“We must ensure the next war is won, not lost, in space” says retired US Air Force general

Written by: Nick G. on July 1, 2026

 

Retired General Jim Slife, former USAF Vice Chief of Staff, has criticised current space warfare planning, saying that obsolete acquisition programs need to be urgently replaced to enable the US to catch up with China in the race for domination of Space.

In a June 24, 2026 opinion piece, he said “Space is now the ultimate high ground in warfighting. Whoever dominates space has a decisive advantage over our adversaries. The recent combat operations in Iran, Ukraine, and Venezuela, where space operations were vital to each and every movement of military forces, have shattered any remaining illusions about space having a secondary role in modern conflict.”

In case anyone took that to mean only the use of satellites to direct ground fighting, he explained that “True space superiority requires systems capable of active orbital mobility that can maneuver on demand, inspect anomalies in real time, and actively service or physically safeguard our critical infrastructure under fire by firing back.”

Unlike objects in geostationary location (for example, a satellite positioned to be directly over Melbourne at all times), the US Space Force is now embracing the concept of satellites with the ability to move freely on orbit over long periods of time as a foundation for orbital warfare (see: Shifting gears: Space Force moves to embrace space mobility for orbital warfare - Breaking Defense ).

Slife says the US has the twin advantages of the world’s largest pools of venture capital and an innovation culture rooted in start-ups, and calls for funding to move away from prime contractors like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. 

Slife himself now works for venture capitalist Scout Ventures, the FTG & Co. Investment Bank and as strategic advisor for a number of defence technology and aerospace firms. He exemplifies the military-finance capital complex that is advocating for the military control of Space by US imperialism.

Pointing to the need to catch up with China in the race for Space, he said “In 2024, the Space Force publicly confirmed five Chinese satellites conducted coordinated proximity maneuvers in low-Earth orbit, described by Space Force Gen. Mike Guetlein as satellite “dogfighting.” Beijing has since demonstrated on-orbit satellite refueling in geostationary orbit, extending the operational life of assets we cannot currently match.”

Meanwhile, on June 23rd and 24th, space agency heads and senior officials from the ten BRICS nations gathered in Bengaluru, India, to attend their latest high-level discussions on outer space. The group considered the idea of a Space Council that has been primarily advocated for by Russia since 2024 as an entity that can facilitate more complex and costly cooperation between the member states.

Inter-imperialist rivalry over Space runs counter to the UN Outer Space Treaty (OSP) which defines Outer Space as being “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind”.

The UN OSP is already being violated by imperialist interests. The commercial colonisation and militarisation of Space must be condemned by all of humanity. 

 

Report from Sri Lanka

Written by: MLND on 30 Jue 2026

 

(Above: source MLND)

The following report is by comrades of the New Democratic Marxist-Leninist Part of Sri Lanka. In 2022, widespread demonstrations led to the overthrow of the SLPP government, and the allegedly “leftist” JVP-NPP was overwhelmingly elected in 2024. It did not, however, dismantle the old state machinery through which the Indian regional expansionists and the US imperialists sought to expand their influence and power. This report provides some details of interest to all in our region – eds.

 

There is now no doubt or secret about the JVP‒NPP sell out to the US and India. As the US acts to consolidate its military footprint, India focuses on its economic hold and buying influence among the country’s elite.

On 23rd June the Sri Lanka Air Force received ten discarded Texas-built TH-57 Sea Ranger helicopters under the U.S. Excess Defense Articles program. Two days later, the US formally designated the Sri Lanka Navy as a key partner in its Indo-Pacific strategy. Sri Lanka’s current defence partnership with the US began in November 2025 when its armed forces paired with the Montana National Guard under the State Partnership Program covering assistance with high-tech communications, transfer of decommissioned US naval vessels, capacity building at naval bases, high level military visits, strategic consultations, defence agreements and joint naval exercises like the series of joint activities conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Sri Lanka Coast Guard. 

The US, owning Sri Lanka’s largest export market, uses the advantage to bully Sri Lanka. When the US recently imposed tariffs on exports, Sri Lanka pleaded for mercy only to submit to the demands of the US. The US seeks to promote a role for its private investors in Sri Lanka’s ports, aviation and digital sectors. Notably, energy is a sector in which the US has demanded a larger share since early this decade, something that the JVP‒NPP had vehemently opposed until assuming power. 

