Nothing Found

‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’

— Edmund Burke, ‘Thoughts on the cause of present discontents’, 1770

The only surprising thing about AUKUS is that it has taken so long to be formalised. For more than a century, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have worked together to protect shared values and improve the security and wellbeing of people around the world. We have been natural allies and we have stood together in the face of totalitarian coercion, oppression and force.

We must never forget that freedom and respect for the rights of the individual are not universally accepted as a global good. The intolerance and oppression of totalitarian power were not eliminated following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union or the disintegration of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate.

The 2020 defence strategic update makes it clear that Australia’s strategic environment is changing as both military and grey-zone threats evolve at unprecedented rates. Democratic nations are witnessing the most consequential strategic realignment since World War II and are increasing their collaboration in response.

AUKUS has been described as ‘epoch-making’ and ‘the biggest strategic step Australia has taken in generations’. Given the headlines and commentary, however, it will come as a surprise to many that AUKUS is not predominantly about submarines.

Certainly, eight nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy will be a potent and effective deterrent that will contribute to the maintenance of security within the established global norms that have benefited all nations in the Indo-Pacific over past decades. But as one commentator has rightly pointed out, ‘the bigger picture is getting lost in a sea of naval analysis’.

The real value of this partnership lies in the joint development of capabilities and the deeper integration of defence-related science and technology, industrial bases and, importantly, supply chains.

This new trilateral security partnership will work towards making each partner more capable and more resilient. AUKUS complements, rather than competes with, regional partnerships such as the Quad and intelligence-sharing arrangements such as the Five Eyes.

Critics of the government have raised questions about what AUKUS will mean for Australia’s capacity to make sovereign decisions. They point to nuclear submarines to suggest that such technological dependence on the US will diminish Australia’s sovereign ability to act in its national interest.

Perhaps these critics are unaware of the facts, but more likely they have embraced historical amnesia for the sake of short-term political gain and are choosing to ignore the record of partnership between Australia, the US and the UK. An exemplar is air combat capability.

During World War II, Australia’s only locally designed and manufactured fighter, the Boomerang, was powered by a US-designed Pratt & Whitney engine. Royal Australian Air Force pilots stood a better chance of survival and victory in the Pacific theatre when flying the British Spitfire or the American P-40 Kittyhawk. The P-51 Mustang, which provided Australia’s air combat capability through until the Korean War, was a US design powered by the UK’s Rolls Royce Merlin engine. In today’s RAAF, the F-35 can hardly be considered to be Australian-designed or -controlled technology, nor can the F/A-18F Super Hornet, P-8A Poseidon and many others. The Loyal Wingman remotely piloted aircraft is as close as we get to Australian-owned air combat technology, but even then, Boeing, a US company, is the manufacturer.

Whether at the tactical, technical or strategic level, history shows that the government can and does make sovereign decisions in Australia’s national interests despite a high level of technological reliance on the US and UK.

During Operation Slipper and related deployments to the Middle East, Australia made its own decisions on rules of engagement even though Australian forces were operating alongside the US and other partners. Australia made the unilateral decision to enhance the capability of its US-made CH-47D helicopters prior to sending them to Afghanistan. After buying the US Navy’s F/A-18 Hornet, we chose to integrate the UK ASRAAM in preference to the standard US AIM-9 short-range air-to-air missile.

The history between the three parties in AUKUS validates this observation of independent action more broadly. In 1958, Britain acquired nuclear technology for its submarines from the Americans. Shortly thereafter, the US requested that Britain commit troops to the Vietnam War. However, UK Prime Minister Wilson refused, instead offering in-principle support for the war but not a military commitment. During that period, Australia operated French Mirage III fighters and British Oberon-class submarines but, unlike the UK, decided that the national interest was served by supporting South Vietnam. The UK and Australia have both remained committed and reliable allies of the United States, while maintaining sovereignty over the deployment and use of military capability.

To understand why AUKUS is so important, you only have to consider the lessons of Covid-19 around supply-chain resilience and the assessment of threat in the defence strategic update, which calls for Australia to be capable to shape our region, deter aggression and respond with military force if required.

