Last week, amid much pomp and ceremony at a naval base in San Diego, California, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed the AUKUS submarine deal with the United States and the United Kingdom. United.
Under this extraordinary arrangement, Australia has agreed to pay $368 billion for eight nuclear-powered submarines to be manufactured primarily in America and Britain. Staggered delivery dates stretch decades into the future.
The AUKUS pact, however, is not just about buying a few overpriced submarines that might be technologically obsolete by the time they are built. The pact also binds Australia firmly to the wheels of the United States and the United Kingdom when it comes to security issues in Southeast Asia. More importantly, this week’s submarine deal represents a significant shift in Australia’s foreign policy parameters towards loose dependence on the US and UK, and s away from its recent rapprochement with China.
Images of Prime Minister Albanese gazing admiringly at President Biden and Rishi Sunak in San Diego perfectly capture the submissiveness that has come to characterize Australia’s relationship with the US and UK. ” I’m so honored to be by your side, ” he said.
Albanese described the AUKUS chord in his typically mangled prose as follows: ” The sum of the three is greater than one plus one in this case. And I think the cooperation that we ‘ve had is really exciting. No mention of the abandonment of Australia’s foreign policy independence, disruption of regional stability, alienation from China or dependence on two declining world powers, one of which is n There hasn’t been a military presence in Southeast Asia since the 1970s.
China reacted to this week’s events by reiterating its characterization of the AUKUS pact as being informed by a ” typical Cold War mentality that will only motivate an arms race and harm regional peace and stability.”
From a historical perspective, Albanese’s obsequious capitulation to the foreign policy and economic interests of the United Kingdom and the United States should come as no surprise. Australia remains a member of the British Commonwealth and King Charles III, in his royal capacity as King of Australia, is the country’s Head of State. Unlike the other British dominions, Australia never chose to become a republic. Until the Whitlam Labor government came to power in 1972, Australian prime ministers inevitably supported the UK on foreign policy issues. Prime Minister Menzies defended Britain during the Suez Crisis and was sent by his British masters to Cairo to lecture President Nasser on the error of his ways.
When Australia briefly broke free from British rule during World War II, it simply replaced one colonial overlord with another – this time the United States. Australia’s misguided involvement in the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan followed, along with decades of squandered opportunities to cement better relations with neighboring Southeast Asian countries, primarily the China and Indonesia. And who can forget Prime Minister Holt’s agitated “All the Way With LBJ” speech delivered at the height of the Vietnam War – yet another ode to Australian submissiveness.
Also, unprecedented is the spectacle of Australia being crammed with overpriced US military hardware in exchange for support for reckless US foreign policy goals. In the early 1960s, when the Menzies government urged President Kennedy to escalate the war in Vietnam, part of that disastrous pact involved Australia buying the expensive and struggling F-111 aircraft from its American manufacturer (without no doubt very grateful).
This brings us back to the AUKUS agreement itself. This is, of course, the brainchild of former Tory Prime Minister Scott Morrison – whom Albanese soundly beat at the polls in May last year.
In September 2021, in typically deceitful fashion, Morrison reneged on a $90 billion deal brokered by former Prime Minister Turnbull to buy a number of submarines from France – and, at the same time, proudly unveiled the AUKUS security pact. This act of unprincipled diplomacy led to a serious rift in Franco-Australian relations which has still not been repaired.
Albanese immediately supported the AUKUS pact, despite its far-reaching consequences – partly to avoid political conflict over foreign policy in the run-up to the 2022 elections, but also – as events this week made clear – because that he aspires to depend on the United Kingdom and the United States just as much as Menzies, Holt and Morrison ever did.
It has become clear this week that Albanese – for all his supposedly left-wing radicalism – adheres to exactly the same irrational worldview on foreign policy as the unreconstructed Cold War warriors like Morrison and the conservative prime ministers who led him. preceded.
Not only does the AUKUS pact, like most disastrous positions in Australian foreign policy, enjoy bipartisan support from both major political parties, it has also been endorsed by all major Australian media – including the so-called ABC and Channel. from the left. Nine newspapers, and no doubt the right-wing Murdoch press and Sky News.
Under these circumstances, criticism of the AUKUS pact has been very thin on the ground in Australia.
Earlier in the week, however, former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, had the audacity to deliver a devastating critique of the AUKUS deal and the Albanian government. Keating made the following remarks:
- AUKUS deal is ‘the worst deal in history’ and ‘ irrational in every dimension’
- the San Diego reunion was a “kabuki show”
- the trilateral AUKUS partnership consists of ” seeking to maintain American strategic hegemony in Asia” by containing China
- Australia is ‘ fleeing security in Asia for security in and within the Anglosphere’
- the UK is “ looking for suckers…(to create a) … global Britain … after that madman Johnson destroyed their place in Europe ” and reminded his audience that the UK had “ Australia under- valued throughout the 20th century”
- ‘Australia is locking down its next half-century in Asia as a subordinate to the United States’ and Albanian is ‘ a prime minister with an American sword to shake’
- Albanese’s decision to ally Australia with the United States ” to try to contain China as an economic rival” could have ” deadly consequences for Australia” and that the “incompetent” Albanian government had ” embarked on a dangerous and useless journey”
- Joe Biden ‘ couldn’t tie three words together…but wants to go to war’
- he reiterated his previously expressed view that China was not a threat to Australia’s security and that Taiwan was ” a manufactured problem”
- Albanese is duped by the “drugs” in the defense and national security establishments
- Albanese could have bought 40 to 50 conventional submarines for the same price he spends on the 8 AUKUS submarines
He also claimed that “there was only one payer in San Diego” – namely Australia – and that the AUKUS deal was structured to support the US economy and “bail out UK businesses”.
The responses of Albanese and his defense and foreign ministers to Keating’s attack were predictable. They have resolutely avoided addressing the issues raised by Keating and simply claim that he had ‘ diminished himself’ by attacking them personally, as well as blaming him for being ‘mean’ to the Foreign Secretary, who happens to be be a woman.
This all-too-common kind of petty ad hominem attacks based on fabricated outrage or offense – which avoid the real issues altogether – is, of course, what passes for political debate in the West these days. this.
Paul Keating’s iconoclastic speech last week was both timely and welcome. He single-handedly attempted to initiate a much-needed debate on an issue of fundamental importance to Australia’s future and the security of the entire Southeast Asian region.
Whether or not serious public debate takes place – it seems unlikely at the moment – Keating, who left office in 1996, has done Australia a great service by drawing attention to the deeply problematic nature and troubling of the AUKUS pact.
Keating also indirectly reminded Australian voters – at least those old enough to remember – of a time when a few politicians of stature and principle still sat in parliament, and real public debate took place, albeit safe, respecting matters of national importance.
Sadly – if Prime Minister Albanese and his defense and foreign ministers are any indication – those days seem long gone.
Source : News 24
