1971年7月，我在外交部负责处理即将承认中华人民共和国的相关事务。当时，我们撰写了一份政策规划报告，其中提到：“在权力平衡不断变化的背景下，与美国的联盟对我们的意义已不如从前。因此，我们现在比以往更需要制定以澳大利亚国家利益及周边邻国利益为基础的独立政策。”
这段话在当时是事实，而如今更是如此。
然而，澳大利亚却走上了相反的道路。我们将与美国的联盟提升到一种不容置疑的神圣地位，结果却是逐步丧失了对自身命运的掌控。
总理阿尔巴尼斯和国防部长马尔斯声称，美国对澳大利亚的军事化保护了我们的主权。然而，这不过是一种“虚饰之言”，旨在迷惑民众。事实上，这种所谓的保护恰恰在削弱澳大利亚的主权，导致我们在任何攸关生死存亡的问题上都无法独立决策。
这一点在所有领域都成立——无论是经济、政治、法律、金融还是媒体，但在国防和军事领域尤为明显。《部队部署协议》（Force Posture Agreement）明确规定，美国对其选择驻扎的澳大利亚军事基地享有“无限制使用权”和“专属使用权”。这意味着，澳大利亚无法决定这些基地的使用方式、时间、地点及针对的对象。
这样的安排并未令澳大利亚更安全。正如美国一直明确表态的那样，其目的并非保护澳大利亚，而是将北澳大利亚视为“美军在印太地区投射力量的中心”。因此，澳大利亚也自然成了任何针对这一投射力量的报复行动的“中心靶点”。
例如，澳大利亚支持美国在乌克兰削弱俄罗斯的努力，已使我们被俄罗斯列入“危险国家”名单中的47个国家之一。这样一来，澳大利亚也可能面临来自俄罗斯这一核大国的潜在打击。
国防部长马尔斯炫耀说，澳大利亚通过与美军的全面互通，增强了“延伸打击能力和杀伤力”，能够在离本土更远的地方攻击“潜在敌人”。这种表态只会令本地区国家感到威胁升级。或许，这也是为什么印度尼西亚近年来与俄罗斯海军在本国水域开展联合演习的原因之一。我们无法通过对邻国的威胁性增强自己的安全。真正的安全保障来自于友谊、互利合作和互不干涉内政的原则。
袁祖文与首任副大使John Lander 在墨尔本ACP的活动中
美国与“虚构的中国威胁”
美国明确将中国视为“头号敌人”，澳大利亚则乖乖附和，采取敌视态度。但与此同时，我们又恳求中国——我们的主要贸易伙伴——购买更多的出口商品，以便赚取足够的收入购买美国的军火，用于对中国的战争。这种矛盾的政策，不免让中国觉得我们在侮辱他们的智商。
如果我们继续坚持“中国威胁论”，最终只会迫使中国将澳大利亚视为威胁。事实上，中国一贯坚持不希望这样做。美国的军工复合体在生产大规模杀伤性武器之前，首先必须制造一个虚构的威胁，以说服政府投入巨资购买这些武器。在“中国威胁论”的营销上，他们对澳大利亚两党政治的说服工作非常成功。
然而，最近的民调显示，大多数澳大利亚人希望政府拒绝参与对中国的战争。这表明，普通民众并未被这种威胁论完全洗脑。
澳大利亚的危险处境
美国已明确表示不会与核武国家直接开战，而是会通过代理战争的形式参与冲突（如当前在乌克兰的行动）。在针对中国的潜在战争中，美国已经编织了包括日本和澳大利亚在内的代理人网络。
必须一再强调：美国并未准备与中国开战，而是准备让澳大利亚为它与中国开战。我们似乎尚未意识到这种危险的严重性。
政府宣称，我们与美国的“神圣联盟”基于“共同的价值观和民主制度”。然而，澳大利亚分享的到底是哪些“价值观”？
- 非法制裁
- 非法入侵他国（如伊拉克、阿富汗）及轰炸行动（如利比亚、也门）
- 推翻民主选举的政府（如2014年的乌克兰）
- 支持独裁政权（如沙特阿拉伯）
- 巨额军费开支
- 在外国设立900个军事基地
- 非法占领外国领土
- 贫富差距扩大
- 环境恶化
- 通过国际货币基金组织和世界银行对发展中国家施加“债务陷阱”
- 非法掠夺他国主权资产
- 不平等的基础设施建设
- 教育标准下降
- 医疗服务昂贵
- 毒品泛滥
- 国内枪支暴力猖獗
- 严厉的国内安保措施
- 言论自由的日益受限
世界的变化与澳大利亚的抉择
1971年的那份政策报告中提到的关键短语是：“权力平衡的变化。”然而，澳大利亚的领导层似乎既缺乏理解世界变化本质的智慧，也缺乏抓住机遇制定政策的勇气。相反，他们固守过去的旧秩序，试图抵挡不可阻挡的潮流。
BRICS+经济论坛的崛起清楚地表明，世界的重心正向东方和全球南方转移。BRICS+成员国的GDP总量已超过七国集团（G7）。中国是这一趋势的核心力量，其“一带一路”倡议已吸引至少160个国家参与，旨在推动基础设施建设和经济合作。
相比之下，澳大利亚依旧被困在美国的影响之下。若选择与中国开战，我们将面临毁灭；若拒绝，美国将对我们实施经济和数字领域的惩罚。
澳大利亚需要冷静且理性地评估这两种充满痛苦的选择。在此之前，我们必须首先恢复财政主权，以支持经济自主的发展。创建由政府控制的公共银行是迈向这一目标的第一步。
结束语
1971年，我们曾担心美国对华政策的重大变化未能提前通知我们，因此感到与美国的联系需要减弱。遗憾的是，我们最终选择了相反的方向。今天，我们需要摒弃对地区的恐惧，正如前总理保罗·基廷所言：“在亚洲寻找安全，而非从亚洲寻求安全。”
人民的力量必须在下次选举中得到体现，展现出它远胜于当权者的力量。正如一句话所言：“摆脱恐惧，才能走向真正的独立。”
-以下为演讲节选- 全文演讲参考：Here's the link to John Lander's FULL speech: https://youtu.be/MfmUjNCrUyY?si=wz4wudcdLznUaXES
Original English Scripts 英文原稿：
Back in July 1971, when I was working in the Department of Foreign Affairs preparing for recognition of the Peoples’ Republic of China, we wrote a policy planning paper which said: “the American alliance, in a shifting power balance, means less to us than it has in the past - Accordingly, we shall need now more than ever to formulate independent policies, based on Australian national interests and those of our near neighbours”.
