Australia needs to prepare for militarised Asia
Updated
A new study says Australia could become a 'muscular' regional power, if it's willing to spend an extra 100-billion dollars over the next fifteen years.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute says money would have to be spent on two aircraft carriers, an additional 150 fighter jets and a tripling of the size of the navy's submarine fleet. One of two ASPI strategic papers says a new beefed up Australia would be able to "inflict enough damage to render belligerence against Australia unattractive."
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Dr Andrew Davies of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute
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DAVIES: Look, I think there's a few things I'd like to say. Firstly, that was the top end option. The paper actually contained four quite different force options for government, including one that was a significant step down from where we are now, that would require 35 billion dollars less over the next 15 years.
So what we were trying to do was put forward a range of options that the government could have a look at. The high end one with the aircraft carriers was very much the top shelf option.
LAM: Okay, let's assume that we go with the top shelf option. What does Australia need to buy to beef up its defence, where do you think is the weak sector within Australian Defence?
DAVIES: Well, one of the things that became very clear as we did this work is that with Australia's force as it is at the moment, we end up paying what's called the fixed cost for a whole bunch of different things.
Australia has traditionally aimed for what they call a balanced force. Now what that means is you have a little bit of everything, which means that you have all of the support costs, all of the infrastructure costs for all of those things, but you never really capitalise on any of them. So what we were saying the top shelf option is essentially to get more of what we already have in order to build on the existing capability.
LAM: So if we had to upgrade the hardware, would it go to the army, the navy or the air force?
DAVIES: Well, given the geography of Australia and the relative size of the Australian population to other countries in Asia, the army is only ever a niche player, very good for things like low level stabilisation operations for those sorts of things, but the emphasis in our studies was very much on navy and air force
LAM: And the paper speaks of potential belligerence. What exactly are we talking about? I mean Australia has good relationships with all its regional neighbours, but in strategical terms, which Asian nations pose a potential threat?
DAVIES: Two responses to that. Firstly, given the time it takes to put a military force in place. The planning is always done in terms of capabilities of neighbours. You are quite right to say that our relationships at the moment are very good, but you plan in terms of capability, not intentions, because intentions can change relatively quickly. But on the large strategic stage, we're entering a regime in Asia that we've never seen before, where all the traditional powers of Asia are simultaneously strong, India, China, Japan, Korea. The United States are still in there and Russia's a bit of a question mark on the perifery of the region.
So in terms of big power relationships, we don't really know what the future is going to look like.
LAM: Mm, and Dr Davies, do you expect a response from the Rudd Government to your study?
DAVIES: Well, the Rudd Government's response will be the White Paper that they publish next year and this was the Strategic Policy Institute's way of just putting some options on the table to say what the range of possibilities are, if you like. Now what the government needs to decide is where in that range it wants to sit.
