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Australian sovereignty not worth a nickel?

A terse exchange between Greens Senator David Shoebridge and Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead during a Senate Estimates hearing earlier this year revealed that contracts signed by the Australian government that have handed billions of taxpayer dollars to American and British shipyards, supposedly to support the faster delivery of submarines, did not include standard protective clawback provisions.

If we never see a submarine—as is possible—we don’t get any of our billions back.

In influence and dollar terms, foreign-owned companies comprise the vastly dominant proportion of the industrial base, not “part of” it. Research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2017 showed that the top 15 weapons contractors received 91 per cent of the Department’s expenditure.

A decade of spin from both sides of politics has inured Australians to the stark reality of our loss of independence inside the US alliance. At what cost?

Michelle Fahy, Jan 12, 2025,  https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/sovereignty-not-worth-a-nickel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=154382292&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=emailAustralia’s independence has been dangerously compromised by Labor and Coalition governments, which have signed up to deep-rooted military agreements with the United States of America. These agreements have also underpinned the increasing militarisation of Australia: witness the 2022 speech by Labor’s Richard Marles, the newly appointed deputy prime minister, in Washington DC when he announced that Australian military forces would now become interchangeable with those of the United States.

In August, after this year’s formal annual talks with the United States, Defence Minister Marles announced that the meeting had “built on the last two in seeing a deepening of American force posture in Australia”.

He added: “American force posture now in Australia involves every domain: land, sea, air, cyber and space.”

A decade of spin from both sides of politics has inured us to the stark reality of our loss of independence. Much is made of “defence industry cooperation” with the United States, for example, but this is simply code for the expansion of the US arms industry in Australia in support of its increasing military presence on our soil.

The day before AUKUS was launched in 2021, the US State Department made plain the importance of Australia in supporting America’s military-industrial base:

Australia is one of America’s largest defence customers, supporting thousands of jobs in the United States … The United States is Australia’s defence goods and services partner of choice … the partnership is expected to deepen further over the coming decade, including in the area of defence industry cooperation.

Soon after this statement was published, Marles flew to Washington to endorse its sentiment. He reassured the Americans that when it came to arms production, “our ultimate goal is to supplement and strengthen US industry and supply chains, not compete with them”.

Meanwhile, our much-trumpeted “sovereign defence industrial base” is simply a collection of the world’s top arms multinationals, dominated by the British-owned BAE Systems, the French-owned Thales, and the American-owned Boeing.

Then there is the egregious erosion of Australia’s sovereignty contained within the little-known Force Posture Agreement (FPA) with the United States, which the Abbott Coalition government signed in 2014.

In short, the FPA permits the US to prepare for, launch and control its own military operations from Australian territory.

Yet AUKUS dominates the headlines, even though other decisions by our political leaders that have sold out the public interest have received little coverage in the mainstream media.

A terse exchange between Greens Senator David Shoebridge and Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead during a Senate Estimates hearing earlier this year revealed that contracts signed by the Australian government that have handed billions of taxpayer dollars to American and British shipyards, supposedly to support the faster delivery of submarines, did not include standard protective clawback provisions. If we never see a submarine—as is possible—we don’t get any of our billions back.

The single most important downside of the US alliance, rarely mentioned, is arguably Australia’s military dependence on a foreign power. The Australian Defence Force is critically dependent on US supply and support for the conduct of all operations except those at the lowest level and of the shortest duration.

We were warned about this substantial sacrifice of national freedom of action. In 2001, a Parliamentary Library research paper stated that “it is almost literally true that Australia cannot go to war without the consent and support of the US”.

Foreign-dominated “sovereign” defence industry

Australia’s political and defence hierarchy regularly assert the need to build “a sovereign defence industrial base”. Most people would assume this to mean Australian-owned defence companies, with profits that stay local. This is not what the Defence Department means by it.

