Critical Times

A broad protest movement has emerged in Australia against the coming Talisman Sabre war games in Queensland, involving 14,000 US troops, along with dozens of warships, bombers and fighter planes.

Australia’s smaller military contingent will play its usual supporting role to US forces, with a few ships and submarines, a battalion or two of soldiers and a few obsolete aircraft. With so much of Australia’s military forces already committed to the service of the Empire in Iraq and Afghanistan, it will be hard to scrape together a credible presence.

Australia’s main contribution will be providing ports and landing strips for the American forces, land and sea targets to shoot at and bomb, and communication facilities, such as Pine Gap.

Among the targets will be sections of pristine coastland, precious native wildlife, coral formations, myriad forms of sea life and countless birds. As for nuclear contamination, “We neither confirm nor deny” is the stock answer.
It will all be promoted by the government as an essential part of the US Alliance, essential to the defence of Australia.

In reality, the war games will not be practicing for the defence of Australia, but to invade and occupy other parts of the world. They are designed to shore up US political and military domination of the Asia-Pacific region, while the US is currently expanding and consolidating military bases in Japan, southern Korea, the Philippines and Guam.

It just reinforces Australia’s subservient position to the economic, political and military priorities of US imperialism.

Independent foreign policy
In contrast to this puppet role, most Australians want an independent foreign policy, one based on peace, friendship, mutual respect, and the principles of fair trade. They want good relations with other countries in the region, including China, whose growing economic influence in the region is the main focus of American hostility.

Australians certainly don’t want to get dragged into any more endless military occupations, such as propping up the corrupt and murderous Arroyo government in the Philippines.

The Peace Convergence to Shoalwater Bay is good way of expressing the real aspirations of the Australian people and building unity among all sections of the people who really want to defend Australia’s land and people.