Confucius was a great fan of calling things by their correct names. So am I. It is necessary to define what you are talking about. We still have armies, navies and air forces. They make up our military establishment. Defence is only one of the many functions of our military establishment. Our military not only defends. It also attacks, threatens, occupies, aids in disaster relief, trains, absorbs young people at loose ends and serves any other function assigned to it by the government. If the term defence were meaningful and all nations had only defence forces there would be no more wars as nobody would attack. Graham Young has accepted the deformation of language implicit in the term, defence. So I fault Graham Young’s article by its title.

We’ll need to pay a higher defence premium under Biden

Since Trump has increased the military budget and decreased the state department budget there is no reason to think the title of his article reflects reality. I wrote an article with which you disagreed recommending a disarmament conference. I did not recommend ridding ourselves of the military establishment but merely, in concert with other nations, making it less of a burden.

Aside from the failure to recognize reality implicit in the title Graham’s first sentence indicates he doesn’t realize the reality of Trump. His first sentence reads, “In return for being one of the US’s most reliable allies, Australia expects and hopes that in the event of any serious threat to our borders, the US will come to our aid.”

The Kurds were a reliable ally in the struggle against ISIS in Syria. Without consulting the Kurds Trump ordered the US forces out of the area at the borders of Turkey which the Kurds were holding. He apparently did that at the request of Erdogan, one of the populist tyrants like Orban, Putin and Kim that Trump holds dear.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/elections/ben-sasse-trump.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

Under Trump Australia could fare like the Kurds. Graham is apparently an admirer of Trump. I have given my view of the title and the first sentence of Graham’s article.

Genug.

Soot Morrison keeps playing the US off against China and we are supposed to believe that America will jump to our defence when China becomes militarily aggressive towards us.

In your dreams!

This week the Commonwealth formally agreed to incorporate Australia into the Asian Regional and Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which will obviously be controlled by China.

This is not the move of an Australia that wants to be totally aligned with American democratic, economic and strategic principles.

Next thing we'll see is Soot and the boys kowtowing it to China. Wouldn't even surprise me to see Soot crawl on his hands and heels to Xi and kiss his feet.

"He is also the first president since Jimmy Carter not to get involved in a foreign war."

This is a very big thing that the Lefties have not once given Trump any credit for.

Free trade. It is ludicrous that China is involved in the latest deal when they are knocking off more Australian goods from their import list by the day as part of their bullying.

Not available domestically. Just what are we self-sufficient in these days? For all the talk about rejuvenation of our manufacturing industry in the face of the China threat, nothing seems to be happening.

There's no denying that Biden will be bad for Australia; our own government's weak and naive repeating of how our association with the US will not change is also bad for Australia.

ttbn,

Do you know what is at the back of Soot's mind?

How to start getting millions of cashed up Chinese migrants back into the Australian economy. (Same goes for Berejiklian.)

Don't you want to see Soot humble himself on his hands and knees before Xi.

"Oh please Emperor Xi be nice to me. You can have all my Australianese taxpayers ..... take them, take them ...... you can have them all."

We'll have to disagree, on "election fraud", but plenty to agree with.

At the slightest provocation, MacroBusiness loves to republish the survey evidence, that Australians rightly prefer the Morrison stance on China.

It's one of three big issues that makes Albanese unelectable. The other two are his slavish support for Big Australia, and his hosannas to Net Zero and the Energy Superpower. Lifted straight from the Ross Garnaut bedtime story.

As far as China and trade, I think we should just grasp the nettle and
sell the cargoes that are hald at sea for what we can get for them.
We need to show the Chinese that while it was nuisance it does not
cripple us and we can absorb such losses.
The same with the wine industry, we can tell them we will do something
else with the land or conduct a sales program in Europe called
"Up You Xi !", I joke of course but you get the idea.
Face it, we can be totally self sufficient if we had to.
We could also ban the export of baby formula, that will get the
Chinese mums out on the street.
China needs to get that message.
We need to demonstrate our sovereignty.
Make sure they understand that we are not one of their Vassal states !

As far as the US is concerned I think Biden and his lefty offsiders
will be in for a surprise when the general US public gets wind of
what they really want to do with the US Government.

As for our defense we need to get all the design details of the nuclear
version of our new submarines so we can convert them to nuclear.
Just due to physics of oil search diesel will be a fragile supply
line in the world as the fracking companies go to the wall over the next ten years