For years Australian ministers have said the country faces the most difficult strategic circumstances since the end of World War II. The phrase has been repeated so often its meaning has been hollowed out and replaced with empty political blather.
Is there no consequence to this worsening strategic outlook? Shouldn’t governments do something, like spend more on defence and make the military stronger? If the risk is near at hand, why are we reducing defence capabilities to pay for an imagined stronger Australian Defence Force in the 2030s and later?
China’s threatening weapons tests in the Tasman last week are a consequence of successive Australian governments failing to anticipate strategic risk, and plan sensible responses. The reality of decades of not properly funding Defence is becoming clear.
When our navy and air force are incapable of mounting a coherent operation to monitor, respond and pressure three Chinese ships firing weapons between the east coast of Australia and New Zealand, we should all understand this is an unacceptable political and military failure.
Sounding aggrieved, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy claims the Chinese boats were subject to “unprecedented” levels of Australian surveillance. That might have been true if our forces had detected the weapons tests but floating meekly over the horizon impresses no one.
Something must change, and quickly. What is supposedly a bipartisan approach to defence is not working. Spending is too low; equipment programs are badly designed and will not deliver for years. As a result, good people are leaving the ADF in unsustainably large numbers.
There is no plan informing where and how we may need to use our forces, and a bureaucratic and political failure to think through how to deal with the biggest threat, China, and our most important partner, the US.
The problem starts at the top. In three decades of working closely with governments on defence strategy, I have never seen a prime minister less competent than Anthony Albanese at leading on national security.
Our national security system can carry a less-than-able minister in defence, foreign affairs or home affairs – goodness knows, the bureaucrats have had enough practice helping dud ministers look better than they really are.
It’s impossible, though, to compensate for the weakness of a below-average prime minister. The prime minister drives the show, sets the pace, determines priorities, demands action when officials advise doing nothing. In a political system such as ours, it’s only the prime minister (or on occasion a forceful and persuasive minister) who can stop policy failure and set a new course of action.
Albanese does not pass this test. On the Chinese ships, he was clearly not across the brief, did not understand Defence’s failure to properly monitor the live-fire drills, did not shape a muscular response to stand up to Beijing’s bullying and cannot explain the situation to the Australian public.
The Prime Minister’s account of the incident has been disproven in Senate committee evidence by the Chief of the Defence Force and by Airservices Australia officials.
Other than talking to his New Zealand counterpart, Albanese has not engaged personally with Chinese leader Xi Jinping or US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto or indeed any leader who might help mount a co-ordinated response to Chinese maritime bullying.
This didn’t have to be Australia’s problem alone. Every country in the Indo-Pacific and many beyond are concerned at the extended reach and bullying behaviour of China’s navy and coastguard.
One Australian response to the Tasman live-fire incidents would have been to internationalise the problem. Had our navy and air force been directed to get up close and personal with their Chinese counterparts we could have provided film and audio recordings of the gunnery and Chinese manoeuvres.
We could have referred the matter to the UN, the G20, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit – not expecting these meetings would do anything but more to direct international opprobrium at Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party is sensitive to naming and shaming.
Did Defence advise the Prime Minister to be more assertive and Albanese directed there should be a low-key response?
Defence leaders would know a lot more could have been done. We could have had a surveillance aircraft overhead on station for days, F-35s from the Williamtown air base in NSW could have regularly tested the readiness and electronic systems of the People’s Liberation Army.
Australian ships and submarines (if available) at least could have put the Chinese ships on notice that we weren’t going to curl into a ball at the prospect of a maritime drive-by shooting.
Why not take a leaf out of the Houthis’ playbook and push some fast-moving small boats into the PLA’s path? Simulate mine-laying? Do some live-fire gunnery of our own? Perhaps we could do impromptu joint drills with the New Zealanders, showing that, unlike China, we co-operate with friends.
Defence Minister Richard Marles claims an Australian ship was shadowing the Chinese taskforce, but what does that mean? If the ships were in visual range, it seems they weren’t close enough to pick up the Chinese radio signals monitored by the Virgin Australia airline pilot.
Defence seems to have lost its sharpness to recommend these types of options to government, but it’s the Prime Minister’s job to demand smarter, sharper policy choices.
Instead, Albanese’s failure to shape a strong response leaves Australia looking weak and
submissive. Beijing was testing us, and we failed. That means more bullying will follow and
China has already promised more ships will come.
The claim that China was acting in a legal manner is true but missed the point. We were being legally and knowingly bullied, and we should have responded with legal but pointed counter-measures.
The Trump administration also will have watched Australia’s ineffective response. Donald Trump is no fool. He, too, will see this as a sign of Australian weakness. The Americans will see this as a Chinese test of one of their closest allies. In American thinking, Australia is supposed to be stepping up to greater leadership responsibilities that merit us getting access to nuclear-powered submarines. How did we do? We behaved more like a third-tier NATO minnow. Should the US risk handing over three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to us if that’s an example of how we operate?