The ability to deter aggression in our region will be enhanced by the agreement to provide the Australian Defence Force with a range of precision-guided missiles, particularly long-range strike weapons that can hold an adversary at risk. Maintaining regional security, however, requires the ability not just to deploy military force when required, but to sustain operations. This requires resilient supply chains, which will be enhanced by the decision to accelerate the manufacture of precision-guided missiles in Australia.

Returning to air combat for an example, AMRAAM is the key air-to-air missiles currently certified for use on aircraft operated by Australia, the US and other partners such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore. The US also has commitments to supply AMRAAM to partners in Europe and the Middle East. The capacity to replenish war stocks will therefore be limited in the event of a major or concurrent conflict, and an alternate manufacturing base will be key to ensuring resilient supply chains in any near-term conflict. AUKUS should underpin an agreement for Australia to develop the local capability in partnership with the AMRAAM manufacturer Raytheon to make and supply the missiles for our own and our allies’ use.

AUKUS does not make Australia captive to a foreign agenda. Instead, it opens doors to enhanced collaboration that will build collective capability and resilience, enhancing Australia’s ability to partner with like-minded nations to deter threats and contribute to stability and security in the Indo-Pacific.

In 1966, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson wrote to his Australian counterpart Harold Holt to explain that Britain would wind back its military deployments in the Asia–Pacific, reducing its presence ‘east of Suez’. Wilson told Holt that the cost of these deployments had become ‘a burden which we cannot afford’ and ‘out of scale’ with Britain’s new, Europe-centred foreign policy.

Five decades later, Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears to have overturned this east-of-Suez posture by entering into the new AUKUS defence pact. In so doing, he has committed to the firmest initiative yet to cement his post-Brexit vision of a ‘Global Britain’.

However, the full details of the trilateral agreement remain unclear. Whether AUKUS really ends up returning Britain to the Asia–Pacific (or Indo-Pacific, in the current parlance) will be the biggest indicator yet of whether Global Britain is a real objective or merely a rhetorical placebo to soothe angst over Britain’s post-Brexit future.

So far, the most tangible initiatives towards Global Britain have been altering foreign aid commitments, contributing to international Covid-19 vaccination efforts, and restructuring the UK’s foreign office. The most coherent articulation of Global Britain came in March in the form of the government’s integrated review of defence, development and foreign policy.

However, the true military dimension of Global Britain has thus far been ambiguous. Care has been taken to ensure the Global Britain program isn’t seen as a plan to project power against a bellicose China. Rather, it has been presented to the world as a plan for a British international role less buttressed by the European Union. The AUKUS commitment, however, will now leave little doubt that Johnson’s vision of a Global Britain also comprises strategic posturing against Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

The headline announcement of AUKUS is the exchange of technological knowledge to ensure Australia can acquire nuclear-powered submarines. It will ostensibly facilitate greater information sharing for other critical technologies as well, such as artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities and quantum computing. Yet what exactly that additional sharing of information will look like remains unexplained. It’s not even clear if AUKUS will be supported by a formal treaty.

Australia, the UK and the US already have an incredibly close partnership, with the Five Eyes grouping providing unmatched access to each other’s military and intelligence secrets. They also already have mutual access to one another’s training grounds, space platforms and research programs and are constantly jointly developing new capabilities.

So, beyond submarine technology, which arguably could have been shared previously, what exactly does Britain achieve by entering into the AUKUS pact? The optics of committing to a new trilateral agreement doubtless send a powerful diplomatic signal to China, Indo-Pacific countries and Britain’s partners about the importance of the region’s security to Britain’s foreign policy. Yet, more will be needed to ensure AUKUS is not just a high-production exercise in diplomatic theatre.

For Johnson to convince the UK’s allies and partners—as well as China—that AUKUS really is a concrete pillar of his Global Britain vision, the UK will soon need to establish a more fixed presence in the Indo-Pacific under the auspices of AUKUS. That could include basing British nuclear submarines in Australia or embedding more of Britain’s own forces in the region akin to the American’s deployment of marines to Darwin.

