Antinuclear

Nuclear submarines: bad policy for Australia

.. bad policy and bad strategy. It turns entirely reasonable concerns about China’s military expansion into responses that verge on hysteria. The proposals are ill-defined and not costed. They would almost certainly prove counter-productive, if not downright dangerous, in terms of Australian policy towards China.

Panicky response would harm our interests  Paul Dibb and Geoffrey Barker: The Australian * February 08, 2011 NATIONAL security policy is too important for federal ministers to stay mute when thoroughly bad ideas are put forward by influential government military advisers. That is why Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd and Defence Minister Stephen Smith should immediately reject proposals on how to counter China’s military expansion from Ross Babbage, as reported by Greg Sheridan in The Weekend Australian.

Babbage says Australia should acquire 12 nuclear attack submarines, host more US military bases, arm “arsenal ships” with cruise missiles and expand cyber warfare capabilities.

Sheridan says Babbage’s paper is “one of the most important, deeply considered and logically compelling strategic documents ever seen in Australia”.We believe it is bad policy and bad strategy. It turns entirely reasonable concerns about China’s military expansion into responses that verge on hysteria. The proposals are ill-defined and not costed. They would almost certainly prove counter-productive, if not downright dangerous, in terms of Australian policy towards China.

Rudd and Smith should remind Australians that the 2009 defence white paper sets out a (roughly) costed and coherent defence policy that is heavily focused on the comprehensive defence of Australia and its key strategic interests out to 2030. It involves a major military expansion program that includes 12 large conventional submarines, three air warfare destroyers, long-range cruise missiles, new frigates, up to 100 F-35 joint strike fighters, as well as other advanced armaments.

Babbage wants to greatly strengthen the white paper finding that Australia should have the independent military means “to impose substantial costs on a major power adversary” operating in our approaches.

The question now is whether adoption of the Babbage plan to rip an arm off China would deter or provoke Beijing, or even tempt it towards pre-emptive strikes against our military bases and cities. It would certainly be extremely risky.

Just take a close look at what Babbage actually wants Australia to do. Inter alia, he proposes that we should be able to “do serious damage to the Chinese leadership’s primary interests” and that we develop “the capability to stir serious internal disruptions and even revolts in the event that the Chinese leadership threatened Australia’s vital interests”. Now, there’s a good way of getting us into war with a nuclear-armed China.

Beijing, deeply suspicious, would seem certain to view these proposals as an attempt to contain China. Rudd and Smith should insist that Australia will neither appease nor provoke China, but that it will build up its military capacity to enable it to defend itself and also to support our US ally to respond to any serious military threats that might emerge in the future in the Asia-Pacific region.

Curiously, given the extreme nature of his proposals, Sheridan reports that Babbage “does not believe that conflict between the US and China is either imminent or even likely”. Yet his proposals are panicky and extremist, and leave many questions unanswered.

What would 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines cost Australia? What would be the cost of the infrastructure necessary to support them? Would they be in addition to or replace the 12 planned conventional submarines? How many more US bases would he consider necessary? Where would they be located? Why propose new “arsenal ships” to carry cruise missiles when the white paper clearly says they will be fitted to the air warfare destroyers, future frigates and submarines?

There is, as Babbage says, a good case for boosting Australian efforts to counter cyber-warfare, of which China is a leading global exponent. But again the white paper specifically commits Australia to do so, saying that the government will invest in a significant enhancement of our cyber warfare capability.

Babbage has rightly identified China’s military expansion and generally more aggressive behaviour lately as transforming events in the western Pacific, but he seems to assume it is only about countering US naval assets in the region. That may be true, but it is not whole story. China also has an interest in protecting its sea line of communications (more than 80 per cent of its crude oil imports pass through the Strait of Malacca); as a rising power it is asserting itself, as rising powers have always done. It is building a modern naval force capable of dominating what it calls “the first island chain” stretching from Japan to Taiwan and the South China Sea.

As the Pentagon has noted, China’s primary aim is to be capable of fighting and winning short-duration, high intensity conflicts along its periphery against hi-tech adversaries — for which read the US. But the Pentagon also states that China’s ability “to sustain military power at a distance remains limited.”

There is no doubt that Beijing is also developing longer-range capabilities that will have implications beyond China’s immediate territorial interests. As these are developed there will undoubtedly be greater potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation between China and the US (and its allies, including Australia).

Certainly, as Babbage says, China is pursuing a vigorous military modernisation program. The Chinese navy now has the largest force of principal naval combatants, submarines and amphibious warfare ships in Asia. But China will not be able to project and sustain large military forces in combat operations far from China until well into the 2020s. And China’s military is untested in modern combat.

Moreover, the bluster about the rapid emergence of the Chinese military is undermined by national defence industries that produce inferior equipment. China’s armed forces are, and will long remain, no match for those of the US. America has vast resources to support military innovation and make unpredictable technological breakthroughs — as the former Soviet Union discovered to its cost.

Rudd and Smith should insist that Australia’s most rational response to China’s military expansion is to strengthen its alliance with the US by ensuring that its maritime re-equipment program goes ahead as planned, on time and on budget. Australian conventional submarines and surface ships armed with cruise missiles can add significantly to US capabilities in the Pacific, and that is what they should concentrate on doing.

The key question that remains is: just who is supporting Babbage’s proposition? Is it a particular minister? If so, who? The advice given to us is that, contrary to Babbage’s claims, no senior official has endorsed his arguments.

Paul Dibb is emeritus professor and Geoffrey Barker is a visiting fellow in strategic studies at the ANU. Dibb is a former deputy secretary for Defence and director of the Defence Intelligence Organisation. Panicky response would harm our interests | The Australian

February 8, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, weapons and war