New World Shifting to the Indo-Pacific new nuclear powered submarines


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  • #77474 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    AUKUS

    Just recently there have been programmes on the U.K. T.V. about nuclear submarines. Two different shows at the same time. One a drama set in an SSBN.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigil_(TV_series)
    Then there is the programme showing an Astute class SSN minding an SSBN in the Atlantic.

    I thought this overload might be to soften us up for something, then today it is announced, that we will be helping Australia to cancell their French contract for diesel-electric submarines and the U.K. and the U.S.A. will be assisting Australia to manufacture nuclear powered submarines.
    https://www.rt.com/news/534966-france-aukus-nuclear-submarine-deal/

    The U.K. puts more distance between the U.K. and the E.U.
    At one time the Five Eyes, Canada, U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand and the U.K. were linked with the E.U. When the U.K. had no working aircraft carriers, we had a lease agreement with the French that we could use their nuclear powered aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle
    I guess that no longer applies as we have two aircraft carriers, built in Scotland, of our own.

    #77478 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Probably, now, the E.U. has no in, with Five Eyes, as the U.K. has departed from the E.U. All Five Eyes countries mostly speak English.
    The U.K. no longer use diesel-electric for the Royal Navy Submarines. They all run on R.R. reactors. The U.K. is expecting, soon, to become less involved with the E.U. and more involved in the Indo-Pacific regions.
    New Zealand has claimed that nuclear powered submarines will not be allowed to port in New Zealand?

    #77479 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    “The American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, whether in terms of our values or in terms of respect for multilateralism based on the rule of law, shows a lack of coherence that France can only note and regret,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Defence Minister Florence Parly said in a joint statement.

    Speaking on French radio on Thursday morning, Le Drian expressed his anger over the deal.

    “It’s really a stab in the back. We had established a relationship of trust with Australia, this trust has been betrayed,” Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Info radio.

    https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210915-us-britain-australia-announce-new-security-pact-to-counter-china

    Somebody is teaching the French Administration some lessons. That two cancellations to French pride in a week, first Valneva

    https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/uk-would-not-have-approved-valneva-covid-vaccine-health-secretary-says-2021-09-14/

    now the subs.

    They must be hopping mad. Also, we are threatening to cancel the money the U.K. gives France to keep the migrants out of the U.K.

    Sour Grapes all round.

    #77528 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Who saw this coming

    China has just asked to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58579832

    This is likely to be a counter foil to AUKUS

    #77545 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    This I thought was amusing.

    Australia has made a choice it was probably forced to make. Caitlin Johnstone’s article is illuminating.

    “So there you have it. Australia is not aligned with the US to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with the US to protect itself from the US.”

    “Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer. “Right you have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.”

    “You’re either with us or against us,” he continued. “And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”

    The debate from which those quotes come can be found on youtube here as well as being embedded in Johnstone’s article. It is worth watching all of it including the Q+A.

    MOA also has an article about this.

    “The price for the new submarines Australia will have to pay will be much higher that for the French ones. Some $3 billion have already been sunk into the French contract. France will rightfully demand additional compensation for cancelling it. The new contract with the U.S. or UK will cost more than the French one but will only include 8 instead of 12 boats. As three boats are needed to keep one at sea (while the other two are training or in refit), the actual patrolling capacity for Australia’s navy will sink from 4 to 2-3 concurrent submarines at sea.”

    I have read elsewhere that Australia will continue its commitment for no civil (nuclear power stations) or military (Nukes) nuclear infrastructure. So the reactors will come from USA or UK as will the required nuclear fuel. How will Australia deal with the nuclear waste? If they have no infrastructure who will dispose of it for them?

    Australia will have to develop port facilities to handle these subs and maintain the reactors. This will give UKUSA access to capable ports to dock their own subs helping to perhaps extend their abilities to remain on station in that part of the globe.

