The Guardian 9 April, 2008
Editorial
Whence the threat to peace?
Last week the Australian Financial Review (AFR) (03/04/2008) published a feature article that should alert all Australians to the extremely dangerous course that the Rudd government has embarked on in foreign policy. The article says that the government seems to be preparing to take part in the US star wars program.
The article was written by Paul Dibb, the former head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the ANU and Geoffrey Barker, a senior foreign affairs and defence columnist for the AFR.
In 1983 the Hawke government dismissed Australia’s participation in the Star Wars program when invited to take part by the then President of the US, Ronald Reagan.
The authors write: "If the Rudd government moves towards ballistic missile research, it will be buying into what is creating real and destabilising international security affairs tensions …"
The US continues to claim that Star Wars, the stationing of radar and missile interceptors in Poland the Czech Republic, and NATO’s push into Eastern Europe are not directed against Russia but against Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program.
Such widespread preparations can only be directed at other major powers — Russia and China in particular. In its drive for world domination the US has never given up its objective of controlling the enormous mineral, gas, oil, timber and gold reserves of Russia and its aim to role back the revolutionary tide created by the formation of the Peoples Republic of China that is having such a profound economic, social, political and military influence in the world.
The US preparations have already sparked a new arms race. Russia is multiplying its International Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program and is planning to build five or six new aircraft carrier task groups. It is going to step up its world-wide bomber patrols from the current 2-3 per month to 20-30 per month.
Instead of a clear and decisive "no", Australia’s foreign minister, Stephen Smith, now says "…we’re happy to give consideration to the missile defence arrangements … we don’t want to make any decisions which would deprive us of technology which might in the end be in our national security and be able to protect our forces in the field."
Paul Dibb and Geoffrey Barker comment: "Smith’s statement is light years from Bob Hawke’s simple ‘no’" (to Reagan). They go on: "…there is strong evidence [that] Australia’s policy has been evolving towards support for extensive missile defence for some years." They point out that a memorandum of understanding signed by Australia and the US in 2004 (in the Howard years) said that "missile defence was a long term measure" and that "It is a purely defensive system."
Such statements turn on their head the source of threats to world peace. Such threats come solely from the US and NATO — from the imperialist states — that contain to dream of re-establishing their colonial domination of the world. The threats do not come from Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba or any of the developing countries.
A decision to join the Star Wars missile program would tie Australia irrevocably to the nuclear war preparations and a major war against Russia and China which is a logical consequence of the current armaments programs.
In response to the US program for missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia has already announced that it will target its missiles on these countries. Could Australia be also targeted if it joins the Star Wars program.
Paul Dibb and Geoffrey Barker comment that "Canberra needs to think deeply on these possibilities."
The mealy mouthed words of Stephen Smith and Rudd’s salute to George Bush while in Washington recently, and his oft repeated enthusiastic commitment to the US alliance indicate that there is not any serious independent thought going into the course that the government is clearly set to implement. It is a course that could bring nuclear bombs raining down on Australia — Canberra, Sydney and Pine Gap in the first instance.
There is an apt saying that describes the government’s course — "He whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad".