For all the discussion of China’s aggression, it is the US and its allies that have been constantly at war for two decades.
Strategic policy development is a more complex task than Jon Stanford has recently articulated in a three-part series of articles, and is as much an amalgam of imagination, judgment, contingent circumstances and risk management as it is a science. It fails when the analyst has a particular solution in mind, like submarines, before commencing the strategic analysis.
Depicting military planning schematically as a linear process flowing from the national interest, to the mission, the strategy, and then the force structure simply obscures the complexities and uncertainties involved. Threats can emerge quickly where a potential adversary has the existing military capability and a casus belli, whereas shaping the force structure is a long-term, constant, and ongoing activity. These cycles operate at a very different speeds, and conflicts are come-as-you-are affairs.
Statements like “China will resist any challenge to its strategic objective of being not only the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific but also, perhaps, globally”, and “represents the greatest threat to Australia’s independence since 1942” are without meaning. How these two thoughts are related to each other is not explained by Stanford, yet they bear an enormous burden in his strategic logic. How would a military attack on Australia contribute to, or remove an obstacle to, China’s presumed ambition to be the sole hegemon? That is not self-evident.
Nevertheless, China’s formidable current and growing high-tech military capability is the biggest change in Australia’s strategic environment. China is a country that is very strong economically and militarily, with a political system it wishes to preserve and a range of interests it will pursue. It should be regarded in the same manner as the US, and can be expected at times to exert its strength in pursuit and protection of its interests, even to the point of coercion and military force if necessary. It is an unexceptional, amoral great power.
China probably believes it faces its worst situation since the Korean war. The SIPRI database indicates that between 2000 and 2019 the US outspent China on defence by $10,880 billion, and between just 2010 and 2019 by $5259 billion. China looks on the US’s presence in East Asia with some apprehension. China’s strategy, from their perspective, is defensive. For all the discussion of China’s aggression, it is the US and its allies that have been constantly at war for two decades. Strategic analysis demands the perspective of other states be considered, an argument made persuasively by Iain Henry (here and here, for example).
It is hard to imagine the circumstances in which China would have a strategic imperative to conduct a major military campaign thousands of kilometres from home. Such an event wouldn’t happen in a vacuum. China would have to be prepared to not only wear the financial cost of such an exercise, but risk damage to trading, diplomatic, and other relationships, retaliation and sanctions, and accept the prospect of domestic disruption, opposition and instability.
Jon Stanford advocates “a comprehensive military strategy” that is “directed towards deterring an attack on Australia”. If China had a reason to take military action against Australia, unlikely though that is, what would be its objective? To nullify Australia’s military capacity? To conquer and subjugate the population? Coerce Australia into a tribute state? Force Australia to join a Chinese Greater Co-prosperity sphere?
Anticipating an adversary’s likely objectives would indicate what they might target and therefore which capabilities they might employ. A military strategy must posit an adversary’s strategic objective in order to develop a concept of how a defence might be prepared. China might have relatively limited objectives in a confrontation with Australia, but that’s clearly not what Stanford has in mind when he argues for the need “to revise the Australian Military Strategy or preferably develop a new one”. This would be “an effective A2/AD [anti-access/areas-denial] strategy in the air-sea gap to our north and west” where “the RAN and RAAF will play the dominant roles”.
A2/AD is shorthand for “the ability of an opponent to raise the risk of operations within this region” whether by “air, land, sea or a mix of these”. It is a concept that has dominated analysis of China’s strategy against the US forces in the case of a conflict in the South China Sea. That this strategy could be transferred to very different strategic circumstances and geography, and where the discrepancy in relative power is so great, has not been demonstrated. Moreover, the deterrence value of the ADF, in the face of a China determined to prevail, is highly questionable.
The core of Stanford’s complaint is that “the ADF’s overriding approach to the force structure has been to replace like with like without critical analysis of Australia’s changing strategic requirements”. There is some validity to this, and some unfairness. It is only recently that China has appeared as a threat, and the force structure process is difficult to shift. Many decisions were taken in the early 2000s. Without a real threat before this time there was little basis for taking the force structure in different directions.
