Login
iscover
Without a doubt the strategic environment and assessments that informed the 2016 Defence White Paper and ensuing Force Structure have changed. In light of this, what key points and developments should the nation consider for the next White Paper, which will inform the nation’s response amid great power competition?
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
Create free account to get unlimited news articles and more!
Global history has been defined by the competing economic, political and strategic ambitions and the ensuing conflagrations of “great powers” as these interests bring them into direct, kinetic confrontation with one another.
The rise of Indo-Pacific Asia is serving to exacerbate Australia’s identity crisis, with politics playing an important role in navigating the quagmire of ideas to develop and implement a clear, concise and considered role for Australia in the 21st century.
In order to do so, however, Australia needs to clearly identify what role it needs to play: that of a minor, middle or regional great power.
Australia's next Defence White Paper (DWP) will be tasked with responding to the challenges of an ever changing regional and global geo-political and strategic environment.
The DWP will also define and guide a series of research and development and capability acquisition and sustainment programs, which will serve to reshape and define the nation's role and strategy in the Indo-Pacific in a more seminal way than the preceding 2016 DWP.
These changing strategic realities are driven by the rise of nations like China and smaller regional powers, a resurgent and assertive Russia, long overlooked as a Indo-Pacific power.
Further complicating Australia's future planning is the increased instability and relative decline of the US, which means it is time to open the forum for discussion to shift the discourse from one of traditional 'black and white' thinking as it relates to Australia's defence and long-term national security.
Strategic policy thinkers, academics, Australian politicians and the public all have a role to play in the discussion to change the nation's approach to defence and national security policy.
Enter ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre academic Stephan Frühling in his piece, 'Reassessing Australia’s Defence Policy: What is the ADF for?’ in which Frühling articulates the growing consensus that the nation requires a drastically different approach to its defence and strategic policies, with the ADF front and centre of any modernisation and evolution.
"Four years have now passed since the release of the 2016 Defence White Paper, the most recent comprehensive review of Australia’s defence policy and capability. The main contours of that document were set down as early as 2014, which was arguably too early to take full account of the geo-strategic implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s island-building in the South China Sea.
"Since that time, the defence policy of Australia’s friends and allies in the northern hemisphere has changed dramatically and now focuses on major-power conflict with Russia and China. Calls for a new white paper or a reassessment of defence policy in Australia are also getting louder – Hugh White has provided the most eloquent and radical, but far from only, call for action," Frühling articulates, setting the scene.
Recognising these challenges and opportunities, how should Australia plan for the increasingly contested Indo-Pacific it will find itself operating in? What are some of the key areas for the Australian government to focus upon in planning the nation's response to a period of 'great power' competition?
Below are a few examples to be considered as part of enhancing Australia's position and national security in the Indo-Pacific.
1. Develop a cohesive National Security Strategy - as the guiding document for the 2020 DWP, Integrated Investment Plan and Defence Industry Development Strategy
From 'Forward Defence' to 'Defence of Australia', Australia has long stumbled from strategic doctrine to strategic doctrine, further complicating matters is the increasingly 'combined arms' approach to pursuing and enhancing national interests as used by totalitarian regimes like China and Russia.
A National Security Strategy (NSS) incorporating a cohesive plan and policy direction for all areas of public policy will provide the basis for navigating a period of traditional national competition.
Any NSS must clearly define the roles, responsibilities and expectations of Australia in the rapidly changing regional order. A key component of this is implementing the first force posture review since 2012 – as announced by the opposition during the 2019 election – to focus on defining Australia's capabilities out to the 2050s.
Further enhancing the effectiveness of the NSS is the introduction and development of a National Strategic Reserve Program to stockpile key strategic resources (including crude and refined energy supplies, iron, aluminium, rare earth elements, coking coal, agricultural produce and medical supplies) and support the development of national strategically important industries.
Further expanding on this, the outbreak of COVID-19 and its impact on domestic and international supply lines and economic resilience highlights the need for greater consideration and development of a comprehensive economic reform and diversification strategy to leverage the nation's unrivalled mineral, energy and agricultural wealth to support a competitive, advanced economy.
Developing these concepts, in conjunction with an updated DWP and an expanded Integrated Investment Plan and Defence Industry Strategy to enhance the capabilities of Australia’s defence industry – splitting the focus on domestic demand and export-oriented industrialisation in a similar manner to the policy and doctrines that supported the development of South Korea.
2. Begin development of a credible conventional strategic deterrence capability
Ruling out the development of a credible nuclear deterrent, Australia's focus on developing a strategic deterrence-focused 'joint force' concept requires an emphasis on developing 'great power' level capabilities. Key to developing these 'joint force' strategic capabilities is developing a range of capabilities, including:
- Rapidly deployable expeditionary focused ground forces – combining amphibious units and traditional, high-intensity and manoeuvre warfare-focused ground combat elements;
- Comprehensive naval power projection forces including aircraft carrier strike groups, amphibious assault groups and conventionally-focused at sea deterrence submarine forces; and
- Integrated, expeditionary capable air forces combining tactical fighter aircraft, tactical and strategic strike, air lift and tanker, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.
It is clear that Australia's strategic policy of waiting for the opponent to "come to us" embodied in the "Defence of Australia" doctrine leaves the continent exposed to direct isolation and/or maritime and aerial interdiction of critical manufactured supplies.
Accordingly the nation will need to develop and implement a new doctrine focused on controlling critical chokepoints, while also establishing and maintaining the freedom of navigation through critical sea lines of communication throughout the Indo-Pacific, it will also be critical to recognise that Australia may very will have to do this without the support of the US or the UK.