The world’s largest weapons companies, including BAE Systems (UK), Thales (France) and US companies Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, dominate the local defence industry. Almost all of the top 15 weapons contractors to the Defence Department are foreign-owned. In June 2024, Deputy Secretary Christopher Deeble, the head of the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group—the Department’s arms-buying group—explained in a Senate Estimates hearing the government’s definition of “sovereign” in this regard. Deeble agreed with independent senator David Pocock that the local subsidiaries of foreign weapons multinationals, such as Lockheed Martin Australia, were not “sovereign” Australian companies. Nevertheless, he said, the Department considers such foreign-owned subsidiaries to be “part of the sovereign defence industry base here in Australia”.

In influence and dollar terms, foreign-owned companies comprise the vastly dominant proportion of the industrial base, not “part of” it. Research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2017 showed that the top 15 weapons contractors received 91 per cent of the Department’s expenditure.

Force Posture Agreement

The erosion of Australian sovereignty accelerated in 2011, when Labor prime minister Julia Gillard agreed that up to 2,500 US Marines could be stationed in Darwin on a permanent rotation, and that an increased number of US military aircraft, including long range B-52 bombers, could fly in and out of the Top End and use Australia’s outback bombing ranges.

This agreement was expanded dramatically a few years later by the Force Posture Agreement, which provides the legal basis for an extensive militarisation of Australia by the US, particularly across the Top End.

The tri-nation military pact AUKUS, between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, was later negotiated and agreed to, in secret, by the Morrison Coalition government. AUKUS gained bipartisan support within one day of it being revealed to Anthony Albanese’s Labor opposition in September 2021. Among other things, AUKUS, in conjunction with the FPA, ensures that Australia’s navy will be tightly integrated with the US navy for the purpose of fighting China, and that the two navies can operate as one from Australian ports and waters.

Two months after Labor assumed office in May 2022, Marles was in Washington DC announcing that Labor would “continue the ambitious trajectory of its force posture cooperation” with the United States. Australia’s engagement with the US military would “move beyond interoperability to interchangeability” and Australia would “ensure we have all the enablers in place to operate seamlessly together, at speed”.

Non-lethal” F-35 parts

Australia’s newest high-tech major weapons systems make us more reliant than ever on the United States. As veteran journalist Brian Toohey reported in 2020, “The US … denies Australia access to the computer source code essential to operate key electronic components in its ships, planes, missiles, sensors and so on”. This includes the F-35 fighter jets, which both Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Marles have noted form the largest proportion of the air force’s fast jet capacity.

When it agreed to buy Lockheed Martin’s expensive and controversial fifth generation fighter jets, Australia became one of the early members of the F-35 consortium. As part of the deal, Australia negotiated a role for local industry in the F-35 global supply chain. As of June 2024, more than 75 Australian companies had shared in $4.6 billion worth of work, according to the Defence Department.

But there’s been a significant ethical downside. Israel, also a member of the F-35 consortium, is using its F-35s in its war against Gaza. Israel stands accused in the world’s highest court of conducting a genocide in Gaza. Every F-35 built contains Australian parts and components, and for some of these Australia is the sole source.

A senior Defence Department official, Hugh Jeffrey, said in a Senate Estimates hearing in June 2024:

“We are a member of the F-35 consortium [which] exists under a memorandum of understanding … That gives the defence industry opportunity to contribute to that supply chain. It also requires Australia to provide those contributions in good faith…” [emphasis added]

Jeffrey also noted that when assessing any export permit, “we have to have high confidence that, in agreeing to the permit, it’s consistent with our national security requirements and with our international legal obligations”.

What happens if the Department perceives a conflict between Australia’s “national security requirements” and its “international legal obligations”? Is Australia “required” to continue supplying Australian-made arms “in good faith”?

In June, after nine months of spreading disinformation, the Australian government was forced to admit that Australia was still supplying parts and components to the F-35 global supply chain. At the time of writing, the government was allowing this supply to continue despite repeated calls from the UN asking nations—and multinational weapons makers—to cease supplying weapons to Israel, including parts and components, or risk being responsible under international law for serious human rights violations.

