Antinuclear

Caps Off: How Mark Hammond’s Appointment Completes Labor’s Capture by Uncle Sam and the AUKUS Boondoggle

18 April 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/caps-off-how-mark-hammonds-appointment-completes-labors-capture-by-uncle-sam-and-the-aukus-boondoggle/

Look at the photo[on original] Anthony Albanese, grinning in his USS Vermont baseball cap like a kid who just won a free submarine from the Pentagon’s lucky dip. Beside him, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, now our incoming Chief of the Defence Force, in his crisp “Chief of Navy” lid, the two of them bonded like old mates who’ve just kayaked Sydney Harbour together over Christmas and strolled San Diego in matching Souths Rabbitohs caps. It’s not subtle. It’s not strategic. It’s surrender cosplaying as mateship.

This week Albanese confirmed what insiders have long known: Hammond, the submariner true-believer who once tried and failed to charm Paul Keating out of his withering contempt for AUKUS, will run the entire ADF from July. Another submariner, Rear Admiral Matthew Buckley, takes Navy. The navy now owns the top two defence jobs while the $425 billion defence spend over the next decade funnels the lion’s share into undersea warfare “anchored by the AUKUS submarine program.”

Translation: the US military-industrial complex just got the keys to the Australian treasury, delivered by a Labor government that once pretended to care about sovereignty.

Keating, to his eternal credit, wasn’t buying the sales pitch back in early 2023. Picture the scene: Hammond, briefcase locked to his wrist, submarine photos ready for the reveal, deploying the full arsenal of Pentagon charm on a man who had already watched one generation of Americans promise the world and deliver the bill. Keating told Marles and Hammond straight that AUKUS is “failed by design.” You can only keep about one-third of a submarine force at sea against a peer enemy. The rest is just expensive metal rusting in dry dock

Hammond’s real mission was never to convert Keating. It was to lock in the man who matters: Albanese. Kayak dates, Rabbitohs solidarity, San Diego photo-ops. The power couple of Australian defence was born. Keating went back to his piano.

And even if the submarines arrive, a proposition on which the actuaries are not taking bets, who exactly is going to crew them? Australia has been scrambling to find qualified submariners for years. The training pipeline is thin, the retention rates are worse, and nuclear submarines demand a level of crew specialisation that takes a decade to build and about eighteen months of a better offer to lose. We are proposing to operate one of the most technically demanding weapons platforms in human history with a workforce we currently cannot fill for the vessels we already have. The recruiters are working weekends. The submarines, theoretically, arrive in the 2030s. The crews, theoretically, materialise sometime after that. In the Pentagon’s spreadsheet this is presumably listed under “Australia’s problem.”

It’s an absurdity that needs the comic genius of Clarke and Dawe to illuminate. My goodness, here they are…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Then there is the small embarrassment that nobody in the AUKUS salesroom wants to dwell on: submarines are yesterday’s technology. The oceans that once hid them are filling up with sensors, autonomous underwater vehicles, satellite-linked surveillance arrays, and drone systems that can stalk a nuclear submarine across an ocean with the patient indifference of a search algorithm. The acoustic and thermal signatures that once dissolved into the depths are now readable. Add the tyranny of distance that always makes Australia’s strategic situation unique, and we are a long, slow bicycle ride from any plausible theatre of war. By the time a Virginia-class boat lumbers north from Perth or Garden Island, the conflict it was sent to influence has already been decided by hypersonic missiles, drone swarms, and electronic warfare conducted at the speed of light. The submarine arrives, metaphorically speaking, to find the furniture already rearranged and the Americans writing the after-action report.

Meanwhile, every serious military analyst watching Ukraine, watching the Persian Gulf, watching the drone campaigns rewriting the rules of engagement in real time, is drawing the same conclusion: cheap, expendable, autonomous systems are eating the lunch of expensive, crewed, prestige platforms. A drone costs thousands. A Virginia-class submarine costs $3.4 billion American, arrives late, requires a crew we don’t have, takes weeks to reach a fight, and can be tracked by technology already proliferating across the Indo-Pacific. We are buying a Rolls-Royce, with a target painted on its roof, for a road that no longer exists.

