Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Friday, 30 October 2015

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

Why is Australia supporting Obama’s mad provocation of war with China?

Barack Obama’s order for US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen to sail within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef in the Spratly archipelago, now claimed by China, is a provocation for thermonuclear war and must be condemned in the strongest terms. In response to the transgression of USS Lassen on 27 October, China deployed its missile destroyer Lanzhou and patrol boat Taizhou to counter further “incursions”.

Despite the fact that China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Defence Minister Marise Payne have slavishly backed the US in this confrontation, and drawn our nation closer to war. The Australian reported on 29 October that “the Royal Australian Navy has for months been preparing a contingency plan to send a warship or a military aircraft close to China’s artificial islands”, as part of a “range of options to support the US”.

Senior Colonel Li Jie, of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), said Australia’s involvement would “only bring trouble”, and “it is not in Australia’s interest to become involved”.

American expert on East Asia Mike Billington from Executive Intelligence Review magazine (EIR) in an interview with Press TV made clear that Obama is on a mad drive for war: “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy by Obama who in fact has no intention other than to militarily confront both Russia and China. This is a very very dangerous situation.”

Billington noted the hypocrisy of US Defence Secretary Ash Carter’s accusation that China is militarising the South China Sea: “this is happening at the same time that the US is attempting to override the Philippine Constitution and deploy massive military forces into eight different bases in the Philippines.”

Using the refugee “boat people” crisis as an excuse, the Obama regime has coerced both Malaysia and Thailand to allow US military aircraft to use their bases for surveillance of their territorial waters—as if the US military were needed to spot refugee boats.

The US and Australian governments’ excuse, that we are defending “unimpeded trade and freedom of navigation”, is farcical. China has no intention to cut off trade or enact a blockade on shipping through the South China Sea; to do so would be economic suicide. The majority of trade through that route is with China itself. China’s posture in the South China Sea is defensive, not offensive, and is prompted by Obama’s Asia Pivot to “contain” China as the CEC documented in our media release of 3 June 2015. China’s overriding concerns are the newly militarised Japan; the basing of 2500 US Marines in Darwin; and the possibility of a pre-emptive US move to choke off the Straits of Malacca, as outlined in America’s prevailing Air-Sea Battle doctrine, which would cut China off from its all-important energy imports.

China’s recent military strategy paper of 26 May 2015 indicates they are fully prepared for conflict with the United States: “The PLASAF [PLA Second Artillery Force] will strengthen its capabilities for strategic deterrence and nuclear counterattack, and medium- and long-range precision strikes. … The nuclear force is a strategic cornerstone for safeguarding national sovereignty and security. … China will optimise its nuclear force structure, improve strategic early warning, command and control, missile penetration, rapid reaction, and survivability and protection, and deter other countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against China.”

The military strategy paper also makes clear China’s policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, a policy that the US regime has refused to accept.

This is the danger the late former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser warned of in his book Dangerous Allies. Like the CEC, Fraser (who was also Defence Minister) long warned that the US targeting of China (and Russia) with its ballistic missile defence (BMD) system, and the policy of “containing” China, including through Barack Obama’s Asia Pivot, which involves Australia, is leading towards nuclear war, in which Australia will be a target.

The former PM starkly warned that Australia’s hosting of the US Marine Air-Ground Task Force in Darwin targeted at China; the 2013 deployment of guided missile frigate HMAS Sydney with the 7th US Fleet as part of the USS George Washington’s Carrier Strike Group; and our hosting of Pine Gap as a targeting installation for America’s nuclear missile systems and murderous drones program, automatically involves us in US wars, in the same way historically that Australia was automatically involved in British wars.

The territorial conflicts in Asia are largely a product of Western geopolitics. At the end of World War I, the German-held Chinese territory of Shandong peninsula was transferred to Japan in Article 156 of the British-run 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Transferring territory of the Shandong Province—the home town of the great Chinese philosopher Confucius—to Japan, is typical of the British Empire’s strategy of divide and conquer. The Anglo-American-orchestrated 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, co-authored by John Foster Dulles, created the causes for almost every subsequent territorial dispute in Asia, including that in the South China Sea. It excluded China despite it suffering the most casualties of all nations in the Pacific War against Japan in World War II.

There is a genuine alternative to war: cooperative economic development. Contrast Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, which conspicuously excludes China, to China’s One Belt-One Road program of economic development and win-win solutions centred on the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road. China is inviting all nations, including the US, to participate in this vision, including through its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Australia must end its historical practice of automatically supporting imperial power-plays, first of Great Britain, and now those of a United States acting in that British tradition. It is in our independent national interest to assert our own sovereignty and collaborate with China on economic development to secure peace.

Click here for a free copy of the proceedings of the CEC’s March 2015 international conference on the New Silk Road as the pathway for peace through economic development, entitled, “The World Land-Bridge: Peace on Earth, Good Will towards All Men”.

Click here to join the CEC as a member.

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