Will you then call yourself @micinbirmingham?
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Itâll be micwasinbeijing196
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Micoutofbeijing196?
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Micnowicansayxiisthepoobear
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@micoff69
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Reportedly Xi and Lula are getting chummy, talk of allowing Brazilian beef in ( even if it is a FMD country) . There goes some of the Australian market.
Until now itâs been mainly soybeans.
For those that have never dug into WW2 submarine warfare history, US submarines destroyed in the ballpark of 95% of the Japanese merchant fleet with campaigns around Taiwan. It directly resulted in the collapse of Japanese fighting power across the Pacific.
And that was despite the fact that their torpedoes were faulty about 75% of the time for the first few years of the Pacific war.
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Reason submarines are a meaningful threat to China is they are not self sufficient on food and energy. If their trade routes are blockaded, then they run short on oil, coal, gas and food. Private corporations will not run shipping through a military blockade and Chinese owned shipping would be vulnerable if it tried to push through. A submarine force could cripple the Chinese economy and create a food crisis without firing a single torpedo. This is a survival of the nation type vulnerability for China.
The Chinese are aware of this and it is the likely driver for their massive naval expansion and push into the South China Sea. Because that navy is also useful for a Taiwan invasion and has been behaving aggressively, the region is seeing it as a threat instead of an additional force to protect freedom of navigation.
Thatâs my best simple take on whatâs driving both sides.
Weaponising food and starving millions to death?
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What happens with your business Mick?
If China doesnât want to trade with us, it doesnât need to exercise military power, just ban imports and exports.
Thatâs where Marles explanation falls down on protecting trade routes. Itâs hardly going to stop us trading with other countries in the Indo Pacific at risk of getting them offside.
Thatâs the strategic threat that China is facing. It is a valid concern that they should mitigate. That doesnât mean a starvation strategy would be implemented, but it is their vulnerability. Australia imports about 90% of our petrol and diesel, if blockaded our agricultural industry would collapse and we would struggle to feel our urban population. Similar scenario. If you try to break us, we would need a way to respond.
This is how defence forces need to think. Iâm happy not to be making those decisions, but they are real and valid risks to manage. Acknowledging the strategic chessboard doesnât require ethical judgements. The options on the table do impact how the other player acts. If nobody can threaten us, we will act more recklessly. If we can threaten them, theyâll act with more restraint. Itâs the threat of nuclear warfare toned down.
We had supreme confidence when only Indonesia was seen as a threat. We were relaxed, intervened confidently in East Timor with F-111s orbiting the border with Jakarta. Now we are in a position where we cannot reach our key geopolitical risk, which means thereâs no way we can respond to any hostile actions. That doesnât mean invasion, but any grey actions below that threshold we have little capability to respond.
To be clear, Iâm not advocating we starve China to death as a first response to any minor disagreement.
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When were we ever under a threat from Indonseia? We did lend assistance to Malaya.
We did go into a War in Vietnam.
Itâs what our defence force was built for at the time. Indonesia wasnât a trustworthy neighbour; but they were never an invasion threat. They could have decided to cause problems. The F-111 was selected to project power over that threat.
Hindsight is not a fair way to judge the threat analysis at the time. The F-111 was purchased for a 30 year period, so it would be very ballsy to say the military dictatorship of a country of 100m+ population couldnât develop in a hostile direction.
If China decides it doesnât want to trade with Australia, it doesnât need to engage in blocking our trade routes in the Pacific.
How would it have the capacity to isolate Australia from trading with other countries. Why would it want to?
Shipping industry and industry in general wonât allow it. Lots of money to be lost if you block a trade route.
Of course, China doesnât have to resort to gunboats to stop our exports to them. Thatâs where Marles justification falls down.
Think you are safe in Singers from any Chinese blockade.
China, or other nations with reach, would most likely use grey zone tactics to exert political pressure. We arenât great at responding in this murky type of conflict, but we will need to be. I think it is almost certain that China will exert some level of deniable direct interference on our economic interests in the coming years. Theyâve been doing it to other countries.
If things escalated, it wouldnât take much to prevent commercial shipping from sailing to Australia. An announcement and a few ships in the area doing a blockade. The current Chinese navy is perfectly equipped to place a trade blockade on Australia preventing any and all oil transit. Is it likely? No. Is it achievable? Tomorrow. Would it be war? Nope. If we opened fire in that situation, we would be the ones escalating and starting a war.
Predicting the future is fraught with danger. The job of the military is to analyse the vulnerabilities and plan accordingly for the worst case. We need them to be pessimistic. Itâs for diplomats to prevent the military being required. The fact we are giving the military the long term kit they say they need is pretty telling about how the diplomatic corps is viewing things. That may have been different if China hadnât spent the last few years attempting to use a trade war to bully us into submission.
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About 6 years ago there was an issue with piracy and armed robbery. The shipping industry had to pay higher insurance and change routes which was a big impetus for countries to act. Now we are only seeing minor robberies at sea, scrapmetal and the like.