AUKUS Exists To Manage The Risks Created By Its Existence by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2023-03-30 at 21:56:20 )

AUKUS Exists To Manage The Risks Created By Its Existence by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

"NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence," Professor Richard Sakwa once wrote in an attempt to articulate the absurdity of the military alliances provocative nature on the world stage. At some point Australians must wake up to the fact that this is equally true of AUKUS: we are told the military alliance exists for our protection, but its very existence makes us less safe.

As former prime minister Paul Keating recently observed in the Australian Financial Review, this governments justification for the AUKUS alliance and the obscenely expensive nuclear submarine deal that goes with it has been all over the map, first claiming that it is to protect our own shores from a Chinese attack, then pivoting to claiming it is to protect sea lanes from being blocked off by China after Keating dismantled the first claim at the National Press Club two weeks ago.

One thing Canberra has struggled to do is to explain exactly why China would launch an unprovoked attack on Australia or its shipping routes; the former could not yield any benefit that would outweigh the immense cost even if it succeeded, and the latter is absurd because open trade routes are what makes China an economic superpower in the first place.

Luckily for us, the Pentagon pets cited in the Australian medias recent propaganda blitz to promote war with China explained precisely what the argument is on Canberras behalf. They say Australia would be at risk of being attacked by China because the United States wants to use Australia to attack China.

Day 2 of the age smh fear campaign. Predictions by a group of experts, most with connections to the defence industry funded-Greg Barns SC (BarnsGreg) March 8, 2023

In Part Two of the infamous joint "Red Alert" war propaganda series by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, imperial spinmeisters Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott wrote the following:

But why would China use its limited resources to attack Australia instead of focusing solely on seizing Taiwan? Because of the strategically crucial role Australia is expected to play for the United States in the conflict.

"Our geography means we are a southern base for the United States of Americans for what comes next," Ryan says. "That is how they are seeing us. They want our geography. They want us to build bases for several hundred thousand Americans in due course like in World War II."

Jennings says Americans would defend Taiwan by fighting from bases in Australia.

"America has a strategy called dispersal, which means when there is a hint of a crisis, the Air Force gets out of Guam, the marines get out of Okinawa. Why? Because they know there is a high chance they will be obliterated. Where do they come? They come here. One risk our government is very concerned about is the phone rings, and it is the United States President asking for 150,000 Americans to be in the Northern Territory by next Tuesday."

Ryan says as many as 200,000 United States troops could descend on northern Australia.

Interestingly, the article also contains a rare acknowledgement in the mainstream press that the presence of the American surveillance base Pine Gap makes Australia a legitimate target for ICBMs:

"Distance is no longer equivalent to safety from our strategic perspective," he says. In the first three days of a war, he says Beijing would be tempted to target Australian military bases with a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile attack to minimise our usefulness in the conflict.

"If China seriously wants to go after Taiwan in a military sense, the only way they can really contemplate quick success is to pre-emptively attack those assets that might be a threat to them. That means Pine Gap goes," he says, referring to the top secret United States-Australian base in the Northern Territory that the United States uses to detect nuclear missile launches.

In their haste to make the case for more militarism and brinkmanship, these war propagandists admit what is long been obvious to anyone paying attention: that the only thing putting Australia in danger from China is its alliances and agreements with the United States. The difference between them and normal human beings is that they see no problem with this.

Former Australian prime minister Paul Keatings scathing assessment of AUKUS has drawn out other Labor heavyweights to question the defense pact.-Foreign Policy (ForeignPolicy) March 25, 2023

Other empire lackeys have been making similar admissions. In a recent article by Foreign Policy, Lowy Institute think tanker Sam Roggeveen is quoted as saying the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal will make it "almost impossible" for Australia to avoid getting entangled in a war between the United States and China:

"When you build a weapon system that is almost specifically designed to operate thousands of kilometers to our north, and which is perfectly suited to fighting a military campaign against China," he said, "then at the final moment when the call comes from the White House-"Will you take part in this war, or will you not?"-it will be very difficult, almost impossible, for Australia to say no."