It was true then. It is even more true now.
But Australia has moved in the opposite direction. It has elevated the Alliance to such sacrosanct status, which brooks no challenge, that we are losing control of our own destiny.
Albanese and Marles assert that the American militarisation of Australia protects Australia’s sovereignty. This is just so much flim-flam, designed to flummox the masses. It has done exactly the opposite. It so undermines Australian sovereignty that Australia has no independent agency on any matter of existential consequence.
This is true for all sectors - economic, political, legal, financial and media. BUT it is nowhere more true than in the defence/military sector. The Force Posture Agreement, which affords the USA “unimpeded access to” and “exclusive use of” all Australian bases in which it chooses to locate its military assets, makes it clear that Australia has no say in how, when, where and against whom such assets will be used.
It does not make Australia safer. America has always made it clear that it is not designed to. As stated by the leader of the recent US Congressional delegation to Darwin, northern Australia is the “epicentre of the projection of US power in the Indo-Pacific”.
Australia is consequently the epicentre of any retaliation against that projection of power.
For example, Australia’s support of the US’s efforts to weaken Russia in Ukraine has led to Australia being on a list of 47 countries regarded as “of danger to Russia”. So we are now exposed to a potential strike from Russia - a nuclear super-power.
Defence Minister Marles boasts that the “extended range and lethality” of Australia’s military capability, enhanced by the complete interchangeability of Australian and US armed forces, will enable Australia to strike “potential adversaries further from our own shores”. This can only be perceived by the countries of our region as raising the level of threat against them.
Perhaps that is why we see Indonesia engaging in joint operations with the Russian navy in Indonesian waters.We cannot be secure in our own region, when we increase our offensive capability against our neighbours. Friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation, based on non-interference in each other’s internal affairs is the best guarantee of security.
The US has made it clear that China is the number one enemy, so Australia has dutifully joined in adopting a hostile attitude towards it. We now have the schizophrenic policy of pleading with China, our principal trading partner, to buy ever more of our exports, so that we can earn enough to pay for the armaments from America to be used in a war against China.
