Asia posturing. At least the Americans discern no contradiction in Australian strategic policy, but the government continues to contort its messaging.
At least the Americans call it as it is.
Over the past few weeks, Washington’s language has again revealed the raw power equation in US-Australia relations. And it has overwritten the government’s consistently careful script about wanting to deal with Southeast Asia free of the prism of great power rivalry.
Remember this the next time you hear the resident American stooge in Australia say that Canberra is more important to the US than ever. They’re right; but only because successive recent Australian Governments have readily and steadily agreed to a greater US military presence in the country with neither public nor parliamentary debate.
It began with US congressman Michael McCaul’s visit to Australia in mid-August. McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, put the capstone on just what the rotations of marines and the network of American airfields and facilities across northern and Western Australia really mean.
He said Australia had become the ‘‘central base of operations’’ in the region for the US military’s plan to ‘‘counter the [China] threat’’. Just don’t expect to hear an Australian prime minister or minister say it.
Then, at a Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke as if he were an imperial proconsul to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Albanese, lacking........