A choice remark: “We’re now defending the fact that we’re in Aukus.
“If we weren’t in Aukus, we wouldn’t need to defend it. If we didn’t have an aggressive ally like the United States – aggressive to others in the region – there’d be nobody attacking Australia. We are better left alone than we are being ‘protected’ by an aggressive power like the United States.
“Australia is capable of defending itself.
“There’s no way another state can invade a country like Australia with an armada of ships without it all failing. I mean, Australia is quite capable of defending itself. We don’t need to be basically a pair of shoes hanging out of the Americans’ backside.”
There are parts I agree with. We shouldn’t be putting all our eggs in the US technology basket, homegrown industry is best a diversified mix is second. Tying ourselves to the US technology pipe might work out, but it also might end like Keating says.
But his brainfart of an armada getting picked off before they reached our shores is fanciful. Last i checked we couldn’t afford to send a warship to the red sea because we don’t have enough sailors, and working frigates (was it 3?). Our submarines are rusting and going in and out of repairs. We have a few planes, but is that enough to pick off an armada? So whats to stop a serious attempt to lop off a nice section of the Pilbara? Lets be sensible, our military is functional but small, if we want to take our own defence seriously, then the current civic understanding and arrangements would need to change.
But the stuff on Taiwan especially. He is so wrong about. We as a nation should always defend the right of a peoples self determination. Not that we live up to that ideal very often, but he is from the side of politics that speaks in those terms more often, so his lack of concern is surprising. The Taiwanese very clearly want a separate identity to mainland China. And no shit they do, Taiwan has been a separate but related island forever. It has the awkward distinction of being the retreat point for the Chinese Nationalists, but thats a pretty small part of the islands population.
Anyway, i suppose its all way more complicated than all this, and thats exactly why I find Keatings comments on so many of those matters so poor. He presented simple solutions that would see Australia more alone instead of more engaged in the region. A loner nation, instead of a friend nation.
The big thing in all of this is why would China invade us? We’re a very big country a long way away from China, maintaining such a territory would be a logistical nightmare for the Chinese as they risk over-stretching themselves
Yeah, I hated that example. Because its probably the least likely scenario in which we will use the Australian Military. As per our history shows.
Thats why i used an example of a more limited operation to lop off the Pilbara in some resource control scenario. Its, I don’t know, less unlikely than the whole of Aus? Lol
Dammit, typed bigly and lost message.
Why are we so focused on Taiwan? Australia ignores separatist movements in the Basque, ought we invade Spain next time they crush one? The UK won’t allow another Scottish referendum but post brexit they want out. Should we park warships off their coast? Indian Muslims are persecuted, what’s our battle plan here?
Military intervention is obviously not justifed, plausible or productive in those cases. So why Taiwan?
The answer to that question is very simple. One country interfering with another country’s internal issues—even when those issues are really abhorrently handled such as treatment of Muslims in India or Uighurs (who are also largely Muslims) in China—is very different to the possibility of one country invading another independent nation.
Look at Germany in the 1930s. It wasn’t until they invaded Poland that the rest of the world cared enough to actually put a stop to it. The world never did anything about the Soviet Union’s Holodomor or the Great Purge. The world sat by during Mao’s Great Famine and during and in the aftermath of the 1989 student protests culminating in the Tianamen Square massacre. Nobody except the Vietnam government did anything to stop Pol Pot’s extermination of nearly a quatre of the country’s entire population. And the Vietnamese only intervened because among those targeted by the Khmer Rouge were ethnic Viets within Cambodia, as well as cross-border raids into Vietnam itself.
If China invades Taiwan, despite officially not being recognised, is an independent country. And everybody knows this. We tend not to respond well to one country invading and taking over another. (See: Germany, 1939. Russia, 2022.)
Look I have a really busy month ahead of me but also strong disagreement that deserves a nuanced reply. Also I’ve seen your other posts and I think you warrant the courtesy of thoughtful response as you are not a hack commentator.
Unfortunately I don’t really have time at the moment to write something researched. So instead I would like to basically raise a couple of points that if you’re curious you could look into to understand why I disagree and point you to a good book and a neat podcast (that I personally find kinda pro status quo and irritating but thoughtful and well worth thinking about).
Privileging taiwan will upset the rules based order and conventions on recognising nations. Maybe that’s worth it, I’m not so sure.
War is usually not the right response, as mentioned in the other comment by the other commentator in many other complex scenarios diplomatic solutions and nuanced approaches are warranted. Simplistic reasoning about invasion would have us going to war against the USA over their invasion of Iraq and that probably would have just got a lot more people killed pointlessly.
