War Powers Reform Media Release
Today marks three years since a widely criticised media series predicted Australia would be at war with China within three years.
The Red Alert series was published by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, and featured a panel of national security experts who claimed war was just around the corner and Australia was woefully unprepared.
“As it turns out all five “experts” were wrong and the authors of the series, Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott, were also wrong,” said AWPR President and former Senator Andrew Bartlett.
No doubt all of Australia is breathing a sigh of relief today as the threat of annihilation recedes.
While it is easy to make fun of this laughable series of reports, it is depressing to think that the views expressed in the articles are common among establishment defence commentators.
We have had years of fearmongering about imminent threats to Australia, all of which have been shown to lack any credibility. Yet this is what currently passes for mainstream defence expertise.
Rarely does a day go by without a news article featuring a so called expert, demonising our largest trading partner and demanding that Australia spends billions more on the military.
This is despite the fact that the government’s own Defence Strategic Review in 2023 found that there is very little risk of an invasion.
Many commentators regularly suggest that if a war over Taiwan erupted, Australia would be compelled to get involved.
This is a dangerous suggestion and should be rejected outright. The Australian government has the right to decline any US request to join foreign wars.
This is why Australia should urgently re-visit War Powers Reform, which would ensure the whole parliament gets a say on overseas wars.
The John Howard-style ‘captain’s call’ decision-making, which we saw over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is no longer acceptable in modern Australia” Mr Bartlett concluded.
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So, China isn’t the US! How many wars has China started around the world? Our idiotic politicians and media worship the US, which is the most dangerous country in the world – has been, for a very long time. But it comes back to our inbred racism, I believe. We’re afraid of brown and black skinned people. So we make up lies about them. And readily believe them. We need to grow up.
This artifice of global neoliberal lies is being exposed for what it is…. grand larceny
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/03/461810-2/?
As an aside, this person is now a casualty of his own making, finally!
https://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2026/03/08/billionaire-kerry-stokes-is-finished-as-a-media-baron-as-seven-is-on-life-support/
Some great comments already!!
It would be helpful if the “experts” compared the security strategies of the US and China, to see where the real threat to Australia’s interests lies.
From a Brookings Institute explanation of the most recent US security document, Nov 2025, we see this.
The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy reorients the United States toward the Western Hemisphere and reiterates the Monroe Doctrine and a “Trump Corollary” to it, essentially asserting a neo-imperialist presence in the region. Yet this conceptualization of U.S. interests and role—and a refusal to be apologetic for any past U.S. behavior—has long fed deep resentments against the United States and hampered its policies.
The strategy identifies three threats in the Western Hemisphere: migration, drugs and crime, and China. The Trump administration explicitly defines all migration, including much of it legal, as undesirable, seeing Latin America’s role as preventing the flows of any migrants into the United States. Although the NSS decries forever wars, its insistence that the United States can deploy the U.S. military for conducting strikes against “cartels” (not just criminal groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations) anywhere in the hemisphere (and eventually perhaps beyond it), unleashes a potentially true forever war. The assertion that the U.S. military can strike other countries also contradicts the strategy’s embrace of the sovereignty of nations.
The (illegal) neo-imperialism described there was repeated just a couple of weeks ago by Marco Rubio speaking at the Munich Security Conference.
China published a national security White Paper in 2025 that was quite different in its priorities.
From a European view of the White Paper — In simplified terms, China’s strategic culture oscillates between two poles: the Confucian legacy, which values harmony and stability, and a more realist approach, arguably influenced by Western thought. Historically, China has upheld a discourse that privileges “peace.”
*However, growing geopolitical tensions and perceived threats have pushed the
country toward a more pragmatic strategy, combining the defence of its interests with increasing military readiness.
This duality remains fundamental for understanding the behaviour of the Chinese regime on the international stage…Within this framework, six core principles can be identified that guide decision-making among Chinese elites: national unification as a supreme goal; a heightened perception of external threats; active defence as an operational doctrine; the legitimization of force under the theory of just war; fear of internal disorder; and the primacy of collective well-being over individual rights.
But China has gone a step further.
Its focus is not just national security, but global security.
In short, security for all the world.