Michael Shoebridge of Strategic Analysis Australia put the broader problem bluntly: “Hammond’s elevation signals the Albanese government doubling down on its single bet on AUKUS and deepening Australia’s military reliance on the US as the key source of resupply for everything our military would need to fight an actual war. While Europe, Canada, and every other US ally are frantically rethinking assumptions in the age of Trump’s “America First,” cheap drones, and missile shortages, Australia stands lonely in its refusal to admit the world has changed.” Albert Palazzo, former director of war studies for the Australian Army, asks the obvious question nobody in Russell Hill wants answered: “when the person running the entire defence apparatus comes from the service consuming most of the budget, is there any critical oversight at all?”

Binoy Kampmark puts the whole farce with magnificent precision: Australian negotiators resemble “a facsimile of Bertie Wooster in desperate need of the good advice of his manservant Jeeves.”

There is Bertie, enthusiastic, well-connected at the club, constitutionally incapable of recognising a con, signing documents in San Diego while the manservant, who is Washington, quietly pockets the cheque. We have already funnelled $1.6 billion into US naval yards for what amounts to stealthy proliferation that benefits the American military-industrial complex far more than any sovereign Australian capability.

The Virginia-class boats? The US will keep them when it suits, rotate them through our bases under effective American operational control, and leave us holding the nuclear waste, the recruitment crisis, and the bill. Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs calls it a “wasteful folly” headed for a “train smash.” Even Malcolm Turnbull, not a man prone to anti-American sentiment on weekdays, labelled Australia the “rich dummy” subsidising Britain’s creaky program.

This is the dark comedy of it all. Labor, the party that once marched against Vietnam and sneered at Yankee imperialism, has become the most compliant vassal in the Anglosphere. Albanese’s “independent” foreign policy is now measured in how enthusiastically we open our chequebook and our bases. Hammond, the perfect courtier with deep Washington contacts and fearless advice that somehow always aligns with the Pentagon, will ensure there is no awkward questioning of the $368 billion black hole.

While the rest of the world pivots to drones, autonomous systems, and missile defence that actually works in actual wars, we are betting the farm on nuclear-powered prestige projects that may never arrive, or may arrive under effective US operational control, crewed by personnel we are still advertising for, travelling very slowly toward a war that ended while we were in transit.

The men who marched against Vietnam are now the men writing the cheques for the Pentagon. The party that was born in the shearing sheds is now the party that holidays in San Diego. The submariners have taken the wheel of a vessel that costs more than any previous generation of Australians could have imagined, moves slower than the conflicts it was designed to fight, and flies, when you look carefully at the fine print, someone else’s flag.

The caps told us everything. We just didn’t want to read them.

This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES

April 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Amid the Iran chaos, war over Taiwan just became less likely

by Marcus Reubenstein | Apr 15, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/amid-the-iran-chaos-war-over-taiwan-just-became-less-likely/

Last week’s meeting between Beijing and Taiwan’s main opposition leader is a bad sign for the China hawks and a sign of rapprochement. Marcus Reubenstein reports.

The combination of the US-Israel war on Iran and the anti-China media narrative in Australia has meant the visit of the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, Cheng Li-wun, to China has largely been ignored. Cheng chairs the Kuomintang (KMT) party, and she spent five days in mainland China from the 7th until the 12th of April.

Her public pronouncements indicate a belief that it is not in Taiwan’s interest to pin all of its hopes on an economic and military alliance with the US, and its future is better served with a pivot towards Beijing.

A significant proportion of Taiwan’s population does not want armed conflict with China. More importantly, Taiwan’s political leaders are acknowledging the fact that the US is becoming an increasingly unhinged and unreliable ally.

As reported by NBC News, Cheng points to Ukraine, saying,

“People do not want to see Taiwan become the next Ukraine.”

Add to that mix that Taiwan gets 70% of its oil from the Middle East, there is sentiment in Taiwan that the US bombing of Iran has been disastrously thought out and delivers Taiwan massive economic pain. Will Taiwan risk becoming the centrepiece of a future US military disaster?

In December, Cheng told the New York Times, “Could it be the United States is treating Taiwan as a chess piece, a pawn strategically opposing the Chinese Communist Party at opportune times?”

