Last year, the submission of Universities Australia to the Defence Strategic Review was almost begging to link universities with the defence needs of the country. All the Defence Department and Australian Defence Forces needed to do was ask.
How fortunate, then, that AUKUS came bumbling along.
Here they go. Vice-chancellors, university managers, and creatures with titles unmentionable and meaningless (deputies, semi-deputies, sub-deputies), a whole cavalcade of parasitic creatures in need of neutering, keen to pursue another daft idea. Australian universities do not want to miss out on the military-industrial-education complex, whatever its imperilling dangers. With the war inspired AUKUS security pact, which promises the stripping of the Australian budget to the tune of $AUD 368 billion over the course of three decades, a corrupt establishment promises to get worse.
The AUKUS distraction could not have come at a better time. The tertiary sector in Australia is becoming increasingly cadaverous, marked by cost-cutting, rampant casualisation and heavy teaching and workloads for those battling away in the pedagogical trenches.
In a recent piece by Guardian Australia’s higher education reporter, an academic, who preferred to remain anonymous fearing institutional retribution, likened the modern Australian university to a supermarket. Students were the customers filing through the self-checkout counters; the staff, increasingly rendered irrelevant, were readily disposable.
The stories have been familiar for years, even as the offending by university management continues unabated: tutors being paid insufficiently to read and grade work adequately; virtually non-existent job security; the suppression of academic freedom and criticism of ghastly management practices. Given the pathological secrecy under which universities work under, essential data shedding light on class sizes, staff-student ratios, and contracts with private business interests, is virtually impossible to attain.
But despite the Australian university sector proving unsustainable, unprincipled, and ungainly, individuals such as Catriona Jackson, the CEO of Universities Australia, are on the hunt for new frontiers.
Last year, the submission of Universities Australia to the Defence Strategic Review was almost begging to link universities with the defence needs of the country. All the Defence Department and Australian Defence Forces needed to do was ask.
As the Australian Financial Reviewreported at the time, “The universities need to be prepared to respond in an adaptable and efficient manner to a clear demand signal from defence in terms of workforce needs – both skills and numbers – as well as technology and hardware needs.”
How fortunate, then, that AUKUS came bumbling along. For Jackson, principles in education are less important than inflated commercial opportunities or, to use her lingo, commercialisation. Distant from the process of learning itself, unaware of the delivery of courses and the classroom, she sees this war making security pact as packed with promise. “It’s workforce, workforce, workforce,” she sloganeered to her Sky News host Kieran Gilbert. “It’s not just nuclear physicists we need, although we do need some of those and it’s a very specialist profession. Almost every area of human endeavour we need a capacity uplift, so engineers, doctors, nurses, psychologists, pretty much everyone.”
Evidently hearing the war jingles around the corner, Jackson is journeying to Washington for meetings with national security officials from the US State Department and National Science Foundation. It is her hope that the number of Australian university partnerships will be expanded, “with more than 10,000 formal partnerships already in place with fellow institutions around the world.” The message she takes to the US capital will, however, be focused on “developing the capability [of Australian universities] to deliver the project, including through the provision of skilled workers and world-class research and development.”
Certain publications have also exuded jingoistic cheer on the new role of Australia’s tertiary sector. The Australian, one of Rupert Murdoch’s premier rags of froth and bile, is ever reliable in this respect. The paper’s higher education editor, Tim Dodd, in a March contribution [paywalled], posed two questions to those in the university sector: Had Australian universities ever played such a vital role in national defence as they would be likely to do over the next two decades in building nuclear-powered submarines? Would they even want to be involved?
Throughout his piece, Dodd seems to think that a university system untethered to the defence establishment is a morally questionable thing. In doing so, he betrays his ignorance of those wise words from US Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright, who warned that “in lending itself too much to the purposes of government, a university fails its higher purposes.”
Dodd can merely observe that, “In the post-war period universities were still not critical to defence programs.” AUKUS and the nuclear submarine program had changed matters. “Australia is now embarking on an enormous program to build, operate and maintain nuclear-powered submarines and a clear goal is sovereign capability.” All in all, it was “a critical national priority that universities are right to give their full support to. Their backing is critical.”
Leaving aside such platitudinous nonsense as “sovereign capability” – the technology, expertise, control and guidance over this new promised machinery will always be directed from Washington – the sentiments are clear. The military-industrial-university complex is a matter to be celebrated. There are, for instance, “other parts of AUKUS” that will involve “our top universities” in such areas as “advanced research cyber security, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.”
Bizarrely, Dodd gets the question about academic freedom the wrong way around: that expressing a choice in favour of the blatant war drumming of AUKUS is something that should be one for academics. If he had any idea about despotic university environments, he would be aware that academics, whatever they agree with, will have little say in the matter. Distant, estranged managements, unaccountably enthroned in administrative towers, will be making such decisions for them; the only real free expression will be exercised by those opposing the measure.
Marshall Islands’ Hilda Heine, Palau’s Tommy Remengesau, Tuvalu’s Enele Sopoga Kiribati’s Anote Tong say the “staggering $368 billion” allocated for the deal flies in the face of Pacific island countries which are crying out for support for climate change.
They accuse Australia and its two allies of triggering an arms race and demonstrating a complete lack of recognition for the climate change security threat faced by the island nations.
Former Kiribati President Anote Tong said Australia and its allies need to do more consultations with the Pacific before the plan develops further.
Center for International Maritime Security, By LtCol Brent Stricker
This article is part of a series that will explore the use and legal issues surrounding military zones employed during peace and war to control the entry, exit, and activities of forces operating in these zones. These works build on the previous Maritime Operational Zones Manual published by the predecessor of the Stockton Center for International Law, the International Law Department, of the U.S. Naval War College. A new Maritime Operational Zones Manual is forthcoming.
Nuclear Weapons Free Zones (NWFZ) are an attempt to prohibit the use or deployment of nuclear weapons within a nation’s territory. None of the signatories to these treaties possess nuclear weapons, where NFWZs stand as a pledge not to develop these weapons. The established nuclear powers of the world have similarly pledged to respect some NFWZs.1 It remains to be seen whether such pledges will be observed or dismissed as a simple “scrap of paper.”2
Background
The legality of the use of nuclear weapons is an unsettled issue. The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating the threat or use of nuclear weapons must be examined under the United Nations Charter Article 2(4) prohibition on the use of force and Article 51’s right of self-defense.3 The Court could not “conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense in which the very survival of the state was at stake.”4
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was an early attempt to limit and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons. Article 1 of the NPT prohibits Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) from transferring nuclear weapons to a Non-Nuclear Weapon State (NNWS) or encouraging a NNWS to develop nuclear weapons. Article 6 of the NPT requires states to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
Since the signing of NPT, the number of NWS has expanded. Two of the newly acknowledged nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, never signed the treaty. North Korea signed and subsequently withdrew. Finally, Israel, a suspected and unacknowledged nuclear power, never signed the treaty.5……………………………………………………………………..