The usa is an untrustworthy ally and unlikely to transition peacefully to a multipolar world. Alignment and arms build up can escalate the likelihood of tension (In this book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200277862-girt-by-sea the authors, IR and defense academics, point out that pac islands have seen the aukus subs as a sign of australia moving away from a goal of regional stability and do not trust that they are defensive weapons platforms).
China is pretty transparent about what it wants, the one china policy. They do not show interest in expanding to colonial holdings etc. Horrible neighbour, like all countries really see aus-indonesia relations, but the world is full of horrible neighbours and war mostly just makes everything worse for the little guys.
China is not a magical happy land of wonder and peace but it is often criticised uniquely for doing the same shit other countries have done. We usually recognise that there would be no point to war with the UK for justice in their treatment of India and the Bengal famine, the USA for all their horrible treatment of south america and illegal bombing of cambodia (which influenced the rise of pol pot), creating the conditions for daesh’s success etc, the abhorrent french treatment of their colonies, or for example australia’s ongoing internationally illegal treatment of assylum seekers and genocide against the native people. Stabilising the world is probably not going to happen down the barrel of a gun, amusingly that is maoist thinking haha.
There’s a podcast “australia in the world” run by the intitute for international affairs: https://australiaintheworld.podbean.com/ half their eps get me apoplexic with rage :P but they are interesting stuff. Recently there was one https://australiaintheworld.podbean.com/e/ep-133-what-might-cooperate-with-china-where-we-can-actually-mean/ which talks about how most analysis places no war with china as the most likely outcome and thus in that light we need to consider how current actions make that more or less likely, and influence how productive future relations are likely to be.
Soz I have basically just thought vomited. Hopefully you found something of value. That book is quite good btw! not exactly leftist but definitely interesting stuff.
I’ll lay my cards out on the table. I have some good friends from Taiwan. By and large, they’re not fans of the current US policy, seeing it as potentially more likely to antagonise China than to help. They’re fans of the status quo staying exactly as it is. But they’re really not fans of China. They idea of China invading Taiwan is an absolute terrifying existential dread for Taiwanese people. One of my friends is lucky enough to already have citizenship in NZ and partly reside here in Aus thanks to that. Another has spent some serious effort researching options to move money somewhere that couldn’t be seized by China if they did invade and he decided to flee, including some greyish legality bank accounts in other countries, and looking at cryptocurrencies. I’m not sure 100% where exactly he stands on that right now.
I’m also extremely wary, by default, especially on Lemmy, of people trying to defend Chinese aggression. This platform has a lot of pro-China stooges, who pretend to have leftist beliefs but are more than happy to defend or deny atrocities committed by countries that aren’t even vaguely leftist, like modern-day Russia, or countries that pretend to leftism while embracing a large degree of authoritarian control over individual actions while allowing a lot of corporate exploitation of people, like China does. In other words: tankies. But I’ve seen you around before and I want to give you the benefit of the doubt.
As far as many of your bullet points: I don’t have any time for whataboutism. It’s an extremely dishonest and lazy form of argument. I don’t give a fuck if the West has also done bad in the past, or even if it’s continuing to do so. That doesn’t excuse China invading independent countries, and doesn’t provide any sort of even vague excuse for suggesting countries shouldn’t support Taiwanese’s de facto independence remaining exactly as it is. That sort of whataboutism is the hallmark of tankies, and whether used deliberately for that reason or out of a sincere belief, it does nothing but undermine the argument of the person making it.
The bottom line is that China invading Taiwan would be exactly the same as Russia invading Ukraine. It’s an aggressive and illegal invasion of an independent country, done on the basis of some false arguments about the invalidity of that country’s right to its own self-determination. It should be, at the very least roundly condemned and the defending country given aid to help it defend itself. Even if direct military support is not involved.
I’m really sorry for your friends, their situations are horrible.
I’m about as far from a tankie as you can get lmfao, I am an anarchist, I want every single tyrant whether petty or not to stop or get the mussolini treatment - from landlords to kings. But gearing up for war footing is not about right or wrong; It is about whether or not millions of people dying, ploughsheers being melted to bullets, diplomatic options being burned, and peasants being dispossessed serves the political elite. That is the only way nations wage war.
Look at Iraq, Sadam was a horrible maniac and a tyrant. Is life better now? Did that war help anyone? I don’t think it did at all.
If the people of Taiwan are to maintain some political freedom war against a nuclear armed superpower is not the way. Countries are run by fucking maniacs and international law is broadly understood as supporting the PRCs position on Taiwan which complicates things and means direct intervention is very likely to escalate. Possibly to the use of nuclear bombs.
I’d recommend you read that book, I think you’ll like it. They are in favour of the current USA led hegemony and the deeply unequal global order, so you don’t need to worry about secret leftism or secret authoritarianism masquerading as leftism. They just also see the asia-pacific with much more nuance than your average polly or ‘journo’ and see australia taking a more peaceful route into the future.
