May 15, 2021

May 15, 2021

5 minute read

In an expansionary budget, one area that felt a bit underdone was Defence. Here, the government delivered what it promised 12 months ago: $44.6bn, an increase over last years budget of 4.1 per cent in real terms.

At any time in the last 25 years a Defence budget growing at that level would have been welcome. But now Australia and the wider region faces the direst strategic outlook perhaps since the end of World War II.

Its clear that Scott Morrison and his ministers understand that the region is facing a crisis brought on by an increasingly bellicose Chinese Communist Party. Taiwan is the immediate flashpoint, with the level of risk peaking in perhaps four to five years time. In that period, according to the US Defence Department, the Peoples Liberation Army will gain a strong military edge over the Straits of Taiwan in air power, missiles and ships.

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Would Xi Jinping risk his own future, as well as that of the Chinese Communist Party, to stage an attack on Taiwan? Xi has learned to turn risky situations to his advantage. In the illegal annexation of the South China Sea, in cyber spying and intellectual property theft, the imposition of Communist authority in Hong Kong and in the economic coercion of Australia, Xi took significant risks to strengthen his rule and largely got away with them.

Xi will apply the same strategy to Taiwan, using all means short of war and indeed some measures that cross that offensive line right up to the limits of US tolerance.

Ill come to what this might mean for Australia and for the defence budget soon, but first consider a remarkable phenomenon, which is the ability of so many in Australia to deny what is obvious about Beijings intentions.

Writing in the Australian Financial Review last week, Gareth Evans judged that no Chinese political or military preparations suggest an invasion is remotely imminent. That is an astonishing misjudgment. On April 24, Xi presided over a ceremony commissioning three major warships for Chinas Southern Fleet.

The Communist Party newspaper the Global Times declared: These vessels will play important roles in solving questions in places like the island of Taiwan and the South China Sea. Hardly a day goes by without PLA aircraft, often in large numbers, encroaching Taiwanese airspace. Communist Party rhetoric about taking Taiwan by force if necessary is increasingly being used in speeches and editorials.

Xi will hope that this show of strength will deter the US and the allies from stepping in and that his aims can be realised short of war, but we all need to understand that the risk of conflict is sharply growing.

In Washington on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Foreign Minister Marise Payne held talks and gave a press conference, underlining the closeness of the alliance relationship.

The Secretary of State stressed the Biden administrations interest in reaffirming and revitalising Americas alliances and partnerships and, in the 70th year of the ANZUS Treaty, finding ways for the alliance to evolve to meet the challenges we face.

Blinken said: The United States will not leave Australia alone on the field, or maybe I should say alone on the pitch, in the face of economic coercion by China. Thats what allies do. We have each others backs.

Understand that the US has every expectation that the requirement for support runs in both directions. Washington wants Australia to do more, and is telling us that the alliance needs to be revitalised, and that challenges will be faced together.

This will include working out how to jointly respond to Chinese Communist Party belligerence over Taiwan, which wasnt mentioned once in the Blinken/Payne press conference. Sometimes you can judge the significance of an issue by the way it isnt mentioned publicly.

Back to the defence budget. The Morrison government has delivered everything that it has promised to do in the 2016 Defence White Paper and more, including two additional P-8 maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft and four extra Chinook heavy lift helicopters. There is also an accelerated plan to establish a missile manufacturing capability in Australia.

While these are positive steps, the uncomfortable truth is that the bulk of the $270bn allocated over the coming decade to build ships, submarines and other military equipment will only come into service well after the riskiest period for Taiwan.

Defence Minister Peter Duttons most pressing challenge is to strengthen the Defence Force in the shortest time frame possible. An immediate candidate will be to move quickly on the life extension and upgrade program for the Collins submarines. The government should also explore options to add yet more P-8 aircraft to the current 14 airframes, but there are limits to what can be done quickly.

A faster way to strengthen deterrence would be to re-open a discussion with the US about increasing the US Marine Corps presence in northern Australia and getting some US Navy ships operating out of our west coast base, HMAS Stirling.

When the US Marine presence was being negotiated a decade ago, the initial American offer was to deploy a 7500-strong Marine Air Ground Task Force. The Australian government of the day baulked, and instead we had a decade-long slow growth to the current annual marine contingent of 2500.

A larger marine presence ultimately hinges on access to a port facility. Consider the thought that if Beijing wanted to slow down the growth of Australian-US defence co-operation in the Top End, a clever way to do it would be to take control of the areas most viable port, which is exactly what happened in 2015, when Darwin Port was leased to a Chinese company for 99 years.

The world has fundamentally changed since then. Now, the opportunity to strengthen a shared US and Australian deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific needs to be urgently reconsidered.

A conflict over Taiwan would be a disaster for all concerned, but disastrous conflicts happen all the time. At this point, the best hope to keep the peace is to change Xis calculation about the level of risk the PRC would face if it initiated such a crisis.

The only short-term way to strengthening deterrence is by lifting the defence readiness of the democracies.

If US President Joe Biden does visit Australia for the ANZUS anniversary, you can be assured this will be the number one item on his agenda.

Peter Jennings is the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former deputy secretary of strategy in Defence.

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Defence spending needs to match risk of conflict - The Australian