The defence minister Richard Marles’ comments on Insiders last month about the outcomes of the defence strategic review was reminiscent of the scene from the Utopia parody on China, mocking those seeking to bolster defence. After all, why would you want to challenge your largest trading partner? Yet the jocularity belies a more complex challenge for a nation struggling to reconcile 10 points of tension, or dialectics. These help explain why this review was written.
1. History v geography
As a predominantly Anglo-spheric nation on the edge of Asia, for more than a century Australia has looked successively for security ties to the UK and the US along with its other “strategic cousins”. For the last half century the US has been the largely unchallenged dominant power. That power is waning in relative terms, although it remains the principal source of Australia’s foreign direct investment. And, despite its technical superiority, its reputation for martial success is patchy. Wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq exemplify overreach and hubris. Australia followed, thinking it was in its interests, noting that the 1951 Anzus treaty is an 800-word essay with no mutual defence clause, headquarters or forces assigned. Today, though, the breadth and depth of ties which make up Australia’s US alliance are substantial and under-appreciated. Australia is enormously invested.
As for geography, engagement with south-west Pacific and south-east Asian neighbours has been patchy and spasmodic. In some respects many Anglo-European Australians prefer to skip over the neighbourhood on their way to America or Europe. Few speak regional languages fluently. Yet the neighbourhood has always mattered, particularly at times of heightened power struggles.
At such times, the Five Eyes intelligence arrangements have contributed to understanding the region but, ironically, have also contributed to a tension between Australia’s history and geography.
With global climate change also driving regional concerns, Australia rightly is emphasising further Pacific engagement, but from a low base. More than defence engagement is required, in response to regional strategic and environmental concerns.
2. Democracy v authoritarianism
Around the region, despite varying levels of democratic and liberal governance, virtually all nations from south Asia to north-east Asia quietly if not publicly desire to keep the US engaged, for the US not to withdraw into isolationism, and for it to exercise a leadership role on UN and other international bodies. Australia’s actions are a benchmark against which the support for US engagement by others can be gauged.
3. Defence v foreign and development priorities
Foreign policy as well as aid and development tend to contrast sharply with the hardware focus of defence. Last week the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, spoke on maintaining a strategic equilibrium. Now Marles has outlined a plan that echoes trends observed in earlier Australian defence reviews – of needing to muscle up with longer range capabilities, to harden up with more resilient defence infrastructure and resources, and to bolster regional engagement.
4. Fear of abandonment v fear of entrapment
Such fears have long been a driving factor in Australia’s strategic consciousness, leading to commitments alongside US and British forces for over a century. In recent decades this has involved carefully calibrated niche contributions to obligations far and wide to avoid being drawn in too far.
5. Quality v quantity
Australia seeks a qualitative military advantage to compensate for the lack of quantity. With only 26 million people, quantity has never been feasible. Instead, the technological edge has long been of fundamental importance to give the boutique Australian defence force the edge it needs and the reach it strives for to deter, or at least complicate the planning for, a would-be aggressor. For that complicating ability, US technology remains critical.
6. Security from Asia v security with Asia
This insecurity has manifested over the years in the ebb and flow of two strategic concepts: forward defence and the defence of Australia. Aukus and the latest defence review reinforce the commitment to bolstering US ties, while also stressing engagement in the Pacific, south-east Asia and beyond.
With Australia’s neighbours now outstripping it economically, more positive and constructive relations with these neighbours is called for. Broadly they welcome this, although the mishandling of the Aukus announcement raised concerns – and China inflamed suspicions, particularly over nuclear weapons non-proliferation.
7. Reliance v self-reliance
For a country with a small population, access to the best defence technology that money can buy makes it more reliant but, ironically, also able to be more self-reliant. And while officials talk up the alliance, should the US retreat into an isolationist shell, the stocks of advanced US-sourced weapons systems and SSNs (nuclear-powered submarines) are seen as all the more consequential to operate independently. The underlying premise is this: weakness invites adventurism and effective deterrence requires strong military capabilities.
8. Maritime v continental view
Australia has long struggled to reconcile being an island and a continent. With little by way of navigable inland waterways, modern Australia has developed along the coast, exposed to the sea. Today, with regional humanitarian, environmental and geostrategic challenges occurring more frequently, the ability to project land forces in response as part of a joint sea-land-air team is key.
9. Long-range strike v short-range close-in defence
Forts have been built since the mid-19th century. In 1942 enemy submarines penetrated Sydney harbour while Darwin was bombed. Awareness of such risks have led to prioritising military capabilities enabling the ADF to strike a would-be adversary if necessary. China’s industrial-scale expansion of its naval, land, air, cyber, space and strategic (and long-range) missile forces are behind a reprioritisation on missile systems– not just in Australia, but in India, Japan, Korea and elsewhere.
10. Guns v butter
Australian governments have long faced pressure to spend more on health, education and welfare and less on defence. The Aukus submarines are expected to cost between $268bn and $368bn (over 30 years 0.15% GDP). But we forget that, combined, the disability insurance, education and health will probably cost about $9tn over 30 years and defence will cost more than $1.65tn, with or without Aukus.
Some contend buying 40 to 50 diesel subs would suffice. This would be worse than futile. Australia can barely crew six boats and diesel submarines no longer can hide on long voyages. This is because of saturation low Earth polar orbit satellites (monitored from Antarctica), combined with AI and drones. Facing this combination, the wake of the diesel submarine’s air and exhaust funnel while recharging batteries is now detectable. That means they can’t get around the Australian coast undetected, let alone farther afield. Without stealth, a submarine loses its efficacy. This means that, in reality, for Australia, only SSNs remain viable.
Many factors contribute to a difficult set of decisions. These 10 points of tension help explain how Australia got to where it is today.
• John Blaxland is a professor of international security and intelligence studies in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. With Clare Birgin he is the author of Revealing Secrets: An Unofficial History of Australian Signals Intelligence and the Advent of Cyber (UNSW Press, 2023)
