Anthony Bergin’s recent post Is Australia a pivotal power?  has sparked a lot of responses. Below are the latest submissions. We’re also happy to hear from readers who aren’t named Andrew.

It’s only words

Andrew Davies

In the proud tradition of ASPI not having a house view on issues, I feel compelled to buy into the ‘pivotal power’ discussion kicked off here by Anthony Bergin. Thanks to Damien Kingsbury, I now know that ‘pivotal’ is an adjective that already has its own associated meaning in these matters. But ultimately I subscribe to the Humpty Dumpty school of thought; words mean what we want them to mean. So really I don’t think it matters how we characterise ourselves. What matters, as Carl Ungerer pointed out yesterday, is how successful we are in shaping our foreign policy to achieve outcomes that support our national interests.

But I’m rather taken by Damien’s suggested ‘thought experiment’ of imagining what would happen if Australia was to disappear—that’s a very neat way of structuring the exercise of evaluating Australia’s influence. And it serves the purpose of quickly illuminating where our real influence lies. Read more

At first glance, the ASPI and CIGI push for Australia to help Canada engage our region to advance its economic interests doesn’t make much sense. Canada is doing nicely already—like in China for example (PDF)—and maybe should be helping us. And, economically, what has Canada—just like the Pythonesque Romans—ever done for us? Just ask the Big Australian: BHP-Billiton! Moreover, our new government seems keener on advancing our economic interests than someone else’s.

Peter Jennings’ argument however, is compelling. It’d be helpful to have another middle power at regional meetings. That’s enough of a shared objective to form the basis of our developing engagement strategy—although others suggest that stronger factors pulling Australia and Canada together are historical legacies and debts of gratitude, or our being similar countries with assumed similar interests (here and here). A consensus from recent events (PDF) is that some practical measures within existing frameworks are needed to advance this common objective rather than creating some new meeting opportunity—ASEAN already has plenty of those. Read more

Defence and security have yet to feature in this election. But it should. As ASPI’s Davies and Thomson recently pointed out, the ADF is in a dire position, particularly in relation to the sustainment of forces over the next decade. Sustainment (spare parts, maintenance, modernisation, upgrading) is just as important as the sharp-edged fighting tools of war: ships, planes, tanks and skilled people. The situation’s worrying enough now but it just gets worse in future.

Despite the wishes of the strategically blind, it isn’t possible to effectively provide for the defence of this country at the start of the 21st century with Defence consuming only about 5% of government expenditure and 1.5% of GDP. That we’ve provided inadequately isn’t alarmist, nor is it a myth—it’s a fact recognised by both political parties, but yet to impact on the Australian consciousness. Both parties agree that Australia should be spending 2% of GDP on Defence. This means that we’re spending about 25% less on our defence than everyone agrees that we should. Think about it. Read more

Like many of our readers, I’ve been following the recent discussion of the nature of the Anglosphere with interest. It’s been a lively exchange—and a sometimes wry one—and it sheds some light on aspects of our strategic culture that we usually take for granted. But ultimately I think we’ve been dancing around the key issue while having fun with definitions.

Whether ‘Anglosphere’ is a good word for the established world order is a subsidiary issue which we can leave for another time. The real question is what is happening to the world order, whether we’re likely to see a significant challenge to it in the foreseeable future and what our response should be if there is.

There’s no doubt from the exchange so far that all of the contributors agree that there are plenty of reasons for Australia to value the current world order. After all, it’s left us sitting fat and happy at the top of the heap. As inheritors of the global trading and financial system that’s largely an Anglo-American construct, we’ve successfully traded our way to prosperity. And along the way we’ve learned to love the military doctrine that goes along with it; God bless those Sea Lines of Communication. Read more

Defence White Paper 2013 breaks new ground in a number of areas—but at the big picture level, the most striking aspect of the paper is its revaluation of Southeast Asia. In place of the vague threat of yesteryear, we’re presented with a region of strategic importance to Australia and a set of prospective partners in joint endeavours. At a number of points across the paper, Southeast Asia looms as the new player on Australia’s strategic landscape. It is depicted as ‘central’ to our concerns about the broader Indo-Pacific. And its new status is reflected in the priority accorded to it in Chapter 6 on international engagements, where the authors proceed directly to Southeast Asian linkages after covering the US relationship and the specifics of the ANZUS alliance. Relationships with North Asia come later, and those with Indian Ocean countries later still.

Striking, and novel, in the paper is the identification of Indonesia as a ‘significant regional power’ in the Indo-Pacific (paras 2.8, 2.31, and 3.20). In the opening paragraph of the document it’s listed among the countries that have ‘transformed within a generation’. In the next chapter it’s portrayed as ‘an increasingly influential democratic regional power and emerging global influence’. As our assessment of Indonesia has changed, so too has our view of our own partnership with Jakarta. Our relationship with Indonesia is variously described as ‘our most important defence relationship in the region’ (para 6.28) or some variant thereof. Para 3.17 says that ‘the stability and security of Indonesia, our largest near neighbour, is of singular importance.’ The security futures of Australia and Indonesia are described as ‘intertwined’. Gone, in a change from past practice, is the tendency to group Indonesia alongside other immediate neighbours, such as Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the micro-states of the South Pacific. Read more