Gonzalo Lira, “Australia is The Next Ukraine” (10 May 2022)
In this video, Chilean-American vlogger Gonzalo Lira explains how Australia is being manipulated by the United States as its proxy to stoke tension with China and goad it into a conflict that in the future may erupt into a hot war. He explains at some length how Ukraine was influenced, encouraged, pressured and finally pushed by the United States, NATO and the EU to ignore diplomacy and complying with the Minsk II agreements to bring onto itself a conflict that will ultimately destroy it. Incidentally as Lira points out much, much later in the video, this ploy of playing one country against another is not new: in the 1970s the US played South Vietnam against North Vietnam and later in the 1980s the US played Iraq against Iran during those two nations’ war.
Lira sees a similar pattern occurring in the southwest Pacific Ocean region with Australia being encouraged by the US to ratchet up tensions with China over that nation’s security pact with the Solomon Islands. Part of the pact involves China posting security personnel to guard Chinese investments (which may involve infrastructure construction) in the Solomon Islands: a rational decision given that in other nations where China has undertaken infrastructure projects, Chinese engineers and other technical personnel have been killed by terrorists in often suspicious circumstances. Beijing and Honiara may well have reason to believe that any developments aimed at improving the lives of Solomon Islanders may be sabotaged by outsiders.
The issue for Australia then is to consider its own national interests, whether it is better for Australia to learn to live with its close neighbours which include China, or to continue following the orders of Britain and the United States, both of whose political elites regard Australia as no more than a lapdog and colony. By entering into closer military arrangements like AUKUS with London and Washington, Australia risks not only antagonising neighbours like Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, it also risks encouraging those nations to move closer to China economically and militarily. Thus does the southeast Asia / southwest Pacific ocean region become divided and weak, susceptible to further manipulation and exploitation by foreign powers outside this area.
At the same time, by increasing tensions with China, Australia risks cutting itself from that nation economically. Lira may not be aware but stoking agitation against China has already cost Australia dearly on the economic front: diplomatic spats between Beijing and Canberra led to China hitting Australian barley exports with a huge 80% tariff. This allowed China to start increasing its purchases of US barley as part of its trade deal with the US. This and similar disputes which end up with the US and others being beneficiaries are bound to increase, not least because if a ploy succeeds once, the US will use it again and again and again ad infinitum.
As he often does, Lira ends his video with a warning for Australia, that the United States is only a fair-weather friend willing to leave us Australians at the mercy of its (and our) enemies. We cannot say we have not been warned; indeed Canberra has had many ample warnings from Australians and outsiders alike, but chosen to ignore them all.