Boost military to take on China but, shhh, don't mention trade

'Boost military' to take on China: adviser

AUSTRALIA will need nuclear-powered attack submarines among a range of highly potent weapons systems... to answer the security dangers posed by China's massive military build-up...

Ross Babbage ... believes Australia should acquire a fleet of 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines.

... a massive increase in Australia's cyber-warfare investment.

... Australia to host a range of American military bases...

"The challenge posed by the rising PLA is arguably one of the most serious that has confronted Australia's national security planners since World War II," he says...

... this is not a question of distant threats to Australia's region but of direct threat to Australia itself, as it is within range of many existing Chinese weapons systems.

Read the whole article, it's more honest and sober than a Kevin Rudd wiki leak.

Greg Sheridan, Time to beat China at its own game

The veteran defence analyst wants Australia to do to China what China is doing to the US. China recognises that it could never defeat the US in a full-on, force-on-force conflict. But it can make it incredibly costly and dangerous for the US to operate its military in the western Pacific.

China achieves this by adopting "asymmetric" warfare ...

... we should develop our own asymmetric approach to China, such that Australia could inflict massive cost and damage on China in the event of a conflict.

... there is no single document on China that I would more strongly recommend all Australians to read than Babbage's paper.

... although it is widely known that China has expanded its military, few are aware of the staggering scale of this transformation...

It should be the starting point of a broad national debate.

Another great article, read it all.

But alas, if the past is anything to go by, a national debate will be a Convention For The Ideologically Blinkered.

Just like these two articles by Sheridan fail to mention the role of trade in facilitating the rise of China, you can bet that almost no-one in the debate will raise the topic of trade.

Why? Because all their brains are infected with the ideologies that "free trade cannot be criticised and is good always and everywhere", and "craven appeasement is good because all non-Westerners are inherently good and will liberalise if we make them rich and don't scare them". Which, of course, is delusional.

So I'll make a preemptive comment on the likely farcical debate: to realise "the most serious [threat] that has confronted Australia's national security planners since World War II" and yet not question the wisdom of facilitating China's rise with our trade, is freaking insane! Totally bonkers! Absolutely mad! Completely cuckoo!

Let Pat Buchanan spell it out:

Then explore the depths of our own dependency on this bellicose Beijing and determine how to restore our economic independence.

Ending the trade deficit with China now becomes a matter of national security.

Duh! Trade is a matter of national security, not the consequence of trade, but trade itself.

What we need is a revolution in consequentialism:

Consequentialism refers to those moral theories which hold that the consequences of one's conduct are the true basis for any judgment about the morality of that conduct.

Duh! And yet our leaders cannot criticise trade with China because the virtue of trade is "good always and everywhere" apparently.

Steve Barber is a rare consequentialist:

... the most significant downsides of neoliberal economics, mean that we are precipitating our own decline and facilitating the rise of China at the expense of our economic security and foreign policy.

Economics and precipitate: are these two words magnetically repelled and cannot be put together in the same sentence by today's leaders? Apparently so.

Donald Trump is leaning in the right direction:

And what the politicians have done to this country, they should be ashamed of themselves...

... You are not going to solve unemployment unless something very, very stringent is done with regard to China and other countries...

I would tax Chinese products...

We don't have free trade right now. We have a country, China in particular, that is ripping us like nobody's ripped us before.

... I just can't believe how people can be so stupid ...

This country has to be rebuilt. This country is in serious trouble. This country is no longer respected like it was... People laugh at us. They laugh at the stupidity of the people running this country.

----

If we tax China we'd pay off that debt very quickly...

It's us, we have the cards because we're the ones who are spending all this money in China ...

Bill Gertz is close to the mark ...

6:00 Bill Gertz: They've made quite clear that there will be no democratisation. They look at democratisation as an alien Western concept. They are taking steps, they have a long-term strategy. The Chinese are working very hard to build what they call their national power ... But as part of that national power they have to fool the rest of the world while they're in this weak state ... and Deng Xiaoping epitomised this in the phrase "bide our time, build our capabilities".. . Chinese diplomats around the world, one of their highest priorities (their intelligence officers too) is to monitor what they call the China Threat Theory around the world. They predict that by 2020 the United States will recognise China as a threat, I hope it happens much sooner than that, but they understand that - they call that the dangerous decade from 2020 to 2030 - because they know the US will recognise China as a threat but they won't be ready to confront us, militarily in particular until 2030. 8:00 Howard Phillips: Roger Robinson ... believes that communist China can be a greater threat to the United States than the Soviet Union ever was because of its economic power around the world. Bill Gertz: Absolutely. There's no question in my mind, having researched this, I think there's no bigger national security problem facing the country than China, and it hasn't been recognised. Everything has been done in just the opposite direction... 17:30 The Chinese military buildup ... shows that China is not this benevolent Panda bear that its supporters try to make it out to be. The Chinese are chess players, they play a game called Go. They think many years in the future. They think strategically. They are acting strategically. 24:00 We need to understand China. We don't understand it today... We don't understand why the view us as their main enemy... So I call for an intelligence blitz... and then developing an American strategy for dealing with China. And, basically, it looks a lot like containment... we need to contain China. We need to find a way to coax them into renouncing communism.

The theory of comparative advantage is a dead duck if we have to spend billions defending ourselves in the process. What we gain by specialising and trading is frittered away in increased defence spending. Net gain: freaking nothing!
And there's another major spanner in the works... The coming balkanisation of Western countries due to diversity. We may not even be unified countries by the time we get sufficiently armed.

So let's stop the problem at its source. Stop the trade. Rogue states should be sanctioned, not supported with trade.

File under: economics and precipitate ... two words magnetically repelled in the demented brains of ideologues.