Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles followed in the anti-China footsteps of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with a speech to the Shangri La Dialogue in which he lauded the U.S.’s “strategic commitment” to the Indo-Pacific as “deeply welcome” amid the risk of global nuclear proliferation, reported The Guardian. “The reality is that there is no effective balance of power in this region absent the United States,” he claimed, sounding much like European leaders. “But we can not leave it to the United States alone.”
Marles urged “other countries” to contribute and said that Australia was making the “largest peacetime increase in defense spending” since the end of the Second World War, including what he called a “generational transformation of the ADF [Australian defense force].”
He added that the AUKUS partnership was “essential” to Australia’s security while playing a role in the region. “While war and disorder rages in European and Middle Eastern theaters, we can not be complacent here,” Marles said.
Marles claimed China had decided to “pursue rapid nuclear modernisation and expansion, which aims in part to reach parity with or surpass the United States.” He added that it had “embarked on the largest conventional military buildup since the end of World War Two, and it’s doing so without providing any strategic transparency or reassurance.”
