All I've done so far is had a brief look at the searchable Hillary emails released by Wikileaks, here. What I can tell you in just the short time that I've searched Australia on them, they are an absolutely fascinating look into how the US views the world. Their prism is as expected, to divide and conquer by any means possible.
In the Asia-Pacific, one email I found appears to confirm that the Trans Pacific Partnership is simply a power-play by the US in the Pacific against China. To export the US's world view of "free trade" via corporate rule and get the Pacific nations stuck in it with no way out. Again, "American exceptionalism" show's it's very ugly head yet again.
Included in this power-play is the military strategy as well, with the deployment of US marines to Darwin as a direct action against incursions by China in the South China Sea to "reassure the neighbourhood".
I present one of two emails I found at this link, in it's entirety. The first one there is certainly worth reading too, but this second one is even juicier:
UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05786185 Date: 10/30/2015I note that nowhere in this discussion is mentioned what the people actually want in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. It's all about the US and what it wants, manipulating the countries into the US economic nightmare. To the US, we're just pawns to use in it's power-play against China.
Japan may not be going from strength to strength, but India, Vietnam, South Korea and many of their neighbors are industrializing and growing rapidly thanks to their participation in the global system. U.S. policy in Asia is built on the understanding that investing in this new balance of power can reduce any challenge a stronger China might otherwise pose.
Beginning with the Clinton administration, which ended the trade embargo with Vietnam in 1994 and normalized relations a year later, the U.S. has been deepening its relations with key Asian countries. U.S. engagement with India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, Australia and Singapore is deeper and broader today than it was at the end of the ColdWar. This engagement is economic in all cases, military in most. President George W. Bush even signed a nuclear-cooperation agreement with India in 2005, despite the cost of complicating relations with Pakistan.
This poses a strategic dilemma for Beijing. If it doesn't push back, the new U.S.-centered Asian system will continue to develop. But if it tries to block the system, it may frighten its neighbors into an even closer American embrace.
In the last two years, China chose to assert itself by stoking disputes over strategically vital (and perhaps energy-rich) areas of the South China Sea. This alarmed its neighbors, and in turn the Obama administration engineered a dramatic diplomatic revolution that will likely serve as the foundation of the region's security architecture in Asia for some time to come.
On his November visit to Australia, President Obama announced that U.S. Marines will be based in the northern city of Darwin, close enough to the South China Sea to reassure the neighborhood, but far enough away to limit the provocation to China. At the same time, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that Australia would begin uranium sales to India. And last week the State Department announced that Japan, India and the U.S. held the first of a series of trilateral security talks on Asian and global issues.
Also in recent weeks, Japan announced that it was purchasing F-35 fighters from the U.S. and joining negotiations to establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a U.S.-backed free-trade initiative covering the Asia-Pacific region. China is currently excluded fromthe initiative but could be invited in later.
India, Japan and the U.S. are also assisting the junta in Myanmar as it seeks to distance itself from China's suffocating embrace. Shortly after Myanmar canceled a major hydroelectric project intended to sell power to China in September, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the country, Japan lifted a ban on aid, and India announced that it is helping Myanmar build a new port.
The U.S. isn't developing an Asian alliance on par with NATO, and at this stage U.S. policy there falls well short of containment. The goal isn't to drive China in on itself and force regime change, as the U.S. intended with the Soviet Union. The goal, rather, is to deter Beijing from mounting a quest for regional hegemony while holding out the option of greater participation in the international system.
Depending on China's response, the U.S. and the other members of the emerging entente are free to move toward either a closer or a more competitive relationship with Beijing. If reason prevails in Beijing, the road is open to long-terminstitutional and cooperative economic integration in the Pacific.
This approach to Asian economic and security policy predates the Obama administration and is likely to survive it. While Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives might argue over emphases and priorities within this general strategy, the broad lines of a sustainable American policy in Asia are clear, and they're supported by everyone to the right of Dennis Kucinich and to the left of Ron Paul.
The Obama administration, like its predecessors, has moved to produce an Asia policy that is in line with the highest traditions of American statesmanship. Realistic, humane, forward-looking and enlightened, America's approach to Asia offers Asians as well as Americans the best available chance to create a Pacific Century worthy of the name.
Mr. Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of the American Interest. Hillary email archives, Wikileaks
What sheer arrogance. We don't want the US corporatisation of Australia. How self absorbed of it to think that their system is the best one. How vain and deluded. Whilst millions of Americans live in third world poverty, they want to export their failed system to the Pacific, arrogantly thinking we'll fuckin love it. This is the true reason for the TPP. The US vs China. It's as simple as that.
I don't mind Australia being friends with the US, but this? This is too far. The friendship needs to go both ways, not all the US's way. And they expect us to buy their crappy F-35 lemons that don't work, to support their corporate military machine?
In a true friendship one can tell the other to just fuck off on occasion without offence being taken and the friendship moves on. It's called mutual respect.
I'm sick to death of the US telling Australia to jump and our piss weak pollies eagerly asking "how high?" The US arrogance is in need of a reality check. The tall poppy needs trimming.
May I just say here and now on behalf of many Australian citizens, "US, oh FFS just fuck off and do some bloody navel gazing for a bit. *sheesh* The audacity!"
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