More gasbaggery from Australia’s weakest national security government in a generation:
Scott Morrison says a “red line” for Australia would be China building a military base in the Solomon Islands.
And:
“We are at a moment in our history, where our strategic circumstances are as complex as any point since the end of the Second World War and we certainly need to prepare,” Mr Marles said in Darwin in response to Mr Sutton’s comments.
And:
Australia’s Defence Minister has doubled down on concerns China is a growing threat, claiming the nation could mount a chemical attack in the next four years.
And:
Defence Minister Peter Dutton says Australians must “prepare for war” and “stare down any act of aggression” to ensure peace and stability in the region, arguing that Australians must not take for granted the “sacrifice” made by Anzacs.
And:
Mr Morrison said Australia stands with the people of Ukraine, before warning that our world was “changing”.
“War does strike Europe again. Coercion troubles our region once more,” he said.
“Democratic free peoples are standing together again.
Ukraine is irrelevant to Australians. The Solomons crisis is existential. Yet the Morrison Government has sent oodles of weapons to the former and done nothing about the latter.
There is literally nothing to report about what the Morrison Government is doing about the Solomons.
On the other hand, Labor is suggesting a lot more missiles, which is fine, but that rather presupposes that a naval base will be built and will need to be defended against. Better is this:
Labor will today unveil a package of wide-ranging reforms aimed at boosting Australia’s diplomatic and military relationships in the Pacific.
- Labor will reveal how much Overseas Development Assistance it will dedicate to the Pacific if it wins the Federal election
- Labor will establish a new Australia-Pacific Defence School which would provide additional training to defence and security force personnel from the region
- It would also expand Australian broadcasting in both the Pacific and the broader Indo-Pacific
- It will include increases to the aid budget, more money for climate change adaptation, and an overhaul of Pacific Island worker programs in Australia.
The ALP is billing its Pacific plan as a “whole of government effort” which will combine “defence, strategic, diplomatic and economic power to reassure the region they can rely on Australia.”
That’s a decent start and light years ahead of Morrison’s phony warmongers who also face fighting without the US which has also backed off:
The U.S. will “respond accordingly” should Beijing’s security pact with the Solomon Islands lead to a permanent Chinese military presence in the Pacific nation.
While the U.S. respects the rights of countries to make decisions in the best interests of their people, there are potential regional security implications of the accord for the U.S. and its allies, the White House said in an April 22 statement. No details of the security implications, or response were offered.
This is classic “speak softly and carry a big stick” American diplomacy. The Solomons is a bug approaching the world’s largest windshield.
Yet, I maintain that this is an opportunity missed. A US naval task force sent the Solomons to settle all issues would boot China from the region for decades. A bloodless coup as a hedge against the conflict to come. Democracies don’t move so swiftly, I guess.
This leaves the Morrison Government a blathering idiot with no stick at all. It’s done nothing diplomatically. It’s done nothing in espionage terms. It’s done nothing militarily. Conservative commentator Greg Sheridan is aghast:
Scott Morrison drawing a red line against a Chinese military base in the South Pacific serves one genuinely useful purpose – it helps to alert the Australian people to the absolute seriousness for them of what’s going on between China and Solomon Islands.
…For an international leader to issue a red line warning is to say that if the nation involved crosses that red line, there will be serious and adverse consequences. What possible adverse consequences could Australia impose on China?
…This has, sad to say, an inherently fatuous air about it.
…Refuse to get rich by exporting our iron ore to China?
Or perhaps promise that some time in the 2040s or 2050s, if we have by then acquired a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines – and it’s a big if – we will send one of them into Chinese waters, there to bristle silently beneath the sea?
In short, the only red line that Morrison is drawing is his usual domestic political gaslighting. To wit:
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has chastised Labor for an advertisement highlighting Liberal MP Gladys Liu’s links to donors suspected to be risks to Australia’s national security, claiming the opposition is engaging in racist campaigning.
“They go after Gladys Liu because she’s Chinese,” Morrison said on Sunday. “They’re engaged in what I think is a sewer tactic here.”
Gladys Liu is a notorious CCP stooge that ASIO warned the PM about long before he collaborated with her.
What the ANZACs would make of Morrison’s armchair generals cannot be repeated in civilised print.