From China — The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper, (2023-02-21)
I. Background
The issue of security bears on the well-being of people of all countries, the lofty cause of world peace and development, and the future of humanity.
Today, our world, our times and history are changing in ways like never before, and the international community is confronted with multiple risks and challenges rarely seen before…
This is an era rife with challenges. It is also one brimming with hope. We are convinced that the historical trends of peace, development and win-win cooperation are unstoppable. Upholding world peace and security and promoting global development and prosperity should be the common pursuit of all countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping has proposed the Global Security Initiative (GSI), calling on countries to adapt to the profoundly changing international landscape in the spirit of solidarity, and address the complex and intertwined security challenges with a win-win mindset. The GSI aims to eliminate the root causes of international conflicts, improve global security governance, encourage joint international efforts to bring more stability and certainty to a volatile and changing era, and promote durable peace and development in the world.
II. Core concepts and principles
1. Stay committed to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.
2. Stay committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries.
*3. Stay committed to abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.
There are three more core concepts and principles, followed by a lengthy examination of the means by which international cooperation and prosperity can be structured and achieved.
These are not empty words.
The Chinese are not waiting for the world to sign up to a global initiative, they are actively engaged on that project right now.
So the question must be asked — of the US and China, which is the greater threat to Australia?
I am sincerely hoping that Xi Jinping never acts on his oft-expressed desire for Taiwan’s unification with China. I believe China’s claim that Taiwan is a rogue state is flimsy at best given the 5000 year history of its native inhabitants or first people some of whom are still part of that nation. China is just one of many countries which have occupied the former Formosa. As a functioning democracy in its own right I believe Taiwan should be recognised and accepted as a separate country by the rest of the world. I believe this case should be made by Australia even at the risk of once again annoying our biggest trading but thin-skinned partner.
RC, as I understand it, Taiwan would not be happy with your suggestion.
The Taiwanese see Taiwan as being part of China.
They even agree with China’s claims in the Sth China Sea.
Claims on an imminent war with China need to be put in the same place as claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the supposed lethality of the Covid vaccines.
Thw war China is winning is the trade war.
The rewards for the Chinese population has been the huge reduction in poverty.
The war is being won by not engaging in battkes, the Tiawan ‘thing’ seens to have more to do with ensuring the US keeps spending huge amounts in defending the Pacific.
A long look at history shows that China is not seeking to expand its empire by militaristc means, but is fighting and winning in trade.
Exactly Bert, and as Paul Keating said, Asia is our more natural market, just look at the map!
Far too much ingrained racism, resentment and social exclusion due to the fact that many fail to understand HOW Oriental’s build relationships.
“..our inbred racism…” is a product of generations of religious indoctrination by narrow minded, ignorant and paranoid individuals who are intent on preserving their notion of exceptionalism rather than practising the principle notion of Christianity – love thy neighbour.
Who knows when Xi is more powerful than predecessors and he sacked some senior PLA generals recently who were rumoured to be not very keen on invading and occupying Taiwan….
The PLA have observed Putin’s, the ‘strategic genius’, efforts in invading Ukraine across flat terrain over land with far more resources; killed 100k’s of Russian minority conscripts, then Ukraine soldiers and civilians for no gains since 2022….. Anglo left and right are mute?
If they look at Taiwan there is the need for overwhelming force, crossing an open sea, to invade a well defended and natural island fortress. Geostrategic analyst Robert Kaplan suggest that due to geography of Taiwan, covered with ridges, valleys, ravines and mountains, makes a sustained insurgency eminently doable.
It isn’t China that is going to start the war. It is the US but they are busy at the moment implementing their long term policy “Which Path to Persia? A New American Strategy Towards Iran.” Published in 2009 by the Brookings Institute, it is actually a fairly old strategy at least 17 years old but last year’s Midnight Hammer Operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities indicates that the US is still committed to and following the advice of this policy analysis paper very closely.
The Strategy for destroying China’s economy to stop it from overtaking US global primacy isn’t quite so old. It’s called “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable” published by The Rand Corp in 2016.
The US has already set up choke points surrounding China to block its trade and isn’t going to attempt an invasion of China. This is to be an aerial and naval war. The US just wants to wreck China’s economy so that the US corporations that fund these strategy policy papers can compete with China from an advantageous position.