China will probably move swiftly to test the resolve of AUKUS, hoping to prove that it is no more than a paper tiger by forcing at least one of the three countries to lose face and limit its commitment. Such a test could come in the form of economic sanctions, cyber warfare, or even military manoeuvres. As the one AUKUS partner not resident in the Indo-Pacific region, the UK is the obvious candidate for a first challenge to the partnership. Should it falter in practically reinforcing its rhetorical support for AUKUS, the credibility of the UK’s Global Britain agenda will also be at stake.

In response to Britain’s 1960s proposal of withdrawing from east of Suez, Holt implored Wilson to reconsider, arguing that the ‘strength, stability and peaceful progress’ of the region needed the ‘moral, material and even military help’ of the United Kingdom. To not provide this assistance, Holt wrote, would be ‘an error which history would condemn’. However, the cost of a UK military presence in the region proved too great for Wilson and his decision arguably marked the end of the last semblances of the British Empire—the previous ‘global’ Britain. Johnson must now similarly decide whether the UK will carry the cost of upholding peace in the Indo-Pacific. This time around it may be a far greater burden.

Australia’s strategic value to Japan can be summed up in three points. Australia is Japan’s partner in bearing the torch of democracy, a quasi-ally with which Japan will work to maintain the Indo-Pacific as a free and open region, and a force multiplier for Japan and its alliance network. Japan’s strategic value to Australia can be described in the same way.

In 2049, the Chinese Communist Party will celebrate the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Until then, it will continue to build its economic and military strength, seeking to expand its dominance in the Indo-Pacific. As this trend accelerates, Australia’s strategic value to Japan is also destined to increase.

Australia has never been unimportant to Japan—the trade relationship dates back to 1957. Australia’s supply of iron ore, bauxite, coking coal and natural gas was the lifeblood for Japan’s rapid economic growth. They say Australia is a lucky country endowed with natural resources. Japan was no less lucky to have Australia as a key trading partner.

Early in the 1980s, Tokyo and Canberra together launched the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, creating the framework for the economic growth of ASEAN nations. Since then, a relationship focused on trade has evolved into one providing a vision for the region’s future. Economics and trade have been the alpha and omega of the Australia–Japan relationship. In recent years this has begun to change.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration in Japan, from 2012 to 2020, deepened and broadened the strategic nature of the Australia–Japan relationship. It also gave a strategic dimension to the trade relationship. Abe dealt with three Australian prime ministers, all of whom made the relationship geopolitically relevant.

One outstanding Abe achievement was bringing to life the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving the United States, Japan, Australia and India. At the end of December 2012, as he began his second term as prime minister, Abe wrote an article for Project Syndicate, ‘Asia’s democratic security diamond’, arguing that Indo-Pacific security should be the responsibility of a diamond formed by Australia, India, Japan and the US. Abe decided that was too much like blowing his own trumpet and he has not used the term ‘diamond’ since. Whatever one calls it, the Quad is the realisation of Abe’s vision.

It is too early to discuss how the Quad should be institutionalised and whether it should expand its membership. What is important is that the four countries’ leaders have agreed to foster the habit of cooperation. Seeds have been planted that will grow into the future. The focus is solely on security, on working together to achieve a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Abe broadened the interpretation of Japan’s constitution, which had become too rigid and outdated, and significantly expanded the scope of joint action between allied forces and the Japan Self-Defence Forces.

As an example, if a Royal Australian Navy ship is in the waters around Japan or a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft is flying near Japan’s airspace, it will be under the protection of the Japan Self-Defence Forces. In fact, US ships and aircraft routinely operate under the protection of the JSDF.

Compared with the Australian military’s history of joint operations with the US military, as in Korea and Vietnam, the changes that have finally taken place in Japan are modest. But the Chinese People’s Liberation Army cannot underestimate the significance of Japan and its partners becoming force multipliers for each other.

Australia is both a Pacific and an Indian Ocean power, and that is where its unique value lies. Japan and Australia, along with the US and India, will continue to play a role in making the Indo-Pacific a free and open place. Japan and Australia are now partners raising the torch of democracy.

When Australia and Japan signed a trade agreement in 1957, the Japanese prime minister was Nobusuke Kishi. By an accident of history, his grandson, Shinzo Abe, eventually succeeded in forging the most advanced form of free trade agreement, an economic partnership agreement, between Australia and Japan. In addition, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Abe rescued the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP) from the brink of death when US President Donald Trump dealt it a blow.

