Keating was wrong. Australia is already the 51st state of the US

 

By John Lander

Paul Keating is wrong when he says that Anthony Albanese risked making Australia the 51st State of the United States of America. Not so! Australia is already the 51st State of America, in all but name.

Historically, countries generally have surrendered after losing a war. Australia has not only surrendered without a fight, but is paying billions of dollars for the privilege of handing over its independence to the US.

The relinquishing of Australian sovereignty to the US began with the signing of the ANZUS Treaty. It was at first almost imperceptible, with the US gradually establishing a strong economic, financial and media/entertainment foothold, leading to the Americanisation of Australian society.

This was accompanied by an ever-increasing grip on the body politic, through the “Five Eyes” intelligence arrangement, the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, the dominant presence of US armaments manufacturers and CIA influence on the board of ASPI, the regular AUSMIN dialogue, the Australia/US Leadership Dialogue, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, the United States Studies Centre and many other influence operations that the US conducts in Australia.

Australian sovereignty, never very robust, was reduced to artificial life-support, when Prime Minister John Howard used the alliance with the US as justification for joining the illegal and disastrous destruction of Iraq, despite the highest level of popular protest since the Vietnam war.

It was placed in its coffin with the Gillard Government’s enthusiastic agreement to US Force Posture Initiatives in Australia as part of the US “Pivot to Asia”.

The Abbott Government put the lid on it with the signing of the Force Posture Agreement, which gives the US “unimpeded access to” and “exclusive use of” all facilities and areas in Australia to which it may choose to deploy personnel, armaments and equipment, giving no say to the Australian Government as to how, when, where and against whom they may be used.

The Morrison Government drove the first nail into the coffin, with the announcement of the AUKUS arrangement, under which Australia would get nuclear-propelled submarines at vast cost, which would be in the service of US strategy in our region, clearly directed against our most important trading partner.

The Albanese Government has been hammering in the final nails in rapid succession, to finally suffocate Australian sovereignty. It has committed to upholding America’s “rules-based order” to sustain US dominance in the world, despite the growing opposition to it by the majority of the world.

The embedding of US personnel into the ADF and intelligence services, the designation of Australian critical minerals producers as US domestic suppliers (giving US control over who may invest in, and who may buy, Australian rare earths), plus the ramping up of US weapons manufacture in Australia, all further derogate from Australian sovereignty.

The outcomes from the latest AUSMIN talks make it clear that “Darwin is at the epicentre” of the projection of US power in the Indo-Pacific, as Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, put it. One can only conclude that a US war against China would be conducted from Australia, thus guaranteeing Australia’s destruction and America’s survival.

The visit of US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to China this week, to provide assurances to China that the US adheres to the “One China Policy” and will not go to war against China (although it will compete fiercely with it), provides cold comfort.

The US has insisted that it will not directly engage in war against another nuclear superpower, it will only fight them by proxy (as it is currently doing in Ukraine). It has lined up Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Australia as proxies for war against China.

The decision of the US-backed Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, for its members to promote pro-Taiwan resolutions in their respective parliaments, indicates that the US has not abandoned its strategy of pushing Taiwan to independence. This would reignite the civil war between the mainland and the province.

The US National Defence Strategy hopes that such a war would bog China down, derail its economic progress and impede its development and security cooperation with countries of the Global South (the majority of the world). It envisages (quite erroneously) that this would halt the creation by China, within the BRICS framework, of an alternative international financial and trade payments system.

Most alarming of all has been Defence Minister Richard Marles’ gleeful celebration of the complete “interchangeability” of US forces with Australian forces. This suggests that US assets in Australia could be re-badged as “Australian”, thus maintaining the fiction that the US is not directly engaged in any war that Australia, as one of its proxies, might be drawn into in defence of ‘Taiwan’s democracy”.

It is worth repeating: the US is not preparing to go to war against China, it is preparing Australia to go to war against China.

Footnote (or possibly the makings of a further article)

The recent bipartisan Parliamentary resolution on Taiwan was an initiative by the anti-China hawks, in response to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (both Paterson and Hastie are members). It represents an attempt to change Australia’s policy as a necessary precursor to war against China.

Parliamentary resolutions do not constitute change to Government policy, unless the Government formally adopts them.

Australia’s One China Policy predates the recognition of the PRC.

Australia recognised the ROC and maintained diplomatic relations with it, on the basis that it was the legitimate government of the whole of China (including Taiwan), from well before the end of WWII until 1972.

Australia’s acknowledgement (meaning recognition and acceptance) of the PRC’s position that Taiwan is part of China’s sovereign territory was the reason given for Australia’s withdrawal of recognition of the ROC and the severing of diplomatic ties with it.

The constitution of the ROC, which is still in force on Taiwan today, states unequivocally that there is only one China and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s sovereign territory.

Changes to which political party controls the government do not constitute changes to sovereign territory. That would be like tantamount to saying that a Liberal/National Party in power in one State of Australia, with a Labor Party in power in Canberra, means that the said State no longer belongs to the sovereign territory of Australia.

John Lander worked in the China section of the Department of Foreign Affairs in the lead-up to the recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1972 and several other occasions in the 1970s and 1980s. He was deputy ambassador in Beijing 1974-76 (including a couple of stints as Chargé d’Affaires). He was heavily involved in negotiation of many aspects in the early development of Australia-China relations, especially student/teacher exchange, air traffic agreement and consular relations. He has made numerous visits to China in the years 2000-2019.

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