‘National Defence’ takes Australia closer to war with China
Pearls and Irritations By Dr Vince Scappatura, May 2, 2023
The 2023 Defence Strategic Review has recommended Australia adopt a new strategic conceptual framework dubbed ‘National Defence’ that incorporates a ‘strategy of denial’. This approach is tied to a broader concept of ‘collective security’ in the Indo-Pacific and is aligned with America’s framework for ‘integrated deterrence’ of China. ‘National Defence’ is consistent with American force structure designs to develop the northern Australian expanse as an increasingly important base of operations for force-projection.
From ‘Defence of Australia’ to ‘National Defence’
The recommendation by the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) to abandon the long-standing strategic doctrine known as ‘defence of Australia’ (DoA) has been met with approval by the Albanese government, even as the doctrine had been previously eviscerated to conform with the requirements of the US alliance.
DoA reached its zenith with the release of the 1986 ‘Dibb Review’ that recommended a shift in Australia’s defence strategy from dependent expeditionary combat to ‘self-reliant’ protection of the continent and the air and maritime approaches to Australia. This was to be achieved by adopting ‘an essentially defensive posture in our region’ and employing a ‘strategy of denial’ with strike capabilities strictly limited in range to accomplish that objective………………………………….
However ………… long-standing aspirations for Australia to be an influential ‘middle power’ in international affairs, or more accurately, a ‘sub-imperial power’, which required undertaking regional ‘burden sharing’ responsibilities to preserve ‘stability’ on behalf of the US-led global order.
………………. A major turning point came in late 2001 when the Howard government committed Australia to America’s ‘global war on terror’. ……………….
……. While DoA and ‘self-reliance’ remained official strategic guidance, operationally the Australian Defence Force (ADF) largely came to serve as an adjunct to the US military.
DoA has now been jettisoned entirely by the DSR in favour of ‘National Defence’, a new strategic conceptual framework based on the prospect of higher-level direct threats to Australia’s ‘national interests’ arising from US-China competition………….. This entails abandoning a ‘balanced’ force in favour of a force structure that is ‘focussed’ on preparing for major war – with China.
…………………….. Today, it is the supposed threat to the ‘rules-based order’ that functions as the new ‘domino theory’, where legitimate concerns about Chinese assertiveness in long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea is imagined as a direct military threat to Australia and our ‘national interests’.
………… maintaining a ‘balance of power’ has long been a euphemism in Australian political discourse for sustaining American military dominance or ‘primacy’…………..
……………….. achieving ‘balance’ translates into an agenda for Australia to work even more closely with the United States, and key American security partners like Japan, to further encircle China militarily.
…………………………………..Unlike the strategic approach articulated in the 1986 Dibb Review, the ‘strategy of denial’ adopted by the DSR is tied to a broader concept of ‘collective security’ in the Indo-Pacific and is aligned with America’s framework for ‘integrated deterrence’ of China. It is consistent with American force structure designs to develop the northern Australian expanse as an increasingly important base of operations for force-projection
………..The biggest change foreshadowed by the DSR is to the Army, which will have its infantry fighting force dramatically scaled back and be optimised for littoral operations and enhanced long-range fire.
……………………………… This is the great strategic folly of AUKUS. It will equip the ADF with a potent capability to strike the Chinese mainland and, in coalition with the United States, play a frontline role in hunting China’s nuclear-armed submarine force and its critical second-strike nuclear deterrent capability.
While AUKUS risks contributing to an existential nuclear threat to China, the DSR reassures Australians that we remain safe from nuclear annihilation under the protection of America’s ‘extended nuclear deterrence’, for which there are no credible assurances, and in efforts to pursue ‘new avenues of arms control’, of which there are none, except that which the Albanese government has yet to join – the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – despite assurances by the Labor Party to the contrary
Finally, climate change is belatedly recognised as a significant national security issue in the DSR, but largely as a distraction that risks detracting from Defence’s primary objective of defending Australia against China…………………..
The DSR overstates the threat China poses to Australia, appears wilfully blind to the risks of nuclear escalation inherent in the defence strategy it recommends, and understates the existential threat of climate change which it fails to confront. What’s more, ‘National Defence’ dictates an acute focus on preparing Australia’s armed forces to integrate in a substantial way with American force structure plans to carry out what should be utterly unthinkable: a high-end war with a nuclear-armed China that risks wreaking a global catastrophe. https://johnmenadue.com/labors-serial-betrayal-of-australia/
No comments yet.
Antinuclear 
Leave a Reply