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The ‘China’ challenge: now a multi-generational test for Australian strategy

In the week of Australia’s 3 May election, ASPI will release Agenda for Change 2025: preparedness and resilience in an uncertain world, a report promoting public debate and understanding on issues of strategic importance to Australia. This is an article from the report.

Navigating increasingly complex and sharp geostrategic competition while advancing Australia’s long-term national interests will be the fundamental test for the next government. China remains a key systemic challenge in this regard—not just for Australia but for the Indo-Pacific and the rules-based order that has served Australia so well since World War II.

Since entering office, the Albanese government has approached its China policy through the prism of stabilisation—along with the formula of cooperating where we can, disagreeing where we must, and engaging in the national interest. That has worked to reset the bilateral relationship, but stabilisation is a transitionary state, not a strategy. Australia’s ‘China challenge’ isn’t cyclical. It’s structural. And, thus, it requires fundamental change for Australia to retain agency and sovereign decision-making.

Indeed, the current relationship is one of increased diplomacy simultaneously with increased malign Chinese activity, and therefore more uneven. Put another way: when one party is seeking stability and another is seeking to destabilise, the destabiliser will always be dominant until facing pushback.

This means, for an incoming government, the key question is: now that Australia–China relations have stabilised in diplomacy but not security, is there a need for a next phase? The answer should be ‘Yes.’

A mercantilist Trumpian world makes this already difficult task harder. The US–Australia relationship remains crucial to security in the region, but Australia must adapt to new realities. The (slim) possibility of a grand bargain between Washington and Beijing also has the potential to sideline Indo-Pacific allies, including Australia. The risk lies in the potential for a US–China agreement that prioritises perceived bilateral interests over the collective security and economic wellbeing of the region.

The unlikely possibility of a grand bargain isn’t the only threat from the US–China relationship. Ad hoc agreements, such as a potential deal over TikTok that doesn’t solve the national-security risk, will also affect Australia, both nationally and regionally. That’s because any sign that the US will take a purely economic approach to China will probably only incentivise more nations to do the same and become even more (over) dependent on the Chinese economy and technology.

To ensure that the US remains invested in the liberal democratic order in the Indo-Pacific, Australia must clearly and consistently demonstrate to the US the tangible benefits of doing so.

Australia has already faced years of coercion from Beijing for choosing national security and international alliances over economic gain but should expect growing pressure to pick sides in ways that will constrain trade and investment choice. The Trump administration’s America First Trade Policy and America First Investment Policy indicate that countries with close trade and investment ties with China could face new obstacles when investing in the US, while countries without those ties may enjoy expedited access.

Amid this ‘harsh’ competition, we’re seeing China accelerating its efforts to pursue military, economic and technological dominance. China’s military aggression has become more pronounced over the past year. In August 2024, a Chinese spy plane breached Japanese airspace for the first time ever. Later in the year, the Chinese Government held its largest military exercises around Taiwan in almost 30 years. Meanwhile, unsafe encounters between Chinese and Australian military aircraft, initiated by the Chinese, have continued to roil relations.

Compounding this is the ‘creeping normalcy’ of China’s use of coercion to bully its near neighbours and to advance unlawful maritime claims, threaten maritime shipping lanes, and destabilise territory along China’s periphery—namely the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

More unusually, in February this year, three Chinese warships sailed 150 nautical miles east of Sydney to what Australia’s Director-General of National Intelligence, Andrew Shearer, described as ‘the furthest south a PLAN task group has operated’. Days later, the Chinese vessels undertook live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea in an unprecedented exhibition of non-allied force—before undertaking an almost complete circumnavigation of the continent. Analysts expect such activities to become more frequent as the PLAN expands its power-projection capabilities south—sending a message not just to Australia and New Zealand, but to Pacific partners as well. The message to, and about, the US shouldn’t be ignored: Beijing was telling the US that it can’t prevent China creating a sphere of influence, and telling regional nations that the US had lost power. It didn’t help that a less than ideal response from the Australian Government was reinforced by no comment at all from the US administration.

Meanwhile, the Cook Islands recently signed a pact to deepen ties with China, without consulting with New Zealand (its free association partner). The prospect of a standing Chinese military presence in the southwest Pacific continues to haunt Australian defence planners. Equally concerning for our economic and fiscal planners are persistent risks associated with China’s debt-trap diplomacy, which is creating significant debt burdens, straining the economies of Pacific nations, diverting resources from essential services and requiring Australia to step in.

In emerging technologies—what’s now the ‘centre of gravity’ when it comes to national power—ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker confirms that China now leads advanced research in 57 of 64 key fields. Those technologies include many with defence applications, such as radar, advanced aircraft engines, drones, swarming and collaborative robots, and satellite positioning and navigation. The number carrying a high risk of monopoly by China has jumped from 14 in 2023 to 24. China is expected to further expand that dominance over the next decade, and we’re already seeing its investment in research resulting in commercial innovation and leadership (for example, DeepSeek).

The Australia–China trade relationship managed to buck some negative trends in 2024. China lifted tariffs on Australian wine and ended import bans on beef and lobster, effectively ending the active Chinese-initiated economic coercion of Australia underway since 2018. The problem is that it’s a mistake to view coercion as existing only once punishment begins—if the threat of punishment results in one not taking action, then that’s still coercion. And it reflects the state of China’s relationship with Australia, and many others. Beijing removed the economic measures only after Australia suspended two WTO cases, which allowed Beijing to save face from what would have been clear international rulings that China had engaged in unfair trade practices against Australia. Notwithstanding the compromises made by Australia, those developments were significant. China is Australia’s number one two-way trading partner; nearly a third of Australia’s exports went to China in 2023.

Although the ending of bans offers the perception of relief, failure to discern between China’s intent and capability—not just in the economic domain, but across the military, diplomatic and technological domains—puts Australia at risk.

China’s actions, not its words—especially in our own region—should drive our choices. From talking points to policy, Australia’s strategic narrative on China has so far been narrowly fixed in terms of Beijing’s apparent intent. The challenge for an incoming government is to shift that focus to China’s capability.

That doesn’t preclude ‘cooperation’ with China where we think we can and should cooperate, but due diligence must be undertaken. Too often, policymakers and politicians use climate change as the easy example of where we should aim to cooperate but fail to acknowledge that China is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide and that, in all likelihood, cooperation with China on issues such as renewable-energy technologies means facilitating China’s systemic use of modern slavery in regions such as Xinjiang. The key is to ensure that our own decisions don’t constrain our future choices as the price Australia pays for stable or cooperative ties with China.

Crucially, Australia shouldn’t limit itself to only being able to ‘disagree where we must’, but rather disagree where we should for national security and sovereignty. That requires a response framework that focuses in equal measure on ‘prevention’ (minimising the conditions from which Chinese coercion can manifest), ‘protection’ (proactive measures to defend against adverse impacts of such coercion), ‘resilience’ (building capabilities to bounce back quicker where coercion is applied) and ‘deterrence’ (imposing costs collectively to deter the continued use of coercion).

Economically, that means we shouldn’t try to replace the decades-long complementarity of the Chinese and Australian economies. Instead, we should focus on:

—building greater diversification and conscious redundancy—with other regional partners and with Europe

—building the dynamism and productivity of our businesses, including through revised industrial policy settings and increasing adoption of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

While China is Australia’s top trade partner on traditional measures, excluding foreign direct investment (FDI), the US is Australia’s other major trade partner, including FDI. So, it can’t be the case that China’s ranking means it dominates our thinking. With Japan, South Korea, India, the US and Taiwan ranked 2 to 6 (and 2 to 6 accounting for more than the 30% that’s China), we’re as economically dependent on the ‘allied’ powers as we are on China.

