Asia

Australia pursues misplaced ‘defence’ policy

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd launched the Australian Government’s first Defence white paper since 2000 on the weekend. Entitled ‘Defending Australia in the Asia-pacific Century: Force 2030′, the paper is a 20-year defence blueprint. It showcases the plan for a multi-billion dollar build-up of naval and air forces, built on the assessment that Australia will need to work toward self-sufficiency in defence as US supremacy in the region wanes, and regional powers like India, Russia and China rise. It also seeks to justify the Australian presence in Afghanistan by noting that the ‘Islamist’ threat will remain a direct threat to Australia for at least another decade, and alleges that Afghanistan will be “a potential source of ongoing instability in the region” requiring “international help for at least a decade”.

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Media Release

Australia pursues misplaced ‘defence’ policy

Sydney, Australia, 4th May 2009 – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd launched the Australian Government’s first Defence white paper since 2000 on the weekend. Entitled ‘Defending Australia in the Asia-pacific Century: Force 2030′, the paper is a 20-year defence blueprint. It showcases the plan for a multi-billion dollar build-up of naval and air forces, built on the assessment that Australia will need to work toward self-sufficiency in defence as US supremacy in the region wanes, and regional powers like India, Russia and China rise. It also seeks to justify the Australian presence in Afghanistan by noting that the ‘Islamist’ threat will remain a direct threat to Australia for at least another decade, and alleges that Afghanistan will be “a potential source of ongoing instability in the region” requiring “international help for at least a decade”.

Uthman Badar, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia, says in this regard, “The Australian Government continues to advocate misplaced policy on the basis of distorted assessment. Western foreign policy with respect to the Muslim World is the primary cause of the so called ‘Islamist’ threat imagined to be a direct threat to Australia. Instead of dealing with this root cause, more of the same is being prescribed.”

“Australia would have much less to worry about in terms of defence if it did not create enemies by partaking in the invasion and bombing of other nations. In essence then, this is a self-perpetuated cycle of aggression followed by military build-up to deal with the reaction to that aggression. In classic Capitalist style, the Government seeks to exploit and justify both the aggression and the response to that aggression.”

“This white paper is also an official admission, as much as Kevin Rudd seeks to underplay it, that US power in the world is on the decline. There is a valuable lesson in this for Australia, namely that building power and furthering one’s own political and economic interests through the exploitation of weaker nations is not sustainable in the long-run and inevitably ends in failure.”

“Western intervention in the Muslim World, to which Australia is a party, is not for the stated purpose of stopping so-called terrorism. It is for the purpose of preventing the reviving Muslim World from snatching its own political destiny out of Western hands. Western governments fear this Islamic revival as a threat to the status quo of subservience they have established in these lands. In reality they should rest at ease in appreciation of the fact that the inevitable re-establishment of Islam will be the means of solving the plethora of social, economic and political problems they have created around the world.”
Ends.

For further information, questions or comments, please contact Uthman Badar, Media Representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia, on [email protected] or 0438 000 465. Alternatively, further information is available on our website: www.hizb-australia.org.

 

Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia
4th May 2009