Current Nuclear Weapons Free Zones
There are currently nine NWFZs in existence. Five of these were created by regional agreements. Three of them were created by international treaty but only occur in unpopulated areas: Outer Space, the Moon, and the seabed. The last NWFZ was created unilaterally by Mongolia. NWFZs cover more than two billion people and 111 countries.13
African NWFZ (ANWFZ)
The Treaty of Pelindaba established the African NWFZ. It was opened for signature on April 11, 1996, and came into effect on July 15, 1990.[14]Article 3 of the treaty renounces nuclear weapons, and the signatories pledge “not to conduct research on, develop, manufacture, stockpile or otherwise acquire, possess or have control over any nuclear explosive device by any means anywhere” and “not to seek or receive any assistance in the research on, development, manufacture, stockpiling or acquisition, or possession of any nuclear explosive device.” Article 4 is a prohibition on stationing nuclear weapons on their territory, but it allows individual nations the ability to allow foreign aircraft and ships to visit or exercise innocent passage without reference to whether such aircraft and ships may be armed with nuclear weapons. This thereby creates a loophole allowing nuclear weapons within the NWFZ…………………………………………….
South Pacific NWFZ (SPNFZ)
The Treaty of Rarotonga established the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone. It was signed on August 6, 1985, and came into effect on December 11, 1985. All five acknowledged NWS have signed onto its Protocols. Annex 1 to the treaty describes the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, which includes both territorial land, waters, and the high seas. Article 3 of the treaty pledges signatories “not to manufacture or otherwise acquire, possess or have control over any nuclear explosive device by any means anywhere inside or outside the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone” and “not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture or acquisition of any nuclear explosive device.” Article 5 prohibits stationing nuclear weapons on the territory of signatory states.
Article 5 also includes a loophole allowing signatory states to allow visits and transit by foreign aircraft and ships that may be armed with nuclear weapons. Article 7 includes a prohibition on dumping radioactive matter within the SPNFZ.”16
A second loophole appears in Article 3(c) of the treaty. There is no prohibition on the research of nuclear weapons. This leaves signatories the option to research nuclear weapons. The most likely being Australia if it needs to rapidly develop such weapons for nuclear deterrence.17
Australia poses a unique challenge to the SPNFZ due to its defensive alliance with the United States. The Australia, New Zealand, and the United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) was signed in 1951, joining the three nations in a collective security arrangement.18 New Zealand banned nuclear-powered vessels in 1984 and later created its own nuclear-free zone with the passage of the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987. In response, the Reagan Administration suspended New Zealand’s obligations under the ANZUS Treaty.19 Australia remains a party.
Australia has publicly stated in its 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper it would rely on the deterrence power of the United States’ nuclear weapons.20 Australia also hosts US military installations that are vital to worldwide command and control.21 Undoubtedly, these facilities would be part of the Communication, Command, Control, and Intelligence (C3I) the United States would rely on during a nuclear crisis. Australia is in a dilemma then of being a party to the SPNFZ and an ally of an NWS poised to potentially assist in a nuclear attack. The treaty does not address this issue of C3I by a signatory state, with Article 3(c) only prohibiting the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons.22…………………
Southeast Asian NWFZ (SEANWFZ)
The Bangkok Treaty established the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone. The treaty was signed on December 15, 1995, and went into effect on March 28, 1997. The ten members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed not to “develop, manufacture or otherwise acquire, possess or have control over nuclear weapons; station or transport nuclear weapons by any means; test or use nuclear weapons.”23 The Treaty also prohibited control, stationing, or testing of nuclear weapons in the SEANWFZ.24 The Bangkok Treaty thus closed the visit, transit, research, and control loopholes for vessels and aircraft with nuclear weapons.
Finally, the Bangkok Treaty prohibited dumping or discharging into the atmosphere of radioactive material or waste.25
The SEANWFZ is striking due to the size of the zone defined in the treaty. The zone is expanded to include the continental shelf and exclusive economic zones of the signatory nations.26 The Zone embraces an area of strategic importance to maritime shipping. The treaty would prevent the 5 NWS from transporting nuclear weapons through this zone. This is likely why no NWS has signed onto the treaty’s protocols and provides a negative security assurance to the ASEAN signatories.27
Central Asian NWFZ (CANWFZ)
The Central Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone was created by the Treaty of Semipalatinsk. The treaty was signed on September 8, 2006, and went into effect on Mar 21, 2009. The CANWFZ is defined as the land, internal waters, and airspace of the signatories.28 Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, all former Soviet Republics, agreed to prohibit research, development, manufacture, stockpiling, acquisition, possession, or control over any nuclear weapon. The treaty also prohibited the location of such weapons in the zone. ………………………
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan have a similar problem to Australia noted above. They are members of the 1992 Tashkent Collective Security Treaty, which includes the Russian Federation, one of the five acknowledged NWS. Article 4 of the treaty requires the Member States to provide all assistance, including military assistance, if one member is attacked.29 It remains to be seen how this will affect the CANWFZ.
Mongolian NWFZ
The Mongolian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone is unique as a unilateral action by domestic law similar to the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone noted above. Mongolia made this declaration in 1992 and called for a regional NWFZ.30 This seemed improbable as Mongolia is surrounded by the Russian and Chinese NWS. The Mongolian NWFZ was recognized with UN General Assembly Resolution 53/77 D.31
Mongolia’s history makes its NWFZ unique, considering it was caught between the two struggling NWS for most of its existence…………………………………………
Latin American and the Caribbean NWFZ
The Treaty of Tlatelolco created the Latin American NWFZ. It was signed on February 1967 and went into effect on April 25, 1969. Article 1 of the treaty prohibits “the testing, use, manufacture, production or acquisition, by any means, of any nuclear weapon [signatory states] by order of third parties or in any other way,” and “the receipt, storage, installation, location or any form of possession of any nuclear weapon, directly or indirectly, by [signatory states], by mandate to third parties or in any other way.”