Taiwan’s ruling DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) had attempted to push a $US40B arms deal with the US through parliament in March, but that was sunk by Cheng’s KMT. The ruling DPP was eventually able to get a deal worth just $US11B through – around one third of an AUKUS submarine.

Cheng’s China visit

The visit to China by Taiwan’s opposition leader took in three very significant cities, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai and Beijing, as financial and political capitals, were logical, but Nanjing is of great historical significance.

She visited the Sun Yat‑sen Mausoleum in Nanjing with a large Taiwanese delegation, a site honouring the founding father of the Republic of China, revered in both Taiwan and mainland China. Nanjing is also the site of one of Japan’s greatest wartime atrocities, the so-called Rape of Nanjing.

A small number of hardline figures in Japan’s ruling LDP continue to deny Japanese participated in any wartime atrocities. The LDP’s newly elected prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, stating that Japan would send in its military to aid Taiwan in any conflict with China, has dramatically escalated tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.

Takaichi is one of Japan’s most pro-US leaders, and Cheng’s visit to Nanjing would not be lost on the US. By extension, Cheng’s point of visiting Nanjing could be seen as a backhanded message to Japan, which hosts 55,000 US troops, to stay out of Taiwan’s affairs.

Implications for Australia

Cheng’s trip to China has implications for Australia and our foreign policies towards both our biggest trading partner and most important strategic partner.

The Albanese government has gone all in on the US’s East Asia military push, and now the US is showing clear signs of stress. The US has redeployed Thaad missile systems from South Korea to fight its war with Iran, while supercarrier naval vessels based in Japan, and operating in the South China Sea, have also been sent to the Gulf. Despite being the greatest military power in global history, it’s obvious it doesn’t take much to wear US forces thin.

Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, nor Defence Minister Richard Marles has deviated from Australia’s blind support for the US war on Iran.

The question is, will they follow the US into an inevitably disastrous war against China or, worse still, act as a proxy in a future war?

Australia’s tilt towards offensive military capability, also enthusiastically supported by the LNP opposition, and the billions committed to submarines which may never arrive, do not augur well.

If the US cannot defeat Iran, there is no path to victory against an equally determined China, far better equipped, with the world’s second largest economy, and that is not a pariah state.

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Last week’s meeting between Beijing and Taiwan’s main opposition leader is a bad sign for the China hawks and a sign of rapprochement. Marcus Reubenstein reports.

The combination of the US-Israel war on Iran and the anti-China media narrative in Australia has meant the visit of the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, Cheng Li-wun, to China has largely been ignored. Cheng chairs the Kuomintang (KMT) party, and she spent five days in mainland China from the 7th until the 12th of April.

Her public pronouncements indicate a belief that it is not in Taiwan’s interest to pin all of its hopes on an economic and military alliance with the US, and its future is better served with a pivot towards Beijing.

A significant proportion of Taiwan’s population does not want armed conflict with China. More importantly, Taiwan’s political leaders are acknowledging the fact that the US is becoming an increasingly unhinged and unreliable ally.

As reported by NBC News, Cheng points to Ukraine, saying,

People do not want to see Taiwan become the next Ukraine.

Add to that mix that Taiwan gets 70% of its oil from the Middle East, there is sentiment in Taiwan that the US bombing of Iran has been disastrously thought out and delivers Taiwan massive economic pain. Will Taiwan risk becoming the centrepiece of a future US military disaster?

In December, Cheng told the New York Times, “Could it be the United States is treating Taiwan as a chess piece, a pawn strategically opposing the Chinese Communist Party at opportune times?”

Taiwan’s ruling DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) had attempted to push a $US40B arms deal with the US through parliament in March, but that was sunk by Cheng’s KMT. The ruling DPP was eventually able to get a deal worth just $US11B through – around one third of an AUKUS submarine.

Cheng’s China visit

The visit to China by Taiwan’s opposition leader took in three very significant cities, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai and Beijing, as financial and political capitals, were logical, but Nanjing is of great historical significance.