They must think that we think they are stupid. If we continue to insist that China is a threat, we will end up forcing China to treat Australia as a threat. It has always been adamant that it does not wish to do so.
First and foremost, before producing its weapons of mass destruction, the military/industrial complex has to manufacture a fictional threat, to get government to purchase the ever more expensive armaments to meet it. It has been remarkably successful in convincing our political duopoly of the fantasy of the “China threat” and in persuading them to throw billions of our dollars into purchasing their products of death and destruction.
Recent poll results show the majority of the people want Australia to refuse to go to war against China.This suggest that the people are not similarly so convinced.
The USA has also made it clear that it will not engage in war against a nuclear armed adversary. It will instead engage in war by proxy (as they are currently doing in Ukraine). It has strung together a network of proxies from Japan to Australia, to be used in war against China, in the near future.
It cannot be repeated often enough that America is not preparing to go to war against China, it is preparing Australia to go to war against China.
We don’t seem to appreciate the gravity of the danger we have been manoeuvred into.
The government says that our sacred Alliance with America is based on our “shared values and democracy”- look at the “values” Australia shares:
•Illegal Sanctions
•Illegal invasions (Iraq Afghanistan) and bombing campaigns (Libya, Serbia, Yemen)
•Overthrowing democratically elected governments (Ukraine, 2014)
•Supporting dictatorships (Saudi Arabia)
•Massive armament spending
•900 military bases in foreign countries
•Illegal occupation of foreign territory
•Increasingly rampant wealth disparity
•Environmental degradation
•Debt traps for developing countries through IMF and World Bank loans with coercive political strings attached
•Illegal appropriation (theft) of other countries’ sovereign assets
•Inadequate and deteriorating infrastructure
•Declining educational standards
•Unaffordable health care
•Drug epidemic
•Epidemic of gun deaths across the domestic civilian population
•Authoritarian “domestic security” measures
•Increasing restrictions on freedom of speech.
(Although, President-elect Trump has surprisingly vowed to restore unfettered freedom of speech as the guarantee of democracy, we shall have to wait and see. Don’t hold your breath!)
Because of the Alliance, Australia insists that it must uphold the “international rules-based order”.
This is not international law, as evolved through the United Nations. It is a set of largely arbitrary rules, designed by the US to keep its position as top dog in the world.
The USA flouts most rules:Just look at what USA refuses to sign/ratify:
•Rome Statute of the International Court - repudiating the jurisdiction of both the ICJ and ICC
•Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
•International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights
•Convention on the Rights of the Child
•Most of the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation
• Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers
•The UN Genocide Convention (the USA claims to be exempt)
•UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (China is a party)
•Agreement on Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space
•Anti-personnel Landmine Convention
•International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
The US withdrew from the Paris Climate Change Accord
The USA has blocked appointments to the Appellate Board of the WTO, thus neutering its capacity to enforce internationally agreed trade rules
The USA violates: the Geneva Convention on the Laws of War; the Chemical Weapons Convention; the Biological Weapons Convention; the Convention on the Prohibition of Torture;
The USA has withdrawn from most Arms Limitation Agreements, most significantly those relating to the control of nuclear weapons.
The USA has placed illegal economic/financial sanctions on at least 37 countries, not only Russia but some of the world’s poorest developing countries -Cuba; Iran; Afghanistan; Palestine; Venezuela etc.
The USA has violated or ignored the many treaties it had entered into with its own indigenous peoples.
The USA applies its laws to the rest of the world// and hypocritically holds other countries accountable to international laws// that it refuses to sign.
In the current slaughter that the US is fuelling in Israel/Palestine, it is important to note that the US considers that neither the Genocide Convention, nor the jurisdiction of the international courts, apply to it.
Australia joins with America in flouting international law, whenever it suits the USA for us to do so. We did it when we joined the “coalition of the willing”- better described as the “coalition of the killing”- in the destruction of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of a million people. We did it, to similar effect, for twenty years in Afghanistan.
We are doing it now, in supporting Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians, in breach of the Genocide Convention, which obliges us to take all possible action to prevent a potential genocide, which the International Court of Justice has determined, does exist.
Our participation in the bombing of Yemen contravenes the Geneva Convention on the Laws of War, which prohibits attacks on the territory of another country, unless that country poses a direct threat to our own territory.
