warning that Beijing has become increasingly aggressive, which is leading to growing tensions in the Indo Pacific that must be countered.
This is not the first time the Australian public has been primed for a potential conflict. At this time twenty years ago, there was rising talk about the threat that Iraq posed due to the weapons of mass destruction it supposedly possessed. And this led to the invasion in March 2003.
Now opposition leader Peter Dutton took a prominent hawkish stance on China in the last years of the Morrison administration. And while the Albanese government has taken a more tactful approach with foreign minister Penny Wong in the lead, war with China continues to be on the agenda.
Indeed, as with most other wars the nation has been embroiled in since World War Two, Australia hasn’t been directly threatened by China, rather it’s blindly following Washington’s lead on the matter, in a conflict that will serve the interests of our US ally.
Unimpeded access
AUKUS is part of the build up to war with China. Unveiled by then PM Scott Morrison in September 2021, the pact is an agreement between Australia, the UK and the US, and while its details are sketchy, it’s clear its focus is on “security challenges in the Indo Pacific region”, which means China.
Central to the AUKUS agreement is that our nation will be provided access to US technology that will see it acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines, which will ensure Australia can approach close enough to China that it can strike the mainland with missiles.
Another military pact involving the US and Australia is the 2014 Force Posture Agreement, which provides that an increasing number of US troops rotate through the north of the country on an annual basis, and that Washington has unimpeded access to dozens of Australian military facilities.
Meanwhile, the 1951 ANZUS treaty continues to be the foundational security agreement between this country and the United States.
However, the commonly held belief that ANZUS ensures that the US would be required to back an Australia under attack is a falsehood, as the United States only ever acts in its own interests, whether that be in relation to Beijing or Canberra.
War or peace?
Long-term Sydney peace activist Nick Deane is taking the opportunity afforded by the passing of two decades since the beginning of the war in Iraq to shine a light on the similarities between the current prepping of the public for a conflict against China and that in the build up to Baghdad.
A member of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN), Deane is hosting a forum on the day that Iraq was invaded in Marrickville next month, which will see speakers like Senator David Shoebridge, Dr Alison Broinowski and Mary Kostakidis consider the rising rhetoric on war with China.
Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to Marrickville Peace Group convenor Nick Deane about the similarities between the march to war now and that of 20 years ago, the impact of the Force Posture Agreement and the way forward according to peace activists like him.
You’ve given me the long title, Can War Be Avoided or Will Peace Be Shattered, but when it’s on the poster, the words will be War or Peace with a question mark.
That’s because, at the moment, we’re standing on the cusp and decisions being made in the next months are going to decide whether we have a warmongering or a peaceful future.
My greatest fear is that we will be dragged into war again.
What we seem to be doing is repeating a pattern we’ve done many times before. You can go back to Korea but, certainly, there’s Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and even Syria.
We’ve gotten involved in all these wars mostly through America’s influence. In particular, in the case of Iraq, we got involved based on lies about weapons of mass destruction.
So, we need to ask ourselves whether we’re being told lies now that will drag us into yet another war, this time with China.
My answer to that question is there is a fabrication being spun, which considers China some sort of threat to Australia, while there’s not a shred of evidence that it poses any sort of a military threat to us.
It’s worth recalling the lies that were told to us in 2003, which dragged us into war, and ask the question, are we going through the same process again? Is this pattern being repeated? Are we being told lies now?
The threat from China is a lie, and the other complete falsehood is the idea that nuclear submarines will somehow guarantee peace.
In my view, and the view of others like me, it’s exactly the opposite: getting nuclear submarines is going to increase tensions in the world and make peace less likely.
These are the basic connections. And that’s why it’s so important that we recall what happened on 20 March 2003, when the invasion of Iraq started and use that as the starting point to talk about what is happening today.
It is in the organisation’s name “independent and peaceful”. IPAN would like this nation to be truly independent. It would like to escape from the myth that the character of the nation was created in Gallipoli.
We would like the nation to become a leader in the pursuit of peace instead. IPAN’s report recommends a review and renegotiation of the ANZUS treaty, in line with what’s appropriate for Australia’s needs.
IPAN calls for the elimination of all overseas presence from military bases here. It insists that the decision to go to war is made in federal parliament and not by the PM and a few cabinet members.
It urges diplomatic before military resolutions of conflict and greater investment in improving relations with neighbouring countries.
It calls on the ALP to abandon bipartisanship on defence. And it recommends that Australia sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
What IPAN wants is independent foreign and defence policies, with the public being consulted on national security.
Some of my colleagues in IPAN favour arms neutrality for Australia: an idea that was put forward by David Martin in 1984.
Whether that is the best strategy is still being debated, but the consensus is that a new defence policy is needed, and this would involve a change in our understanding of what defence and security mean.
I would suggest that this should start with a clear understanding of Australia’s geography and by asking, seriously, what nation is a realistic threat to us.
My own view is that, if you take that as your starting point, you’ll quickly come to realise that Australia is extremely safe and unlikely to suffer serious attack, that is to say an invasion, ever again.
Remember Malcom Fraser’s paradox: the reason we need the USA to protect us is because the presence of the USA’s military assets might make us liable to attack.
So, in other words, if these assets were removed from Australia, then no nation on Earth has any reason to attack Australia.
An aspect we haven’t touched on is the greatest threat to national security. When you start talking about national security and what threatens it, it’s not coming not from any military enemy but the climate crisis.
War diverts resources away from where they’re needed and contributes enormous CO2 emissions. And, over and above that, it destroys any possibility for the international cooperation that is so urgently needed in the face of the climate crisis.
The war in Ukraine is a case in point. There is no possibility for any sort of negotiations between Russia and the USA.
The way things are changing, going to war and making preparations for going to war, such as acquiring nuclear submarines, are becoming increasingly stupid. They aren’t looking at where the real threat lies.
Source : Sydney Criminal Lawyers