Aukusing for War: The Real Target Is China
The occasional burst of candour from US diplomats provides a striking, air clearing difference to their Australian and British counterparts. Official statements about the AUKUS security pact between Washington, London and Canberra, rarely mention the target in so many words, except on the gossiping fringes. Commentators and think tankers are essentially given free rein to speculate, masticating over such streaky and light terms as “new strategic environment”, “great power competition”, “rules-based order”.
On the occasion of his April 3 visit to Washington’s Center for a New American Security (CNAS), US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was refreshingly frank. His presence as an emissary of US power in the Pacific has been notable since the AUKUS announcement in September 2021.
In March last year, Campbell, as Deputy Assistant to the US President and Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific National Security Council, was unfurling the US flag before various Pacific states, adamant that US policy was being reoriented from one of neglect to one of greater attentiveness. The Solomon Islands, given its newly minted security pact with Beijing, was of special concern. “We realise that we have to overcome in certain areas some amounts of distrust and uncertainty about follow through,” he explained to reporters in Wellington, New Zealand. “We’re seeking to gain that trust and confidence as we go forward.”
In Honiara, Campbell conceded that the US had not done “enough before” and had to be “big enough to admit that we need to do more, and we need to do better.” This entailed, in no small part, cornering the Solomon Islands Premier Manasseh Sogavare into affirming that Beijing would not be permitted to establish a military facility capable of supporting “power projection capabilities.”
In his discussion with the CNAS Chief Executive Officer, Richard Fontaine, Campbell did the usual runup, doffing the cap to the stock principles. Banal generalities were discussed, for instance, as to whether the US should be the sole show in projecting power or seek support from like-minded sorts. “I would argue that as the United States and other nations confront a challenging security environment, that the best way to maintain peace and security is to work constructively and deeply with allies and partners.” A less than stealthy rebuke was reserved for those who think “that the best that the United States can do is to act alone and to husband its resources and think about unilateral, individual steps it might take.”
The latter view has always been scorned by those calling themselves multilateralists, a cloaking term for waging war arm-in-arm with satellite states and vassals while ascribing to it peace keeping purposes in the name of stability. Campbell is unsurprising in arguing “that working closely with other nations, not just diplomatically, but in defensive avenues [emphasis added], has the consequence of strengthening peace and stability more generally.” The virtue with the unilateralists is the possibility that war should be resorted to sparingly. If one is taking up arms alone, a sense of caution can moderate the bloodlust.
Campbell revealingly envisages “a number of areas of conflict and in a number of scenarios that countries acting together” in the Indo-Pacific, including Japan, Australia, South Korea and India. “I think that balance, the additional capacity will help strengthen deterrence more general [sic].” The candid admission on the role played by the AUKUS submarines follows, with the boats having “the potential to have submarines from a number of countries operating in close coordination that could deliver conventional ordinance from long distances. Those have enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including in cross-strait circumstances.” And so, we have the prospect of submarines associated with the AUKUS compact being engaged in a potential war with China over Taiwan.
When asked on what to do about the slow production rate of submarines on the part of the US Navy necessary to keep AUKUS afloat, Campbell acknowledged the constraints – the Covid pandemic, supply chain issues, the number of submarines in dry dock requiring or requiring servicing. But like Don Quixote taking the reins of Rosinante to charge the windmills, he is undeterred in his optimism, insisting that “the urgent security demands in Europe and the Indo-Pacific require much more rapid ability to deliver both ordinance and other capabilities.”
To do so, the military industrial complex needs to be broadened (good news for the defence industry, terrible for the peacemakers). “I think probably there is going to be a need over time for a larger number of vendors, both in the United States in Australia and Great Britain, involved in both AUKUS and other endeavours.”