In our own region, although we claim to adhere to the legal position that Taiwan is an integral part of China’s sovereign territory, we join in so-called “freedom of navigation operations” in the Taiwan Straits. This is an incursion into China’s territory, in contravention of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which expressly prohibits military operations in another country’s territorial waters or Exclusive Economic Zone.
China’s reactions have been mercifully non-violent so far, despite the mainstream media propaganda machine’s distortion of them as “acts of aggression”.
Australia’s constant flouting of international law disqualifies it from recourse to international law for the protection of its interests, thus further weakening Australia’s security.
The key phrase in the 1971 policy paper that I referred to earlier, is: “in a shifting power balance”.
Leadership on both sides of politics in Australia seems to have neither the wit to understand the nature of the changes that are taking place in the world, nor the courage to devise policies to take advantage of them. Instead, they have doubled down on trying to hold back the tide, which, as King Canute demonstrated, is an impossible task.
The emergence of the BRICS+ economic forum clearly shows that the tide is moving to the East and to the Global South.
The BRICS+ share of global GDP now exceeds that of the G7 (the Genocide 7) countries. The success of the Kazan Summit of BRICS+, with the attendance of some 20,000 delegates from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including 34 Heads of State/Government, clearly demonstrates where the Global Majority now sits.
The BRICS+ New Development Bank provides for the creation of infrastructure and economic growth in developing countries. The creation of a financial clearance centre enables BRICS+ participating countries to trade with each other in their own currencies, without the use of the almighty dollar. New metals and grain exchanges being set up by BRICS+ will give producing countries more control over the marketing of their own resources.
China’s economic strength is at the heart of all these developments. China also continues to forge ahead with its own Belt and Road Initiative for infrastructure projects across Central Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, Africa and Latin America. At least 160 countries have signed up for this. Even Australia did so, until the USA forced it to withdraw.
Our near neighbours, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam,are cooperating partners of BRICS and they all have infrastructure projects under China’s BRI.
By means of the BRI, China will by-pass the maritime choke points that have enabled the USA to exert control. China’s growing economic power and influence undermine US supremacy. This is why the US wants to use war to stifle China. But US supremacy is already over, as shown by the failure to weaken Russia in Ukraine. The US is in denial, unable to recognise the new reality.
The benefits of aligning ourselves with China and participating in the economic growth of our region, are obvious. But Australia is caught between a rock and a hard place.
If we go to war against China we will suffer devastation.
If we refuse to go to war against China, America will punish us.
US control of our economy, finances, military and especially our digital communications systems essential for the conduct of business, means America could shut us down. Like it did in a limited way, cutting us off from international finance when Whitlam threatened to close Pine Gap. Ominously, declassified communications between Washington and Marshal Green (then US Ambassador to Australia), reveal that the US was planning military action to keep Pine Gap open if Whitlam were to be re-elected.
Australia has to make a cold, hardheaded and rational cost-benefit analysis of two highly unpalatable choices.To do so, we must first regain sovereign financial control so we can fund the development of sovereign economic control. The creation of a bank owned by the government, on behalf of the people and out of the hands of the private banks, is the essential first step.
We cannot afford to flip-flop electorally between the two sides of the political duopoly, (“the two cheeks of the same backside” as George Galloway has so eloquently put it) in the vain hope that one side or the other will bring about real change.
A vote for either of the major parties at the next election must be rejected, in favour of building a third force within the Parliament that will effectively advance, and achieve, policies of benefit to the people, instead of benefitting vested financial, political and military interests, which are opposed to the welfare of the people.
In 1971 we were alarmed that the Kissinger visits to China, to prepare for recognition, had been kept secret from us. We had not been privy to an impending change in US policy of enormous consequence for Australia.
Consequently, it was felt that we needed to attenuate our links to the US. We didn’t do that. We did the opposite. Through such flawed deals as ANZUS, AUKUS and the FPA we have shackled ourselves to the American ship, which is sinking under the rising tide of prosperity in our region.
Our foreign and defence policy has always been driven by fear - fear of our region and fear of abandonment by our great and powerful friend. We need to have the courage to jump into the rising tide around us, to find, as Paul Keating has said, security in Asia, not security from Asia.
Instead of fear of abandonment we need an abandonment of fear. At the next election, the power of the people must be shown to be greater than the people in power.
Here's the link to John Lander's FULL speech: https://youtu.be/MfmUjNCrUyY?si=wz4wudcdLznUaXES
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