Must watch: An urgent warning to Australia

Following US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s intentionally provocative visit to Taiwan, and China’s military exercises in response, veteran Australian diplomat John Lander has issued a stark warning to his nation.

The issue is not whether Australia will follow the USA into a war against China, he insists; rather, Australia, like Taiwan, is being primed to be a proxy for the USA in a war against China.

Click here to watch CITIZENS INSIGHT: An urgent warning to Australia—John Lander

John Lander was Australia’s Deputy Ambassador to Beijing 1974-76, Ambassador to Iran 1985-88, and three times the head of the China desk at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

His experience in foreign affairs, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, goes back more than 50 years, and includes the period when Australia pursued a policy independent to the United States by recognising the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1972 (the USA did not formally recognise the PRC until 1979).

At the time there was a growing awareness of, and concern about, the security implications to Australia from always marching in lockstep with the USA.

This concern was expressed in the Department’s Policy Planning Paper QP11/71 of 21 July 1971 (then Secret/Eclipse, now declassified), which argued that there was “cause for concern whether our alliance with the United States can protect us at every step from political disadvantage resulting from the manner in which the United States conducts its global policies…. The American alliance, in a changing power balance, will mean less to us than it has in the past.

“If anything, this argument has been strengthened by recent United States actions and America’s failure to consult us on issues of primary importance to Australia. Accordingly, we shall need, now more than ever, to formulate independent policies, based on Australian national interests and those of our near neighbours, that will enable us to react quickly to developments in United States’ policy towards China and Indochina” (and the rest of Southeast Asia).

The streak of independence Australia displayed in the early 1970s, and which motivated John Lander his entire diplomatic career, has long since disappeared.

John Lander is warning that this has implications for Australia’s security that are even more grave today.

In the interview, he gives a different perspective on the war danger to that expressed by former US military officer Scott Ritter—the courageous weapons inspector who tried to stop the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003—who warned that Pelosi was provoking a US war with China over Taiwan that America couldn’t win.

John Lander insists that the US war planners have no intention of directly fighting a war with China, because of the very real danger it could escalate to a nuclear exchange.

Rather, they are planning to use Taiwan to fight a proxy war against China, hoping to “weaken” China, just as US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted America is using Ukraine to “weaken” Russia.

The United States, he warns, is priming Australia to also be its proxy against China; the USA would arm Australia to fight China but avoid engaging China directly.

This would be an unwinnable war which would destroy Australia, but, America hopes, would at least weaken China, so the USA would remain the world’s sole superpower.

With their undisguised hostility towards China and their sycophancy towards the United States—cultivated by the likes of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue and the US State Department-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)—Australia’s political leaders are not just talking themselves into being America’s proxy, but are taking concrete steps through increased military “interoperability” and “interchangeability” with the USA.

In the interview, John Lander explains precisely the legal status of Taiwan as a province of China, showing how America’s actions that are instigating the conflict are in breach of its own recognition of the law.

If Australians do not want to find themselves suddenly thrust into a war of annihilation against China, they should all listen and heed the warning of this veteran diplomat, who is the clearest strategic thinker in Australia today.

Click here to watch CITIZENS INSIGHT: An urgent warning to Australia—John Lander

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