    The French are pissed off not simply because of the lost contract but also because as recently as August there was a meeting between an Australian and French dplomatic teams to work on the submarine deal. Obviously at this point the Aussies knew they were going to drop it.

    Ultimately The French will realise the Aussies had little choice and the ultimate response will be directed at USA.

    #77574 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    The U.K. government has announced £170m will be invested in developing technology for a new generation of submarines for the Royal Navy.

    Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said it marked “the start of a new journey”.

    Two contracts for £85 million each have been awarded to BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce to deliver design and concept work for the replacement vessels.

    The investment will guarantee 350 jobs: 250 at the shipyard in Cumbria and 100 at Rolls-Royce operations in Derby.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58599757

    The design work will help inform future decisions to decide on the replacements for the Astute Class submarines, the nuclear-powered fleet of submarines currently in service with the Royal Navy.

    Described as “the largest, most advanced and most powerful attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy”, the Astute Class submarine can launch long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles at sea, striking ground targets “hundreds of miles inland with pinpoint accuracy”.

    Yes, rather amusing that these two T.V. programmes are currently on air, who would have thought, government propaganda still alive and well.

    #77597 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “So the reactors will come from USA or UK as will the required nuclear fuel. How will Australia deal with the nuclear waste?”

    Presumably, removing spent fuel and refuelling will be done together. Either the subs will go somewhere for a fuel change (Diego Garcia perhaps), or they will rendezvous with some kind of service vessel which brings new fuel and takes away the spent rods. Or, if done in an Australian port, the spent fuel could be stored until taken for reprocessing.

    The UK used to do this with Magnox reactors in various countries; spent fuel elements from all over the world went to Sellafield, earning the UK the nickname “the world’s nuclear dustbin”. The idea was that by selling reactors but retaining control over the fuel cycle the UK could make money and gain power, and build up a stockpile of plutonium. But the reprocessing facility at Sellafield got trashed in 1974(?) when the Magnox stations were run flat out to try and break the miners’ strike, leading the spent fuel pond, Building B30, to become the most contaminated site in Europe, gaining the nickname “Dirty Thirty”.

    #77644 Reply
    kodlu
    Guest

    Can you name the second submarine drama about hunting an SSBN, please? Amusingly [or not] Vigil had just been released here in Australia on Binge, a few weeks before this AUKUS business.

    #77651 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210917-france-recalls-its-ambassadors-to-us-and-australia-in-submarine-deal-backlash

    I wonder if this was actually set up / put in motion by Donald Trump.
    Trump hates France and Germany and the E.U. and China – all the gang who are upset.

    #77652 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Channel 5’s Submarine:
    “Life Under the Waves”
    features Devonport-based HMS Trenchant
    It’s the first time British cameras have been allowed on board a hunter-killer submarine on live operations in the Atlantic Ocean.
    https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/channel-5s-submarine-life-under-5910284

    ‘Submarine: Life Under the Waves’ is the first time British cameras have been given access on board a hunter-killer submarine on live operations.

    The documentary series covers life aboard the Royal’s Navy’s oldest submarine on a four-month tour of duty to the mid-Atlantic, before it returned to Plymouth for the last time in March for decommissioning.

    #77653 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    First major blow to E.U. from Brexit-Fall-Out

    According to Ben Judah, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, AUKUS is unlikely to have been formed had the U.K. staying in the E.U. He tweeted:

    “AUKUS without Brexit? Technically, yes, but as an E.U. member the U.K. would have been involved in so many overlapping negotiations with France and with so many French ways to screw them back in Brussels, no Prime Minister would have taken a $90bn swipe at their defence industry.”

    My thoughts exactly, this is Global Britain sticking two fingers up to France.

    #77654 Reply
    Jon Cofy
    Guest

    “the U.K. and the U.S.A. will be assisting Australia to manufacture nuclear powered submarines

    To be honest if Australia wants to have submarines they need to be nuclear powered. Just to get around the place requires range and endurance.

