The US-Israel war on Iran shows once again how deadly it is to be America’s enemy – but also how very hard it is to be its friend
Excerpt
Australia enmeshed with US military
Trump came to office the second time promising to be the “President of Peace”. He vowed to end the forever wars and not start new ones.
“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars,” Trump said on election night.
He possesses a Nobel Peace prize – which he didn’t win, but was given by the actual recipient María Corina Machado – and which he chose to keep.
Canadian PM Mark Carney offers to team up with Australia as ‘strategic cousins’ to push back against dominant superpowers
Trump’s Department of War released its US National Defense Strategy in January, vowing it would not be “distracted by interventionism, endless wars, regime change, and nation building”.
But in just more than 12 months in office, Trump has bombed eight countries.
Annette Brownlie from the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network argues Australia should condemn the “brutal escalation of an already illegal conflict”.
“Attacking Iran is not a path to peace or stability, but a recipe for wider regional conflict.
“The legality of military action is not determined by one’s approval or disapproval of another nation’s government. The Iranian people have the right to determine their own future free from foreign interference.”
Australia’s chance, however, to escape being dragged into the spiralling Middle East conflict may have passed. Australian personnel are crew members onboard a submarine that sank an Iranian frigate, killing scores. Iran’s foreign minister has vowed vengeance for what he describes as an “atrocity at sea”.
“Mark my words: the US will come to bitterly regret the precedent it has set.”
But the presence of Australian sailors and officers onboard a US nuclear-powered submarine is part of a far-longer integration of Australian defence within the American military machine.
Over years, Australia’s alliance with the US has seen it become increasingly enmeshed within the might of America’s massive military-industrial complex.
The government has committed $1.6bn to upgrade RAAF base Tindal in the Northern Territory to accommodate US nuclear weapons-capable bombers. Pine Gap’s role gathering intelligence continues to expand, and the presence of US troops stationed in Australia grows.
The Aukus submarine binds Australia to the US even further: dependent on the world’s largest navy selling its junior ally its excess nuclear-powered boats.
“Australia’s complicity through the Pine Gap surveillance base, which provides intelligence-gathering and targeting data for United States strikes and missile defence, makes a clear and independent stance from our government even more urgent,” Brownlie says.
She argues Australia has enmeshed itself with the US “structurally, materially and politically”.
“But as a nation, do we value our sovereignty, or do we just succumb to whatever pressure America applies?
“No matter how deep we have got ourselves into this alliance with the United States, I don’t think we should ever get to a point where we cannot say ‘no, this is the line in the sand: we will not facilitate this illegal war any further’.”