Its really got nothing to do with the 'Yellow Peril' rubbish. It's a fact.

For your perusal:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25340312-2702,00.html

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25306305-31477,00.html

I used The Australian for the convenience of the articles.

That made me laugh.
International Politics is played like a school-yard, it's a notorious observation. And have you ever tried to escape bullying by being nice to the bully, and giving him/her whatever they want? That's called "appeasement", and always fails.
We DO need a military force, but the details and size are open to debate, we are too heavily enmeshed with the yanks for my comfort.
As for China, I fear the Yellow Peril fear is still with us, and it's as silly as ever, really. We won't win any friends with money, we're not even in the race compared to others, nor will we by sticking our heads in the sand-box of Idealism, we need to be realistic and engage locally as best we can, without surrendering our souls or principles.

Maximillion

"That made me laugh."

Glad you've had a laugh at my expense. Feel free any time. I said nothing about appeasement. I was talking about fairness and cooperation.

Bullies don't change by being bullied by a bigger bully either, by the way. They just ramp up and rebuild their efforts to dominate, and feed into a dangerous and pointless cycle of oneupmanship.

Cooperation and negotiation are the keys to national security. This is realism, not 'sandbox idealism' as you so derisively coin it. We can all see where being the bully took us under George Bush's presidency, and fortunately we're now going to witness things being done differently.

Just today, we've had Hiliary Clinton showing real world leadership in stating that the Somali piracy problems will only be solved through tackling the reasons that have driven these people to take up piracy in the first place. What would you or George Bush have done? Announce a 'War on Piracy' no doubt. None of these wars on anything bring about the desired solutions. They just exacerbate the problems and create a whole set of new ones.

I state again, nothing will be achieved by sinking huge amounts of money we don't have into building up state of the art defence forces, especially when there are so many more pressing priorities. Look at America's astronomical defence spending. How many friends has that ever won for it? What has it ever done to create world peace?

You talk of being realistic and engaging locally as best we can, which is exactly what I said too by the way. How about you begin by engaging civilly on this very local forum. Laughing at others whose views are different to your own is an example of small time bullying, and creates wasteful tension rather than productive dialogue.

Well said Bronwyn
I have always held that having our neighbors like and care about us will make us way way safer than having neighbors that hate and distrust us.

Ive got to say there is a serious amount of racism underlying this discussion. Please stop.

There is always someone who has to drag out 'racism' when there is a discussion about anyone not Western.

The truth is that the Chinese don't get het up about race: they just know that they are better than everyone else.

They also play on Westerners' hang ups about being called racist in this absurdly politically correct society by calling Westerners racists to gain an advantage. Politicians know this, and when they want to have a go at a Chinese poltician in an opposing party (there are quite a few in Australian politics now) they get their own Chinese member to have a go at the target. That way, the Chinense politician to be lambasted can hardly say his attacker was racist.

It's rather like getting a woman MP to have a go at another woman MP so that the sexism label can't be hung on a man.

The poster 'mikk' is obviously still wet behind the ears.

Australia, being so large, inhospitable and isolated would be an almost impossible country to conquer and especially since I believe (as did the Japanese during WWII) that every man woman and child here would fight to the death to stop an invasion of our homeland. Al Queda would pale in comparison with us Aussies if we were occupied.
Posted by mikk,

mikk. You dont believe that do you?

Have a look at what happened in Vic recently and on Ash Wednesday. Pick the right day any summer and, with a few light aircraft, someone could bring this country to its knees with, virtually, a box of matches, then walk in and take over. So a lot of people would die and towns destroyed but the mineral resourses would still be there and the land for agriculture. Any enemy would not care if Aussies died, their interest would be in what they can gain.

Without weapons how could there be a civilian uprising against any invading force. Just as in WW11 we would have to rely on the US to protect us. That is why we are in alliance with the Yanks and it is in our interests for them to have some bases here.

Sure we are friendly to all and give assistance to many of the small island neighbors, and some larger ones, but relative to those a bit further away our military resourses are miniscule.

I would not speculate on where, or when, a specific threat may come from. that is best left to our intelligence and military services to keep tabs on, but adequate consideration has to be given to defence.

Bronwyn,
I can tell you why the pirates in Somalia act as they do. Money and greed, nothing more. They are not forced to be pirates.
Appeasement did not work in WW11 against invaders and the British and Yanks used force to put an end to the Barbary pirates and the Chinese beheaded many pirates to put a stop to their activities in the 1900s

So force has been known to work.