India is seeking economic and trade integration to enhance its economic grip. Indian FDI in Sri Lanka, involving heavy investments in energy, fuel retail, luxury hotels and automotive manufacturing, has reached $2.8 billion. Plans are afoot to conduct cross-border trade in the local currencies and expand trade in services, digital commerce and investment beyond the scope of the current Free Trade Agreement (FTA) through a comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). 

India, is also strengthening its position in infrastructural development and connectivity through projects such as the energy hub in Trincomalee, jointly with the UAE and Sri Lanka, the Three Islands Hybrid Renewable Energy Project besides interconnection of power grids of both countries, and drawing Sri Lanka into the Indian digital payment system to facilitate real-time cross-border transactions. Bilateral efforts are afoot to strengthen logistical connections including ferry services and air transport from the Jaffna peninsula. Talks have also been reactivated on a marine bridge.

India has intensified development assistance besides credit assistance. Its support for community development projects in the North and East has now extended to the Hill Country where it is actively seeking influence among the Hill Country Tamil nationality. Its four High Commission offices in the island visibly exploit cultural commonalties to strengthen influence among the Tamil-Hindu elite.

India has often used the ‘China threat’ to promote its expansionist schemes in South Asia, and seeks to bring Sri Lanka under a common South Asian security umbrella. Pretexts of maritime security, counterterrorism, and regional stability serve to strengthen strategic collaboration.

Matters have passed the point of persuading the JVP‒NPP government to reverse its treacherous path of surrendering the sovereignty of the country to the main imperialist power and the regional hegemon. The government is unlikely to fulfil any of its pledges but for selectively punishing past perpetrators of economic and social crimes, using the draconian PTA which it pledged to scrap. The government is also bound to rely heavily on the state machinery and the chauvinist clergy for its survival.

It is for the progressive left and democratic forces to awaken the public to the harsh reality of the JVP‒NPP government and mobilise the masses for genuine revolutionary action for national salvation and social justice.

NO SECURE JOURNEY FOR IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTRE WORKERS

Written by: Ned K. on 27 June 2026

 

(Source: UWU Facebook page)

Detention Centre Officers who are members of United Workers Union have been taking rolling strike action for several weeks to win a real wage increase, safe staffing levels and better rosters.

Their employer is US owned Management and Training Corporation Pty Ltd and trades as Secure Journeys in its contract with the federal ALP government to operate 7 onshore Detention Centres and numerous "Alternative Places of Detention" in Australia. 

This US corporation operates private prisons in 8 US states and also operates in the UK and Egypt.

The nearly 1000 United Workers Union members across these Centres in Australia work unsafe rosters of up to 15 day blocks on 12 hour shifts. Fatigue is a serious safety issue as well as workload due to under staffing.

Secure Journeys' contract with the federal government hands them $2.3 billion so the more they can reduce staffing levels and labour costs, the more profits flow back the corporations head office in Utah in the US.

Immigration Detention Centre Officers had numerous workplace issues with the previous, outgoing contractor, UK multinational Serco, including a dispute over redundancy pay when Serco lost the contract.

The federal ALP government showed its allegiance to US imperialism by handing the new contract to Secure Journeys. 

The Detention Centre Officers have had anything but a "secure journey" working for the latest one of a number of overseas owned for-profit Immigration Detention Centre operators.

These workers are part of a growing number of services sectors workers who unashamedly see themselves as part of the working class in Australia. Like the "blue collar" mass manufacturing industry workers of decades ago in Australia, they face the same class enemy in the form of mainly US multinational corporations.

The type of work the Immigration Detention Officers perform is different from for a Ford or GM Holden worker of decades past, but the class nature of their struggles is the same.

The Detention Officers are determined to continue action until they win their key demands.

Melbourne rally calls for better public transport

 Written by: By Bill F. on 19 June 2026

 

(Photo supplied)

On the 18 June, residents and commuters from the western suburbs of Melbourne rallied together outside Parliament House around the demand for ‘Better Buses for the West’.

The west of Melbourne, with a large working class population, has always been poorly served by public transport when compared to the more affluent east, which enjoys a whole network of tramlines in addition to numerous rail services. People without cars, young workers, the poor, the elderly, people with wheelchairs and walking frames, all depend on public transport to get around, to make medical appointments, to shop, to visit relatives.

This rally was focused on bus transport, calling for improvements in the frequency and reliability of bus services and their extension into areas not currently served, as well as better community consultation over routes. There was also comment on the aging quality of many buses and the need to increase the number of new cleaner and quieter electric buses.