Developing these individual forces requires an acceptance of Australia's position within this shifting regional environment, and an acceptance that Australia's precarious position and dependence on the Indo-Pacific will require increased investment and targeted policy development to maintain the nation's prosperity, security and way of life.
Conventional strategic deterrence embodies this capacity and provides Australia with the capacity to protect and promote its own strategic economic, political and defence interests in the region.
3. Recognise Australia's role as a regional benefactor
Australia’s security and prosperity are directly influenced by the stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific, meaning Australia must be directly engaged as both a benefactor and leader in all matters related to strategic, economic and political security, serving as a complementary force to the role played by the US.
Australia cannot simply rely on the US, or Japan, or the UK, or France to guarantee the economic, political and strategic interests of the nation. China is already actively undermining the regional order through its provocative actions in the South China Sea and its rapid military build-up, and this has been emboldened by the impact of COVID-19.
To assume that Australia will remain immune to any hostilities that break out in the region is naive at best and criminally negligent at worst.
As a nation, Australia cannot turn a blind eye to its own geo-political, economic and strategic backyard, both at a traditional and asymmetric level, lest we see a repeat of Imperial Japan or the Iranian Revolution arrive on our doorstep.
It is clear from history that appeasement does not work, so it is time to avoid repeating the mistakes of our past and be fully prepared to meet any challenge.
4. Shift focus of DST to focus on 'developing the weapons systems of the future'
Mimicking the effectiveness of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which focuses on developing next-generation technologies with a longer-term focus (25 years plus), shift the focus of the Defence Science and Technology Group (DST) to locally develop and commercialise breakthrough technologies to support the modernisation and integration of leading-edge technologies by the Australian Defence Force.
This shift is one supported by Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who told Defence Connect, "While we have to ask what are the sorts of capabilities we can field now, we also have to ask what are the capabilities we will need to field in the future, out to 2040?
"This is where an organisation like DARPA becomes particularly powerful in helping the US to locally develop key technologies, which will provide us with a tactical and strategic deterrent in the future."
5. Establish partnerships – but never depend on them entirely
Australia’s earliest strategic relationship with the British Empire established a foundation of dependence that would characterise all of the nation’s future defence and national security relationships both in the Indo-Pacific and the wider world.
As British power slowly declined following the First World War and the US emerged as the pre-eminent economic, political and strategic power during the Second World War, Australia became dependent on "Pax Americana" or the American Peace.
While the Cold War largely entrenched the status quo, Australia's involvement in the politically disastrous Vietnam conflict at the behest of our "great and powerful" friend, the US saw a dramatic shift in the previously interventionist approach to defence, national security and foreign policy.
Domestic political backlash and a changing geo-strategic environment would see Australia adopt an arguably more isolationist policy, focusing almost entirely on the "Defence of Australia" – that is a shift away from regional intervention and towards a policy favouring the defence of the Australian mainland and outlying territories.
This shifting domestic and regional environment saw the formalisation of the Defence of Australia (DoA) policy in the 1986 Dibb report and the subsequent 1987 and 1994 Defence White Papers.
These successive white papers established the sea-air gap as a strategic "buffer zone" for Australia, enabling the reorientation of Australia’s strategic and broader defence industry posture, shifting away from what Dibb identifies:
"Until the late 1960s, Australian defence planning and policy assumed that our forces would normally operate in conjunction with allies, and well forward of the continent. We saw our security inextricably linked with the security of others."
While the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War cemented America's position as the pre-eminent world power, this period was relatively short lived as costly engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, peace-keeping interventions in southern Europe and enduring global security responsibilities have drained American 'blood' and 'treasure'.
As a result, the erosion of America's domestic political, economic and strategic resolve have collectively hindered the capacity of the US to unilaterally counter the rise of totalitarian regimes and peer competitors in both China and Russia.
Accordingly, Australia has set about seeking to establish robust relationships with larger powers seeking to offset the relative decline of the US, this includes Japan, India, individual European powers like France and Germany, and more broadly with the European Union and NATO – however these nations cannot fill the place of Australia's own responsibility to promote and protect the national interests, assertively if need be.
Questions to be asked
As an island nation, Australia is defined by its relationship and access to the ocean, with strategic sea-lines-of-communication supporting over 90 per cent of global trade, a result of the cost effective and reliable nature of sea transport.
Indo-Pacific Asia is at the epicentre of the global maritime trade, with about US$5 trillion worth of trade flowing through the South China Sea and the strategic waterways and choke points of south-east Asia annually.
While the Indian Ocean and its critical global sea-lines-of-communication are responsible for more than 80 per cent of the world's seaborne trade in critical energy supplies, namely oil and natural gas, which serve as the lifeblood of any advanced economy.
The growing challenges to the Indo-Pacific region are raising questions about whether Australia’s commitment to 2 per cent of GDP is suitable to support the growing role and responsibilities that Australia will be required to undertake as regional security load sharing between the US and allies becomes a reality.
However, given the geographic area of responsibility Australia will become increasingly responsible for and dependent on, is the RAN and the recapitalisation and conventionally-focused modernisation program for Australia's submarine fleet enough for Australia to maintain its qualitative and quantitative lead over regional peers?
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.
Traditionally, Australia has focused on a platform-for-platform acquisition program – focused on replacing, modernising or upgrading key capabilities on a like-for-like basis without a guiding policy, doctrine or strategy, limiting the overall effectiveness, survivability and capability of the Australian Defence Force?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, or get in touch with