In scientific developments and critical technologies, most of our strategic partners—the US, Japan, Britain, the EU and South Korea—are larger and have globally competitive tech sectors they’ve spent decades building. In recent years, those areas have included AI, semiconductors, quantum computing and biotechnology.

By contrast, Australia largely remains a mid-sized mining and tourism–dependent economy with a low national spend on R&D (we sit below the OECD average). Building greater sovereign capability in our science and technology sector is needed to improve the shape and size of our economy, as well as its competitiveness. At present, we also poorly understand the industrial dependencies within our economy. That’s resulting in Australian industries becoming uncompetitive and disappearing. For example, the loss of nickel mines has killed fertiliser production. Building real resilience requires us to understand those complex interdependencies, to take more risks in responding (fail fast, but learn faster), and to build new trusted partnerships while strengthening existing ones.

The next Australian Government should therefore consider the following four strategies.

Reframing the ‘China’ challenge as a multigenerational national enterprise

Commence development of an integrated (public and classified) national strategy—embedded as a standing national enterprise. This needs to start from a holistic view of our national interests and our values to determine not just who we must trade with, but how we must trade with them, the undivided purpose being to make us both more prosperous and secure. We have long worked towards a liberal economic order governed by rules—free trade and free markets. The intent of this national enterprise is to not let China trade (or America First trade) water down our national commitment to a liberal economic order.

This national strategy should be enabled by an appropriately tailored whole-of-government coordination mechanism, potentially the reinvention of a dedicated Australian National Security Adviser role with a secretariat, as ASPI has recommended separately. And it should reflect engagement not just across the federal government, but with states and territories and across the economy, as well as think tanks and civil society.

The Prime Minister should give effect to this proposal by making a national address or statement detailing why such a reframing is critical, and then provide an annual account to parliament of progress against the strategy. That statement should speak plainly to the strategic challenges that confront Australia and the Indo-Pacific region and be focused on lifting public awareness and understanding. The purpose will be to alert, not alarm, and to be accountable for progress.

Behind closed doors, an incoming government should elevate systematic planning to identify points of vulnerability or potential leverage. That includes a review of Australia’s supply-chain resilience across sectors relevant to national resilience.

Embedding economic resilience

Complementing the 2024 Independent Intelligence Review’s call for ‘an uplift in intelligence support on economic security’ and a matching review of economic security policymaking architecture, appoint a Minister for Economic Resilience. This could be modelled on Japan’s approach to coordinating and implementing policies to make its economy more robust, more competitive and less vulnerable to external shocks—and which sits as a crucial component of Japan’s overall national-security strategy.

The ministerial portfolio would involve, among other functions, a focus on:

—securing supply chains (particularly for essential goods and technology); that includes diversifying supply sources, promoting domestic production and reducing reliance on potentially vulnerable foreign suppliers

—safeguarding sensitive technologies and intellectual property from foreign interference or leakage; that includes protecting patents and restricting export of strategically important technologies

—driving a coordinated effort to rebuild manufacturing capability and rethink the industrial ecosystem that drives innovation and productivity; that includes building an understanding of industrial dependencies within our economy where investment is necessary for real resilience.

Enabling this would be a redesign of cabinet decision-making processes through the introduction of an advisory framework that better supports cross-cutting decision-making at the intersection of economic prosperity and security, ensuring that the objectives in each domain are rigorously assessed against the impact in the other. That would require a greater focus within the Australian Public Service on developing ‘dual skilled’ personnel who are equally proficient and capable in economics and in national security.

Blocking a ‘G2’ world

Reinvest in collective action to push back on the risk of a ‘G2’ world, in which the fate of Australia and the region is decided exclusively in Beijing and Washington. The current government has pointed to a multipolar diffusion of power in East Asia as an ideal; that is, while there are two great powers, multiple countries retain global influence and impact.

That should indeed become a more explicit strategic objective, but we also need to recognise that a world of multiple influential nations without an architecture for a rules-based order would be just as bad for Australian security and prosperity. Historically, the US and Europe have been the ‘global police forces’ of the rules-based system. We need to adapt our approaches to ensure that they remain ‘fit for purpose’. That requires Australia to commit to even closer relations with Europe, Japan, the ROK, India and the non-aligned world to drive an agenda of purposeful and tangible reform to the rules-based system.

Doing so also requires the development of a ‘strengthened deterrence’ strategy that reflects the reality that the trans-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific no longer exist as distinct geographical locations. The longstanding judgement that authoritarian regimes don’t trust each other enough to work together is no longer accurate. Countering one adversary now requires addressing the influence of the other.

Enhancing competitive edge

Implement a two-pronged approach that attracts our best and brightest in emerging technologies back home from places such as Silicon Valley, while also offering fast-track visas to top US-based scientists and researchers who are newly out of a job or low on the funding they need to keep their start-up or scientific lab running. All would provide shared benefit to our alliance with the US and close partnerships.

Complementing that would be the implementation of a comprehensive strategy to create an Australian AI ecosystem that drives innovation and enhances economic competitiveness—ensuring Australia’s place higher in the value chain. The UK Government is pursuing such a strategy. That includes driving AI adoption through investments in infrastructure, talent and R&D, while also establishing a flexible regulatory environment and actively encouraging both domestic and international investment in the sector. There’s a focus on sector-specific regulatory approaches, empowering existing regulators and promoting the UK as a global hub for AI innovation and safety. That’s a valuable approach for Australia to consider.

A successful COP31 needs Pacific countries at the table

Australia’s bid to co-host the 31st international climate negotiations (COP31) with Pacific island countries in late 2026 is directly in our national interest. But success will require consultation with the Pacific.

For that reason, no final decision should yet be made on which Australian city hosts COP31—particularly because this week’s announced preference to host it in Adelaide appears to have taken the Pacific climate community by surprise. Adelaide isn’t on the Pacific.

By making this announcement, Australia sent the wrong message to its potential Pacific co-hosts, and if collaboration goes ahead, there will be many more choices and investments to make.

To be clear, Australia should maintain its bid for COP31. Australia’s leaders need to grasp that hosting COP31 is a strategic win for Australia, but how it does so matters. It is an opportunity to build and strengthen relationships with the Pacific community at a crucial time in the region, given key partners such as US are withdrawing and competitors such as China are advancing.

Going forward, Australia should define COP31’s success in terms of strengthening its relationships with Pacific island countries. Failure, not just for COP31 but for Australia’s interests in the region, will come from decisions that work against those relationships

Viewing COP31 from a domestic policy perspective is a mistake, yet that is how Australia’s leaders appear to be approaching it. It is instead a much wider strategic investment aimed to firm up Australia’s Pacific partnerships on climate and security.

Australia’s narrow approach includes framing the rationale of hosting COP31 around the cost of the event. It’s right for federal and state governments to be prudent about practical aspects when it comes to choosing a host location for such a large event, but thinking of it solely in those terms ignores the important strategic benefit of hosting in the first place. Preparing for an event of this scale comes at a cost, but in purely narrow local economic terms, hosting COP26 in Glasgow netted more than $1 billion in benefits for Britain.

It may well be that the South Australian government was more interested in hosting than the Queensland or New South Wales governments—both of which make more sense logistically for Pacific participation. South Australia has advanced renewable energy deployment at a great scale. Hosting COP31 would allow it to showcase its efforts and domestic industry. But with co-hosting being a strategic priority, these decisions should be made in consultation with Pacific governments.

Again, potential economic benefits should not be the main driver of decisions around hosting COP31. Our aim should be to jointly advance Australian and Pacific interests in the region.

Australia and its Pacific partners should prioritise the development and advancement of a COP31 agenda defined by key regional concerns. On climate, we are all digging ourselves further into a hole. Australia should work with Pacific partners to reframe climate discussions around addressing those fundamental risks.

Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are crucial for the survival of many low-lying islands and regions, including in Australia. Equally, we are behind on adapting to and preparing for climate effects, limiting our ability to mitigate. Global climate finance is seeing even more regression: the gap between what countries need and what will be delivered is widening, just as global investments in development and resilience are dropping.

COP31 is an opportunity for Australia to shift regional views of its approach to climate and security. It’s a chance to demonstrate to Pacific leaders that Australia legitimately wants change and is willing to make sure the Pacific voice is heard. To do this well, it needs the support of Pacific countries who have proven time and time again that their voices are worth hearing.

It is still a long road to hosting COP31. Turkey’s competing bid remains active, and the next decision on Australia’s bid will take place this coming June. But if Australia does not secure Pacific support ahead of that vote, it won’t just be harder to land the bid; it will also be less worthwhile, and the damage to our Pacific relations will hurt our regional interests.

China targets Canada’s election—and may be targeting Australia’s

Following Canadian authorities’ discovery of a Chinese information operation targeting their country’s election, Australians, too, should beware such risks.

In fact, there are already signs that Beijing is interfering in campaigning for the Australian election to be held on 3 May.

In Canada, China evidently prefers the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney to the Conservative opposition. In Australia, we are seeing messaging against Opposition Leader Peter Dutton—suggesting that Beijing wants the Labor government of Anthony Albanese to be re-elected.

The Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Electoral Commission are cooperating to guard against China’s now well established habit of trying to shape foreign elections.

For Australian voters, especially those consuming media in languages other than English, the information environment is crowded and contested. Overtly, there are foreign official state channels (communications by foreign governments) and state-controlled outlets (those funded and editorially controlled by foreign states).

Covertly, there are attributed and non-attributed channels. Attributed channels operate under foreign state oversight without publicly disclosing affiliation. Non-attributed channels aren’t directly linked to foreign states, but are nonetheless aligned. The interwoven and reinforcing nature of these channels is part of the cause for concern, particularly as they operate outside regulatory or journalistic oversight.

Politicians usually refrain from commenting on foreign elections, though Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister this week raised eyebrows by saying he personally hoped Labor would win Australia’s. China’s interference is different to such one-off instances: it’s persistent, widespread and surreptitious.

Indicative sample of state-affiliated entities, it is not an exhaustive list. Source: 3rd EEAS Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats Report, March 2025.

In early April, Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Taskforce revealed that a  Chinese-language influence campaign backed by Beijing was targeting Chinese-speaking Canadians on the popular multi-function app WeChat. The messaging promoted Carney as a strong statesman, subtly framing him as a leader more capable of managing relations with the United States.

The taskforce found that the campaign originated from Youli-Youmian, a popular WeChat news account, which Canadian intelligence linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. The authorities had also picked up on the account in June 2023 and January 2025, when it targeted other members of parliament. This time the authorities found ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’—the use of a network of accounts to amplify a narrative disguised as organic public opinion. This activity peaked in March.

This tactic mirrors a developing pattern of Chinese electoral influence, where efforts are not always confrontational but rather cloaked in affinity and praise. Unlike the older image of disinformation campaigns as combative, these efforts are subtler. They don’t necessarily involve falsehoods and are not sought by the candidates themselves. This makes detection, let alone public consensus on countermeasures, more difficult.

In contrast, China-supported messages targeting Australia’s federal election have taken an overtly critical form. They often show up on state-aligned media, such as the Global Times, and on Chinese social media platforms, such as Rednote and WeChat.

For example, in response to Dutton’s concern a Chinese research vessel might be mapping Australia’s undersea cables, the Global Times accused Dutton of ‘beating the drums of war’ and using China as a political wedge in the election campaign. The editorial, which was also reposted in China Military news, took aim at what it framed as ‘paranoia’ and ‘double standards,’ pointing out that Australia’s own naval activities in contested waters, such as the Taiwan Strait, were not similarly scrutinised. Australian media outlets picked up this Global Times article and reported it widely, feeding directly into Australia’s public election discourse.

Screenshot showing Global Times article republished by China Military.

Screencap of 7 News coverage of Chinese state media articles.

Popular Chinese-language WeChat accounts have also amplified such narratives. One outlet, Australian Financial News (AFN) Daily, is a self-described financial media platform.  It recently published a series of highly circulated articles, collectively read more than 100,000 times, portraying Dutton as ‘a reckless, Trump-aligned figure unfit for leadership’.

Headlines included ‘Chinese people absolutely loathe him! If Dutton takes power, Australia will be in chaos!’ ‘华人极度讨厌！达顿上台后，澳洲大变!’ and ‘Completely doomed! Dutton’s rise will crash Australia’s housing market!’ ‘彻底完蛋！达顿上台，澳洲房价必将暴跌!’ Despite AFN’s nominal tie with Australia, its official account IP address traces back to an organisation called Changsha Aoxuan Culture Communication. The IP territory is registered to Hunan, China.

Example of headlines targeting Peter Dutton.

Official account information for AFNdaily in Chinese (left) and English translation (right).

China’s approach differs with local conditions. In Canada, efforts involve community-level micro-targeting through Chinese-language media platforms. In Australia, efforts have been at a macro level, with state media weighing in on elite political debates. But in both cases, the aim is the same: to seed confusion and divide public sentiment, ultimately reshaping policy trajectories in Beijing’s favour.

In the lead-up to the federal election, the presence of such narratives in Australia’s information environment may distort the truth at a sensitive democratic moment. Democratic resilience depends on transparency of the media and information environment. It’s increasingly requiring us to engage with new forms of information manipulation.

Ultimately, Chinese electoral influence reflects Beijing’s ambitions and tests the strength and self-awareness of democracies. By treating this challenge as either overblown paranoia or merely a problem for intelligence agencies, we risk missing the point. Our democracy and sovereignty require our elections to be based on Australian perceptions of what our politicians are telling us—whether truth, untruth or half-truth—not on what foreign adversaries such as China are secretly feeding us.

Strengthening Australia’s space cooperation with South Korea

The time is ripe for Australia and South Korea to strengthen cooperation in space, through embarking on joint projects and initiatives that offer practical outcomes for both countries. This is the finding of a new ASPI report by an ASPI visiting fellow from South Korea’s Defence Acquisition Projects Agency (DAPA), Sangsoon Lee, on the opportunities ahead for Australia and South Korea in terms of space cooperation.

Lee’s paper makes clear that there are opportunities to boost space cooperation and development to mutually benefit both states in areas such as national security, economic growth and resource management.

The paper argues that the first area of collaboration should be in joint research and development into small satellite technologies. These are satellites under 100kg, which, if developed collaboratively, could build domestic manufacturing skills and infrastructure in this important technology area. The paper notes that constellations of small satellites are more effective in strengthening resilience in the face of growing counterspace threats. Lee provides the example of South Korea requiring small satellites to enhance surveillance and reconnaissance of North Korea, and he notes that Australia also has a requirement for Earth observation satellites to support civil and defence needs.

A constellation of small satellites, jointly developed by Australia and South Korea, could thus benefit both countries. Although the current Australian government cancelled the National Space Mission for Earth Observation (NSMEO) project in June 2023, the requirement that it was to meet—for space-based Earth observation and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance— remains in place. By jointly developing such satellites, the paper argues, the Australia and South Korea could gain benefits not only from enhancing sovereign space capability but also through developing rapid technological innovation cycles.

Building on from collaboration on small satellites, the paper then suggests collaboration in the critical area of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). This could be achieved by establishing suitable ground stations in Australia to support and enhance South Korea’s planned Korean Position System (KPS) and the Korean Augmentation Satellite System (KASS). Australia is optimally located for ground stations, as Japan has recognised in an agreement for this country to host the Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System. Furthermore, by hosting these ground facilities, such collaboration would complement Australia’s existing Southern Positioning Augmentation Network (SouthPAN), which is also used by New Zealand. The overall outcome would be to enhance the accuracy, diversity and resilience of PNT services open to both states.

