The chief of the Australian defence force, Gen Angus Campbell, has offered a gloomy assessment of developments in the Indo-Pacific region, warning of a rise in “coercive statecraft and grey-zone activities”.
Ahead of a major defence review, Campbell has declared that Australia and Japan are bound together by “increasingly shared strategic challenges” in our region.
“Across our region, large-scale military modernisation is accelerating,” he said, in a clear reference to China.
“National sovereignty, the law of the sea, freedom of navigation are all facing challenges from both states and non-state actors alike.
“Serious economic risks are emerging, natural disasters are more frequent and more severe, advanced technologies proliferate and the use of coercive statecraft and grey-zone activities continue to test the thresholds for conventional military response.”
Grey-zone tactics refer to actions that are designed to tilt a situation in a country’s favour, but through steps that are not serious enough to trigger an armed response. China has pursued its claims in the South China Sea through island-building and installing military hardware.
Campbell told an event at the Japanese embassy in Canberra on Wednesday night that the importance of the ADF and the Japanese self-defence forces was “brought into sharper relief” by the regional context.
He said a key element of a new security declaration signed by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, was to consult each other “on contingencies that may affect our sovereignty and regional security interests, and consider measures in response”.
“This clause is a natural, incremental step in an already close strategic partnership – one warmly welcomed by Australia,” Campbell said.
He was addressing a high-powered audience that included former ADF chief Angus Houston, who is working with former defence minister Stephen Smith on a defence strategic review for the Albanese government.
Others in attendance included the Department of Defence secretary, Greg Moriarty, together with the chief of the navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond; the chief of the army, Lt Gen Simon Stuart; and the chief of joint operations, Lt Gen Greg Bilton.
Japan’s ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, told the gathering the security environment in east Asia was “growing more severe”.
Japan is considering buying up to 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States in coming years as it seeks to counter threats from China and North Korea, according to reports published this week.
Yamagami said Japan was undergoing “a transformation in societal attitudes to defence” but he argued “a similar and no less significant transformation in thinking can be discerned in Australia’s approach to the South China Sea and the East China Sea”.
Japan has reported an influx of Chinese coast guard vessels and fishing boats near the Senkaku islands – uninhabited islets in the East China Sea that are administered by Japan but are also claimed by China, where they are known as Diaoyu Dao.
“For many years during my long career in the foreign service, my interaction with Australian diplomats, always the very epitome of decorum, would often end in disagreement on the strategic importance of the East China Sea,” Yamagami said.
“For Australia, its attention was seemingly focused on the South China Sea and a fear of abandonment, as opposed to the East China Sea and a fear of entanglement.”
But Yamagami said events over the past decade had “served to remove that line entirely, with recognition here that contingencies in the East China Sea can impact on Australia’s trade, investment and security, as assuredly as those in the South China Sea”.
The ambassador also pointed to polling by the United States Studies Centre that suggested 46% of Australian respondents would support sending military forces to help defend Taiwan if it was attacked by China, compared with about a third of American and Japanese respondents.
Yamagami added that with “a changed dynamic at work in the region” it should come “as a surprise to no one that Japan and Australia sought to level up our defence relationship”.
The state-run China Daily criticised the security agreement between Japan and Australia, arguing it was at odds with Albanese’s “generally” positive steps “to correct his predecessor’s wrongs”.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, told the 20th Communist party congress he would never rule out the use of force to achieve “reunification” with Taiwan, a self-governed democracy of 24 million people that he regards as central to his promise to achieve “national rejuvenation”.
Xi denounced “foreign interference” for exacerbating tensions, saying Taiwan was “China’s own problem to solve”.