Any country that maintains state control and political party involvement in business management does not deserve to be part of the CPTPP. By building on their economic partnership agreement, Japan and Australia have created a free, transparent, rules-based economic system that spans the Pacific, using the trust fostered by economics and trade as a lever.

The fact that the UK is about to join the CPTPP, and that the CPTPP has provided the impetus for the EU and Japan to establish their economic partnership agreement, also demonstrates that Japan and Australia have become partners in sharing the responsibility for maintaining a democratic and free economic system on a global scale.

Both Australia and Japan have a track record of fostering democracy while respecting social pluralism. Both Tokyo and Canberra know that their democracies will never be complete.

To abandon democracy and become Leninist is unthinkable either in Australia or in Japan. In China, there’s a risk that the Chinese Communist Party’s stranglehold will collapse and the system will be replaced by something else. Both Australians and Japanese believe in the values of democracy. Even if democracy is on the wane elsewhere, they are willing to raise the flag of democracy. And there is the Quad, with Japan and Australia as its northern and southern pillars.

Australia, as seen from Tokyo, is a pillar of democracy, perhaps more so than Australians realise. It’s not for nothing that Japan, with its rapid growth, has Australia so close at hand. It’s a blessing for the whole world that Japan and Australia can now work together as dependable partners in uncertain times.

The United States rightly considers itself a ‘Pacific nation’. It has been engaged there almost since its founding—and the US west coast stretches to Guam.

Today, the US is indispensable to the region’s security. Remove it and see what happens. No single nation or combination of nations can withstand domination by the People’s Republic of China. The American presence also keeps certain other nations from going for each other’s throats.

But the US is dangerously overstretched militarily and, in locations such as the South China Sea, it’s overmatched.

Some sobering data: the People’s Liberation Army Navy has about 350 ships, though it’s 700-plus if you include China’s coast guard and maritime militia, which PLA planners undoubtedly do. The US Navy has just under 300 ships to cover the entire globe. And the PRC is launching four ships for each the US Navy builds. Play this out over a decade (or less) and, unless something changes, the PLA will be operating in force well beyond the so-called first island chain.

The US needs more ships and aircraft, operating from more places, and more missiles to counter the PLA’s massive rocket force. But even then, America wouldn’t be able to handle China by itself.

It’s not enough to beef up numbers. The US needs real partners that can operate with its forces and are willing to fight if necessary. That requires choices that regional nations deeply linked to PRC markets and scared of Beijing have been loathe to make.

The US can make the choice easier. It’s a major economic player but seldom uses this power to pressure adversaries, or to support friends. It had better start doing both.

Similarly, the US has scant physical commercial presence in much of the region, particularly in Central and South Pacific nations. These aren’t huge markets but, from a strategist’s perspective, they occupy key terrain. If you’re not there, you’re not interested, and the locals know it.

America’s political warfare (politely called ‘strategic communications’) is abysmal. Its diplomatic presence is limited—or non-existent—in too many places that matter. And, even when US diplomacy is present, political warfare seems not to be part of anyone’s job description. Beijing is running circles around Washington.

So, while the US has a base to work from, if it’s serious about remaining a Pacific nation, much less a Pacific power, it needs to get its military in order with appropriate funding, size, capabilities and locations; marshal and deploy its economic and commercial power; relearn political warfare; and sell itself and its influence (demand for US ‘green cards’ suggests this shouldn’t be hard). And it needs to do of all this with real partners. Australia, are you ready?

To politically and economically reinforce each other and the region, the US and Australia, in parallel or in tandem, should:

• relearn and conduct political warfare. If you must ask what political warfare is, I’ve made my point
• introduce an ‘economic Article 5’ akin to the NATO provision that an attack on one member is an attack on all. So, when China imposes economic sanctions on Australia, the US provides immediate economic support and takes other measures to defend its ally, demonstrating that it’s a real partner. Then expand the economic Article 5 to like-minded nations
• kick the addiction to the China market. Australia knows the vulnerabilities all too well. In the US, Wall Street and much of the financial and business classes are pouring money, production and technology into the PRC, a totalitarian country that wants to displace the US and dominate the Indo-Pacific. Boeing’s chairman recently declared that he wished human rights could be separated from trade relations.

