Brand Rudd's fantasy Defence White Paper

It is fantasy to suppose that such a capability can deliver strategic deterrence. China is a nuclear weapons state, which makes small scale cruise missile strikes on the Chinese homeland by Australia an absurdly fantastic notion. Because any sane Chinese planner knows this, the purported deterrent effect would not really have him quaking in his boots.

To be sure, the White Paper states that the US extends nuclear deterrence to Australia. However, US extended deterrence in every other instance follows on from a formal treaty commitment, which does not exist in the Australia case. This undermines the credibility of the White Paper's assurance on extended deterrence.

China has reportedly assisted with Russia's upgrading of the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, known as the S-400. It is reported by the Russian military that the recently deployed S-400 has the ability to shoot down both cruise missiles and low radar cross section aircraft such as the F-35. Beijing might very well be able to thereby blunt any independent strike by Australia against high value targets. An S-500 follow-on system is being seriously discussed.

The aspects of the White Paper dealing with China only make sense in the context of a joint operation in North-East Asia led by the United States. To believe otherwise is to believe in fantasy. A more weary position on China was actually formally flagged in the Howard government's last Defence Update, which was handed down in 2007.

China is very much focused on economic modernisation and its vast internal problems. Of the four modernisations announced by the leadership in 1978 defence modernisation has received by far the least attention. In the nuclear field China has deliberately eschewed a build up despite US provocation.

Beijing does not constitute a military threat. The threat that Beijing poses is its example of an alternative model of economic development that runs counter to the neoliberal models of industrialisation that have been developed to suit the interests of dominant centres of global financial and economic power. China also provides breathing room for less developed states to reject the economic austerity programs, promoted in the interests of western investors, that have long been a feature of the Washington Consensus.

In some respects the White Paper is more nuanced than commonly perceived. These nuanced features are the Paper's strongest points; it seems that here the perspective of the Foreign Affairs Department carried the day.

It has barely been mentioned that the government has, in a welcome move, rejected Australian participation in sea-based North-East Asian Ballistic Missile Defence alongside Japan and the United States, which the Howard government was all but set to enter into. This would have been of much more strategic import with respect to China than cruise missiles.

The rejection of BMD is an implicit repudiation of the notion that US primacy promotes regional stability. As stated previously, the idea that US primacy provides strategic stability is one of the constitutive principles of the Paper. This demonstrates the muddled nature of the Paper, but one not readily acknowledged by analysts. In Realist International Relations theory, which seemingly undergirds a lot of the discussion in the White Paper, unipolarity is the most unstable structure that any state system can possess. This intellectual contradiction makes for more muddle.

In a further welcome development the Paper adopts a nuanced position on space, which one of us (Marko) has previously discussed as being of importance.

In so far as strategic strike is concerned we would strongly suggest that the reader see this also in the context of the Howard doctrine which envisaged Australia playing a deputy sheriff role in South-East Asia. Much of the Australian military build up is made intelligible with reference to the Howard doctrine, indeed the military build up largely follows on from Howard era programs.

Indonesia and the Straits of Malacca are of vital importance here given concerns about the role energy security will play in international relations over the medium to long term.