Is AUKUS Australia’s coming of age moment or is there more work to be done?

For much of our national history, Australia has grappled with its position and status in relation to the broader world dominated by former imperial powers like the British and French empires, or the emergence of global powers like the United States, Soviet Union, and now, the People’s Republic of China. 

This has largely been a result of the largely benevolent geopolitical, economic, and strategic environment enjoyed, despite periodic periods of conflagration in the form of the First and Second World Wars, respectively, or the relatively “peaceful” period closer to home during the Cold War. 

Unfortunately, far from the end of history we were promised following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the near four-decade hiatus from great power rivalry and competition has come to an end as the mounting competition between China and Washington continues to gather pace as the two rival superpowers confront one another across the vast expanse of the Pacific. 

While nations like Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Western Europe have served as the beneficiaries of the post-war globalised world and radically new approach, ironed out at the Bretton Woods Conference, and then more drastically implemented through policies like the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe following the devastation of the Second World War, this golden era of the Pax Americana is now coming to an end.    

This epochal end was reinforced by comments made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 22 December 2022, when he stated: “When it comes to Russia’s war against Ukraine, if we were still in Afghanistan, it would have, I think, made much more complicated the support that we’ve been able to give and that others have been able to give Ukraine to resist and push back against the Russian aggression.”

Ready or not, this new paradigm presents new challenges for Australia’s geostrategic policy community and the planning surrounding the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) as for the first time in lived memory, both we and our great and powerful friend, the United States, face an increasingly contested and competitive world.

While the DSR forms the core of Australia’s reinvigorated response to the mounting challenges of the new global and regional paradigm, the recent announcement that Australia’s future fleet of SSN-AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines, as part of the trilateral AUKUS agreement, is one of the foundational pillars for delivering an enhanced Australian strategic response to the strategic challenges of the 21st century. 

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This perfect confluence of circumstances is now playing a pivotal role in what a number of strategic policy analysts and key public policy thinkers are describing as part of Australia’s “coming of age” on the world stage. Front and centre of this is the Australian National University’s Professor Rory Medcalf AM, in a piece titled, Australia comes of age as an Indo-Pacific power. 

Anxiety from history repeating itself

There is an old saying attributed to Mark Twain, “History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes”, and nowhere is that clearer than in the contemporary Indo-Pacific. As Australia once again finds itself confronting a potentially hostile major power with designs for regional economic, political, and strategic dominance at the expense of smaller powers, flying in the face of post-Second World War order responsible for the economic growth, stability, and prosperity of the last half century. 

This isn’t the only major factor underlying the strategic anxiety Australia and many nations both in the Indo-Pacific and more broadly around the world are facing, the relative decline of the United States and its reliability as an ally and strategic benefactor, something Medcalf highlights, stating, “That (Australia’s participation in AUKUS) stems from the military power, ambition, reach, and recklessness of a hard authoritarian China.

“Another factor is the instability of a region where many other nations, understandably, are toughening their own defences or hedging their diplomacy, or both. Nervousness about American commitment to regional order will not dissipate with one announcement, however credible, but the intergenerational promise of AUKUS should help allay it.” 

Going further, Medcalf adds, “Indeed, concern about the China challenge need hardly be secret. Xi Jinping’s public promise this week of ‘a great wall of steel’ is hardly new.

“It simply illustrates what has been hiding in plain sight for three decades: one of the most relentless military build-ups in history. Beijing’s armaments spending has often outpaced economic growth. Its security technology advances – fusing espionage with the innovations of a research sector suborned to the communist party-state – has often outstripped even the warnings of foreign intelligence agencies,” Medcalf explains. 

These tactical and strategic realities, combined with Australia’s almost learned state of helplessness exacerbated by the fallout in the aftermath of the Fall of Singapore in 1942, combined with direct Japanese aggression against the Australian mainland, highlighted the vulnerability the nation’s blind dependence on a “great power” benefactor could have on national security. 

Nevertheless, while both Australia and its regional neighbours have enjoyed the stability afforded to them by the strategic umbrella of the UK, prior to the Second World War and the US in the aftermath — Australia has at times exercised a degree of tactical and strategic independence within the confines of its own strategic umbrella.

