This release was first published as an article in the 11 May 2022 Australian Alert Service.
Just four days after Defence Minister Peter Dutton declared on ANZAC Day that Australia is preparing for war, former Ambassador John Lander sat down with Citizens Party Research Director Robert Barwick for a second interview on the ACP’s Citizens Insight program.
All Australians, without exception, should be highly alarmed by the dangerous tone of this federal election campaign.
What was previously unthinkable—a war with China—is now being normalised by the rhetoric of our leading [sic] politicians.
Former Australian diplomat John Lander is speaking out in retirement to warn that the current direction of Australia’s foreign policy is leading to war with China. In an interview that every thoughtful Australian should find alarming, Lander explains how the strategic dynamic that has triggered war in Ukraine is also at play in the Asia-Pacific, and risks pushing Australia into a war with our biggest trading partner.
In Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, the heroic general by that name is incited into a murderous rage by a web of malicious lies spun by his trusted adviser Iago. Because Othello does not recognise Iago’s lies, he ends up falsely believing his beloved wife Desdemona was having an affair and kills her, thus destroying his life and everything he loves.
The following statement was authored by retired senior Australian diplomat John Lander, who worked in the China section of the Department of Foreign Affairs in the lead-up to the recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1972 and several other occasions in the 1970s and 1980s. He was deputy ambassador in Beijing 1974-76 (including a couple of stints as Chargé d’Affaires).
