11 - Exposed - the Cocos plan to blockade China

Australian and US war plans reveal that Australia's Cocos or Keeling Islands are being prepared for a significant new role in a future US military conflict with China, wrote award-winning investigative journalist Peter Cronau on the first of October.

Australia's Cocos Islands Territory is being converted to support US military operations, he wrote in an article for Declassified Australia, headlined Australian Island Bases Hidden US Military Role.

While no formal announcement has been made that the location will host a new US military base, quote, military construction is proceeding veiled through separate Australian construction projects, American military tenders, alliance force posture arrangements, and commercial port infrastructure, end quote.

US Navy tender documents were revealed in August twenty twenty-four by a Reuters journalist with infrastructure works for new forward-based military facilities listed under the heading Pacific Deterrence Initiative.

Wrote Cronau, The Pacific Deterrence Initiative is a fifteen billion US dollars eight-year project intended to disperse and strengthen American military infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific in preparation for possible conflict with China.

This includes, he said, challenging China's role as its main economic competitor, situating the tiny atolls two thousand eight hundred kilometers northwest of Perth and one thousand kilometers south of Indonesia in this framework is further evidence supporting former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans' statement to the AUKUS public inquiry that US submarines are being based at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia so they can interdict China's shipping through the Malacca Strait.

The US documents show, wrote Cronau, that the United States is specifically looking to utilize the Cocos Islands to project airborne power across the eastern Indian Ocean through the Indonesian Archipelago shipping passages and into the South China Sea.

This will take development on the islands far beyond what was permitted by the twenty twenty-three Defense Strategic Review and appears to breach a nineteen fifties UN agreement made when Australia took over the islands not to militarize them.

Already in twenty twelve, The Washington Post reported the US and Australia had plans to make it a US air base.

US and Australian officials said the atoll could be an ideal site not only for manned US surveillance aircraft, but for Global Hawks, an unarmed high-altitude surveillance drone.

Meanwhile, the presence of US Marines on permanent rotation through Darwin, added Cronau, may be expanded.

Having already grown from an initial deployment of two hundred to two thousand five hundred today, there are some defense experts who want it boosted significantly in size and capability, perhaps to as many as sixteen thousand Marines.

With support ships and aircraft that would converge on a complete marine expeditionary brigade of twenty battalions of marine sailors and aircrew, he wrote, An important part of an emerging American policy aiming to challenge China's economic rise by targeting China's essential sea lanes.

Quote, This distant blockading strategy would aim to cripple China's economy or bring about regime change without a full-scale war or invasion.

Whether China would accept its own death by a thousand cuts, however, seems remote and a wider war would seem inevitable, end quote.

Cronau cites strategic analyst and former US Marine, Brian Berletic, who says, The US Marines have been transformed into a force almost solely for disrupting Chinese shipping.

Australian and US war plans reveal that Australia's Cocos or Keeling Islands are being prepared for a significant new role in a future US military conflict with China, wrote award-winning investigative journalist Peter Cronau on the first of October.

Australia's Cocos Islands Territory is being converted to support US military operations, he wrote in an article for Declassified Australia, headlined Australian Island Bases Hidden US Military Role.

While no formal announcement has been made that the location will host a new US military base, quote, military construction is proceeding veiled through separate Australian construction projects, American military tenders, alliance force posture arrangements, and commercial port infrastructure, end quote.

US Navy tender documents were revealed in August twenty twenty-four by a Reuters journalist with infrastructure works for new forward-based military facilities listed under the heading Pacific Deterrence Initiative.

Wrote Cronau, The Pacific Deterrence Initiative is a fifteen billion US dollars eight-year project intended to disperse and strengthen American military infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific in preparation for possible conflict with China.

This includes, he said, challenging China's role as its main economic competitor, situating the tiny atolls two thousand eight hundred kilometers northwest of Perth and one thousand kilometers south of Indonesia in this framework is further evidence supporting former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans' statement to the AUKUS public inquiry that US submarines are being based at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia so they can interdict China's shipping through the Malacca Strait.

The US documents show, wrote Cronau, that the United States is specifically looking to utilize the Cocos Islands to project airborne power across the eastern Indian Ocean through the Indonesian Archipelago shipping passages and into the South China Sea.

This will take development on the islands far beyond what was permitted by the twenty twenty-three Defense Strategic Review and appears to breach a nineteen fifties UN agreement made when Australia took over the islands not to militarize them.

Already in twenty twelve, The Washington Post reported the US and Australia had plans to make it a US air base.

US and Australian officials said the atoll could be an ideal site not only for manned US surveillance aircraft, but for Global Hawks, an unarmed high-altitude surveillance drone.

Meanwhile, the presence of US Marines on permanent rotation through Darwin, added Cronau, may be expanded.

Having already grown from an initial deployment of two hundred to two thousand five hundred today, there are some defense experts who want it boosted significantly in size and capability, perhaps to as many as sixteen thousand Marines.

With support ships and aircraft that would converge on a complete marine expeditionary brigade of twenty battalions of marine sailors and aircrew, he wrote, An important part of an emerging American policy aiming to challenge China's economic rise by targeting China's essential sea lanes.

Quote, This distant blockading strategy would aim to cripple China's economy or bring about regime change without a full-scale war or invasion.

Whether China would accept its own death by a thousand cuts, however, seems remote and a wider war would seem inevitable, end quote.

Cronau cites strategic analyst and former US Marine, Brian Berletic, who says, The US Marines have been transformed into a force almost solely for disrupting Chinese shipping.