By far the most significant aspect of South Korean and Australian space cooperation could be space launch. Through streamlining procedures and regulatory arrangements such as launch permits export licenses and payment of export-import taxies, cross-border movement and launch of commercial rockets could become more efficient. To this end, the paper recommends that South Korea and Australia should negotiate an agreement to build and operate a permanent space launch site that takes full advantage of Australia’s proximity to the equator and distance from potential threats.

Rockets launched close to the equator for easterly orbits gain the starting advantage of the Earth’s rotational velocity, so the launch cost per kilogram is lower than for launches from higher latitudes. For those orbits and also for orbits that cross the poles, launches from Australia do not endanger people by flying over heavily populated territory. South Korea lacks proximity to the equator, and its rockets must dodge the territory of neighbours.

Lee’s paper notes that some cooperation is already underway in regard to launch. South Korean defence company Hanwha Group is exploring use of Australian launch services through a partnership with Gilmour Space, which intends to launch its Eris 1 rocket from Bowen, Queensland. Korean firm Innospace has signed an agreement with Equatorial Launch Australia for launch services from that company’s proposed Cape York space port.

In addition to streamlining regulatory arrangements for easier collaboration, Lee’s paper argues that a dedicated South Korean launch site, established by Seoul, could then benefit local economies.

Finally, the paper argues that there should be increased collaboration in space situational awareness and space traffic management as part of broader cooperation in space security. This makes inherent sense given the reality that space, as an operational domain in its own right, is highly contested and likely to become a warfighting domain in a crisis. Boosting cooperation on space situational awareness is a key step towards collaborating on deterrence through resilience, which other aspects of cooperation, such as small satellite development and responsive launch also contribute to.

Lee’s paper concludes with a recommendation for a space dialogue that brings together government, the private sector and civil society. This can help build collaboration and see a regular sharing of perspectives on both practical collaboration and policy development. Outcomes could include a government-to-government agreement on space launch cooperation and there could be a technology working group to support cooperation in areas such as small satellite development and PNT.

That would provide a foundation for more ambitious cooperation, with Lee’s paper considering ‘moonshot’ projects such as a lunar rover to be jointly developed and made by South Korea and Australia. Others could be a collaborative mission to a resource-rich asteroid and or research on technologies such as space manufacturing, resource utilisation and space logistics.

Australia and South Korea are both new space powers, so it makes sense for them to work together to make faster progress in using the space domain to their mutual benefit. Sangsoon Lee’s analysis is excellent and thought provoking. It represents a good contribution to any future discussion between South Korea and Australia on strengthening space cooperation.

Australian policy does need more Asia—more Southeast Asia

The international challenge confronting Australia today is unparalleled, at least since the 1940s. It requires what the late Brendan Sargeant, a defence analyst, called strategic imagination. We need more than shrewd economic manoeuvring and a tough assessment of defence capacity. Despite immediate election concerns, this is a time to question long-established assumptions about how Australia is positioned in the world. The Trump chaos, for all the damage it is bringing, could help Australia develop a fresh international identity.

Eight decades ago, between the fall of Singapore and the 1951 ANZUS Treaty, Australians could no longer put trust in the British Empire. Also, despite America’s large contribution to the Pacific War, there was no certainty of a United States security guarantee for the future. Analysts on both sides of politics increasingly began to think about a regional identity for a more independent—potentially more lonely—Australia.

The American alliance then allowed Australians to postpone such an accommodation with Asia. Now, in the words of Heather Smith, speaking at a 1 April security forum convened by Malcolm Turnbull, the post-Cold War order has collapsed ‘along with the norms and values that have underpinned the US-Australia relationship’.

How to imagine today a more autonomous Australia? Escalating British, European and Canadian engagement has obvious advantages—but this can reinforce Australia’s otherness in our region. Gareth Evans is right to insist we have ‘more Asia’—but what does that really entail? What is the roadmap for a deeper Asian engagement? Japan will continue to be important—but an explicit tightening of security relations with Japan delivers to China an unnecessarily provocative message. Australia’s Indian engagement will grow, but may present a similar problem.

The obvious strategy for achieving ‘more Asia’ is to capitalise on the relationship in which both sides of Australian politics have invested most heavily: Southeast Asia.

This is not to say that individual Southeast Asian countries or their regional organisation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), offer Australia the type of economic or military advantage once gained from the United States, although ASEAN as a grouping is our second-largest trading partner and has a GDP larger than India.

Nor can we be confident we share values with Southeast Asians—or that we will not sometimes have tension with one ASEAN country or another. There has also been frustration with ASEAN institutions when it comes to getting things done.

Our ASEAN priority, however, should not just focus on practical endeavours. In identifying ASEAN as the framework for achieving more Asia, what matters is that their institutions are inclusive—embracing all major players in the region. In an increasingly fluid environment, they offer an established arena for engaging not just with Southeast Asian countries but also with Japan, India and South Korea—as well as China. In these institutions—sometimes on the sidelines of meetings—Australia can build bilateral or mini-lateral endeavours without provoking one major power or another.

There are no serious downsides to this ASEAN emphasis. Washington, Beijing, Tokyo and others recognise Australia’s long commitment to this part of Asia. Our early support for Southeast Asian nationalist movements, our status as ASEAN’s first Dialogue Partner, our founding membership of ASEAN-led institutions (the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, the ambitious Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade agreement, our vigorous practical cooperation across the region and our government’s declarations supporting ‘ASEAN centrality’—this record also gives Australia a claim to ASEAN’s continuing attention.

What we must avoid is claiming a leadership role. Australia’s long-term closeness to the United States sometimes enhanced our regional authority—and added to the prestige of our liberal democratic values. We need not back away from such values—and can expect they will still attract respect in parts of Asia. There is also reason for pride in the part Australia has played—certainly from the period of the founding of the United Nations—in developing an international rules system. The new era, however, will demand patient negotiation with non-liberal perspectives.

Although the liberal rules-based order faces resistance in Asia, there is nevertheless a strong commitment to rules and principles that facilitate international interaction. In a genuinely multipolar world, ASEAN’s consensus-seeking institutions provide an ideal forum for the type of give-and-take deliberation—negotiating across different normative frameworks—that will be a feature of rules development.

Inter-state relations more generally will require openness to ‘Asian values’. For instance, we tend to see Southeast Asians and others as hedging when they are unwilling to align with one power or another—and ignore the claim to a ‘principled pragmatism’ (as Malaysia often states). When Southeast Asian countries refuse to join an alliance, or to promote one ideological position rather than another—or when they accept the need to operate in a China-centred regional hierarchy—they are influenced by a heritage of foreign relations principles often different from Western traditions.

Working alongside our Asian neighbours—putting our point of view, of course, and acting where possible as a bridge to the United States and European states—Australians may also learn from Asian experience in handling major power ambitions.

Trump’s chaotic tariff policies provide an immediate opportunity. The whole region faces a common threat. With ASEAN leaders meeting to discuss a coordinated response, Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong speaks of strengthening ‘our network of partnership with like-minded countries’. ASEAN will reach out to China, Japan and South Korea—already indicating some willingness to set aside bitter rivalries between them. As a middle power with strong experience in trade negotiations (including through the Cairns Group)—and seven decades of intimate familiarity with America—Australia has much to contribute to Wong’s networking.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently called Canada ‘the most European of non-European countries’. Using the ASEAN framework to engage in tariffs, rules and other deliberations, could help build Australia’s post-America identity as the most Asian of non-Asian countries.

