By World BEYOND War, May 27, 2025
Keep Space for Peace!
WBW Board Members Liz Remmerswaal and Alison Broinowski.
Remarks by Peter Murphy:
I acknowledge the Gadigal people and their elders past and present, as the traditional owners of this land we are on in Darling Harbour.
I am active in the Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition and many other projects of our anti-war movement here in Sydney.
Space has been a military domain since 1957 when the Sputnik satellite was launched into orbit by the Soviet Union. The US was very quick to catch up and made sure its Apollo Mission to the moon in 1969 was all about dominating space. Already by then the Pine Gap spy base was up and running near Alice Springs, controlled by the US National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. Australia has been part of the militarisation of space for over 50 years. Pine Gap has long been a war fighting base as well as a massive surveillance facility.
Yes, there have been a lot of really important civilian and deep science spinoffs from the space programs, but these are not the main objective, which is military dominance.
This conference here today and tomorrow is all about warfare, and chimes in with the AUKUS nuclear powered attack submarines, the quantum computing, cyberwarfare and hypersonic missile projects in AUKUS Pillar 2, and the massive buildup of US Marines and air forces in northern Australia. These are all part of the build up to a US war against China, to reassert US military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.
Back in 2014 the Obama administration commissioned the Rand Corporation to report on how a war with China might unfold, on what its consequences could be. In 2015, the Rand Corporation published its report titled War With China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.
This is part of the scenario it painted about how war between these two nuclear powers could begin, either in the West Philippine Sea or around Taiwan.
The first moves by either side would be high impact attacks on command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems.
This is where the US Space Command, and its Chinese equivalent, come in, mainly moving killer satellites close to each other’s surveillance and communications satellites and blowing them up or disabling them with laser strikes or other electronic pulse weapons. Undersea, here would be strikes on fibre optic cables.
This would be immediately followed by missiles, bombs and cyber attacks. The highest targeting priority for China would be U.S. aircraft carrier groups, land bases in the western Pacific, and other force concentrations in the region. Think Guam, the Philippines, Japan, northern Australia, including Pine Gap. For the United States, it would be Chinese capabilities to deny US navy and aircraft approaches to China and around the island chain going from Japan to the southern Philippines. Most of these targets would be on the Chinese mainland.
The Rand Corporation predicted that such a war fought in 2025, this year, would cause massive military losses on both sides, and dramatically damage the Chinese and US economics, but with China suffering more damage than the US. Even if such a conflict did not lead to nuclear war, it would cause a massive global economic depression. Rand really said there would be no clear winner and strongly advised against anyone starting such a war. But then it went on to advise the US to build up its military alliances in the region and be prepared for a massive industrial effort to sustain fighting if it did break out. Of course that is what has been happening in each US administration since Obama.
I urge the participants in this conference to declare that space must be for peaceful purposes only, and to refuse to take part in military-related research and development projects. Refuse to take part in war, no matter how much money the US military industrial complex throws at you.
The Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition has two simple demands – No AUKUS Nuclear Submarines and No War with China.
No Nuclear Subs, No War with China!
Space for Peace, not for War!
Thank you very much