The Latin American and Caribbean NWFZ has a similar problem shared by Australia and the CANWFZ due to the mutual defense obligations imposed by the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance. This treaty was signed in 1947 by all of the states in North and South America, including the nuclear-armed United States. While it may be in decline with the withdrawal of member states and attempts to replace this treaty with sub-regional treaties, it remains valid international law.
Antarctica, the Moon, and Seabed NWFZ
It is interesting to note that the first NWFZs were created in places that humans normally do not inhabit: Antarctica, Outer Space, and the deep seabed. Article V of the Antarctic Treaty prohibits nuclear explosions or the dumping of radioactive material on the continent. Article IV of the Outer Space Treaty prohibits the stationing of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in space or on celestial bodies. This prohibition also prohibits the militarization of celestial bodies. The Outer Space Treaty does not address military activities in orbit, though. Article I of the Seabed Arms Control Treaty prohibits the emplacement of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction including structures to test, launch, or store such devices on the deep seabed.
It has been speculated that support for these NWFZs by the five acknowledged NWS was to limit the area to deploy nuclear weapons and the increased pressure on the arms race this would impose.36The strategic value of making Antarctica off-limits for nuclear weapons seems to belie this argument since all NWS, acknowledged or not, are located in the Northern Hemisphere. The future possibilities for weaponizing outer space may render the Space NWFZ irrelevant.
Under Article 1 of the treaty: “Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to:
(a) Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;
(b) Transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly or indirectly;
(c) Receive the transfer of or control over nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices directly or indirectly;
(d) Use or threaten to use nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;
(e) Assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Treaty;
(f) Seek or receive any assistance, in any way, from anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Treaty;
(g) Allow any stationing, installation, or deployment of any nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices in its territory or at any place under its jurisdiction or control.”
“So, what worries me most is China’s use of space to complete the kill chain necessary to generate long-range precision strikes against the maritime and air components scheme of maneuver. That’s what concerns me the most,” Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, commander of Space Forces Indo-Pacific, said.
SYDNEY — The vast landmass of Australia, possessed of clear skies free of city lights or pollution, is the perfect spot to place the most acute space situational awareness systems. Which is why Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, the head of Space Forces Indo-Pacific says it’s “absolutely critical” to get a new radar system there as quickly as can be.
“When you look at a place like Australia as a landmass, you have a lot of opportunity to contribute to that space picture,” Mastalir told Breaking Defense during an interview during the Sydney Dialogue, put on by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “The Australians, the defense Space Command folks and the acquisition arms, they absolutely understand that, so they’re moving aggressively to embrace some of these opportunities and bring systems like DARC — deep space radar capability — here on the continent.”
DARC, officially the Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability, was designed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to provide global monitoring of geosynchronous orbits in all kinds of weather and during daylight. According to the APL, it relies heavily on commercial technology. The Space Force received DARC technology from APL last year, with demonstrations taking place at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Ultimately, the operational DARC program calls for three transmit/receive sites, spaced at mid-latitudes around the world, to detect and track satellites. Northrop Grumman won a $341 million contract from US Space Force’s Space Systems Command last February to begin building the global system, with the first location in Australia targeted for calendar year 2025. That will be followed by one in Europe and a third in the US, with those locations yet to be announced.
FY24 budget justification documents show $174M requested for DARC in the next fiscal year. It further states that “The total cost of the DARC Rapid Prototype Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA) effort is 844.6M. DARC Site 1 is not fully funded across the Future Years Defense Program.” $40 million is set aside for early work on sites 2 and 3.
“The DARC program will field a resilient ground-based radar providing our nation with significantly enhanced space domain awareness for geostationary orbit,” Pablo Pezzimenti, vice president for integrated national systems at Northrop Grumman said in a statement announcing the first contract award. “While current ground-based systems operate at night and can be impacted by weather conditions, DARC will provide an all-weather, 24/7 capability to monitor the highly dynamic and rapidly evolving geosynchronous orbital environment critical to national and global security.”
Discussions are underway about where to locate the system in Australia once it’s ready. Before anything can be released officially, negotiations must conclude on a treaty level document known as the Technology Safeguards Agreement. Negotiations began in mid-2021. Mastalir declined to discuss the talks, noting they are led by the Department of Commerce.
Russia And China Remain Top Concerns
During the panel Mastalir appeared on at the Sydney Dialogue, the general said that Russia had clearly possessed space superiority at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine but had lost it. After the panel, Breaking Defense asked him to explain his remarks.
“Russia clearly is a dominant space power, relative to Ukraine. So they entered that conflict in that position,” he said. “Now you see no less than seven or eight different commercial entities, everything from GPS jammer detection, communications to tactical ISR that are bringing products to bear to support the Ukrainians. And has Russia been able to deny the adversary, in this case, Ukraine, from benefiting from space? And the answer, I think, is no — not really.”
His assessment is that the two countries have reached perhaps the most dangerous state for two militaries slugging it out on the battlefield: parity.
“Now parity, parity is dangerous, right? Because when you have parity — and I think this is what we’re kind of seeing play out — you have these prolonged conflicts, and a lot of destruction and death. And that’s not a situation that we ever want to be in as the United States.”
Asked if there are lessons for the United States military and intelligence community in light of what he called “a potential paradigm shift.” the general said it raises many difficult policy and operational questions.
“Number one, who’s going to defend those assets? Is there a responsibility for the United States to protect and defend commercial on-orbit capability that’s assisting the US military?” The related issue is, “to what extent should we integrate commercial across all of our space capabilities?”
Given these complexities, what keeps the general up at night in this region?
So, what worries me most is China’s use of space to complete the kill chain necessary to generate long-range precision strikes against the maritime and air components scheme of maneuver. That’s what concerns me the most,” Mastalir said. “I have to have the ability to deny China in this situation, as a potential adversary, the ability to do that. And so those are the kinds of things that that you know, worry me the most now.”
He stressed that the simple possession of such capabilities “doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But if you look at our efforts to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific, you quickly run into a situation where our ends, and what we see in terms of behavior coming from China, their ends don’t necessarily align.”
Theresa Hitchens in Washington contributed to this report.
After a certain point criticizing the hypocrisy and contradictions of the US-centralized empire starts to feel too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. But hell let’s do it anyway; the barrel’s right here, and I really hate these particular fish.
