Alex Lo

ALEX LO—The purest expression of this US strategy in Asia has been Australia’s costly deal for nuclear-powered submarines under the Aukus security partnership with the United Kingdom and the US.

In a new book, Australian investigative journalist Andrew Fowler has delivered the proverbial smoking gun, courtesy of David Gould, former British undersecretary for defence hired by Canberra as consultant for a programme to replace the country’s ageing submarines.

“Gould revealed for the first time what has long been suspected: one of the submarine’s most important requirements would be to work with the Americans in the South China Sea,” Fowler wrote in Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty.

ALEX LO—As recounted by Princeton political scientist Gary Bass in The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide, Washington gave the go-ahead to the Pakistani army in 1971 to launch Operation Searchlight that killed at least 300,000 Bengalis and forced 10 million to flee. The genocide was halted by India’s military intervention, leading to the establishment of Bangladesh. In 1965-66, with full support from the CIA and the State Department, the anti-communist purge launched by Suharto after his coup against Sukarno cost the lives of up to a million Indonesians.
About 3 million Vietnamese were killed in the war waged by the US in their country.