Peter Hartcher has the bad news:
Russia already is paying a heavy price for its wanton violence and still its success is not assured. China, on the other hand, is winning on all fronts and paying bargain-basement prices.
“China has been more subversive and less obvious than Russia,” observes the New Zealand sinologist, Anne-Marie Brady of Canterbury University.
China’s inroads in Solomon Islands have captured headlines in recent days, but it’s only one part of a much bigger picture. Beijing’s South Pacific probings have been described by Euan Graham of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore as “a pre-conflict type of shadow game”.
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Here’s how I see this going over the next twenty years if the current trends persist:
- China does more Pacific deals with other ambitious local hardmen and the naval bases are quietly built as the milieu of fait accompli develops.
- We are steadily encircled and become, for all intents and purposes, the Israel of the South Pacific.
- Surrounded by enemies, any time a great power conflict comes to blows between the US and China, we will be automatically shelled, stalked, and intimidated for being on the wrong side, even if we abstain from direct involvement.
- Until we acquiesce to the 14 demands to end democracy along with a fifteenth to build Pilbara labour camps for the divergent such myself, Anne-Marie Brady, Peter Hartcher, as well as some of your children.
Read the article by Houses and Holes (David Llewellyn-Smith) in Australian Politics in Macrobusiness.