On Apr 29, 2022, 3:26:00 AM Chinese/PRC Anonymous said:
"Anonymous said...
Chinese here.
I was always baffled by Australia's paranoia about our country. You are thousands of kilometers away from us and there are no geopolitical disputes between our countries. You were concerned about increasing Chinese military power and its possible influence in your region. It was an unfounded fear in my opinion. But you made it a reality yourselves. China can not watch a middle power spending a disproportionate amount of money on its military and putting most of that into American made force projection assets to be a good ancillary to the US forces in a possible war against it.
I think you guys should stop thinking about force projection and just be a peaceful country like Ireland or New Zealand. You'd spend less money and you wouldn't lose people in American "police action"s for nothing.
Apr 29, 2022, 3:26:00 AM"
Pete Comment
The Anonymous comment, voicing arguments I've never read before, may be authentic.
If authentic I feel privileged that a military and economic superpower, like China, finds the time to comment on my wee blog.
Interesting is the suggestion that:
"I think you guys should stop thinking about force projection and just be a peaceful country like Ireland or New Zealand. You'd spend less money and you wouldn't lose people in American "police action"s for nothing."
This is the type of suggestion Soviet Russia successfully made to Finland in the 1940s and "Putinic" (you saw first use here) Russia made more recently and unsuccessfully to Ukraine.
Ireland, because of its geographical position, is protected at a higher strategic level by the UK and NATO. Meanwhile New Zealand enjoys some protection by Australia and the US. Australia enjoys nuclear umbrella coverage and conventional weapon support from the US with more sporadic support from the UK, France and to an extent, India.
China is suggesting that Australia reorganise its foreign and defence policies and minimise Australia's defence spending. This Finlandization would favour China's aims for increased and unopposed strategic influence in Australia's region. Also Australia would need to rip up some long standing agreements, including those governing Pine Gap, ANZUS and, of course, AUKUS.
While I disagree with the arguments of "Chinese/PRC Anonymous" I look forward to more comments from him/her.