Endless war

AUSTRALIA, the UK, and the US announced that they are forming a new alliance called the AUKUS scarcely two weeks after withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years of disaster.

This is a mindless extension of the policy of endless war. Instead of abandoning Afghanistan to the hell that 20 years of military intervention, followed by a shut off of international funds, and leaping into a new and entirely unnecessary escalation of conflict with China, Australia, the US and other NATO countries must immediately act to do good, to repair the damage of the Afghanistan and other unjust military adventures of the past two decades, through a policy of real development.

The needs are urgent; the situation today in Afghanistan is horrendous. Despite a much-hyped sum of $1.2 billion assembled early this week from a donors conference, Afghanistan remains largely cut off from sources of funding that are required to keep its people alive. More than $9 billion of the country’s banking reserves is frozen by the US. The World Bank has shut down a major health program required to maintain the system of clinics and hospitals that serve the population.

The World Food Program warns of 10s of millions of people already faced with “food insecurity” or threatened with it.

But after withdrawing from Afghanistan following 20 years of disaster, instead of working to rebuild that nation, the US has rushed into a new catastrophe – a new British Empire alliance targeting China as NATO already targets Russia. The AUKUS alliance was announced on Wednesday, focused squarely against China.

The goals of this military monstrosity include equipping Australia with a fleet of nuclear submarines.

All that effort, for what end? This is precisely the wrong orientation. As the British Empire pursues military pressure abroad and financial regime-change at home, China has spent the past decade creating growth. Under the rubric of its Belt and Road Initiative, China has established a Central AsiaChina gas pipeline, tying together Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. The small town of Gwadar, Pakistan, has been transformed into a modern industrial port, now connected to China’s western provinces through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor of roads, rail, power, and pipelines. China last year signed a development agreement worth up to hundreds of billions of dollars with Tehran. Following hundreds of billions – or trillions – of dollars of investment in Africa,

China-Africa trade has doubled in the last years to a level that now is triple US-Africa trade. China’s approach is far better than the pointless creation of an Australian nuclear submarine fleet.

As the AUKUS prepares for war, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative encircles the planet with infrastructure.

The Afghanistan withdrawal could be the beginning of a shift away from endless war, or an escalation in an even worse direction: namely the confrontation with Russia and China – then the lesson from this shameful disaster has not been

learned and we are embarking on an even worse catastrophe.

Unfortunately, that “even worse catastrophe” looms; the AUKUS reflects a steadfast determination not to learn the lessons of Afghanistan.

Permanent warfare is a dead end, potentially leading to the end of the human race. Australia must get out of this alliance and regain its morality, both abroad – as through Afghanistan reconstruction – and at home, through creation of a national development bank exerting government power over finance, to allow focused investment in infrastructure and productivity, and chart a course of doing good rather than armaments.

JIM HAZZARD, Toowoomba