The Kentucky colonel who drives Australian foreign policy |
Australia’s foreign policy is being distorted by AUKUS, militarised thinking and a misplaced faith in US power, when the country should be rebuilding its diplomatic strength as an independent middle power.
By all accounts Defence Minister Richard Marles is a personable fellow. One of his passions is his vast collection of snow globes. The fascination with snow globes has been described as a yearning for nostalgia, childhood innocence and the desire to preserve a moment in time. They represent a magical escape from reality.
Marles is also known for this love of all things American. Years ago he was delighted to be ‘commissioned’ as a Kentucky Colonel by that US state’s Governor. His office is littered with assorted American memorabilia and he is well known for his hard-line views on China. Like his mate, US Secretary for War Pete Hegseth, he believes in the slogan ‘peace through strength’.
Speaking at the Singapore Shangri-La Dialogue last month, Marles told his audience that our region faces the most complex and threatening strategic landscape since World War Two. After condemning the alleged sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, he switched to the Asia-Pacific with a vague tale of undersea cables severed recently in the Taiwan Strait. Dog-whistling our favourite ‘peek-a-boo’ enemy, China, Marles told his audience that “this matters in Australia because we are threatened by this threat…the cutting of cables with an anchor in the middle of the night”. These cables, he says, “are the arteries of modern civilisation, they are strategic targets”.
Marles went on to string together a list of fuzzy assertions, namely the ‘plunder’ of illegal fish catches and water-canon skirmishes at sea presented as evidence of emerging ‘new vectors of coercion’. Linking all these new threats with his favourite theme, maintenance of the Rules Based Order, Marles then outlined Australia’s ‘hard power transformation’ with a substantial naval buildup of submarines, frigates and air-warfare........