This empowered Australia to directly engage in regional strategic and security affairs, actively deterring aggression and hostility in Malaya during the Konfrontasi, and communist aggression in Korea and Vietnam as part of the “Forward Defence” policy. However, growing domestic political changes following Vietnam saw a dramatic shift in the nation’s defence policy and the rise of the “Defence of Australia” doctrine.

This shift in doctrine resulted in a departure from the hard-earned lessons of the pre-World War II years, with Australia abrogating its responsibilities and interests through Southeast Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific for the safety and security of a larger role for the United States — while leaving the nation in the predicament it now finds itself. 

Our ‘coming of age’ tale

Australia as both a continent and a nation is unique in its position, enjoying relative geographic isolation from the flash points of global and regional conflagrations of the 20th century.

Blessed with unrivalled resource wealth and with the growing pace of automation, industrial potential, the nation has been able to embrace vastly different approaches to the nation’s strategic role and responsibilities, however, the eerily similar period we find ourselves is similar to the decade preceding the Second World War with serious questions raised about Australia’s preparedness, resilience, and capacity to resist a rival great power with limited input from its primary security benefactor.

Medcalf reinforces the importance AUKUS and its central role in beginning to reshape the way Australia views itself and is, in turn, viewed by the Indo-Pacific and the broader globe, stating, “AUKUS is about Australia itself, and our coming-of-age as a power to match our unique place in the world. Australia is an island continent, acutely dependent on maritime lifelines such as trade, energy and undersea cables, situated at the intersection of three oceans. The wider Indo-Pacific is this century’s centre of gravity in economics, population and security contestation.

“In reality, the nuclear-powered and sometimes nuclear-armed submarine force already expanding across Indo-Pacific waters is China’s. And regional governments privately know it, even if some struggle to be able to do much about it,” Medcalf states, tentatively explaining the need for Australia to establish and build its own strategic umbrella to our own benefit as part of our own “coming of age” tale. 

Critically, whether Australia’s political and strategic leaders want to admit it or not, the post-war era of economic prosperity and political and strategic stability is dependent upon a transactional relationship between the United States and smaller powers. Whether they be traditional “great powers” like the United Kingdom or Japan, or middle powers like Australia, this new era in the Indo-Pacific is a collective challenge. 

“My consultations across the region in recent weeks – discussions with officials and researchers across Indonesia, India, Japan and Fiji – suggest that a sophisticated awareness of Australia’s implicit Indo-Pacific strategy is starting to emerge.

“India and Japan get it outright. The two most powerful Asian democracies want a stable region where China’s coercion is quietly constrained, not just by Washington but by a web of partners, and where each partner supports the other’s self-strengthening. In this light, both are fine with AUKUS, and Australia likewise welcomes Japan’s overdue defence modernisation and India’s rising strategic heft,” Medcalf explains. 

Expanding on this further and looking to our more immediate environment, Medcalf references the recognition among the region that Australia can be the strategic partner of choice and be trusted as an honest broker, this time referencing Indonesia’s own nuanced response to this week’s announcement, stating, “Indonesia, meanwhile, is pivotal to the future of Southeast Asia, that geographic core of the Indo-Pacific where Chinese wealth, intimidation and influence are on the march.

“As for the Indonesian defence establishment, my sense is that privately they well understand why Australia would look to its defences. Moreover, they see why a stronger Australia can be good for Indonesia, provided we are genuine in transparency and reassurance about our intentions, and redouble our efforts at a wider security partnership with their country.

“Australia should, for instance, be the partner of choice to help Indonesia forces know what is happening in their archipelagic waters and international sea lanes, the regional crossroads. We should reiterate at every turn why we think a stronger Indonesia is good for Australia too,” Medcalf explains. 

The intrinsically transactional nature of strategic umbrellas is as much a feature as it is a bug, something US geostrategic analyst and author Peter Zeihan explains, “Today’s economic landscape isn’t so much dependent upon as it is eminently addicted to American strategic and tactical overwatch ... Globalisation was always dependent upon the Americans’ commitment to the global order and that order hasn’t served Americans’ strategic interests since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. 