Unlike China’s flotilla, the Great White Fleet came in friendship

When the US Navy’s Great White Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour in 1908, it was an unmistakeable signal of imperial might, a flexing of America’s newfound naval muscle. More than a century later, the Chinese navy has been executing its own form of gunboat diplomacy by circumnavigating Australia—but without a welcome. The similarities and differences between these episodes tell us a lot about the new age of empires in which Australia now finds itself.

Both were shows of force. The former expressed President Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy of speaking softly while carrying a big stick—the original version of peace through strength—while the latter aimed at disturbing the peace.

The Great White Fleet’s visit was a spectacle. Australians cheered as 16 gleaming battleships, painted white and with shiny trim, paraded into Sydney Harbour. A flight of steps, the Fleet Steps, was specially built in the Royal Botanic gardens to receive the American visitors.

The visit was a calculated diplomatic manoeuvre by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin in making the invitation and by US President Teddy Roosevelt in accepting it. Both Australia, a young federation deeply tied to the British Empire, and the United States, a rising but not yet super power, saw value in signalling US Pacific presence to Japan.

For Roosevelt, the fleet also presented his big-stick foreign policy to European nations: the US had arrived as a global power. Just as important, he saw the fleet’s world tour as helpful in explaining to the American people why they needed to spend money on defence, including ships, as their country opened up to global opportunities but also threats. Deterrence, preparation, social licence all strengthened national resilience.

Deakin saw the chance and didn’t just invite the fleet to Australia but engineered the visit. He wanted the visit to kindle the notion in Australia that it should have its own fleet. Irregular Royal Navy deployments to the Far East could not guarantee Australian security.

Also like Roosevelt, Deakin knew that a passive approach to defence policy would not keep the nation safe in an era of rising military powers, with a strategic shift to proactive engagement needed urgently, not only once a crisis had begun. He was especially concerned about Japan’s growing sea power but, again like Roosevelt, he also had an eye on Russian and (later) German sea power.

While Deakin wanted a national navy and was an empire man, he thought it prudent to start building a partnership with the US. Not yet replacing Britain as global leader, it had burst on to the strategic scene only a decade earlier. It had annexed the Philippines in 1898 in the Spanish-American War and, in the same year, the Hawaiian Islands. These made the US a Pacific power.

Both men in the early 1900s understood the connection between European and Pacific security and both set out to protect their national interests by working together against European and Asian powers seeking to create instability and spheres of influence.

As Russell Parkins well describes in Great White Fleet to Coral Sea, Deakin noted in one of his written invitations to the US that ‘No other Federation in the world possesses so many features of likeness to that of the United States as does the Commonwealth of Australia’. Roosevelt later acknowledged he had not originally planned for the fleet to visit Australia but that Deakin’s invitation had confirmed his ‘hearty admiration for, and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe that America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious emergency’.

This was naval might wielded with soft edges: immense firepower floating on the harbour, and friendly chats over tea ashore.

Today the strategic environment again involves European and Asian powers—Russia and China—seeking spheres of influence, only the dynamics of the naval visit couldn’t be more different. No time for afternoon tea, just the reality that Australia faces a security threat from Beijing that demands national preparedness and international friendships and alliances.

When Australia and China encounter each other at sea, the interactions are adversarial, accompanied by dangerous Chinese manoeuvres, high-powered lasers shining into cockpits, chaff dropped into Australian aircraft engines and sonar injuring Australian navy divers. These are not friendly port calls but dangerous military activities and displays of coercive statecraft.

The Great White Fleet sought goodwill and alliances. China’s naval behaviour is an assertion of dominance. If the Australian public were in any doubt about how Beijing intended to interact with the region, China’s behaviour in this most recent episode should be instructive. The lack of warning given to Australia was a warning itself of what is to come. Beijing wants us to heed it and submit.

We must not submit. We must learn from the incident and change Beijing’s behaviour.

When a Chinese naval flotilla last made a port call to Sydney, in 2019, it was met with some public unease, if not alarm. Australia had, after all, approved the visit. But through a combination of Canberra’s ignorance of history and Beijing’s aim of rewriting it, the visit was approved without recognising that it coincided with the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Not long after the negotiated port visit, China suspended ministerial-level engagement as part of coercion to bring Australia into line. Despite some warming in relations in recent years, Beijing chose not to give Australia advance notice of live-fire exercises. The same Beijing that only a few years ago gave notice of a visit now has the confidence to fire at will.

Australia must stop being surprised by every new Chinese military or hybrid warfare development. Beijing’s confidence is growing in all domains, including cyberspace. With intrusions known as Volt Typhoon, China’s intelligence agencies were outed in 2023 as having pre-positioned malware for disrupting and destroying our critical infrastructure. This should also be seen as a rehearsal for later cyber moves.

And now, for the first time in the modern era, we have seen a potential adversary rehearse its wartime kinetic strategy against Australia. Yes, the Japanese did surveillance and intelligence gathering before World War II, but this circumnavigation with live-fire exercises takes us well beyond intelligence collection. Beijing has been undertaking ‘intelligence preparation of the battlespace’ for some time with ships it frequently sends to Australian waters to observe our exercises or to conduct oceanographic studies (which improve submarine operations).

Just as the Great White Fleet helped to inspire the development of an Australian navy, the Chinese flotilla should warn us that our own fleet needs to be larger and ready to assure our security. The rhyme of history is that distant fleets operating in Australian waters matter and should spur our own thinking (and act as catalysts for action) regarding Australian sovereign capabilities.

After all, these episodes underscore an enduring truth about Australia’s geopolitical reality: we are a regional power situated between global hegemons and their very large navies. One could even say that we are girt by sea power. But this is not new territory; it is the blessing and burden of geography and history.

Whether it was navigating the transitions from British to American primacy in the Pacific or more recently adjusting to China’s challenge to the US-led order, Australia has always had to manage its strategic relationships with agility and nuance.

The key difference, of course, is that Australia welcomed the Great White Fleet in 1908 with open arms. Today, Australia finds itself on the receiving end of an unwelcome presence by ships that appear uninterested in friendly port visits. This demands a response that is not reckless but is firm enough to avoid being feckless.

Although the position is difficult, the Australian government should not think it must walk a tightrope in dealing with China. The strength of response to Beijing’s aggression should depend on the minimum needed to deter more aggression, not by a perceived maximum that will leave trade and diplomatic relations unharmed. European countries have made such mistakes in handling Russia—declining to hold it to account in the hope that Putin would keep selling gas to them and delay military action.

There’s no use in pretending or hoping there is nothing to see here except one-off instances of unpleasant behaviour. China’s aggression follows its concept of dealing with the rest of the world, and it won’t stop. Quiet diplomacy won’t deter Beijing from more dangerous behaviour but will embolden it to repeat its actions. Each instance will show Australia is incapable of doing anything about it until Beijing—mistakenly or intentionally—goes so far as to make conflict inevitable. Australia’s time to stand up cannot wait until a live fire drill becomes just live fire.

As Teddy Roosevelt put it, big-stick foreign policy involves ‘the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis’. Navigating the best response to aggression therefore requires clarity about what is at stake.

What Australia does in the South China Sea—where it operates in accordance with international law alongside allies—is not equivalent to China’s recent foray into the Tasman Sea. Beijing’s actions represent yet another demonstration of reckless behaviour, following its dangerous harassment of Australian forces. By making various attacks—with lasers, chaff or sonar—China shows an undeniable pattern of attempted intimidation. When Australia sails into international waters, we do so to maintain the rules-based order and promote regional stability, yet when China does the same it is often to undermine the rules and destabilise the region.

The intimidation is in fact regional; it’s not just about Australia. Just as the Great White Fleet demonstrated America’s arrival as a Pacific power, China’s naval activities signal Beijing’s intent to reshape the region’s strategic balance. Australia, as it has done before, must adapt. It must spend more on its own defence capabilities, deepen relationships with like-minded democracies and maintain the diplomatic dexterity that has long supported its survival in a world of rising and falling empires.

