As retired Major General Mick Ryan says “China has waged a quiet war against us for two decades”. He also believes that Australia is complacent, even though the old world we knew and understood is nearly gone. As is possibly protection by America.

We are on the edge of a “dark abyss”.

China and other totalitarian regimes are constantly probing for military, societal and technological weaknesses. When this probing goes unchallenged (as it is by the Albanese government), they will take the meekness as a tacit invitation to continue. Think the Chinese circumnavigation of Australia, and all the near misses of Australian aircraft by Chinese aircraft.

Australia's apathy is leading to an almost inevitable strategic surprise and failure. Years of chronic underfunding have degraded our military readiness. And the people mismanaging Australia do not understand war; and this misunderstanding of war means you cannot deter it, and you “certainly cannot win it if it is forced upon you”. There is a rigid group think in Australia that blinds our so-called leaders to strategic danger, resulting in events like the Bondi terror killing of 15 Australians; the outdated belief that geography will protect us; that we have established our relationship with China; and of course, the unwillingness of government to discuss the threats to our country with citizens, and what could happen if Australia had to go to war to protect itself.

The Chinese circumnavigation of Australia, for instance, and the Albanese government's fairytale that China was just exercising ‘freedom of navigation’ was nonsense. It was a deliberate display of power to show Australia's relative weakness. The Albanese government's “response” was pathetic.

The General's observation that the Albanese government has probably demonstrated “less capacity for leading Australians and engaging with them than any other modern Australian government” is pretty hard to refute.

War is always a possibility, and anyone thinking that our trade with China (the ‘we need each other’ trope) is seriously deluded. Historically, economic ties have not prevented wars.