Offensive defence

The stunning ineptitude in choice of opening date led to APDSE’s cancellation. However, the worry is that such a regional re-armament bonanza even got to first base.

Back to the white paper. For all that it does say, there are some startling omissions. The insecurity and repression of the people of West Papua, right on our doorstep, doesn’t rate a mention, except as a veiled dismissal of their plight with reference to Indonesia’s “territorial integrity”. Within recent memory, and with chilling similarities, Australia also dismissed the plight of the East Timorese.

Surpassing all other omissions, however, was a serious appraisal of the threat posed by the most destructive and terrifying of all weapons, nuclear weapons. Apart from scattered references to “WMDs”, the subject barely appears in the whole 138 pages.

This is despite the recognition globally that the possibility of use of nuclear weapons, either by state or non-state actors, is an increasingly urgent security risk of the highest order. The dismissal by the White Paper of any risk to Australia - a country that is complicit with US nuclear war fighting policies - as “remote”, is simply negligent.

The paper’s clear statement of support for US nuclear “deterrence” perpetuates the dangerous stereotype of “good” and “bad” nuclear weapons. Globally, the view that nuclear weapons offer any security to anyone is coming under increasing scrutiny, and yet the implications of this for Australia were ignored totally.

The omission is compounded by ignorance. The paper refers (briefly) not only to nuclear deterrence, but to “stable” nuclear deterrence, as if such a thing exists. The same policies that the White Paper regards as “stable” are those that brought the world “a hair’s breadth from absolute disaster” in the words of Robert McNamara, US Defense Secretary at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. While history has moved on, thousands of Russian and US nuclear weapons remain on high alert.

On a positive note, buried inconspicuously in the paper, was an unexpected and pleasing rejection of national missile defence systems, although how this rejection will play out in practice at Pine Gap in the Northern Territory is unclear.

Overall, the paper might possibly have made some sense in a bygone era. In 2009, however, its recommendations are an expensive and dangerous distraction from dealing with the threats we face.