The countdown is on. In confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate between Jan. 12th and 18th, key cabinet nominees of newly elected U.S. President George W. Bush repeatedly raised the specter of a U.S. war with China. Both Secretary of State nominee Gen. Sir Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense nominee Donald Rumsfeld, hit out at China as a "strategic competitor"; their stance was so alarming, that outgoing Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth warned, "There is growing suspicion in China about the intentions of the U.S." In the context of their anti-China posturing, both Powell and Rumsfeld ominously foreshadowed a special role for their closest regional ally—Australia.

In reply to a question from Senator John Warner from Virginia about "our valued ally Australia", Rumsfeld linked Australia to Bush's China strategy: "As you look at what's happening in that part of the globe and periodic difficulties the People's Republic of China has had with its neighbours—whether it's the Spratley Islands, or difficulties with India, or Russia, difficulties with Vietnam, there's no question but that Australia is a truly important nation," he said. On January 18, Sir Colin Powell echoed Rumsfeld, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Australia's role in helping to contain "a new and dynamic China." Powell saw Australia's role as a continuation of its leading involvement in smashing Indonesia. "In the Pacific, we are very pleased that Australia, our firm ally, has played a keen interest in what's been happening in Indonesia," he said. "And so we will coordinate our policies, but let our ally, Australia, take the lead as they have done so well in that troubled country."

On January 8, American economist Lyndon LaRouche exposed the true agenda of the new Bush White House, and their Australian allies, in a paper entitled "Why Kissinger's Cronies Have Pulled Their China Ploy Now!". LaRouche wrote, "During a period in which the U.S.A.'s friends in Europe and Asia are tending to seek an alternative to a U.S.-led financial and economic collapse in Eurasian cooperation, how shall the Anglo-American Five keep themselves together, and their former allies and satrapies in line? Crisis-management."

The "Anglo-American Five" LaRouche referenced, include the U.S.A., Britain, and Britain's leading colonies, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, who would "use covert methods to create the 'who me?' crises, to which they will then respond vengefully, to keep the world off balance...these were the methods followed by Hitler..." LaRouche said.

Australia is no stranger to the use of covert methods to provoke a crisis. An example is Australian Prime Minister John Howard's triggering the 1999 East Timor crisis by pressuring a vulnerable Indonesian President Habibie to hold "elections", which resulted in the predictable bloodshed and Australian intervention—an intervention which Australia had prepared for, for months, including by clandestinely sending crack SAS into Indonesia months before the ballot. Howard applied a similar method to help provoke last year's crises in Fiji and the Solomon Islands, which it then used to impose the Biketawa Declaration on the Pacific nations, self-appointing itself and New Zealand to enforce regional "democracy".

Such manufactured crises were used to push through a dramatic expansion of Australia's military budget. Then, in August, Howard rammed through a bill to allow the newly-expanded Australian Defence Force to be called out to put down domestic unrest, which authorises soldiers to use lethal force—i.e. "shoot-to-kill"—Australian citizens. The ostensible excuse for this measure, was the rise of a classic provocateur movement, the "anti-globalist" S-11, which conducted bloody riots in Melbourne in September against a meeting of the World Economic Forum. S-11 was spawned by the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), a well-known front for British Intelligence. Under the new bill, the official empowered to call out the troops is the Queen's representative in Australia, the Governor-General.

The Howard Government is enthusiastic about the new Bush White House, much more so, than it was about Clinton. Anti-China fanatics in both countries kept their cause alive during the Clinton years, through the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, founded by the Australian CEO of Bonlac Foods, Phil Scanlan. Raving anti-China agitator Richard Armitage, a former defense official in the last Bush White House, is a Dialogue member, as are two of Bush's current appointments, trade representative Robert Zoellick and economic adviser Larry Lindsay. "This will be the best informed administration on Australian thinking and national interests (sic)," Scanlan gushed to the Jan. 19 Australian Financial Review.