    Why has it taken so long?
    There is a well entrenched anti-nuclear lobby in Australia, possibly as a result of British nuclear testing that covered the continent with radiation under the reign of Prime Minister Robert Menzies. Understandably Menzies spent a lot of time in England while his country was being covered in radioactive fallout.
    It doesn’t end there. Enter the French who, despite vehement protests, covered parts of Northern Australia in radioactive fallout while conducting nuclear bomb tests. The Queensland government banned mothers from breastfeeding and all the cows milk had to be dumped until the radiation levels dropped. This happened multiple times.

    French travelers have complained to me that Australians don’t like French people and I tell them that it is nothing personal. Lots of Australians remember the French bombings. In contrast not many of us down winders (from British nuclear bomb tests) are left and even fewer know that they were irradiated at all since Menzies didn’t issue any warnings.

    The French Barracuda class submarine is designed to be nuclear powered, so Australia could have simply chosen a French nuclear power plant. However, the memory of France ignoring Australia begging them to stop their nuclear tests precludes this. To buy nuclear power from the State that heartlessly covered us in radioactive fallout would be too much to bear.

    Prime Minister Covid Morrison has two things on his side. Nuclear subs are really the only practical option and Aussies won’t mind a bit of pay back on the French for their nuclear vandalism.

    So ultimately who should be furious here?
    Karma’s a bitch!

    #77662 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    AUKUS

    “While Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines will not be nuclear-armed, the small reactors used to power them do produce weapons-grade uranium as waste. And it’s the ability to produce weapons-grade uranium that is behind the decades-long nonproliferation dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

    And that’s the leverage point Beijing has chosen to target.

    Chinese military experts warned that such a move will potentially make Australia a target of a nuclear strike”

    https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/china-calls-for-combat-readiness-after-aukus-submarine-purchase/news-story/c53bfe2bef6b24c8352247232343ccb4

    There is a serious realignment going on.
    America has just pulled out of Afghanistan.
    Afghanistan is close to China/Russia/Pakistan/India/China/ex-Soviet Central Asia.
    Part of the strategic importance of Afghanistan, is, its potential to be a Methane hub.

    Methane could flow from Russia/Ex-Soviet Central Asia/Iran/Gulf of Persia into Pakistan/India or China.
    Russia has just constructed NORDSTREAM TWO from Russia to Germany.
    World traded price of Natural Gas is going through the roof.
    America is against Russia Natural Gas flooding the E.U. but America is in favour of Fracked Gas becoming LNG and being transported from America to Europe.

    So, just partly AUKUS might be payback for the E.U. taking Russian Methane?
    From America/U.K. point of view, this kills many birds with one stone.

    #77686 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “the small reactors used to power them do produce weapons-grade uranium as waste. And it’s the ability to produce weapons-grade uranium that is behind the decades-long nonproliferation dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.”

    Both statements are nonsense; see below the dotted line.

    What the Chinese government is really worried about is this map:

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/11i/aussubmap.jpg

    China is out of range of conventional subs from Australia, but very much within range of nuclear powered subs. And China will only have Australia’s word that these Australian subs won’t have US or UK nuclear weapons on board.
    – – – – – – – –

    Physics:

    Reactors produce “spent fuel”, a horrible, highly radioactive mixture of some of the original fuel (U235 and U238), fission products (radioactive isotopes of strontium, caesium, iodine etc, the same as fallout from a nuclear bomb), plutonium, and other ‘actinides’, which are radioactive elements with higher atomic number than uranium.

    The plutonium can be used to make nuclear bombs, but (1) it needs complicated reprocessing facilities to separate out the plutonium, and (2) it can only make A-bombs, not the far more powerful H-bombs. You need to make tritium as well to make H-bombs.

    I think what the clueless author means (couldn’t he have just asked someone?) is that the Chinese government is concerned because the fuel elements for these subs will be uranium of fairly high enrichment; 60% U235 with 40% U238 – whereas civilian reactor fuel elements are only 5% U235. But you can’t make bombs with 60% U235 either; you need 95% U235 for bombs.

