AUSTRALIA: Choice of armed neutrality or US alliance
Updated
An Australia defence expert is warning that the rise of China's will mean Australia ultimately has to choose between armed neutrality or an even closer alliance with the United States.
BEHM: They are I suppose the poles that I'm painting out, they are the extreme options. Arms neutrality is simply not a goer for Australia, it's unaffordable. And the reason it's unaffordable is that in modern warfare more than anything else you need superlative intelligence. We're only too aware now of what a breakdown in intelligence actually does to you given our experience in Iraq particularly but also in Afghanistan. So intelligence goes to the heart of your ability to conduct modern warfare. We have access to a phenomenal intelligence system at this point through our alliance with the United States, and its replacement would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, which is simply well outside affordability for a country the size of Australia. On the other hand drawing closer to the United States carries with it similar sorts of risks though this time they're not cost risks. When I say draw closer to the United States I'm not referring to what has become something of a habit in our going along with the United States and following its lead ...
DOBELL: And going to fight their wars as well?
BEHM: More or less unquestioningly. It's strongly my view that it is the role of an ally as much to advise and warn as it is to support. And so I would be looking at a much more mature alliance with the United States which advises and warns, which supports and also which seeks to integrate at some very important points the technological basis on which capability is developed by both Australia and the United States.
DOBELL: Obviously as you're looking out to 2050 you keep coming back to China. And the argument in Australia over the last decade has been that Australia won't have to choose between its relationship with China and the United States. Do you think that happy circumstance is going to continue?
BEHM: I think hope often triumphs over experience. One would hope that we don't have to make any of those sorts of harsh choices. But strategists have got to think about the reality of choice, and in some circumstances it would be inevitable that Australia would find itself in a cleft stick. And it needn't necessarily be just over Taiwan. It could be over a number of any other factors. There are a number of tipping points in strategic relationships over the next three or four decades, which relate as much to resources, to water, to population movements, all sorts of things that could bring a fairly serious confrontation between the United States and China.
DOBELL: And in that confrontation is it your view Australia would always choose the United States?
BEHM: Australia would have two choices but I think only two; the choices would be either to be completely neutral, to pretend that we're a kind of antipodean Switzerland or to support the United States. I cannot think of circumstances in which we would support China against the United States. So in those circumstances we would have to think about what is it that drives the nature of our decision making whether to remain neutral or whether to side with the US. And for me the answer lies in whether or not the particular contest in question is a contest about the values on which the United States and Australia stand, that is the values of personal freedom and so on, or whether it is about something else. If it is about something else where for one reason or another the United States if not in the wrong is at least in an ambigious position, then Australia might stand back. But if it's about values, if it's about the fundamental ideologies on which our societies depend then I think we have no options.
DOBELL: You write though that China has succeeded in having its legitimacy and its authority recognised in Asia. And isn't it the case that Australia also like the rest of Asia has recognised that Chinese authority?
BEHM: I think it's true that what Australia has done is to recognise China's increasing political and strategic power in Asia, whether that's the same as authority we could probably discuss it another time. But one has to remember how China has managed to achieve this, certainly over the last quarter century China has followed a very careful painstaking diplomatic practice of what I describe sometimes as preemptive accommodation. It is China hands out the prospects of its future power as the basis for making an accommodation in the present. And certainly a number of Southeast Asian countries over the last quarter century have done that. The ones that haven't are notably Singapore, Singapore has been able to resist those pressures, but certainly countries such as Thailand and the Philippines have not really been able to resist those pressures. So as we see this next two or three decades evolve China's power will continue to increase, not only in Southeast Asia but globally. That changes the nature of the relationship that China has certainly with the United States, certainly with India and as a consequence it carries with it a number of longer term strategic risks for Australia.
DOBELL: How has China been able in your words to create a policy tension for Australia, how's it done that?
BEHM: The Chinese diplomats are amongst the most skilful in the world and what they continually do is put Australia in the position of acknowledging its longer term economic dependence on China's growth and at the same time having to weigh off the nature of a strategic dependence on the United States where traditionally Australia has had a very, very small voice in the strategic decisions that the United States takes. So Chinese diplomacy has been constantly about reminding Australia that it sits at least in an ambiguity if not in an anomaly, and for that reason Australia from time to time squirms.
Presenter: Graeme Dobell
Speakers: Allan Behm, author of a Kokoda Foundation paper on Australian security policy to 2050
