Australia Readies for World War: Tragedy, or Just Plain Farce?

Australia Readies for World War:
Tragedy, or Just Plain Farce?
by Gabrielle Peut, Aaron Isherwood, and Allen Douglas

July 13, 2012 EIR International 39
This article originally appeared in the June/July 2012
edition of The New Citizen, the newspaper of the Citizens
Electoral Council, the LaRouche political movement
in Australia. The CEC is a federally registered
political party.

Australia is deep into preparations for a British-directed,
Obama-led, nuclear world war against Russia and
China. Indeed, our nation is a key chess piece in that
war. Should such a war unfold, we will be hit by Chinese
nuclear weapons, and perhaps by Russian ones as well.
This reality was the subject of a secret chapter in
Australia’s 2009 Defence White Paper, which envisaged
an armed showdown initiated by the USA and
Australia against China, beginning with Australian submarines
blockading China’s sea lanes, followed by China’s
hitting the Pine Gap radar installation with a missile.
The Australian of 2 June summarised, “A secret
chapter in the Rudd government’s 2009 defence white
paper detailed a plan to fight a war with China, in which
the navy’s submarines would help blockade its trade
routes, and raised the prospect of China firing missiles
at targets in Australia in retaliation.”
Such an attack on Pine Gap, a joint US-Australian
facility, vital to US global signals intelligence and its
ever expanding global Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD)
system, would almost certainly unleash a US nuclear
reprisal and world war. The 29 March 2012 issue of
Global Times, an official Beijing paper written for foreign
readers, editorialised that “North Korea and Iran
are named by Washington as the targets of the missile
defense system, though it is clear the real targets are
China and Russia.” Moreover, the editorial warned,
“Installing a missile defense system in Asia disrespects
China’s nuclear policy. The US is seeking to shift the
regional balance. A strong response from China should
be expected. An overarching missile defense system
would force China to change its long-held nuclear
policy.” As all experts know, “change its long-held nuclear
policy” refers to abandonment of China’s pledge
of “no first use” of nuclear weapons.
Shocking though it may be, the prospect of Australia
being bombarded by nuclear missiles should come
as no surprise. After all, the British Crown is preparing
for nuclear war, and Australia has never been anything
but a (sometimes) restive colony within the British
Empire. How could Australia not be in the thick of it?
For the past decade, under the British-steered foreign
policies of Presidents Bush and Obama, the United
States has been building a worldwide BMD system, intended
to make possible a US first strike against Russia
and China. Since no later than 2004, when Australia
signed a far-reaching BMD agreement with the USA,
we have been a linchpin in that mad scheme. Obama’s
much ballyhooed November 2011 visit to Australia,
with the agreement finalised to host 2,500 US Marines
at Darwin permanently, was just the latest step in this
escalating process of establishing “joint” US-Australian
facilities. In the words of one military analyst,
“Taken together, the result of these policy and force
structure changes may well be, from a Chinese perspective,
that Australia is not so much hosting US military
bases, as becoming a virtual US base in its own right.”1
The British Created the Cold War
The Australian Defence Signals Directorate, like all
our military and intelligence agencies, is so deeply integrated
into its British and American counterparts as to
constitute a single entity. The modern form of this integration
began after the end of World War II; it has escalated
over the past decade.
By 1945, the United States had created an agroindustrial
powerhouse without precedent in world history.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt intended to
wield this power to rid the world of economic back-
1. Richard Tanter, “After Obama—The New Joint Facilities,” Nautilus
Institute for Security and Sustainability (nautilus.org), March 2012. The
author is a professor at the University of Melbourne and former senior
curriculum consultant for the Deakin University/Australian Defence
College Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies.
Australia Readies for World War:
Tragedy, or Just Plain Farce?
by Gabrielle Peut, Aaron Isherwood, and Allen Douglas
40 International EIR July 13, 2012
wardness and colonial looting by the
British Empire, which still controlled
much of that world. FDR’s son and
aide Elliott Roosevelt reported in his
book As He Saw It, that his father
said as much to the arch-imperialist
British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, driving the latter “apoplectic.”
