Australia is sleepwalking into a confrontation with China. Wars can happen suddenly in an atmosphere of mistrust and provocation, especially if a minor power, such as Australia, abandons its independence for an "alliance" with an unstable superpower.

The United States is at a critical moment. Having exported its all-powerful manufacturing base, run down its industry and reduced millions of its once-hopeful people to poverty, the principal American power today is brute force. When Donald Trump launched his missile attack on Syria ‒ following his bombing of a mosque and a school ‒ he was having dinner in Florida with the President of China, Xi Jinping.

The attack on Syria was clearly, above all, to show his detractors and doubters in Washington's war-making institutions ‒ the Pentagon, the CIA, the Congress ‒ how tough he was and prepared to risk a war with Russia. He had spilt blood in Syria, a Russian protectorate; he was surely now on the team. The attack was also meant to say directly to Xi, his dinner guest: this is how we deal with those who challenge the top dog.

China has long received this message. In its rise as the world's biggest trader and manufacturer, it has been virtually encircled by 400 US military bases ‒ a provocation described by a former Pentagon strategist as "a perfect noose".