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The Forum > Article Comments > Rethinking the quadrilateral alliance > Comments

Rethinking the quadrilateral alliance : Comments

By Simon Louie, published 19/9/2016

Our prosperity is largely dependent upon us being able to sail through international waters and should this be impeded then the costs to trade would soar as longer shipping routes and higher insurance rates would be incurred.

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Our prosperity relies absolutely in selling more to the world than we buy from it! And much more value added production than we do today, with its feast or famine financial outcomes

If we are prevented from accessing markets via traditional sea routes, we need to transition to overland options? Preferably via roll on roll off fast ferries and rapid rail links through cooperative nations whose own interests are also served, in both directions?

And that is better achieved if we are governed by proactive forward thinkers ahead of the curve, rather reactive numskulls so far behind it, (frogs being made warm and comfortable in nice warm water being slowly brought to the boil) they are completely flummoxed by foreseeable changes! Or when their goose is well and truly cooked along with those of the "governed"!

In the interim we need far more self sufficiency in almost every area and everything, so we can should the need arise, become an island of sanity (and cash and carry) in a world gone mad!

We could assist reduced regional confrontation by just getting on with the job of transitioning our economy, to one no longer in any way dependant in any sense on traditional fossil fuels! The cause of all the current consternation/confrontation!?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 19 September 2016 10:43:21 AM
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I don't think that there is anything "inherently unstable" about the Chinese dictatorship. They have total, unwavering faith in their superiority over everyone else in the world, and there is no chance that the Chinese people will ever stand up to them. The West has only one path: to destroy and humiliate China before it destroys us.
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 19 September 2016 10:53:13 AM
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Australia is more in a balancing act than the other former Quadrilateral Countries:

- the US has undertaken net withdrawals from Australia's region when China's rapid military rise (including island building) is taken into account.

- US leadership is unstable, with the possibility of an isolationist US under Trump withdrawing even more rapidly OR the unpredictable Trump or even Hillary tilting the US into economic and military confrontation with China

1. Australia cannot be in a hard-edged alliance against China when the (by far) major ally, the US, may withdraw - leaving Australia high and dry to face China.

2. Australia needs to give more broad-based support to a South China Sea that has no excessive sea or air-space claims of Taiwan, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_South_China_Sea

and of course China.

More comments on Japan and India later today.

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 19 September 2016 12:00:52 PM
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The proposed group would be very much enhanced if Indonesia was
added to the original four. Indonesia has had its sovereignty trampled
on by the Chinese. I thought that intrusion into Indonesian waters by
China was the worse act it could have made.

Those five countries would make a grouping that China could not do
other than be very attentive their military posture.
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 19 September 2016 11:01:08 PM
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I agree with ttbn that dictatorships are not inherently unstable. China has had totalitarian rule for 5000 years and they still exist as a state and a people. Democracies can become unstable through multiculturalism and much of the west is becoming unstable through the importation of unassimilable people who do not believe in democracy.

China is a new superpower and unfortunately, it is going the way of some other superpowers in being an aggressive and expansionist bully. The annexation of an entire ocean is unprecedented in human history, and it is a territorial claim which must be opposed by all means, including military ones.

China is in a poor position here. Except for North Korea, it has no allies in this dispute at all. It has managed to upset the entire ASEAN, and that even included Indonesia, who's territory was completely outside of the "nine dash line" which China claims is Chinese national waters.

China is opposed by the USA, Japan, Australia, France (which is calling for a NATO response) India (which wants to conduct "freedom of navigation" exercises with the US Navy in the SCS) Singapore, Malaya, Vietnam, the Philippines, and South Korea. China may be a superpower, but even superpowers can bite off more than they can chew.

China has not had a naval engagement for 500 years, and just because you have a lot of modern equipment does not make you a serious military power. Just ask Saddam Hussein about that.

A united front by all interested parties should prevent the Chinese government from continuing it's acts of aggression. If we had done this with Hitler in 1938, 55 million people may not have died. And unlike WW2, this time, the world is militarily prepared to stand up to rogue aggressors.

I would love to see the combined fleets of every interested nation form one giant fleet, and sail right past those shonky "islands" that China has built, with every seaman on board giving the Chinese the finger. Think twice, China, think twice.
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 20 September 2016 7:34:56 AM
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Hmmm "China has not had a naval engagement for 500 years,"

All experts in very obscure naval battles recall:

- The Second Battle of Chuenpi in 1841 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Chuenpi :
"After the capture, the Nemesis attacked a fleet of about 15 war junks under Admiral Guan Tianpei in Anson's Bay.[b] The junks mounted 7 to 11 guns of various calibre from 4- to 12-pounders.[13][14] The ship fired a Congreve rocket that struck a junk near the admiral,
…At about 11:30 am, the Chinese on board the junks hauled down their flags."

- Battle of the Yalu River (1894) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yalu_River_(1894)
"The Battle of the Yalu River...was the largest naval engagement of the First Sino-Japanese War, ...It involved ships from the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Chinese Beiyang Fleet.
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 20 September 2016 12:02:27 PM
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