The collapse of policy thought and process tracked by MB for the past decade has not so far been fatal to the nation’s prospects.
Until today:
Australia and the US are bracing for the rapid deployment of Chinese security forces to the Solomon Islands, fearing Beijing will move to seal a controversial new security agreement by putting “boots on the ground” as soon as possible.
Strategists said China would “move as fast as it can” to establish a foothold in the country, as the Solomon Islands opposition warned that the country’s Prime Minister, Manasseh Sogavare, would use the Chinese presence to tighten his hold on power.
China’s announcement on Tuesday night that it had signed the security pact with Honiara reverberated through the Australian election campaign, with Labor accusing the government of the “worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific” since WWII.
Scott Morrison said Mr Sogavare had faced “a lot of influence” from Beijing, and warned that Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga were under the same pressure to strike deals with China.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has known this is coming for eight months and has done nothing to stop it. This is plenty of time to have prepared a comprehensive soft and hard power response to prevent it.
The failure to do so is an extreme dereliction of duty and a betrayal of everything that the Office of the Prime Minister of Australia exists for.
That role can be summed up easily: protect the liberty of Australians.
As Morrison himself describes, Australian freedom as we know it is over as China’s malign influence spreads via a military presence that now has every chance of surrounding Australia without firing a shot. This means that:
- China will hold a gun to Australia’s head permanently.
- Canberra will increasingly struggle to resist.
- ANZUS will come under fundamental strain.
- All of the Pacific will begin a transformation into Chinese satraps by stealth. Proxy war bases for the occupation of the South Pacific.
This is China’s plan. It will happen surprisingly quickly, as we saw with the militarisation of the South China Sea.
Australia can stop it. The Solomons is nobody until it becomes a Chinese proxy. We are the power of the region. This is not contingent or political. It is historical.
The Menzies and Curtin Governments of WWII both committed to ridding the Solomons of tyranny and fascism in the early nineteen forties:
Whereas most Australians are familiar with the determined resistance and subsequent counter-offensive by Australian soldiers along the Kokoda Track, the concurrent actions of Australian sailors at Guadalcanal are often forgotten, but are perhaps equally as important to those who wish to better understand the fundamentals of Australian defence. After all, as an island nation, defence of our sea communications has always been vital. During late 1942, Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, which was situated alongside Australian sea communications with America, became the centre for the fight for Sea Control in the South and South West Pacific areas.
On 2 July 1942, the United States (US) Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered Allied forces in the Pacific to mount an offensive to halt the Japanese advance towards the sea lines of communication from the US to Australia and New Zealand. This led to the long struggle for control of Guadalcanal and neighbouring islands. Operation WATCHTOWER, the occupation of Guadalcanal and Tulagi, was the first offensive by the Allied Forces in the Pacific Theatre, and was the first US combined amphibious operation since 1898. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) contributed significantly during the early stages of the Guadalcanal campaign
Half a century later, the Howard Government launched the RAMSI mission to the Solomons during the War on Terror to secure the South Pacific from insurgency.
Now China is using the Solomons to challenge US hegemony in the South Pacific, along with threatening all that it brings: democracy, liberalism and freedom. The US is relying upon its truest ally, Australia, to step up with its knowledge, expertise and power to act to protect that which it guarantees.
Yet as Chinese troops roll south with the singular goal of destroying ANZUS by encircling Australia, PM Morrison is busy focussing the nation on some trans-obsessed loon in northern Sydney.
An ANZAC he ain’t.