But with Roosevelt’s death
on 12 April 1945, Vice President
Harry
S Truman, a corrupt, ignorant stooge
of Wall Street and the British, became
US President. Instead of the alliance
of China, the Soviet Union, and the
United States, which FDR had envisioned
as breaking the British Empire,
the British orchestrated the Cold War.
The threat of nuclear war has hung
over the world since then.
Standing with his puppet Truman
in Fulton, Missouri on 5 March 1946,
Churchill announced the Cold War.
The crux of the matter, he thundered,
was to confront the Soviet Union by
a “special relationship between the British Commonwealth
and Empire and the United States”—primarily a
military relationship that would establish supranational
armed forces and oversee the “continuous rise of world
organisation”: in other words, world government.
The Cold War gave birth to institutions such as the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the South
East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), the Central
Eastern Treaty Organisation (CENTO) covering the
Middle East, and so forth. Crucial for Australia was the
1946 UK-US Agreement on defence and intelligence,
particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT), among the
UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This
was “perhaps the single most important intelligence
agreement ever reached, and perhaps the most important
security agreement after World War II.”2 Australia was
integral to its implementation. An officially “joint” facility
with the USA at the North West Cape became the
major Southern Hemisphere communications base for
US nuclear-armed submarines, while the Pine Gap and
Nurrungar electronic listening stations were tasked to intercept
Soviet communications and monitor their radar
2. Greg Sheridan, The Partnership: The Inside Story of the US-Australian
Alliance Under Bush and Howard (Sydney: New South Wales,
2006, p. 107).
development, missile launches, and
bomb tests.
Such facilities made Australia a
target for Soviet nuclear weapons, as
all Australian leaders understood, but
rarely acknowledged in public. One
such admission came from Minister
of Defence Kim Beazley on 11 August
1997, in parliamentary testimony
that “we accepted that the joint facilities
were probably targets” of the
USSR. Former Deputy Secretary of
Defence
Paul Dibb, author of the “Fortress
Australia” defence policy now
being scrapped, was more blunt in
The Australian of 10 September 2005:
“We judged, for example, that
the SS-11 ICBM3 site at Svobodny
in Siberia was capable of inflicting
one million instant deaths and
750,000 radiation deaths on Sydney.
And you would not have wanted to
live in Alice Springs [near Pine
Gap], Woomera [by Nurrungar] or
Exmouth [on the N.W. Cape]—or even Adelaide [where
SIGINT offices were].”
Mike Pezzullo, Beazley’s deputy chief of staff in
1997-2001, was the principal author of the 2009 Defence
White Paper projecting a US-Australian war with
China, a paper which has painted nuclear bull’s eyes on
Australia once again.
By a formal agreement signed in July 2004, Australia
became a charter, and obviously major US partner,
in the strategic plan for a showdown with China. Our
defence and foreign policies are now guided by that
strategy, as formalised at meetings of the Australia-
United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN)
and the Australia-UK Ministerial Dialogue (AUKMIN)
The USA makes a splash with its high-profile military
and intelligence buildup in Australia, typified by
Obama’s visit last year. But the British Empire remains
the guiding hand. Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The
Australian, wrote on 27 December 2007 about startling
discoveries he had made while preparing his book on
the intensifying US-Australian alliance:
“In researching it I was astonished at just how intimate
the US-Australian military and intelligence relationships
have become. But the most surprising thing I
discovered while writing the book did not directly concern
the Americans at all. Rather, it was the astonishing,
defense.gov.au
Michael Pezzullo, deputy chief of staff
1997-2001, was the principal author of
the 2009 Defence White Paper projecting
a US-Australian war with China, a paper
which has painted a nuclear bull’s eye on
Australia once again.
July 13, 2012 EIR International 41
continuing, political, military and intelligence closeness
between Australia and Britain. . . . Everywhere I
went in the US-Australia alliance, I found the Brits.”
Moreover, wrote Sheridan in the book, “In some
ways, in the assessment area, the Australian relationship
with the UK is even more intimate than it is with the US.”
