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Australian security and partnership in the age of a rising China

Australian security and partnership in the age of a rising China

A reflection on the strategic value of partnership and alliance in Australia’s foreign policy, its origins, and Australia’s role in Indo-Pacific security.

The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Note: This essay was written for a module on international security and grand strategy during Spring 2023. Following my previous essay on Chinese strategy during the Ming, I turned my attention towards more recent developments, analysing the new AUKUS agreements and Australia’s security landscape and partnerships.

Essay

Sitting at the edge of empire in the nineteenth century, Australia leapt into the twentieth century maintaining deep economic and cultural ties with its fellow English-speaking countries, with whom it fought side-by-side in two world wars which forged its national identity. But with the end of these struggles and the turn of the twenty-first century Australia was met with a new actor in its region which presented both new opportunities and challenges. The rise of China as a key player in the international scene from the late 1980s onwards gained Australia a new regional economic partner which questioned Australia’s fairly rigid association with countries which are quite literally half a world away from its shores. However, Australia has cemented its position with long-term policies which tie it to the United States, fellow anglosphere countries, and those unnerved by China’s aspirations. In this essay, I intend to explore how Australia’s strategic choice to pursue this policy of alliance and deepened economic, cultural, and military ties with partners uneasy with China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific came to be, and appraise this choice on the basis of the developments of current initiatives such as AUKUS, the debate around Australian naval strategy, and trends among regional players regarding the perception of China in the region.

In discussing Australian foreign policy there is a foundational question which should be answered (from which all others derive) before formulating a plan for how Chinese-Australian relations should pan out — does China constitute a strategic challenge to Australia? The former Australian Labour PM Paul Keating has been a prominent voice in the negative answer to this question, arguing that China is not, by itself, an adversary in competition with Australia. A revisionist of the current international order, Keating views Australia’s relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States through the lens of great power competition.1 Whilst detractors of China’s deeper engagement in global affairs perceive the nation as a destabilising actor for the security in the Indo-Pacific and beyond, Keating is more concerned with what he perceives as a collision course being set between two great-powers — the US and China —and Australia’s position in that conflict, being geographically situated between both parties’ interests. In his view, the PRC’s aspirations for regional clout and global significance are justified, notwithstanding any moral judgements regarding its treatment of ethnic minorities, non-democratic regime, bellicose attitude towards Taiwan (which he considers undefendable against Chinese incursion2), and territorial disputes in the South China Sea — with all of the above disregarding well established international law and security arrangements. Such a worldview accepts the thesis that, so long as China is granted a sphere of influence — the “natural” result of its power — it should not prove to be a challenge to the security of Australia, and any Australian security arrangements with the purpose of containing or mitigating China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific should be considered escalatory.

The establishment of AUKUS (Australia – United Kingdom – United States), however, represents a positive answer to our previous question of whether China represents a strategic challenge to Australia. Canberra’s policy makers have for the past three decades debated over this fundamental strategic choice, and the announcement of a long-term commitment to regional security (ranging from intelligence sharing and construction of military infrastructure, to mutual defence, technology sharing, and stronger economic ties) represented the conclusion which these decision-makers and strategists reached — that China is a strategic competitor of Australia.

What then, is the nature of this challenge that China poses to Australia? The 2020 Australian Defence Strategic Update’s foreword points to the following: that “Our region is in the midst of the most consequential strategic realignment since the Second World War, and trends including military modernisation, technological disruption and the risk of state-on-state conflict are further complicating our nation’s strategic circumstances. The Indo-Pacific is at the centre of greater strategic competition, making the region more contested and apprehensive.”3 For all his misguided diagnoses — and outright dismissal of Chinese disregard for an international order which he considers broken to begin with — , Keating was correct in pointing out the symptoms of a changing security environment in the Asia-Pacific region. China’s economic revitalisation in the 1990s was the overture to the deep economic web it now casts over the region and beyond. Australia is an important Chinese trade partner in this web, being a net exporter to the PRC4 and representing roughly two thirds of the nation’s iron ore 5 — a substantial amount given China’s status as the world’s leading steel producer. The economic relationship between the two countries, however, is one of interdependence, as Chinese trade accounts for a plurality (32.2%) of Australian two-way trade.6 Interdependence by itself does not, however, present a strategic liability — the issue lies in China’s leveraging of that interdependence in its demonstrated pursuit to reshape the security environment in the broader Asia-Pacific region. Whilst Keating and his fellow naysayers who perceive a greater danger in decoupling (or de-risking, an euphemism that president of the European Commission von der Leyen coined in April 20237) from China’s economic hold and engaging in what they perceive as escalatory behaviour, Australia’s decision makers (despite some latent opposition within the governing Labour Party and other crossbenchers) have reached a broad bipartisan consensus to the opposite, with the current PM Albanese’s Labour cabinet continuing what their Liberal-National predecessors started under Scott Morrison. This presents Australia with the conditions to pursue policies aligned with this shift in relations with China.

