“The United States is not preparing to go to war against China. The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China.”
Beijing has seized on the words of a former diplomat to portray Australia as the “Ukraine” of Southeast Asia.
Former Australian diplomat John Lander worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs in the 1970s. Now he’s leading the charge to sell Beijing’s message that tensions over the East and South China Seas, the Himalayas and Taiwan are Washington’s fault.
And he’s claiming Canberra is being set up.
“The militarisation of northern Australia is, I believe, actually designed to make it possible to ensure that Australia will, in fact, be at war against China at some point in the not too distant future, whilst America can stand off on the sidelines,” he says in an interview with the Communist Party’s Global Times.