Australia Strategic Outlook 220207

8/14/2019 Australia Strategic Outlook 220207

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2007 The Australian National University

Australias Strategic Outlook 2017-2027

Paul Dibb*

Speech given at Australian Defence Magazine (ADM) 2007 Conference,22 February 2007

Let me begin by telling you a story. In the early 1970s the national intelligence assessmentscommunity were asked by government to look at Australias strategic circumstances 15 yearsahead. It was called The Environment of the 1980s. What were we good at and where did wemake poor predictions? Well, we were pretty good at predicting population trends,technology developments and future military capabilities. We were poor at predictingideology and politics. So, for example, we failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And we thought that US defeat in Vietnam would lead to the dominoes falling in SoutheastAsia. That did not occur. You may think that some of this perhaps has resonance today.

What is the Connection between Strategic Policy and Force Structure?

Turning now to my main topicsketching Australias likely geo-strategic circumstances 10 to20 years ahead. The first thing to understand is that in defence planning the most difficultchallenge is always to arrive at an intellectually rigorous connection between strategic policyand force structure priorities. There are three options:

The first, and easiest, is to have a clearly identified enemy on which to focus militarycapability development. But the fact is Australia has not had to face a major enemy likethat since the Second World War.

The second alternative, which has recurred throughout Australias history, is to have anexpeditionary force designed to operate in a subordinate role to a great and powerfulally.

The third option is to rely primarily on Australias unique strategic geography to guidethe development of the force structure. Strategic circumstances change but geographyhas an abiding relevance (although I recognise it can be influenced and compressed bytechnology).

My view is that we are presently in danger of sliding towards a hybrid force, which lacks therigorous connection that is necessary between strategic policy and rational force structurechoices. By this I mean that we now have a confused force structure that has a bit of thedefence of Australia, a recognition that regional requirements will become more demanding,and an increasing tendency to develop an expeditionary force for distant military operationswith our American ally.

Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb was Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 1991-2003. Otherprevious positions have included Deputy Secretary of Defence (198891); Director, Joint IntelligenceOrganisation (198688); Ministerial Consultant to the Minister for Defence (198486); Head of the NationalAssessments Staff, National Intelligence Committee (197478). His research interests include Australian defence

policy, regional security, and alliance relationships, and he has written widely on these issues. Emeritus ProfessorDibb was the author of the Review of Australias Defence Capabilities (more commonly known as the DibbReview), a Report to the Minister for Defence, published in March 1986.

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What I wish to demonstrate today is that our own region will become more challenging, andpotentially more unstable, in the next 20 years. A time of regional troubles lies ahead. Thiswill demand a steady hand on force structure priorities to ensure that our margin oftechnological advantage in our own region for advanced conventional forces is not eroded.

The challenge ahead will be especially grave for us because the resources available toDefence will inevitably decline as Australias rapidly ageing population undermines thegovernments discretionary revenue base in favour of health and aged care. We also need torecognise that our limited population base, which is unlikely to be much more than 25 millionpeople, means that Australias relative strategic importance risks being eroded still furtherwith the rise of large new powerssuch as China, India and Indonesia.

Australias Strategic Outlook to 2027

It is fashionable to claim that the contemporary era is the most threatening, unstable andcomplex ever. I reject that. Just go back 20 years and reflect on what the world looked like

then. Well, I can tell you that in 1987 the Soviet Union was alive and well and threateningglobal nuclear war. Our estimates were that in the first 24 hours of a full-scale nuclearexchange between the Soviet Union and America there would be 180 million dead, and thatdid not account for subsequent radiation deaths. I for one do not accept that the so-calledglobal war on terror is an existential threat like global nuclear war was. Nor do I accept, asPresident George W. Bush claims, that terrorism is the only defining ideological threat of the21st century.

However, I do accept that the combined dangers of nuclear proliferation and terrorism are avery serious threat indeed, which could lead to the first use of nuclear weapons sinceHiroshima and Nagasaki over 60 years ago. This could also involve a nuclear exchange, asthe United States responded in kind in the event of a nuclear explosion on its own territory.

Another apocalyptic threat that I do not accept is the current trendy argument that climatechange is such a serious national security threat that it will lead to war between nations.Where, how, and between which countries? This is not to exclude some nasty nationalsecurity challenges short of war arising from climate change, but we need to keep them inperspective.

The job of the strategic analyst is to manage risk and look for credible contingenciesnotincredible ones. Of course, defence planners need to examine the risk of serious shocks ordiscontinuities. As defence strategists, we are necessarily gloomy because we deal with theuse of armed force. We leave it to the foreign policy experts to be optimistic that the worldsproblems can be solved by diplomacy alone. So, much of what I have to say is not to ignore

the forces for peace, stability and economic interdependence in the world of 2027. But I needto identify the key issues that military planners need to worry about in the two decadesahead.

Our first priority will continue to be Australias own security and that of our immediateregion. The defence of Australia will remain a fundamental responsibility of government,which no politician will be able to dismissparticularly if our own region becomes moreunstable. What I have termed the arc of instability promises to become more of a nationalsecurity problem for us. This is our front yard, not our backyard as some would have it. Andour American ally quite rightly expects usnot themto fix it up.

