Appease or not to Appease?

Either Australia is part of the solution or it is part of the problem.

One can read this piece and decide.

The concept of what is right is not hard to define. Australia should state that it will not tolerate bullying of a Free Japan and South Korea by Communists, Stalinists and Maoists.

Or, just appease those three groups and hope an aggressor will like them.

Note, the current U.S. administration is a bit wobbly on this too. The only acceptable response to N. Korea noise is a strong, clear and present deterrent force to back up South Korea and Japan.

The implication is that if those two countries are threatened, that an automatic JDAM party will commence.

That is the only thing the bad actors understand.


---Funny sidebar to the paper above:

...future capabilities to support this new posture will include fifth‑generation multi‑role f‑35 Joint Strike fighter (JSf) combat aircraft...

and...

A second criticism is that the uS military could end up with far fewer JSf combat aircraft, which are deemed a critical AirSea Battle capability. partly for budgetary reasons, the Air force has deferred the acquisition of the aircraft. moreover, the number of f‑35As (conventional take‑off and landing) to be acquired by the Air force until 2017 has been reduced from 203 to 166. the planned acquisition of short‑range, tactical f‑35Bs (short take‑off and vertical landing) for the uS marines during the same time period is cut from 50 to 41. finally, the carrier‑based variant, the f‑35C Cv for the uS navy, has been reduced from 72 to 37 (Blumenthal 2012:329). however, these projections are only based on a four‑year framework, and over the long run the services will probably have a significant number of JSfs in their inventories.

LOL. The author has a very limited understanding about the F-35 Just So Failed.