Such shortsightedness makes detoxing the US economy harder than it should be. I suspect things are only a degree different in Australia. If business and financial types can’t figure out which country’s name is on their passports or recognise that forced organ removals and concentration camps are bad, perhaps regulatory encouragement is required.

To thwart Beijing’s plans, the US and Australia could:

• lead a serious export control effort along the lines of the old Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls
• support Taiwan, starting with free trade arrangements, liaison officer exchanges and joint humanitarian assistance and disaster relief training. If Taiwan falls to Beijing, the US will be hard-pressed to maintain its position in the Indo-Pacific. And if the US can’t hang on, Australia’s chances are slim
• as part of a systematic positive political warfare effort, put together a serious public–private infrastructure development scheme for the Central and South Pacific. That effort could also include Japan and, where appropriate, India, reinforcing the Quad. Current efforts aren’t working, as evidenced by Solomon Islands’ and Kiribati’s ‘flipping’ to the PRC from Taiwan in 2019. For countries to feel they have a real alternative, assign outreach and implementation people who know what they’re doing, and hold them responsible
• work with India on defence and economically
• search the whole Indo-Pacific map, looking for places to engage, without shirking responsibility. Given the embedded layers of PRC penetration, seeming redundancy of outreach helps ensure that vulnerabilities and opportunities aren’t overlooked. The Pentagon and State Department tend to look at much of the map and say, ‘The Australians (or Kiwis) have that part (so we’ll do nothing).’ Kiribati, the Solomons and other nations where Chinese inroads are causing headaches suggest that leaving things to others isn’t the best approach.

Now some military initiatives. It’s no coincidence that these come second. Without the political and economic efforts, military progress won’t make much difference.

The US and Australia could establish a joint multinational amphibious task force in the Northern Territory, perhaps in Darwin. It needs to be standing and not ad hoc or temporary. Consider the difference between getting together for a party and living together; they’re two very different relationships. Bilateral and multilateral exercises are good parties, but a permanent taskforce allows partners to really coalesce.

They should also pay special attention to Japan and the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Without a capable JSDF (which it currently is not) solidly linked to partners, our prospects are dim. Australia should assign an air force squadron to Japan, perhaps to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. The Japanese navy and army should be brought into the amphibious taskforce.

For the PRC, the political and economic realm and the military realm are fused with grey-zone activities, military and paramilitary. Then there’s the full range of economic, political, diplomatic and psychological activities that push one country’s interests at the expense of an adversary or enemy.

The PRC’s pulling nations away from Taiwan, planning a fishing port in southern Papua New Guinea and encouraging ‘independence’ movements in New Caledonia are all grey-zone operations. They’re as calculated as the PLA Air Force’s practice-bombing runs against Taiwan.

China has considerable success in the grey zone because there’s little to challenge it. Too often our response is to stare, semi-hypnotised, as at a cobra. That’s Beijing’s goal.

To break the spell, you must ignore the legal sophistry that claims China’s fishing fleet (and any Chinese company) isn’t part of the Chinese state, or that the maritime militia is a figment of the imagination.

Make it clear that you’ll push back, that you have the means to do so and, ideally, that you have friends who have your back. Have American and Australian (and Japanese) fighters accompany Taiwan Air Force jets to intercept PLAAF aircraft flying around Taiwan. This requires a willingness to take risks rather than just fret that Beijing might get angry.

As China gets stronger, the risks will get bigger. The sooner we push back, the better our odds.

Also, grey-zone assaults should not necessarily be matched act for act. If 500 Chinese fishing boats show up in the Torres Strait, don’t send 500 Australian boats (if they exist) to joust with them. Your counter will be more effective if it applies pressure where it will be felt.

You might suspend the Bank of China from the US dollar system, cancel residence permits and put liens on bank accounts of relatives of Chinese leaders—and expose and trumpet to high heaven those complicit in Chinese Communist Party corruption.