Albanese’s characteristic failure to grasp the nettle and lead in real time on a difficult issue means we are nationally diminished in the eyes of our vital defence partner in Washington and the world’s most disruptive power in Beijing.
Surely that should be an election-defining moment? It probably will have no electoral bearing because national security has slipped from the political and public consciousness, such that our inability to defend our interests doesn’t rate alongside cost of living and other voter priorities.
Once the election has been held an urgent task for our prime minister will be to develop a strategy for personally engaging Trump and Xi. These leaders exercise astonishing levels of personal political control.
At least for the moment Trump dominates the American executive and congress. He runs an autocratic White House with his personal whim-shaping policy. In Beijing, Xi exercises more personal power than any leader since Mao Zedong. For Australia it matters profoundly what type of personal relationship the next prime minister develops with Trump and Xi.
Albanese will stop being prime minister if the Coalition wins or he will be ousted by the end of 2025 if Labor limps into minority government after one lacklustre term.
The task of crafting a new US alliance policy and a linked China policy will fall to Peter Dutton or Albanese’s Labor successor. That’s a positive in the sense that neither of those figures will carry the baggage of Albanese’s weak, unfocused and indecisive international leadership.
Our new prime minister needs to ask: what does it take to promote Australia’s interests with the world’s two most important political leaders? Neither Trump nor Xi are what one may consider typical figures from their respective political systems. They are supremely powerful and because of it isolated and hard to reach. Both emphasise strength, are globally ambitious, want much from their political partners and demand personal attention and engagement.’We stand with Ukr
Trump and Xi also have incompatible ambitions for their global interests. Australia’s prime minister needs to think carefully and systematically about how to manage our interests by engaging personally with these leaders.
The next Australian prime minister should make a priority of meeting Trump as soon as the government is sworn in. The Trump-Zelensky meeting was a disaster, but there’s a lesson for us in the underlying idea on co-developing Kyiv’s rare earth deposits. That means, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims, “the security guarantee is that the United States is now a partner with the Ukrainians in something important”.
On that basis, why not offer the US joint development over refining and processing Australian rare earths? This will strengthen our economy and deepen alliance engagement. Surely this is a deal that Trump could savour.
On defence spending, there is no alternative to Australia significantly lifting spending from 2 per cent to 2.5 per cent or 3 per cent of GDP. We should have done this in our own interests years ago. Here is Rubio speaking about Europe underperforming on Defence: “What can’t continue to happen is the United States basically is their security blanket so they only spend 2 per cent on defence and then build up this massive social safety net.” Trump will make the same critique of Australia. He will not be fooled by Labor’s promise to increase spending to 2.3 per cent of GDP three elections from now in the 2030s.
A new Australian prime minister can walk into the Oval Office with an agenda for defence and national security co-operation which, in our own interests, will meet every Trump expectation. The price is cutting the fakery from our current defence plans, but isn’t that the right thing to do given our deteriorating strategic situation?
Relations with Xi will be harder to manage because the next prime minister’s starting point must be to refuse to accept the subordinate status Xi demands of partners. The right Australian approach would be to apply measured distancing to Beijing. All forms of Defence engagement should be cut, making it clear that there will be no resumption of contact until the PLA can co-operate as respectful sovereign equals.
Australia must manage relations based on our values – that means proceeding with cases against China in the World Trade Organisation; calling out cyber espionage; refusing to be cowed into cutting contact with Taiwan; and clamping down hard against Chinese covert influencing and interfering in Australia.
The next prime minister should be clear with Australian business that diversifying engagement away from China and finding new markets are essential. We should avoid policies that try to build back over-dependence on China post-Covid.
This approach needs to be firm, quiet and measured, not “shouting from the sidelines”, as Marles describes it, but neither cowering in the corner. Championing Australian interests rather than backing industry’s demands for export dollars from China at any strategic price needs to be the next prime minister’s plan for Beijing.
The history of the 20th century shows that appeasement rather than military strength creates the basis for war. We need to stop appeasing China. Beijing will bully us for as long as we are prepared to submit to it.
Both Trump and Xi respect strength. Australia needs to invest in its security and stand up for our values internationally. If we compromise on these we will turn into the third order country China wants us to be and the US fears we are becoming.
During a visit by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the Oval Office on Friday, Trump let slip that he wasn’t familiar with AUKUS, the treaty on nuclear-powered submarines and defence technology. Have no doubt: AUKUS is a big deal for the US and a massive deal for Australia. If AUKUS fails because the President decides it’s not good for the US, this will be a security crisis for Australia.
The problem is Albanese’s failure to press the AUKUS case personally with Trump. Two phone calls between leaders since November does not do justice to the importance of the relationship. Albanese inherited the idea of AUKUS but it’s his job to persuade Trump of the treaty’s importance. Albanese’s drift, lack of energy and inability to advocate policy ideas damages the alliance at precisely the time some effort is needed to strengthen it.
A version of this article was first published in The Weekend Australian.