‘Interoperability’
The 2004 AUSMIN conference laid down a program
of joint US-Australian training and creation of a
Joint Combat Training Centre (JCTC). Then-Defence
Minister Robert Hill described its purpose: “Under the
concept, facilities at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area
in Queensland and the Bradshaw Training Area and
Delamere Air Weapons Range in the Northern Territory
will be further developed and able to be linked with
American facilities. Our initial priority will be to upgrade
the Shoalwater Bay facility to support the first of
the Taslisman Sabre series of biennial joint training exercises.
. . . Talisman Sabre will see tens of thousands of
Australian and US military personnel undertake land,
sea and air training in operations such as full-scale amphibious
landing, airstrike bomb runs using live munitions
as well as high-tech computer simulated scenarios.
. . . We also plan to further develop and link
Bradshaw and Delamere into the training centre so that
similar training exercises can be undertaken there.”
The stated purpose of these measures was to create
such a high degree of “interoperability” between the
US and Australian defence forces, that they would effectively
become a single entity. The merger was described
by the Department of Defence at a 2006 parliamentary
inquiry into Australia’s Defence Relations
with the United States: “A mature JCTC should not be
seen as a test range or even a series of ranges. The JCTC
should function as a training system that links training
management systems, training areas, simulations,
headquarters and units. It is proposed that the JCTC
should be linked to the US Pacific Command’s Pacific
War-fighting Center and the US Joint Force Command’s
Joint National Training Capability as part of the
US Global Joint Training Infrastructure.”
Tragedy or Farce?
Now the [Prime Minister Julia] Gillard government
has “embarked on the nation’s biggest-ever capital
works project,” The Australian reported 3 May. The
price tag is a staggering $56 billion. Was this the announcement
of a long-overdue infrastructure program to
address our collapsed physical economy and mass unemployment?
Not on your life. It was $40 billion to build
12 state-of-the-art submarines to replace the Navy’s six
aging Collins-class subs, and another $16 billion committed
to purchasing up to 100 of the advanced Joint
Strike Fighter, under development by the USA, to replace
Australia’s F/A-18 fighter-bombers and F-111
bomber fleets. The submarine portion, in the words of the
government’s own press release, is “the largest and most
complex Defence project ever undertaken by Australia.”
Is this some kind of bad joke? It is an open secret
that not only have the Collins submarines been a technical
disaster, but we lack enough submariners to man
more than one or two subs at any one time! Our industrial
base has been so savaged, that we had to subcontract
even much of the ill-fated Collins sub project to
hundreds of companies across twelve countries.
Who will build the new subs? Who will oversee the
project? Who will man the subs? Not Australians, at
any point in the process! They will be built mostly or
entirely abroad, and Gillard has already hired David
Gould, a 35-year veteran of “Nuclear Plans and Operations”
at the UK Ministry of Defence, to oversee the
project. The most promising staffing option is unemployed
British submariners, according to a 27 December
2011 story in The Telegraph (UK) about a Royal
Australian Navy recruiting trip to Britain.
To pay for the big-ticket items like advanced submarines,
fighter aircraft, and BMD infrastructure, other
aspects of our defence forces have been slashed relentlessly.
Our Navy’s submarine force has been decimated
in wave after wave of “efficiency reviews” over several
decades, while most of our remaining qualified electrical
and mechanical engineers have quit the military to
go to work for Rio Tinto or other British-owned mining
companies, for the sake of far higher pay and even for
better working conditions.
ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corp.] reported in
April 2009 on the life of submariners who work rotating
shifts of six hours on, six hours off, around the
clock, seven days a week. One submariner reported, “I
remember during one workup being on watch in the
control room with people so exhausted we were all slurring
like drunks. There were several deep draft ships
around and I couldn’t even see through the periscope
properly I was so tired. It was very dangerous.”
These are the crews who will be deployed to block
China’s sea lanes?
While cowboys, anglophile toadies, and political
hacks like Mike Pezzullo puff out their chests and bask in
Continued on page 44
42 International EIR July 13, 2012
Australian Defence Force
Expansion for
UK-USA War Plans
The stunning scale and constant upgrades of U.S.