With Public Transport Victoria (PTV) granting franchises, western suburbs buses are operated by several private companies, such as CDC Melbourne, Kinetic Melbourne (also owns Skybus to the airport), and Transit Systems Victoria.

Even during school times and peak hours service is poor on most routes, even those connecting to shopping centres or railway stations. With the rising cost of living really biting into family budgets, the State Labor government has introduced periods of free travel and then half-fare travel, but only to woo voters in an election year. Yet there has been no improvement in the frequency of services, nor any new routes developed, nothing to really challenge the domination of multinational car manufacturers and oil monopolies, the finance and insurance industries, all those with vested interest in maximum motor vehicle sales and minimal public transport.

Nevertheless, whenever there is a major breakdown or an accident that disrupts regular train services, there is suddenly no shortage of buses and bus drivers to shuttle commuters between stations, in addition to running the usual bus services. This reserve capacity to boost service delivery at short notice is dictated solely by the profit motive, the compulsion to weigh costs against income/government bonuses. The concept of “serve the people” is alien to capitalism, where services are provided and operate only to the extent that profits can be realised.

From the rally it was apparent that there was clear interest in further activities, hopefully in a public space with more connection to the people than the windswept steps of Melbourne’s Parliament House.

Army trains to protect AUKUS

Written by: (Contributed) on 16 June 2026

 

(Above: The US puppets here are planning to curtail people’s protests against AUKUS. Photo: Matt Hkrak, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

A statement issued in a defence report about Defence Force Aid to the Civil Authority has carried all the hallmarks of moves in Canberra to consider military deployments into Australian civil society. (1) While the main heading of the report provided concern about domestic terrorism following the Bondi shootings, reference to 'no-warning exercises involving whole-city terrorism', would tend to convey widespread insurrection, and the move toward military personnel conducting counter-insurgency and counter-intelligence operations in Australian society. (2) 

The report follows revelations in January of a new national command within the Australian Federal Police centred on security for the AUKUS nuclear submarine project. The AUKUS Command includes public order management (see: Revealed: Australia’s secret Anti-Protest Force for US Department of War - Michael West )

The report also refers to 'a potential use of force … envisaged and … containment of a large-area terrorist site', which would tend to indicate areas of Australia being cordoned off with the use of military-style barriers and manned checkpoints to restrict access and egress for the general population. (3)

The plan would appear to also include Defence personnel being integrated into 'planning and operational capabilities for homeland security … alongside … the counter-terrorism relationship that exists between the ADF and different police forces … despite the increased capabilities of police tactical units'. (4)

We have previously reported on Australian soldiers training for Australian civil conflicts (see: Vanguard: Australian soldiers training for civil conflicts ).

More recently, on June 11, the City of Port Adelaide Enfield issued a notice to residents that the Australian Army would be carrying out Exercise Rhino Resolve on the weekend, then two days away, at Osborne, Edinburgh, and Woodside. “The training helps Army personnel to be prepared to respond to a domestic security situation, defend Australia’s territory, and protect citizens during a response.”

The Council notice continued: “During the exercise, you may notice more military activity than usual in the area. This could include military vehicles coming in and out of Defence sites on the peninsula, and soldiers moving around within Defence areas wearing body armour, helmets, and carrying weapons. Civilian “role players” will also be interacting with soldiers as part of the training scenario.

“Some soldiers may carry weapons using blank ammunition for training purposes. There will be no live ammunition used at any time, and no blank ammunition will be fired within the Osborne Naval Shipyard.”

The exercise sets a dangerous precedent for Australia where the military apparatus overrides civilian life.  As we said in our article on Australian soldiers training for civil conflicts, we need to remember the military definition of “protection” when we read reports of ADF personnel practicing its implementation.

That is particularly relevant when the Army is carrying out training exercises in the vicinity of the submarine shipyard at Osborne.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise to find the recent Canberra defence report also stated the Australian military 'has much to contribute to security at home … with … intelligence'. (5) Examples from the previous Cold War, however, have provided chilling pictures of wholesale abuse of democratic processes and widespread repression, totally politically unaccountable at the time. The profiling of whole subject populations, by the US, including that of allies and perceived adversaries, has been well recorded in declassified documents. (6)   

The recent political scandal in Tasmania where a Hobart City Councillor was suspended following their use of a decades-old ASIO file about the parents of Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds 'in an attempt to cause political harm', is evidence of the practice being used in Cold War Australia. (7) The availability of the supposedly secret file also remains a matter for consideration with uses and abuses of power inside the present-day corridors of power. Reynolds is the daughter of historian Henry Reynolds and former Queensland ALP senator Margaret Reynolds, both well-known for their advocacy of Australian First People's rights to self-determination, and for their opposition to AUKUS.