    It is quicker and less staggeringly expensive to make 95% U235 from 60% U235 than 5% U235, but a complicated and costly enrichment facility is still needed – either a centrifuge cascade or a gas diffusion facility. Australia has neither of these, and it would be blindingly obvious if it started building one. The same goes for a reprocessing facility, for extracting plutonium from spent fuel.

    The only thing about these subs that makes it easier for Australia to get nuclear weapons is that they could sail to other countries and collect them.

    Iran:

    According to US intelligence agencies, in 2003 I think, Iran had stopped attempting to develop nuclear weapons some years earlier; Iran is fully open to IAEA inspections. The “decades-long dispute” is basically driven by Israel, objecting to Iran enriching to 20% U235 for its research reactor which can produce medical and industrial isotopes. But these days Russia does Iran’s uranium enrichment anyway.

    #77693 Reply
    Pigeon English
    Guest

    I don’t have a good comment but I have loads of rhetorical questions!

    • Why is China our enemy and Japan our friend?
    • Why is Russia our enemy and Ukraine is our friend?
    • Why are Absolute monarchies in ME our friends but autocracies are enemies?
    • Should party in power provide food and well being to it’s population or free speech?
    • How USA could have been leader of FREE WORLD While having SEGREGATION (until 1964)
    • How come UK would engage in nuclear war to protect us East Europeans but do not like us living among yourself?
    • Why is Little Fascist racist country in the ME our the best ally?

    No wonder I am subconsciously on China’s side.

    “if you like China so much you should go and live there”!!!!

    Too old for that and climate doesn’t suit me!

    #77697 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    P.E. fantastic questions, I am fairly sure, most of us have asked ourselves these exact same questions. Let me have a dab.
    Israel, The first Jew to become a prime minister was in England but by then his Dad had converted the family to church of England for their family advancement, Benjamin Disraeli was the most favored prime minister of Queen Victoria.
    The U.K. set up Israel. Thus we are friends. Some of the money to set up Israel came from Russia.
    It is thought that Israel sits on a massive Methane field.
    Israel “controls” the Middle East.
    The U.S.A. was an incredibly fascist country, perhaps until the Second World War, they speak the correct language, they came out of The British Isles. The U.K. and America between them drove the enslavement of Africans. Two peas out of the same pod.
    The U.K. is the most famous enduring Monarchy, in the whole World, why would they not get on with other monarchies?

    #77700 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Pigeon English, you and other East Europeans are very welcome in the UK so far as I am concerned, and I’m sure my friends would all agree.

    Don’t take sides, because that is the trap – divide and rule. Everywhere, the people are exploited by the power structures around them. Even nasty, powerful people are exploited by those structures because they were shaped by them, promoted by them and are continually rewarded and gratified by them, yet simultaneously threatened by them – the more they are rewarded, the more they have to lose. Their nastiness is useful to the structure, so the structure cultivates it. There are nasty but powerless people too.

    #77699 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Also please bare in mind our Queen is also Queen to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the remnants of Empire.
    Such as Isle of Mann, South Georgia and Antarctica.
    U.K. is about to reconfirm its love of India.
    Queen Victoria, although never visiting India was Empress of India.
    She loved everything about India.
    Her grandson George Frederick Ernest Albert
    was initiated into the Emperor of India at the Durbar in 1911.

    #77701 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    P.E. you have given us a great laugh, thank you for the gift of humour.
    I once had a foreman, in Reading, who one day came to work subdued, I asked him what the matter was. |¦| He said his granddad had just attacked a Japanese tourist on a bus. |¦| Strange.
    It turned out my foremans granddad had been captured and tortured by Japs in the Second World War, and he hated them with all his being. |¦| He was unable to distinguish the past and the present.
    I actually felt sorry for all of them, my foreman, his granddad and the innocent Japanese person. |¦| That is history and your personal perception.
    Before the First World War, the country of Japan was given the nomenclature of honorary European country. |¦| So, after World War Two the Japs reverted to being Asian/Europeans, we like them but we hate the Chinese Communists.
    I hope that sorts things out for you.

