It "was the pace of recent changes in Australia's immediate region--the Asian economic crisis, the fall of Soeharto, the Timor crisis and other upheavals stretching from Aceh to Fiji," editorialized the December 7 Sydney Morning Herald, which has led to this acceleration in military preparations by Canberra.

The rearmament program was released December 6 as a government white paper entitled "Defending Australia 2000." It supercedes the former stance of "Fortress Australia," which backed reductions in forces and costs, with a more openly aggressive posture of "forward defence." It explicitly lays out Canberra's "strategic objectives" for increased intervention in Asia and the Pacific, using terms like "regional stability" and "global security," code words for the capitalist powers' policing of the world to defend imperialist exploitation and domination.

The government paper explains bluntly that "success in pacifying an unstable situation often depends on a demonstrated ability and willingness to use preponderant force swiftly...[with] ample firepower."  
 
Increased military interventions
In addition to Canberra's commitment to the imperialist slaughter against Iraq in the Gulf War of 1990-91, there have been more military interventions in the guise of "peacekeeping" over the past decade, reflecting what the white paper acknowledges is "a worldwide trend." The document said that over the last two years, more reservists had been deployed on full-time service than at any time since 1945.

Canberra has flagged orders for new airborne early warning and control aircraft, in-flight refueling tankers, and upgrading its F-111 bombers and F/A-18 fighters. This would considerably extend the striking range of the Australian air force. Washington has been pressuring Canberra to upgrade its arsenal to enable it to join in any imperialist conflict in the region led by the United States against the workers states of China and north Korea, as well as to be able to intervene in other regional conflicts.

This militarization drive has support from the opposition Labor Party. Its leader, Kim Beazley, welcomed the thrust of the white paper while adopting a seemingly less aggressive posture by criticizing the government's failure to ensure stable regional ties.

The militarization campaign comes after the deployment of nearly 5,000 Australian troops as the spearhead of the multinational intervention in East Timor. It also coincides with an ongoing Australian-led imperialist military presence in Bougainville and another naval and police intervention begun in recent weeks in the Solomon Islands.

The Herald cited Howard's belief that "interest in defence has surged with a new generation free of the traumas of the Vietnam war and intensely interested in the ANZAC tradition." The latter is a reference to the nationalist mythology commemorating the failed--and bloody--storming of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey during World War I by troops mainly from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

This has been accompanied by an orchestrated rise in jingoistic propaganda reflected even in ads for beer, using the nationalist hype around the East Timor intervention, the Sydney Olympics, and the upcoming centenary of federation, when the separate Australian colonies joined together in 1901. "Our armed forces...are part of our national identity," reflecting "the kind of country we are, the role we seek to play in the world, and the way we see ourselves," the document boasts.

Some $A5 billion is to be spent on the Australian Army, expanding land forces from four to six battalions, and setting up two separate well-armed forces, a 3,000 strong brigade and a battalion of 1,000 troops, ready to be rapidly deployed with increased firepower, including combat helicopters and missiles. The government also proposes to boost the strength of the army reserves and the training of cadets in high school as part of its militarization program.

The Australian rulers have recently stepped up pressure for New Zealand to increase its military capabilities to participate alongside its imperial allies, Canberra and Washington, in policing the region. Wellington is re-equipping its land forces, which assisted Canberra in intervening in East Timor, Bougainville, and the Solomons, but there is speculation in the New Zealand media about phasing out its attack aircraft and reducing the number of its warships. A seminar of Australian defense analysts on December 4, with typical chauvinism, decried New Zealand's military as "useless" and little help in the event of any joint imperialist intervention.

Australian imperialism, as a middle-ranked power of European colonial-settler origins on the edge of Asia, has always relied on more sophisticated technology and its advanced economy to maintain its edge over the Third World countries of the region that it helps dominate. Australia's "capability edge" is being blunted, the Herald warned, as it chimed in to support the expanded military in its December 7 editorial. The white paper proposes an extra $A1.9 billion to keep this edge in advanced intelligence, battlefield communications, and other high-tech warfare, all in cooperation with the Pentagon.

Australia's capitalist rulers are openly alarmed about disorder in what they consider their "backyard"--from Papua New Guinea, to elsewhere in the South Pacific; and from Fiji to the Solomons, where Australian military intervention has reinforced Australian neocolonial domination. They also see the trend toward the potential disintegration of Indonesia with the rise of national struggles from Aceh to West Papua.

Australia has always been a militarily aggressive junior imperialist power. During the twentieth century, Canberra was involved in 11 wars against workers and peasants, chiefly in Asia and the Pacific, as well as 36 "peacekeeping" interventions overseas. Previously, these have always been in close alliance with London and later Washington. But in the last few years, Canberra has also been leading regional interventions.

The Australian government has no illusions, Hamish McDonald noted in the December 7 Herald, "that war between states is obsolete and the only likely conflicts are low-level and internal." He points to the aggressive position of the white paper, which talks of "retaliation and deterrence: the F-111s were acquired in the 1960s to be able to strike at Indonesia; the Collins-class submarines designed with the range to blockade ports far afield. This document makes it all very explicit, albeit in the current managerial jargon of a 'proactive' defence policy.... This is high-intensity warfare far from Australia."

Ron Poulsen is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia.  
 
 
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