Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Reader comments 26 Nov 14 -- Australia's tired associations/alliances

Bushranger 71

This recent viewpoint from Mikhail Gorbachev: "There is the same type of public both in the U.S. — including the military-industrial complex that cannot imagine its life without weapons and war — and here in Russia too. Every U.S. president feels obliged to wage a war during his term or, even better, two — as the saying goes. I am serious. It's not a joke. This idea has survived, and that is very bad."
The arms manufacturers have become somewhat self-defeating because the bigger players are focusing primarily on hardware that is beyond the economic affordabilit y of most nations. They of course co-opt the 'assistance' of easily influenced politicians and ambitious military leaders in this regard. No clearer example than shedding a well established F-16 production line that should have been orientated toward enhanced versions to satisfy broader world needs than focusing on the potentially dysfunctional F-35 concept.
And while big flat-top aircraft carriers might provide a short duration option to project force during a conflict, they are hugely inefficient from a cost-benefit perspective, arguably unable to sustain meaningful on-line aircraft effort with disproportionate manning and escort costs.
The same logic applies to helo carriers because no military leader of right mind would entertain the 'combat air assault' notion of the Vietnam War era. Amphibious ship to shore movement these days would be principally shuttling and a very few helicopters can move significant people and stores quickly over pretty short ranges.
The Russians might be better off without the Mistral class ships now being withheld by France. For the Crimea intervention, they put Special Forces with light vehicles and FSV ashore by LCH style platforms to disarm the local military.
Where there is need to deploy say a battalion group size force, would it not be far smarter militarily for Australia to do so via say 5 x JHSV -1? Great tactical flexibility with overall crewing between 100-200 compared with 360 for the Canberra Class LPD and comparable collective helo capacity.


The notion that Australia must be able to deploy expeditionary forces to support US initiatives in faraway places of the globe is an unaffordable and unmanageable concept of operations. In the words of President George Bush when referring to another country, we are 'a pissant nation' with just 0.32 percent of world population and around 1.15 percent of the world economy. Foolishly, we are ranking near 10th in the world for actual defence outlay while federal government spending is careering out of control, heading down the same track as the US economy.
The hubris ('a great or foolish amount of pride or confidence') exhibited by Australia's political and military leadership is just delusional. ADF military capacity is continuing to diminish under the imprudent Howard big spend doctrine oriented toward a mythical Force 2030 vision.
Where does the influence originate? The US and Brits between them have just over 50 percent of direct foreign investment in Australia, both exerting inappropriate hegemonic pressure in the Australian political sphere. China and Japan are predominant trading partners and the geo-strategic fact is Australia relies heavily on favourable relations with the ASEAN Plus Three bloc, which does not embrace the US or Brits. China already has Australia by the scrotum economically and will likely be more enabled by this so-called free trade deal to gain greater control of Australian assets.
Australia's regional diplomacy has been dismal in almost all respects and there needs to be far greater effort in this direction than pandering to US and British influence via tired associations/alliances.

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