Decoded: Defence Department’s deadly deceits

Michelle Fahy, July 10, 2024

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January 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

There is no such thing as good nuclear proliferation

it’s not just Trump — America’s actions have been running counter to Washington’s nonproliferation interests for longer than that.

In a world less constrained by international norms and rules, and increasingly governed by sheer power, the strictures that long constrained nuclear proliferation are in danger of loosening — if not untangling altogether.

ReutersFrom Across the Pond, January 8, 2025 , By Ivo Daalder

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s Across the Pond column.

While attending a virtual transatlantic seminar on burden sharing recently, I heard two Americans arguing that Washington needed to prioritize military engagement in Asia over continued engagement in Europe — a view closely aligned with the incoming administration.

But my ears perked up when one of them said the U.S. “would maintain its extended nuclear deterrent,” even though Europe would need to defend itself against Russia’s military threat. This was reassuring, for America’s nuclear arsenal has been the cornerstone of NATO’s nuclear security for decades.

However, I have my doubts. NATO’s nuclear history consists of one long effort to reassure nonnuclear European allies that the U.S. would risk the destruction of New York or Washington to defend Berlin or Warsaw. One way it has done so is by deploying nuclear weapons in Europe and offering some European allies to fly their own aircraft carrying U.S. nuclear weapons.

The more important reassurance, however, has always involved the deployment of U.S. troops on the front line, which guarantees America will be involved in any war from the very first shot. It is those troops that make America’s security commitment, including its nuclear deterrent, very real — both for Russia and for NATO allies.

When I pointed this out, though, the presenter suggested that European countries may want to consider getting nuclear deterrents of their own then. After all, they argued, Washington had supported “good proliferation” before — just look at France and the U.K. But while this view isn’t all that far removed from what President-elect Donald Trump has been saying, it’s also a very slippery slope.

Indeed, back in 2016, then-candidate Trump argued that Korea and Japan might want to get nuclear weapons to deal with North Korea’s arsenal. He then offered them little reassurance that the U.S. had their backs. And later, as president, he was more concerned with getting allies to “pay up” than defending them in the event of an attack.

Of course, worries about nuclear proliferation are nothing new. In 1963, then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy warned of a “world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons.” But while Washington did help some allies with their nuclear programs, its longer-term effort was to stem the desire for acquiring nuclear weapons through a combination of arms control and alliance building.

Together with the Soviet Union, the U.S. negotiated the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which committed nonnuclear states to remain so, and nuclear states to work toward nuclear disarmament. Washington also bolstered its nuclear commitments to allies in Europe and Asia, sharing nuclear information and inviting some allies to participate in nuclear missions.

These efforts have been extraordinarily successful. Since the NPT was signed in 1968, only five other countries developed nuclear weapons — and one of those, South Africa, dismantled its small arsenal in the 1990s. Over the past few decades, arms control agreements— as well as stronger alliances — reduced nuclear inventories by nearly 90 percent.

But now, this strategy is under severe stress. New START, the last remaining U.S.-Russia strategic arms control agreement, will expire in little over a year. Moscow has already made clear it doesn’t seek another extension, and Washington is now concerned that Beijing’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal means future negotiations will mean trying to pull off a more complicated and difficult tripartite agreement……………………………………………………………………….

it’s not just Trump — America’s actions have been running counter to Washington’s nonproliferation interests for longer than that…………………………………………………………

As a nuclear power, Russia deters the U.S. and its allies from directly defending Ukraine, but as a nonnuclear power, Iran can do little to prevent the U.S. and its allies from directly defending Israel. No surprise, then, that the International Atomic Energy Agency recently announced Tehran had “dramatically” accelerated its uranium enrichment efforts.

In a world less constrained by international norms and rules, and increasingly governed by sheer power, the strictures that long constrained nuclear proliferation are now in danger of loosening — if not untangling altogether. And in such a world, even “good” proliferation can soon lead to very bad results. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-study-proliferation-risk-haleu-nuclear-fuel-after-warning-by-scientists-2025-01-08/

January 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment