16-08-2023: The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) reported on August 4 that the US military already has plans for a US Air Force Command Centre to be built in Darwin, which has not even been mentioned by any Australian politician or in parliament itself. The plans are described in US budget filings at a cost of $40 million.[1] This one positive contribution to journalism is a rare break with the usual practice of the reporting of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) which some joke stands for “Always Bashing China”. As the saying goes, many a true word has been spoken in jest. The ABC and the mainstream media are as much a part of the gears of war against the People’s Republic of China as the US troops being “rotated” through Darwin ever since former Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard signed Australia up to Washington’s “pivot to Asia” ten years ago. Today, Australia is a willing partner of AUKUS (Australia – United Kingdom – United States of America), which is a transparent war alliance squarely aimed at preparations for a catastrophic war on China.
Nuclear powered submarines
However, the overwhelming majority of the Australian people have no interest in a war with China and are horrified by the thought of it even if intense anti-China propaganda over the last ten years has whipped up irrational fears about the Asian economic powerhouse. Moreover, China is by far Australia’s largest trading partner for both imports and exports, by tens of billions of dollars.[2] Australia’s economy would be on its knees if a war was to eliminate Chinese imports and raw material exports to China. Some parts of the Australian ruling class are willing to pay this price, while other members of the elite are not so enthusiastic. This explains why there are government attempts to maintain and/or expand trade with China at the same time as parliamentary parties clamour for war, eagerly allowing the US to use Australia as a southern staging post for its troops and military equipment. Nuclear capable B-52 bombers from the US have already been stationed at the upgraded Tindal Air Base in the Northern Territory (NT),[3] with not even the pretence of a public discussion.
Nor has there been any public or institutional debate about the Australian government spending a jaw-dropping $368 billion by 2055 to supposedly build eight nuclear powered submarines, which MAY enter service sometime in the 2040s.[4] Nuclear powered submarines are noted for their ability to travel ultra-long distances without the need to refuel, and thus IF these vessels are built, they are intended for little else but long range war missions against China. In the meantime, Australia will be used as merely a parking garage for US submarines, war planes and other military equipment. Other countries in the region are being strong-armed to simply accept a vastly expanded US military presence, such as the Philippines (although the current Filipino government is a willing participant) and Papua New Guinea. While countries bordering the South China Sea regularly have fishing and waterway access disputes, these disagreements would never lead to war unless the US state and their allies in Europe and Australia weaponise them. Meanwhile US and often Australian warships sail straight through the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait itself, ostentatiously claiming “freedom of navigation”.
Taiwan the next proxy war?
Yet the claimed “freedom of navigation” justification by the Western powers is as hypocritical as it can get. This is because this concept is contained in, and stems from, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This convention has been ratified by 157 countries, but not the US! Then the West points accusing fingers towards China for “aggression” when it takes guarded measures in response to Western warships sailing within eyesight of its coastal borders. All this while Taiwan is being prepped to be the next proxy war, in an eerily similar way in which Ukraine was readied for a proxy war with Russia for twenty or so years. On paper, all Western governments, including the US and Australia, recognise and accept the “One China” policy, which is predicated primarily on the recognition of Taiwan being a part of China. All nations intending to trade any amount of goods into or out of China must recognise the government in Beijing as the sole body which administers China. If this is not done, then lucrative access to China’s markets containing a 1.4 billion strong population is a non-starter. As China is today virtually the manufacturing hub of the world, all Western nations dutifully salute “One China”, or at least pass official resolutions to this effect.
Yet the Western elites have little intention in being genuine about Taiwan, or much else to do with China. For, the US has been funnelling weapons into Taiwan at increasing rates, while US politicians provocatively visit Taiwan while waffling about the need to protect Taiwan’s “democracy”. Taiwan cannot be separated from the Chinese mainland except through Taiwan declaring a faux “independence” followed by an AUKUS/NATO intervention. It is extremely doubtful that substantial numbers of Taiwanese will be prepared to fight and die for the US in a war against the Chinese mainland, in the manner in which Ukrainian Nazified forces are currently being used as cannon fodder by NATO in a proxy war against Russia. However, not even the gruesome end of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in that conflict will deter the US ruling class from trying it on elsewhere. For them, China’s economic and political rise, alongside its allies, is a threat to the US led unipolar world.
No Nuclear Subs! Shut down all US bases!
No war on China! No war on Russia!
