With respect, I really think that it is a bit more difficult than you make out. America is clearly getting very unstable politically & economically and, while it is fine for Ms Clinton to reiterate that America is & always will be Australia's great and good friend, I doubt whether the GOP has any interest in our country at all; the tea party collectively neither knows or care about our existence. On the other hand, nobody is going to rush out and celebrate China as our new great and good friend. In truth I think Australia is going to have to box very clever in the next decade, and our survival may well be at stake.

Walter Lohman wrote 8 November 2010:

>... the US should make the sort of investments in America’s military that are indicative of a long-term presence in the Pacific.

The US may not be able to afford the needed investments. These consist of bases in Japan and South Korea and, most importantly, the US 7th Fleet. In 1997 I spent a day on the flagship of the 7th fleet, looking at the use of the Internet for coordinating operations with the Australian Defence Force: http://www.tomw.net.au/nt/tt97.html

The fleet is a powerful, but very expensive tool. As other nations in the region develop submarine and missile forces, carrier battle groups will become increasingly vulnerable.

> The Navy running with at least 30 fewer ships than it says it needs ...

Fortunately for Australia, some of the new, more versatile US ships are Australian designed. There is the Littoral Combat Ship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Independence_%28LCS-2%29

Also the Fortitude class Joint High Speed Vessel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortitude_class_Joint_High_Speed_Vessel

Curiously while the US Navy buys these Australian designed ships built with Australian expertise, the Australian Navy is not interested in buying any.

>... a new permanent base on Australia’s northern shore at Darwin ...

US bases in Australia are not a lot of use for power projection in East Asia, as they are too far away.

> Third, if the Obama Administration’s love–hate relationship with trade is perplexing ...

The USA (and Australia) need to come to terms with the fact that as its share of world trade declines, so will US influence in the world.

> Ensuring American predominance far into the future does not mean living in denial. ...

The US military dominance of East Asia may last only a few more years. Australia will need to spend more on its own defence. This should include new submarines and replenishment vessels for them: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/11/high-speed-resupply-for-new-australian.html

As far as possible, we should avoid the need to choose.

It is not good for Australia to side with America in unprovoked imperial wars, and interminable corrupt occupations. These things are disgraceful and reflect badly on any country participating. And so far as American government is destroying America's economic base by printing money, causing the cycle of boom and bust, taking over entire industries without any basis in the Constitution or in common sense, giving billions in handouts to banks and big corporations, with troops in 135 countries, as a friend, we should be criticising the USA and naming its corruption for what it is.

The irony of the current situation is that communist China is less communist than America, and Clinton is persistently on the worse side of freedom so she has no credibility whatsoever.

Just last week in Hawaii, Secretary Clinton gave a speech in which she said emphasized “the persuasive power of our values - in particular, our steadfast belief in democracy and human rights"
Having just viewed on SBS a program entitled "Taxi to the Dark Side" last weekend, Clinton 's hypocrisy is incredible. It covered in some detail Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Cheney, Bush, the Jewish Neocons and that whole bunch of unpatriotic Americans on the public payroll and the antics they got up both to bring on two wars and still agitating for a third.

And this is the country with whom both Rudd, Gillard and Smith are prostating themselves in Melbourne, on behalf of Australia, to encourage them to invest militarily in this country with even more military bases to add to their 740 already through out the world.

What we do not need is any further subservience to a country morally and financially bankrupt and with a criminal history that would make any terrorist organisation, anywhere, green with envy. They have eroded their Constitution, reduced civil rights, are protecting and supporting the world's largest drug growing enterprise in Afghanistan and have a CIA organisation that is involved with the military and economic control of small countries throughout the world. Remember Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile and on. "Do it our way or not at all" Is that what we want?

Why would anyone want to encourage such a country into a position of influence in this region. I would rather take my chances with a growing China, a major trading partner contributing to our standard of living every day as opposed to the US and its ill-named US Free Trade Agreement, good for the US and proven hopeless for Australia. A one-way street, their way as was expected.

Where are the agitators for an independent Australia, capable of its own independent policy making, defence arrangements and untainted by an aggressive militaristic country bent on remaining the world #1 power against all the odds and knowing that China has their measure, in every way.

Don't sell Australia out to the Americans.

Tomw, you sound as if you should be in a position to know that our chances of defending ourselves are diminishing by the day.

Charging our infantry blokes with murder, for defending themselves is not a great way to ensure we will have an infantry going forward. No one should never be able to bring such charges, unless they have served is such situations themselves.

If that means we can’t have girls in the army legal core, so be it.

We have our pilots flying around in B grade aircraft, about half as capable as the 30 year old F111s we are decommissioning. In one action we have lost air supremacy.

Then, just like that fool Rudd, you want more subs. What on earth for, when we can only man one & a half of the six we have. Although these things are starting to get a bit long in the tooth, they are still effectively brand new, due to lack of use. Hard to use them you know, without someone to run rhe engines.

We’ve got Frigates sitting idly along side, because of lack of engineering crew, & we near rammed Sydney heads with one of the amphibious landing ships, because emergency drafted on engineering crew [because of shortages of engineers] had no idea of how to run the thing.

We need a crash course in Canberra & Duntroon in how to value, & then perhaps keep, the people essential to the operation of a modern defence force. We are loosing the people who know ho to run our ships, [not command them] at a rate 5 times faster than we can train them.

Then were telling our pongos that we’ll salute then, if they come home in a box, but don’t want them to defend themselves.

We had better start a course in grovelling at the military college, because that’s what we’re going to be reduced to, in the very near future.

Hasbeen,

I question just one comment you made, "Charging our infantry blokes with murder, for defending themselves is not a great way to ensure we will have an infantry going forward. No one should never be able to bring such charges, unless they have served is such situations themselves."

Respectfully and I really do not know where you are coming from on this matter, but you obviously consider that the soldiers mentioned have been wrongly charged.

I really do not know how you can say that. That assumes that the Army Prosecutor of 25 years standing would have taken this action lightly. It would be my understanding that the Brigadier, yes, 'that woman' as called by that disgraceful rabble-rouser Alan Jones, would have had to wrestle with the facts in some great detail and over a long time to even come to her conclusions, hardly taken lightly as I am sure you must realise.

Military justice has progressed somewhat over the years. They will have the opportunity to bring their case to court which will be considerably more than Breaker Morant had by way of justice in the Boer War, before he was punished, rightly or wrongly

I think we should all wait to see and hear the evidence. Surely no one considers this is a flippant action by Defence.

In the meantime, one should ask who it is you consider that we cannot defend ourselves against in 2010. We have no enemies on the horizon and if we avoid becoming a part of everything that angers the Americans, for reasons of power, trade, oil, drugs or whatever motivation they conjure up, we will certainly avoid alienating any number of other countries who would be regarded in 2010 and on as friends. Better to maintain this status quo than become a target for all the countries that the US sees fit to antagonise. There is no country better at creating enemies than the USA, mostly based on lies, false flag exercises and vested interests.

History cannot be discarded. They have proven themselves to be a dishonest and evil empire