AUKUS nuclear submarines: Keating rebuts Cold War doctrine

This is the end of running on the waves;
We are poured out like water. Who will dance
The mast-lashed master of leviathans
Up from this field of Quakers in their unstoned graves?
– Robert Lowell

The corporate media were lining up to have a piece of Paul Keating over his rejection of the government policy to throw their lot in with the Americans and the British and buying nuclear submarines to withstand threats from China. Firstly Olivia Caisley from Sky News: “You’ve described Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles are seriously unwise in this nine page document. Unlike present players, you haven’t received a military briefing on this issue since the mid 90s. Could you be out of touch on this issue? And given you didn’t foresee the military buildup from China as well as intimidation of neighboring countries when you were in office? What makes you so sure China isn’t a military threat to Australia?”

Keating: “Because I’ve got a brain. Principally, I can think, and I can read. You know, and I read every day, you know, I mean, why would China want to threat? What would be the point? They get the iron ore, the coal, the wheat. What would be the point of the China wanting to occupy Sydney and Melbourne, militarily? And could they ever do it? I mean, could they ever bring the numbers here? It would be an armada of troops ships to do it. You know, so you don’t need a briefing from from from the dopey security agencies we have in Canberra to tell you that. You know, I mean? I know, you’re trying to ask a question, but the question is so dumb, it is not worth an answer.”

Nuclear Subs- Keating rejects cold war doctrine by 4PR – Voice of the People

Keating grew up in politics during the American war in Vietnam, with all its nonsense about the yellow peril and the Domino Theory. This was a Cold War fantasy that suggested a communist government like China would quickly lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states, each falling like a row of dominos. But the journo from The Australian persisted:

Olivia Casley: “What, so do you just let them carry on with their business? Whether that be in the Spratly Islands or wherever, you just say that they don’t plan to attack Australia?”

Keating would have no part of it: “How big you know, how big the, what’s the other islands (in the Spratly Group of three islands) we’re already talking about ? Just look, just pick it up. Just go onto Google Maps and have a look at it. It’s about as big as Centennial Park, about as large as Centennial Park, in Sydney. That’s what we’re talking about. Here. You know, I mean, you know, Sky News, you got to you know, you got to dust up your reputation to be on Sky News, you know, and you’re probably doing your best to do that.“

Ben Westcott, the journo from Bloomberg, took up the gauntlet in favour of aggressive US policy toward China: “… Australia, we’re a trading nation, all of our wealth comes in large part from overseas trade. And that’s, you know, similarly to the US interest in Asia. A lot of their trade comes from Asia as well. Shouldn’t Australia, you know, work with a partner like the US to protect trade, which is its main economic interest in the region.”

Keating responded: “… this is the United States that would never ever agree, at congressional level, to ratify the international program on the Law of the Sea, you realize that, don’t you? The US refused to ratify the Law of the Sea program. So that puts a pretty big hole to that question, doesn’t it?”

Keating is right to be angry with the Americans.

The journos at the National Press Club just kept lining up for a beating, defending the government’s decision. Jess Malcolm for the Murdoch Press (The Australian) asked: “China’s submarine fleet is forecast to grow by six nuclear powered submarines by 2030. And they’re building 20 service warships a year which is even more than the entire Australian fleet, in your opinion, who is being more provocative Australia or China?”

Keating: “What they’re trying to do in building a fleet is not provocation. Why do you use the word ‘provocation’? That’s the wrong word to be using. You know, that they are a major state, they have an economy bigger than the United States, they spend about 40% of their national budget on defence, the Americans spend more than next nine states in the world on defence. So why is it a provocation? Why would you think it’s a provocation for a great state like China to build a navy? Why would you think that? I’ll just don’t accept the question is invalid. Just the truth of it.”

Andrew Probyn from the ABC was little better than his colleagues from Sky News. His question beat the drums of war: “Mr. Keating, you said before that the China has not threatened Australia, but how do you reconcile that with the fact that they have issued sanctions on coal, timber wine, lobster, barley, Australian products, that there has been a debt diplomacy employed among our Pacific neighbors, an encroachment of the South China Sea and effective annexation of some islands. The huge military ramp up that that Laura (Tingle)‘s asked you about how is this not, as one … Biden official said this week: ‘undeclared, economic and commercial boycott of Australia’.”

Keating: “You know, I mean, look, look at we’re doing to them and the WTO (World Trade Organisation), and all the steel dumping and all the rest of our stuff, you know, I mean, you know … in the friction of international politics, these things turn up, but they’re not threats, you can’t impute threat … meaning, meaning invasion with putting a tariff on wine? Or maybe you’re silly enough to think that …”

Note: I think when Keating talks about steel dumping he is referring to duty measures imposed by the Australian government on imports of wind towers, deep drawn stainless steel sinks and railway wheels from China.

Grasping at straws, the ABC’s Andrew Probyn didn’t know when to call it quits. His follow-up was even worse than the first:

Probyn: “Mr. Keating, (what about Chinese) cyber attack ?”

