Thanks to Michael Pezzullo’s Strategist article last month, we now know that Australia’s 2009 defence white paper foresaw our risky future and planned for it.

The white paper’s outlook for Chinese force development and the associated geopolitical risks has largely come to pass. It anticipated the world we now inhabit.

To face the changes, it envisaged Australian force expansion in five-yearly cycles that would extend into the 2030s and be informed by regular reappraisals of strategic risk. Had we stuck with the white paper’s plan, Pezzullo writes, 2025–26 defence spending would be $85 billion to $90 billion instead of the actual $59 billion. We would have an easily adjustable force structure and a level of expenditure that could pay for it.

Instead, this landmark policy was set aside when Kevin Rudd lost the prime ministership in 2010.

I can add to the story. In the years that followed the white paper, Australia and the United States thought diplomatic approaches could handle rising China. The US still wanted us to implement the 2009 white paper, but it was focused on making progress with its Strategic and Economic Dialogue with China. This occurred during my term as ambassador to the United States from 2010 to 2016.

Before we get to that, let’s go back to the 1987 defence white paper, which I delivered, which Paul Dibb wrote and which, as Pezzullo writes in another article, ‘established the self-reliant defence of Australia as the organising principle of our defence strategy.’

The 1987 and 2009 white papers both argued for a force structure that could achieve a self-reliant capability with our own resources in our area of direct military interest, covering the approaches to the continent. The explicit objective in 1987 was to be able to handle threats to Australia without imposing on the US greater burdens than the provision of equipment and intelligence, not an obligation to intervene. We wanted to be an easy ally.

The task in 1987 was much easier and far less urgent than what we must do now. China in defence terms was barely considered. In fact, we eschewed identifying any potential opponents, because the focus on the modest capabilities of our neighbours did not require naming a country.

By 2009 an opponent was identifiable and the outlook was much more severe. The force requirements for meeting it in a regional strategy were still achievable—if there was enough money and focus.

In 1987, we didn’t set resources as a fraction of GDP, though, if we had, it would have been a continuation the effort we’d maintained since the Vietnam War, 2.5 to 3.0 percent of GDP. Defence spending in 1987 was around 10 percent of the federal budget.

Resources looked adequate. For the navy, for example, there was some confidence we could buy eight submarines of what became the Collins class, replacing the six Oberon-class boats we had. When the Collins program was approved, it was for six submarines, but the submission to Cabinet noted if that number were achieved another two could be sought.

The surface fleet was more confidently projected at 17 ships, up from the 12 we had at the time. These were to be three destroyers (which were already in service), six first-tier frigates (four in service, one building and one planned) and eight new second-tier frigates of what became the Anzac class.

It was estimated that a fleet of 20 ships would be needed to cover the entrances through the archipelago north of Australia that led to our continental approaches. But it was hoped New Zealand would come up with four ships. (It eventually bought two Anzacs.) As the next decade-and-a-half proceeded, the two extra submarines were not built. The destroyers and first-tier frigates eventually paid off and were replaced with not nine ships, as expected, but three, the present Hobart-class destroyers. The surface fleet slowly declined.

The inflexion point was the 1994 white paper. We took a peace dividend from the end of the Cold War. This was despite our rejection in 1987 of the Cold War as the basis of spending. We argued in 1987 that the force structure we needed was based on regional, not global, strategic circumstances.

Moreover, the 1994 white paper changed the guidance for spending to a fraction of GDP, which it set at about 2 percent. With that much money the 1987 objective of controlling the approaches to the continent was still doable, but by 2009 the outlook demanded much more.

When the 2009 white paper was published, we were in fact below 2 percent of GDP, and the defence share of the budget was below the 10 percent we had had in 1987. Since 2009, the 1994 target has been reached only in the past two budgets. If we had reached Pezzullo’s figure of $85 billion to $90 billion for 2025–26, we would be around 3 percent.

When I was ambassador to Washington, the US constantly pressed me for Defence spending to reach 2 percent of GDP. US officials noted both the contents of the white paper and our reluctance to spend.

