Imperialist hypocrisy on display

Written by: Nick G. on 6 August 2024

 

We have known all along that imperialism practices rampant hypocrisy. It tramples on people’s rights under the guise of “defending democracy”, and oppresses peoples and nations under the guise of “fighting for freedom”.

These are general manifestations of its hypocrisy.

A particular example of it was revealed on August 5 in the online US magazine Breaking Defense.

 

Under the heading Outsourcing the US shipyard industrial base will outsource American sovereignty, the American Council of Shipbuilders warned that the US was falling far behind its social-imperialist rival China in both naval and mercantile ships, but that proposals to close this gap by outsourcing naval shipbuilding to allied countries would be a mistake. 

 

The Council said:

 

Some of our allies took the outsourcing path, and now are desperately trying to rebuild the industrial base back to what it once was — but they have lost the technical expertise, the infrastructure, and most importantly, the craftsmen to make it a reality. As a nation, why would we ever entertain this idea when we can see what it has done to our allies?

 

The building of the US Navy’s ships, it says, “must be done in our homeland, not by sending hard earned tax dollars and jobs overseas to bolster another country’s industrial base.”

 

These are the words of big corporations set to profit from the non-refundable gift of $A4.7 billion of Australian “hard earned tax dollars” sent directly to US shipbuilders, with a further slice of the estimated cost of $368 billion allocated for eight nuclear-powered submarines.

 

Among the corporate heavies running the American Council of Shipbuilders are:

 

• Chairman, Brad Moyer, Vice President of BAE Systems Ship Repair

• Vice-Chairman, Dave Carver, President of General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO)

• Board of Directors member, Jennifer Boykin, President, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) Newport News Shipbuilding

 

BAE Systems is a British multinational whose US operations are one of the six largest suppliers to the US Department of Defense. The design and building of the SSN-AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines has been outsourced to BAE Systems, together with the Australian Submarine Corporation.

 

Before the SSN-AUKUS submarines are built, Australia will buy between three and five Virginia-class SSNs from the US. They are built by General Dynamics and HII.

 

The only reason we had to drop earlier plans for 12 redesigned and locally built Collins-class conventionally-powered submarines, perfect for Australian coastal defence at $A40 billion, was the plan for Australia to have long-range subs, interoperable and interchangeable with those of the US Navy, and sitting off the coast of China ready to support whatever provocation US imperialism decides to throw at China.

 

Former Prime Ministers Paul Keating (Labor) and Malcolm Turnbull (Liberal), and former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr have criticised the AUKUS arrangements for outsourcing Australian sovereignty. An earlier US proposal for us to lease US SSNs was criticised on the same basis (as “a derogation of sovereignty”) by former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.

 

Our current “leaders”, Albanese and Dutton, are enablers of US imperialist hypocrisy on the question of naval shipbuilding.

 

Essentially, they are compradors and traitors.

 

They will have no place in an independent, sovereign and socialist Australia.