Australia - The Vassal State of the USA

[old man emu]

A vassal state is a nation that is nominally independent but has its sovereignty significantly limited by a more powerful, dominant state. While it often manages its own internal affairs, it relies on the dominant power for protection and is subservient in matters of foreign policy, defense, and trade.

 

I am furious at what our Governments, on both sides, have allowed to happen. Without telling us, they have made Australia a target in any confllct in the Indo-Pacific region. It's probably a case of "out of sight, out of mind" since much of what is depicted in this video occurs in the sparsely inhabited northern regions of the country. 

 

 

[nomadpete]

We are fortunate in our relativly isolated geographical location.

However, we collectively accept law being used to suppress whistleblowers, and accept subservience to powers such as the USofA. We should be outraged but unfortunataly our collective apathy dilutes our ethics.

 

My own apathy has diluted my own anger to the point that I couldn't be bothered writing a nastygram to a polly any more.

[nomadpete]

Vassal?

No, I think Australia has never shaken itself free from colonialism. Used to be a colony of the 'old country', now we are a colony of USA.

[willedoo]

I don't have a problem with it at the level and numbers it is now. They're our major defence ally and it would be a bit rich to tell them we don't want them on our soil but still expect them to spill blood for us in the event we are attacked. Any defence alliance is a two way street and has to be mutually beneficial with all parties paying their dues. The U.S. has bases all over the world and the amount we have here is buggar all compared to a lot of other countries. The reality is we don't have the capabilities to defend ourselves against a major adversary, hence the alliance with the U.S.. We have to pull our weight in the alliance and not expect to bludge off them.

[rgmwa]

The US will only defend us if it's in their own interests. They probably would if Australia was attacked but mainly to protect their intelligence assets and forward bases, not us.

 

[nomadpete]

And we don't need to pretend to buy non existent submarines, for that.

[willedoo]

The ANZUS alliance is non binding and doesn't mandate automatic armed intervention. What that means is if we didn't have U.S.assets here that are in their interests to defend, we'd be rooted in the event of a capable force attacking us. That means it's in our interests to allow them to have defendable interests here. The situation is that Australia is militarily weak, the U.S. is not a charity, and we need to give them something if we're asking for something.

[willedoo]

Aside from military assets, the US is heavily invested in Australia with more than 1,000 US companies operating here. 1.6 trillion in bilateral investment between the two countries, 70 billion annual bilateral trade, the US is our biggest foreign investor at about a quarter of our foreign investment, so there's plenty of interest here for them to help us defend the place. It wouldn't all be about military asets and bases.

[rgmwa]

You can probably add rare earths to that list as well. The point is their motivation for defending us would be their military and commercial interests here, while our interests in defending them in places like Vietnam and Iraq were mainly about staying in their good books.

[willedoo]

Yes, it's a fact of life. It would be ignorant of us to think there was some high moral stance in them coming to our aid. They wouldn't be doing it because they think we're really nice people, or because they felt sorry for us. We would be the same if the shoe was on the other foot and we were the world's biggest power. We would want something in return the same as them. It's all transactional. I think it would have been much the same in WW2.

[nomadpete]

Wille, what you are saying is that we must continue to get involved in the US conflicts as we have done in the past, in the hope that they MIGHT come to our aid in the highly unlikely event of us being invaded.

 

The US has not historically behaved in the way that NATO (for instance) has a binding defense agreement to come to the aid of invaded members.

 

Meanwhile we have repeatedly rushed to the aid of US involvrment in other wars. But none of those were cases of US being invaded. Do they owe us anything? I wouldn't count on it.

 

I do not believe the US would do a great deal to help us if we really needed help.

 

The US once said they would help Ukraine if Russia threatened it. Look how that turned out.

 

 

Edited yesterday at 08:57 AM by nomadpete

[willedoo]

Yes correct Pete, that's pretty much what I'm saying.

[facthunter]

Trump treats former reliable allies as Enemies or Freeloaders. USA made lot's of Money out of WW2 with Lend- Lease and didn't come in to the War till after Pearl Harbour. The Russians had the Most casualties by far and didn't Pay the Lend Lease bill.   Nev

[willedoo]

It's hard to comprehend the sheer volume of lend-lease gear during the war. The Soviets received more than 1,300 Spitfires from Britain and almost 3,000 Hurricanes from Britain and Canada. The big item they needed from the US was trucks. Lack of German trucks was a big part of Hitler's downfall on the Eastern Front. 

[willedoo]

Small numbers when you think of the Soviets building 36,000 Ilyushin Il-2's, second only to the Cessna 172 in build numbers. I think the Ilyushin Il-2 numbers include the Il-10 made late in the war and post war.

[onetrack]

The Soviets got 440,000 trucks during WW2 from the Americans. They received nearly 2000 locomotives, and tens of thousands of railcars. They also got the manufacturing machinery to build a lot of American machines and equipment.

Entire factories in the U.S were dismantled and re-erected in Russia - such as complete tyre factories. They received tens of thousands of machine tools, vital for manufacturing and repair of equipment.

America provided almost half of the high octane aviation fuel used by the Russian Air Force during WW2.

Even Stalin admitted privately, if it were not for American equipment and logistics assistance during WW2, Russia would have been overrun by the Germans.

[facthunter]

Wille, You've wandered off topic. Which is Australia is a Vassal state of America.  Nev

Edited 9 hours ago by facthunter

[onetrack]

I don't think anything has changed since WW2. America only ever sees Australia as a convenient Southern base to protect its national and corporate interests. During 1942, the Americans moved in and took over a lot of Australian real estate, built a substantial number of airfields on land they didn't own (and the Australian Govt was very slow to compensate for land losses during WW2, not making reparations in some cases until 1947 and 1948. And even then, the compensation was poor), and set up "joint forces" command groups - where the Americans had virtually all the say. That was because they had an Army, Navy and Air force, that dwarfed ours.

 

We built three new hospitals and turned them over to the Americans for their exclusive use, for their injured and sick military men. That grated on a lot of Australians who had to go without medical assistance during WW2, simply because it wasn't available. We both built and requisitioned vast amounts of military accommodation for American servicemen during WW2. Some of the those installations held up to 20,000 American troops.

We supplied about 90% of the food the American servicemen consumed in the South East Asian region. At the end of the War, the bills were totalled (with "Reverse lend-lease" included, where Australia supplied goods and services for American military use), and the final result was that the Americans got more from us, than we got from them.

 

The only real gain Australia made was the purchase of all the remaining U.S. military equipment left in Australia after the War. This was purchased at a value of around 5% of its manufactured cost, and it was nearly all sold at the Commonwealth Disposals Commission auctions held between late 1945 and early 1950, and these CDC sales reaped a very substantial profit for the Australian Govt.

 

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69591061

 

Edited 8 hours ago by onetrack

[willedoo]

7 hours ago, facthunter said:

Trump treats former reliable allies as Enemies or Freeloaders. USA made lot's of Money out of WW2 with Lend- Lease and didn't come in to the War till after Pearl Harbour. The Russians had the Most casualties by far and didn't Pay the Lend Lease bill.   Nev

Yes Nev, we have wandered off topic.