There’s a lot of talk about submarines again this week thanks to the SubSummit conference in Adelaide. Perhaps not surprisingly given the venue, much of the focus was on the local versus offshore build aspect. That’s all fair enough—we’re talking big dollars here, and the size of the program is such that all of the potential stakeholders have plenty of reasons to make their pitch. That’s a good thing—the more the various options are explained the better informed the discussion can be.

Clearly the government wants to keep ‘Option J’—a submarine sourced from Japan—open, which is why it settled on its ‘competitive evaluation process’ to allow for the possibility. Otherwise it would simply run a tender process similar to that for the Collins class for the Europeans to compete. The question then becomes how to weigh the positives and negatives of what are quite different options.

But one of the unfortunate downsides of this debate (in fact most debates) is the tendency to talk down the competition beyond what’s objectively true, thus muddying the waters and detracting from the quality of the discussion. There’s no shortage of criticism of varying quality of Option J out there—in fact it’s hard to find much support. In our new paper released today, we take a look at the case for Option J and find that there are indeed some real strategic positives as well as issues of concern.

Let’s take a look at the critic’s concerns. They fall into several distinct categories. The first are ‘strategic concerns’, with any or all of the following:

• Australia would be choosing sides in north Asian security and thus would risk being drawn into a future conflict in that region
• a submarine deal would be to the detriment of Australia’s important economic and security relationship with China
• Australia would effectively helping Japan to ‘remilitarise’.

We don’t buy any of those arguments. First, Australia would only find itself trapped into north Asian conflicts if it negotiated a submarine deal especially ineptly. If we get the support arrangements we need in place, Japan’s leverage—even if it decided to use it—would be much reduced.

Second, China has shown no tendency to punish Australia for being a forthright critic of its security policies to date, and it’s far from clear that they could effectively punish Australia in any case. Finally, Japan’s moves towards a normalised security posture falls well short of a region threatening militarisation.

We think it’s in Australia’s interests for Japan to be more, not less, engaged in regional security. As American power declines in relative terms, having allies and partners around the region that can carry part of the burden of maintaining order will be increasingly important. That’s probably why it’s widely thought that the US is firmly supportive of a possible Australia-Japan submarine deal.

Because of these factors, Option J has positives that simply aren’t there in the same way with France or Germany. Yes, they’re both like-minded liberal democracies, but neither has the proximity, the inclination or the regional capability to make a lot of difference in our part of the world. On the other hand, the Europeans offer a wealth of experience in arms exports, and both have successfully exported submarine designs to be built in foreign yards. After our experience with the AWDs, that’s a very strong selling point.

The other broad class of criticism are ‘industrial and economic concerns’:

• a Japanese submarine would offer much less work in Australian shipyards than a deal with European suppliers
• the project management with Japan would be prohibitively difficult given cultural factors and their lack of export experience
• the opportunity cost to Australia of taking the work offshore would be too high.

We don’t say a lot about that in this paper. (ASPI has commented here, here and here on these in the past.) But it’s almost certainly right to say that the ‘Eurosub’ option offers more local work.

Nor can we sensibly evaluate from publicly available information the capability issues that might arise, such as the suitability of the Soryu-class for Australian mission profiles and the difficulties that might be encountered in modifying the design for the RAN’s use. That requires government—through Defence—to do its due diligence. Of course, that’s also true of any European option.

Our paper shouldn’t be interpreted as an endorsement of Option J. This isn’t an ‘apples versus apples’ competitive evaluation and the two pathways have qualitatively different strengths. But it’s not right to say that Option J offers little in the way of positives. Apart from anything else, it’d signal a further deepening of the Australia–Japan defence relationship and a further underpinning of the US alliance framework, at a time of shifting major power relations in the Asia-Pacific region.