She visited the Sun Yat‑sen Mausoleum in Nanjing with a large Taiwanese delegation, a site honouring the founding father of the Republic of China, revered in both Taiwan and mainland China. Nanjing is also the site of one of Japan’s greatest wartime atrocities, the so-called Rape of Nanjing.

A small number of hardline figures in Japan’s ruling LDP continue to deny Japanese participated in any wartime atrocities. The LDP’s newly elected prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, stating that Japan would send in its military to aid Taiwan in any conflict with China, has dramatically escalated tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.

Takaichi is one of Japan’s most pro-US leaders, and Cheng’s visit to Nanjing would not be lost on the US. By extension, Cheng’s point of visiting Nanjing could be seen as a backhanded message to Japan, which hosts 55,000 US troops, to stay out of Taiwan’s affairs.

Implications for Australia

Cheng’s trip to China has implications for Australia and our foreign policies towards both our biggest trading partner and most important strategic partner.

The Albanese government has gone all in on the US’s East Asia military push, and now the US is showing clear signs of stress. The US has redeployed Thaad missile systems from South Korea to fight its war with Iran, while supercarrier naval vessels based in Japan, and operating in the South China Sea, have also been sent to the Gulf. Despite being the greatest military power in global history, it’s obvious it doesn’t take much to wear US forces thin.

Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, nor Defence Minister Richard Marles has deviated from Australia’s blind support for the US war on Iran.

The question is, will they follow the US into an inevitably disastrous war against China or, worse still, act as a proxy in a future war?

Australia’s tilt towards offensive military capability, also enthusiastically supported by the LNP opposition, and the billions committed to submarines which may never arrive, do not augur well.

If the US cannot defeat Iran, there is no path to victory against an equally determined China, far better equipped, with the world’s second largest economy, and that is not a pariah state.

Respected US political scientist Professor John Mearsheimer says, US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is “manna from heaven” for China. He argues the war on Iran has made the US an irresponsible stakeholder in the international system and that China looks like the “adults in the room.”

China’s carrot and stick

China’s approach to Taiwan, and more broadly to much of its global diplomacy, has been a mix of carrot and stick. Beijing is still dangling carrots in front of Taiwan. Reunification with Taiwan remains the endgame,

“but the overwhelming desire is that it should be achieved peacefully.”

Cheng was warmly received by Chinese President Xi Jinping, and following Cheng’s visit, the Chinese government announced a list of ten new policies to promote economic and travel initiatives to strengthen ties between Beijing and Taiwan.

In the background, a looming stick could be an easily achievable Chinese blockade of commercial shipping around Taiwan. As Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates, it doesn’t take a great deal of military firepower to cripple an economy. 

What would, or could, Australia do to intervene? Hypothetically, that is a question which may face Australia, but a reconciliation, indeed possible unification between Taiwan and China, would render moot Australia’s current strategic policy. 

Taiwan’s future?

While opinions in Taiwan about Cheng are divided, she has a realistic chance of becoming Taiwan’s next president at the 2028 election. To win, she doesn’t only have to run on China policy; there are plenty of domestic issues facing voters. Also, there is no suggestion that a reunified Taiwan would be considered as a province of China. Instead, it would become a special administrative region, citizens would keep their Taiwanese passports, and the New Taiwan Dollar would remain the official currency.

The line in the sand for Beijing would be separatist movements and their sympathisers speaking out publicly. Taiwan would also be prohibited from entering into any military alliances or agreements with other nations. 

While this is the same set of conditions imposed on Hong Kong, Taiwan hardly has a tradition of democracy. For its first four decades as a territory, it was governed under martial law, and it wasn’t until 1996 that democratic presidential elections were held. 

Current president, Lai Ching-te, is unpopular with his approval rating sinking to 33% in late 2025, having recovered to the low 40% mark in the most recent polls. Cheng’s approval rating is lower, reflecting the distrust Taiwanese people have for their political leaders.

In terms of specific issues, concerns over the economy rank first for Taiwanese voters. 

The Chinese, that is to say those of Chinese ethnicity, are by and large very pragmatic. Cheng is betting on a belief that close ties with China represent the future and that the

“Taiwanese people will come to distrust Washington more than they distrust Beijing.” 

April 18, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment