Showing posts with label Defence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Defence. Show all posts

21 September 2021

AUKUS - best news in some time

So much to cheer in the new AUKUS alliance. 

Why?

1. It enhances Australia's and the region's defence. It enables Australia, New Zealand's most important ally, to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, which will much better serve the defence of Australia and its allies, than the diesel-powered retrofitted French ones, that the Malcolm Turnbull government ordered.  

2. It cancels the previous disgracefully wasteful defence contract, which was a A$90 billion pork-barrel deal to win votes in South Australia, driven by former Minister Christopher Pyne. It was a disgrace, and economically destructive whilst delivering little strategic benefit.

3. It annoys the Communist Party of China, which, given it is the political party responsible for the greatest famines and slaughters in human history, is entirely moral.

4. The mouthpieces of the Communist Party of China took nearly 12 hours to respond to the announcement, indicating that Beijing doesn't have quite the effective spook or snooping network that it might want, otherwise it would have promptly issued a line of comment in response.  AUKUS took Beijing by surprise.

5. So-called "peace" activists are unhappy, as is the Australian Green Party, whilst all fail to protest Beijing's military exercises against Taiwan, imperialist occupation of rocks in the South China Sea and skirmishes with India. It just shows them up for what they are, supporters for any tyrannies that confront liberal democracies.  

6. It has annoyed the Government of France the most, and even the supine European Union has shown sympathy to the gallic sooks.  France was not remotely this concerned about China's occupation of the South China Sea, undermining of rule of law and freedom in Hong Kong, authoritarian racism in its Xinjiang Province or indeed just about any other international incident in recent years. The French response is totemically beautiful, by confirming and reinforcing every stereotype about French hyper-arrogance and emotional incontinence about their entirely onanistic-pneumatic honour.  It's particularly delicious that France withdrew ambassadors from Washington DC and Canberra but not London, demonstrating, once again, France's unbounded Anglo-phobic arrogance, of a kind that it is claimed too many British people use as a stereotype. France EXCEEDED stereotypes about itself, proving that you cannot make up how absurd they can be.

7. The European Union has demonstrated its virtual irrelevance in international strategic defence circles. With France its only serious defence member, and almost all of its members pathetically irrelevant in their funding of defence (and some being neutral), it has been sidelined.  

8. For all of the self-serving puffery of the New Zealand Labour Party about the supposed importance of the Fourth Labour Government's nuclear free policy in the 1980s, New Zealand was, once again, proven to be utterly irrelevant in serious strategic international defence circles. New Zealand was sidelined (as was Canada), because it not only has little to add, but its adolescent nuclear-free policy is an inhibitor, not an enabler, of more robust defence of the region. Jacinda Ardern can claim "New Zealand wouldn't want to join", but it demonstrates that the "nuclear free moment" is more a display of performative virtue signalling, than anything of substance or impact on anyone, except those claiming how wonderful they are for the act of keeping nuclear powered submarines just over 12 miles off the coast of New Zealand.  What New Zealand does is of little importance to those who are committed to the international peace and security, and is of equally little importance in climate change, no matter the egos in Parliament who wish you believe otherwise.

So good for Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden (even if Joe isn't necessarily fully aware), this was a great leap forward in dealing to a whole host of issues at once.

oh and don't anyone think for a moment that the EU was going to offer Australia a useful free trade agreement, neither France nor the EU really care about free trade.

13 October 2009

Is nuclear disarmament a good idea?

The Greens think so. That's why MP Kennedy Graham has written to Barack Obama calling for, among other things, the end to nuclear deterrence:

"To reduce the numerical surplus of nuclear weapons, from some 20,000 in the national arsenal to some 5,000 is laudable, but it does not confront the central challenge – which is to cross the threshold of minimal deterrence. Russia and the others will follow, but the lead can only come from the US."

So the Greens WANT the US to make the first move, and somehow trust Russia and China, let alone India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel to follow. Really?

Let's be clear what he is advocating is for global security to be ensured through conventional weapons, under UN auspices:

"So the twin challenge is to wean the US, and the world, off nuclear deterrence and replace it with a credible alternative means of securing global governance through conventional weaponry."

Now who would doubt the usage of nuclear weapons is truly horrible to imagine. It is why it is an effective deterrence.