Russian security services have formally filed espionage charges against Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia since his arrest last month. Gershkovich reportedly denies the spying allegations and says he was engaged in journalistic activity in Russia.
This news came out at the same time as a joint statement was published by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell condemning Gershkovich’s detention as a violation of press freedoms.
“Let there be no mistake: journalism is not a crime,” the senators write. “We demand the baseless, fabricated charges against Mr. Gershkovich be dropped and he be immediately released and reiterate our condemnation of the Russian government’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish independent journalists and civil society voices.”
The use of the phrase “journalism is not a crime” is an interesting choice since the most common individual case you’ll hear it used in reference to is surely that of Julian Assange, who has been locked in a maximum security prison for four years while the US government works to extradite him for the crime of good journalism. Every pro-Assange demonstration I’ve ever been to has featured signs with some variation of the phrase “journalism is not a crime,” and any Assange supporter will be intimately familiar with that refrain.
So as an Assange supporter it sounds a bit odd to hear that slogan rolled out by two DC swamp monsters who have both enthusiastically supported the persecution of the world’s most famous journalist.
“He has done enormous damage to our country and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law,” McConnell said of Assange after WikiLeaks published thousands of diplomatic cables in 2010.
“Neither WikiLeaks, nor its original source for these materials, should be spared in any way from the fullest prosecution possible under the law,” Schumer said in 2010.
“Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government,” Schumer tweeted when Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London almost exactly four years ago. (Assange has not been charged with anything related to Russia or the 2016 election, and allegations of collusion with Russia remain completely unsubstantiated to this day.)
These are two of the most powerful elected officials in the world, puffing and posing as brave defenders of press freedoms after having actively facilitated their government’s attempts to destroy those very press freedoms. Their government is working to extradite and imprison Assange under the Espionage Act for engaging in what experts say is standard journalistic activity, which will allow them to set a legal precedent in which any journalist anywhere in the world can be extradited and prosecuted for exposing US war crimes like Assange did.
There is no greater threat posed to world press freedoms than the one the US is presenting with its persecution of Julian Assange, a persecution which has been fervently endorsed by Schumer and McConnell and all the other Washington swamp creatures who are melodramatically rending their garments about Evan Gershkovich today.
Which is of course ridiculous. You don’t get to say “journalism is not a crime” while literally working to criminalize journalism. Those positions are mutually exclusive. Pick one.
It’s worthwhile to point out the hypocrisy of US empire managers, not because hypocrisy in and of itself is some uniquely grave evil but because it shows that these people do not stand for what they pretend to stand for. The US empire does not care about press freedoms, it cares about power and domination, and the noises it makes in support of journalism are only ever made as a cynical ploy with which to bludgeon disobedient foreign governments on the world stage.
Assange exposed many inconvenient facts about the US empire in his work with WikiLeaks, but none have been so inconvenient as what he’s exposed by forcing them to come after him and reveal their true face in their brazen persecution of the world’s greatest journalist.
Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022 Submission No 126
AUSTRALIA DOES NOT NEED TO EXPOSE OURSELVES TO THE DANGERS OF NUCLEAR ENERGY
Interestingly, attitudes to nuclear energy align with attitudes to climate change. Climate change deniers tend to approve of nuclear energy, and oppose renewable energy.
Scientists who accept the reality of climate change and the risks associated with nuclear energy oppose it as a ‘solution’ to the climate.
These are the reasons for retaining our ban on nuclear energy and our focus on clean, cheaper renewable energy:
Nuclear is the most expensive energy option can take decades to build nuclear reactors and would require a decade or more to develop the legislative framework Nuclear is dangerous. Either through human error, disaster, or as a military target the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear disaster would create permanent pollution. Nuclear is unwanted. There is long standing popular opposition to nuclear power in Australia because of the issues above as well as the unsolved problem of nuclear waste and the link to nuclear weapons. Alternatives like renewables, storage and energy efficiency are faster, cheaper, more deployable and enjoy much more public support
The Prime Minister agrees: “Nuclear power has never overcome the dangers that we have seen played out around the world time after time. The arguments against nuclear energy are laid out cogently by Professor Ian Lowe, most recently in Long Half-Life which puns on both the interminable time nuclear remains dangerous in our environment and the steadfast opposition by ideologues to the facts about nuclear energy and its dangers. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submissio
LONDON, April 8 (Xinhua)http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/VOICES/16215442.html The United States, Britain and Australia have been pressing ahead with nuclear submarine cooperation despite being widely questioned, which creates nuclear proliferation risks and undermines the international non-proliferation system, the Chinese Embassy in Britain has said.
In response to a question concerning the trilateral Australia-UK-U.S. (AUKUS) cooperation on nuclear submarines, the embassy said on Friday that such cooperation will exacerbate the resurgence of the Cold War mentality, trigger a new round of arms race, and further provoke regional security and military confrontation, seriously jeopardizing regional peace, stability and prosperity.
The Asia-Pacific is now the most dynamic and fastest growing region in the world, which hasn’t come easily, the embassy said in a press release. “The AUKUS cooperation is designed to serve the U.S. geopolitical agenda to introduce group politics and Cold War confrontation into the Asia-Pacific with military deterrence. It is aimed at creating a NATO-replica in the Asia-Pacific, which runs counter to peace and stability in the region.”
The AUKUS nuclear submarine cooperation marks the first time for nuclear weapon states to transfer naval nuclear propulsion reactors and weapons-grade highly enriched uranium to a non-nuclear weapon state, it noted.
As the current International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system is incapable of ensuring effective safeguards, such cooperation poses serious nuclear proliferation risks, seriously compromises the authority of the IAEA, and deals a blow to the agency’s safeguards system, the embassy said.
“If the three countries are set on advancing the cooperation, other countries will likely follow suit, eventually leading to the collapse of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime,” it said.
China urges the three countries to heed the call of the international community and regional countries, discard the outdated zero-sum Cold War mentality and narrow geopolitical mindset, earnestly fulfil their international obligations and do more things that are conducive to regional peace, stability, unity and development, the embassy said.
“This serves the fundamental and long-term interests of regional countries as well as the three countries themselves,” it said. “The UK is not a country in the region and it is unwise to overstretch itself.”
https://www.rt.com/news/574018-cia-spies-assange-firm/2 Apr 23, A private contractor installed microphones inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where the WikiLeaks co-founder lived, an El Pais investigation has found.
The CIA used private Spanish security company UC Global to secretly install microphones inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to monitor WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, El Pais reported on Wednesday, citing the company’s internal communications.
