Missiles vital in hostile climate

Australia’s spending $7bn over the decade to revolutionise air and missile defence systems under a new agreement with the US is a major step towards strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. The announcement, by Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy in Washington, follows China’s recent major investments in anti-ship ballistic missile technology. Australia’s acquisitions, Joe Kelly reports, will provide some of the world’s most advanced air and missile defence weapons. These include the Standard Missile 2 Block IIIC and Standard Missile-6 to boost the long-range capability of the navy’s surface combatant fleet. The missiles will be deployed across the navy’s three Hobart-class destroyers and planned six Hunter-class frigates, in a boost that has long been needed. While most missiles launched at ships drop down and fly across the water’s surface with a range of a couple of hundred kilometres, ballistic missiles can go into space and have a range of thousands of kilometres. Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies noted a few years ago that Beijing had up to 1500 short-range ASBMs, 250 medium-range ASBMs and up to 160 long-range ASBMs.

The deal comes at a propitious time, as leaders of the rapidly expanding BRICS group, dominated by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, meet in Kazan, capital of Russian Tatarstan, for a summit aimed at building a counterweight to Western power. Previously made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the group recently included Iran, part of the “Axis of Evil”. The BRICS umbrella provides a thin veneer of respectability for what, at its core, is a gathering of malign haters of freedom and democracy, the bedrock of Western society.

Other new member states include Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has agreed to join but delayed formalising its membership. A total of 32 countries, representing more than half the world’s population, are attending the Kazan summit. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, in another display of anti-Western partisanship, also is expected to be there despite host Putin being indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Ukraine. Mr Guterres, astonishingly, has scheduled a private meeting with Putin. His willingness to embrace the tyrant will further damage the status of the ICC as a credible body for dealing with genocide and other gross human rights abuses. In 2022, the UN strongly condemned Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as “illegal” and demanded “the Russian Federation immediately cease its unlawful use of force against Ukraine”.

It is a reflection of the power Putin and Mr Xi wield that even the leader of the world’s most populous democracy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and leaders from flawed and corrupt democracies such as South Africa and Brazil, are attending.

Given the way the BRICS group is enlarging and becoming a major catalyst for anti-Western strategy across the globe, Mr Guterres should have second thoughts about attending. BRICS countries are poised to take their anti-Western focus to the next stage by seeking to oust Western influence from global institutions, and set up alternatives to the World Bank and other pillars of US influence. One of the group’s pie-in-the-sky projects is to replace the US dollar as the global currency, absurd though that may be. The Kazan summit reflects the determination of Putin and Mr Xi to campaign against Western power and influence, with BRICS countries as part of their strategy.