Something quite extraordinary is happening in Australia.
Over the past few weeks, many key authoritative figures - former PMs, top strategists, etc. - came out against AUKUS and US imperialism, in favor of Australian independence.
A small 🧵 listing the various key statements
First of, Paul Keating, former Prime Minister, describing AUKUS as the “worst deal in all history” and saying it will turn Australia into the 51st state of the US.
Malcolm Turnbull, another former PM, writing in The Guardian that it jeopardizes Australia's defense capability and sovereignty: "we now have to face the real prospect [...] of not having any Australian submarine capability at all."
Hugh White, inaugural Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), who says that if the US doesn't abandon primacy and starts treating China as an equal partner, then they'll take on a rivalry that he "doesn't think they can win".
Former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans calling AUKUS "one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions our country has made"
Another former Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, colorfully describing AUKUS as "fragrant, methane-wrapped bullshit"
johnmenadue.com/fragrant-metha…
Ross Garnaut, former Australian ambassador to China, saying that if the US doesn't abandon its drive for primacy "there may be no future for humanity", and that AUKUS is inconsistent "with the preservation of Australian sovereign independence".
These statements are all recent, but others, like academic Clinton Fernandes, have been calling it out right from the beginning, calling AUKUS a "booby-trap" for Australia's "self-reliance", tying Australia to "US's great power interests".
amp.smh.com.au/national/scott…
John Lander, a former Deputy Ambassador to China, has also been against AUKUS from the start, saying that it "squandered 40 years of goodwill" and was "engineered by the US military-industrial complex which manufactured the 'threat from China'".
citizensparty.org.au/china-australi…
Many in Australia's neighborhood have also long been calling AUKUS out, such as Indonesia, with an official statement implying that it goes against "maintaining peace and stability in the region"
Or Malaysia, warning against "provocations that could potentially trigger an arms race or affect peace and security in the region".
Or former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark, who said that her own country should not join AUKUS because "what is good about joining a ratcheting up of tensions in a region?", adding that she'd rather NZ "keeps its head while all around are losing theirs".
johnmenadue.com/joining-aukus-…
Or also Enele Sopoaga, Tuvalu’s former PM from 2013 to 2019, saying that AUKUS showed a “contemptuous disregard for Pacific regionalism” and a tendency to see Pacific nations solely through the prism of security which reeked of "neo-colonialism".
crikey.com.au/2024/04/29/auk…
This list is far from exhaustive but it shows, and this is a vast understatement, how increasingly controversial AUKUS is both in Australia and in the region overall.
People are realizing that it is essentially a trap by the US against Australian sovereignty, using them as a proxy against China in their quest for preserving a fast-eroding primacy. And they worry, rightly IMHO, that it may end up destroying both Australian prosperity and security, as well as that of the region overall.
The Americans themselves aren't even hiding it, Kurt Campbell - the US Deputy Secretary of State - literally said that AUKUS was a way to "lock [Australia behind the U.S.] for the next 40 years" ()
Hopefully this torrent of negative push-back will make the Australian government see the light, and start acting in a way where - in the words of former PM Paul Keating - they starting seeking "security in Asia" as opposed to "from Asia".
More importantly, but sadly even less likely, push back like this from "allies" should make the US realize that primacy is a dead-end: it should stop its destructive habit of trying to submit the rest of the world and instead learn to coexist with others... Sadly, if you listen to the rhetoric from both presidential candidates, we're a long way away from this...afr.com/policy/foreign…
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