There is little to quarrel with in Hugh White’s assessment of the uncertainties in East Asia. His counsel to the government on the way forward for strategic policy, on the other hand, is less satisfactory.
To embark on a major expansion of Australia’s military forces is not the way to protect Australia.
One of the more disturbing tendencies of modern governments is ‘securitisation’ – transforming policy problems into threats, thereby elevating them into the national security domain. In many western democracies security is accorded pre-eminent status among the various domains of public policy, creating the preconditions for securitisation to elevate the levels of state intervention in a way that displays, emphasises and enhances the power of the state and its control over its citizens.
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Grand strategies are the territory of great powers, while other states see their strategic independence incorporated into another state’s grand strategy. The comfort that Australia embraced while enclosed in an American grand strategy can’t last, and hard choices lie ahead. In the shifting power balance, Australia will need to recover its autonomy.
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While China – and the potential for conflict in Northeast Asia – is prominent in discussion amongst Australian strategists, often overlooked is the fact that Northeast Asia has emerged as a critical theater of Russian foreign policy in recent years.
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Australia’s strategic quandary emerges from its status as an ally to a great power. If it abrogates its responsibility to set national policy aims by joining in a coalition in which one great power antagonist determines the goals of the war it cannot claim to have a strategy. It cannot claim to be linking Australia’s national priorities to the military actions. Its fate would be in the hands of its great power ally.
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Jamie Shea identifies potential strategic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. A retreat back to the nation state? Increased geopolitical rivalries, defence budgets under pressure and reduced capacity to deter Russia and China? The end of globalisation? The rise of the western surveillance state?
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It’s problematic to present arguments for a submarine capability that lean heavily on a fuzzy concept: the ‘capability gap’. In the current strategic environment, the idea of a capability gap may have become redundant. And doesn’t it seem odd to expect submarines now being designed to fill a ‘capability gap’ in 30+ years time?
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Some confusion has emerged in Australian strategic thinking over ‘strategic strike’, where a threat to an adversary’s key war-making assets produces a deterrent effect, and ‘tactical strike’, where an effect is sought on the battlefield. The result is the inability to see that strategic deterrence is a game for the nation with the preponderance of power and broad options.
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Robert Gottliebsen (‘The Australian’ 12 Feb 2020) claims to have found risks associated with the procurement strategy for Australia’s Future Submarine Program which ‘may even ultimately put the [ANZUS] alliance at risk’. Is there any basis to this claim? Or, more broadly, any evidence that Defence is not managing the project risks effectively?
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How did the Australian government decide to approve the SEA1000 project? That these decisions are always hidden from wider view by secrecy classifications and need-to-know protocols must be accepted, as must the reality that pragmatic consideration will be given to other important matters like alliance and industry policy. But nonetheless, Tthe decision doesn’t easily stand up to scrutiny.
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Australia’s SEA1000 Future Submarine project is back in the news following a 60% increase in the project’s cost to AUD 80 billion, and a report by the Australian National Audit Office that identified flaws in the acquisition process Mike asks the broader question of the strategic assessment that underpins an investment of this magnitude over an extended, 30-year timeframe. What sort of capability will be produced by the project, and what sort of conflict would the capability serve?
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Statements from NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg and President Trump reveal a divergence in the strategic interests of the Europeans and the US. If real alliances only work when there’s a clear alignment of strategic objectives, Stoltenberg’s comments are telling. Australia’s foreign and strategic policy needs to reflect a more sophisticated appreciation of the geopolitical shifts taking place.
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