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our so-called leaders to strategic danger, resulting in events like the Bondi terror killing of 15 Australians; the outdated belief that geography will protect us; that we have established our relationship with China; and of course, the unwillingness of government to discuss the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.

yes ttbn

Our leaders are obsessed with identity politics, climate cult lies, dei policies in the military, free handouts, appeasing China, bringing in people who hate this nation, Palestine, sucking up to UN, so called far right. It does not go well for the future. Future generations will want to know how we let such dei clowns and treacherous bureaucrats destroy this nation.

"China and other totalitarian regimes are constantly probing for military, societal and technological weaknesses."
- Only because the West is engaged in a war against them.

Understand the Wolfowitz doctrine ttbn.
http://youtu.be/WA5ReEf3vtY
And understand the difference between the Unipolar and Multipolar world.
Understand that the world does not trust America or wish to only trade in U.S dollars and hold that currency to trade or to carry is debts, when it looks like it's headed to default.

China bailed America out in 2009.
They don't wish to have their central bank assets frozen like Russia, so they buy gold now, not U.S. treasuries.
They don't wish to fund a nation hostile to them.

The cost of U.S. bonds is the highest in decades and the U.S can't borrow the money to pays its debts at a low cost.
All it can do is print money, and devalue the currency.
No country want their assets frozen and held over them, the U.S. weaponised it's own dollar system and put the nails in its own coffin.
43% of the global populaion live under U.S. sanctions.
No country wants to hold dollars when they are devaluing against gold.
That's why gold is now the worlds reserve currency, not the U.S. dollar.

The U.S. is driving the world towards CIPS (Chinese SWIFT) and trading in their own currencies.
The U.S. empire is almost over.
It's overstretched militarily it has neither the weapons or the means to fight its own wars, and it's currency is failing.

The Mick Ryan's might have some valid arguments here and there, but beyond that they are products of a dying age.
No amount of spending on U.S. weapons would've helped, Americas adversaries have learned how to defeat the weapons of the past era.

"War is always a possibility, and anyone thinking that our trade with China (the ‘we need each other’ trope) is seriously deluded."

We buy 32 billion in goods from America and 82 billion from China.
America buys 29 billion in goods from Australia whilst China buys between 140 and 195 billion in goods annually.

China buys twice as much from us as we buy from them.

You are worried about 'Who might invade us' but your not thinking about 'where the food on our tables (via jobs though exports) comes from already' and which country it is that produces the goods where we spend that very money which we make from selling things to them.

Which don't we need again, and who is deluded?
The numbers don't lie.

I told you years ago, U.S. weapons would bankrupt our nation 1 week into any conflict and either Australia or the West (whichever applies) will still lose the war anyway.

AUKUS will be obsolete before we ever get a sub.
And that fuel shortage I told you was coming, it's almost upon us.

US diesel prices hit an all-time-high
http://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7903r0grx0o

Ukraine is heading towards collapse as well.

Australian students record worst-ever reading and maths results in international PISA test
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-08/australia-records-worst-ever-reading-and-maths-results-pisa/107101504

There is only a war if you want a war, and these relics from yesteryear like this retired General Brassbottom, just like all his predecessors, wants war with these truculent Fuzzy Wuzzy's, in this case the Chinese, where the enemy can feel the thrust of cold British steel up their their khyber pass. Get real fellas, with your gunboat mentality, this is the 21st and not the 19th century, wake up to the shock horror that the world has moved on.