One does not have to agree with those who think that AUKUS is an abomination to be similarly concerned about AUKUS cost and schedule uncertainties, and the significant trade-offs that will have to be made in the Defence budget to accommodate the acquisition of nuclear-propelled submarines. These issues should be the subject of public scrutiny and debate.
However, the far more vital issue that the critics raise is how, in their view, the AUKUS technology partnership, and the new basing arrangements for US nuclear-capable bombers, attack submarines, and other forces, will undermine Australia’s sovereignty and independence; are contrary to the national interest of seeking ‘security in Asia’; and affront our sense of national pride.
If this were the 1990s, there might be a point to this criticism. At the time, the policy of seeking ‘security in Asia’ made sense. Acquiring nuclear-propelled submarines, and hosting US combat forces, did not. However, after 2000, ‘security in Asia’ started to become a mirage, once a militarising, and increasingly belligerent, China began to fracture the peace of Asia.
Debates about sovereignty and independence should not be treated as tests of patriotism or ‘national pride’. What is in issue is a hard strategic reality: seeking ‘security in Asia’ will be meaningless for as long as China continues to act coercively, even while still calibrating its actions so as to avoid, for the moment, direct confrontation. It has expansionist designs to displace the United States as the primary regional power. It is in our interests to work with others to prevent this. Absent US strategic primacy, there is no credible collective counterbalance to China. The choice is therefore a binary one: between being in partnership with an engaged and regionally dominant US, or taking our chances with China as the pre-eminent regional power.
Acquiring long-range nuclear-propelled submarines under AUKUS, transforming ANZUS into an operational military alliance, and hosting US combat forces in Australia are better policies for the times. These initiatives will help to build regional deterrence, and harden Australia as a secure bastion, should tragically war come. They should be seen as an independent decision on Australia’s part to band together with others in a deliberate strategy to deter Chinese aggression and resist Chinese regional hegemony.
This need not entail global confrontation, and proxy wars of the kind seen in the Cold War. Competition with China can be best managed through diplomacy, and trade, investment and technology policies. Where this will not work is in the ‘Quad arc’ of the Asian periphery, from Japan to Australia, and around to India. In this arc, hard military power will count most.
Unfortunately, the missing element in this mix is the lamentable erosion of our own defence capability. Australia’s military power is at least a percentage point of GDP below its required fighting weight when we face the prospect of what the 1987 Defence White Paper termed ‘more substantial conflict’—where Australia would be at risk of being attacked by a major power. As a consequence, Australia is contributing more to facing the China challenge by providing access to geography than it is through hard military power—when we should be doing both.
Deterrence entails being prepared to engage in warfighting, because the adversary has to understand that those seeking to deter it are willing to use force, if necessary. Alliances and military coalitions are collective endeavours. Strength comes from banding together to confront difficult strategic challenges, a sovereign act where the alternative is worse.
I agree with the critics who say that our ability to now abstain from a future US-China war is only nominal, notwithstanding the platitudes about Australia reserving its sovereign rights. True enough on paper, but a fuller and more honest explanation is required. For Australia to actively decline to take part in a US-China war, it would have to deny the US access to the use of facilities in Australia, whether those that were established in the 1960s (Pine Gap being the best known), or more critically any that might be used for mounting combat operations through or from Australia. Washington would heap enormous pressure on Canberra to allow just that, as Australia’s strategic geography would be vital terrain for the US in any such war.
The critics bemoan the fact that, accordingly, Australia is now ‘locked in’. While they will point to Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Iraq as instances of the ‘folly’ of blindly following the United States (a topic for another day), those were not great power conflicts that could profoundly shape our own security. Today, Australia is demonstrating resolve, and unity of purpose, with others who similarly fear that the greater risk lies in an unchecked and dominant China. Thwarting the establishment of Chinese regional hegemony—which would be the inevitable consequence of a US withdrawal from, or defeat in, the Western Pacific—is in Australia’s national interest. While more analysis needs to be done of what Chinese hegemony might mean specifically for Australian sovereignty and independence, the best instinctive conclusion would be that our interests would be harmed far more than they would be advantaged.
An accommodation of China’s interests should be attempted, by way of the skillful creation of a regional order that is accepted by all as being legitimate, in equilibrium, and thus at peace. However, given China’s belligerence, and the worrying degree of its war preparations, we are a very long way from achieving that order. One day, ‘security in Asia’ might again be in prospect. In this respect, perhaps the 2030s or the 2040s will be an echo of the optimistic 1990s.
First, however, the imminent China challenge has to be seen off, by a coalition that is prepared to pool its strength in a collective endeavour, preferably without war. We can make an independent choice today to collectively resist future subordination, or we can harm our national interest in the pursuit of outdated policies.