Most importantly, the government must bring the Australian public along for the voyage. The threat from China should surprise Australians no more than the threat from Putin should surprise Europeans.

Knowledge is power and the Australian public can be empowered, and therefore prepared, not to be shell-shocked by China’s aggression. It should instead be reassured that the Australian government has the situation in hand and that defence investment is a downpayment on our future security. It should be reassured that the spending makes conflict less likely.

Australia is not a major power, but we have the world’s 13th largest economy and are not without influence. We should stop seeing ourselves as a middling middle power. We definitely shouldn’t act as a small power. We should be confident as a regional power. Our voice, actions and choices matter at home and abroad. It’s why Washington wants us as an active partner and Beijing wants us to be a silent one. Australia’s global advocacy for a rules-based system, and its public calling out of Beijing’s wrongdoing have been highly valued in Europe, Asia and North America.

Smaller regional countries rely on us to stand up to Beijing where they feel unable, while Europe increasingly knows the fight against Russia is also a fight against Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partner, China. And an Australia that stands up for itself and our friends will again demonstrate the value of partnerships to our ally the US.

Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet epitomised show of force as a means to deter conflict as well as preparation should deterrence fail. (Its cruise was also an exercise in long-range deployment.) The time for deterrence and preparation is with us once again. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said this month that China was ready for war, ‘be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.’

We need to show, along with our ally the US and other partners, that war is not what we want but is something we are prepared for. If we cannot show that we have a capable stick, and the intention to use it if required, we will be defeated with or without a fight.

As Teddy Roosevelt said: ‘Peace is a great good; and doubly harmful, therefore, is the attitude of those who advocate it in terms that would make it synonymous with selfish and cowardly shrinking from warring against the existence of evil.’

The past tells us that navigating strategic competition requires a blend of strategic foresight and political agility. The echoes of 1908 should serve as both warning and guidepost for the uncertain waters ahead.

Trump’s tariffs: Australia’s worry is the effect on its trading partners

With the execution of global reciprocal tariffs, US President Donald Trump has issued his ‘declaration of economic independence for America’. The immediate direct effect on the Australian economy will likely be small, with more risk from the confluence of tariffs on its key trading partners. But the global effects of the United States’ tariff regime will extend beyond the economic effects, with implications for America’s reputation as a trusted and reliable partner. All the while, China stands ready to fill the gap.

With Trump’s latest executive order, from midnight on 3 April the US will impose far-reaching tariffs on other countries to compensate for the alleged combined impact of foreign countries’ tariffs and non-tariff barriers on US exports. Emphasising the ‘fairness’ of the approach in a White House Rose Garden address on 2 April, Trump said the reciprocal tariffs of up to 50 percent equated to just half of the trade measures levied by those countries against America. These were complemented by a baseline tariff of 10 percent on goods from every country—except for Canada and Mexico, which are already subject to tariffs of 25 percent. The 10 percent would not be added to goods already subject to tariffs, such as semiconductors, steel and aluminium.

The 10 percent levied against Australian goods exports to the US will likely have a minimal impact on Australia’s economy, despite being estimated to constitute a direct cost the Australian industry of US$1.6 billion. Speaking to the media after the tariff announcement, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the tariffs were unwarranted and ‘not the act of a friend’. But he also sought to reassure, noting the exports constituted less than 5 percent (US$16.6 billion) of Australian goods exports. By comparison, more than 30 percent of Australia’s exports are sold to China.

Australia provides duty free access to US imports under the 2005 Australia-US Free Trade Agreement. However, the Trump administration’s concern with Australia is likely with what it considers non-tariff barriers as outlined in the findings of the USTR report on Foreign Trade Barriers (PDF), of 1 April. The report details several longstanding US concerns with Australian biosecurity regulations on agricultural products (certain meat and fruit imports), issues with Australia’s policies on pharmaceuticals (which mandate a price for drugs under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) and payment for news content on social media. While it doesn’t mention Australia’s recent social media protections for children, this has also been raised by the US tech industry as a non-trade barrier.

The 10 percent tariff scenario will impose short-term direct costs on Australian industry. Most affected will likely be Australian beef and other meat products, exports of which to the US were worth US$4 billion in 2024 and accounted for more than a quarter of US imports of foreign beef. The US has been Australia’s largest market for beef in recent years. Despite having a large beef industry, the US relies on certain imported beef products. This could give a degree of leverage as Canberra progresses long running negotiations with Washington on the issue. Albanese has ruled out any compromise on other US concerns, in particular social media protections and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Australia’s trade-exposed economy will be more vulnerable to second and third order effects as some of Australia’s key trade partners respond to these new tariffs. While tit-for-tat tariffs may depress the Australian economy, greater impact will likely come from regional partners adapting trade strategies and adjusting supply-chains to minimise their exposure, and from businesses delaying investment decisions due to uncertainty around US and other governments’ policies.

Four of Australia’s top five trading partners, accounting for 44.3 percent of Australia’s two-way trade in 2023–24, are subject to higher US tariffs: China (a 34 percent tariff), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (26 percent) and India (27 percent). Developing or emerging economies, such as Vietnam (46 percent) and Indonesia (32 percent), will likely find it harder to absorb the effect of tariffs, due to their reliance on export-driven growth and deep integration in global manufacturing supply chains. The resumption on 2 April of exclusion of goods from China and Hong Kong from duty-free de minimis treatment will be an additional hit to the Chinese economy.

The Indo-Pacific is home to most of the world’s people. It accounts for 60 percent of global GDP and two-thirds of global economic growth. Since former president Barack Obama’s much vaunted Pivot to Asia from 2011, the US has sought to focus more strongly on the region for strategic and economic reasons. Despite some efforts such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, US protectionism has hampered meaningful progress on US trade with the region. By comparison, China is likely the top trading partner for most countries in the world, particularly in Asia. As China actively competes with the US for influence with these countries, steep US tariffs on their exports may cause them to orientate away from the US market, deepening this trend. Tariffs will undermine US efforts to establish itself as a preferred partner in the Indo-Pacific region while providing China with ammunition to support its claims of American self-interest and unreliability.

This article has been corrected in several places. It now says the direct cost to Australian industry from Trump’s tariff on Australia is estimated at US$1.6 billion, that it will likely have minimal economic impact, that the administration’s Australian concern is likely with what it sees as non-tariff barriers, that Australian pharmaceutical price regulation applies not only to imported pharmaceuticals, and that the tariff on India is 27 percent.

Open Australia versus closed United States

Beyond trade and tariff turmoil, Donald Trump pushes at the three core elements of Australia’s international policy: the US alliance, the region and multilateralism.

What Kevin Rudd called the ‘three fundamental pillars’ are the heart of Australia’s foreign policy consensus.

Even Robert Menzies had versions of those pillars in his policy Parthenon. The consensus dates from the dark days of World War II, when the United States stepped up to perform the vital role Menzies defined as the ‘great and powerful friend’.

The eight-decade lineage means Australia is not about to give up on alliance, region and multilateralism as expressions of our interests, history and geography. But Trump alters Australia’s understanding of what the pillars can support.

The scope of region has grown from the South Pacific and East Asia to become the Asia-Pacific, and now the Indo-Pacific. The sorry state of the United Nations means multilateralism offers a rules-based order where rules rupture and order buckles. The US ‘is turning against the liberal international order that it once forged’, Chatham House argues, drawing on its research for the US National Intelligence Council.  The alliance has deep roots in the dire days of 1942 when Washington made General Douglas MacArthur commander in the Southwest Pacific, instructing him to repel the Asian invader and hold ‘the key military bases of Australia as bases for future offensive action’.

