If only everyday Australians knew that only by yelling allahu akbar loud enough, even in a Western democratic, Judeo-Christian country, will our institutions give you what you want. Yet this is exactly what occurred as the powers at Sydney University capitulated to a group of campus jihadists with alleged links to a terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, by granting them access to defence and security research.

For some, being an Australian means serving our nation in uniform, playing sports for our country, or ploughing our farmland and being free to be openly critical of ideas. For others, it’s an opportunity to subvert the course of our foreign and domestic policy.

Given the growth and influence of anti-Western citizens within our population, by the time the first Aukus submarine is operational in 2040, it may never be deployed to defend Western democratic interests.

Whether you take pledge one or two of Australia’s citizenship oath the intent is the same. You are pledging loyalty to Australia and its people, ‘whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey’.Except now, our democracy is being infiltrated, cultivated, and co-opted by some of the most anti-democratic, anti-Western, anti-Christian forces in the world. According to the ABS, China now represents the second-largest state of origin for migrants to Australia. This trend is expected to escalate.

A nation’s goal in the international arena is ensuring power and security to survive on its own terms and maintain freedom. Much of that power comes from people. During Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Canberra, Beijing offered a small demonstration of its power to mobilise ‘patriotic’ citizens to advance its agenda. Some argue incidents such as blocking Australian journalist Cheng Lei in Parliament House, are small matters. As ancient Athenian general Pericles argued, ‘If you give in [for a trifle], you will immediately be confronted with some greater demand, since they will think you only gave way on this point through fear.’ If such forces can be mobilised for something small, consider how these ‘patriotic’ citizens can be used for something more serious.

This use of migration to co-opt our political class and decision-makers is not a criticism of China. It’s only sensible to respect great opponents. China’s President Xi Jinping gives speeches about his ambitions and is using his power to act in his interests. Xi knows how to manipulate the fears, interests and honour of many elites in our political and business community. As Sun Tzu advised, seize that which your adversary holds dear or values most highly, then they will conform to your desires.

A 2015 Pew Research Centre study forecast a global surge in the Muslim population, with Australia and New Zealand among the nations expected to see the biggest rises. It is estimated the number of Muslims in Australia will grow four times more quickly than non-Muslims over the next 20 years. This is not an attack on individual Muslims, especially those who fled extremism. Yet, as evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad asks, ‘Does the Islamisation of a society lead to more freedom, more liberty, and greater individual dignity?’ Ultimately, these principles and all the little freedoms are what our Aukus submarines are designed to protect.

The Islamic population is now realising its power. Two new websites, The Muslim Vote and Muslim Votes Matter, explain how, ‘we will no longer accept being taken for granted. We are a powerful, united force of nearly 1 million acting in unison. We are focused on seats where the Muslim vote can influence the outcome. We are here for the long term’. Some may argue this is a small percentage of our population. Although T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935), who mobilised the Arab tribes in the first world war against the Turkish, recognised a successful insurgency can be achieved with only two per cent of the population and a passive sympathetic base.

When well-educated, privileged Australian politicians and many in mainstream media can find moral equivalency for the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023, we know demographic gains have been made by the Islamists since the collapse of the Isis caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

Calculating their electoral interests, many of our political class have been ambiguous in the face of atrocious attacks on Jews, even as their electorate offices are terrorised. Which must have been a shock as they thought apathy would remove them from the Islamists’ hit list. If only they knew the Arab expression, ‘First we come for the Saturday people, then we come for Sunday people.’ Whether Islamism or the plans of Xi, these are not single-issue movements – they’re aiming to change our society. We need a whole-of-nation approach to minimise the effects of this strategy.

This phenomenon of using our high immigration policy against us is not isolated to Australia. A December 2021 Financial Times column exposed how Europe is also grappling for ways to respond to weaponised migration alongside other tactics aimed at political and social destabilisation. EU Foreign Policy Chief Joseph Borrell explains, ‘The world is full of hybrid situations where we face intermediate dynamics of competition, intimidation and coercion.’ It’s fourth-generation warfare. In his 1989 Marine Corps Gazette paper, US military theorist William Lind describes how our enemies will co-opt and deploy our own democratic forces against us. Targets would include the enemy’s culture and will to resist the opposing side’s narrative. And with the 2024 National Defence Strategy recommending non-citizens be permitted to serve in our military, why wouldn’t anti-Western adversaries take advantage of this opportunity.

Security is more than guns, tanks and fighter jets. Three years before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, two senior serving officers in the People’s Liberation Army, colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, wrote Unrestricted Warfare. In this slim volume, the PLA officers advocate the use of non-military methods of waging war to defeat technologically superior opponents. Recommendations covered disrupting trade, telecommunications and transportation on which the West depends, as well as electricity grids and avenues of information technology (for instance through incessant hacking) including mass media, plus financial and economic manipulation. Now it includes migration. Check out the rise in well-nourished military-aged males with obvious haircuts coming across in the invasion of the US southern border. Aided and abetted by UN-funded Western NGOs with camps along the Central American transit routes.

In his writings on the second world war, Winston Churchill lamented the fatal fallacies that beset the West during the inter-war period, or what he describes as the locust years (1931 to 1935); the delight of politicians in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the state. And like many of our political class today, a picture of fatuity and fickleness which though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and though free from wickedness or evil design, continues to play a definite part in the unleashing upon us of an undesirable society.

In the end, the long-term strategy of our opponents and the complicit designs of our leaders will make the Aukus submarines impotent. Some might point to the obvious fact we are a democracy. Those in the future have every right to set a new course for our country. I’m sure at this moment, right now, few remember ever voting for this kind of future. Yet now more than ever we need to combine power and security, as well as the belief in all that is good about Australia and the West, to protect what we hold dear.