UC Global was hired to provide security for the embassy. Assange, who was granted asylum by Ecuador at the time, resided in the diplomatic compound from 2012 to 2019, before he was forcibly removed by British police. The Spanish company’s alleged links to US intelligence agencies were first reported by El Pais in 2019.
According to the newspaper, UC Global founder and head David Morales first came into contact with the CIA in 2017. Around that time, Morales informed his employees that the company would have to provide a new American client named ‘X’ with remote access to the server that collected the data from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which was referred to as the ‘Hotel’.
“Regarding the Hotel work, I would like to offer our information collection and analysis capability to the American client,” Morales wrote in a September 2017 email. “We must… try to make it attractive and easy to interpret.”
The information shared reportedly included profiles of Assange’s visitors, including lawyers and diplomats, as well as cell phone data. Morales was quoted as saying in a chat message that “the people in control are our friends in the USA.”
One of microphones that Morales’ team secretly planted inside the embassy was hidden in the base of a fire extinguisher in order to listen in despite Assange’s habit of using a white noise machine to prevent surveillance, El Pais said. Stickers were attached to window corners to avoid vibrations and allow sound to be recorded through laser microphones. “I know it is of the utmost interest and that the USA wants to do it,” Morales reportedly wrote to his employees.
According to El Pais, UC Global’s work helped Washington foil a plan to sneak Assange out of the embassy in December 2017. Lenin Moreno, Ecuador’s president at the time, allegedly wanted to grant the WikiLeaks co-founder Ecuadorian citizenship and get him out of Britain in a diplomatic car.
Morales’ team reportedly recorded a conversation between Assange and Ecuadorian officials and then quickly sent it to the US. Washington responded by issuing an arrest warrant for Assange to Britain, which apparently prompted organizers to abort the plan.
In 2019, the Spanish authorities launched an investigation into Morales’ company and briefly detained him. He has since been released on bail.
ERA hopes to raise $369 million to continue rehabilitation of Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu The operator of a decommissioned uranium mine in Kakadu National Park is hoping to raise $369 million to continue paying for rehabilitation, with its current funds due to be exhausted by the end of September. Energy Resources Australia (ERA) has been trying to find enough money to return the Ranger uranium mine, 250 kilometres east of Darwin, to its pre-mining state, after operations shut in January 2020.
Senior Labor figures say a decision on where to put a future submarine base on Australia’s east coast is unlikely to be made until after the next federal election, insisting locking in a location is not an immediate government priority.
Key points:
Labor says a decision on where to put a future east-coast submarine base is unlikely to be made before next election
Port Kembla appears to be the preferred option, though residents are wary of becoming a military target
Officials claim they are in no rush and the new base is “not needed” until the 2040’s
Last year former prime minister Scott Morrison announced Port Kembla as one of three potential options for a new naval facility to house Australia’s future nuclear-powered submarines, along with Brisbane and the NSW city of Newcastle.
The AUKUS agreement attempts developments that will shift Australia into a zone that will threaten the existence of Australia itself.
I am not merely thinking of the militarisation of Australia, although that is definitely one likely outcome. I also have in mind our way of life that, while still set in settler-colonial assumptions that give First Nations people no substantial value in Australian society, is relatively relaxed when compared with the way of life of people in the United States. Australia has not experienced the focus upon security that high-powered militarisation associated with nuclear weapons brings. This is the world our leaders are leading us towards.
I want to take up two lines of inquiry into Aukus in this brief article. Firstly AUKUS brings together three Anglo-settled countries – two examples of settler-colonial domination that date back two centuries and more. plus of course the original Anglo-source nation, the United Kingdom. This may seem like an insignificant reference to an aspect of European colonialism that has shaped the whole world for centuries. However, Anglo colonialism has a particular complexion. Here I am drawing in part on the book by James Belich, Replenishing the Earth, about the history of Anglo colonialism. It is well-known these days in anti-colonialism circles that the Anglo slavery pursued in the Caribbean by England was the worst form of slavery, with cruelty on a scale that makes slavery in the United States seem enlightened. Anglo colonialism is typified by relations of difference that deal with colonised peoples with a vengeance. It is noteworthy that Anglo-settled countries like Australia have not at all come to terms with the cultures that pre-existed them. All invading cultures find this difficult, but Anglo-based cultures, as Belich shows, are a special case. It is no coincidence that Adolf Hitler looked with admiration to the United States for its ‘handling’ of its First Nations ‘problem’—a form of extermination of the Native American population—in how to think about the treatment of Jews and Slavs in Europe. Anglo cultures’ commitment to freedom and democracy has a repellent underbelly of racism and cultural suppression, not to mention genocidal elimination.
Significant cultural reform is always difficult but clearly the Anglo-powers have made the decision, at a time when in many respects their backs are up against the wall, to stand and fight—not for their own territory, but against the emergence of China, which was itself on the humiliating receiving end of Anglo colonialism in the nineteenth century. AUKUS in a strong sense is a thumbing of the West’s nose at all the emerging powers in Asia—on racial grounds. They must toe the line.
This is surely a crisis for an Australia seeking in the first half of the twenty-first century to survive in our region. To survive here Australia has to change its spots profoundly. It needs a form of cultural regeneration, in significant combination with Australian First Peoples, to justify its presence outside of the strategies of colonial power. While cultural change is always slow and complex, it is Australia’s only hope of both flourishing and being accepted in this region. It is also crucial because our allies are, in any case falling apart.
While I think the Voice could be the first step towards a significant and substantial change, only a weak version of the Voice, suitable for photo opportunities and feel-good policy, will survive the reassertions of this new Anglo alliance. Australia combines an especially empty form of recognition of First Nations with the arrogance of a superior colonial presence, coloured only a little by multiculturalism, and all this in a region where it has no basic right to exist.
The AUKUS alliance represents an incapacity to flexibly adjust to an emerging situation in which a new world power has emerged, one that will not go away. It is deeply ironic that the United States has fostered this emergence by its global development strategies, just as it fostered its opponents in Afghanistan at an earlier time.
That China is a new superpower is a reality—not that being a superpower is good for China or for us. Like large bureaucracies, superpowers develop self-oriented agendas related to their size, and are not to be trusted. But linking up with the remnants of the old powers to resist emergence means that Australia has resorted to a last gasp Anglo-cultural alliance rather than enter a serious process of rethinking its social composition and its place in the world.
