IT'S ridiculous that Australia, on one hand, has closely followed the US in condemning what it perceives as Russia's 'brutal and unprovoked invasion' of Ukraine, but on the other, its elites bluntly threaten to invade its neighbor in the South Pacific and foster regime change.

A Reuters report on March 30 saying that a proposal for a broader security agreement with China that would be sent to the Solomon Islands' cabinet for consideration has caused shock waves through Canberra. David Llewellyn-Smith, founding publisher of MacroBusiness and former owner of leading Asia-Pacific foreign affairs journal The Diplomat, suggested a day later that Australia 'must ready Solomon Islands invasion.' Calling the China-Solomon Islands deal 'Australia's Cuban missile crisis,' Smith said, 'If it must, the nation [Australia] should invade and capture Guadalcanal such that we engineer regime change in Honiara' to protect Australia's 'sovereignty and democracy.'