from RedFireOnline
The 2024 ASEAN-Australia “Special Summit” which took place in Melbourne from March 4 to 6 has been accompanied by political spin, as is to be expected from international diplomacy. Yet this particular “Special Summit” – special because Australia is not a member of ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) – has rhetoric and declarations which conceal one of the real aims of the Australian ruling class as a delegate of US (United States of America) led imperialism. This aim is to contain the gargantuan economic power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and its consequent rising political influence in world politics. Imperialism will use any and all means to achieve this aim, up to and including a catastrophic global war. The governments of the capitalist West will of course never declare this openly, and so working people need to read between the lines ushering in the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit which trumpet “dialogue” and “co-operation”.
Cold War creation
ASEAN was created in 1967 by the then governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand with the open admission of preventing the spread of “communism” in the region. Later, however, ASEAN admitted the “communist” led nations of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and the Laos People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR).[1] Brunei joined ASEAN in 1984, followed by Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999.[2] For the governments of Vietnam and Laos, which both remain bureaucratically deformed workers’ states administering socialistic economies, to join a decisively anti-socialist bloc exposes the politics of the leaderships of these nations. Put simply, it is another example of the betrayals that are legion due to the twin Stalinist policies of “socialism in one country” and “peaceful co-existence with imperialism”. A genuine Marxist leadership of a workers’ state may well enter into diplomatic and trade agreements with surrounding capitalist states for its own development, but joining a political anti-socialist bloc of capitalist states is another thing entirely – especially one which is today ultimately aimed at the PRC.
The spin from Australian Labor Party (ALP) Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s official page is that the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit (marking 50 years of Australia as a Dialogue Partner of ASEAN) has the aims of: “boosting economic engagement, supporting an accelerated clean energy transition, increasing practical maritime co-operation and supporting the region’s current crop of emerging leaders”.[3] The phrase “increasing practical maritime co-operation” is a clear reference to the Western provocations of the PRC in the South China Sea. As The New Atlas points out,[4] the Western imperialist powers are not at all attempting to free trade routes from Chinese interference in waters in its region but is rather attempting to block trade from the PRC to its many trading partners in an effort to slow down or thwart the PRC’s economy.
The PRC is the largest trading partner of almost all countries in South-East Asia, including Australia, yet the Australian government is prepared to jeopardise this by doing the bidding of Washington and its dangerous drive to confront the PRC.
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Are you for real? If it was not for the US and the Uk I shudder to think where we would be. I think you have completely forgotten that those countries stand for the freedom of the individual and democracy. The countries you seem to admire are totalitarian regimes that decide what you are allowed to do and think. Who persecute Chistian’s and anyone who dare to stand up in protest. It is an insult to the Ukrainian people to say they are fighting a proxy war for the US. Get real. They are fighting to retain their freedom in the face of the Russian aggressor. I happen to have friends in that country. I think you should go and talk to the people in countries neighboring China and find out for yourself who is the aggressive one! Do your research before you come out with this communist propaganda!
We occasionally publish commentaries from traditional — as distinct from neo-Marxist — communists if they are well written and present an alternative to the Mainstream Globalist Media versions. It doesn’t mean we agree with Marxist ideology which we don’t — we are Libertarians.