Abolish AUKUS! Abolish NATO!
E: RealLeftAustralia@gmail.com
t.me/RealLeftAustralia
[1] www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-04/abc-uncovers-plans-for-us-air-force-centre-to-be-built-in-nt/102688804 (08-08-2023)
[2] www.oec.world/en/profile/country/aus/ (08-08-2023)
[3] www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/b-52-bombers-only-part-very-long-australian-story (08-08-2023)
[4] www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/14/aukus-nuclear-submarines-australia-commits-substantial-funds-into-expanding-us-shipbuilding-capacity (08-08-2023)
Comments from the Workers League
16-08-2023: The Australia-United Kingdom-United States of America war alliance (AUKUS) is a threat to working people the world over and must be abolished. It is a straight-forward alliance for war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC), where the ruling classes of the AUKUS powers are the clear aggressors and provocateurs. While we should welcome all shades of opinion in an attempt to mobilise working people against a potential nuclear war, the campaign against AUKUS needs to develop in a much clearer anti-imperialist direction if it is to make gains. The rally called by the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition (AAAC) at the Australian Labor Party (ALP) National Conference in Brisbane in August is a good start, but the politics and rationale of their protest call must be discussed and debated further, with genuine Marxists leading the way.
1. The class nature of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
AAAC opposes a war against the PRC, opposes the Australian government spending $368 billion dollars on nuclear powered submarines, and recognises that the submarines will not be used to “defend” Australia, but to “project power and threaten China”.[1] Of this there is no doubt, but left alone is the reason why US, British and Australian imperialism is preparing to wage war on the PRC. Is it only the competition of a rival? Is it just that the PRC is competing for the same markets? Is it just that the PRC is a “Near-Peer”[2] competitor? The PRC’s economy has already surpassed that of the economy of the United States of America in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP – the amount of goods and services which can be purchased for a given amount of money) back in 2014.[3] In 2016, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) predicted that the PRC’s economy will surpass, in other significant measures, the economy of the US by 2029.[4] Several years later, this prediction is being brought forward. Many say that 2025 is the point at which the PRC will surpass the US economically, and that this is the time at which it will be too late. From that point on – barring a worldwide catastrophe – the US and their Western allies in Europe will be left behind and will never catch up.
US-led imperialism cannot even tolerate independence, let alone a rival, let alone one which simply moves ahead of it and leaves it behind. Its answer is a catastrophic nuclear war – even while many Western countries continue to trade and invest in the PRC. Yet the “rise of China” is only possible due to the fact the PRC overthrew capitalism back in 1949 and began constructing a workers’ state. It took decades to reach the manufacturing, scientific and technological power it now possesses – but this would not be possible unless the economy did not run primarily on the basis of private production for private profit, and the state ensured and guided its progress based on planned priorities. The land in the PRC is nationalised (despite constant complaints about this from pro-business West[5]), the major and strategic means of production are publicly owned, and the economy is managed through Five Year Plans. The first one was launched in 1953, four years after the founding of the PRC.[6] Clearly, the PRC has socialistic rule, and this provides the basis for its modern stupendous economic ascendancy.
The PRC is today demonstrating what Marxists have asserted for 200 years – that the socialist mode of production is the logical successor to the capitalist mode of production. It is far more productive, can raise living standards much higher, and enables much further advances in science, technology and education. At the same time, political power in the PRC is monopolised by a Stalinist bureaucratic caste crystallised within the Communist Party of China (CPC). This is one reason the CPC (not “China”) capitulated to the nonsensical “Covid” narrative which caused immense harm. The working class in the PRC does not exercise political decision-making power through elected councils – but does nevertheless benefit from the proletarian class nature of the state. The courts, armed forces, police and other state bodies protect the working class, though imperfectly. Despite conservative bureaucratic rule, the state in the PRC does provide a certain safety net, advanced infrastructure and a developing level of culture – though with limitations. To overcome this and open the road to genuine socialism, authentic Trotskyists call for a proletarian political revolution to sweep away Stalinist rule (taking into account the historical role of Maoism in relation to the 20th century) and establish workers’ councils open to all political tendencies willing to defend the gains of 1949.
