Sharp criticism levelled against Australian defence white paper
Updated
Australia's latest defence white paper has been heavily criticised for pretending that Australia's military could eventually deliver a knockout blow to China in the event of a full scale conflict.
One of Australia's most prominent strategic policy makers, emeritus professor Paul Dibb, says the Australian government has failed to explain how it would even develop the force structure for such a blow. But professor Dibb's views have not gone unchallenged.
Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra correspondent
Speakers: Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University; Professor Hugh White, Strategic Studies, Australian National University and visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy
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MOTTRAM: Before an audience of former and current Australian defence ministers, experts in the field, foreign dignitaries and defence journalists, Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb was less than flattering about key propositions in Australia's recent defence policy paper.
DIBB: This is what comes of the entirely silly idea of Australia tearing an arm off a major Asian power.
MOTTRAM: The major Asian power is China, and the entirely silly idea is that Australia should prepare for a future where it would be able to hit back decisively at an attacking China, a nuclear armed nation, Professor Dibb reminded his audience.
DIBB: I find it remarkable that we are contemplating apparently war with a major power. Do we actually think that if China attacked yus and we decisively defeated them that Beijing would let the matter rest there?
MOTTRAM: And while the White Paper envisages Australia's alliance with the U-S coming into play in such a scenario, Professor Dibb warns that's never been tested.
As well as these concerns, Professor Dibb said the White Paper failed on many fronts. It failed to address current personnel shortages, let alone personnel requirements for that long list of proposed new defence platforms. And neither the White Paper, nor the subsequent Australian National budget, delivered promised details of how to fund that expanded force structure beyond the first four years .. a truly ugly omission, Professor Dibb said, which looks set to be replicated when the government releases the industry-focussed defence capability plan next week.
DIBB: How is industry supposed to plan its future investments on that basis? What's wrong with a ten-year DCP? What are we frightened of?
MOTTRAM: Professor Dibb's withering assessment on the China question is not shared by another key Australian strategic policy maker and analyst, Professor Hugh White. He's not completely flattering towards the White Paper either, but for different reasons. Speaking to the same audience, Professor White said China's power was already changing the way Asia worked, and that could force some key issues for Australia, which were not properly addressed in the White Paper. Those issues included the clear risk that Asia becomes more contested between a more muscular China and a United States that at present says it's not ceding the Pacific to anyone.
WHITE: That doesn't sound to me like a country that's thinking about sharing power. So we've got to ask ourselves, third question, do we stay with the United States as it becomes drawn deeper and deeper into a more strategically competitive relationship with China? I think the answer is quite probably not. And that's a very big choice for Australia to make.
MOTTRAM: Professor White says Australia either becomes a small power, or it builds forces to give the country significant strategic weight in a changed environment.
WHITE: If we do want to go that way we'll have to build a defence force which looks I think in significant ways very different from the one we have at the moment. It needs to be much more focussed. It needs to be focussed specifically on capacities for maritime denial and that means that you'd spend a lot more on submarines, a lot more on combat aircraft, a lot less on surface ships.
MOTTRAM: Professor Dibb though had a warning about projecting the future strength of China.
DIBB: Beware those who do straight line extrapolations of unending economic growth with no hiccups. China's hiccupping right now. Do you remember when they used to say about Japan in the 1970s, the rising Japanese economic superpower? Where is it?
MOTTRAM: But Professor White added, a very powerful China could not be ruled out.