Stanford’s solution is a new military strategy. There are strong hints already that Australia has a strategy that is informing its future force structure, and that’s America’s strategy (here, here and here). That aside, Stanford pre-empts any new military strategy and leaps to conclusions about the importance of submarines, frigates, and bombers, and canvasses a 50% increase in the Defence budget. He emphasises the need to protect the north and west approaches in this new strategy, ignoring the growing reach, flexibility, and numbers of China’s military, and its future ability to strike population centres and infrastructure on the east coast.
Stanford’s analysis has an alarmist refrain. Australia is never likely to hold a key place in China’s strategic policy. It is not big enough or strategically located. It probably could have annoyance value, in which case Australia might see coercive threats. But planning on a very remote major military threat seems an unjustified reason to divert significant scarce resources.
Stanford’s opening suggestion that “the avoidance of a military conflict is clearly the first priority” is irrefutable. Extracting Australia from the US’s strategy is the means.
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
Comments
15 responses to “Exaggerated threats and contrived military strategies: a response to Jon Stanford”
On reading Mike’s piece and others, I guess I am coming from a fundamentally different position.
First, although we have sometimes paid an excessive premium for the insurance policy provided by ANZUS (e.g., Vietnam, Iraq), overall the net benefit to Australia for the last 78 years has been positive. Even in the age of Trump (who, in fact, has applied no pressure on Australia to participate in military adventures), I see no moral equivalence between America and China. Those that do regard China as being of no threat to our independence should read ‘Hidden Hand’ by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg. Nevertheless, as I stated in my first article, we should make it clear to the United States that we are not prepared to go to war with China unless Australia’s independence is directly threatened.
Secondly, in the unfortunate event that America will decide to go home, I consider we should tailor our defence posture so that it can deter an attack by any power. This seems to me to be one of the prime responsibilities of government. It will be difficult and expensive, as Hugh White points out in detail in his 2019 book ‘How to defend Australia’. Of course, we would lose a war against a great power if they were determined to defeat us. But the aim of effective deterrence is to raise the costs to a level where a rational adversary would understand that they would clearly exceed the benefits. It’s a policy that Switzerland has always applied, which proved greatly to its benefit in World War 2 when even Hitler judged the costs of invasion too great. The alternative put forward by a number of commentators is to give up on defence and spend the money on issues such as combatting climate change. My view is that we can do more than one thing at a time anyway, but that without being able to ensure our national security, the options become more limited with our freedom being in some doubt.
Although, with other commenters, I find Mike’s essay convincing, I want to acknowledge Jon’s measured response. In few places other than P&I would one have the good fortune to find such an informative and respectful dialogue.
“But the aim of effective deterrence is to raise the costs to a level where a rational adversary would understand they would clearly exceed the benefits”. The predicted high casualty rate was one of the reasons that the Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than invade. If we make it too costly for the Chinese to invade they will presumably just nuke us. The cost of an effective anti ballistic missile system, covering every population centre on the continent, needs to be added to the Proposed 50 per cent increase in the Defence budget. It’s a lot of money to spend when the likelihood of being taken over by the Chinese is so small.
I stopped reading at Clive Hamilton. If thats you source heaven help us.
In this excellent article the essential message is in the final paragraph, the key action in the last line.
Thank you and I liked the title ‘exaggerated threats….’ Indeed. I doubt China “probably believes it faces its worst situation since the Korean war” rather I gather it looks upon the US and its Aussie ally posturing as being the blathering of weakness and indicative of directionless diplomacy. Regardless of whether the USA has “outspent China on defence by $10,880 billion” there is a dramatic and rapid fleet construction underway in China right now. Besides the current weapons of war have rendered the peripatetic fleets of the USA obsolete. More significantly there is a continuing and growing Chinese investment in public health, education and infrastructure never seen in the west for the past 50+ years. (Neo Liberal economics has pauperised the west) Simultaneously there is an immediateChinese decoupling from the $US, a dramatic decline in trade purchases from the USA and Australia. All of this because the USA/Australian nations are spraying mendacious exaggerated threats around the world. More fool them. Time for the Australian government to promote peace and diplomacy with its trading partners in this region and stand independent from its warmongering ‘ally’ the USA.
