PJ Keating Letter to the Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age 26 February 2025
PJ Keating
Letter to the Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, 26 February 2025
Peter Hartcher has no shame. (As China stalks, will America baulk? SMH, 25 February 2025)
After a decade of aggressively urging Australia to put all its security bets on America, and as the bet is on the cusp of failing, he falls back to the mealy-mouthed claim that Australia is to be blamed in not preparing for its own defence. This is the same person who has barracked for AUKUS, notwithstanding we have to wait twenty to thirty years for the submarines to protect us.
For just on a decade Hartcher has argued that Australia would best protect itself being an integral part of US military primacy in Asia only now to discover to his chagrin that Trump’s America no longer believes in allies - European or otherwise. And that Australia has squandered a decade of opportunity in securing the right weapons for its geography, preferring instead to buy and inject itself into the United States’s Pacific military apparatus.
This is an unforgivable error of judgment. Yet Hartcher in his column displays not a hint of humility in having had any role in bringing this situation about.
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