Australia’s future maritime warfare capability is now to include the ‘Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant Fleet’. Requiring, like the AUKUS submarines, ambitious naval acquisition and construction programs with long lead-times before delivery, serious questions are raised about how the ELSCF responds to assessments of Australia’s strategic circumstances – and of the extent to which it would be just another contribution by Australian taxpayers to US military forces.
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Extravagant claims are made about the capability that the proposed AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines will give to Australia. The latest from Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy are particularly puzzling.
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Prime Minister Albanese has announced new commitments to the United States which have the potential to give American institutions and agencies access to the inside workings of Australian intelligence, research, and business in ways that will not be, and could not be, reciprocated.
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From the moment it was sworn in, the Albanese government has been swept up in a series of defence arrangements with the Americans with far-reaching implications for Australia’s ability to act independently and in its own interests. The nation’s intelligence function is the latest casualty.
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A consensus is growing that the US alliance is no longer in Australia’s national interest and the AUKUS partnership should be abandoned. But while the argument for distancing Australian foreign policy from that of America is strong in theory, its practical implementation would be difficult and risky.
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America’s space policy reveals its hegemonic obsession and exposes the future quandaries for Australia. How will Australia confront the inevitable question of whether to support a peaceful or a militarised exploration of space?
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US foreign policy is underpinned by ideational myths, like that of the ‘innocent nation’, which requires a succession of ‘immoral’ enemies to sustain it. Does Australia fully comprehend the potential implications of the American sense of righteousness and mission?
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A recent ASPI report, arguing for Australia’s acquisition of the B-21 Raider long-range stealth bomber, sees the return of the ‘adversary-base-in-the-archipelago’ bogeyman. Hopefully the forthcoming Defence Strategy Review will not similarly rely on wildly improbable assumptions to justify very costly investments.
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On PM Albanese’s watch Australia has, without explanation, agreed to host US B-52H Stratofortress aircraft: “a nuclear stand-off platform with global reach”. The recent US National Defence Strategy provides the missing context, and effectively confirms Australia’s role in American nuclear war planning.
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B-52s are part of the US’s nuclear capability. Basing these aircraft at RAAF Tindal draws Australia into America’s nuclear war planning. How did Australia come to this? And why?
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Can non-expert distanced observers meaningfully deduce the psychological and moral make up of national leaders? Is a nuclear umbrella a vestige of an outmoded nuclear framework, from an earlier strategic era, without contemporary relevance? Some responses to Professor Paul Dibb.
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The rebirth of a lost innovative technological utopia requires a vibrant, stable polity that tolerates debate, dissent, and difference; and supports objective research standards. America looks nothing like this.
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The recently announced Defence review looks set to be much more than the promised ‘force posture review’. The opportunity to anchor Australia’s strategy and military posture in a broad appreciation of a significantly changed international environment should not be lost.
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Submission to US strategic objectives is often on display as new Australian Defence Ministers ritually wend their way to Washington to offer up jaded homilies, full of hagiographic accounts of ANZUS and strained assertions of shared values. The new Minister’s recent visit, however, foreshadows a more dangerous abandonment of fundamental elements of national sovereignty.
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Australia’s interests are not obviously met by joining gatherings on distant shores with leaders sharing different strategic concerns. The Asia Pacific remains at the heart of Australia’s economic and strategic interests and the crucible where Australia’s prosperity and peace will be forged.
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Credit is due to Australia’s new Prime Minister and Foreign Minister for moving swiftly to correct the foreign and climate policy failures of the Morrison era. But shouldn’t there be a similar rethinking and resetting of strategic policy?
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Before the seductive power that security classifications, codeword documents, need-to-know briefings, and the jargon of militarist advisers blunt the critical faculties of ministers, which it almost always does, the new Australian government needs to consider the matter of war.
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Putin’s forces might not progress far beyond the Dnieper River. And yet the invasion will reshape the world in which the next Australian government operates.
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In Australia, bipartisanship over defence has mutated into a democratic pathology. A courageous new Defence minister committed to transparency and participatory democracy is required.
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In the 2022 election, too much is at stake for Australians to be duped into thinking that they ”remain well prepared for the future”, and into believing that everything can be fixed by unregulated economic growth.
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