Seriously, our two big-boy best friends have always been China and the US. Now tensions are really coming to a head we're going to side with the failed state of the US? I don't understand anything about foreign policy.
Australia as a 5 eye's member is an imperial vassal state, it doesn't have an independent foreign policy, it is completely subservient to the American empire and the will of Washington.
This btw is also the case for all NATO members.
Australia will always be stuck being very dependent on whatever regional naval power there is due to island logistics. Right now, it's the United States. However, China makes up 69.7% of Australia's entire export market. There has been speculation that China would be Australia's number 1 ally as soon as China forms enough of a navy to be regionally dominant in Oceania.
and that's happening, I've heard China has started using the sea to hide their submarines
yeah it's foolish to assume China will try to be the new world police after thwarting American hegemony, but it's still up in the air if they'll decide to play god in Oceania
they're definitely building their navy, I didn't mean to be sarcastic about that. I guess I just couldn't help mentioning that article it always makes me laugh
Australia bailed on the Brits once the empire crumbled, we will do the same to the Yanks
Remember when we tried to not be and got a Very Aussie Coup out of it.
You can upset a whole lot of neoliberals by bringing this up.
I got a range of responses from "That didn't happen you fucking idiot" to "He was a corrupt incompetent moron who deserved it" to "Whataboutism! Russian Bot!"
Not just a right-wing government, but a government that is trapped between it's white nationalist voter base and it's dying coal export industry.
The Australians are dealing with many of the same ecological and economic pressures present in the US right now. And their reaction is much the same. Blood and Soil Nationalism is becoming a proxy for The American/Australian Dream of middle class first world decadency.
So we're doing the sunk cost fallacy but for a whole nation? All this sunlight must be wrecking our racist brains.
We denounced the British because they wouldn’t let us be racist enough. (not even joking). Although Australia was one of the first western countries to establish a relationship with China, from Wikipedia:
As opposition leader, Gough Whitlam visited China in 1971 (before Henry Kissinger's historic visit on behalf of the United States), and in December 1972, after Whitlam's victory in that year's federal election, Australia established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, and Australia ceased to recognise the Republic of China government of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. Although Whitlam's decision was informed by warming relations between China and the West generally, especially the United States,
Australian diplomatic relations with the People's Republic predated that of the United States by seven years.
We denounced the British because they wouldn’t let us be racist enough.
Source? Sounds interesting.
I mean it was the same shit with Native Americans, Black Americans, etc.
The government just wanted the resources, the religious terrorists wanted lebensraum
It was called The White Australia Policy, pretty bad blight on Australian history. It was like the first thing we went against the British on... don’t have a specific source on it atm but here’s wiki:
The British government in London was not pleased with legislation that discriminated against certain subjects of its Empire, but decided not to disallow the laws that were passed.
Unfortunately the early labour movement was quite involved in this :( because of cheap foreign labour, although without capitalism there wouldn’t beside strong material causes of racism to begin with.
There's more nuanced answers in this thread but...
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Australia is super fucking racist, especially against the Chinese immigrant population there, rich or poor.
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Australia is America's puppet state, not just because of Five Eyes etc but also because when an Australian government tried to pull back from being basically a US military base and close the infamous Pine Gap in 1975 the CIA helped the opposition literally do a political coup to get rid of them.
Damn straight on point two. Some real fine reading about it here for anyone who might not know.
Yeah, that's an excellent little rundown and well worth a read for people who are interested.
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Australia is the most heavily affected by Murdoch press what with it being his home country. They have incredibly tight control of the country and have distorted the population's views incredibly well.
A friend of mine recently visited and called it "The UK but 50x more racist I won't be going there ever again".
It's fucked.
The anglosphere is going to suicidally attempt to fight with China while everyone else in the world plays the adult in the room, Australia is the angry drunk racist of the anglosphere.
Australia is what you get if every single TV channel and newspaper is Fox News.
Yup, that's us. Shits fucked and I can't wait til we become an occupied Chinese nation.
CIA controls Australia, partly because that baby is right underneath central asia
Because australia is just as racist and right wing as the US is, with all of its power ceded to daddy USA.
I would straight up pay to see a fight between Scomo and Xi though. Just some weird old man wrestling, all oiled up and shirtless.
Oh yeah, this. I always hear that property prices are so high because the Chinese buy them up. When I mention that no-one should be able to own more than one home (e.g. removal of the landlord class), these same folks get super pissy and say that people are entitled to earn money from rent.
Think of the Anglo countries as a mob family
The US is the head boss leading the mob, the chairman, everyone else basically follows their orders
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are like the siblings of the boss, decent amount of power, decide shit on their own, but they ultimately act for the interests of the mob as a whole
The UK is the much older mafioso, the former patriarch for the Anglo crime family that used to head the mob before its kid, America took over; the UK still has that old man strength but is nonetheless an old man with his days numbered
auspol will screech about "foreign interference" at the whiff of a person who even looks chinese anywhere near a parliament but when overseas companies like apple and general motors wriggle their way out of paying taxes or put thousands of people out of work it's "just one of those things"
Not to mention that, militarily and in terms of international relations we’re literally just a client state of the US empire. But nah them having military bases here isn’t “foreign interference”.
