I would like to add a few of my ideas to several of the recent comments on this thread in no peculiar order.
First, I think that India, though a growing economic power which is attempting to become a military power equal to its size, it is not a threat to Australia. Assuming that its economic and military power does rise to the levels you think that it will. Personally I would wait and see about that. The fact is, with China to the north and Pakistan to the west, where there is open real hostility that will probably extend on into the future, with Nepal and Bangladesh next door with their endless internal instabilities that can spill out over their borders at any time, the Indian Ocean filling up with pirates, and numerous ongoing internal, yet little reported real and violent rebellions endemic within it, India is looking for friends, not any more enemies no matter what its resource needs may be someday in the future. Their military build up is not a threat to Australia. If the arms build up within their area continues as it has, they are not a threat to any body else, they are just keeping pace with their surroundings.
A Question that I don’t know the answer to is, dose India even know what their own mineral resources truly are and have they yet to fully exploit them? I say this because here in America, with its extremely thorough and competent US Geologic Survey, we are still finding new useful things within our own land borders and we have been working on this since from the beginning of the country without letup. Have they been as thorough?
As to the comment
“As for China and the US not being able to afford another war, you may not realize this, but the USA does not make most of its money out of fridges and ovens... (def profs here correct me if I am wrong) but armaments are USA's top dollar earner, and war is the best environment for sales.”
The United States exports on average about 5.5 billion dollars a year as the worlds largest arms exporter; it also exports about 50 billion dollars a year on average in semiconductors exports alone. The previous statement given as a fact, is not only false it is ridiculously false. War does not serve the interests of the United States but the imaginations of people who do not know better. We in the US show far more restraint, in the exporting of our weapons to other countries for profit than others do, much to the chagrin of our manufactures I might add, more that ether Russia or France ever has. We are just better at making them.
As to the general idea that economic concerns are the only dependable connections between allies, this is simply ridicules. Though it might not be strictly rational, people and their leaders are often not that rational. How many examples do you need? I have been to Australia many times and think it is a great place and recommend it for all visitors. The feedback I get from them when I have visited about the US/ Australian alliance, is though they sometimes think we Americans are often reckless and unnecessary confrontational, they like being on our side. The part of out alliance that rubs them the wrong way is that the alliance is not an equal one. But when considering the relative sizes of our two populations how could it be equal? If it was the other way around, it would rub me the wrong way too and that would be just as irrational.
For those of you out there calculating the dependability of what is now trendy and popular thing to assume,( that of the declining Unites States trustworthiness as an ally), here is a wake up call. We do not always follow our own best economic interests. That is not the only consideration we use in our dealings with other countries and their peoples. I no longer try to explain The Unites States to other people, no matter from where they come from, they just don’t get it. They always think they already know more than enough about us coming from the media, and see my country only through their own country’s eyes. But I will say this; the United States is more about ideas than it is the pursuit of power or even wealth. Many would say we are ideological but that would be a wrong assumption. Unless you understand those ideas we believe in you cannot predict our actions.
As too the true military capacity of the US and its ability to its fight wars? In World War Two we put 12 million men into uniform, when we had a population of 130 million people and still out produced the world in war making materials. It was an all out effort I grant you. Our two current wars, barely affect everyday life here in America. They have gone on for so long because we have chosen not to employ the historic methods used in fighting wars, kill everybody and destroy everything. Something that is far easier, faster, and cheaper than the course we have chosen. The US now has a population of over 300 million people. If the motivations were great enough what do think would happen?
But the mach ups being discussed here about possible confrontations are not very likely but I have a far more amusing one to propose if not more likely. Let us say that China some time in the future decided to make a statement by menacing New Zealand in some direct way? Use any reason that you want, they are so unpredictable in their foreign policies after all. New Zealand is not an ally of the US. It decided to bake that relationship a long time ago. Believing that they do that their remoteness in the world would protect them from all the big power’s messy confrontations and for other silly reasons.
Now I am going to admit I have a bias in this regard. That is why I think it would be so much fun to contemplate. I visited in New Zeeland only once and have never been back. I was on a US Navy ship that stopped at Wellington and was met by a mob of antiwar protesters throwing rocks at me and my ship. It left a lasting impression. I have been giving New Zealander’s shit ever since when ever I met them anywhere in the world. But as unlikely as China attacking New Zealand is, it is a more likely event that them attacking Australia.
