AUKUS Update
Today I’m doing grampa things, but …
Arnaud Bertrand has updated the AUKUS debate in Australia (with a nod toward New Zealand). The concerns over Australia joining AUKUS amount to the concern that in so doing Australia will have, de facto, surrendered its sovereignty. By allowing for the expansion of US military bases Australia will, de facto, be drawn into any wars that the US enters into. The pact also puts Australia at odds with important regional neighbors—Indonesia and Malaysia. And, of course, it places Australia in a hostile relationship toward China, hostage to Anglo-Zionist policy.
This follows up on our earlier post Does AUKUS Make Sense For AUNZ? It’s disturbing to see the US ruling class refusing to accept that the world is changing, and roping smaller nations into an effort to maintain Anglo-Zionist hegemony at whatever cost. That cost wil be higher for others than for Americans, who tend to be oblivious to such matters.
Bertrand has assembled statements from former PMs and other Australian officials who oppose entry to AUKUS. Most, but not all, are Labor politicians.
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
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 [thread] listing the various key statements
One of the VERY rare Western politicians who gets it and rejects U.S. imperialism to preserve his country's sovereignty, the immense Paul Keating, 24th [Labor] Prime Minister of Australia https://x.com/labagainstwar//LabAgainstWar/status/1821663207838105928/video/1…
“You see, we're going to get AUKUS but not the submarines. What we're going to get is what Kurt Campbell, US Deputy Secretary of State has said: 'We're going to tie these guys up for 40 years'.
What AUKUS is about in the American mind is turning the suckers in Australia, locking us up for 40 years with American bases all around. I mean what this report today tells you, they can have American bases all around Australia. American bases! Not Australian. All around Australia. So AUKUS is really about, in American terms, the military control of Australia.
I say this: the Albanese government with their policy is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States.”
Fascinating article on AUKUS by Malcolm Turnbull, former [Liberal] Prime Minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018.
https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/26/australia-aukus-deal-us-uk-submarines-virginia-class…
He explains that it now looks likely that Australia "for much of the next decade and beyond, [will not have] any submarine capability at all", but will instead have to build the U.S. a submarine base in Perth, staffed by U.S. submarines subsidized by Australia.
In short Australia will end up having paid for the privilege of its own military colonization by the U.S. when the original AUKUS rational was to have its own submarine capabilities, which is quite insane when you think about it...
There's now an incredible number of extremely senior Australian figures rallying against AUKUS.
The latest is former [Labor] Foreign Minister Gareth Evans calling it "one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions our country has made" 
https://theconversation.com/gareth-evans-aukus-is-terrible-for-australian-national-interests-but-were-probably-stuck-with-it-236938…
He says this is because AUKUS is "not only putting at profound risk our sovereign independence, but generating more risk than reward for the very national security it promises to protect".
Specifically on Australia's loss of sovereignty, here's what he says:
1) Australia would lose operational independence and sovereign decision-making: "The notion that we will retain any kind of sovereign agency in determining how all these assets are used, should serious tensions erupt, is a joke in bad taste."
2) Australia would be expected to automatically be involved in US conflicts: "But also now the ever-clearer expectation on the US side that 'integrated deterrence' means Australia will have no choice but to join the US in fighting any future war in which it chooses to engage anywhere in the Indo-Pacific, including in defence of Taiwan." Especially given that he apparently has bad memories of being a junior ally of the US: "I have had personal ministerial experience of being a junior allied partner of the US in a hot conflict situation – the first Gulf War in 1991 — and my recollections are not pretty."
3) It'd increase US military presence in Australia: "Not only the now open-ended expansion of Tindal as a US B52 base; not only the conversion of Stirling into a major base for a US Indian Ocean fleet, making Perth now join Pine Gap and the North West Cape – and increasingly likely, Tindal – as a nuclear target..."
He also quotes former French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who said: "The Australians place themselves entirely at the mercy of developments in American policy. I wish our Australian partner, who made the choice of security – justified by the escalation of tensions with China – to the detriment of sovereignty, will not discover later that it has sacrificed both."
Le Drian was right, Australia is sacrificing both, as Evans now recognizes...
Another former [Labor] Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, colorfully describing AUKUS as "fragrant, methane-wrapped bullshit"
Yet another senior Australian figure comes out against AUKUS and the danger of "a US hell-bent on preserving its supremacy": Ross Garnaut, former [Labor] Australian ambassador to China and former principal economic adviser to prime minister Bob Hawke.
https://crikey.com.au/2024/08/20/china-ambassador-ross-garnaut-aukus/…
Here's what he says:
The US needs to abandon its drive for primacy, the future of humanity is at stake
“There is no future for our two peoples [Australia and US] and there may be no future for humanity unless our US ally can get used to being one of several powerful states in a world that allows primacy to none of them.”
AUKUS inconsistent with Australian independence
On AUKUS specifically, he asks "Is AUKUS consistent with the preservation of Australian sovereign independence in future decisions on war and peace?”. Implying of course that the answer is no...
"Dangerous to encourage thoughts of independence" in Taiwan, the issue needs to "be worked through by Chinese on the mainland and in Taiwan"
"In a changing world, one thing that doesn’t change is that any government in China will be determined never to allow Taiwan to emerge as an independent state … We want the people on Taiwan to live under a political system as close as possible to that preferred by most of them. Ultimately this will be worked through by Chinese on the mainland and in Taiwan. Friends of the US need to explain to Americans who think they have the people of Taiwan’s welfare guiding them, that it is dangerous to encourage thoughts of independence."
He also says it's a “dangerous mistake” to interpret China’s longstanding refusal to rule out the use of force to prevent Taiwan’s independence “as an indication of its willingness to use military force against other states”.
Devastating consequences for Australia if it gets involved (via AUKUS) in a war over Taiwan
"America would be damaged by war with China over the status of Taiwan, but, short of a major nuclear exchange debilitating both great powers, its sovereignty would not be at risk. Australia’s would be. Indeed, I doubt that Australia could survive as a sovereign entity the isolation from most of Asia that would be likely to follow anything other than a decisive and quick US victory in a war in which our military was engaged."
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".
https://amp.smh.com.au/national/scott-morrison-s-booby-trap-buying-us-nuclear-submarines-is-a-huge-mistake-20221214-p5c6af.html
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'".
China: Australia squandering 40 years of goodwill
From citizensparty.org.au
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".
All the aforementioned former politicians/officials played their obsequious part in getting Australia to where we are today [see Wikileaks]. Meanwhile, Julian Assange arrived in Australia on 26 June, and has not spoken or been seen in public since. He has been disappeared.
The Aussies need to settle down. This is all being done to save and protect democracy in the world. Losing your nation’s sovereignty is a small price to pay for “saving their democracy.”