 

It should, therefore, also come as no surprise to find the Defence Force report was totally dismissive of the Australian civil liberties lobby. The military had assessed the lobby as having 'raised concerns about the dangers of excessive involvement by our armed forces in domestic security, especially where it involves the use of force, (but) this appears to be an elite debate that does not resonate with the public'. (8) 

This is not the Australia our people want to live in.

It demonstrates the extent to which the US and their lap dogs in Australia will go in their futile attempt to maintain US global hegemony. AUKUS is exactly about that - not Australia's defence and security - and the warmongers are taking no chances of it being threatened by the community. This is what they really mean by "a domestic security situation".

1.     How ADF could help prevent Bondi 2.0 terror attack, The Defence Report Supplement, Australian, 2 June 2026, column 3.  
2.     Ibid., column 7.
3.     Ibid., column 3.
4.     Ibid., Columns 3, 7 and 8.
5.   Defence Report, Australian, op.cit., column 5.
6.   See: Secret Army's war on the left, The Observer (London), 18 November 1990; and Lost History: Project X., The Consortium Magazine, 31 March 1997; and, Army's Project X had wider audience, The Washington Post, 6 March 1997; and, Counter Insurgency Operations, US Army Report: 19960709 052.
7.   See: Councillor barred for ASIO file attack, Australian, 23 April 2026.
8.   Defence Report, Australian, op.cit., column 8.

The Real Face of Liberal Democracy and the Role of the Social Democrats

Written by: (Contributed) on 13 June 2026

 

(Above: World's first Nazi trillionaire https://commons.wikimedia.org/ Public Domain)

 

The following is an extract from a post on social media. It contrasts the American ruling classes’ role in the creation and promotion of popular cultural images with the reality for working class citizens.

This is the country who our leaders bow to and ensure we meet their every demand as they undertake directly and with the support of countries such as ours the subjugation of any country that attempts to stop their imperialist domination. 

There are a number of key issues to be addressed when considering this post.

Firstly, there is a need to understand that the current situation is not the result of individuals doing the wrong thing. It is the outcome of a capitalist system that is incapable of substantial, sustainable reform.

The Social Democratic parties and those advocating reform have been an integral part of ensuring the current situation has developed. The record of those in power during the reign of such parties is clear evidence of this fact.

Any attempt to blame this on the population in general is to ignore the importance of the role that the ruling class and their associated means of control through the media primarily, is to avoid addressing the fundamental problem. That is a capitalist imperialist system based on private ownership and monopoly.

While this post is about the US and its 250th anniversary year, such an overview of our country will result in similar contradictions between what is in the interests of working people and how our economy and political system serves the interests of the owners, the ruling class. And this class is dominated by US imperialism.

 

“250 years. Two hundred and fifty fucking years of the most powerful, most resourced, most theoretically capable nation in the history of human civilization and here is what we have to show for it.

Forty million people on food stamps, thirty million without health insurance, the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, the highest incarceration rate on earth, an opioid crisis that has killed over half a million people and counting, a housing market so broken that working people cannot afford to live in the cities they work in, an education system that buries young people in debt before they earn their first dollar, infrastructure that is literally collapsing, a life expectancy that is going backwards, a political system so thoroughly purchased by concentrated wealth that the laws it produces bear almost no relationship to what the public actually wants or needs, a working class that has not seen meaningful real wage growth in thirty years, a mental health crisis so severe we normalized it, a gun violence epidemic so routine we don’t even act when preschoolers are slaughtered, and a climate hurtling toward catastrophe while the people paid to address it collect checks from the industry causing it.

Two hundred and fifty years of that. And to celebrate, we built a wrestling arena on the White House lawn.

Not a hospital, or a school, or a housing development. Not a single fucking thing that addresses a single goddamn item on the list above. A wrestling arena. With cranes and pyrotechnics and a steel arch that probably cost more than the annual budget of three rural counties combined, erected in front of the building where Lincoln and Roosevelt and every president who ever tried to make any of this mean something once lived and worked and in some cases died trying.

