Has Australia Made A Fatal Choice?

I’m always ready to share an article from James O’Neill.  He is one of very few fellow Australians to make any sense of today’s world.

In this article he speaks of the fruitless attempts at empire building by Western interests of the past and the present.  Fruitless because they never achieve any lasting presence or even much in the way of influence – though that does not seem to diminish the inane Western bravado to keep doing what has proven not to work.

O’Neill then swings into attack on Australia (fawning puppy dog of the West) and its recently announced but, as usual, utterly stupid Defence Policy – bound up in lame 20th century thinking, with no relevance to the needs of current times, nor to Australia’s continued viability as an independent (though that would be wishful thinking) nation.  I have no time nor interest in spelling out why that policy is ridiculous.  You can seek that out for yourself, if you care.

I feel I need to repeat the obvious here, that Australia still stubbornly relies for its ‘security’ on the one hand (though who knows why?), on a failing concept known as the ‘US’ and, for its continued viability and for the welfare of its people in matters of trade and commerce, on the other hand, on the People’s Republic of China.  Polar diversities on the scale of ‘chalk and cheese’ or ‘hell and high water’.  A divergent recipe for disaster.  One or other has to be discarded – but not both. And in reality there is just one choice.  

China is not a threat to Australia – at least not an existential threat – and could be a great ally.

The US, on the other hand, is an existential threat to Australia, both self-confessed and by vitrue of that nation’s imminent collapse into irrelevance. 

On such threats, O’Neill has this to say:

“The real threat to Australia from China is that the latter has finally grown tired of the constant belligerent rhetoric from Australian sources and decided that its role as Australia’s largest source of foreign trade by a significant margin, largest source of foreign students, largest source of foreign tourists and third largest source of foreign investment is no longer in China’s interests to maintain. The economic consequences for Australia will be devastating.”

James O’Neill

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That puts Australia in a very precarious situation, wouldn’t you agree.  Things can not remain the same.  Cling to old pals, and go down with them – in opposite directions down different hemispherical plugholes.  Or, split from old allegiances – which really amount to servitude – and forge ahead with tomorrow’s world leaders at your side (they have been very forgiving of our past rectitude – though no longer it seems).  Is there really any more than one choice there?

Convinced?

If not, try this for size – quoting from O’Neill’s honest appraisal:

“The difference in military capability between Russia, Chinese close strategic partner, and the West is so great that Hartcher does not refer to it at all to avoid embarrassing comparisons. The Russians are highly unlikely to allow an American attack upon China. The Russians have at their disposal an array of nuclear weapons that vastly exceed the United States military arsenal and the Americans know it, even if Australian mainstream commentators insist in maintaining a fantasy image that it is not so. 

These weapons include the Sarmat ICBM, a 10-15 individual weapons per rocket system capable of 35,000 km sub orbital flight; the Avangard Hypersonic missile; the Burevestnik nuclear tipped subsonic cruise missile with unlimited range; and the Zircon, a 9800 kmph Mach 9 anti-ship cruise missile with a 1000 km range. 

There are others in the repertoire, but these make the point. There is no United States equivalent, let alone an Australian one, and by the time the United States does have similar weapons the Russians (and the Chinese with their Dong Feng 8-10 independently targetable nuclear warheads and an 11,000 km range) will have moved on to even more sophisticated weaponry.”

James O’Neill

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Only a fool would reject the obvious course change that faces Australia.  But, of course, we tend to elect fools to do our thinking and to represent us to the world.  I hope our mistake, if not soon corrected, does not prove to be totally fatal.

“Australian Defence Policy Locked in Counter-Productive Mythology” – James O’Neill for New Eastern Outlook