Australia is faces an increasingly novel external environment. For strategic policymakers this means discarding as much old thinking as possible in order to understand the contours of that future. Crucially, the policymaker also must remain cognisant that the sine qua non of strategic policy is the use of lethal armed force in international relations. At one end of that spectrum of violence lurks catastrophic war.
China’s expanding economy allows it to invest heavily in military capability. The further out we look the more profound will become the gap relative to Australia. This trend will continue to change the power relativities across Asia. According to the results of the Lowy Asia Power Index, Australia is expected to fall from sixth to thirteenth of the 25 largest regional nations on overall power by 2030. If the Index is an accurate projection, in just over a decade Australia will go from being a middle to a minor power.
A number of important considerations for Australia’s strategic policy settings flow from this. We must accept that it is an arithmetical truth that Australia will never have sufficient military strength to prevail in a conflict with China, whose military strength is growing at a factor many times that of Australia.
In relation to China, Australia needs to discard the strategic concepts that have outlived their contingent circumstances. Warning time is one. China’s military advantage over Australia will grow quantitatively and qualitatively as it invests heavily in the military application of robotics , artificial intelligence, space programs, naval shipbuilding, unmanned underwater vehicles and aircraft carrier production and in modernising its military-industrial complex.
The orthodox assumption that China would require a forward operating base ‘to launch a naval and airborne assault on Australia’ comes from an earlier time. China will soon be more than capable of blockading Australia ports, or launching stand-off missile and carrier-based air assaults on east coast targets, or bombing Australian cities.
The strategic concept ‘to defeat in detail an airborne and naval attack in the air sea gap and the maritime approaches to Australia’ also originates in past circumstances. At the time the Sea-Air Gap concept reflected Australia’s overwhelmingly military superior military in the immediate region, the response to Nixon’s Guam doctrine, and confidence the US would keep the USSR away.
Equally antiquated is US National Security Strategy’s attempt to elevate the strategic competition with China to the ideological equivalent of the Cold War. There is no sign of China wishing to impose socialism with Chinese characteristics on neighbouring states and since the end of the Chinese civil war the PLA has only engaged in a small number of border conflicts, apart from the Korean War, which was also on its border.
Clearly China is seeking hegemonic status in East Asia consistent with its economic and strategic weight. Yet its continued economic growth will depend on a global rules-based international financial and trading system, but without the liberal internationalist trimmings. In this China, like other states, will leverage all of its national assets in pursuit of its objectives. It is difficult to see Australia as a long term threat to those objectives.
Assumptions about national motivation and intent are normally relegated in strategic calculations to the consideration of comparative force structures, readiness, sustainability, and force posture. But where overwhelming discrepancies in military and economic power exists the largest states shape the system and the small states must rely on statecraft, diplomacy and alliances to survive and prosper. In any conflict between Australia and China, where the US could not or would not become involved, China would control the tempo, intensity, location and scale of hostilities.
This brings us to the submarines and the recent piece by Michael Keating and Jon Stanford. Michael and Jon judge that, ‘To move away from self-reliance, however, would constitute a major change in our defence policy and one that is dangerously at odds with the possibility that Australia would not be able to rely on American military support in the event of a future attack by a “major adversary”’.
They argue, ‘submarines are the classic assets by which a weaker power can level the playing field and prosecute asymmetric warfare in its defence’. The value of submarines comes from their capacity to ‘loiter outside enemy naval bases in order to attack warships and submarines, and also to patrol the archipelagic choke points to our north to prevent hostile forces from penetrating Australian waters’. Like much of the current discussion about defending Australia from China, their analysis is strangely silent on Chinese capabilities, the regional geography and the tactical difficulties.
According to the Pentagon, by 2020, the Chinese submarine force will be ‘between 69 and 78 submarines’ and include nuclear-powered attack submarines and 20 air-independent power attack submarines. If during a conflict China had no other demands on their forces, and Australia had all of its new submarines, it is still inconceivable Australian submarines could remain on station safely outside Qingdao, Ningbo, or Zhanjiang for any length of time.