Truthfully, this is not a departure from American values. This is the fullest possible expression of them. Because this is what we chose. Every single time the choice was presented.

We built a culture where a football coach makes forty times what a physics professor makes and then express genuine bewilderment at the outcomes. Where a reality television star becomes president and a school district cuts its art program in the same fiscal year. Where children know every statistic of every player on their favorite sport team and cannot locate their own country on a map. Where scientific consensus on vaccines, climate, evolution, and basic nutrition gets weighed against a Facebook post and the Facebook post wins at the dinner table. Where the school that wins the state championship gets a parade and the school that produces a Nobel laureate gets a budget cut.

We chose the bomber over the teacher. The tank over the clinic. The aircraft carrier over the water treatment plant. We spend more on military than the next ten countries combined, including our allies, while veterans sleep on the streets of the cities they came back to. We built the most expensive killing apparatus in human history and then told the nurse she made too much money. We sent young men to die in wars that made defense contractors rich and called it freedom and put a yellow ribbon magnet on the back of the car and called that support. We made the soldier and the police officer into sacred untouchable symbols of national identity and then cut their benefits, denied their PTSD claims, let them die waiting for VA appointments, and sent them back for third and fourth tours because it was cheaper than taking care of them when they came home. We worshipped the uniform and neglected the human inside it because the uniform is a symbol and symbols are cheaper than healthcare and housing and the therapy that would actually help. We built bases in a hundred and fifty countries and could not build enough affordable housing in fifty states. We funded a military budget that could have ended homelessness and medical debt and student debt several times over and we did it with bipartisan enthusiasm and called the people who questioned it unserious.

We chose entertainment over education so many times and for so long and at every available level of society that we forgot there was a distinction worth making. Spectacle over substance, performance over policy, the aesthetics of greatness in place of the actual thing, and the feeling of winning instead of asking what was being won and who was paying for it and what it would cost the people who came next.

Rome had bread and circuses. We Americans have food stamps and a wrestling ring outside the Oval Office.

250 years. This is what we built. This is what we chose. This is what we are celebrating. And the most perfectly, catastrophically, irreducibly American thing about all of it is that anyone pointing at this image and asking what it means will be called unpatriotic by people watching it on a television they bought on credit they cannot afford to pay back, rooting for a sport they cannot explain, in a country they cannot describe, celebrating a birthday they cannot contextualize, for a nation that has spent two and a half centuries confusing the noise it makes with the work it never did, all while claiming to be the greatest country on Earth.”

'Force projection' and the Indian Ocean: the role of Australia as a hub for 'US interests'

Written by: (Contributed) on 10 June 2026

 

(Above: Royal Australian air force Wing Commander Tanya Evans, RAAF No. 23 Squadron commanding officer, left, speaks with U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Bolton, Eighteenth Air Force commander, right, during an immersion at RAAF Base Amberley, Australia, Dec. 9, 2025. The immersion was part of a welcome briefing for the players participating in Operation KENNEY STRIKES BACK, a joint and coalition exercise designed by the 62d Airlift Wing to validate rapid generation and power projection capabilities, while operating effectively with joint, allied, and partner forces. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Blake Gonzales. Public domain)

 

Scrutiny of Australia's defence budget following demands by the Trump administration to increase expenditure has provided some interesting insights into the mindsets of the higher echelons of decision-makers in Canberra. It has also thrown light upon Australia's designated role to 'project power' in support of sensitive US defence and security provision in the Indian Ocean. All is not what it would appear.

A study of the Australian defence budget has revealed allocations into sensitive areas of the Canberra bureaucracy not usually associated with the military. The fact that what was diplomatically noted as 'large slices of funding for ASIO, ASIS, the Department of Home Affairs, the Office of National Intelligence, and the national intelligence watch-dog, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security', have remained comparatively well hidden in vast troves of government bureaucracy. (1) Secrecy can be used to serve many purposes.