The treaty expression of the alliance, ANZUS, now in its eighth decade, rests on a promise to consult about military threats. Thus, while NATO is shocked to sense Trump-sized holes in the promise of automatic military response to attacks, Australia has always understood the contingent nature of ‘consult’, all that ANZUS actually compels the signatories to do in case of security threats. The embrace of the alliance totem by Menzies raises three implicit questions about any US administration: How great? How powerful? How friendly?

Trump has changed the politics of the alliance consensus in Australia’s election. Peter Dutton proclaims: ‘If I need to have a fight with Donald Trump or any other world leader to advance our nation’s interest, I’d do it in a heartbeat.’

Fight the US president in a heartbeat? Roll over, Bob Menzies. A Liberal leader breaks an unwritten rule of Australian politics that states that any party doubting the alliance is punished by voters.

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull offered a meditation on how Australia must recalibrate ‘to discuss how we can defend ourselves without America’, arguing that ‘Trump makes it very clear he is both a less reliable and a more demanding ally.’ 

Canberra wise owls such as Dennis Richardson recognise this less-reliable-more-demanding judgement of the US, while still embracing the alliance. Attempting that balance, Dutton offers to fight Trump while maintaining that the AUKUS submarine isn’t at risk, because both sides of US politics see its benefits.

Even the crown jewels of the alliance lose shine. The Economist surveyed Trump’s damage to ‘the world’s most powerful intelligence pact’, the Five Eyes signal intelligence partnership of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, identifying three risks:

—The US will disrupt the arrangement, ‘perhaps acting on its threats to boot out Canada from the Five Eyes’;

—The allies will share less, fearing that ‘the Trump administration will be lax in protecting its secrets’; and

—The most likely scenario is that Trump’s war on the federal bureaucracy and politicisation of the intelligence community ‘will cause turmoil and paralysis among American spies that spill over onto allies’.

In the new reciprocal tariff schedule just released by Trump, Asia is the top target. Countries getting tariffs in the 40 percent range include Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Laos and Myanmar; those in the 30 percent range include China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh; those in the 20 percent range include Japan, South Korea, India, Malaysia and Pakistan.

As Trump imposes tariffs to shut out the world, Australia could show the Indo-Pacific how open it is by killing the last of its tariffs, completing our trek from being a highly protected economy to one of the most open in the world. Australia’s remaining tariffs range from 3 to 5 percent. We could quickly go to zero. Bryan Clark of the Australian Centre for International Trade and Investment says: ‘Abolishing tariffs would lower prices for consumers, reduce business costs and simplify supply chains, boosting resilience in a disrupted global market.’

Zero tariffs would be an emphatic response to an autarkic US and a practical invitation to the rest of the Indo-Pacific. Australia would answer bad policy with good policy—open Australia versus closed US.

Technology can make Team Australia fit for strategic competition

In the late 1970s Australian sport underwent institutional innovation propelling it to new heights. Today, Australia must urgently adapt to a contested and confronting strategic environment.

Contributing to this, a new ASPI research project will examine technology’s role in fostering national security innovation, particularly in transcending business as usual.

Australians love sport, especially the Olympics. They particularly love winning—even if they only beat New Zealand. Between 1956 and 1972 Australia won at least five golds (and 17 medals) at each summer games. This seemingly confirmed how effortless national success, prosperity and development were for the post-war ‘lucky country’.

And then the world changed.

Australia returned from Montreal 1976 with zero golds and just five medals. Humiliation was exacerbated by it being the first games broadcast in colour on Australian television. Worse, the Kiwis won two golds—even beating the Kookaburras at hockey.

Australia had missed the global shift in sports to professionalism and (sometimes questionable) sports science. Post-Montreal disquiet motivated Malcolm Fraser to reverse planned cuts and to establish the Australian Institute of Sport in 1981. Beyond the dollars, Australian sport underwent a profound cultural and psychological shift and continued to evolve: in May 2024 the Albanese government invested almost $250 million in the sport institute’s modernisation.

The result? Since 1981 Australia has won at least 20 medals at each summer games except 1988’s. We’ve even become regular winter medallists. Adaptation, innovation and commitment paid off.

Today much more consequential shockwaves are bearing upon Australian prosperity and sovereignty: the prospect of Chinese hegemony in our hemisphere; convulsions in US policy and relationships; and the metastasising threat environment described in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment.

Since the late 2010s, governments of both persuasions have rhetorically recognised the magnitude of the challenge. In 2020, the then prime minister said Australia was facing ‘one of the most challenging times we have known since the 1930s and the early 1940s’. According to a press release from Defence Minister Richard Marles, ‘Australia faces the most complex and challenging strategic environment since the Second World War.’ Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describes ‘a time of profound geopolitical uncertainty’. Foreign Minister Penny Wong says it’s ‘nothing less than a contest over the way our region and our world work’.

So, where’s the imperative to address this ‘new world disorder’? We’re still not organising like a nation under this sort of challenge—despite warnings in ASIO’s threat assessments, the Defence Strategic Review and the National Defence Strategy. How do we create traction? How do we overcome the capacity gap of a nation of 26 million in a region of 4.3 billion?

Like after the 1976 Olympics, this isn’t just about budgets. It’s about creating cultural shift and encouraging and implementing novel, innovative ways of working—particularly through opportunities presented by technology.

A new research project by ASPI’s Statecraft & Intelligence Centre, in collaboration with Australian technologists Penten, is exploring the application of Australian sovereign technologies (including secure mobility) to business-as-usual work practices inside national security agencies. This aims to show how technology may foster innovation, bridge the capacity gap and sustain capabilities.

The project also explores how agencies and staff can access effective, secure tools so that ‘working better’ doesn’t become ‘working around’—which would introduce security and governance risks highlighted in a recent report by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and shown by the Signalgate debacle in the United States.

Agency-level focus recognises that national adaptation will need to be comprehensive, including not just big-picture government and societal changes but organisational and workplace-level reforms. What’s more, it comes as historically significant investments are creating opportunities to transform default ways of working. This is also happening as the recently released Independent Intelligence Review finds that ‘the business model for meeting the intelligence needs of executive government is no longer keeping up with demand and needs re-imagining’ and, separately, that the National Intelligence Community must ‘work hard at recruitment and retention’.

Using internationally tested secure mobility options inside and outside high security spaces doesn’t simply promise convenience and speed. They offer possibilities for better bridging the interface between intelligence producers and consumers—moving beyond pieces of paper (and electronic versions of pieces of paper) to meet actual information preferences of a new generation of ministers, officials and war fighters. This in turn will transform how intelligence is generated, presented and evaluated.

Making IT use and IT-linked work practices inside national security facilities look more like 2025 and less like 1995 isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s an important shift towards meeting expectations of current and future workforce talent. Meeting their needs would improve retention and thereby addresses a key national security vulnerability.

These are just two examples of possibilities being explored as part of the ASPI-Penten project, which will report later this year and provide practical, implementable advice to the broader national security community – while building on the IIR’s findings and recommendations.

Business as usual didn’t cut it in sport 50 years ago. It definitely won’t cut it in the unforgiving international arena today—or tomorrow.

The US alliance is precious, but Australia should plan for more self-reliance

If our strategic position was already challenging, it just got worse.

Reliability of the US as an ally is in question, amid such actions by the Trump administration as calling for annexation of Canada, threating to disband or leave NATO, and suddenly suspending support for Ukraine. This follows the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, which declared Australia’s strategic circumstances the worst since World War II.

As Australia seeks to urgently enhance its defence capabilities and sovereign capacity—including by acquiring nuclear submarines, long-range strike options, war stocks and emerging and disruptive technologies—our key ally of more than 70 years has become highly unpredictable.

In Australia’s immediate region, three critical questions arise. Can Australia depend on US military support, particularly the delivery of nuclear submarines within the AUKUS agreement?  Will the United States continue to develop and honour security agreements with Japan? And will the US help Taiwan in the face of potential Chinese aggression? This is not a complete list of concerns for the Australian government and Defence officials.