    #77711 Reply
    Pigeon English
    Guest

    Clark
    you are right. Let’s not be divided between

    • global warming or not
    • vaccines or not
    • oppressed and oppressor
    • etc.

    Take it easy do not play in their hands! (I know what you mean ?)

    Regarding Brexit thank you for kind words and all other lovely people of Uk I had pleasure to befriend during my great stay in England but TBH with you guys, because of Brexit my wife’s job moved to Netherlands and so did I. ?
    Internet + bbc on Tv makes me British expat. ?

    #77745 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Trident starts off with 6ft 11in diameter rocket, so no, Trident cannot be fired from an Astute, which does fire Raytheon Missile Systems, Tomahawk; these are fired through their torpedo tubes 20.4″ in diameter.

    #77750 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    What’s more, Raytheon are already embedded in Australia, such as at Woomera Rocket Test Range.
    Raytheon Australia’s experienced team is committed to delivering mature sovereign capability across joint battlespace systems, mission systems, above water systems and under water systems delivery areas. The company also remains focused on delivering innovative solutions for key areas including targeted exports, sovereign weapons, advanced test and training, as well as integrated air and missile defence.
    https://www.raytheon.com/au/news/feature/capability-partner-australias-defence

    #77757 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Raytheon GLENROTHES – Manufacturing Facility

    I wonder how much of the Tomahawk missiles are manufactured in Scotland?

    #77830 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    French government very angry at Australia
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1493650/Emmanuel-Macron-France-Australia-trade-talks-UK-US-submarine-deal-latest

    Paris has signalled it will block future talks between Brussels and Canberra after the latter’s decision to renege on a contract for French-built submarines Australia instead agreed to a new pact with Britain and the United States to purchase nuclear-powered vessels. Clement Beaune, France’s hardline Europe minister, said future negotiations between the E.U. and Australia would be “unthinkable” as a result of the feud.
    Looks like France is incredibly miffed, so much so, that they may cut off their own nose to spite their face.
    Today the French Defence minister has cancelled his trip to London to meet with Mister Wallace, the Defense minister of the U.K.

    #77839 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    I wish we had Craig’s insight and experience on these developments.

    Europe can’t be pleased with the UK joining the new US cold war against China, increasing the chances of the geographically European UK becoming a nuclear target in any future conflict.

    #77843 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Funny, a few years ago David Cameron invited Xi Jinping to his Oxfordshire constituency and they had fish and chips and beer in David’s local boozer. A whole new World of Chinese money was grasped. Then Donald Trump decided the U.K. must give up Chinese 5G Huawei.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53403793

    I think most contributors on here despise Donald Trump and think he is idiotic but most of what Donald put in place (exception of Global Warming) is being done by Democrat Jo Biden.

    #77849 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    “I think most contributors on here despise Donald Trump and think he is idiotic”

    Not initially MN, he offered a promise of change that he didn’t keep. He was always a pig of a man (would you want to go for a pint with him?), and he did say many idiotic things. I think he was used by the USA foreign policy establishment to readjust to a more agressive anti-china policy which they could blame on an anomalous Trump but continue with anyway. Basically, it comes down to if you trade or co-operate with China you are “feeding the beast” and an enemy of USA. I posted a YT video of a debate between John Mearsheimer an american foreign policy “thinker” and Hugh White an aussie counterpart. It’s a bit long but well worth a watch right through including the Q+A at the end.

    I see Japan is urging Europe to counter China more agressively today. So do you want to be part of an American or Chinese empire? I’d prefer neither. Do the Chinese really want an empire? In the long run my money would be on the Chinese to win out but I don’t want to be subjugated by either USA or China.

