Pearls and Irritations

“Nothing Australia does – with or without AUKUS – will make any difference to the collective capacity to either deter or defeat China in the next decade, which is the time frame that counts. That means the only prudent choice for Australia’s military strategy is to prepare to defend ourselves from major powers such as China without American support” – Hugh White.

It’s time to talk frankly about Australia’s defence. As a nation we are sleepwalking into catastrophe. Let’s face it, Australian Governments deceiving their people on the nation’s defence policy has been the norm for long periods.

Over the ninety years since World War 2 only two official documents have profoundly shaped Australia’s security policy. The first was the ANZUS Treaty of 1953. Presented falsely at the time, and ever thereafter, as a security guarantee for Australia, it has served America’s interests repeatedly to our cost. ANZUS as an obligation-free, manipulative tool settled firmly in the hands of the United States’ global strategists from the outset.

The second document was Australia’s fledgling White Paper on defence in 1976. It followed our chastening experience in the Vietnam war and President Nixon’s Guam doctrine. It rendered the Treaty a subsidiary influence, as our government proclaimed self- reliant defence as the way ahead for Australia’s security planning. Embraced bi-partisanly, it was a rare, honest and competent attempt at giving material weight to our independent nationhood. In effect, White Paper 1976 confirmed the hollowness of ANZUS and the deliberate misrepresentation by PM Menzies of its security benefits for Australia right from the start. Today ANZUS is a mere political symbol, exploited vicariously on each side.

Self-reliance in the direct defence of Australia has been officially the centrepiece of defence policy since 1976. Numerous governments, white papers and reviews have followed, with not one explicitly articulating a departure from that central objective. But egregious and sustained deception of Australians set in about 2010.

When President Obama was invited to Australia and the Gillard government announced that henceforth US marines would be rotated through Australia, our self- reliance was effectively shredded, certainly in America’s mind. Thereafter, militarily containment of China to within the “first island chain” in the western Pacific has become the top priority of US security planning and programs. Explained in Pentagon reports to Congress in detail. Into which Australia is being integrated. More American basing here has unfolded for long range strike and interdiction against China, alongside deep integration of Australia’s intelligence assets, sensors and forces generally into the US posture for that conflict, energetically pursued since the Force Posture Agreement of 2015.

No government has been honest with Australians at any time over this period of Australia’s calculated absorption into America’s war machinery against China. Explaining eye-watering defence spending hikes for China-purposed acquisitions and operations, Defence Minister Marles mumbles phrases like “impactful projection”, as our Navy is reshaped by a US Admiral. Before that PM Morrison talked of “meaningful impact” while committing Australians to hundreds of billions of dollars for a few nuclear- powered submarines, of extremely modest operational influence against China in its waters. Australia’s defence commentariat, academia and mainstream media have genuflected to these obfuscations, with pomposity. Many have a financial incentive which reinforces the absence of intellect to inquire.

Thankfully, an exception has emerged to this shabby commentariat of “security experts”. An article by Professor Hugh White (one of two worth reading, alongside Sam Roggeveen) in The Saturday Paper (April 27, no. 497) has cut through the confusion.

Australia has a choice of two strategies
White finds that the “2024 National Defence Strategy” recently promulgated by Defence Minister Marles “fails just as badly as its lamentable predecessors, and for the same basic reasons. It cannot decide what kind of threat China really poses, nor make the hard choices about how to respond. China of today constitutes a new, and unprecedented, element in Asia’s strategic system. Yet how exactly does it pose a threat to Australia’s security? There is no chance of working out an effective response to China’s rise unless we can answer that question clearly”.

The reality is Australia will never reach a credible, coherent response to Asia’s strategic transformation until we make a clear choice.

Do we support Washington to sustain US primacy in Asia – doing whatever we can to help America win the contest with China and preserve the US-led order in our region. That means building forces to support America in a US–China war.” To which our contribution could only be very marginal against that of US’s north Asia allies, and degraded by our strategic separation.

“Or do we prepare to defend ourselves when US primacy has passed, building forces designed to defend ourselves independently in the longer term against a major power such as China?”

The first choice is the path Australia now is on – supporting America’s objectives against China wholeheartedly – with our money, people and national assets – at the expense of our direct national defence. In continuing to be absorbed into US strategy our own homeland defence will be severely degraded. America will increasingly demand that we pursue its interests, with ever greater claim on the national budget. We are forever tied into whatever fate America throws our way. Australia’s nationhood is limited at US discretion. The chief risk is that America will be unsuccessful against China and withdraw from the region. But only after immense struggle and pervasive damage regionally and to Australia itself and its people. This risk has a searing US domestic political component overlaid on a daunting military ambition to diminish China. Australia would be left with the regional aftermath, largely alone, exposed diplomatically, economically and devastated militarily.

The consequences of failure from following America into conflict with China are pre-eminent, even fatal, for Australia.

Our other strategy is to take a step back, to concentrate on what we had been doing successfully to America’s delight then – creating unique defences for independently defending our homeland. We know this challenge. We would again have full discretion in our relations, able to deal diplomatically as ourself and with our region genuinely as part of it. Able to freely embrace the richness of opportunity our region offers. And we can be confident that with focussed investment our defences will ensure any opponent reflects deeply before attacking our territory.

A notable risk to Australia in overtly reclaiming our self- reliance arises in the short term – from the US, that it would seek to overturn our independence politically, fluent as it is in such actions. Only recently US chief diplomat Blinken observed “If you are not at the table, you are on it”.

White sums it up: “The reality is Australia will never reach a credible, coherent response to Asia’s strategic transformation until we make a clear choice. Do we support Washington to sustain US primacy in Asia, or do we prepare to defend ourselves when US primacy has passed?”

It is too late now for the US and its allies to preserve the old regional military balance against the massive shift in wealth and power to China and the relentless growth in its air and naval capabilities.

Nothing Australia does – with or without AUKUS – will make any difference to the collective capacity to either deter or defeat China in the next decade, which is the time frame that counts. That means the only prudent choice for Australia’s military strategy is to prepare to defend ourselves from major powers such as China without American support.”

And, simply, it is not sane to assist America, with its record, in destroying our region. Yet, like circus dogs, our military are directed to provoke China in the South China Sea until conflict is confected.

What will it take? The Albanese government is already half way there. Our foreign policy seeks a multipolar Asia which is at “equilibrium”. This is a far cry from America’s determination that its hegemony should prevail globally.

Australia’s defence policy, evidenced in Marles’ troubled activity, is utterly dissonant with what should be the nation’s overarching security policy determinant.

Australia hasn’t needed a leader so badly for eighty years, since John Curtin recognised that Australia itself was at dire risk. And acted.

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