The second line of comment is about nuclear submarines, drawing on a piece that appears in Arena Quarterly, just publishe
I want to take up two lines of inquiry into Aukus in this brief article. Firstly AUKUS brings together three Anglo-settled countries – two examples of settler-colonial domination that date back two centuries and more. plus of course the original Anglo-source nation, the United Kingdom. This may seem like an insignificant reference to an aspect of European colonialism that has shaped the whole world for centuries. However, Anglo colonialism has a particular complexion. Here I am drawing in part on the book by James Belich, Replenishing the Earth, about the history of Anglo colonialism. It is well-known these days in anti-colonialism circles that the Anglo slavery pursued in the Caribbean by England was the worst form of slavery, with cruelty on a scale that makes slavery in the United States seem enlightened. Anglo colonialism is typified by relations of difference that deal with colonised peoples with a vengeance. It is noteworthy that Anglo-settled countries like Australia have not at all come to terms with the cultures that pre-existed them. All invading cultures find this difficult, but Anglo-based cultures, as Belich shows, are a special case. It is no coincidence that Adolf Hitler looked with admiration to the United States for its ‘handling’ of its First Nations ‘problem’—a form of extermination of the Native American population—in how to think about the treatment of Jews and Slavs in Europe. Anglo cultures’ commitment to freedom and democracy has a repellent underbelly of racism and cultural suppression, not to mention genocidal elimination.
Significant cultural reform is always difficult but clearly the Anglo-powers have made the decision, at a time when in many respects their backs are up against the wall, to stand and fight—not for their own territory, but against the emergence of China, which was itself on the humiliating receiving end of Anglo colonialism in the nineteenth century. AUKUS in a strong sense is a thumbing of the West’s nose at all the emerging powers in Asia—on racial grounds. They must toe the line.
This is surely a crisis for an Australia seeking in the first half of the twenty-first century to survive in our region. To survive here Australia has to change its spots profoundly. It needs a form of cultural regeneration, in significant combination with Australian First Peoples, to justify its presence outside of the strategies of colonial power. While cultural change is always slow and complex, it is Australia’s only hope of both flourishing and being accepted in this region. It is also crucial because our allies are, in any case falling apart.
While I think the Voice could be the first step towards a significant and substantial change, only a weak version of the Voice, suitable for photo opportunities and feel-good policy, will survive the reassertions of this new Anglo alliance. Australia combines an especially empty form of recognition of First Nations with the arrogance of a superior colonial presence, coloured only a little by multiculturalism, and all this in a region where it has no basic right to exist.
The AUKUS alliance represents an incapacity to flexibly adjust to an emerging situation in which a new world power has emerged, one that will not go away. It is deeply ironic that the United States has fostered this emergence by its global development strategies, just as it fostered its opponents in Afghanistan at an earlier time.
That China is a new superpower is a reality—not that being a superpower is good for China or for us. Like large bureaucracies, superpowers develop self-oriented agendas related to their size, and are not to be trusted. But linking up with the remnants of the old powers to resist emergence means that Australia has resorted to a last gasp Anglo-cultural alliance rather than enter a serious process of rethinking its social composition and its place in the world.
The second line of comment is about nuclear submarines, drawing on a piece that appears in Arena Quarterly, just published.
The AUKUS strategy seeks to assert massive power, especially surveillance in the Pacific, surrounding China. Nuclear submarines combined with surveillance are the main focus of this attempt to cripple what actually, as I see it, cannot be stopped, in a way similar to Paul Keating’s argument. AUKUS shifts the whole emphasis away from how we protect our independence to what is needed to contain China. For Australia this seems to mean we have to achieve interoperability with US weaponary and systems, with nuclear submarines a key aspect of this. It means Australia must take a first step into adopting nuclear technology, and its consequences. We should not be assured by those who claim that it will be the last step.
Much has been written about the dangers of nuclear power and weapons over the years, to the point where it seems many in the community are now blasé about it—unless radiation waste is to be placed next door to you. Part of what the nuclear industry and its supporters have done is to launch smaller scale tactical nuclear weapons and also small-scale nuclear power plants because both large-scale nuclear weapons and large-scale power plants have unmanageable consequences and poor public acceptance, either because of non-human-scale destruction or ridiculous costs, which only keep escalating.
No one, with the exception of some military strategists, favours nuclear war. The reasons are obvious. The level of destruction of atomic bombs steps beyond our capacity to comprehend: it steps into another realm, a post-human one. Even the seemingly more mundane questions associated with nuclear waste are on another scale because they cannot be effectively disposed. All around the world nuclear waste is piling up around nuclear power stations as well as ‘storage’ of used nuclear submarines components because the waste is not of this world. There is no solution to the waste question. Nuclear waste is killing us on an increasing scale, as exposed by Kate Brown in her book A Manual for Survival. Contrary to the findings of mainstream Western science, she argues that low-level radiation is a mass killer and a general source of ill health As one Russian scientist she quotes puts it: ‘Chronic radiation is a crime’, and chronic radiation is a process that Australia has just signed up for with its nuclear submarines, adding its contribution to the systemic decline of the Earth’s environment, at least one that is suitable for human habitation.
We need to give some focus to this because it is an embarrassment to the nuclear lobby, which they handle and largely get away with by resorting to silence. But nuclear waste is a contradiction that will not go away. All attempts at solutions have failed in every part of the world. This cannot be emphasised enough.
What sort of contradiction is this?
Like nuclear technology, nuclear waste is usually simply regarded as a special category of danger. But its special effects arise out of a social process that is usually ignored. And this is a disaster because that social process is transforming our world in unprecedented ways.
This new world first burst upon us in 1945, with the practical scientific triumph of the atomic bomb. It was not merely novel. It was a consequence of the practical/conceptual reconstructions in the early twentieth century we associate with Albert Einstein and his associates. It was not merely a new theory. It was a combination of abstract academic theory with practical technology in the real world that gave birth to technoscientific society and culture, most importantly through its systematic approach to the transformation of nature. As such, academic theory entered the world of production, as an alternative or supplement to the transformations performed by the working classes, in a way that has expanded exponentially ever since. For better or worse, our world has become increasingly composed socially of the intellectually-trained.
The novelty of nuclear technology is contained within this social approach. Scientific intellectuals now uncover deep levels of the natural world, levels never before encountered by human societies that turn out to be mysterious and unmanageable. Nuclear is not the only example but it is a key one that destroys whatever it touches.