We should be careful not to throw our most fundamental alliance out with the bathwater of one US administration. But we had better start thinking now about what we would have to do if we needed greater defence self-reliance. To some extent, that implies preparations now.

As the old joke goes, if Australia asked for directions to a self-sufficient defence policy, the reply would be, ‘Well, you wouldn’t want to be starting from here.’  But here we are.

Despite early speculation, it is unclear how isolationist this Trump government will be. Its responses to Ukraine and Gaza present contrary pictures. It is important to remember that the US was isolationist and leaned heavily towards non-interventionism after the beginning of both World Wars I and II. Ultimately, it entered both conflicts on the same side as Australia. The bonds formed between Australian and American military forces in those conflicts are deep and enduring and are often invoked by politicians and service personnel alike. The dominant feature of the Australian defence headquarters in Canberra is a towering, stylised eagle symbolising Australia’s gratitude for US help during the Pacific war and the more than 100,000 Americans who died fighting there. America has been hard to predict and slow to react at times, but it has turned up for the free world when it matters most.

Despite some unnerving pronouncements from Trump, over the longer term the US has been more predictable and positive to Australia’s global interests. Australia benefits from American influence, even unpredictable American influence, as it helps maintain the mutually beneficial status quo. Beyond military advantages, our US alliance delivers essential intelligence through the Five Eyes intelligence partnership. The scale and breadth of that partnership would be nearly impossible to replace fully in any new arrangement.

I don’t like to imagine an Australian Defence posture without the US alliance, but I understand the need to consider the possibility. Australia would face an increasingly volatile world without the US as a strategic ally. It is wishful thinking to assume that Russia, China, North Korea or Iran would benignly fill any power void left by America. In such a world, deterring the use of force as a policy option would remain paramount. Deterrence is achieved through credible military capabilities, political resolve and, more often than not, alliances that complicate and overwhelm any opportunistic use of force. Deterrence is the starting point for any defensive national strategy.

A self-reliant Australia would have choices in how it achieves deterrence. The spectrum of deterrence options extends from neutrality to nuclear weapons. The most recognised example of neutrality is Switzerland’s armed neutrality. This is supported by more than 90 percent of its people, while defence costs less than 1 percent of its GDP. Although Switzerland’s approach has worked in a geopolitical sense to date, it is challenged by pressure from allies during crises to align with such policies as sanctions on Russia and by emerging security threats, such as cyber.

Nuclear weapons and the policy of mutually assured destruction have helped ensure there have been no global conflicts since 1945. Russian threats to employ nuclear weapons also appear to have restrained further escalation by other nations in Ukraine. The grim reality is that nuclear weapons remain the ultimate deterrent. However, these weapons are expensive to build and maintain, and a decision to acquire nuclear weapons is not straightforward or guaranteed.

Australia could consider each of these options. How a neutral or a nuclear-armed Australia would be accepted in our region is an open question. Whether the Australian public could be convinced to go down either path is doubtful. Domestic opinion will probably remain somewhere on a middle path. Australia would need greater self-sufficiency or a revised alliance framework without American military capability as a backstop. Defence self-sufficiency would not come cheaply and could not be achieved without a defence budget beyond 3 percent of GDP. It is impossible to determine the precise requirement, but it is sobering to note that Australia’s defence budget in 1942–43 was 34 percent of GDP.

A revised alliance framework could help mitigate costs. It would also bring the advantages of burden-sharing, enhanced mass and breadth, and more significant strategic complications for adversaries. Beyond the US, our traditionally nearest and most predictable military partners are New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. However, they each spend less than 1 percent of GDP on defence. They offer limited practical capability in either scale or deterrence. Indonesia will remain an important partner, but our relationship with it will—for historical and cultural reasons—continue to wax and wane.

Further afield but closely linked to our region and interest in the status quo is Japan. It has a credible military force, and the national and military relationships with Japan are developing strongly. There is good potential for an alternative alliance here. Our relationship with India is less well developed. India’s strategic worldview is also less aligned with ours than Japan’s is. There is potential with India, but building a trusting relationship with it will likely be slower.

We could look at the possibility of working more closely with Singapore, which is well armed for its population of 6 million and is highly skilled in regional statecraft. Our former closest ally, Britain, remains a trusted and capable partner, but it is far from our region and must remain focused on European concerns.

These are a few obvious options for a new alliance framework. No combination will replace the US military’s global reach and scale (including its nuclear capabilities) or capacity for deterrence. Nor could the new alliance replicate the Five Eyes intelligence apparatus in any reasonable timeframe. Australia’s relative security position would be degraded without US military backing.

What, then, would Australia need to prioritise in defence policy if it judged that the US was no longer a reliable ally?

The two key elements of military capability are the ability to shield (defend) and to strike (attack). Each requires a third element, intelligence, to be effective. Australia would need to enhance all three to be more self-sufficient. None would come cheaply in dollars or workforce. Typically, these capabilities take decades to establish. Building them up would require bipartisan agreement through successive government terms of office. In all three, we would be better off maintaining the US alliance through thick and thin. But let’s imagine what we’d do if we were unsure of the alliance, as follows.

Intelligence would require new trusted partners and additional technical and human capabilities for collection and analysis. AI will help but will demand ever-larger supercomputers and data centres. The workforce is specialised and complex to scale, let alone quickly. With national resolve, we could be more capable in a decade.

Concerning shielding, strategically, we would have to decide whether to defend forward (in our near region) or back (on our home shores). Either would have implications for our close neighbours.

Regardless of that choice, we would have to step up preparations that we are already undertaking. Critical infrastructure and locations already require hardening from physical and cyber threats. We need proven air and missile defence capabilities such as Patriot and THAAD ( both, incidentally, US systems) and an ability to integrate them. In a policy and coordination sense, we require a national alert system for air and missile threats and enhanced capabilities to counter sabotage, subversion and espionage within Australia. All this would become more important if the US alliance looked unreliable.

Similarly, additional strike options and weapons holdings are necessary and would be all the more so if we needed to be more self-reliant. The current Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance program to expand our domestic munitions-production capability is worthwhile but needs additional funding and acceleration.

Greater reach, particularly to strike targets from the air and sea in the maritime domain, and an ability to fight for protracted periods are key. It would be expensive to buy additional weapons and platforms (such as aircraft and ships) and to make genuine effort to expand domestic production. Increased domestic production is already necessary, and more of it would be needed for greater self-reliance.

Nuclear submarines are essential to our deterrent posture, because they most credibly contribute to intelligence, shielding and striking. Their full cost is still being realised but they do more to complicate an adversary’s strategic and tactical calculations than any other kind of platform. Walking away from the effort to acquire nuclear submarines (if we could) would undermine our greatest deterrent.

If we are determined to achieve greater maritime reach and influence, the debate about Australian aircraft carriers should be revisited. Again, the cost of these ships would be significant, and having an ally that might deploy a few in our region would be very attractive.

Autonomous air and sea systems offer potentially more cost-effective surveillance and shield and strike options. We already need to incorporate more of these with greater urgency. Even more of them would be part of an Australian Defence Force that might have to stand without the US.

We are already in a world where almost nothing happens without some ability to maintain our operations from space. Satellites and the ability to protect them are increasingly essential (and expensive) capabilities in which we are underinvested. A shift away from the US alliance would necessitate very substantial investment here.

These are only a few of the most critical areas for consideration in a more self-sufficient defence posture for Australia. If we broke our alliance with the US for any reason, we would need to increase defence spending enormously to maintain credible deterrent forces.

A final point should be emphasised: a move away from our alliance of more than 70 years—and a military partnership founded in World War I—should not result from the term of office of just one erratic US administration. The ramifications for Australia would be profound.