Partnership missions are pure insanity. Chinese troops to train in Australia.

Thanks for the link Kristoffer!

via SMH.com.au

Chinese troops could end up exercising alongside the diggers in Australia’s north, perhaps even in conjunction with US Marines.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised the possibility in the final press conference of his north Asia trade trip in Beijing, declaring these issues had been ‘‘well and truly discussed’’.
He said Australia’s already strong defence ties with Japan and South Korea had now strengthened further.
‘‘Here in China, as a result of this trip, I am now quite confident that we won’t just have high level meetings between our respective militaries,’’ he said.
‘‘We will have exchanges and exercises between our respective militaries and also multilateral exercises.’’
"That's got to be good for peace and understanding in our region and the wider world," he said.
Mr Abbott said he would not speculate on who else could be involved in exercises involving Chinese forces.
‘‘Thanks to the rotating elements of US Marines in Darwin, there’s potential for multilateral exercises in Australia involving the US,’’ he said.
When Australia and the US announced the program of training US troops in northern Australia in 2011, China expressed strong concerns.
Mr Abbott said that was then, not now, and the issue was not the troop rotation but that it had come as a surprise at the time.
‘‘Once people were fully aware of what was happening, the concerns fairly quickly dissipated,’’ he said.
Starting from a low base, Australian defence ties with China have expanded steadily in recent years.
Australian and Chinese defence leaders hold annual talks and Australian and Chinese warships have staged reciprocal port visits.
Australia already cooperates with New Zealand and China on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief drills, and the prime minister said that would be the foundation on which he hoped to build on, perhaps even involving United States marines based in Northern Australia.
“Thanks to the rotating elements of the US marines in Darwin, there’s potential for multilateral exercises in Australia involving the United States,” he said

Wow.  So much to say about this.

I consider this to be a sad remnant from the War on Terror.  Both the Obama administration and the previous one, both used the military in a diplomatic role instead of the State Dept.  In seeking to gain allies in the War on Terror, military to military exchanges and training took place.

It made sense then.  Global Terrorism looked like the disease that would gobble up the world, but since then things have changed.

We played this game before with both the Russians and the Chinese.

What did we get from the experience?  In my opinion nothing but more professional forces that would menace our real allies.  Russian and Chinese units that started looking more and more like Western forces and became more and more effective.

The latest example is what we're seeing in the Ukraine.  The Russians have always been efficient in war but now they're acting with almost US Army Special Forces professionalism.  Not surprising considering the training that they've received...and now Ukraine is paying the price.