PNG’s defence deal with USA is ‘sensible’
17 June 2023
CHRIS OVERLAND
“It’ll be fascinating to watch how PNG squares away the deal with China. (I guess the Yanks will offer a few tips)” – Keith Jackson
“Presumably PNG’s policy of ‘friend to all, enemy to none’ means the same rights will be extended to China. I think the US has now decided where it’s going to fight its war with China” - Philip Fitzpatrick
“If anyone says there is a crisis between China and the US, that is hushuobada [nonsense]. It's like a siheyuan [traditional Beijing family]. Sometimes you get into fights, you have disagreements, you have no alternative but to work it out, and I think you can” - Kevin Rudd, Australian Ambassador to the USA
“Sino-US cooperation will achieve things that are beneficial to both countries and the world, while confrontation will be disastrous” – Xi Jinping
“The thing we see across all the wargames is that there are major losses on all sides. And the impact of that on our [USA] society is quite devastating” - Becca Wasser, head of gaming lab at Center for a New American Security
ADELAIDE - We don’t know the details of the US-PNG Defence Cooperation Agreement, but it does not really matter.
The plain fact is that the war with the forces of totalitarianism has already commenced. The Russo-Ukraine War is a proxy war between the Western democratic powers and Russia.
The latter is being surreptitiously supported by China, although not to the degree Putin so desperately wants and needs.
The only real questions now are whether the shooting will start in the Asia Pacific region, and when.
If this occurs then Papua New Guinea and Australia will inevitably become involved to some extent at least.
A shooting war is still avoidable provided both the USA and China can find a way to live together.
This will require the USA to recognise that it cannot any longer exercise the dominant position in world affairs it has enjoyed since the demise of the USSR in 1991.
For its part, China must accept that, whilst it will be a major power, it cannot become the world’s dominant power.
Both countries stand to benefit by achieving some sort of accommodation. Equally, both will lose if they resort to armed conflict and so will everyone else.
Both countries have major internal problems.
The USA is in a state of undeclared civil war, with the so-called progressives locked in a tremendous political struggle with the forces of reaction over the future socio-economic structure of US society.
Also, while remaining an economic powerhouse, the USA is not the predominant economic power it once was. It is by no means clear how this will play out over the longer term.
China has major problems of its own. Its economy is much more fragile than it pretends.
It has accumulated a mountain of internal debt (300%+ of GDP) whilst engaging in perhaps the largest and fastest debt fueled infrastructure construction program in human history.
Much of that debt will never be repaid and the Chinese central bank has yet to figure out how to manage the deleveraging process without an enormous economic crash.
Also, the Peoples Liberation Army is a powerful force but has no recent experience of large scale industrial warfare and none at all of trying to mount a seaborne invasion such as will be required to seize Taiwan.
Consequently, prudence suggests that directing the PLA to conduct the modern equivalent of the D-Day landings of June 1944 without having gained experience elsewhere might, as we have seen in Ukraine, prove to be an ill-advised strategy.
I am hoping that the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party is much smarter than Putin and his fellow gangsters and will be more inclined to do some sort of deal rather than engage in a chancy military adventure. Ditto the Americans.
So this is the context of the PNG’s defence cooperation deal with the USA.
If PNG can wring some financial advantage out of it, well and good.
Given the factors I have mentioned, it seems to me to be a pragmatic recognition that doing a deal with the USA is a sensible measure.
The question here is whether PNG's defence deal is sensible.
Aligning itself with one of the two competing world powers, the most belligerent of the two, and letting it build bases on its land, is not sensible.
It is almost akin to taking sides, even though it naively claims to be friends with everyone. That claim in itself is not exactly smart either.
The other factor to be seriously considered is the prospect of a fascist American president gaining control in 2024, either Trump or one of his Republican buddies.
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 20 June 2023 at 10:52 AM
For all of its faults, the USA was and remains a bastion of democracy.
Still, I think that Phil is right to say that it warmongers in the sense that it has far too often sought to use force to do what it judged was in its national interest.
Sadly, this judgement has been awry in too many cases and this seems to now be understood in Washington.
Anyone who thinks that a 'civilised' China will not use force to achieve its own ends is being naive in the extreme.
Force and counter force are always a critical factor in relations between competing powers.
Long periods of peaceful coexistence between powers can occur only where the 'balance of power' is such that there is a point of equilibrium where the powers concerned know that their capacity to wield force in their own interests is matched by that of a putative enemy.
During the European imperial era the British played the role both international 'umpire' and enforcer in a conscious attempt to maintain a balance of power in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
It did this fairly successfully from around 1800 to 1914, when Europe once again fell into the abyss of war.
I think it can plausibly be argued that the war that began in 1914 finally ended with the fall of the USSR in 1991.
At this point, the USA was the world's only superpower and could utterly dominate international affairs.
But that period is over and now the USA is the counterbalancing force to the rising totalitarian powers, Russia and China.
China is a one party, authoritarian state which seeks to establish its dominance in South-East Asia and beyond.
It has shown its willingness to assert its will and crush dissent by any and all means. It is not a benign power.
I am very conscious that the USA asserts its power quite ruthlessly too but there is not moral equivalence between the world's greatest democracy (however flawed) and any totalitarian state.
As Winston Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government in the world except for all the others that have been tried.
We should all bear this axiom in mind when looking at our modern world and trying to understand how it actually works.
Posted by: Chris Overland | 19 June 2023 at 09:22 AM
Let's be frank here.
The PNG defence deal with the USA is profoundly stupid.
First of all, it is based on the perceived benefits that might flow to PNG, particularly into the pockets of its politicians.
The defence minister's recent performance in parliament made this abundantly clear.
Second, the USA is a warmongering nation built on the idea that might is right. It is also gun crazy that thinks nothing of murdering its own people, especially poor blacks.
Using PNG as a base for one of its ill conceived military adventures wouldn't bother this nation in the slightest.
Third, China won't start any wars in the Pacific or anywhere else. It is a lot more sophisticated than that.
Have a defence agreement with the USA by all means. But have a sensible agreement that doesn't give away sovereignty with everything else.
PNG, could you please stop being so dumb and greedy.
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 18 June 2023 at 03:16 PM
And one of the interesting sidelights from this may be the interaction of the USA and China at the Taurama military base.
Recently we saw that the Chinese are undertaking a significant rebuild of the hospital at the base.
Posted by: Ross Wilkinson | 17 June 2023 at 01:12 PM
I guess the Yankee dollar is stronger and more valuable than the Chinese yuang?
Posted by: Harry Topham | 17 June 2023 at 08:55 AM