Opinion | Be a good neighbor: Can Australia U-turn on Anti-China Alliances?
By Philip Yeung, a university teacher
PKY480@gmail.com
Jeremy Corbyn, the former British Labor Party leader, may be many things, but he is no fool. Lately, he seriously questions whether military alliances, such as NATO, are an effective deterrent against aggression.
The war in Ukraine emphatically shows that their very existence may have the opposite effect—acting as a provocation that tips countries into gratuitous military conflict.
The US has gone completely alliance-crazy, pushing military alliances like club memberships on lesser powers. Australia has lapped it all up, becoming a card-carrying member, in not one but three anti-China alliances: 5-Eyes, AUKUS and Quad which targeting the Indo-Pacific region completes the US encirclement. Its leader Scott Morrison has never met an alliance he doesn't love. Like a man with too many credit cards, he may soon go bankrupt on his shopping sprees. Military alliances beget costly military build-ups and blood-sucking arms race. They are like neighborhood bullies looking for a fight, only to find an imaginary enemy. Technology-crazy China is too busy reinventing itself to have any appetite for aggression.
This is sheer lunacy. China, in case you haven't noticed, is the only major power that has not invaded another country. It alone has no blood on its hands. But that does not stop the US from ganging up on it. Up and down its coast and along its southern border, the US and its allies are bristling with ill intent. Why is Japan, the former evil empire that had killed hundreds of millions of innocent people in World War II now loitering in the Indian Ocean? Hasn't it inflicted enough death and destruction on Asia? And why is the South China Sea, 8,000 miles from British shores, any of the UK's business?
Last week, something unusual jolted our attention. The US and its allies are going ballistic when news of China's security agreement with Solomon Islands leaked. They call it a "serious risk to a free and open Indo-Pacific". Talk about double-standards! Alliances are the toys of powers with imperial ambitions. They are designed to put China back into the box. Hence, the alliance overkill.
The world barely escaped the near-apocalyptic face-off between the Warsaw Pact and NATO during the Cold War era. But the players have yet to learn their bitter lesson.
Military alliances run counter to the spirit and mission of the United Nations as a peace-keeping body. These "gun clubs" are no more than US attack dogs and ought to be outlawed. How ironic that peace-loving China as a model UN member, with a pristine record in non-interference in other members' internal affairs has become the vicious target of war-mongering and scare-mongering alliances.
Mad-dog US lawmakers, led by frothing China-haters like Lindsey Graham, are losing no time in capitalizing on the war fever in Ukraine, spreading it like a virus to Taiwan, in hopes of goading China into war. If the US cannot beat China by economic or technological means, it will not shy away from the last resort.
How many more millions must die, how many more cities must burn, how many economies ruined, in order for the US to keep its top-dog status?
It is sad that "liberal democracies" like Australia and Britain are led by immature men with serious mental deficits. Australia does 31% of its trade with China, but its prime minister Scott Morrison has been hurling insult after eye-poking insult at its largest trading partner, a country that is literally minding its own business.
Gullible and one-dimensional, this man finds China's communist label unpalatable, but that is no justification for making China his country's mortal enemy. The so-called "China threat" is a pure US concoction. But Morrison's every utterance on this subject drips with ill will. Devoid of common sense, he has become an existential threat to his country and the region.
His hatred of China, frighteningly, is at the gut level, where reason doesn't reside. He is ignorant of what a totally reinvented country China has become in the last 30 years, utterly technology-transformed and focused only on prosperity for its people, though, in the Confucian spirit, eager to share it with the world.
Morrison and his ilk think in terms of election cycles and their own political survival. Chinese leaders think in decades and generations. The likes of Morrison are too delusional to realize that they don't belong in the same league as China's long-term strategic planners. He may piously lecture China. But that only exposes his ignorance and juvenile self-righteousness. Labels lie, and China has outgrown its own label. Despite its clumsy style, technology-savvy China, free of violence and racism, is today a nation governed by reason.
On May 21, cool-headed Australians will have a chance to vote this Trump-like simpleton out and send him to the Bondi Beach where he can do the least harm. He can still flex his bulging biceps, of course, as the sun sets on him.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
Opinion | Who is qualified to be Hong Kong's next leader?
Opinion | The impossible country---Looking at China upside down
Comment