{"id":231812,"date":"2023-03-20T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2023-03-20T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=231812"},"modified":"2023-03-18T10:13:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T10:13:53","slug":"a-sane-voice-amidst-the-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/03\/a-sane-voice-amidst-the-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sane Voice amidst the Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Australian PM Paul Keating has eviscerated Australia\u2019s deal to buy nuclear submarines from the U.K. and U.S., saying there is no Chinese threat to defend against, despite the war hysteria stirring in Australia. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday 15 Mar 2023.
(ABC screenshot)<\/p><\/div>\n

17 Mar 2023 – <\/em>Paul Keating, a former prime minister of Australia, has boldly contested the establishment consensus that Australia needs to spend A$368 billion to buy nuclear submarines as protection against a China Keating bluntly says is not a threat.<\/p>\n

The former Labor premier has defied the conventional wisdom, saying the U.S. opposes China only because Beijing has committed \u201cthe high sin in internationalism \u2013 it has grown as large as the United States,\u201d a fact the \u201cexceptional state\u201d can\u2019t accept.\u00a0 By subordinating itself, Australia is forfeiting its sovereignty to rely on Britain, which abandoned its former colony years ago, to build nuclear submarines that serve U.S. \u2014 and not Australian \u2014 interests.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina does not present and cannot present as an orthodox threat to the United States. By orthodox, I mean an invasive threat,\u201d Keating said in a speech<\/a> to the Australian National Press Club on Wednesday. He said:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States is protected by two vast oceans, with friendly neighbours north and south, in Canada and Mexico. And the United States possesses the greatest arsenal in all human history. There is no way the Chinese have ever intended to attack the United States and it is not capable of doing so even had it contemplated it. So, why does the United States and its Congress insist that China is a \u2018threat\u2019?<\/p>\n

The US Defence department\u2019s own annual report to Congress in late 2022 said \u2018the PRC aims to restrict the United States from having a presence on China\u2019s periphery\u2019.\u00a0In other words, China aims to keep US navy ships off its coast. Shocking.<\/p>\n

Imagine how the US would react if China\u2019s blue water navy did its sightseeing off the coast of California. The US would be in a state of apoplexy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keating said China is integrated into the international system as a member of the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the World Bank, the G20 and other organizations and has a \u201cvested interest in globalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is a world trading state \u2013 it is not about upending the international system,\u201d said Keating. \u201cIt is not the old Soviet Union. It is not seeking to propagate some competing international ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former prime minister said \u201ca sensible American\u201d like Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski would celebrate the fact \u201cyou had turned up a co-stabilising power in Asia. \u2026 But no. China is to be circumscribed. It has committed the mortal sin, the high sin in internationalism \u2013 it has grown as large as the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNowhere in the American playbook,\u201d Keating said, \u201cis there provision for this affront to be explained or condoned for the exceptional State to be co-partnered, let alone challenged.\u201d\u00a0 Keating is merely quoting the Pentagon itself, whose strategy is to not countenance any power that challenges U.S. \u201cprimacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus the U.S. didn\u2019t \u201csee itself as the \u2019balancing power\u2019\u201d in East Asia, he said, but the \u201c\u2018primary strategic power\u2019. Its geostrategic priority is to contain China militarily and economically.\u201d<\/p>\n

This means that if 1.4 billion Chinese do not keep their place, the U.S., \u201cwill shut them in \u2013 contain them \u2026 with the complicity of a reliable bunch of deputy sheriffs, Japan, Korea, Australia and India,\u201d said Keating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are now part of a containment policy against China,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Chinese government doesn\u2019t want to attack anybody. They don\u2019t want to attack us \u2026 We supply their iron ore which keeps their industrial base going, and there\u2019s nowhere else but us to get it. Why would they attack? They don\u2019t want to attack the Americans \u2026 It\u2019s about one matter only:\u00a0 the maintenance of U.S. strategic hegemony in East Asia. This is what this is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

China\u2019s new foreign minister, Qin Gang, warned this week the U.S. is heading for \u201cconflict and confrontation\u201d with Beijing because of America\u2019s \u201csuppression and containment.\u201d China has \u201cworked out what the U.S. game plan is,\u201d Keating said. \u201cSo, the ball game has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just like in Afghanistan and Iraq, if it all goes wrong, he said, the U.S. \u201cwill just pull out and leave the mess behind. They will go back to San Diego, 10,000 km, and leave us with the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch Keating\u2019s full remarks from Wednesday: <\/em><\/p>\n