By Alison Broinowski, Australians for War Powers Reform, September 30, 2024
Among many events on and around 21 September, the International Day of Peace, an audience of nearly 500 took part in person and by zoom in a multilingual, global conference in Australia, Germany, Colombia and the United States. The collaborating organisers in Sydney of NOWAR2024 were Raising Peace and WorldBEYONDWar.
They devised a program to consider problems and solutions. Session 1 asked about problems caused by the strategic reach of the US into Australia. Session 2 considered how a strategically independent Australia could be achieved as a solution. While the conference agenda was broad many guest speakers discussed crucial issues related to the AWPR policy focus – transparency, accountability and sovereignty.
As part of his acknowledgement of country, and in his speech to Session 2 of the conference, Pastor Ray Minniecon quoted Costa Rica’s 1948 Constitution (article 12) which stated that ‘The Army as a permanent institution is abolished’. He urged Australia to do the same, becoming a neutral nation like Switzerland, Ireland, or Malta, one in which First Nations people have a ‘seat at the table’ and are listened to.
In Session 1, Karina Lester used a dramatic graphic showing Australia’s uranium mines, weapons test sites, and proposed nuclear waste dumps. First Nations people have no more warning or consultation about them than they had during the 1950s and 60s when British atom bomb tests blinded her late father, Yami. Nuclear isn’t the answer, she declared, nor is war. Sovereignty has been stripped from First Nations people. AUKUS takes it away from all Australians.
Former Premier and Foreign Minister Bob Carr used the example of Costa Rica to show that a nation without a military force is sustainable, including for Palestine which proposes becoming a non-militarised state. In Australia the Army, he predicted, will become unaffordable and redundant if AUKUS goes ahead. Anthony Albanese should have called for an inquiry and then backed the French non-nuclear submarine option instead. The presence in Australia of American SSNs, bombers, and military erodes Australian sovereignty and is the sole reason for a Chinese attack on Australia. But in 2029, whoever becomes president of the US after Harris or Trump, AUKUS is ‘going to fall over’. Yet Australia refuses to oppose the integration of our defence with America’s. Australia’s dependency is like that of Puerto Rica and Micronesia.
Former ABC journalist and co-editor of Declassified Australia, Peter Cronau, summarised his recent articles about US military and intelligence installations in Australia, first at Northwest Cape near Exmouth, then the secretively expanding Pine Gap, at Kogarena near Geraldton, Stirling near Perth, Tindal out of Darwin with its facilities for B52 bombers, and Sherger on Cape York. US Marine deployments that began with 200 are now 2500, and are not temporary. As well, because these bases would be bombed first, backup bases are being built elsewhere. The role of HQJOC(B) near Bungendore is to plan, conduct, and control military operations. The 2015 Force Posture Agreement gives the US exclusive access to these facilities, and allows transition and storage of American nuclear weapons in Australia.
Agreeing with Cronau that Australia needs such information to be shared and publicly debated, Dr Sue Wareham of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) recommended that Australia should do away with accepting the US ‘neither confirm nor deny’ policy on whether the US brings nuclear weapons into Australia on its vessels or aircraft. She pointed to the prospect of a major catastrophic war with China. Militarism is infiltrating Australia’s education system, and the top five American weapons companies are all trying to capture the best young scientists, particularly women, by providing educational material to underfunded public schools. The warfare industry should have no place in our education system, she argued. MAPW will be hosting a discussion on 11 October, live streamed from the University of Melbourne, on universities and weapons manufacturers.
In Session 2, Dr Albert Palazzo of ADFA proposed that the problem is not American but Australian. Governments which could ask the US to leave the bases, opt instead to be loyal allies. AUKUS is a one-sided deal in the interests of the US and makes our dependency worse. Erroneously predicated on fear of China, Australian policy should radically shift away from military responses, and put diplomacy first, as a much cheaper, more effective option. We should resolve our colonial experience, become comfortable with our past, and become an independent, neutral sovereign state. This should be a grand strategy at all levels of government. We may be forced to do it if a global catastrophe leaves us no choice, or if the US descends into such political and social chaos that it cannot be our ‘protector’.
Lili Barto, fresh from demonstrating at the Land Forces Expo in Melbourne, argued that on the contrary Australians should become uncomfortable with our past, adopt more confrontational tactics, ‘build our own community infrastructure, then burn down the system’. Protest and direct action can achieve more than committee discussion about military strategies. Young people are smart and tactical and are organising themselves to connect action with outcomes. To her own question about what to collapse and build into what, she replied, ‘Do all of it’: dismantling not only the Israel/Gaza conflict but also the global North/South, rich/poor basis on which all wars are fought.
In Q+A time, former diplomat John Lander urged Australians to abandon fear or our neighbours, and to dismantle the imperial alliance in favour of neutrality. He did not believe that the US would go to war with China, but would use Australia and possibly Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines as its proxy fighters, with disastrous results.
Summing up the conference, Chris Walker said Australia has always been under imperial control, and the impact of the US military presence makes it more so. But there is hope: détente between the US and China is an aim for Australia to pursue; we should be less fearful and ask more questions of government and of our allies; we can find comfort in our shared nationality; we can move to become neutral and a republic.
