By Mick Le Moignan
ONE of the many tragic outcomes of Russia’s outrageous invasion of Ukraine and that terrible, continuing war is a massive flow of money and power to arms dealers and manufacturers.
They are emboldened by this unexpected flush of bloody triumph and the carnage has lured other warmongers out of the woodwork.
Three years ago, long before the Russia-Ukraine war began, Peter Dutton, then Australian Defence Minister, now Leader of the Opposition, warned everyone to ‘prepare for war with China’.
At the time, most dismissed it as the ravings of a deluded xenophobe singing from the Fox News hymnsheet, but now the mainstream media are joining the chorus and urging us to ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’.
This month, Australia’s usually moderate newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age (both owned by the Nine TV Network) published a special report they have commissioned from five prominent hawks in the military/defence establishment, titled ‘Red Alert’.
The pundits have expertise in their own fields, which include military strategy, defence policy, cyber science, geopolitics and technology, but none is an expert on China, which is the main focus of their attention. They warn that ‘Australia faces serious national security threats and has disturbing vulnerabilities that need to be urgently addressed’.
Their innocuous opening statement reads: ‘We do not want war. We urgently want to strengthen Australia as a means of sustaining peace through deterrence… Complacency will increase the probability of conflict.’
They fear ‘the prospect of armed conflict in the Indo-Pacific within three years’ prompted by ‘a Chinese attack on Taiwan that sparks a conflict with the US and other democracies, including Australia’.
Their concern is prompted by ‘President Xi Jinping’s aggressive stance and rapid military build-up’ and China’s ‘growing capability and sense of entitlement’. They point to Xi’s clearly stated intention to ‘reunite’ the province of Taiwan with the Chinese mainland before he leaves office.
(The issue of whether Taiwan, properly the Republic of China (ROC) is truly an independent democracy and separate from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a complex question which I’ll examine in my next column tomorrow.)
The ‘experts’ ask Australians to make ‘a psychological shift’: ‘Urgency must replace complacency. The recent decades of tranquillity were not the norm in human affairs but an aberration. Australia’s holiday from history is over. Australians should not feel afraid but be alert to the threats we face, the tough decisions we must make and know that they have agency. This mobilisation of mindset is the essential prerequisite to any successful confrontation of China.’
Note the shift from peaceful aspiration and deterrence to ‘confrontation’.
The report goes on to deplore Australia’s ‘many vulnerabilities’. We have ‘long and exposed connections to the rest of the world – sea, air and undersea’ which we are ‘incapable of protecting’. It points out our ‘dependency on imports of essentials – including fuel, pharmaceuticals, electronics and weaponry’ which ‘could be a fatal weakness in a crisis. This was exposed in World War II yet remains unaddressed’.
The bad news continues: ‘Some critical infrastructure, including the electricity grid, is vulnerable to cyber-attack. Australia’s military bases are unprotected and could be disabled quickly. Australia has no long-range military strike power to protect its approaches or hold an enemy at a distance.’
On brighter notes, we are told the nation is ‘much more than a middle power… Uniquely in command of an entire continent and unthreatened by any immediate neighbour, it has great wealth of every variety. It is a global superpower in production of food and energy. Its people are among the most educated and capable on Earth. We are inventive and enterprising. Australia has a robust democratic system and rule of law.
‘It has living standards among the very highest anywhere, at any time in human history. Uniquely, it combines the oldest surviving culture on Earth, the liberties bestowed by its British-derived system of government and the richness of the most multicultural population of any developed nation.’
It should therefore use its military alliances and capabilities ‘to defend itself and to strike the enemy where necessary’. Hold on, I thought we were ‘unthreatened by any immediate neighbour’…
No, we must ‘plan for war in the near, medium and long term’. Whatever happened to ‘the lucky country’?
According to ‘Red Alert’, our government should double its defence budget from the current 2% of GDP to 4% and invest in ‘costly’ cyber-defence systems, ‘long-range strike missiles’ and ‘drones for delivering explosives, for example’.
In a nod to current policy, ‘the AUKUS agreement… for the US and UK to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines – could prove useful. The submarines are intended to give Australia the ability to threaten China’s territory directly (!), increasing Australian coercive power and thus strengthening deterrence.’
They’d better – they are expected to cost $9 billion over the next four years and a mind-boggling $268-368 billion between now and 2055.
We, the people, can play our humble part – as well as paying the bills through our taxes – because the military visionaries want to bring back ‘compulsory national service to boost the people’s preparedness. This can be civil or military, or both, and it can be voluntary or mandatory. It need not be limited to young people.’
Well, that’s a relief. I wouldn’t like to be excluded from this glorious nation-building process. Lord Kitchener still needs me for cannon-fodder. Let’s charge the guns. They won’t fire till they see the whites of your eyes, so keep them shut – that’s the best defence.
Nobody wants wars – and nobody wins them. Both sides get exhausted and then have to start rebuilding what they have destroyed, trust, homes, infrastructure, wealth and lives. This latest arms race may be different. Win, lose or draw, it could be our last.
Next time, I’ll comb the smoking wreckage for a few shreds of hope and see if I can find any alternatives to this headlong rush to Armageddon.
