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The great Australian defence strategy delusion

By Murray Hunter - posted Thursday, 4 November 2021


Even if Australia is able to buy, lease or build nuclear powered submarines quickly, without strategic nuclear weapons on board, these platforms will not be strategic deterrents for potential enemies. At best Australia’s nuclear submarines will only be tactical platforms for conventional weapons. They may not be suitable for deployment around the shallow waters off Australia’s coastline to defend the country against any future military threat.

The strategic alliance Australia just signed with ASEAN has little to do with security. ASEAN is not a defense pact, and has differing member views on China. ASEAN members have mutually coexisted with China for more than a thousand years. ASEAN is in effect a neutral party which sees superpower coexistence in the South China Sea as desirable. During the recent ASEAN Summit in Brunei, the bloc also signed strategic alliances with the United States, China and Russia. ASEAN is scheduled to have a special summit with China in November to bring their multilateral relationship up one more tier.

Australia’s participation in the Quadrilateral Security Cooperation Agreement or QUAD, is an organization that former prime minister Howard saw as a platform for Australia to play a key role along with the US in the region. Canberra at the time had the view of being the US deputy sheriff, running on from the war on terror era. However, the QUAD itself has changed with the QUAD plus, and one of the cornerstone countries in the so called frontline, South Korea has been very reluctant to fully commit to the US containment view of the region. There are strong opinions from political analysts that the QUAD’s role in the region may be more provocative than stabilizing on peace.

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Australia cannot afford to develop an offensive armory. This will leave the Australian continent poorly defended. Australia needs strategic bombers, tactical fighters, submarines that are agile in shallow waters to defend Australia. A small number of nuclear warheads will send the message that Australia, although a small military country, would be very costly to engage.

Australia must come to the realization that no country may come to the defense of Australia over low scale localized military action. This is more likely to become an immediate threat to Australia, than a mass invasion from the north. A potential enemy would use forward bases in Indonesia or PNG to launch nuisance attacks, provoke skirmishes on the waters around the country, or make probing flights into Australian territory, all that we have seen in the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits. Most probably, Australia will have to deal with this alone.

The biggest cost to Australia is the need to compromise the nation’s freedom to determine its own policies. The Biden-Johnson axis pressured the Morrison government to commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. This severely strained the cohesiveness of the Liberal National Party coalition, and may even cost Morrison the election when it is due next year. Morrison’s reputation after AUKUS and his reversal on climate change policy has done him a lot of personal damage for a conference that couldn’t come to any firm agreement.

Its time for Australia to come to the realization that it is not a middle power. Australia just can’t spend the money to do it. Australia’s defense strategy decisions are creating more risk for the national security, rather than safeguarding it. Unfortunately, most of the analysts and academics Canberra listen to have given AUKUS hawkish approval.

The concept of Fortress Australia has been abandoned for the delusion of playing like a middle power.

AUKUS won’t solve Australia’s diplomatic issues with China. In fact, it will probably make them worse, and this could be felt very quickly with further losses in trade. This means that eventually, every Australian may feel the pain in some way or another. Since the announcement of AUKUS, Australia has increased its breath of strained relations with other nations.

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Australia has 20,000 kilometers of coastline that needs protection. This should be Scott Morrison’s number one priority, not being an appendix to the US vision of containment. Australia has other potential threats much closer to home.

A survey by the Alvara Research Centre in October 2017 of 4,200 students at 25 universities, indicated that 20% supported an Islamic Caliphate in Indonesia, and 30% were prepared to wage jihad in some form. This number is growing rapidly, and the influence of fundamental and radicalized Islam on Indonesian society and politics has been grossly under-estimated by Australian analysts. This threat must be taken seriously and prepared for, if one day in the near future Australia shared a border with an Islamic Caliphate. Local government in many regions within Indonesia are already introducing very strict Syariah laws.

Its time for Australia to deeply reflect upon its own geo-position in the world rather than the views from the other side of the world. Until Australia does this, it will not be an independent country.

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About the Author

Murray Hunter is an associate professor at the University Malaysia Perlis. He blogs at Murray Hunter.

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