Two incidents so far this year have highlighted Australia’s inability to protect its sovereignty and discharge its responsibilities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

In the first incident in January, three foreign fishing vessels were apprehended by the RNZN’s offshore patrol vessel, HMNZS Wellington, illegally fishing in Australia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Southern Ocean in breach of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). While the vessels were initially detected by an Australian surveillance aircraft, Australia did not itself have the ability to respond to the sighting.

After that incident, NZ Foreign Minister McCully said that countering illegal fishing in Southern waters was ‘not straight forward’ and New Zealand needed the cooperation of other members of the CCAMLR Commission. The environmental action group Sea Shepherd criticised the Australian government for ‘leaving the New Zealand government stranded’. Read more

Along with the submarine replacement program, the size and scope of Army’s future fleet of protected vehicles under Project LAND 400 and the future of the surface fleet are the other big capability choices for the Abbott government. That’s why ASPI will be taking a hard look at both subjects this year, and will run major conferences on both topics. The first, from 30 March to 1 April, will discuss Australia’s future surface fleet. Registration will open in mid-February. In May, ASPI will run a separate event on the future structure of Army and the LAND 400 program.

The future of the Navy’s surface fleet isn’t simply about choosing the vessels. There has been much political, public and media attention on the impact of program decisions on Australia’s naval shipbuilding sector. While the factors determining Navy’s future surface fleet are (or at least should be) shaped by strategic considerations, unavoidably they’ve become entangled with questions of construction. Over the coming weeks, the Strategist will run a series of posts related to the strategic, operational, international and industrial factors involved in decisions about the future surface fleet. Read more

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague is currently examining China’s South China Sea claims in a case brought by the Philippines. While China isn’t expected to take part in the case—indeed, it missed the deadline to lodge a defence this week—the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has nonetheless released a position paper outlining their legal objections, one of which is that the PCA lacks jurisdiction. A recent US State Department report into the legality of Beijing’s South China Sea claims refuted the validity of the nine-dash line as a maritime boundary. China rejected the US analysis claiming that it ‘ignores the basic facts and international legal principles’.

Human societies can only enjoy peaceful progress under the rule of law; the same is true of international society. If cooperation and orderly behaviour are to be advanced in the Asia–Pacific, we need strong global norms and legal rules to guide and govern relations among states.

The Asian strategic environment is witness to one of the most important power shifts in history—one that might produce a more cooperative Asia or a more competitive one. The biggest strategic question we face is not simply whether the future of our region will be one of war or peace, it’s also about the nature of that peace. Will it be a peace governed by rules and norms or a peace governed by power and coercion? Read more

In wrapping up the Strategist debate on Australia as a ‘top 20’ defence power, I’d like to thank the other contributors for a fascinating exchange. Peter Jennings’ initial contribution drew a thoughtful response from Andrew Carr, and the series unfolded from there. Contributions from John Blaxland, Nic Stuart, Peter Dean, and Andrew Smith subsequently helped to illuminate the shape of the battlefield. Looking back over the contributions, the core difference that emerges is the one between regionalists and globalists. Carr, Blaxland and Dean are regionalists. Jennings and I are globalists. I think Smith’s a globalist by virtue of alliance. And Stuart’s got a foot in both camps.

I want to use this final post to talk about three things that seem to me to underpin the debate: the notion of ‘balance’ in our global and regional imperatives; Australia’s strategic interests; and the concept of international responsibility. Rolled together those factors become something like an exploration of Australian strategic identity.

Several contributors mentioned the need for Australia to strike a balance between its global and regional roles. I think that’s an important point. But I don’t think past Defence White Papers have been good at setting the balance between the near and the far in Australian strategic thinking. The layered concentric-circles model is structurally biased, because the circles lead ever downhill, emphasising a supposed declining interest in the more distant ‘issues of strategic concern’—to use Peter Dean’s phrase—and a strategic prioritisation on ‘fundamental issues’ close to home. The concentric-circles model doesn’t help us strike a balance; indeed, it doesn’t even pretend to be interested in the concept of balance. If we want to do some balancing between near and far, then we need a different way to think about Australian strategy.

Read more