Having concluded that China indeed poses a challenge to the region’s security, Australia finds itself in a perilous security environment. The pursuit for AUKUS, deepening of existing (note the considerable American military and intelligence presence in Pine Gap and Nurrungar, already important components of America’s deterrence strategy8) and new military and intelligence cooperation and furthering of economic, political ties with regional actors answers yet another binary question of great consequence, which is whether Australia has long-term confidence in its international partners (particularly the United States) or not. While a policy of self-reliance, even if we accept the thesis that China poses a threat to Australian and regional security, could arguably land Australia in China’s good graces (appeasing the PRC by mere virtue of non-alignment and non-interference in its power struggles with the United States, while still possessing a deterrent), an active policy of cooperation and partnership with those countries — and in particular the US — shows China that Australia squarely rejects its ambitions and will cooperate with others to contain the threat it presents.

This carries its own risks, however: AUKUS being a long-term commitment between the three signatories, its establishment required a great degree of trust among the three parties for each to uphold their ends of the bargain; and that is where the historical danger of pursuing a security arrangement dependent on alliances lies. This compromise hinges on the assurance that Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States agree on the challenge posed by China, and that this agreement and the policy choices of current and future administrations will be consistent and non-contradictory. For Australian policy makers, this requires not only careful domestic messaging — such as PM Albanese’s mentioning that the agreement would not only safeguard Australia’s security but also bring jobs and technical know-how to the country9 — in order to secure and maintain the bipartisan consensus that has been built over the subject, as well as establishing a great degree of confidence in their partners’ course of action. This might prove difficult in the face of a particularly withdrawal-minded second Trump administration from 2025 onwards. Though the AUKUS deal was already in the works during the Trump administration, with Michael Pompeo’s Department of State having collaborated with Boris Johnson’s and Scott Morrison’s cabinets on the deal’s early phase, the reliability of a second Trump mandate or following Republican administrations may be questionable given the ideological shift towards an “international coalition of the aggrieved”10 that the party has undergone in recent years. This and Donald Trump’s lack of diplomatic finesse in dealing with historical partners does not bode well for America’s allies and friends, and Australian leaders may need to develop domestic contingencies for an American withdrawal. Yet although a self-alienating US administration presents the gravest danger to the AUKUS alliance, there is still a very present bipartisan consensus on the US’s perception of China as a competitor (even corroborated by members of the former cabinet,11 which has been usually hostile towards President Biden’s administration) — a consensus which could mitigate damage to accords founded on a mutual distrust for China in the Indo-Pacific.

But taking a step back from the political necessities in Australia’s security, we should not minimise the importance of the material aspects associated with either AUKUS or Australia’s own domestic capacity for deterrence, and in no domain is this more present than the maritime one. Australia’s current long-term maritime strategy (the Mercator Maritime Domain Strategy 2040) and its subsidiary short to medium-term evaluation and implementation direction (Plan Pelorus) serve as clear translations of the aforementioned political discussions.12 13 Mercator’s stated navy mission is “to prepare naval power in order to enable the joint force in peace and war,”14 echoing stated political declarations of greater cooperation with Australia’s partners. The acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines via cooperation with the United States and the United Kingdom is both a significant signal of mutual trust due to the secretive nature of the technology involved (Pentagon strategists are not known to be particularly enthusiastic about sharing their nuclear propulsion technology with unreliable or merely nominal partners), and part of a greater deterrence game being played in the region, even if these submarines are not part of a nuclear proliferation effort — something Chinese representatives have often misleadingly presented them to be, enjoying the general public’s ignorance to the difference between nuclear powered (thus more silent) submarines and nuclear armed (thus carrying a much heavier punch) ones. In this maritime domain, these submarines represent an important deterrent under joint command, being able to both defend Australian and allied territories and shipping lanes, as well as possessing the ability to operate in any given point in a theatre of operations of choice. As far as an adversary is concerned, such a capability (much like Schrödinger’s cat might have been considered dead and alive simultaneously) must be assumed to be employed in either a defensive or offensive action simultaneously.