Moreover, China’s submarine force, not to mention its surface fleet or bomber fleet, would pose a far greater threat to Australian shipping than vice versa. How would China react to the sinking of one of its vessels?
If an issue of contention arose that presented so grave a threat to Chinese national interests that it warranted a military assault on Australian territory or assets, then it is highly unlikely they would prosecute the attack by playing to Australia’s strengths. The depth and breadth of their growing military capabilities would provide them with a range of tactical options. Whatever counter Australia submarines might offer could be easily neutralised or avoided.
The real problem with the analysis provided by Michael and Jon is the proposition that it would make sense to plan on fighting China. Self-reliance has never meant being able to defeat all comers. There is strong justification for the ADF acquiring the capabilities suited to exercising sovereignty, securing borders, and projecting infrastructure and resources. Defending the maritime approaches against lesser capable regional powers should be a priority. But it must be obvious that successfully prosecuting a conflict with China is a delusion. And one that in the worst case could see large numbers of Australians die.
Australia’s national priority should be avoidance of war with China. That’s not to say the ADF should not be as capable and well equipped as Australia can afford. There are many roles for the ADF. But fighting China is not one.
Mike Scrafton is a former senior Defence executive, former CEO of a state statutory body, and former chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
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
7 responses to “MIKE SCRAFTON. Rethinking Strategic Policy”
nice to see the main strategic foreign policy game finally debated. About time! I managed to co-educate a few thousand Queenslanders in the 2007-2016 period, showing them (based on 2005 calculations!) how in 2017 China would become the world’s biggest single player in economic terms and thus (with a lag) in military terms. The consequences of that shift are finally starting to be realised more widely.
Whilst it of course makes sense to carry a big stick, over-priced 3rd-class submarines that wont be available for another 20-odd years (if you include the likely delays) are not credible sticks. Rockets, drones, cyberwarfare, and nuclear weapons are the obvious things to go for if we’re serious about military deterrents. Which we’re not.
But then, our increased integration in the Chinese economy (including the welcoming of the kids of their economic elites and their tax-evaders, selling them visas and property) is probably a much better way of avoiding any major confrontation anyway.
Our amateurish foreign policy has thus been redeemed by our blind greed.
The ironies of history….
Yes we in Australia are in a global competition for wealth, power and security. But we are not working to win so others lose. We can build a multicultural peaceful society that has strong links with other countries but not while planning wars of aggression against any of them.Many people prefer to live here rather than where they are now and we should accept some of them for our mutual advantage while keeping border controls.Perhaps we could really make the First Nations a core of our commonwealth with a Shorten Cabinet implementing the ULURU statement from the Heart. We could imagine our warrior First Australians defending “us” too if there is another invasion. When we belong to our country and know it and its peoples we are less fearful of Others abroad. Although now a Canberran I was born in Alice Springs and belong there. I hope we plan to avoid wars.
Among all the above I cast my vote with Michael Keating and Jon Stanford. We don’t want to go looking for a fight with China but we are now leaning too heavily in the direction of appeasement. There is no shortage of iron ore and gas around the world. The Chinese can and will drop us like a stone when it suits them regardless of whether we suck up to the Politburo. My sympathies are with the Tibetans, the Taiwanese, the West Papuans and the Palestinians and I would like to think most of my countrymen feel the same way.
The arguments about strategy and military hardware are interesting from a technical point of view but the real issue is our people. Do we know who we are? We need to find out fast. Current American policy is a disaster for Australia. Instead of getting out of the Middle East and normalising relations with Russia the Americans appear to be sinking deeper into the Arabian religious wars and the revived European cold war, leaving them even less able to intervene in our part of the world. At least we are starting to talk about the main game. For this we are indebted to Messrs Keating and Stanford.