I have no need to remind you that recently we have been in East Timor and the Solomon

Islands twice, Fiji has had its fourth military coup and is looking more and more like a militarydictatorship, and even Tonga has erupted in violence. But the most serious challenge for us


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would be if Papua New Guinea becomes a failed state. It is a large country with a populationof over 5 million (approaching 8-10 million by 2027). More than 15,000 Australians live there.And it shares a long common border with Indonesia. The most serious circumstance for uswould be if we had to intervene in the face of violence from the Papua New Guinea DefenceForce.

We will therefore need to factor our immediate region increasingly into our force planning.

Our second priority is the broader region of Southeast Asia, which forms a strategic barrierto Australias northern approaches. It is from or through there that a putative enemy couldattack us. The central question for Australia is the future of Indonesia. So far, the democraticexperiment has gone better than we might have expected. But the transition from anauthoritarian regime to some form of democracy is fraught with danger (as Russiademonstrates only too clearly). The most serious potential discontinuity that Australia couldface in the future is the failure of democracy in Indonesia and its replacement with anextreme Islamic nationalist military government in Jakarta. That would focus our mindsandindeed our defence preparationslike nothing else. And remember that Indonesias

population in 20 years time will probably be around 275 million.

In the past, we have depended upon our greater economic size and advanced militarycapabilities to underpin our influence in Southeast Asia. Yet that might be about to come toan end in the decades ahead, as regional economies grow and can afford much moreadvanced military equipment. We will find it increasingly difficult to be the leading militarypower with the most advanced technology and training/education in our own part of theworld.

Our third priority will be Northeast Asia which looms as a grave area of uncertainty 20years from now. The centre of gravity of world economic power is moving immutably towardsAsia in the 21st century, with the rise of China and India. But just look at what could go wrong

in Northeast Asia over the next 20 or so years compared with the long period of peace wehave had since the Korean War more than 50 years ago:

In the shorter term, the most obvious hotspots are the Korean Peninsula and theTaiwan Strait. If war erupted between North and South Korea, Australia (as a signatoryto the UN Armistice of 1953) will be automatically involved. The Taiwan Strait is adifferent matter, but if we refused an American request for combat assistance it mightprove to be an alliance breaker for us.

Within the 20 year timeframe, we must consider the possibility of a unified Koreaemerging. It would see Japan as its historical enemy and might well develop anindependent nuclear weapon to that end.

The most serious discontinuity would be outright war between China and Japan. Asiahas never before had the experience of both a strong China and a strong Japan. Thereis deep-seated enmity and distrust between these two countries and they haveimportant unsettled maritime border disputes. In Europe today the idea of a majorpower war is an obsolete concept. That is not the case in Asia.

Closer to home, China is carving out a sphere of influence for itself in Southeast Asiaand, in future, will display a willingness to challenge the United States in this part of theworld. China is deliberately developing a sea denial capability against American forces.Within the 20 year period, it could conceivably acquire military bases for itself inSoutheast Asia and an ability to project naval and air power there.


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Finally, I believe that we will have a resurgent Russia on our hands that is angry andresentful because of the way in which the West treated it when the Soviet Unioncollapsed. Russia is now the worlds leading producer of natural gas and oil (itoutstripped Saudi Arabia last year as the leading oil producer) and it is keen to exportits weapons in competition with the United States. This will have implications for ourmargin of military advantage in our own region.

These then are the three key regions that will challenge Australias future national securityinterests. They mean that we need to define a region of pre-eminent security interest to ournorth that, together with the defence of Australia, is the primary driver of our force structurepriorities. Of course, as now, it should not be the only driver: we can accommodate the needfor niche capabilities for operations much further afield. But we should do so with extremecare. And much more so than at present.

In the time available here, I have been unable to canvass some other important issues. Oneis the growing importance of understanding the geopolitics of energy security in Asia andespecially the security of energy supplies to Japan and China. We have a key role here as a

stable energy supplier to both of them. The other is the fact that the Middle East willundoubtedly continue to be a region of great importance (because of oil) and great instability.But we must be careful of how far we get sucked in. This will be particularly so as our ownregion becomes more demanding of our national security priorities.

Concluding observations

Let me now draw all this together with a few concluding points:

1. The United States will continue to be the dominant world power and our most importantally over the next 20 years, but we will need to become more adept at balancing our

relations between the United States and China and more discriminating in how werespond to alliance demandsespecially given the likely crucial defence challengesarising in our own region.

2. We will need to monitor very carefully indeed the potential for nuclear weaponsproliferation in our nearer region. On a number of occasions in the past (in the late1960s and early 1980s) we sought to narrow the technological lead time with regard toa nuclear weapons potential because of deterioration in our perceived strategiccircumstances.

3. The picture I have painted suggests that we should not slide further towards a hybridexpeditionary force. I am a strong believer that we need to focus on our own unique

force structure needs for a time of regional troubles ahead. Crucially, we need to focuson being able to expand our current very modest core of advanced conventional warfighting capabilities. We must not let Australias relative military strengths inevitablydecline over the next two decades.

4. Having said all this, I believe that tighter defence budgets loom ahead as our ageingpopulation cuts into the governments discretionary revenue base. Tougher times loomahead. A future generation in the Defence Organisation will have to learn all over againSir Arthur Tanges famous maxim that strategy without the discipline of money is notstrategy.

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Australia Strategic Outlook 220207