This is the world we are now entering, and doing so with great enthusiasm. It is not only a question of nuclear war. It is just as much one of the levels of security needed when dealing with what we do not know how to control. Nuclear weapons have been ‘controlled’ by such monstrosities as the Cold War and MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) strategies that give reason a bad name. And low-level radiation has been controlled by denial of any major effects, while the environment of Planet Earth deteriorates. As Brown remarks, ‘Western researchers are discovering, like Soviet scientists before them, that radioactive decay at low doses changes the way cells behave in subtle and life-changing ways’, laying the basis for ‘chronic radiation syndrome’.
AUKUS is a strategy that pursues these outcomes systematically, our leaders planning to leave submarine waste in the desert, once again to be dealt with by First Nations people, now to be permitted by the WA Labor government. Among other things, the crime of chronic radiation poisoning needs to be sheeted home to the powers that be, and in particular now, the Albanese government.
A group of leading defence figures is urging the Albanese government to release a secret report on the national security risks of climate change even though its contents may alarm Australians.
Former Defence Force chief Admiral Chris Barrie said climate change posed a bigger risk to Australia than China’s rapid military build-up, and it was crucial to inform the public about the security implications of warmer temperatures, rising sea levels and increased natural disasters.
Potential impacts included famines caused by global warming, conflicts over access to scarce resources and the mass migration of people to Australia from vulnerable Asia-Pacific nations in the coming decades.
“We are worried about the possible collapse of societies because of starvation, a lack of fresh water and shortages of food supplies,” said Barrie, a member of the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group.
Barrie said he understood the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) had delivered a landmark report on external climate risks to the government in December but a declassified version had not been released to the public.
“I expect it might contain things that are a bit scary, but we’re adults and we are up for it,” he said. “This is about transparency and keeping people informed.”
As the government prepares to spend up to $368 billion on nuclear-powered submarines over the next three decades under the AUKUS pact, Barrie said: “I see climate change as an existential threat.
“It’s a much bigger threat to our national security than a potential fight with China or some other conflagration. Only a nuclear war could be more catastrophic.”
Labor went to last year’s federal election promising to deliver a strategic climate security threat assessment and put ONI director-general Andrew Shearer in charge of the project soon after taking government.
Barrie said famine helped trigger the 1917 Russian Revolution and the phenomenon could recur in other countries in coming decades as a result of global warming.
Australia’s large land mass and relatively small population would make it an attractive destination for people displaced by climate change, he said.
The retired navy officer, who led the Defence Force from 1998 to 2002, said Australians living on flood plains and in bushfire zones should also be informed about the domestic threats posed by climate change, which are believed to be examined in a separate report by the Office of National Intelligence.
Spokespeople for the Office of National Intelligence and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet declined to comment on whether a public version of the report, which is based on classified information, would be released.
The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, which includes retired air vice-marshal John Blackburn and the Department of Defence’s former head of preparedness and mobilisation, Cheryl Durrant, said nations such as the United States and United Kingdom had released public versions of similar reports on the national security risks of climate change.
The federal government had also released declassified reports on threats such as cyberattacks and COVID-19 to help inform the public, they said.
US President Joe Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, has described climate change as an urgent national security threat, saying it was likely to increase global political instability in future decades.
Despite insisting that Julian Assange has been held captive for too long, the Albanese Government still won’t intervene while the AUKUS pact keeps us in lockstep with the U.S., writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
THE SHAM that is the Julian Assange affair, a scandal of monumental proportions connived in by the AUKUS powers, shows no signs of abating. Prior to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese assuming office in Australia, he insisted that the matter dealing with the WikiLeaks publisher would be finally resolved. It had, he asserted, been going on for too long.
Since then, it is very clear, as with all matters regarding U.S. policy, that Australia will, if not agree outright with Washington, adopt a constipated, non-committal position. “Quiet diplomacy” is the official line taken by Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, a mealy-mouthed formulation deserving of contempt.
‘“Quiet diplomacy” to bring Julian Assange home by the Albanese Government is a policy of nothing. Not one meeting, phone call or letter sent.’
Kellie Tranter, a tireless advocate for Assange, has done sterling work uncovering the nature of that position through Freedom of Information requests over the years:
‘They tell a story – not the whole story – of institutionalised prejudgment, “perceived” rather than “actual” risks and complicity through silence.’
The story is a resoundingly ugly one. It features, for instance, stubbornness on the part of U.S. authorities to even disclose the existence of a process seeking Assange’s extradition from the UK, to the lack of interest on the part of the Australian Government to pursue direct diplomatic and political interventions.
Former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop exemplified that position in signing off on a Ministerial Submission in February 2016 recommending that the Assange case not be resolved; those in Canberra were ‘unable to intervene in the due process of another’s country’s court proceedings or legal matters, and we have full confidence in UK and Swedish judicial systems’. Given the nakedly political nature of the blatant persecution of the WikiLeaks founder, this was a confidence both misplaced and disingenuous.
The same position was adopted by the Australian Government to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), which found that same month that Assange had been subject to ‘different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth Prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorean embassy’.
The Working Group further argued that Assange’s ‘safety and physical integrity’ be guaranteed, that ‘his right to freedom of movement’ be respected and that he enjoy the full slew of ‘rights guaranteed by the international norms on detention’.
At the time, such press outlets as The Guardian covered themselves in gangrenous glory in insisting that Assange was not being detained arbitrarily and was merely ducking the authorities in favour of a “publicity stunt”.
The conduct from Bishop and her colleagues did little to challenge such assertions, though the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) did confirm in communications with Tranter in June 2018 that the Government was ‘committed to engaging in good faith with the United Nations Human Rights Council and its mechanisms, including the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’. Splendid inertia beckoned.
The new Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Stephen Smith, has kept up that undistinguished, even disgraceful tradition: he has offered unconvincing, lukewarm support for one of Belmarsh Prison’s most notable detainees. As the ABC reports, he expressed pleasure “that in the course of the next week or so, he’s agreed that I can visit him in Belmarsh Prison”. (This comes with the usual qualification: that up to 40 offers of “consular” support had been previously made and declined by the ungrateful publisher.)
The new High Commissioner is promising little:
“My primary responsibility will be to ensure his health and wellbeing and to inquire as to his state and whether there is anything that we can do, either with respect to prison authorities or to himself to make sure that his health and safety and wellbeing is of the highest order.”