Given the recent strategic “drivel” about our future defence needs, this article is truly welcome, and timely. The Cuban missile crisis was instructive in relation to the now constant drumbeat about our purported future submarine needs. As we do now, the soviet strategic submarine fleet then consisted of four diesel powered boats. As they neared Cuba, the Americans simply pinged and pounded them with percussion ordnance until they had to surface, or suffocate. We face the same fate against any capable maritime force, let alone the Chinese. When one confected adversary can take out every one of our major cities with a single strike from a submarine somewhere off the Antarctic ice shelf, it behooves a nation like ours to think through a more intelligent solution to strategic challenges. Sucking up to a fantasy ally that can’t protect its own people and one that waxes and wanes depending upon the state of its president’s spleen is not a strategic plan. It’s simply another episode of The Bachelor.
Jon Stanford’s trilogy was a useful summary of the linear, internally convergent and largely complacent approach to strategy and force structure planning over the past few decades. The trilogy was testament to the lack of any effective contestability within Australia’s strategic elite – if that’s the word for it. So Mike Scrafton’s demolition was even more useful. Strategic policy is formed in what is essentially a chaotic planning and decision space. And as for deterring China – good luck with that. But Mike’s last sentence is problematic. From my vantage point on the desert hermit’s pillar, it is less a matter of extracting ourselves from US strategy than of a more calibrated, nuanced and internationally collaborative approach to managing the competing strategies of the US and China and anyone who is prepared to sign up blindly to either of them.
Very good short article.
“Extracting Australia from US’s strategy is the means…(of) ‘avoidance of military conflict (which) is clearly the first priority’ ”
Precisely.
Why is it that states like Sri Lanka and Indonesia can resist signing up to US militarism
Whereas Australia and now Germany cannot ?
What coercive US mechanisms may be at play ?
“It should be regarded in the same manner as the US, and can be expected at times to exert its strength in pursuit and protection of its interests, even to the point of coercion and military force if necessary. It is an unexceptional, amoral great power.”
Very sensible.
My own database indicates that the PLA already out-buys the Pentagon, when we adjust their budgets for general PPP. IF we further adjust them for specific PPP–by recognizing that the PLA gets 2x-3x more bang for its buck than the Pentagon, the gap widens. Real world correlation of this is that the PLAN has a bigger, more powerfully armed fleet than the US, and its army is likewise much more powerful. In the air, the US is no match for the PLAAF within 1000 miles of China’s borders.
https://i.imgur.com/knMr4Su.png
Well, yes. But can we then do any realistic planning. We could put the money spent on ‘defense’ into useful things – but that won’t be considered.
Sir,
I greatly admire your ability to help Australians see the light. The only thing that Australia produces that is of significant value to the Chinese are iron ore and other minerals. It would be very foolish of them to spend trillions of dollars, many lives, upset their own trading applecart and risk alienating the rest of the world by invading Australia instead of buying them cheaply off Australian miners who are very good at what they do. I have been trying to say things like this in my comment in P&I but have received response that I am a China apologist and pro-Chinese. I would be doing the same thing if the words “Chinese and China” were replaced by the names of any other country being regarded in the same manner.
The Chinese are good with the abacus (meaning that they are good at business). The idea of invading Australia for some brown earth is risible.
It suits the purpose of aspiring writers to exaggerate bad news because humans take bad news more seriously and are better convinced of them than good news. It is our self-protection instinct. I am so glad that you are helping good sense to prevail.
Sincerely’
Teow Loon Ti
Outstanding article. Thank you.
A brilliant dissection Mike.
I thought Jon’s series of article’s were basically a strawman argument to justify more defence spending rather than a serious analysis of the military threat to Australia. This was evidenced by the failure to identify what China’s objectives maybe towards Australia but rather the use of vague and emotive terms such as “the greatest threat to Australian independence since 1942.”
The South China Morning Post is reporting today that China is/will ban Australian imports of barley, timber, sugar and copper. I would suggest that this type of strategy is far more likely and effective, at much lower risk than, any military strategy aimed at Australia. All the submarines, fighters etc that Australia could afford can do nothing to defend against this type of threat.
The answer, as you conclude, is to disassociate ourselves from the United States. How much harm will be do to our country before we realise this?
‘constantly at war for two decades’? Try two and a half centuries.