While some may doubt it, nuclear weapons kept the peace in Europe from 1948 to 1989. The USSR knew if it rolled east it would face tactical nuclear weapons in response, and strategic weapons on its capitals. A horrible proposition, but the credibility had to be there for the deterrence. Better to threaten annihilation than to face war and totalitarian tyranny.

Similarly, Japan and South Korea were protected by nuclear weapons. North Korea has always wanted to take over South Korea by force, but the US nuclear umbrella has made it clear that Pyongyang would be flattened if it tried. The credibility of that threat has been critical to protecting South Korea.

Today the Korean situation is little better, with the USSR no longer shielding North Korea. However, elsewhere there remains instability and risk of conflict. One need only look at some of the other nuclear powers.

Russia is effectively a one party state with a strong military and substantial interest in expanding its sphere of influence back to some of what it once had. Who could seriously trust Putin and Medvedev to undertake arms control given how Russia has acted towards Ukraine?

China always claims peaceful intent, but whilst relations with Taiwan have warmed, China has never withdrawn the military option for "reunification". China also has border disputes with India, and in the South China Sea.

India and Pakistan will say "you first" to each other, and frankly until Kashmir can be solved and Pakistan is no longer a breeding ground for Islamist terror, neither will abandon nukes.

North Korea will abandon nukes when there is Korean reunification, on the South's terms.

Israel will abandon nukes when Arabs and Iran stop calling for its destruction and treat it as a trading partner and friend.

In this environment, why abandon nuclear deterrence? For Israel it has kept the peace on a large scale since the Yom Kippur War. For the Korean peninsula it has prevented a second Korean War, and elsewhere it makes Russia think how far it can push the West.

In such a world, it is immoral for the US, UK and France to abandon nuclear weapons, for they are the only relatively moral states to hold them, the only ones that can keep the dictatorial other two members of the UN Security Council honest (and any other states that acquire them).

For until aggressive dictatorships are wiped from the face of the earth, there will be governments that seek to be aggressive against their citizens and citizens of other nations. They will seek war, and some will seek weapons of mass destruction (treaties on chemical and biological weapons have not stopped the most egregiously aggressive states from having both - like North Korea, Syria, Russia and Libya). Sadly, only by holding similar firepower, and a clear willingness to use it if provoked, can we talk a language they not only understand, but have used their whole political career.

Any other belief is naive - as naive as anyone who trusts Putin, Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or as evil as one who sees any of them as morally equivalent to any US President.

04 May 2009

Bludging kiwis should thank Rudd government

$A22 billion of spending on 100 new fighter jets and 12 submarines by Australia is a substantial commitment over the next 10 years, along with confirmation that its military alliance with the US is the cornerstone of its defence policy.

Have no bones about it, this means Australia is maintaining its strong defence presence in the region and its ability to project its air and sea power around its lengthy territorial waters. It is a commitment Australia has maintained throughout the Cold War and since.

Sadly, New Zealand has eroded its military commitment to the defence of the South Pacific in several stages since the mid 1980s. It started with the effective abandonment of ANZUS when the Lange government, following extensive goading from the left of the Labour Party, took an ideological hardline against the US Navy. The Lange government refused to accept a conventional powered, nuclear incapable ship because the US "neither confirmed nor denied" it carried nuclear weapons.

Following that, New Zealand has eroded its blue water navy to 2 frigates, and eliminated its air strike capability. As a result, with New Zealand effectively unable to contribute more than 2 frigates (and the army) to an overseas actions, its contribution to the collective defence of the South Pacific is derisory, through no fault of the forces themselves.

So New Zealand should be grateful at Australian taxpayers continuing their commitment. The truth is that the New Zealand armed forces are capable of maintaining some defence of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) from illegal fishing, but not any serious attack, or assisting Australia in the likelihood of any attack.

From Lange to Clark, New Zealand governments have wimped out of defence, because New Zealanders always felt safe from invasion. The idea of contributing to a defence alliance has seemed fanciful, suiting the "independent foreign policy" stance of the so called "peace movement".

Defence is a core role of the state, and while the current government will be fiscally constrained in a recession to remedy it, it should be addressed over the medium term. Meanwhile, a big "thank you" should be extended to the Rudd government, for maintaining Australia's defence forces over the longer term, and in effect, New Zealand at the same time, whilst New Zealand can effectively contribute proportionately so little in return.