Thus an AUKUS led war on China would not be an “inter-imperialist war”, but a war OF imperialism against the world’s most powerful bureaucratically deformed workers’ state. In this context, we call for the unconditional military defence of the PRC, while offering no political support to the decidedly non-revolutionary political leadership of the CPC. In the event of war breaking out – no matter which side fires first – this also entails calling for the military defeat of the imperialist AUKUS alliance, via non-cooperation of all military production and transport where possible, and the formation of workers’ committees to coordinate strikes, demonstrations and other activity. In Australia, this may well require a direct challenge to the ossified Trade Union officials, the liberal left and other peace organisations, such as the AAAC. Such bodies have remained silent or have quietly applauded dire NATO provocations which constantly threaten nuclear war against Russia via Ukraine and elsewhere.
2. “Renewable Energy”
The AAAC and other so-called left parties call for “climate action not war” and/or the funding of essential services (health and education), rather than war preparations. Many of these groups nonetheless politically merged with the capitalist state during “Covid”, even when the police and the army were being mobilised against working people in the supposed name of “health”. Covid detention centres were built and operated with the full political backing of many of these groups now politely requesting the very same government to spend taxpayers’ money on essential services! Nonetheless, the devastating wildfires in Hawaii recently[7] have yet again demonstrated that “climate action” is indeed critically urgent. However, just as working people cannot cooperate with “its own” ruling class on an imperialist war, neither can working people bloc with the capitalist state on funding for education, nor on taking the first steps towards reducing or eliminating greenhouse gases. Rather, independent working-class political action with the aim of taking all energy sources into public hands is what is required. If achieved, this is much more likely to lead towards the expropriation of the major means of production – and a bridge towards a workers’ republic. Meanwhile, the same government of the mega-billionaires which is threatening the world with a nuclear war on China (and Russia) cannot be trusted – to say the least – to take climate action !!
The AAAC and most other liberal left organisations take the decades old position of total opposition to nuclear energy/nuclear power. Generally, they argue instead that “renewable energy”, by which they mean mainly solar and wind power, should replace the fossil fuels of coal, oil (burnt as petrol or diesel) and gas. It is true that the anti-nuclear movement largely held sway over the left during the 1980s and for a considerable time afterwards. However, with the pressing need to move towards low or zero carbon energy sources due to the ongoing series of climate disasters over the last two decades, many workers and scientists are returning to look again at nuclear energy – given that it produces no carbon when operating.[8] Solar and wind power generate zero carbon when operating also, but the supreme problem with solar and wind power is the storage and then the delivery of the energy collected “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow”.[9] There are also significant environmental problems with the large scale production of solar panels and wind turbines, some of which were demonstrated in the 2019 documentary film Planet of the Humans.[10]
Safety concerns about nuclear energy were also prevalent in previous generations. Yet, as technology advances, all kinds of safety measures can be built into nuclear reactors to make the possibility of a serious accident negligible.[11] New small modular reactors (SMRs) can vastly reduce the size and scale of the construction of a traditional reactor, can be assembled in a factory, and deployed almost anywhere regardless of geographical conditions.[12] Concerns about the over-use of water for cooling nuclear reactors are also being surpassed with the development of thorium fuelled reactors, which have no requirement for cooling water. Thorium is much more plentiful in the Earth’s crust than Uranium, and the material cannot be easily used for the production of nuclear weapons. Due to the fact that Thorium reactors can be used in arid environments, the PRC deformed workers’ state is deploying them in the sparsely populated desert regions of western China, as part of its flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).[13] Basically, for every objection raised by the outmoded anti-nuclear movement, there is a scientific and technological solution which renders such concerns immaterial.
To be sure, even greenhouse gas emissions on their own are only a part of the environmental degradation from which the planet suffers. Plastics in the ocean, nitrogen-based fertilisers running off into water catchments, the clear-felling of forests, industrial waste and much more are just as urgent. Yet it is extremely unwise for working people to oppose one form of technology – and one which contains a number of solutions in itself at that. Solar and wind technology may be the most appropriate use of resources in some locations and for some uses. Yet to rely entirely on solar and wind for all the energy needs of humanity is at the very least impractical. Moreover, the working class defeats itself if it joins politically with capitalist industry in favour of solar and wind power – or nuclear power for that matter. Under capitalism, the exploitation of the natural environment cannot be separated from the exploitation of the labour power of the working class. The aim of socialism is to remove the ability of private capital to exploit labour, and thus degrade and distort the lives of working people. Expropriating the major means of production and placing them collectively in the hands of the public, administered by a workers’ government, provides the basis for the removal of the “need” to exploit the environment.