There was also little by way of peace talk in Campbell’s confidence about the April 11 trilateral Washington summit between the US, Japan and the Philippines, following a bilateral summit to be held between President Joe Biden and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. When terms such as “modernize” and “update” are bandied about in the context of an alliance, notably with an eye towards a rival power’s ambitions, the warring instincts must surely be stirred. In the language of true encirclement, Campbell envisages a cooperative framework that will “help link the Indo-Pacific more effectively to Europe” while underscoring “our commitment to the region as a whole.”
A remarkably perverse reality is in the offing regarding AUKUS. In terms of submarines, it will lag, possibly even sink, leaving the US and, to a lesser extent the UK, operating their fleets as Australians foot the bill and provide the refreshments. Campbell may well mention Australia and the UK in the context of nuclear-powered submarines, but it remains clear where his focus is: the US program “which I would regard as the jewel in the crown of our defense industrial capacity.” Not only is Australia effectively promising to finance and service that particular capacity, it will also do so in the service of a potentially catastrophic conflict which will see its automatic commitment. A truly high price to pay for an abdication of sovereignty for the fiction of regional stability.
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13 comments
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Old bloke
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Canguro
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Harry Lime
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JulianP
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Clakka
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Terence Mills
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Phil Pryor
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wam
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Cool Pete
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JulianP
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Phil Pryor
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Return to home pageIf I have correctly read a number of recent articles, it seems that the US wants to have Indo-Pacific allies become part of NATO. Given the rules of NATO requiring member states to take up arms in the defense one member which is attacked, surely that would mean Australia would be obliged to take part in a European war, supposedly against Russia, a war in which there is no threat to us. Just like the good old days of WW1 and WW2.
As referenced in an earlier post within these pages, the American imperium knows nothing better than starting, continuing, and then either winning or losing the wars it deems essential to its survival as the military and economic hegemon it deems itself to rightfully be. It matters nothing to them that the people they enlist in this cause, whether of their own or other countries, live or die, survive intact or are brutally maimed, physically & psychologically, for the rest of their lives, or of the collateral consequences in society, within families and other relations.
What is of utmost importance to the imperium is the continuity of the war machine; the major American corporations that manufacture the billions of dollars worth of armaments to be either used by the hegemon or sold to willing client states around the planet for their one & only designated purpose – the killing of other people and the destruction of built infrastructure.
The money pipeline must be preserved at any cost, and this means, always, that conflict must be generated abroad; god forbid that there should ever be a hot war on the North American continent, but anywhere else may be designated an appropriate target if and when the hegemon determines this to be the case.
The hegemon’s utter & profound ignorance of history, and of China’s role in that history, is of zero concern to the ignoramuses that parade their facile and egoistic fantasies about the existential threat that China poses to America’s future, while all the while they refuse to enter into profound reflection as to the real causes of the decline of their power & position and respect amongst the global communities. The hegemon’s head up its arse approach to its position as merely one of close to 200 sovereign nations sharing the finite terrestrial resources of this planet has brought, and continues to bring, profound distress to countries and peoples across the globe.
Its muscle-flexing approach to problem-solving and cooperative existence is the antithesis of what is urgently needed and necessary as the planet’s population burgeons, resources contract, ecosystems struggle under threats climatic and human-induced, and all the while God, or Allah, or whoever your preferred deity is, looks down from above and possibly wonders, ‘Just what the actual f*ck is wrong with these people?’
Enlisting in the Military: A Very, Very Bad Idea
Yeah,but at least we’ve been given the concession to run Uncle Sam’s tuck shop in the South Pacific…that should employ a few people.Or maybe it’ll be on a volunteer basis……………………..and to set a good example,Albo,Marles and Penny can kick off the roster.It’s a win win,they get a job more suited to their abilities,and we get to worry less about the country being screwed.
Canguro
As you correctly point out, we now understand the real reason for America’s “forever wars”, and it’s got nothing to do with winning – rather it’s all about prolonging conflict for as long as possible in order to maximise the dollar – which is great if you are a armament stockholder, not so great if you are a Gazan, or a Houthi on the receiving end.
Closer to home, as one commentator wryly noted, the US now has another military base – with kangaroos.
