VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
The 2024 AUSMIN (Australia-US Ministerial) Talks have just concluded. Attended by each countries’ Ministers for Defence and Foreign Affairs, what has not concluded is the steady occupation of Australia by US forces readying for war with China.
The two sides announced today a series of joint initiatives including new “operating locations,” more frequent troop rotations, more frequent B-52 nuclear armed bomber rotations, and the formalisation of plans to coproduce two key, long-range missile systems.
Canberra has agreed to “new and longer-term operating locations” for “force posture cooperation,” a senior US Defense official said.
“We’re also expanding our logistics cooperation by assessing places where we could locate an enduring logistics support area in Queensland, Australia,” the official said.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said there would be an increase in rotational forces, to include more maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft and more frequent rotational bomber deployments.
Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said that put together, those kinds of moves are “greatly going to enhance the United States’s ability to operate in Australia.”
Not one of these increases of US military activity in Australia have been discussed with the Australian people.
This betrayal of sovereignty runs through the decision by Menzies to sell pig iron to Japan before WW 2, to his approval for the British to test atomic weapons in Australia, to the CIA setting up its spy base at Pine Gap, to our lap dog obedience to every call by our US masters to follow them into unjust and unwinnable wars, to Gillard’s approval of a “rotational” US marines base outside Darwin.
This betrayal of our sovereignty has only hastened under the AUKUS arrangements.
What sort of thinking is behind the betrayal?
US marine, B-52 bombers and nuclear submarine bases in Australia are the realisation of a proposal by US armaments industry-funded think-tank ASPI. It is an organisation of Australians Serving Predatory Imperialism.
In its analysis of the 2014 “defence” budget, ASPI raised the unlikely prospect of US “disengagement” from the Asia-Pacific and put forward a treacherous and bizarre proposal for turning the whole of our continent into a US base against the peoples of the region.
“Leaders need followers,” argued the paper.
“But there’s also something that Australia can offer the United States which goes to the heart of its economic and security interests - access to 7.7 million square kilometres of terrain stretching from the Pacific to Indian Ocean and from the Great Southern Ocean to the base of the Asian archipelago.
“As the Western pacific becomes more contested, the value of access to Australian ports, airfields and training grounds will surely grow. It’s arguably the most valuable thing we can offer our ally…a solid strategic base straddling the sea lanes passing from the Indian to Pacific Oceans.”
ASPI, which has an incredibly powerful voice in the media and in government circles, was advocating allowing US imperialism to use Australia as a giant aircraft carrier, all the better with which to project force into Asia, and at China in particular.
That treacherous thinking has been totally embraced by the US loyalist Marles who boasted today that “American force posture now in Australia involves every domain: land, sea, air, cyber and space.”
These are all areas in which Australia has surrendered any capacity for independent judgement and action.
We need an armed people to defend this country, to defend it from the forces of US occupation.
For anti-imperialist independence and socialism!