The greatest threat to the long term independence and security of Australians is the naïve belief of many that countries desperate for energy will allow us to cease exporting fossil fuels.
The practice of power in an anarchical world makes it unlikely that 25 million people inhabiting a continent containing massive quantities of raw materials will be allowed to maintain control of those raw materials if they do not allow the export of those raw materials to countries with populations in the multi-millions who need those raw materials to properly support their populations.
Instead, very possibly, the raw materials, and the continent in which they are found, will be removed from the control of the 25 million withholders of essential materials, most probably by force of arms. This is especially likely when that same continent produces enough food to feed 80 million people. One of history’s most salient and most oft repeated lessons is – ‘You have what I want, if you won’t let me have it, I will take it’. Very simple.
If Australia embarks upon the course of action promoted by the Greens, and others, of phasing out fossil fuel exports, then Australia, as we know it now, runs the real danger of ceasing to exist. Former Greens leaders, Brown and Milne, seem blind to the realities of the importance of fossil fuel exports to the economic wellbeing and security of Australia.
“Brown, the founding leader of the Australian Greens, and Milne, his successor, said the real and bigger problem was the federal government’s insistence on retaining coal and gas exports as essential to the Australian economy.” Sydney Morning Herald, July 29, 2022.
The most obvious vulnerability is the inability of Australian governments over many decades to have developed a defence force able to ensure the protection of the nation’s significant natural resources. Australia on its own, which it may well be, would find it very difficult to match an attack from energy and food poor, but population large and militarily strong, countries. Especially given that Australia is a very large, thinly populated, land mass with hundreds of thousands of kilometres of largely undefended and generally readily accessible coastline. The usual course of human history makes the probability of an attack upon a resource rich and exposed country such as Australia virtually unavoidable, whether or not Australia ceases fossil fuel exports. However, ceasing fossil fuel exports will, almost certainly, accelerate the arrival of the attack.
Continuing coal, gas, iron ore, uranium and other raw material exports may well buy Australia some more time to prepare for what will very probably come. However, governments must apply that time well. Australia’s defences must be improved significantly. Dependency upon renewable energy alone must be avoided as this will undermine Australia’s capacity to be self-sufficient and its ability to defend itself. Australia itself must make the most of the raw materials which the rest of the world desires from us, including our fossil fuels. Certainly we should extract as much as we can by way of export income from sales of raw materials but, more importantly, we must use those raw materials to develop our own industries, including our manufacturing and defence industries. Australia must develop further its irrigated food production industries. We must prepare for the day when we will be an island standing alone against significant forces seeking to take what we have.
If we do not do these things, we run the high risk of losing this continent to those who value those things which we seemingly do not. That is the realpolitik of the world in which we live.
