Our media in Australia has been overwhelmed by a barrage of reporting on the importance, the necessity and the cost of the AUKUS Agreement with its handful of nuclear powered submarines.
Disapproval of the bias in mainstream media means there has been outspoken approval of Paul Keating’s handling of journalists questions at his National Press Club Address on 15 March.
He trashed the whole handing over of our foreign policy to defence and security boffins under the pretence of the China threat.
The China Hawk themes of aggression, invasion and protection of trade routes were all that the corporate journalists raised.
Mr Keating, not known for indulging fools, gave several of them a quick education in accountability.
When the ABC’s Probyn cited the examples of Chinese tariffs on Australian exports as evidence of aggression Keating explained the difference between commercial measures and invasion. When Probyn tried again, citing cyber attacks as further evidence, Keating countered by referring to the use of such attacks by many nations including ours. Journalist tail between legs.
Then came Caisley of Sky News inferring that Keating was too out of touch on the situation so how could he claim that China was not a military threat to Australia?
Keating’s reply – “Because I’ve got a brain.” As he said, what advantage would China have in occupying us when it can trade freely and get what it needs? He described her question as dumb.
Westcott of Bloomberg asked about guarding our trade routes, for which we would need allies. Keating retorted that we do not need American support to ship our products to our main trading partner, China.
When Malcolm of The Australian asked why Keating did not see that China was being provocative by building up its navy, he pointed out that it was a major nation with an economy bigger than the USA and that it did not spend anywhere near what that country spent on defence.
His response to Knott of the Sydney Morning Herald who wrote the three “China War Soon” articles with Hartcher, which he described as the worst journalism he has ever seen, was classical Keating.
When Knott tried to wedge him on the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs, he responded by asking why he lauded Modi whose treatment of Muslims in Kashmir was reprehensible.
He did not defend China on the Uyghurs but said quite bluntly that Knott should hide his face over the disgusting war articles and attacked their deliberate choice of China Hawks as their professional voices for the incitement. He described the Sydney Morning Herald as a newspaper without integrity.
We are not used to major figures taking on the stenographers from the corporate media with such vigour and it was most refreshing.
Disasters in US led Wars
Those of us who lived through many US led wars to which we have contributed lives, are suspicious of xenophobic campaigns.
We saw what happened in Saigon as the helicopters took off from the embassy.
We witnessed the aftermath of the Iraq Invasion and the suicide bombings and anarchy which produced Daesh/ ISIS terrorism.
We saw the horrors at the Kabul Airport as the Americans retreated.
Once again we must confront the realities of American foreign policy and its questionable relationship with reality.
This 2021 statement from Brown University should give us some indication of what is going on.
“As the US reduces the size of its military footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan, exaggerated estimates of the military challenges posed by China have become the new rationale of choice in arguments for keeping the Pentagon budget at historically high levels. Military contractors will continue to profit from this inflated spending.”
The defence budget is central to the US economy and as weapons are easily disposable, good turnover is assured.
“A large portion of these contracts — one-quarter to one-third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years — have gone to just five major corporations: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman.”
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar
The Cost of Sycophancy
In his address Keating compared the role of Prime Minister Albanese with the once Labor PM Billy Hughes, who in devotion o to the British Empire, tore his party and the nation apart as he tried to get it to agree to conscription for the meat mincer of the Western Front in World War I.
Billy Hughes did not achieve conscription but at the Versailles Peace Talks he managed to rally the Empire to defeat the Japanese attempt to have a clause proclaiming racial equality in the treaty. The bombing of Darwin in 1942 was one of the fruits of his policies.
The submarines we are paying over $380 billion for are not suitable for our continental waters but are to help the USA patrol the periphery of China.
The Thucydides Trap, where a declining power seeks to prevent the rise of a developing power, has long been a cause of war, although that is not the inevitable outcome.
The fact that this trap is well understood in foreign policy circles and that our leaders have followed the path set by the Morrison government into AUKUS, is a real national problem which could become a disaster.
Keating made clear that if we are concerned about the defence of our nation, the amount spent on the few nuclear powered submarines would pay for about 45 Collins class submarines which could be used on our continental shelf.
His address is available on ABC Iview and on You Tube.
The same issues we had to deal with at the time of the Vietnam War have returned.
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