Very few persons would now recall Malcolm Fraser’s prescient warning of 10 years ago;
“The taskforce in Darwin, when fully equipped, it will be an immensely powerful taskforce capable of exercising force anywhere in the Pacific, and if the US wants to use that force they’re not going to ask first; we’ll read about it in the newspapers.”
[ https://www.smh.com.au/national/malcolm-fraser-calls-for-an-end-to-the-australianus-alliance-20140512-zragh.html ]
I would add only: if we were really, really lucky we might get to read about it.
For matters of the past (since the day dot), and leading to today, it’s very difficult to say difinitively who is to blame for the global death cult that predominates today. Human reactionary brutality and violence is not the exclusive domain of any one state or culture, and its propagation has usually been in lock-step with and disguised by religion in the phantasm of the word of god(s), and quest for wealth, dominion and supremacy.
Since the days of Columbus, it’s become a global race, through to today where it has become a digital lightspeed psycho-contamination, from which no-one is immune.
Where there is ‘good’, it will invariably be questioned via ‘compared to what?’ And where there is ‘evil’, the question will be whether to counter it with another ‘evil’, achieving a ‘lesser evil’, or perhaps a ‘good’ resulting in a lesser ‘good’. And so it goes on and on apparently irresolvable because of an endless universe-load of prejudices, biases and self-interest.
Regardless, unless, as one and all, we pay her close attention, mother nature will have her way in our demise.
Rather ominous that they sent (Lord) David Cameron out to get the money from the Australian government for AUKUS.
Cameron could only get back into power through the back-door, by being given a peerage showing up the House of Lords as the most undemocratic riff raff in the western world.
Then there are ‘Dodgy Dave’s’ dealings with Australian con-man Lex Greensill where he is reputed to have made about $10m (£7m) from Greensill Capital before the finance firm he lobbied on behalf of collapsed.
BBC’s Panorama said it had obtained documents showing the former prime minister received the sum from cashing in shares he held in the company worth $4.5m (about £3.3m) in 2019, in addition to an annual salary of $1m (£720,000).
Aukus is yet another farcical follishness, and deadly, in the USA story of stupendous stupidity. Boasting, bullshitting, blathering, the USA is just a scrap heap of old human refuse from Britain and Europe, mostly of those ancestral pioneers who fled obedience, law, taxes, duties, service, educated sense and humanity for all. Trump is typical, a dropping from dreggies, those who fled service, taxes, honesty, decency, humanity, social inclusion. AUKUS means the yankee doodles are facing reality, competition, sense, honesty, rivals, extermination, humiliation, and they do not like it up ’em!!!!!
wow what a turn about when this simpleton writes ‘abrogation’? The yoU SUcKerA refers to Macron’s liar and, is so far into the AI future, as to have no worthwhile place in Australia’s arsenal. More pertinent, there is a history of the fishnet stocking twit lying about the frog subs being built in SA. It will be a miracle if SA has anything to do with these subs as it is too far from the indian or the pacific.
There is a one-word reason why Australia should be extremely cautious about AUKUS. Trump. If, heaven forbid, he is re-elected this year, a so-called democracy will be entering into an alliance with a fascist state. And the UK, under Sunak, is not on a good path, and the fact that Tone the Botty sings some of his praises should make people question him.
As much as I oppose any action that China could take over Taiwan, I do not believe that China is as interested in taking over Australia as the right-wing potties claim.
Better investment ?
“AUKUS Scrapped: Australia to Just Pay China $300 Billion Not To Invade”.
[ https://theshovel.com.au/2023/03/14/sub-plan-scrapped-australia-to-just-pay-china-300-billion-not-to-invade/ ]
K Campbell, a USA yabbering nobody, follows Lord Useless-Cameron of the UK here, to nag us, corner us, fleece us. Sickening, futile, garden path, wrong turning, missed the right road, empty dreaming, waste and blunder and stupidity…what about diplomacy?
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