The visit to Australia by China’s Foreign Minister, H.E Wang Yi, reminded us of how the strong exact what they can and the weak suffer what they must, while questions of justice between states only arise when there is equal power to compel. It is a timeless lesson from Ancient Greek historian Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War, and one of its most important chapters, the Melian Dialogue. In their attempt to rebuff Athen’s argument of power, like the globalists running Australia and all other Western states, Melian’s elites appealed to justice, rights, and hope. The conclusion we can draw from Yi’s visit is that Australia has no power to compel and is not recognised as an equal. Yi made Aukus appear as an irrelevant deterrent against China’s rise as the region’s new superpower.

Critically we were exposed to how Australia will indefinitely live under what George Orwell described in his 1945 essay as ‘a peace that is no peace’ in an epoch of horrible stability. While China does not seek territorial expansion into Australia, it seeks to control and repress our system. It is an invasion without being invaded, reinforcing the idea that conflict continues to play out over a moral, mental, and physical continuum.

This horrible stability will remain excruciating for current and future Australian governments. While Orwell foresaw the first Cold War, he might just as well have been laying out the conditions of the second. History has a habit of repeating. This new Cold War will continue to be one where war preparation, controlled conflict, and targeted repression becomes normal. Just as Orwell laid out the conditions of the first Cold War.

As a visitor to Australia, which is a democratic country and all that entails, China’s Foreign Minister appeared to determine all the rules while using economic and elite capture and coercion to penetrate our nation’s political centre of gravity. On home soil Australia was unable to compel Yi to do anything.

The line-up of Australian companies willing to sacrifice our power and security during Yi’s visit is no longer surprising. And it’s no use blaming Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong. The accountability lies with political elites on all sides, globalist organisations, and Australian corporations that are addicted to taxpayer subsidies. They broke a basic rule in business about not putting all your eggs in one basket. For more than a generation, these ruling classes have disregarded the grubby truth that their ideals and their freedoms rely on the security provided by realists.

This is not a criticism of China. One should respect this kind of leadership. It’s important to empathise with political opponents. Today, for many in mainstream media and group-thinkers, this means you are an agent of the enemy. China’s strategy is to control all corners of the board leaving us as pawns. They know what they want. China is acting in its interests, and now slowly, so are we. China understands the laws of nature and the use of power. Just as Athens explained to the Melians:

‘This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when it was made. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that you or anybody else with the same power as ours would be acting in precisely the same way.’

In his 1910 work Germany and the Next War, General von Bernhardi argued, ‘Germany cannot attain her great moral ends without increased political power, an enlarged sphere of influence, and new territory.’ For Germany prior to the first world war, it was a law of necessity, a duty of the State. The first world war was touch and go for the Allies. Same as now with China; it’s just that the path for this new great power into being prepared by artillery.

Two Chinese senior military officers wrote Unrestricted Warfare, advocating the use of non-military methods of war. This included disrupting the West’s trade networks, telecommunications, transportation, electricity grids, and information technology (witness the incessant hacking), as well as manipulating our media and financial and economic systems.

It’s not as if any of this is a secret. China’s President Xi tells us. He gives speeches about it. The implementation of the strategy, that is the art of creating and deploying power and security, has been deliberate, methodical, seductive, and in plain sight. We all knew what was happening. Yet very few, in fact too few, did anything about it. Just as it was no secret Russian President Vladimir Putin would launch on expanded war into Ukraine. He also told us for years. And just when America and the European Union were at the height of their collective weakness, and when the United Nations had been hollowed out as an anti-Western vassal, he made his move.

There are no Churchills, Thatchers, or Reagans in our current crop of Western leaders. Not even a Truman. Neither Churchill, Thatcher, or Reagan submitted to opponents’ social, cultural, or ideological demands. It’s hard to imagine such a clear, unequivocal position from any Western leader today. They are more interested in destroying all that has made Western Civilisation great. Without a firm belief in ourselves then if we even see an Aukus submarine, it will be aimless to our opponents.

No matter how modern we perceive ourselves to be, and irrespective of AI, human nature is no different now to what it was during the time of Thucydides. Yet as Thucydides revealed, those who are too smart to fight find themselves being governed by those who are not.