And don’t just be reactive. The US and Australia should conduct grey-zone activities together.

Addressing representatives from Central Pacific nations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticised the PRC’s coercive lending practices—but he didn’t offer an alternative. That tells you plenty about where we are when it comes to addressing Chinese grey-zone actions, and the political warfare of which they are a part.

So, what are the odds of America maintaining its Indo-Pacific role 10 years from now? Maybe 50–50—and I never thought I’d say that in my lifetime. However, if Washington girds its loins and collects its wits and works with Canberra, Tokyo and New Delhi as real partners, the odds improve considerably.

But this will be, to borrow the Duke of Wellington’s reflection after Waterloo, ‘the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’.

A clear strategy of the Biden administration is to repair relations with allies and partners and to build up the cooperation with them before negotiating with China, says Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Arthur Sinodinos.

In a video address to an ASPI masterclass on ‘The US–Australia alliance in a more contested Asia’, Sinodinos said there were areas where the US wanted to compete with China, particularly around technology, and others where it wanted to cooperate with China—climate change being a major one, along with nuclear non-proliferation and the aftermath of Covid-19.

‘Their attitude is there are areas where we will compete, areas where we will cooperate, and there may be areas like human rights where basically we just have to confront and call it out and no linkage between the two,’ Sinodinos said.

‘They built up to the phone call between the president and President Xi, and then of course, the meeting in Anchorage between senior foreign and security officials of US and China. So, it was all done in sequence.’

The message to China at Anchorage was that the US was working with its allies and partners and there could be no reset of the relationship between the US and China unless China also reset its relationship with allies and partners, including Australia.

‘John Kerry, the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, has made it clear, no deal on climate change between the US and China at the expense of the US’s other interests.’

Having served in varied roles, Sinodinos is one of Australia’s most experienced diplomatic and political figures. He was chief of staff to Prime Minister John Howard for 10 years, was a minister in the Abbott and Turnbull governments and has been ambassador to the United States since early 2020.

Sinodinos said that under the Biden administration the US–Australia alliance was going from strength to strength. ‘I think that reflects a conscious decision of this administration to place more emphasis on the role of allies and partners,’ he said.

‘They’ve looked at the world as it’s become, they’re not trying to hark back to the Obama era, they’re not seeking to airbrush the Trump era. I think what they’ve done is reflect on the lessons of the last few years in global politics and geopolitics and they’ve come to the conclusion that with the rise of China and with the way in which China seeks to assert its growing power, that allies and partners are a significant force multiplier from an American perspective.’

The Biden team had concluded that America needed to reassert its presence, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, and use that as a basis for working with allies and partners to push back in areas of overreach and to encourage China to think about how it adapted to the rules-based order rather than to create its own order.
‘From our point of view, this is a very important exercise,’ Sinodinos said.

‘The China of today is very different from a few years ago. It’s now more conscious of its power,’ he said. China was now exercising that power in ways people didn’t expect a few years ago. Sinodinos said he was one of those who thought China would grow up to be a version of Singapore or Taiwan on steroids, but that was not how it had developed.

‘That means that we have to adjust how we think about China. We have to adjust how we work with allies and partners.’

He said the goal should not be to contain or suppress China but to promote a strong and prosperous China which would be a productive member of the rules-based order in which the norms and institutions created, as much as possible, a level playing field among countries great and small.

In that context, the US–Australia alliance had never been more important and the US realised it was a significant advantage in dealing with China.

In the first few months of the Biden administration, a lot of work had gone into repairing relations with allies and partners. ‘That was not so much a challenge in the case of Australia, but there’s been work with partners in Europe. There’s also been work with Korea and Japan, particularly in seeking to deal with some of the issues that they have between themselves, so as to create a more harmonious set of allies and partners who can work together.’

Sinodinos said that before Kurt Campbell became Biden’s Asia coordinator, Australia’s representatives in the US had a number of seminars with him and his team about Indo-Pacific policy, including about what might happen with the Quad, how the US should approach ASEAN, and how they could work together to push back on economic coercion by countries like China.

Sinodinos said it was gratifying to the Australians that a US priority was an early meeting of Quad leaders. It was important that Biden and his team did not reject the idea of the Quad because it had been advanced under Donald Trump. ‘They looked at issues like the Quad on their merits and decided this is good, we should build on this.’