The only way China attacks Australia is if Australias role as a United States military asset makes us a target when the United States attacks China, possibly over Taiwan or some other internal issue that is nobodys business but the Chinese. We are told we are allied with the United States to protect ourselves, but that "protection" reminds me of an old joke by Willie Barcena:

"My homeboy Tito was always trying to get me to join a gang. Tito, with two black eyes, arm in a sling, and crutches, saying, "Hey, Willie, why do you not join the gang? You get protection!""!

This obvious point gets flipped upside-down by those desperate to manufacture consent for militarism and empire, as we saw on a recent episode of ABCs Q+A where South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas called Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John an "isolationist" (my God I hate that word) for questioning AUKUS and said if we are attacked it is because we did not travel rapidly enough along this self-destructive trajectory.

"Do you worry because of the AUKUS deal, because of South Australias role in this, do you believe South Australia becomes a target?" Malinauskas was asked by host Stan Grant.

"No," Malinauskas said. "Because if Australia becomes a target, that speaks to the fact that we have not been making the decisions that we should have a long time ago to ensure that we do not become a target, and the best way to do that is to improve our defence posture."

Of course this is bullshit!!

AUKUS has nothing to do with "defence". You do not need long-range submarines to defend Australias easily-defended shores, you need long-range submarines to attack China. Australias "defence posture" is an attack posture.

Keating expanded on this point in the aforementioned National Press Club appearance, suggesting that the real plan for those nuclear submarines is to take out Chinas nuclear-armed submarines to cripple their "second strike capability", i.e. to allow the United States to win a nuclear war with China. Keating gave the following comments after arguing that many short-range submarines are a much better way to defend Australias coast than a few vastly more expensive long-range nuclear submarines:

"That is the better defense policy for Australia than joining with the Americans up there in the shallow waters of the Chinese coast, trying to knock out - see look, you know this, Phil, or you may know this - the Chinese, in the air-sea battle plan they had eight or ten years ago, is whether they could knock out all the Chinese nuclear weapons in one strike. And people doubt that this could happen, you know, you can find the sites and knock them out.

"So what big states do is they have submarines in deep water that carry the same nuclear weapons that are not subject to a strike - it is called a second-strike capability. What the Americans are trying to do is deny the Chinese a second-strike capability, and we would be the mugs up there helping them. We will be up there saying Oh no, we will put our boats into jeopardy in the shallow waters of China."

So stop babbling about AUKUS having anything to do with defending Australia or its shipping lanes, or defending anything at all besides the United States empires last desperate hopes of securing unipolar planetary hegemony.

AUKUS is not a defence partnership because it has got nothing to do with defence, and it is also not a defence partnership because it is not a "partnership". It is the United States empire driving Australia to its doom, to nobodys benefit but the United States empire.

AUKUS exists to manage the risks created by its existence, and the same is true of ANZUS and all the other ways our nation has become knit into the workings of the United States war machine.

If we are being told that our entanglements with the United States war machine will make it almost impossible for us to avoid entering into a horrific war that will destroy our country, then the obvious conclusion is that we must disentangle ourselves from it immediately.

The problem is not that Australias corrupt media are saying our nation will have to follow the United States into war with China, the problem is that they are almost certainly correct.

The Australian media are not criminal in telling us the United States is going to drag us into a war of unimaginable horror; that is just telling the truth. No, the Australian media are criminal for telling us that we just need to accept that and get comfortable with the idea.

No. Absolutely not!! This war cannot happen. Must not happen.

We cannot go to war with a nuclear-armed country that also happens to be propping up our economy as our number one trading partner. We need to shred whatever alliances need to be shredded, enrage whatever powers we need to enrage, kick the United States troops out of this country, get ourselves out of the Commonwealth while we are at it, bring Mr. Julian Assange home where he belongs, and become a real nation!!

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