‘Throwing toothpicks at the mountain’: Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating says Aukus submarines plan will have no impact on China

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Former PM Paul Keating says Australia has 'lost its way' over China tensions, new subs "a handful of toothpicks at a mountain"​

Sarah Basford Canales​

NOVEMBER 10 2021 - 1:30PM

Former prime minister Paul Keating has slammed the federal government's escalation of tensions with China as "appalling", and its nuclear submarine ambitions as flawed, urging for a shift to stronger engagement with the emerging global superpower.

Mr Keating, who held the top job in the 90s, said the country had lost its way in seeking security from Asia, rather than with it, in his National Press Club appearance on Wednesday.

"We are at odds with our geography and we have lost our way," he said.

"This is a kind of hopeless environment we're in.

"I have taken the view ... that engagement with China, and its absorption in the region, will establish a better frame [for] both China and the United States to work in, including Australia.

"China is simply too big and too central to be ostracised."

The former leader also savaged a recent trilateral agreement between Australia, the US and the UK to acquire nuclear submarine technology under a new agreement.
The AUKUS agreement is expected to deliver eight nuclear-powered submarines to the country by 2040.

Mr Keating described the upcoming capability, which is being touted as a boost to the country's military strength amid a rising Chinese presence in the region, as throwing "a handful of toothpicks at a mountain".

"These submarines were designed in the 1990s. By the time we have half a dozen of them, it will be 2045 or '50, they will be 50 or 60 years old," he said.
"In other words, our new submarines will be old tech, like buying an old 747 [plane]."

China's socioeconomic power had grown exponentially in recent decades but had no desire to push its ideology, Mr Keating said.
"They are in the adolescent phase of their diplomacy - they have testosterone running everywhere, the Chinese," he said.

"But we have to deal with them because their power will be so profoundly in this part of the world.

"China is not about turning over the existing world order. It only wants to reform it, and it wants to reform it because of its own scale."

When asked about whether Australia should be allowed to raise human rights abuses against the Uyghur people in China's north-western region during diplomatic discussions, Mr Keating said it should.

But they should not overrule efforts to maintain consistent engagement, he added.

He referred to India's treatment of the Muslim-majority Kashmir region as an example of an ally who had comparable strikes against it on the human rights front.
"You can speak powerfully about the rights of citizens of these countries, but it can't be the whole conversation," he said.

"That doesn't displace the wider country-to-country, nation-to-nation conversation about the states.

"In other words, you can't let human rights discussions supplant wholly and completely the relationship between the countries."

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7504671/like-throwing-toothpicks-keating-slams-nuclear-subs-amid-china-tensions/?cs=14231

 

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‘Throwing toothpicks at the mountain’: Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating says Aukus submarines plan will have no impact on China​

Wed 10 Nov 2021 06.44 GMT

Former Australian prime minister also says Britain ‘like an old theme park sliding into the Atlantic’ compared to modern China

• ‘It would make a cat laugh’: key moments from Paul Keating’s National Press Club appearance
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The former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has denounced the US- and UK-backed plan for nuclear-powered submarines as “like throwing a handful of toothpicks at the mountain”, declaring Australia should avoid being drawn into a war with China.

The former Labor leader on Wednesday accused the major Australian political parties of losing their way on foreign policy, while dismissing the credibility of the UK’s “tilt” to the Indo-Pacific region.

“Britain is like an old theme park sliding into the Atlantic compared to modern China,” said Keating, who was Australia’s prime minister from 1991 to 1996.

Keating also played down criticism of China’s militarisation of disputed features in the South China Sea by saying “big powers are rude”, and said it would be wrong to insist the increasingly dominant economic power could be only “a stakeholder” in a US-led system.

While he said Beijing was “in the adolescent phase of their diplomacy” and had “testosterone running everywhere”, Australia had no alternative but to engage with an increasingly powerful China.

Keating was most critical of Australia’s plan to work with the US and the UK to acquire at least eight nuclear-propelled submarines, as part of the Aukus partnership, with the first of them unlikely to be in the water until about 2040.

He said Scott Morrison’s Coalition government was wrongly “trying to find our security from Asia rather than in Asia”.

The plan was all about hawkish national security advisers who “can’t wait to get the staplers back on to the Americans”, he said, adding that the submarines would not have a decisive military impact against China.

“Eight submarines against China when we get the submarines in 20 years’ time – it’ll be like throwing a handful of toothpicks at the mountain,” he told the National Press Club.

Keating said the Australian government had treated the French government “appallingly” over the cancellation of the $90bn deal for 12 conventionally powered submarines.

He also questioned whether the plans would diminish Australia’s strategic autonomy – a concern also raised by the Labor opposition. The former prime minister said if Australia were to buy American Virginia class submarines, “they’ll simply be part of the United States force directed by the United States”.

Last month, on an unofficial visit to Taipei, the conservative former prime minister Tony Abbott raised fears Beijing “could lash out disastrously very soon” at Taiwan – and argued the US and Australia could not stand idly by.

Keating said China “wants its front doorstep and front porch” – including Taiwan – but he did not believe China would launch military action unless leaders in Taipei formally declared independence.

He cited a recent speech by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, that Beijing would try to resolve the matter harmoniously.

‘Throwing toothpicks at the mountain’: Paul Keating says Aukus submarines plan will have no impact on China

Former Australian prime minister also says Britain ‘like an old theme park sliding into the Atlantic’ compared to modern China

www.theguardian.com

 

[xizhimen]

Coalition's nuclear submarines mere 'toothpicks' against China: Paul Keating​