To be clear: their situation today is not horrible at all. It’s totally fine. It will only become horrible if a foreign country invades their home.
Again, comparing the idea of China invading Taiwan to situations like Sadam Hussain is a mistake. Because we’re not talking about one country interfering in another country’s internal issues. We’re talking about one country providing a degree of protection to another against a third country invading them. Defensive military aid is a completely different question to invading a country for its internal practices, even if those internal practices are tyrannical. We’re talking about a hypothetical situation where war has broken out regardless, and it’s just a question of ensuring that the little guy doesn’t get totally overrun by a much bigger country.
It’s great to talk about taking a peaceful attitude into the future. But I don’t see any way the region can be peaceful with the threat of China invading other countries’ territory. It’s bad enough today with them using their military to invade other countries’ waters deep in the southern South China Sea. This isn’t the USA, or Australia as a proxy for the USA, being aggressive or upsetting peace. The peace is being upset by China.
Any discussion about Taiwan that doesn’t fundamentally start from the premise that it is an independent country and its people have the right to self-determination is not one to be taken seriously. Because it’s either in bad faith or a level of ignorance that makes it impossible to take any conclusions seriously. And that’s not what I see from people like Keating who talk about friendly relations with China without acknowledging the very real possibility that China trying to invade Taiwan is a completely unacceptable action. And his talk about how it should just be left for China to invade because it’s “not a vital Australian interest” is just nationalistic bullshit, putting the lives of Australians ahead of anyone else.
I hate it when that happens.
First, Basque, Catalonia, Scotland et al are independence movements. Taiwan is a functioning democratic nation, (albeit without the recognised status). They have their own separate while related history from mainland China, check the wikipedia on taiwan its got a good a quick run down near the page top. They were a Dutch colony, Japanese, then Chinese, now on their own again and thats only since the 1600’s. Spain and England are also no longer demonstrating bellicose saber ratling language and behaviour, while they still disagree with the respective independence movements; China is demonstrating a distinct intention to take Taiwan, with or without the Taiwanese consent.
Specific comments on each:
Basque: I can’t comment too much on Spain’s relationships with Basque and Catalonia. I do know there has been movement to make Catalonia more autonomous, i don’t know if thats the same for Basque but i’d assume the situations are similar. Which means Spain is on the road to a peaceful settlement that works for everyone. Its also notable that the EU’s ease of borders and trade has also helped the Spanish State and the Independence movements live more autonomously but still together.
Scotland: A referendum was had on the subject before brexit. The order of those looked very strategic, or stupid, at the time by the Cameron government. The UK High court ruled that Westminster has the only legitimate power to hold another referendum.
Immediately post brexit the Scottish did want out, however the tide has gone out on this subject for now, cost of living pressures, SNP corruption problems, need to vote out Tories, have all added up to send independence down the list of priorities.
But by far the largest problem now with Scottish independence is how would Scotland and the rest ameliorate the similar effects to Scotland’s and the rests economy’s as brexit is having on the british economy. Scotland is integrated into Britain far more than Britain was/is integrated into the EU. Think roads, trains, defence, finance, postal, and everything else. This now presents a tough question for independence advocates to answer, and preferably there should be a plan before the referendum with it, because as we found out ‘Brexit did not mean brexit’. So independence might still sound good to the Scottish people, so based on the recent brexit experience a sober discussion needs to be had, and a real plan needs to be worked out otherwise its all a pie in the sky rush of blood to the head that could cause people a lot of long-term pain in their lives.
Indian Muslims: The subcontinent’s story is huge, and there is no answer but to say there is no changes from the ouside that would have a positive effect. Don’t forget Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim majority and were part of India. Indian Muslims are far from the only peoples persecuted in the Indian subcontinent. Indian partition was fucked up, and maybe India is better off as smaller principalities as it mainly was before the British.
I recently listened to this series, its well worth the time and explains that part of their history so much better than i,
https://open.spotify.com/episode/24liH113yVBe3ccfO7U4Z1?si=nUw26N4bS2q4PxFNf0Js6g
I wrote something in response to zag or zal or whomever. I basically agree that the world is complex and diplomacy and nuance is the way forward. Hence my objections to arming up and tying ourselves to a belligerent, warmongering, and frankly evil empire. I am really busy till mid sept, but will try and remember to listen to that podcast as I know a fair but about india but could always stand to learn more as they are probably the most successful statist democracy in the world and I think a lot of the future depends on what they do as a rising superpower.
Anyway I wrote some thought vomit in that other comment if curious, and linked a podcast I find very frustrating but informative and a book on australia’s maritime security that I disagree with a lot less than the current approach.
Soz can’t be more conversational, to the acid mines I go. Pray for me.
Lol! Good luck