“Most people think of the Bretton Woods system as a sort of Pax Americana. The American Century, if you will. But that’s simply not the case. The entire concept of the order is that the United States disadvantages itself economically in order to purchase the loyalty of a global alliance. That is what globalisation is,” Zeihan adds. 

This is particularly troubling for the US-led world, as an increasing number of countries begin to shift away from the dollar-backed trading system, driven by growing uptake by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economic, quasi-security bloc that continues to expand its influence across the Middle East, Africa, South America and to a lesser extent, Southeast Asia, effectively undermining the economic balance of power much of the world has become dependent upon. 

While Zeihan paints a particularly grim picture of the US strategic umbrella, particularly for the US as the leading strategic benefactor for the global order, Australia can learn from the weakness of the US-designed system, while leveraging its strengths, providing the United States with a period of respite to regather its strength and resilience. 

Such a shift in Australian doctrine requires a dramatic shift in thinking, relationship building, and most importantly, policy making across domestic, industrial development and competitiveness, defence, and foreign affairs — with massive potential benefits for Australia’s economic prosperity, national security, and resilience in the face of mounting geopolitical competition.  

This is reinforced by Medcalf who states, “A stronger Australia is good for our regional neighbours, but it will take sustained investment in diplomacy to ensure that message sinks home.”

A strategic umbrella with Aussie characteristics 

Broadly speaking, Australia shares the same objectives for the Indo-Pacific as the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Looking further abroad, Australia also supports the continuation of the post-Second World War economic, political, and strategic order — in fact, the nation’s wealth, security, and stability are built upon the type of rules-based order in the style the US established.

Australia isn’t alone in benefiting from that post-war structure, indeed, across our region, Indonesia, India, post-war Korea and Japan, China itself, Vietnam and many others have equally benefited from the stability of the Pax Americana, which despite Zeihan’s belief that America didn’t benefit from, it has benefited immensely providing incentive for Australia to establish itself as the Indo-Pacific’s strategic benefactor and trusted partner. 

So, what building blocks does Australia need to lay in order to provide a regional strategic umbrella? Well in this instance, success leaves clues, and thankfully, historical forebears have identified the key “hard power” factors that underpin a “strategic umbrella”, namely: 

• Conventional military capabilities – including air, land and sea-based power projection capabilities; 
• Strategic deterrence capabilities – including but not limited to a nuclear triad, strategic bomber, and naval strategic force multipliers; and
• Economic power – focused on maintaining strategic industries with a focus on being globally competitive across manufacturing, resource and energy, innovation, and research and development. 

As a nation, Australia is at a precipice and both the Australian public and the nation’s political and strategic leaders need to decide what they want the nation to be: do they want the nation to become an economic, political, and strategic backwater caught between two competing great empires and a growing cluster of periphery great powers? Or does Australia “have a crack” and actively establish itself as a regional great power with all the benefits it entails?

Lessons for Australia’s future strategic planning

There is no doubt that Australia’s position and responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific region will depend on the nation’s ability to sustain itself economically, strategically and politically in the face of rising regional and global competition.

Despite the nation’s virtually unrivalled wealth of natural resources, agricultural and industrial potential, there is a lack of a cohesive national security strategy integrating the development of individual, yet complementary public policy strategies to support a more robust Australian role in the region.

While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the socio-political and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.  

Enhancing Australia’s capacity to act as an independent power, incorporating great power-style strategic economic, diplomatic and military capability serves as a powerful symbol of Australia’s sovereignty and evolving responsibilities in supporting and enhancing the security and prosperity of Indo-Pacific Asia, this is particularly well explained by Peter Zeihan, who explains:

"A deglobalised world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies. Economically speaking, the whole was stronger for the inclusion of all its parts. It is where we have gotten our wealth and pace of improvement and speed. Now the parts will be weaker for their separation."

Accordingly, shifting the public discussion and debate away from the default Australian position of "it is all a little too difficult, so let’s not bother" will provide unprecedented economic, diplomatic, political and strategic opportunities for the nation.

As events continue to unfold throughout the region and China continues to throw its economic, political and strategic weight around, can Australia afford to remain a secondary power, or does it need to embrace a larger, more independent role in an era of increasing great power competition?

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