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Australia must boost military to deal with China
afp ^ | 4/18/09 | afp

Posted on 04/18/2009 4:12:54 AM PDT by Flavius

MELBOURNE (AFP) – Australia must boost defence spending to give its military the hardware to deal with strategic challenges presented by China's rise as a global superpower, an influential think tank has warned.

China's growth meant the US, Australia's main military ally, would lose its dominant position in Asia in coming decades, creating uncertainty and a higher risk of conflict, the Lowy Institute for International Policy said.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Australia/New Zealand; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; good; luck
thats dumb, why spend all that money when all you have do is turn commie and hugs will ensue
1 posted on 04/18/2009 4:12:54 AM PDT by Flavius
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To: Flavius

Australia is suiciding their economy on global warming nonsense. They are wonderfully industrious clever and hard working, then throw their money in the toilet. They won’t be able to afford a military


2 posted on 04/18/2009 4:15:06 AM PDT by Mount Athos (A Giant luxury mega-mansion for Gore, a Government Green EcoShack made of poo for you)
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To: Flavius

we can’t, we’re kinda broke. We just spend $50bil in stimilus money and will add another $40bil in national fibre broadband network upgrade. We don’t have the money. We’re in deep debt


3 posted on 04/18/2009 4:16:12 AM PDT by 4rcane
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To: Flavius
Astrualia should seriously consider increases military cooperation with India, South Korea, Japan, etc. It would be foolish for those countries to assume were a reliable ally.
4 posted on 04/18/2009 4:19:09 AM PDT by Red Dog #1
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To: Flavius

“... an influential think tank has warned.”

Whatever the subject matter, I am so sick of this brain-dead style of writing.


5 posted on 04/18/2009 4:29:05 AM PDT by chuck_the_tv_out (click my name)
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To: Flavius

Well sooner or later i guess more and more countries will be “forced” to build nuclear weapons because it looks like an easy way to protect yourself against a superior forreign millitary force. unfortunately countries like north korea,Iran... might think the same way.


6 posted on 04/18/2009 4:30:48 AM PDT by Jonny foreigner
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To: Mount Athos

> Australia is suiciding their economy on global warming nonsense.

We all have alot to thank AlGore the Inventor of the Internet(R) for.


7 posted on 04/18/2009 4:45:37 AM PDT by DieHard the Hunter (Is mise an ceann-cinnidh. Cha ghéill mi do dhuine. Fàg am bealach.)
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To: 4rcane
We just spend $50bil in stimulus money and will add another $40bil in national fibre broadband network upgrade

Bread and circuitses

8 posted on 04/18/2009 5:56:23 AM PDT by Oztrich Boy (Obama water dog don't swim)
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To: Jonny foreigner

You are quite correct. The idea that Australia can begin to compete militarily against China with conventional weaponry is just stupid.

The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military: good, but not good enough to win.


9 posted on 04/18/2009 6:21:12 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.)
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To: Mount Athos

Please explain to me how “Australia is suiciding (its) economy on global warming nonsense”.

Yes, the current government seems to be made up of believers - but they don’t really seem to be doing much about it. Nor are they likely to. They might have when we were in a boom, but they seem to understand that now is not the time to spend money without clear, tangible benefits.


10 posted on 04/19/2009 12:03:02 AM PDT by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)
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To: Sherman Logan
You are quite correct. The idea that Australia can begin to compete militarily against China with conventional weaponry is just stupid.

True - but paying too much attention to that means we might as well just get rid of our military altogether. Yeah, we can't win a conventional war against a nation with over fifty times our population - so should we just surrender now and save time later?

Whether we can win or not, if war comes, we're going to have to fight. Better to do something than nothing.

I've nothing, personally, against the idea of a non-conventional approach - up to and including nukes. But politically that isn't going to happen in the short term, where some boosts to conventional forces might.

The bottom line is that if we are ever at war with China, we're going to need help from our allies - most notably, at present (and I hope in the future) the US. We might need that help, but I, for one, only want to be asking for it in the knowledge, we've already done everything we can ourselves.

Added to that, that while China is a concern, it's not the only concern - we have the world's most populous Moslem nation just off our north west coast, and they outnumber us ten to one. China, we can't handle - but planning for China might give us a real capacity to handle Indonesia - if we ever need to. Hopefully Indonesia will continue to move towards secular democracy and remain fairly friendly. But we can't just hope that happens.

East Timor stretched us in 1999, and since then we've been operating at a tempo that is not all that easy with our current force structure. That demonstrates we need to come up with more conventional forces, whether we're concerned about China or not. China simply helps to make the case - it's not the only case.

11 posted on 04/19/2009 12:11:37 AM PDT by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)
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