It only made it to page 19 of The Weekend Australian but the biggest news item of the week was definitely the US President Obama’s visit to Australia with the joint announcement of the US shifting from Iraq and Afghanistan to northern Australia and the Pacific. He said: “We see our new posture here in Australia.” The purpose is to swing US policy back to the Asia-Pacific in strategic economic and multilateral terms. The alliance is recast to handle the rise of China to great power status. This week’s defence announcements are the most significant for military cooperation since the joint facilities in the 1980s according to Defence Minister Stephen Smith. The US alliance is deeply part of our Australian culture. There are few dissenters and it has both major party full support.

What does it mean for us locally? Well Australia is underdefended and clearly this increases one aspect of Australia’s defence that we are unable to provide alone.

On the other side great powers are always fighting wars. It has direct economic pay-offs for them because weapons manufacture is a huge industry for these economies and they are always needing somewhere to blow them up – the weapons industry equivalent of markets.

They also always want to hold their wars on someone else’s territory preferably as far away as possible from their own home ground.

Australia I regret to think may be being set up to become an arena of war for great powers just as countries like Iraq and Afghanistan have been. War destroys the lives of the citizens in countries where it is conducted. We might be absolutely powerless to do anything about this but let us at least think it through without two many smiling faces and rose-coloured glasses. War is one of the toughest harshest realities about what it means for us to be human.