The same US Corporations fund both the Republican and Democrat campaigns to gain leverage over them to ensure that these policies are eventually implemented no matter which party wins office. Continuity of agenda is guaranteed, just like the continuity of agenda that has continuously prosecuted the US strategy against Russia from president to president at great profit to these corporations.
The problem is that these strategies are sometimes so old they fail to see and take into account new developments like Iran’s greatly advanced drone and missile technology and production, so Which Path to Persia? isn’t leading the US quite where it wants to go.
Given that the long-running civil war waged for control of China ended in 1949 with victory for the Communist party, led at that time by Mao Zedong, and that the losing opposition, the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, subsequently looted the Chinese Treasury, along with hoarding hard assets as well as the USD750 million in financial aid provided by the American government – leading Truman to describe the leaders of the KMT as ‘all thieves’ – and then fled with the booty to Taiwan, along with two million Chinese who had supported the KMT in its fight against the CCP, it’s not difficult to subscribe to the position that mainland China has a legitimate right to retake that island.
Long-delayed justice, in regard to the criminal theft of Chinese assets, for starters, would be a sufficient reason. Reunification of the millions of Chinese who fled due to their misaligned support of the corrupt KMT would be another. Western powers, including this country, should rightfully butt out entirely in this matter.
As for the sabre-rattling paranoid claims of China threatening to invade/attack places other than Taiwan, they ought to relegated to the filing cabinet that’s filled with similar predictions such as the imminent Martian invasions, the return of the True Saviour, the Apocalypse and ascension to heaven of all True Believers along with the lists of recent sightings of the Loch Ness monster and that cache of documents that show Donald Trump is really an android created by Silicon Valley as a prototype to be utilised by the billionaire class in their determination to subvert everything, overturn all law, then rule the world.
Steve asks of the US and China, which is the greater threat to Austraya?
Big Macs or Beijing Duck? Ugly sterile capitalist culture dominated by billboards for beer & big pharma or a cultural landscape that speaks to a five millennial maturation? A skittery, struggling & jumpy drug-addled society soaked in violence or an anthropologist’s dream of a broadly multi-ethnic community brimming with mind-blowing opportunities for daily discovery and delight?
An exposure to a country ruled by the cruel logic of might makes right, greed is good, god is mammon, wealth is health, the laws of the jungle are inviolable, and violence has a rightful place for expression, or on the contrary, to a country that by virtue of its long history of struggle, repression, exposure to natural disasters along with internecine conflicts embarked on the greatest human experiment in lifting its people out of poverty, of using social engineering for the benefit of all, of using the capacity of technological progress and modern engineering to develop its country for its own benefit in a manner without historical precedent?
A country known for its superstitions, ignorances and adherence to anachronistic 17th century Christian dogma, or a country where the wisdom of ancient creeds such as Buddhism, Daoism and the words of the wise man Kong Qiu shaped the minds of millions for the better?
A country defined by its inward looking, engaging with others in ways that always prioritise the benefits that it can reap for itself, or a country that has extended its skills and strengths to others across the globe so that they may also realise an uplift in their own circumstances? A country widely known as a global bully, crude and malevolent, or a country that quietly gets along with the work at hand?
I think the answer speaks for itself.
Nicely put Kanga.
And yet, even on a site such as this, we see comments such as that from Mr Smith that are no more than a re-wording of US paranoia and propaganda.
When will the politicians sheltering from reality under the Canberra bubble learn that Australia is being bombarded by propaganda from the USA (Undemocratic States of Apartheid) supporting their national intention to dominate everything in the world for their own benefit.
Uhm ….. 1) Which country supported the Dismissal of the Whitlam LABOR government?
2) Which government agency came up with the WMD, ”Words of Mass Deception” strategy to commence the Iraq-Afghanistan failed occupation giving access to Iraqi fossil fuel reserves for US multinational oil corporations ….. and providing very rich profits for the US military industrial complex?
3) Which government pushed Australia out of the Middle East (Iraq) wheat trade for doing business by local standard operating procedures and replaced Australian wheat supplies with their own, also taking possession of the physical infrastructure built at cost to Australian wheat growers??
4) Which country has initiated 80+ interventions in the domestic politics of third party countries for the benefit of their own multinational corporations??