3. Nuclear weapons
AAAC states that it is campaigning for “an Australia that is committed to peace, justice and a nuclear-free world”.[14] AAAC, and other liberals unfortunately conflate nuclear energy, nuclear science and nuclear technology with nuclear weapons. Hence their call for “the Australian Government to immediately sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”.[15] The notion that the government which remains a bitter class enemy of working people should be pleaded with to sign international treaties displays a liberal cross-class conception of the state. The Australian capitalist state does NOT represent working people in Australia or internationally – it represents a tiny handful of elite billionaire corporate magnates, to put it mildly. It demonstrates this daily by preparing a diabolical war on China for having the temerity to outperform it in economic terms. Moreover, shepherding workers towards approaching the government of the corporate class cap-in-hand profoundly disempowers them.
Rather, workers should put forward demands which will mobilise the largest numbers of the most class aware to achieve them. Moreover, while it is the case that nuclear weapons can be developed with nuclear material, this is by no means automatic. It remains always a political decision whether a state embarks on the road to build nuclear weapons. In an ideal world, all states from all corners of the globe would agree not to develop nuclear weapons given the possibility of vaporising human civilisation. Yet in his time, Lenin ridiculed the notion that wars can be avoided through gentlemanly agreements between the predator “great” powers themselves, or between the “great” powers and the non-imperialist bloc and developing nations. As long as imperialism exists, wars can only be ended by the joint efforts of workers overthrowing imperialism itself – via social revolutions which bring about workers’ states.
This side of socialism, it remains a fact that US led imperialism may well invade and destroy a nation which DOES NOT have nuclear weapons to defend itself. Witness the wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, for example. This is one reason the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or “North Korea”) decided that it had no alternative but to develop a nuclear weapons deterrent over the last 25 years. It has done so, and it has not been invaded – though Washington and its allies constantly threaten to do just that. Enormous resources are needed to develop nuclear weapons, and the design and building of them in the DPRK diverts much needed reserves to the military. Nevertheless, the fact that it has done so has (so far) guaranteed its security. Hence, workers internationally must defend the right of non-imperialist states (Russia, Iran) and bureaucratically deformed workers’ states (PRC, DPRK) to develop nuclear weapons if they choose to do so.
While the approach of World War III contains grave dangers, working people should not submit to despair. The imperialists launched World War I – which led to the October Revolution and the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The imperialists unleashed World War II – which led to the expansion of (bureaucratised) socialism into Eastern Europe, and later led to socialist revolutions in China, Korea, Cuba and Vietnam. The imperialists take the great risk of a result of spreading socialism further if they embark on World War III. Key to bringing about such an outcome, however, is the painstaking construction of internationally linked Marxist vanguard parties inspired by 1917 and the clear-sighted leadership of VI Lenin, LD Trotsky and the Bolshevik Party.
E: workersleague@protonmail.com
http://www.redfireonline.com
[1] www.antiaukuscoalition.org/ (12-08-2023)
[2] www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/its-time-to-retire-the-term-near-peer-competitor-when-it-comes-to-china/ (12-08-2023)
[3] www.ibtimes.com/china-economy-surpasses-us-purchasing-power-americans-dont-need-worry-1701804 (12-08-2023)
[4] www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/the-world-s-top-economy-the-us-vs-china-in-five-charts/ (12-08-2023)
[5] www.chinadashboard.gist.asiasociety.org/winter-2021/page/land (12-08-2023)
[6] www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202010/26/WS5f960a78a31024ad0ba80c76.html (12-08-2023)
[7] www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1192865955/maui-wildfires-hurricane-evacuation-lahaina (12-08-2023)
[8] www.energyforhumanity.org/en/briefings/energy/nuclear-and-carbon-emissions-the-facts/ (13-08-2023)
[9] www.physicsworld.com/a/why-we-need-to-tackle-renewable-energys-storage-problem/ (13-08-2023)
[10] www.planetofthehumans.com/ (13-08-2023)
[11] www.nae.edu/19579/19582/21020/239120/239255/Why-the-Unique-Safety-Features-of-Advanced-Reactors-Matter (13-08-2023)
[12] www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-reactors-smrs (13-08-2023)
[13] www.livescience.com/china-creates-new-thorium-reactor.html (13-08-2023)
[14] www.antiaukuscoalition.org/statement-of-principles/ (13-08-2023)
[15] Ibid, 14.
Image credit: http://www.johnmenadue.com
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