US ties nothing to sneeze at Greg Sheridan Foreign Editor Melbourne AUSTRALIAN AUGUST 07, 2014 WE need new language to talk about the US-Australia alliance. The Australian public overwhelmingly supports the alliance so there is no real problem. But the way we talk about it hasn’t changed in decades, although the context and much of the content have been transformed. This does not make it less relevant to our security. Quite the reverse. Except for the darkest days of World War II, there is no time in our history when the US alliance has been more relevant, or helpful, to Australia’s national interests and security than today. There are two astonishingly foolish arguments against the alliance today. One is that it needlessly upsets China, for no commensurate benefit. This is associated with Australian National University professor of strategic studies Hugh White. The other is that while the alliance may have been helpful to Australia during the Cold War, the Cold War is over and therefore the alliance is no longer needed. This is associated with Malcolm Fraser. These lines of attack, though they have no influence on official policy and little support among the public, get a good run in the media. But they proceed from profound misunderstanding of the contemporary strategic environment and the way the US alliance contributes to our security. During the Cold War there was a great threat to Western interests from Soviet-led communism, and to an extent within Southeast Asia, from Chinese-led communism. But once the communist threat disappeared in Indonesia in the mid-1960s Australia was a fair distance from Cold War battlefields. Although the Vietnam War ended tragically, it did give Southeast Asia time to develop successful non-communist economies and societies. Back then, none of our neighbours approached our wealth or defence technology level. And there were several Western hi-tech defence suppliers we could have bought from. Today, our environment is totally transformed, with something akin to an arms race in the Asia-Pacific, led by China but with many nations joining in. Many of our regional neighbours now approach or surpass the size of our economy. Many are acquiring serious, high-end, war-fighting capabilities. If any of these countries should, for one reason or another, become hostile to us they could be significant military competitors and threats. The US, while it is not as big a part of the system as it was in, say, the 1950s, is in many ways even further ahead of its competitors in military technology than ever. It is the privileged access to that technology that makes Australia a viable security entity. Consider our air force. It could defend Australia’s approaches against almost all comers because of the effective way we have bought and used US defence technology and integrated that into a big, operational intelligence picture. Thus our air force combatants are all American: our classic F-18s, now coming to the end of their working lives; our Super Hornets; our soon to be in service Growlers, with their deadly and unbeatable electronic wayfarer capabilities; and soon after that the Joint Strike Fighter F35s, which will be the best fifth-generation planes in the sky. It’s all American in origin, it’s vastly more effective than anything anyone else in the region has, and we have it in the way we do because of the US alliance. With an air force, knowledge is power. We have unmatched over-the-horizon radar, AWAC tactical intelligence planes to guide our fighters, and all of this is integrated seamlessly into the vast US intelligence and watching capabilities. This means the Australian force is basically four or five times more effective than it would otherwise be. But on the purely practical side the alliance is much bigger and broader even than this. We have a deterrent offensive cyber war capacity because of co-operation with the Americans. In 2012-13 we spent $2.7 billion, or 12 per cent of our defence budget, on US equipment and activities with the US. At any given time we have more than 500 Australian defence personnel in the US, many of them working in line positions, some of great seniority, within US commands. This not only makes them vastly more capable than they would otherwise be, it also gives our system overall an almost unrivalled knowledge of the US system and considerable influence within it. All our really big military exercises, which are essential to giving our military actual capability, are conducted with the Americans. At the forthcoming AUSMIN meetings in Sydney, the two nations will finalise a status of forces agreement that will cover the rotational presence of marines in Darwin. Hopefully, in the long run, it will see the home-porting of a small number of US ships in Western Australia. This is a case of Australia helping the US arrange and decentralise its forces in a way that is good for the US. But it is also immensely good for us because it gives tangible, operational life to the profound US commitment to Australian security, a commitment we fully reciprocate. Similarly, the joint communications facilities that we share with the US contribute to global peace and stability by collecting intelligence on all the threats that bother us, chief among them terrorist networks that would want to strike against Australians. They also give us unrivalled visibility of all regional military developments. They monitor nuclear proliferation and give early warnings of ballistic missile launches. Others play a role in coordinating allied submarines in the region. This is a relationship that for Australian security is pure gold. Many nations of the region would love to have such a relationship with the US. Others might want it but know they could never secure it or sustain it politically. But absolutely every strategic hardhead in Asia knows this relationship is a vital asset for Australian security, an immense vector in itself of Australian national power.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 00:37:52 +0000
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