The AUSMIN 2023 talks between the United States Secretaries of State and Defense and their Australian counterparts, confirmed the increasing and unaccountable militarisation of Australia’s north in preparation for a future conflict with Beijing.
Details were skimpy, but the performance from defence minister Richard Marles and foreign minister Penny Wong was crawling, lamentable, even outrageous.
State secretary Antony Blinken and defense secretary Lloyd Austin III could only look on in wonder at their prostrate hosts.
Money, much of it from the US military budget, is being poured into upgrading, expanding and redeveloping Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) bases in the Northern Territory city of Darwin and Tindal, situated 320 kilometres south-east of Darwin, bothto“address functional deficiencies and capacity constraints in existing facilities and infrastructure”.
Two new locations are also being proposed at RAAF Bases Scherger and RAAF Curtin, aided by site surveys.
ճ, while revealing nothing in terms of operational details or costs, proved heavy with talk about “the ambitious trajectory of Enhanced Force Posture Cooperation across land, maritime, and air domains, as well as Combined Logistics, Sustainment and Maintenance Enterprise (CoLSME)”.
In addition, there would be “Enhanced Air Cooperation” with a rotating “US Navy Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft in Australia to enhance regional maritime domain awareness, with an ambition of inviting likeminded partners to participate in the future”.
Further details have come to light about the money being spent by the Pentagon on facilities in Darwin.
ճat the RAAF Darwin base “includes the construction (design-bid-build) of a United States Air Force squadron facility at the … (RAAF) in Darwin, Australia”.
The project is deemed necessary to add space “for aircrew flight equipment, maintenance and care, mission planning, intelligence, crew briefings, crew readiness and incidental related work”.
Some of the systems are mundane, but deemed important for an expanded facility, including ventilating and air conditioning, water heating, plumbing, utility energy meters and sub-meters and a building automation system (HVAC Control system).
Correspondents from the ABCinto the squadron operations facility, consulting US budget filings and tender documents to reveal cost assessments of A$40 million.
A further parking apron at RAAF Darwin is estimated to cost somewhere in the order of A$391billion.
This will furtherthe East Arm fuel storage facility for the US Air Force located 15 kilometres from Darwin that should be able to, on completion by September, store 300 million litres of military jet fuel intended to support US military activity in the Northern Territory and Indo-Pacific region.
According to the tender documents, the squadron operations facility also had a broader, more strategic significance “to support strategic operations and to run multiple 15-day training exercises during the NT dry season for deployed B-52 squadrons”.
The RAAF Tindal facility’s redevelopment, slated to conclude in 2026, is also intended to accommodate six B-52 bombers.
Given their nuclear capability, residents in the Northern Territory should be alarmed.
Michael Shoebridge, founder and director of conservative Strategic Analysis Australia,by this state of affairs. He is unhappy withCanberra’s reticence on US-Australian military arrangements and none too keen on a debate that is only being informed by US-based sources.
“A public debate needs to be enabled by information and you can’t have a complete picture without knowing where the money is being spent.”
While it is hard to disagree with that, Shoebridge’s outfit, in line with such think tanks as the equally conservative Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is not against turning Australia into a frontline fortress state ready for war. What he and his colleagues take issue with is the US’ overwhelmingly dominant role.
Those in Washington, Shoebridge argues, seem to “understand the urgency we don’t seem to”.Rather than questioning Australia’s need for a larger military capability to fight confected foreign adversaries, he accepts the premise, wholeheartedly. Canberra should muck in more and pull its weight, he said, including drumming up Australian personnel for the killing.
Anthony Bergin, a senior fellow of Strategic Analysis Australia, suggested a familiar formula. Heto improve “our national security, we should be looking at options short of conscription which wouldn’t be as hard to sell to the Australian people”.
He thought the timing perfect for such a move. “There’s now a latent appetite for our political leaders to introduce measures to bolster national resilience.”
This silly reading only makes sense on the assumption that the Australian public has been softened sufficiently by such hysterical affronts as thecampaign, waged by Nine Publishing (formerly Fairfax Media).
Options to add padding to Australia’s military preparedness include doubling or tripling school cadets and cadet programs of the “outdoor bound” type based in the regions.
But more important would be the creation of a “national militia training scheme”.
Bergin is, however, displeased by the difficulty of finding “volunteers of any kind”, a strange comment given the huge, unpaid volunteer army that governs the delivery of numerous services in Australia, from charities to fire fighting.
Alison Broinowski, a former diplomat,that the current moves constitute “another step in the same direction —a step that the government has been taking a series of for years; accepting whatever the United States government wants to place on Australian soil”.
More’s the pity that most details come from Washington sources, indicating Canberra’s abject subordination to the US imperium.
[Binoy Kampmark currently lectures at RMIT University.]