Uhhh...so the Admiral would have balked if it instead had been Obama ordering immediate nuclear strikes on China?  Dumb question of course.  The real tone of the article is putting down China.  Australia sees itself as Asia's big player, because Australia is quite irrelevant everywhere else on Earth.  Although first in for the spoils, it always gets squeezed out by others like China, Taiwan, Korea, and U.S. as in, for example since the late 1980s South Vietnam.  Although Australia wrote the book on how to do business in Vietnam while ruling from its glorious $$$ perch on Ho Chi Minh City's (Saigon) Floating Hotel, Australia eventually got the book thrown at it and sent to the sidestreets of commerce.  China is the one at the top today that everybody would like to take down.