    #77854 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “most of what Donald put in place […] is being done by Democrat Jo Biden.”

    Yep. The president isn’t nearly as significant as people think.

    “Macrocosm dominates microcosm” – structures dominate the people they consist of.

    #77867 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    Some things are obviously linked, maybe unintentionally or maybe intentionally.
    David Cameron, when he was U.K. Prime minister hosted Xi Jinping, we were to become great buddies. It frightened me at the time, I knew this would end badly, the U.K. was about to be eaten alive by Communist China.
    As if by magic, along came Brexit and David Cameron was yesterday’s fish and chip paper.
    Boris Johnson was born in New York as was Boris Johnson, like two peas in a blond pod.
    America (Donald Trump) came to understand that there is no future in having almost everything made on the cheap in China, they will eventually have you by the balls, then the price goes up as their workers want more and more.
    So, Donald’s Big idea was Make America Great Again, which I think means make stuff in America again with American money and American leadership and with American workers, on the pipeline he insisted that the iron and coal cam from America, the steel was to be made in America and the pipes were to be made in America, to move American Oil and Gas or Canadian Oil or gas. Frack oil and gas in America. Elon Musk, who at first was friends with Donald, has a vertical system, he buys the land, has his own factory built all the stuff is manufactured by his firm, mostly under one roof, the cars are moved by rail, alright he does not own the railway and the Lithium, for now comes from The Atacama. He does have plans to mine Lithium in America, also to reuse the Lithium after end of battery life.
    America is done with Europe and the Middle East, it is shifting to the Indo-Pacific.

    #77899 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    I can’t despise Donald Trump, nor any other politicians or media personalities because they aren’t fully real to me, not like a person I meet in real life. They’re images on a screen, quotes in media etc. With media, never forget that really we’re just staring at a sheet of cleverly illuminated plastic and listening to two pieces of vibrating cardboard, and everything we see and hear has been carefully selected and edited by a massive team, coordinated by a system that has changed slowly for the worse over the course of decades.

    And never forget that we are that system’s product, not its customers. We’re an audience, being sold to advertisers. Even if we pay for our newspaper or TV channel, 2/3 of its income comes from advertising. The “news” is essentially bait, as is the rest of its output. That’s why “news” comes in various political flavours.

    I’m pretty sure I’d dislike Trump in real life, but I did speak up for him at the Quaker meeting I attend. Quakers are very diverse; the meeting I attend consists mostly of atheists, but something that unites them (us? I haven’t actually joined) is our opposition to war and injustice. At meeting, someone spoke in criticism of Trump. I thought for a bit, and then spoke myself, pointing out that he was the first US president in a very long time who hadn’t actually started a major war. Credit where it’s due.

    #77901 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Michael, regarding your 18:10 comment – humanity and all the nations must learn to cooperate or the entire edifice of our civilisations will fall in pieces around us and we or our descendants will die by the billions – if we don’t kill each other first, as resources run short, with our nukes and modified viruses. Despite modern ideas about progress we are dependent upon nature, not her master. Unrestrained competition would be the undoing of us.

    #77944 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    After this humiliation The French will now be re-evaluating their role in Nato. Emmanuel Macron is the man who described Nato two years ago as “brain-dead”. He will not have changed his mind.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58614229

    This AUKUS pact and the America rapid an unexpected pullout of Afghanistan are good lesson to Ukraine, |¦| the Americans will not stand by you, focus has shifted away from Russia/Europe into the Indo-Pacific.

    #77952 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Michael, many nation states in Europe are in NATO. They are not blind. AUKUS could precipitate the breakup of NATO and the formation instead of a united European military alliance.

    The BBC article – its propaganda is so thick you could cut it with a knife, eg:

    “The fact is that the Australians calculated they had underestimated the Chinese threat and so needed to boost their level of deterrence.”

