No. of Recommendations: 19
First of all, if I was either a Kiwi or an Ozian, I would take great exception to "There is nothing of strategic value in either place." Certainly, Australia has vast mineral wealth as well as both countries punching above their weight class when it comes to food production.
China is in the process of building a world-class blue-water navy capable of protecting its interests. Those interests now span the Pacific as far as South America - effectively on a line which cuts off the Anzac area.
Australia has participated in every harebrained war that the US got involved in - presumably to make sure we reciprocate if "Asia" (whether China, Japan, Russia, whoever) tried to take a poke at them. Up until a few months ago, I took the US obligation to the treaty as immutable, but we seem to have suddenly become "more fickle and selective".
Jeff
