Russia raising ‘a new iron curtain’, Tony Abbott warns
A ‘Moscow-Beijing axis’ could spur China to invade Taiwan, tipping the balance of power against the West and threatening democracies, Tony Abbott says.
Tony Abbott has warned a “new iron curtain will ring down in Europe” if Russia seizes Ukraine while a “Moscow-Beijing Axis” could spur China to invade Taiwan, tipping the balance of power against the West and threatening democracies.
The former prime minister has used a key speech in Budapest, Hungary, which shares a border with Ukraine, to call on democratic nations to “renew collective self-defence to the point where no aggressor could think war worthwhile”.
“I’m not sure how widely it’s grasped what’s at stake in this confrontation between
democracy and autocracy, between sovereignty and subservience – and how the whole trajectory of history could change,” Mr Abbott said.
In the speech to conservative think tank the Danube Institute, Mr Abbott argued that Chinese and Russian leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were witnessing an “America in retreat, and no other country or collection of countries with strength and goodwill sufficient to be the guardian of peace with freedom”.
He said this impression had been fuelled by the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the West’s “self-flagellation over race and identity”, which had led Beijing and Moscow to conclude that a “decadent West is unlikely to defend itself with vigour, let alone stand up for others”.
“If Russia seizes Ukraine, a new iron curtain will ring down in Europe,” he said. “If China exploits the confusion to seize Taiwan, the whole world order would shift against the
democracies.”
Indo-Pacific countries would be left to make the “best deal they could with the red superpower” or instead arm themselves “to the teeth” against it in an act of resistance.
Mr Abbott called for more decisive action in the face of the Russian threat to Eastern Europe and the Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific, attacking the withdrawal by Britain and US of its trainers from Ukraine and the unwillingness to install more forces in Taiwan.
“Why shouldn’t the British and American trainers have stayed in place to help, if needs be, their Ukrainian comrades?” he said. “Why shouldn’t more allied soldiers slip into Taiwan to join the US special forces who have reportedly been there for some time?”
“At the very least, NATO should be ready substantially to reinforce its frontline states and to supply the Ukrainians with whatever they need to fight on.”
He argued the lesson of the Cold War was that the only way to keep aggressors at bay was through collective security and said he hoped the latest military crisis would “awaken the people of Western countries … to how readily a freedom that’s not cherished and defended can be lost”.
Mr Abbott said Mr Putin would not cease until Ukraine became a Russian colony, even if it came to “all-out-war”, and that the Russian President’s attention would then turn to the Baltic States, and then to Poland and the other former Soviet satellites until “Russia is again the overlord of Eastern Europe”.
“Let’s be under no illusion. Vladimir Putin sees himself as the new Tsar, a ruler for life, determined to restore greater Russia,” Mr Abbott said.
“I fear the only thing that will stop him is death, defeat, or the conviction that he would lose … On what do I base that?
“Well, after a Russian missile battery shot down MH17 over the eastern Ukraine, killing 38
Australians, I promised to ‘shirt-front’ the Russian President … I had that very robust conversation with him on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Beijing in 2014.
“With rare intensity, he insisted that Ukraine was really Russian and that their government was fascist or worse – and that provocateurs had brought down the plane.
“And then he grabbed me with both hands and said something both strange and revealing: ‘You are not a native Australian’, he said, ‘but I am a native Russian’.”
Mr Abbott said it was the combination of “blood and soil and sacred mission” that drove his fear Mr Putin was “ready to take big risks to restore the Russia of his dreams, especially if he senses weakness and vulnerability”.
He said the new Moscow-Beijing axis was aimed at dismantling NATO, removing the US presence from Japan and South Korea and “ultimately an end to the Pax Americana through a dictators’ partnership that has … ‘no limits’ and no ‘forbidden areas of co-operation’”.
“The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, maybe it’s not; but it’s definitely a free hand from each, for the other to do its worst,” he said.
Lamenting the impotence of the global response to the Russian threat against Ukraine, Mr Abbott said Britain and America had sent anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles “but no troops” while Germany had been “reluctant even to threaten sanctions, should Russia invade”.
“In shades of Munich, France has championed a peace deal based on changing the Ukrainian constitution to meet Russia’s demands,” he said.
“(Putin is) relying on everyone’s unwillingness to take risks for someone else. And so far, he’s succeeding. The Europeans and the Americans are divided and the West looks impotent.”
“The only ones to emerge with much credit are the Ukrainians themselves, who’ve manned their defences and insisted on their right to conduct an independent foreign policy, including to join NATO and the EU.”
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