Australian Intelligence Chief has said that China and Russia are developing strategic relations amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine. As a result, there is a risk of “major power conflict” in this scenario.
According to ODNI’s Andrew Shearer, China’s President Xi Jinping appears to be attempting to dominate the Indo-Pacific region and use it as a springboard to achieve global supremacy.
The high-profile protests suggest that Western leaders are speaking with one voice to warn against the prospect of a wider conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has elicited near-unanimous condemnation from the international community.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week called on liberal democracies to interdict an “arc of autocracy” that is reshaping the globe.
“We’re going to have to work even harder to sustain the rules-based system in Europe and across the Indo-Pacific region,” Shearer said at an Australian Financial Review event.
“We’re looking at a leader who’s really tightening his country down and hardening it for this battle to take over the United States as the world’s leading superpower,” he continued.
“The strategic base camp for the Indo-Pacific region is to achieve primacy in the area.”
Professor Shearer said that the geopolitical danger would be focused on technology, particularly cyber attacks, and that Australia must improve its cyber defenses without restricting trade or information sharing.
“We require a developing, open economy in order to finance the increases in military spending that the government has committed to. This can’t be a zero-sum game between security and economics,” he added.
Australian Intelligence professionals believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a more major power conflict than earlier, said Shearer
He agreed with many Western critics by stating, “I was shocked by the strength of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian troops.”
However, he warned that “a vicious, bloody couple of weeks” lay ahead since Russian President Vladimir Putin “had everything on the line now (and) it’s hard to picture an elegant or ungainly dance-off.”
The Kremlin characterizes its activities as a “special operation” to disassemble Ukraine and remove political figures it alleges are neo-Nazis.
The pretext for military aggression against Ukraine and its Western allies is described by some as a baseless rationale for a war of choice that has prompted concerns of wider conflict in Europe.