Armed Forces “exercises,” “visits,” and “joint facilities”
across Australia expose the heated debate over
whether or not permanent foreign “bases” are being
allowed on Australian soil, as nothing but a dialogue
between residents of a loony bin. Figure 1 reveals
that Anglo-American strategic demands, and “interoperability”
with U.S. forces, are the driving principles,
both for officially “joint” facilities, and for
those which are simply shared without having that
status. Functions such as Australian submarine staffing
are starved for resources, but top priority goes to
signal intelligence (SIGINT), naval, air, and training
facilities for use in the U.S. global Ballistic Missile
Defence (BMD) program and the Anglo-American
confrontation with China.
FIGURE 1
Continued on next page
July 13, 2012 EIR International 43
SIGINT. Any scheme for a nuclear first strike
against Russia or China seeks to neutralise their
ability to retaliate; their missile launches from
land or sea must be detected and intercepted. Upgrading
Australia’s several SIGINT networks is integral
to the U.S. global BMD program for this purpose.
The Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), headquartered
in Canberra, administers SIGINT facilities
like the famous Pine Gap station near Alice
Springs. Pine Gap and the former Nurrungar station
in South Australia were central to the global
UKUSA agreement on joint SIGINT during the
Cold War, but Pine Gap underwent major expansion
after the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse. Though
information on Pine Gap is still classified, intelligence
expert Desmond Ball has testified to Parliament
that it handled ground control and processing
for geosynchronous satellites doing SIGINT on the
Soviet Union, including ballistic missile telemetry;
anti-missile and anti-aircraft radar signals; satellite
communications, and terrestrial microwave transmissions.
Nurrungar did missile launch and nuclear
detonation detection via U.S. geostationary military
satellites; after its decommissioning in 1999,
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson confirmed to
Parliament in 2007, that the ballistic missile launch
warning function, for sharing with the USA, was
handed to Pine Gap.
Australian coastal SIGINT supports the U.S.
Navy’s growing presence in the Asia-Pacific, as
well as providing communications for Australia’s
Navy and Air Force, which operate jointly with
the U.S. military. AUSMIN 2008 agreed on upgrading
the NW Cape Naval Communications
Station with joint communications systems usable
by U.S. attack submarines; in 2010 came
approval for the addition of a powerful space
sensor there as part of the U.S. Space Surveillance
Network, transmitting to the U.S. Joint
Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California, a key facility for
U.S. BMD tests in the Pacific Ocean and part of a
command assigned “to deny the benefits of space
to adversaries.” Signals to and from these facilities
are processed and transmitted between Canberra
DSD headquarters and the USA through
the Signals Regiment at Watsonia near Melbourne.
The Australian Defence Satellite Communications
Station is at Kojarena, east of Geraldton, WA.
This major DSD listening facility monitors Russian
and Chinese satellites under the UKUSA Agreement
and is part of the U.S.-Australian Wideband
Global SATCOM system of seven to nine highcapacity
military communications satellites, one
of them funded by Australia. In 2007, Australia
approved construction of an additional U.S. facility
at Kojarena, a ground station for the Mobile
User Objective System, an ultra-sophisticated satellite
communications system with four ground facilities:
in Sicily; Virginia and Hawaii, USA; and
Kojarena.
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network
(JORN), begun in the 1970s, but operating since
2003 on the basis of a major upgrade done with the
U.S.[ defence firm Lockheed Martin, is a unique capability.
Unlike conventional radars that transmit
on a straight “line of sight” and are therefore limited
by the Earth’s curvature, Jindalee bounces signals
off the ionosphere, back to ground receivers.
Besides an extraordinary “over-the-horizon” range,
the technology gives a from-above view of stealthtechnology
planes that are invisible to standard
radar. The JORN system has an acknowledged
range of 3,000-3,500 km, but it may already be
greater, covering parts of China. The original Jindalee
R&D site, near Pine Gap at Harts Range/
Mount Everard, has operational interfaces with
Pine Gap; the major receiving/transmission sites
(labelled J on the map) are at Longreach, Queensland
(Qld), and near Laverton, WA; another 10 ionosonde
sites are around Australia (small radar symbols);
and JORN administration and processing
takes place at the RAAF Edinburgh base in Adelaide.
