Australia: a hub for “US interests”

Written by: (Contributed) on 6 December 2024

(Source: www.asd.gov.au )

Residents of Perth may have noticed the opening of some offices for the Australian Signals Directorate in September. Some limited publicity was forthcoming. What was not so well publicised, however, were the finer points of the Cold War nature of the everyday business of that department: sensitive telecommunications linking the Australian government with their US counterparts, elevating Australia ever further as a regional hub for 'US interests' across the Indo-Pacific and enhancing US-led intelligence-gathering and surveillance facilities.

In September a brief announcement on an official Australian Government website included information concerning the opening of a new Perth State Office under the Redspice program, focussed primarily upon cyber security and signals intelligence. (1) The exact location of the office was not so forthcoming.

The government department, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), however, has a noted presence in West Australia with their Kojarena Geraldtown military facilities which are directly linked into the sensitive Five Eyes, US intelligence and the Echelon system and form part of a global US system of satellite communications. (2) Kojarena is a ground station for satellites stationed above the equator and used for interception. (3)

Like nearly all Australian-based military facilities, upgrades in recent times have followed US-led Cold War directives in wave after wave of militarisation.

A brief announcement in late November, therefore, was perhaps to be expected; Google were following planning to expand its $1 billion undersea cable to 'connect Darwin and Singapore with Christmas Island, a move it says will boost the reliability and resilience of Australia's internet connectivity and provide a new link between the US and Asia … via a … link to the Homomoana cable system which connects with the US' (4)

It noted, furthermore, that, 'new digital pathways for Australia, enhancing the reliability and resilience of the internet within the country and throughout the Indo-Pacific region … via a … new interconnection point between the US and Asia'. (5)

The media releases were carefully edited to avoid unnecessary publicity; information already in the public domain, however, would tend to indicate high-level military and diplomatic planning inside the Pentagon for upgrading Australian-based facilities.

The diplomatic role of the US toward Australia has a long history, dating from the earliest days of the previous Cold War. In mid-1947, for example, Australia was directed to accept its regional responsibilities toward Madagascar, a then French colony on the far side of the Indian Ocean. It was diplomatically noted that 'the direct bearing of events in Madagascar on Australians is in its strategic position … any power that controls the entrances – the Cape of Good Hope; the mouth of the Red Sea; the seaways south of the Malayan Peninsula and of Australia, controls the Indian Ocean'. (6)

And foreign policy responsibilities thrust upon Australia by the US also included wholesale domestic interference inside sovereign affairs: a diplomatic report prepared by US Naval Attache Commander Stephen Jurika Jnr., dated 6 August 1948, noted, 'Australia, its life and history, are dominated by the Communist-controlled unions … until the parliamentary Labor Party is removed from office there is not one chance in ten million that any effective action against Communism can, or will, be taken … Communism was rife in the highest governing circles in Australia'. (7)

Later the same month the new US Ambassador, Myron Cowen, arrived in Australia with the specific instruction from the president and under-secretary of State to do 'everything possible in connection with the Communist problem in Australia'. (8)

With the onset of the present Cold War the US diplomatic mentality has changed little in eight decades. The recent developments with Australian signals are merely the systematic strengthening of a strategic regional hub for 'US interests', with all which that position entails. It is interesting, therefore, to note the threads connecting the previous with the present Cold War.

A reference to Christmas Island has revealed the strategic nature of outlying islands; the island in question has also been closely linked to the nearby Cocos Islands which have been noted as highly strategic territories which possess 'a valued capability which Australia could offer the use of in a major contingency, as those sites would be a genuine gap filler between major bases in Guam and Diego Garcia'. (9)

The fact Guam and Diego Garcia are hubs for 'US interests' on an arc from Pine Gap in Central Australia is not coincidental. They have been upgraded many times.

The strategic location of the Cocos Islands and Christmas Island both resting on an arc from Australian military facilities at Geraldton, likewise, is not coincidental. The islands are located at the entrance of the Sunda Strait and South Java Sea. Even in the previous Cold War the capacity of the military facilities covered a wide area, including West Africa, the Middle East, former Soviet Union and China together with the Indo-Pacific. (see diagram)

Studies of the period concluded with the observation that 'the US has a world-wide network of electronic listening posts engaged in eavesdropping on other nations’ radio traffic and pinpointing the location of transmissions'. (10) Modern mobile telephones also have specialised radar and motion detectors built into their programs, ensuring they are easily traceable using specialist monitoring equipment. (11) The role of the US using the elite intelligence-gathering facilities within the Five Eyes should also not be overlooked; the US regularly out-source intelligence-gathering to their partners. (12)

The intelligence-gathering is now set to be expanded still further through higher levels of US control of the internet; with the onset of the present Cold War it was already noted that the US National Security Agency had 'shifted to finding ways to exploit the global reach of Google, Microsoft, Venizon and other US technical powers'. (13) The military planning would now appear well under-way, with Australia a strategic regional hub for operations.

The US is also planning to expand their three-stage Island Chain Theory based in the Asia-Pacific region to the larger Indo-Pacific arena with fourth and fifth chains; it is not particularly difficult, therefore, to establish the timing of the present implementation of higher level signals intelligence facilities for future and more comprehensive uses across a wider arena of all those countries bordering on the Indian ocean. (14)

Studies of the strategic significance of Christmas Island have already established the ADF have submarine monitoring facilities for access and egress into the Indian Ocean. (15) They, too, would now appear set for an upgrade.

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. See: Australian Government – Australian Signals Directorate, 10 September 2024, Australian Defence Force expands footprint with new Perth State Office.
2. See Wikipedia: ASD.; and, Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station, Kojarena, The Nautilus Institute, 23 October 2024.
3. Nautilus Institute, ibid.
4. Google expands US-Asia sea cable, Australian, 27 November 2024.
5. Ibid.
6. Madagascar's Future Concerns Australia Security, Talk, Monthly Digest of A.B.C. Broadcasts, June 1947, page 64.
7. The Spycatchers – The Official History of ASIO, 1949-63, David Horner, (NSW, 2014), quoted: pp. 78-80.
8. Ibid.
9. Strategic potential of the Cocos Islands and Christmas Island, Airpower / Defence Today, Dr. Carlo Kopp, March 2012.
10. Indian Ocean Zone of Peace, Australian Left Review, Owen Wilkes, (1976), Edition 55/56, page 32.
11. See: US Navy in race to reload on high seas, Australian, 3 December 2024.
12. See: Spyworld, How the C.S.E. spies on Canadians and the world, Mike Frost as told to Michel Gratton, (Toronto, June 1995).
13. The intelligence coup of the century, The Washington Post, 11 February 2020.
14. Wikipedia: Island Chain Theory.
15. Christmas Island, Military Significance, GlobalSecurity, 9 July 2018.