Assange’s health and wellbeing, which has and continues to deteriorate, is a matter of court and common record. No consular visit is needed to confirm that fact. As with his predecessors, Smith is making his own sordid contribution to assuring that the WikiLeaks founder perishes in prison, a victim of ghastly process.
As for what he would be doing to impress the UK to reverse the decision of former Home Secretary Priti Patel to extradite the publisher to the U.S., Smith was painfully predictable:
“It’s not a matter of us lobbying for a particular outcome. It’s a matter of me as the High Commissioner representing to the UK Government as I do, that the view of the Australian Government is twofold. It is: these matters have transpired for too long and need to be brought to a conclusion, and secondly, we want to, and there is no difficulty so far as UK authorities are concerned, we want to discharge our consular obligations.”
Former Australian Senator Rex Patrick summed up the position rather well by declaring that Smith would be far better off, on instructions from Prime Minister Albanese, pressing the current UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman to drop the whole matter. Even better, Albanese might just do the good thing and push U.S. President Joe Biden and his Attorney-General Merrick Garland to end the prosecution.
Little can be expected from the latest announcement. Smith is a man who has made various effusive comments about AUKUS, an absurd, extortionately costly security pact appropriately described as a war-making arrangement. The Albanese Government, having placed Australia ever deeper into the U.S. military orbit, is hardly likely to do much for a publisher who exposed the war crimes and predations of the Imperium.
Even among Australia’s roll call of opinionated former prime ministers, Paul Keating stands out—not least for his unmatched ability to dress down those who oppose him. But few thought he would ever turn this skill on his own political party, the Australian Labor Party, which finally seized government in 2022 after a decade in the wilderness. That was until last week, when Keating publicly condemned the AUKUS defense pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for signing it.
That tripartite deal, details of which were announced with fanfare just two days earlier, was “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government” since conscription was attempted during World War I, Keating said during an appearance at Australia’s National Press Club. The decision to purchase nuclear-powered submarines—at a cost of up to 368 billion Australian dollars ($245 billion)—would invariably draw Australia into any potential conflict between the United States and China, he warned.
No words were minced: “Signing the country up to the foreign proclivities of another country—the United States, with the gormless Brits, in their desperate search for relevance, lunging along behind is not a pretty sight.”
Another former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull of the Liberal Party, also chimed in with concerns, though he put them slightly more delicately.
…………….Turnbull has questioned whether the use of U.S. submarines—employed as a stopgap until British-designed, Australian-built subs are complete—could compromise Australia’s sovereignty. ……………….
Sam Roggeveen, the director of the international security program at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, told Foreign Policy that his sovereignty concerns regarding AUKUS stretch beyond personnel. “When you build a weapon system that is almost specifically designed to operate thousands of kilometers to our north, and which is perfectly suited to fighting a military campaign against China,” he said, “then at the final moment when the call comes from the White House—‘Will you take part in this war, or won’t you?’—it will be very difficult, almost impossible, for Australia to say no.”
………… Should this relationship continue to devolve, AUKUS could prove “very dangerous” to Australia, dragging the country into a conflict between the two great powers. Ultimately, more debate was needed about the deal, he said, particularly because Australia will bear all of its cost and risk………………………………………………………….
“Many rank-and-file [Labor] members would and do agree with Keating’s criticism, if not all aspects of his argument,”said Chris Wallace, a political historian and professor at the University of Canberra. And some local branches, the bedrock of the party, have recently been pushing back against the deal.
Similarly, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was founded in Australia in 2007, warned that AUKUS posed “both a major proliferation risk and could be seen as a precursor to Australia acquiring nuclear weapons.” The organization said the purpose of the submarines was, clearly, “to support the [United States] in a war in northeast Asia. Whether with China, North Korea or Russia, there is an alarming risk of any such war escalating to use of nuclear weapons.”
Recent polling suggests the Australian people may also be coming around to Keating’s point of view. Leading pollster Essential found this month that the public’s belief that AUKUS would make Australia more secure has fallen to just 40 percent, down from 45 percent when the pact was first announced back in 2021. On the question of the nuclear-powered submarines in particular, Essential reported that 55 percent of people surveyed either thought the purchase was unnecessary or too expensive.
…………………………………. “There is no rational basis for the Albanese government facilitating the withering expense of nuclear submarines,” Keating wrote, “other than to suit and comply with the strategic ambitions of the United States—ambitions which slice through Australia’s future in the community of Asia, the basis of our rightful and honourable residency.”
The backlash to the recent announcement, from adversaries and allies alike, Wallace said, should prompt the Albanese government to go back to the drawing board and actually vet whether the deal—including the procurement of submarines powered by weapons-grade uranium—was the best option for Australia. “Instead, the government made the announcement first and expected everyone to back in behind it,” she said. “They were dreaming.”
The Albanese government is weighing whether to make a dramatic break with the United States and sign an anti-nuclear weapons treaty that would aggravate Washington and launch a new era in Australian security policy.
Anti-nuclear campaigners are urging the government to join over 90 countries and sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) before the next election, a step that would see Australia abandon a key pillar of the US alliance by removing itself from America’s “nuclear umbrella” in the Asia-Pacific.
Labor’s national platform commits the party to signing and ratifying the treaty – which prohibits member states from participating in any nuclear weapon activities – but only after certain conditions are met.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been a strong supporter of signing the treaty, describing the idea as “Labor at our best”.
The US strongly opposes the treaty and has previously urged friendly nations not to support it, on the grounds it would undermine peace and security.
……………………… A spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the government will consider the treaty “systematically and methodically as a part of our ambitious agenda to advance nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament”.
“There are a number of complex issues to be considered,” she said.
…………………………………….. Gem Romuld, Australian director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said “if the government is committed to non-proliferation and disarmament, it will sign the TPNW during this term of government”.
“That would be warmly welcomed by countries across the Asia-Pacific, most of which have already signed the treaty, as well as most of the Australian public,” she said.
Romuld acknowledged ratifying the treaty would represent a “big change for Australia, ending a practice we have had in our security policy for a couple of decades” by prohibiting Australia from hosting American assets armed with nuclear weapons, such as B-52 bombers.
………….. Romuld said the AUKUS pact – under which Australia will acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines – does not prevent the government from signing the treaty. “In fact it only underlines the importance of it,” she said.
………………….
Labor MP Josh Wilson, the chair of the joint standing committee on treaties, said the TPNW represented a “much-needed jolt of momentum in the global nuclear disarmament effort”.
Antinuclear 