Yet while it is evident that without reaching out to partners such a deterrence mechanism would be wholly impossible to implement domestically by Australia, there are those who argue the case for self-sufficiency is feasible. Among these is Hugh White, who believes Australia’s strategic goals can be secured via maritime denial achievable with affordable solutions, independent from direct foreign assistance.15 His argument, however, rests on the shoulders of a similar logic as Paul Keating’s — that which (even though perceiving China as a challenge to Australian security) sees China’s rise and hold over the Indo-Pacific as inevitable. His critics have, however, described his stance on self-sufficiency and lack of an answer to Australia’s energy imports dependence as “analogous to designing the fortifications and defensive weapons for a castle without ensuring provision of its water supply.”16 Likewise, without the ability to at the very least contest an adversary in several domains — something a domestic solutions based strategy of self-reliance will not be able to provide Australia with — , the country will not be able to make good use of the few capabilities where it might have developed an advantage.17

To this criticism, I would add that he minimises the prospect of Australian cooperation with its regional counterparts, in particular ASEAN, whose members are devoid of agency in a world where one recognises China’s inevitable hegemony over most of these. Australia’s economic ties to ASEAN countries are already significant, with initiatives such as the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of 2021 introducing new development cooperation funding and novel security cooperation in the domains of terrorism and transnational crime.18

Australia has clearly chosen the path of partnership as opposed to self-reliance, and together with the United States is pushing for a stronger regional consensus over the threat that China represents to the collective security of its neighbours. AUKUS and other overtures to deeper diplomatic relations in the region have been a key element of Australian strategy over the past decades, and progress, though slow for the past few decades, has been exponentially speeding up over the few years leading to and after the coronavirus pandemic. In 2017, during the annual ISS Asia Security Summit (the Shangri-La Dialogue) held in Singapore, PM Turnbull already alluded to a regional “vested interest in each other’s security,”19 regarding Chinese aggressive posturing in the South China Sea over conflicting territorial claims with all nearly all of its maritime neighbours. In that same speech, Turnbull borrowed from former Singaporean PM Lee Kuan Yew’s words regarding security in the region, describing it in the terms of “big fish eat small fish and small fish eat shrimps,” passing a message of cooperation between the small fish and shrimp of the region to become ‘unpalatable’ to the big fish that is China.20

Australia is playing a fundamental role in the region’s security thanks to its diplomatic efforts. It has distanced itself from a strategy of self-reliance and diplomatic neutrality that presented nothing of benefit to the region’s security environment, and is now reassuring regional partners that it too will be a force to contend with if China hopes to alter the regional situation by force. Likewise, the reciprocal confidence that the Australian government has given to America’s continued commitment to the region may further reinforce America’s allies’ confidence in the US as a partner, especially in an eastwards shifting international order. Partners such as Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Singapore will benefit from another friend in the South Pacific committed to ensuring the region’s stability, and view its deeper cooperation with the United States as a sign that they too may rest reassured of its commitments to the region.

Bibliography

Notes

  1. Keating, ‘Paul Keating’s Speech on Australia’s China Policy – Full Text’. ↩︎

  2. Hurst, ‘Paul Keating Sent Explosive Email to Labor Cabinet Two Hours before Attack on Aukus, FOI Documents Reveal’. ↩︎

  3. ‘DSU20’. ↩︎

  4. ‘Australia and China Trade’. ↩︎

  5. ‘Australia Exports, Imports, and Trade Partners’. ↩︎

  6. ‘China Country Brief’. ↩︎

  7. von der Leyen, ‘Speech by the President at the EP on EU-China Relations’. ↩︎

  8. Ball, ‘The Strategic Essence’. ↩︎

  9. Albanese, Biden, and Sunak, ‘Remarks by President Biden, Prime Minister Albanese of Australia, and Prime Minister Sunak of the United Kingdom on the AUKUS Partnership’. ↩︎

  10. King, ‘The Antiliberal Revolution’. ↩︎

  11. Morrison, Pompeo, and Johnson, Partnership of Freedom. ↩︎

  12. ‘Plan Pelorus 2022’. ↩︎

  13. ‘MERCATOR Maritime Domain Strategy 2040’. ↩︎

  14. ‘MERCATOR Maritime Domain Strategy 2040’. ↩︎

  15. White, ‘How to Defend Australia’. ↩︎

  16. Goldrick, ‘A Fortress with No Water Supply’. ↩︎

  17. Dunley, ‘Is Sea Denial without Sea Control a Viable Strategy for Australia?’ ↩︎

  18. ‘Australian Mission in ASEAN | Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’. ↩︎

  19. Hwai, ‘Australia PM Malcolm Turnbull Calls for Region to Uphold Rules-Based Order, Urges China to Rein in North Korea’. ↩︎

  20. Hwai. ↩︎

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