Pine Gap a target as Ukraine invasion raises nuclear war risk, Australian defence expert warns

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Australian defence strategist Paul Dibb says Russia’s invasion could escalate into a wider war perhaps with the use of nuclear weapons. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

Australia could become a nuclear target due to its hosting of a US military base at Pine Gap in the Northern Territory, one of Australia’s leading defence strategists has warned.

Prof Paul Dibb, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University and former director of Australia’s Joint Intelligence Organisation, said the current Russian invasion of Ukraine carried potential global nuclear consequences, with the possibility of a defeated and humiliated Russia pushed closer to China in “a grand coalition … united not by ideology but by complementary grievances”.