AUKUS- where now for Australia’s Defence Strategy?

2 March 2024

The Chinese incursion into Australia’s area was frankly predictable. Australia has sailed through the Taiwan Strait to please the USA.

China has the fastest growing navy in the World, and wants to be taken seriously as a world power. The way to send us a message is to send some ships through Torres Strait, Timor Sea and Bass Strait.  The pathetic inadequacy of our naval defence was there for all to see. NZ got is act together better than we did.

We have dithered about a defence strategy for years, becoming ever more mendicant to the USA and integrated into their anti-China world view as China became our major trading partner and source of wealth. We survived the Global Financial Crisis because China kept buying our stuff, not because our government was particularly clever. The US is declining as a world power. We will have to get used to the idea that China is a growing power and adapt to it.

Our defence strategy has been to put all our money into AUKUS, attack submarines to scare China into not attacking us. Yeah right.
This might be a tiny fraction of a US ‘defence’ strategy, but it is foolishness for us. The US will act in its own interest and protect us to the extent it suits its interest at the time and with the priorities it has at the time.

We might learn from history. When Britain was at war in Europe it did not defend us. It demanded that we keep our soldiers in North Africa and said Australia would be recaptured from the Japanese when the European war was won. Curtin insisted on bringing our soldiers home, but raw recruits, ‘chocos’ (=chocolate soldiers from song of the time) were needed in Papua New Guinea in the meantime. We appealed helplessly to the US. The US came to Australia as an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the assault on Japan. General MacArthur’s contempt for the Australian Army is something historians gloss over.

The US, for its part has always had a strong isolationist streak. It did not enter WW1 until very late and after the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine killed a lot of Americans.

They did not join WW2 until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.
Since WW2 they have behaved as a global power, putting bases everywhere, but being very selective where they support democratic movements. They let the Indonesians have West Papua and Portuguese East Timor. They have supported appalling authoritarian governments in many countries such as Iran under the Shah, Saudi Arabia, and many South American governments. They talk free trade, but exclude agricultural products, which has hugely disadvantaged Australia. They also want copyright laws enforced, so that their products such as drugs and software can be sold at prices immensely higher than production costs for very long periods.

Their self interest has always been there, it is just more extreme and more naked than it was. The increase in the US national debt and the decrease in their share of world GDP are giving them an unpleasant reality check, Trump’s hubristic bluster notwithstanding.

Trump appears willing to sacrifice Ukraine. Presumably if it suited US priorities, they would sacrifice Australia also, like the British did. Trump is aware of the US deficit, but doesn’t even recall AUKUS.

The new AUKUS ‘deal’ is likely to be ‘We cannot make enough submarines for ourselves, let alone you. You cannot defend yourselves. We will let you have our nuclear submarines in your bases- take it or leave it.’

Which Prime Minister will sit in Zelenskyy’s chair in the Oval Office to sign the deal?

Alternatively, we might recognise that China has no real need to invade us, is unlikely to do so, and probably could not be stopped if they really tried. That is probably the same situation as many countries in the world, so we need to free ourselves from the binary American world view.

We need to junk AUKUS and get ourselves a more independent defence strategy.

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