The Quad agenda now had three parts: vaccine diplomacy, climate change, and critical and emerging technologies, Sinodinos said. There was a critical need to ensure maximum vaccine production and delivery in this region as a template for what it might roll out in Africa and Latin America. That would involve a permanent step-up in capacity for production and delivery, recognising that this pandemic was not over and the world had to prepare for future pandemics.

The Quad nations would work together on climate change, on developing low-emissions technologies and other critical and emerging technologies sitting at the intersection of economics and national security, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonics, cyber and space.

There was a recognition that a challenge in the post-pandemic era, and as a consequence of technological competition with China, was to reconfigure supply chains around trusted partners. ‘And that of course has a security dimension to it,’ Sinodinos said. ‘It also has an economic dimension. It will create opportunities for Australia.’

For Australia, the Quad was more significant than ever, but it complemented the other architecture in the region, including the central role of ASEAN and APEC in the economic and trade space.

‘It’s not meant to supplant them. It’s not meant to be an Asian version of NATO. It’s not meant to be institutionalised or bureaucratised with its own secretariat.’

Sinodinos said the defence and security aspects of the US–Australia alliance were strong and would be built on further.

‘We also want to make the economic and trade aspects of our relationship with the US even stronger. We’re looking to have a strategic economic dialogue with the US which encompasses the sort of critical and emerging technologies and other matters … where national security increasingly impinges on the economic space. For us that dialogue will be an important complement to our other activities. We want that pillar to be as strong as the AUSMIN pillar in the relationship.’

Sinodinos said Prime Minister Scott Morrison had made it clear that in seeking to further deepen engagement with the US and in encouraging the US to play a greater role in our region, Australia was not seeking to have it carry an undue share of the burden of the alliance.

‘The defence strategic update made it clear, we want to carry our share of the burden, and the Americans recognise that. We got top marks for that when it was announced last year both from the then administration and from the Congress. And today, this administration recognises we’re prepared to do heavy lifting on our own behalf and as part of the alliance.’

Sinodinos said this would create opportunities, not only in a defence and security sense, but also in an economic sense. ‘I’m very optimistic about where the alliance is going. There’s a lot of clarity around objectives.’

Returning to the Quad, Sinodinos said it was underpinned by a vision that democratic governance had not run out of steam and that the West and the US were not in relative decline. ‘We have confidence in our institutions and our values, and we are prepared to stand up for those in our region.’

While some peddled a narrative that the US wasn’t interested in the region or that it was in relative decline, said Sinodinos, ‘I think the opposite is the case. The lesson from the history of the US is whenever they seem to have gone into decline, they’ve bounced back. There’s enormous resilience in the system.

‘And on the economic side here in the US I can tell you, over the next few months as the economy continues to recover from Covid, we’re going to see a very strong recovery which will also have a major impact on the recovery in Australia.’

From a military point of view, Australia’s drive to produce more of its own munitions would be done in conjunction with the US, along with research on ‘frontier technologies’.

Sinodinos said Australia must, from a strategic perspective, keep encouraging the US back into the region in the trade and economic space to help set rules and standards.

Getting the US into the Trans-Pacific Partnership to make it the region’s biggest trade agreement would be important. At present, the TPP was, Sinodinos said, ‘a bit like Hamlet without the prince’.

Having the US in the TPP would maximise its benefits and enable it and like-minded countries such as Australia to set the rules and standards in the region.

‘In the meantime, we’re engaging the US on a digital trade agreement, which may be either bilateral or regional. It’s based on the sort of agreements, for example, that we have with Singapore, high-quality digital agreements, which promote digital trade.’ That would, in particular, ease the burdens of small businesses involved in areas like e-commerce through the recognition of payment systems across borders. ‘All of this is the bread and butter of trade, but it’s important as a way of engaging the US further in the region.’

Sinodinos said he dined last week with the senior leadership of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and its Asia Subcommittee in the Congress. He found a surprising level of support for the TPP. ‘So, I’m quite optimistic that we can put together a coalition of the willing on this sort of stuff.’