Exclusive: US-controlled weapons corporations and forces have control or access to more than 100 facilities across the continent, which some analysts describe as a ‘colonisation’ of Australia’s military. Find a map of them here US military interests control or have access to more than 100 defence facilities on Australian soil, in what some analysts describe as a “saturation” – even a “colonisation” – of the Australian continent. New data compiled by the Nautilus Institute and published by Guardian Australia maps the extent of US militarisation. The US military controls 17…
Tag: US military
How Chinese tech and Russian tactics are aiding Iran’s bombing of US bases
As the crisis in the Middle East escalates, Iran has been bombing US bases and critical infrastructure in the Gulf with increasing accuracy, helped by Chinese satellite imagery and tactics learned by Russia in Ukraine. Three US soldiers were killed last Friday in an attack on the Muwaffaq Salti airbase in Jordan, which was being protected by a Thaad air defence system. Satellite imagery later released by Iranian media showed several buildings had been destroyed. It is not clear why the air defence system failed in that incident, which is…
US ‘more than capable’ of resuming war against Iran, Pete Hegseth says
The US has more than sufficient stockpiles of weapons and is “more than capable” of resuming the war with Iran, Pete Hegseth told a defence summit hours after a meeting in Washington failed to produce a deal to end the conflict. “Our ability to recommence if necessary is we are more than capable,” the US defence secretary told the Shangri-La Dialogue, a defence summit held in Singapore on Saturday. “Our stockpiles are more than suited for that, both there and around the globe because of how we balance exquisite and…
‘Makes no sense’: experts doubt pause in US arms sale to Taiwan is due to Iran war
The Trump administration’s war against Iran should have no impact on arms sales to Taiwan, experts have said, after a US official suggested a pause in the delivery of a key weapons package was due to the Gulf conflict. Analysts told the Guardian that a $14bn arms package left in limbo after Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping could take up to six years to process, and there was a “low likelihood” of any true connection between events in Iran and weapons delivery to Taiwan. Uncertainty over Washington’s support for…
Man who allegedly planted bomb at US airbase at large after fleeing to China
A man who allegedly planted a bomb that went undiscovered for a week in the visitors center of the Florida headquarters of US Central Command, which oversees the ongoing war in Iran, remained at large on Friday after fleeing to China. Authorities charged Alen Zheng and his sister Ann Mary Zheng, both US citizens in separate indictments this week for their alleged role in planting the explosive device at MacDill air force base. Ann Mary Zheng was arrested in the US after a short trip to China, and was arraigned…
CIA publishes recruitment video aimed at disaffected Chinese soldiers
The CIA (the US’s Central Intelligence Agency) has published a Mandarin-language recruitment video aimed at Chinese soldiers, in an apparent attempt to capitalise on the recent instability in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) after a series of high-level purges. The video, published on the CIA’s YouTube channel on Thursday, is titled The Reason for Stepping Forward: To Save the Future. It depicts a fictional Chinese military officer who contacts the CIA after becoming disillusioned with his own leaders. The voiceover of the video says: “This is the world I know,…
What would happen if every state acted like Donald Trump’s America? | Kenneth Roth
What is wrong with resurrecting the prerogative of major powers to claim a sphere of influence in which they dictate and others must follow? That idea informs the “Donroe Doctrine” behind the US invasion of Venezuela to seize Nicolás Maduro. Donald Trump seems to believe that, as the world’s strongest military power, the United States should be allowed to invade other countries at will. Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, says “the real world” is “governed by strength”, by “power”, so we should get used to it. There is a…
US attacks on Iran redraw calculus of use of force for allies and rivals around globe
For US allies and rivals around the world, Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran have redrawn the calculus of the White House’s readiness to use force in the kind of direct interventions that the president said he would make a thing of the past under his isolationist “America First” foreign policy. From Russia and China to Europe and across the global south, the president’s decision to launch the largest strategic bombing strike in US history indicates a White House that is ready to employ force abroad – but reluctantly and under…
The Australia-US alliance is facing a decisive test, and not just over the Middle East | Hugh White
Would Australia go to war to support the United States in conflict with China over Taiwan – or elsewhere? The government avoids discussing the question, let alone answering it, by dismissing it as hypothetical. But it will not go away, for two reasons. First, the possibility of us going to war over Taiwan looms over the whole debate about our military preparedness and defence spending, and gives it urgency. That is because choosing to fight China alongside the US is a scenario in which Australia would find itself drawn into…
Trump’s military parade taps an ancient tradition of power: from Mesopotamia to Maga
To Donald Trump, the inspiration is the pomp and pageantry of Bastille Day, France’s annual celebration of the 1789 revolution. For his critics, it is redolent of the authoritarian militarism proudly projected by autocracies such as Russia, China and North Korea. Despite its military prowess and undoubted superpowers status, overt military displays in civilian settings are the exception rather than the rule in US history. But in bringing to the streets of Washington DC on Saturday, the military parade Trump has long hankered after he – consciously or otherwise –…