AUSTRALIAN PM PRAISES NATO-AFFILIATED ‘ASIA-PACIFIC FOUR’

Anthony Albanese, the newly minted Australian prime minister, made it clear last week that Canberra will take a pro-NATO stance and continue to try and isolate Russia and China.

Albanese said he was especially pleased with the emergence of the so-called “Asia-Pacific Four,” which includes New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. All four countries were invited to the NATO summit in Madrid last week due to the threat they face with China.

“NATO has sent a strong message by including Asia-Pacific leaders in discussions at this forum,” Albanese said. “It is clear that President [Vladimir] Putin’s barbaric and illegal invasion of Ukraine has consequences far beyond Europe’s borders.”

China accused Albanese of being “ignorant” and “ill-informed” on the geopolitical ramifications of his comments. News.com.au reported that the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper, China Daily published an opinion article that said the hopes of a reset between Beijing and Canberra were “diminishing by the day.”

The paper said the take-away from his comments is that Albanese may try to talk about improving relations with Beijing, but he will have to do a better job understanding the issues that have “led to bilateral ties deteriorating precipitously or be more diplomatically astute.”

The Trends Journal has reported on the strained relationship between Australia and China. (See “AUSTRALIA ACCUSES CHINA OF COMMITTING ACT OF AGGRESSION,” “SPOTLIGHT CHINA: EAST VS. WEST” and “AUSTRALIA: MORE MONEY FOR MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.”)   

China was on everyone’s mind at the NATO summit in Madrid. Beijing has been accused of taking aggressive actions toward Taiwan and has been criticized for supporting Russia economically during the conflict in Ukraine. China was identified by NATO as the biggest threat to global peace and security.

Liz Truss, the British foreign secretary, told the summit that European countries should reconsider their trade relationship with Beijing because it tends to use its economic power in “coercive” ways, The Guardian reported.

She was alongside Albanese and Alexander De Croo, the Belgian prime minister, when she said there is a real risk that China draws the “wrong idea that results in a catastrophic miscalculation such as invading Taiwan.”

Truss said the West will use the Ukraine War to learn how to best face the threat of a Chinese invasion of Ukraine.

“We didn’t do enough early enough,” Truss said. “And by ‘we’ I’m talking about the free world, the collective West, to make sure that Ukraine was able to defend itself, so-called deterrence by denial. That enabled Putin to think that he could stage an easy invasion that he could win within days, so we need to make sure that we protect peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits. We also need to make sure that together, the free world are ensuring that Taiwan has the defense capability it needs,” she said.

TRENDPOST: NATO declared China a “challenge” for the first time last week in its blueprint and lumped Beijing together with Moscow. NATO declared China as a challenge to the “rules-based international order.”

China rejected NATO’s claims and said the Alliance is essentially trying to start a fight and is “creating problems around the world.”

Xing Haiming, China’s ambassador to South Korea, urged Seoul to reject Washington’s “comprehensive containment and suppression of China,” according to the South China Morning Post. He was also critical of NATO’s “unmistakable” offensive expansion in the Pacific.

“China advises NATO [to] stop spreading false facts and provocative remarks against China, and not to sow chaos in Asia and the world after messing up Europe,” he said.

North Korea has also spoken out against the NATO-like alliance growing in the Pacific. A spokesman from the foreign ministry told reporters that the “reality clearly shows that the real purpose of the US spreading the rumor about a ‘threat from North Korea’ is to provide an excuse for attaining military supremacy over the Asia-Pacific region.”