Vol. 73/No. 26      July 13, 2009

A close alliance with U.S. imperialism, and deepening “interoperability” with Washington’s armed forces, remains—as it has been for decades—the bipartisan course of Australia’s capitalist rulers. The Rudd government recently announced the deployment of an additional 450 troops to Afghanistan, where 1,100 Australian troops are already fighting as part of the US-led imperialist alliance.

The Australian military plans to build 12 new submarines, doubling the size of its fleet, along with three destroyers and eight frigates and to buy 24 antisubmarine helicopters. The new, larger ships and submarines will be equipped with cruise missiles for the first time.

Other extensive purchases include 1,100 new armored personnel carriers for the army and special forces units and 100 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters for the air force.

A report in the Australian states that the buildup will enable the Royal Australian Navy to “deploy up to seven boats to protect Australia’s northern approaches, including key maritime straits running through the Indonesian archipelago, at times of high threat.”

“The biggest changes to our outlook,” defense minister Joel Fitzgibbon wrote in a preface to the White Paper, “have been the rise of China, the emergence of India and the beginning of the end of the … almost two-decade-long period in which the preeminence of our principal ally, the United States, was without question.”

While “the U.S. will remain dominant over the next 20-year period,” he said, “there will be a number of other superpowers floating around.” U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton retorted, “the United States is not ceding the Pacific to anyone.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhong Xu told the Australian in response to questions about the White Paper that “China is a peaceful force that forms no threat to any other countries.”

A central focus of the “defense review” is the “stability and security” of the South Pacific, where the Australian government seated in Canberra views itself as the preeminent power. Together with the New Zealand government, its imperialist ally in the region, Canberra has led a number of interventions in the area in recent years.

Australian and New Zealand troops, cops, and government officials have been deployed in the Solomon Islands since 2003. The two powers dispatched troops to Tonga in 2006 to help quell antigovernment protests on that island. They have also intervened in East Timor several times since 1999.

The White Paper makes it clear that Canberra expects to engage in further “peace-keeping operations” in the region in the coming period.

At the center of its intervention in the South Pacific today is a campaign of deepening economic and diplomatic pressure on the government of Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, who seized power in Fiji in December 2006. Posing as the champions of “restoring democracy,” the Australian and New Zealand rulers are pressing Bainimarama to call elections.

Both the Australian and New Zealand rulers are concerned at China’s increased influence in the region. In the year following the 2006 coup in Fiji, Chinese aid pledges to that country increased from about US$23 million to $161 million. Australian grants to Fiji this year are $21 million.  
 
 
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