Joint Combined Training Centre. Since
agreements in 2004, the USA has been granted
ever greater access to ADF bases for joint and unilateral
exercises. Facilities utilised, several of
which have been improved for the purpose, include
the Bradshaw Field Training Area (TA)—a former
cattle station only slightly smaller than the island
Continued on next page
44 International EIR July 13, 2012
of Cyprus, Mount Bundey TA, and the Delamere
Air Weapons Range (over 3,000 sq km), all
in the Northern Territory (NT); and the Shoalwater
Bay TA (4,500 sq km) and Townsville
Field TA in Qld. The U.S.-Australian Talisman
Sabre (TS) exercises, held with tens of thousands
of troops every two years since 2005, use
these ranges, as well as air space over the northern
NT, commercial ports at Brisbane, Gladstone,
and Port Alma in Qld, the waters of the
Coral, Timor, and Arafura Seas, and the Townsville,
Darwin, Tindal, and Amberley RAAF
bases.
The ADF says TS also trains teams for “defensive
and offensive operations in an urban environment,”
and has involved the Australian Federal
Police and the U.S. FBI, raising the question of
whether an included purpose is preparing to enforce
the police-state laws passed by the Howard
Government in 2002-03. The Delamere Range,
the RAAF’s principal bombing range, has also
been used since at least 2005 by U.S. forces including
B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers based in
Guam.
Northwest mineral cartel defence. Figure 1
shows planned Royal Australian Navy (RAN)
upgrades, such as a new east coast fleet base,
likely at Brisbane, to supplement Fleet Base
East in Sydney. Other existing bases will be expanded
to accommodate larger vessels. Certain
low-budget upgrades for the RAN and RAAF
are also recommended in the 2012 ADF Posture
Review: for the Air Force, runway extensions
at the Learmonth and Curtin so-called
bare bases, non-permanently-staffed facilities
used in the large-scale joint and other exercises.
Increased military port access is anticipated
at Common Use Facilities at Port Hedland and
other western and northern ports, where minerals
companies are expanding their export terminals.
That’s only fitting, since the ADF Posture
Review devotes a whole chapter to the need to
defend the raw materials-exporting industries of
northern and western Australia—that is, the
very Crown cartel companies that are looting
the national economy.
the power of their great American and British comrades
in war preparations against China, people with real military
experience at the highest levels in Australia, personally
responsible for making command decisions that may
decide the life or death of men and women in actual warfighting,
have sounded a different note. Peter Leahy, Australian
army chief in 2002-08, for instance, quoted in The
Australian of 12 April 2012, warned: “As a sovereign
nation Australia should maintain the ability to say ‘no’ to
the US and separate itself from their actions.” Pointing to
the ever greater US military presence in Australia, he
said, “These are momentous decisions with far-reaching
consequences. They potentially implicate Australia in a
series of actions that could lead to increased tension and
even conflict with China. War is improbable but not impossible.
Australia needs to be careful that it does not
make inevitable the future that it should fear the most.”
Another former army chief, Lt. Gen. John Sanderson,
echoed Leahy. The newspaper reported Sanderson’s
view “that Australia’s future lay in building a
proper strategic relationship with its Asian neighbours.”
He said, “This is where we live. And if there is anything
about this relationship with the Americans that impairs
our ability to build on that relationship then we should
have a much deeper strategic debate.”
When all is said and done, to whom would you
rather entrust the lives of yourself and your loved ones?
To veteran commanders who have had to think through
the implications of actual warfare, or to the wet dreams
of Rambos like Mike Pezzullo? According to his own
account, Pezzullo was received by Chinese officials
with “cold fury” when he visited Beijing following the
release of his White Paper.
Chronology
Australia Becomes Base
Of US-UK Ops in Asia
The buildup of military capabilities in Australia is
shepherded by constant consultations with US and UK
strategic planners, highlights of which are outlined
here. The facilities named are discussed in the articles
and located on the map (Figure 1).