    Surely this is nonsense? By far the greatest part of Australia’s trade is with China, so what is there for Australia to “deter”? It seems more likely that the “Anglo-Saxons”, as Renaud Girard put it, have coerced the Australian government, and history bears this out; a democratically elected Australian Prime Minister was replaced by order of the English Monarch in recent history, and Australia is infested with US military bases, yet there are no potential US targets within a thousand miles.

    In light of the above, the following BBC statement is also nonsense. Referring to Australia, the BBC author wrote:

    It is almost the definition of a nation: a group of people who have come together to defend their own interests. Their own, not others’.

    Compare trade with conflict; which is more in the interests of the people? Yet here is the Australian government defending the interests of the US-UK alliance, literally on the other side of the world.

    Governments do not serve their people. Not here, not in China, the US, Australia, nor nearly any other place you can think of. Democracy is corruptible, power corrupts, and the evidence bears it out – power has corrupted democracy.

    #77965 Reply
    Pigeon English
    Guest

    If I were Chinese Emperor, invading UK or Europe would be last on my list. My eye would be on the Asian part of Russia.
    If I were Russian I would be equally scared of Europeans and Chinese.

    #77974 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    The only thing about these subs that makes it easier for Australia to get nuclear weapons is that they could sail to other countries and collect them.

    I did read this a few days ago but it only struck home on rereading in in the consortum news article, AUKUS: Activists Blast the ‘Anti-China’ Military Pact.

    Critics of the alliance, however, worry that it “could still indirectly spur the proliferation of weapons” by setting “a dangerous precedent for countries to exploit a loophole in the NPT,” The Guardian reported. The NPT allows countries without atomic bombs, such as Australia, “to build nuclear-powered submarines, and to remove the fissile material they need for the submarine reactors from the stockpile monitored by the global watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, opening up the possibility it could be diverted to making weapons.

    Given the stockpiles of fissile material nuclear countries already have it’s probably not that relevant in the grand scheme of things but it still gives pause for thought.

    #77978 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Oh it’s proliferation all right. Proliferation of nuclear submarines, which are far more capable than diesel-electric submarines; see Moon of Alabama’s map. And NPT or none, how is anyone to know what weapons are on board? Government promises? It is most definitely a big step in the wrong direction; we need rid of as much weaponry as possible before the shit hits the fan and governments start launching weapons at ordinary people, because that can only make things worse.

    ‘Our Indifference To Ourselves’ – Beyond The ‘Virtue’ Of Self-Sacrifice – Part 1

    #77995 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    United Kingdom Ministers are understood to be hoping to use the Aukus defence pact with Australia and the US to create a new base in the Indo-Pacific region. Under the plans the Navy’s £1.4bn Astute-class attack submarines would undergo maintenance in Australia rather than the Faslane naval base in Scotland.

    This is because Scotland does not want the Royal Navy in Scotland.
    Independence must be close.

    #78011 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “Scotland does not want the Royal Navy in Scotland”

    The Sturgeon (Murrell) government has, I think, agreed to lease the Faslane site to England in the event of independence.

    Another example of governments representing the powerful rather than the people. The nuclear bases and dockyards in Scotland (Coulport and Rosythe too) are extremely unpopular with the people; “Bairns not Bombs” stickers everywhere.

    #78014 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    As the focus of the U.S.A. shifts from Europe/Russia and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, |¦|
    there is a good chance that America will begin to leave Syria alone. |¦|
    Then there is a good chance that Syria can start to heal and rebuild. |¦|
    Possibly Israel will become less important to America and possibly Saudi Arabia will begin to revert to unimportance and we switch away from Oil.

    #78015 Reply
    michael norton
    Guest

    3,256 miles between the Australian HMAS Stirling submarine base, near Perth to Diego Garcia. About five days for an Astute to sail between
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Stirling
    2,935 miles from HMS Jufair, Gulf of Persia to Diego Garcia.
    So, I can not see the U.K./U.S.A. giving up Diego Garcia.

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