I used to point to an unusual position shared by the two countries’ national governments. Both had available about 25 percent of GDP to spend. With that, the US government did defence, social security, Medicare and Medicaid. Beyond those items, the federal government used funds for leveraging the states, local government and the private sector. There were no other programs on which the federal government was the major or exclusive provider.

But our 25 percent, I pointed out, covered pensions and defence and also universal health care, the universities, the 35 percent of students in private schools, a substantial subsidy for state schools and a range of social benefits (for example far more complete unemployment benefits than the US government provides). Today we could add the National Disability Insurance Scheme to the list.

A US defence secretary meeting Treasury and Congress for the upcoming year’s funds sees smiling faces. Here a defence minister sees no smiling faces.

It’s worth comparing US and Australian national-government spending of about 25 percent of GDP with the figures for European countries, including Britain, Germany, France and the Scandinavian countries, which all spend around 45 percent or more. The truth is we were nowhere near resourcing the 2009 plan.

Then there was the issue of focus. The 2009 white paper sought to prioritise our area of direct military interest in a way that no major defence policy statement had since the 1980s.

Our military had been and was heavily occupied—dramatically with East Timorese independence and then with Afghanistan and the Middle East. Our force structure needed only small adjustments for meeting these tasks. We performed as usual to very high standards and impressed our allies.

I remember a meeting in the Oval Office between prime minister Tony Abbott and president Barack Obama. Vice president Joe Biden and almost all Obama’s senior state, defence, trade and intelligence officials were present. They were ready to take us to task on fighting global warming, where they were not happy with our efforts.

But Obama began by asking Abbott for more general views on affairs.

‘Well,’ Abbott said, ‘we know that most foreign leaders who come to see you are unhappy about some aspect of US policy. We have no problems. Or there’s something they want. But we are happy with everything we get from you.’

‘But I want to tell you we think you are about to get into a lot of trouble in the Middle East [fighting ISIS in Iraq], and when you do we will be with you in numbers.’

The atmosphere deflated. How could you pressure a fellow who had said that?

I heard that, for months afterwards, whenever Obama was frustrated by allies, he’d say, ‘We need more Tony Abbotts.’

The prospective military tasks were expeditionary missions. In the first half of the 2010s, these were our focus, despite the clarity of outlook in the 2009 white paper. Except in promoting the solidity of the alliance, they had nothing to do with Australia being able to prevail in its own area of military interest. And the operations were readily achievable within the approximately 1.6 percent of GDP we were spending at the time on defence.

By 2009, China was emerging as the pacing power for the US in the Western Pacific. It was the main factor in Obama’s rebalancing of US forces to the Indo-Pacific, announced in 2011. This was the zone that Australia’s 2009 white paper addressed. China’s rise and the US pivot to Asia was the context in which the US pressured us to spend 2 percent of GDP on defence.

The Chinese forcefully objected to the 2009 white paper. Rudd rejected the complaints. There were domestic objections, too, some based on the importance of achieving satisfactory diplomatic dealings with China.

Also, with such a small fiscal pie to carve up, many people were concerned with the other pressures on the budget. Such pressures tend to be immediately politically salient. Except in a confrontation or when war threatens, defence tends not to be.

Later, the Obama administration was focussed on a process it had put in place in 2009, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with China. To some extent this effort to deal with the China problem diplomatically took the administration’s attention away from pressuring us to implement the 2009 white paper.

Under the Sino-US dialogue, an annual meeting took place alternately in Beijing and Washington. It covered security, including the main points at issue between the two powers, such as military issues around Taiwan and US deployments in waters close to China. The nuclear ambition of North Korea was also a preponderant issue.

This dialogue with China, I reported back to the Australian government, was probably the most important diplomatic effort that engaged the US.

The 2009 white paper is worth reading again. It provided for very disciplined force-structure development on a timeline that would have met what Australia now confronts. With the reliability of the Trump administration in doubt, self-reliance in the framework of the alliance has become critical. We really do need to be able to deter hostile developments in our area of direct military interest.

We are headed towards spending 2.3 percent of GDP on defence, in large part to pay for nuclear submarines. I believe as time goes by we will move to 3 percent of GDP.