British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond declared this week that Britain could benefit from Australia's "footprint" in the Asia-Pacific and its deepening defense relationship with Washington, and welcomed the U.S. military "pivot" to the region, targeted against the rise of China.
Hammond was travelling in Australia for the Australia-UK ministerial talks on defense and foreign affairs. Quoted in The Australian Jan. 16, he enthused, "We should celebrate the fact that the U.S., the only power on Earth that is capable of rising to the challenge of growing Chinese ambition, has been prepared to take on that challenge and that it has been prepared to make a strategic pivot in order to respond to China's growing economic and political and military power."
To enhance the British-Obama Asia pivot, Hammond also called for Australia to continue deepening its co-operation with the NATO military alliance. Hammond emphasized, "We could see threats to international security from non-state actors arising within the Asia-Pacific region." He forecast that such "tensions in the Pacific" would "directly engage the interests of NATO countries," creating conditions in which not only the United States and Australia, but also other NATO members, "may wish to contribute, show support in the way that Australia has done in Afghanistan."
Hammond then gushed that the defense relationship with Australia was critically important to Britain. "As the Asia-Pacific region becomes more important, Australia's footprint on the ground in that region and your understanding of that region through the prism of a shared value set with us and the U.S. is crucially important," he said. "It allows us an understanding of a region in which we have a relatively limited presence and involvement."
The background to this warmongering proclamation by Hammond on Australian soil is the shift in British policy since 1995, when Australian economist Katherine West issued her infamous (British) Royal Institute of International Affairs report calling for Australia to become the British Empire's base and launching pad for the entire Asia-Pacific region, i.e., for the looting of Asia and the break-up of China. From this has followed Australia's increasing integration into NATO, which was upgraded in June 2012, when Prime Minister Julia Gillard and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen signed a "joint declaration" to strengthen ties and cooperation.
Even more indicative was the appointment of an Australian, Gen. Richard M. Burr, as the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army Pacific, at the end of 2012.
In the past six months, the Citizens Electoral Council, the organization of Lyndon LaRouche's co-thinkers in Australia, has distributed 700,000 copies of two editions of the New Citizen newspaper exposing this agenda. That's one paper for every 30 Australians, with activists blanketing all military bases, think tanks, universities, and military/industrial firms with the expose.
