Australia 'not prepared' to fight China in Pacific; Army urges govt to scale war defences

Australia’s Defense Minister Peter Dutton had earlier exposed China’s belligerent approach towards the West in fulfilling its regional expansionist agenda, stating, that no matter how focused Australia is on maintaining good relations with Beijing, the CPC has been ‘very clear’ about the prospect of a “battle” over Taiwan. “I don’t think it [conflict] should be discounted,” Dutton had told an Australian news channel.

On Wednesday, another Australian senator delivered a “dire warning” against China, cautioning both Beijing’s Asian neighbours and the West against the Chinese threat and its intentions of “waging a war,” stressing that the down-under nations, including Australia, in terms of their military might, needed to bolster up. In a shocking statement, the liberal Senator and Australian Armed forces’ former major general asserted that the United States “is unable to stop China.”

[Credit: AP]

In his televised remarks, Australia’s Ex-major general Jim Molan on July 28 said that Australia is "not prepared at all" to fight a war in the Pacific against China, as tensions between both countries continued to simmer. While the Australian politicians, he said, are looking towards the United States to interfere and resolve regional differences should an armed conflict breaks out, America hasn’t been "confident" whether it could resolve the Taiwan issue, Molan shockingly revealed. 

Further in his statement broadcasted earlier yesterday, the Army major general stated, that while some think tanks believed that CPC’s war with Australia over Taiwan is “inevitable,” it is to note that Beijing has “stepped up its war game against both Taiwan and the US.” Speaking to Sky News Australia, Molan asked Australia to bolster defences as he hypothetically listed a scenario of war breaking out in the Pacific. 

"I'm not a believer that the Chinese nation will get on 500 ships and come down and invade Australia in the first instance, the big target for China is the US,” said the Australian ex-Army Major General in his broadcasted statement. “What worries me is that if China finally does move on Taiwan, the US has indicated it has no confidence that, after war game after war game and we got one more from Secretary Austin today,” he stressed.

Further, Molan elaborated, that the US indicated that “the Americans can't deal with a Taiwan scenario with confidence,” adding, “we’ve got to look after ourselves and it's about time we started."

Molan told Australia’s Sky that Beijing’s move to squash the democratic freedom of Hong Kong was an intentional act of exerting its power. “It should remind us of one thing, and that is we’re dealing with a country which has a particular view as to the use of power, as to the exercise of its power, —it’s not mucking around,” he warned. 

[The USS Carl Vinson during the last Rim of the Pacific military exercises. Credit: AP]

Both the US and Australia have challenged China’s extensive maritime claims in the hotly contested South China Sea. The two countries have been conducting joint freedom of navigation military exercises in the Pacific, as China has scrambled over the past few years to militarize the  3.6 million square kilometres vast the South China Sea with military-grade, underground oceanic air combat bases, China’s PLA warships routinely patrol maritime regions from the northern edge at Taiwan to the southern edge at the Strait of Malacca, claiming sovereignty on the “nine-dash” line that covers over half the sea, despite that the international tribunal in The Hague had ruled against those claims. 

China 'a dangerous threat,' but Canberra 'not prepared to fight'

Australia’s retired army general called China the “most dangerous threat to the existence” of Australia, quickly adding that Canberra wasn’t militarily prepared to fight a war in the Pacific. “We’re not well prepared to fight a war in the Pacific at all, defence department mobilization reports have produced information quite publicly which indicate that this is the case,” Molan told Sky in a live-streamed interview. 

[The US Navy operating in the South China Sea. Credit: Bullit Marquez/AP]