The findings have to be seen in the light of recent demands by the Trump administration for Australia to increase its defence budget to 3.5 per cent of GDP 'as soon as possible'. (2)

During the days of the immediate aftermath of the previous Cold War, Australia's defence budget fell to about 1.75 per cent of GDP; previously it had been above 2.5 per cent of GDP.
(3) Only in 2013 did the defence budget increase to about two per cent of GDP, hovering between 1.9 per cent and 2.1 per cent of GDP. (4) For the next Australian financial year the budget actually falls back to 2.02 per cent of GDP. (5)

Defence budget projections have recently concluded that Canberra's use of its present accounting methods show the present budget will increase to about 2.5 per cent by the mid-2030s. (6)

The budget percentages, however, have been disputed by various government officials on the basis of what actually constitutes a defence allocation. The fact that Canberra uses part of its defence budget to finance the intelligence services perhaps reveals a great deal about the present Cold War mind-set in both domestic and foreign monitoring and surveillance.

Just who is spying on whom? And for what reason? Immigration? Emigration?
The debate has taken place amid concerns that China, for example, has already established a credible foothold across the vast Indo-Pacific region. The US, in response, has begun upgrading its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), making greater use of Australia for the defence and security of 'US interests'. References in military publications have included, 'enhancing its northern and north-western bases to support force projection into the region'. (7)

Reference to force projection, however, is misleading. It is not merely restricted to the range and capacity of missiles being launched into Australia's neighbouring region. It is, primarily, the role of the intelligence services to assessments developments and to analyse their significance. It should be noted, for example, that the 'Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering and analysing intelligence'; the use of sensitive signals-intelligence (SIGINT), however, rests upon 'ground humans', who are well-placed agents (HUMINT) trusted with providing sensitive and secret intelligence in their localities. (8)

References in recent military publications about Australia's role in the Indian Ocean have provided an interesting insight into the close links between US-led intelligence facilities and their counterparts in Australia. A significant part of the US upgrading to their Indo-Pacific Strategy has included expanding the three tier Island Chain Theory across the Asia-Pacific region into fourth and fifth chains across the Indian Ocean, with specific reference to Diego Garcia as a main intelligence-gathering facility closely linked to Pine Gap.

It has been noted, for example, that 'Australia identifies the north-east Indian Ocean, alongside the South Pacific and South-east Asia, as one of its strategic priority areas'. (9) The high-level diplomatic statement was accompanied by a list of countries in the Indian Ocean regarded as geo-strategically important being drawn closer to Australia for the specific purpose of establishing 'mechanisms for the sharing of information and intelligence'. (10)

And the implementation of the grande plan would appear already under-way, if the facts and figures in the defence budget are correct. Breaking down the budget into individual areas of significance for the plan include Australian Signals Directorate, which specialises in SIGINT. A marked increase in their recent budget allocation has been recorded as:

                                                          2025-26 – 2331 ($m)
                                                          2026-27 – 2531
                                                          2027-28 – 2382
                                                          2028-29 – 2266 (11)

Their intelligence counterparts, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, likewise, have a recorded recently increased budget allocation of:

                                                          2025-26 – 524 ($m)
                                                          2026-27 – 549
                                                          2027-28 – 522
                                                          2028-29 – 503 (12)

When incoming US ambassador, Dr. David Brat, stated at a recent high-level diplomatic mission in Canberra that, 'he loved everything about Australia … and that … few countries were more important to US interests than Australia and he expected the alliance relationship to deepen over time', he left little to the imagination. (13) It was to be expected.

A statement from Brat's counterpart, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, James Risch, likewise, included the statement that 'Dr. Brat would be charged with overseeing an historic transformation of our alliance with Australia as the US moved to step up diplomatic economic and security co-operation through AUKUS and other initiatives'. (14)

Studies of sensitive information can often clarify and highlight seemingly hidden insights:

                                             We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Sexy little numbers that conceal our modesty, Australian, 2 June 2026.
2.     Ibid.
3.     Questions cloud big-spending ambitions for national strategy, Defence Report, Australian, 2 June 2026.
4.     Ibid.
5.     Ibid.
6.     'We must be more self-reliant', Australian, 2 June 2026.
7.     Making our bases harder nuts to crack, Indian Ocean Defence and Security Supplement, Australian, 26 May 2026.
8.     See: Pentagon's parallel spy network revealed, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 28 January – 3 February 2005.
9.     New wave of diplomacy creates a secure Indian ocean for all, Indian Ocean Defence and Security Supplement, Australian, 26 May 2026.
10.   Ibid.
11.   'We must be more self-reliant', Australian, op.cit., 2 June 2026.
12.   Ibid.
13.   Envoy's focus on Pacific security, Australian, 22 May 2026.
14.   Ibid.