1995. The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Continued from page 41
July 13, 2012 EIR International 45
(the old British imperial Round Table organisation)
calls, in “Economic Opportunities for Britain and the
Commonwealth,” for using Commonwealth cultural
and business networks as a launch pad to extend British
influence worldwide—particularly in Asia, where Australia
should serve as a “stepping stone.” British foreign
investment here then ranked second—$74.5 billion in
1994—but would soar to $427 billion in 2008, surpassing
US investment.
1999. Vladimir Putin becomes acting President of
Russia, going on to election in his own right in 2000. He
halts Russia’s slide into economic and strategic oblivion.
11 September 2001. British/Saudi attacks on New
York and Washington unleashes a (still ongoing) blizzard
of domestic police-state measures in the USA,
Australia, the UK, and elsewhere, as well as endless
foreign wars.
13 December 2001. President George W. Bush
gives Russia notice of US unilateral withdrawal from
the 1972 bilateral Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty,
followed the next year by launching of a global ballistic
missile defence (BMD) program.
2003. Australia-USA agreement is signed to start
preparations for biennial Talisman Sabre (TS) joint military
exercises. Beginning in 2005, TS takes place in
both countries, and involves tens of thousands of troops.
By 2011, the estimated cost is $100 million.
2004. Australia-US Ministerial (AUSMIN) consultations
finalise far-reaching BMD agreements; establishment
of a massive Joint Combined Training Capability
(JCTC) in Australia; and de facto integration
(“interoperability”) of the US and Australian militaries.
Included is Australian participation in the Nimble Titan
global BMD exercise under the US Strategic Command.
2005. AUSMIN announces that Delamere Air
Weapons Range and RAAF Darwin will “support an
enhanced Strategic Bomber Training Program,” including
US B-52, B-1, and B-2 aircraft.
March 2006. British PM Tony Blair visits Australia
to inaugurate Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial
Consultations (AUKMIN), the “highest level of formal
strategic consultations” with Britain.
2007. AUSMIN announces US strategic and military
communication system to be constructed at the
Geraldton (Kojarena) Australian Defence Satellite
Communication Station.
January 2008. British Foreign Secretary David
Miliband tells the Herald Sun that “Britain will relaunch
itself as an Asian power with the help of former
colony Australia in its biggest foreign policy shift since
the Cold War.” He demurs, “We are not seeking to recreate
the Empire.”
2008. AUSMIN announces new joint US-Australian
facilities at Naval Communication Station Harold
E. Holt at North West Cape, including for communications
with US attack submarines.
April 2008. Kevin Rudd becomes the first Australian
PM to attend a NATO meeting.
May 2009. Australian Defence White Paper, “Defending
Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force
2030,” advocates massive military buildup for a coming
US-Australian war against China.
October 2009. At AUKMIN Miliband gushes over
Rudd and “the internationalism of Australia” in promoting
the “climate change” scam and half a dozen
other British imperial schemes. The biennial AUKMIN
becomes annual.
2010. At AUSMIN, a new Space Situational Awareness
Partnership is signed as part of the US Global
Space Surveillance Network.
January 2011. William Hague makes the first visit
to Australia by a British foreign secretary in 20 years,
with Defence Secretary Liam Fox. Hague proclaims
that, although “our partnership with Australia is one of
our greatest assets in world affairs already,” the UK will
further upgrade the relationship as part of a “decisive
change” in foreign policy towards Asia.
November 2011. PM Julia Gillard, as agreed at
AUSMIN 2010, introduces the Defence Trade Controls
Bill 2011 to ratify the far-reaching Australia-United
States Defence Trade Cooperation Treaty, already approved
by the US Congress.
March 2012. The Australian Defence Force Posture
Review advocates huge expansion of joint US-Australian
military facilities, particularly in northern and
western Australia.
May 2012. Gillard announces the next phase of
Australia’s “largest-ever capital works program,” a $40
billion plan to build 12 new submarines, and $16 billion
for purchase of US Joint Strike Fighter planes. AUSMIN
2010 had agreed that “high interoperability of submarine
systems was strategically important for both countries,”
and “the high level of submarine interoperability
between Australia and the United States . . . will extend
into Future Submarine acquisition program.”
2013. Australia to take possession of the first of its
three US Aegis ABM systems, to equip new Advanced
Warfare Destroyers.