Keating torpedoed the question: “The best friend we had in Asia was a was a former president of Indonesia, Yudhoyono. You know, he was the best guy we had barrack for us, you know, those dopes in ASIS (Australia’s overseas security agency) tapped his telephone, and that of his wife …. tapped his phone. I mean, this is what states get up to, if you let the security agency ning-nongs take control, you know, but you can’t impute as your as your question imputes that a tax or a tariff on wine or barley is equivalent to, to an invasion of the country. China does not threaten Australia has not threatened … the great non-Minister of our time, went on the Insider’s program and said, ‘We’re gonna have weapon inspection, weapons type inspections of Wuhan to find out what was the cause of the (covid) virus? It was out of that came all of this, you know, so you can’t put a question without (the) context of it. You know, I mean, contextualization may not be your long suit, but that’s what you should be doing.”

Context

So what is the context of Paul Keating’s attack on the Australian government’s decision to buy eight (8) nuclear submarine for $A380 billion? The nuclear reactors on the Virginia class attack submarines under the AUKUS agreement are powered by high-enriched uranium. Australia’s uranium may end up being made into nuclear fuel to drive the AUKUS submarines. It was a Labor Party government that voted to continue to mine and export uranium stolen from aboriginal lands like Jabiluka in the Northern Territory. Mining at Jabiluka was ordered by the Liberal Fraser government in 1977. Labor continued to mine and export uranium from 1983 till 1996 under the leadership of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. At no stage has Paul Keating or any of the people he has condemned ever come out against Australia’s involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle that produces hazardous waste.

It is a shame that Keating was not so critical of the United States when he was prime minister counting Henry Kissinger as one of his mates. Kissinger who (with Gerald Ford) gave the OK for Indonesia to invade East Timor in 1975. Keating refused to criticise the Indonesian government despite the genocide committed by them on Australia’s doorstep over the next 25 years. This was his justification when asked about a possible attack from China: “Well, I’ve said before many times, Australia’s strategic bid bread is buttered in the Indonesian archipelago, a major attack on them. And the only people who could attack them majorly would be the Chinese would affect us. Whether we like it or not, and a major attack on us would affect them. So this is why I put the agreement together with Soeharto, the attack on any one of us was an attack on all of us.” It seems Keating’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. The Indonesian invasion that Keating turned a blind eye to ended with the murder of a third of the population of East Timor.

I don’t agree with Paul Keating’s characterisation (caricature) of Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese as being from the Left. The Labor Party that they grew up in (and that Keating led) introduced neo-liberalism into Australia copying the Chicago boys policies in Latin America. This was disastrous for the Australian economy as we lost our manufacturing base and became dependent upon countries like China and India to buy our natural resources. Australian coal mining has been a blight on both this country and the world because of climate change. The sale of iron ore has made rich people like Lang Hancock, Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest richer but has made ordinary workers scarred and poorer. The Labor Party attacked the real wages of Australian workers during the Accord causing the demise of the trade union movement. It comes as ironic that the generation most affected by this decision has such little desire to join a union. I wonder how many of the journos so willing to challenge Keating’s scathing critique of the government decision, I wonder how many are members of trade union.

On foreign policy, the Labor Party has been both pro-Israel and pro-US. Keating make some big claims about Labor Party foreign policy in the 20th century. He states:

“Look, Labor has got all the big ones basically right. In the 20th century. It got a got right knocking Hughes off over conscription. Curtain got it right in knocking Churchill off over the troops from Burma back to Papua New Guinea, you know, back to Kokoda, Arthur Caldwell got it right when he opposed the Vietnam War.”

It was not the Labor Party in government that defeated the referendum on conscription in 1916. Labour Party policy was opposed to conscription however, in government Labor passed the conscription bill on the floor of the House of Representatives. When Labor senators attempted to uphold party policy, Billy Hughes, as Labor Prime Minister, called for a referendum to support conscription. It is ironic that John Curtin, Paul Keating’s hero, and who led Australia during the Second World War was jailed in the First World War for opposing conscription.

The opportunism of the Labor Party that Paul Keating led knows no bounds. The Labor leadership supported the US Gulf war against Iraq in 1991. The Australian government led by Hawke and Keating sent naval ships to support the US military campaign against Iraq during so called ‘Operation Desert Shield’. Previously the US had armed Iraq with chemical weapons to attack Iran. When Saddam Hussein overstepped the mark and invaded Kuwait (made a British protectorate during WWI) the US government slaughtered Iraqi troops and civilians fleeing Kuwait on the HIGHWAY OF DEATH in 1991.

The Australian Labor Party did not support the the 2003 Iraq war because millions of people mobilised onto the streets and over 64% of Australians were vigourously opposed to the war. Prior to the Iraq war Keating’s defence minister ‘Bomber’ Beazley criticised the Howard Government for spending “vastly less on defence” than he did as defence minister.

I think we should leave it leave it there.

This is Ian Curr from 4PR voice of the people.
17 March 2023