There is much we agree with in Mike Scrafton’s article, which was written partly in response to our earlier pieces (8 and 9 May). We agree that China is not an expansionist power. We agree that a conflict between Australia and China is unlikely but that if it were to occur it would be catastrophic and we should work very hard to avoid it. We agree that in any general war with China, Australia could not hope to win. Despite the aspirations in the 2009 Defence White Paper, we also believe it would not be a good idea, under any conceivable circumstances, to launch a strategic strike on mainland China.
The problem is that Defence policy needs to address possible contingencies and if and when China becomes the new hegemon in our region we don’t know how it will behave. Perhaps it will impose a relatively benign equivalent of the Monroe doctrine. But it could conceivably be much worse. For example, China might seek to use its military dominance to impose a Mercantilist trading regime to our disadvantage, or even interfere in our governance and independence to achieve its objectives, not ours.
Where we part company with Mike Scrafton is in regard to his contention that we could never deter an attack on Australia by China and that, were such an attack to occur, we could never defeat it. Our argument, however, is not that we can defeat China in a regional war, but rather that we want to deter China from attacking Australia, if it were ever so inclined in the future. But that deterrence requires sufficient military capability to make China think twice about the costs of trying to subjugate Australia and, if the worst did happen, to impose unacceptably high costs on the attacker. Furthermore, we agree with Mike Scrafton that diplomacy is also important, if not quite the whole answer, as he seems to see it. But again, in our view, our diplomatic representations are likely to be more effective if they are supported by our having significant military power. In short, diplomacy is almost certainly the answer but to be effective it needs to be underpinned by some muscle. We need to be better at speaking softly while carrying a big stick.
The notion that we could constructively blockade our major trading partner is akin to a man slipping on an elastrator ring to upset his wife. Any half-sensible person would be hard-pressed to recall a more stupid suggestion to emerge from the smouldering compost heaps of Canberra.
Australian defence policy is built on a number of illusions and Mr Scrafton has usefully identified some of these. There are a large number of others, but I will mention only a few. I am happy to engage in a more detailed debate.
First, Australia places huge reliance on the ANZUS Treaty, with such reliance being largely misplaced. Unlike Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, ANZUS only requires its members to “consult” with each other in accordance with their constitutional principles.
Secondly, we have paid enormous “insurance premiums” on the basis that the US will come to our aid if we are attacked. That has been to the detriment of Australia’s international standing. The US will only come to our aid if they deem it in their interests to do so. That is a very uncertain assumption, particularly given the nature and direction of current US foreign policy.
Thirdly, China has the capability to (a) destroy our naval capacity in short order (the Dong Feng 21D) and to destroy as many of our cities as it thought expedient (Dong Feng 41). We have no defence against either of these weapons. Any Australian involvement in a war with China would last about 25 minutes – the time taken for the DF41 to traverse the distance between Beijing and Canberra.
Fourthly, the world is changing at a pace faster than the neural connections of our PM, FM and DM, and those changes include the demise of US hegemony.
In short, our foreign and defence policies require a radical rethink. There is no evidence of any ability or willingness to do so with the present political leadership of all the parties currently represented in Canberra.
This is welcome realism from a familiar respected name in the Children Overboard saga of Howard government mendacity and cruelty. Hi, Mike!
Of course China could overwhelm Australia in any bilateral conflict. So could Russia. So could the US. We must accept that we cannot stand up to any of these three powers. We must learn how to exercise a mutually respectful diplomacy towards all three, and work for a world based on a concert of powers large and small in which we will be small – Vienna 1814..
The old model of sticking close to our US nurse for fear of something worse no longer has credibility. Nothing could be worse than the indecisive and out of-control US govt we now see , floundering through every diplomatic crisis, whether it be Middle East or Korea or Ukraine. As Tillerson said recently – America is threatened by a growing crisis of ethics and integrity. He said ‘American democracy’, I would amend that to ‘American power’.
No one in the government or Labor opposition actually understand this, or if they do, they are keeping prudently silent about it for fear of frightening the horses. The Greens are not afraid to declare such truths, but they won’t be in government any time soon.