America’s Aircraft Carrier: Australian Bases for US Bombers

March 14, 2016
America’s Aircraft Carrier: Australian Bases for US Bombers

by Binoy Kampmark

Subservience is a terrible state, not merely because of its indignities, but its distortions. Speech from the main political centre is garbled and marred, ever mediated by the higher power. Media releases from departments from the vassal or satrap state tend to be coloured by the broader interests of the larger power. For years, that has been characteristic of US-Australian relations.

The Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was again sallying forth with a whitewashing measure, hoping that no one would notice that Australia was again offering itself up for conspicuous targeting in the event of any future conflict. In February, the Turnbull government had already announced a $140 million package for military expansion that would see a greater reliance on Washington’s good will, and a greater desire to stick its neck out in the event of any conflict with China.

Washington had decided to press its Australian allies on permitting a rotation of bombers at the Darwin and Tindal bases, notably the long-range, nuclear capable B-1B type, in the aftermath of rising tensions in the South China Sea. In 2011, it got Canberra’s acquiescence in increased US troop deployment on Australian soil, a measure that will see US personnel rise to 2,500 in 2017. For all of that, Australians still insist they are not under a benevolent occupation.

According to the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Auslin, “It is part of an overall rebalancing of military forces to the region.” It continues what is amounting to an increasingly dangerous theatre of demonstrations, with the USS aircraft carrier John C. Stennis along with a cruiser and destroyer stepping up patrols in an effort to maintain freedom of navigation.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/14/americas-aircraft-carrier-australian-bases-for-us-bombers/