Opinion Archives - Page 2 of 4

The big wins for a stronger Australia out of AUSMIN talks

8 August 2024

This week’s AUSMIN dialogue between Australia and the United States has delivered some important policy agreements that will strengthen the vital US-Australia alliance in the face of a strategic outlook that Australia’s National Defence Strategy, released in April, characterises as “the most challenging environment since the Second World War”.

Of greatest concern in confronting the risks ahead must be that China will seek to impose unification on Taiwan, against the wishes of the Taiwanese people, through use of force, if necessary, with a crisis potentially coming as early as this decade.

China also continues aggressive provocations, notably against the Philippines, in an effort to dominate and control the South China Sea.

In the longer term, Chinese success in these territorial disputes would see it then well placed to control maritime trade routes that are vital to Australia’s security and economic prosperity in the 2030s and beyond.

In the face of this growing challenge, Australia and the US must continue to strengthen their alliance and reinforce credible deterrence against the risk that Beijing will seek to use military force to achieve its geostrategic ambitions in the coming decade and beyond.

The latest round of AUSMIN talks saw very practical and sensible steps being taken towards this goal.

Most importantly, AUSMIN saw agreement between Canberra and Washington that Australia’s defence facilities in the north will be enhanced to enable greater access and sustained use by US military forces during a crisis. This makes eminent sense.

Australia’s key role in any future war with China would be to act as a secure rear area for US and allied forces to operate from and to sustain and support allied military operations in what is likely to be protracted major power war lasting months or longer.

The agreement out of AUSMIN to enhance airbases at Darwin and Tindal in the Northern Territory, and to consider upgrades to the “bare bases” at Curtin, Learmonth and Scherger, as well as at the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, will give US and ADF forces greater flexibility to conduct forward operations in a crisis.

Important agreements were made on combined logistics, sustainment and maintenance that builds on a demonstration of pre-positioned US Army equipment at Albury-Wodonga and will consider requirements for establishing a logistics support area in Queensland.

It is sensible for Australia and the United States to prioritise the steps needed to ensure that the US, and other allied partners in the Indo-Pacific, can operate on a sustained basis from Australia in a future war in the Indo-Pacific.

AUSMIN 2024 thus has produced some practical and sensible outcomes which will not only contribute to strengthened deterrence to ideally prevent such a war from happening in the first place, but also ensure that Australia and the United States and other partners are best placed to respond if a crisis were to emerge.

The second key outcome from AUSMIN is a focus on technology co-operation that can lead to key new military capabilities. There has been important progress on new mechanisms which can circumvent onerous defence trade regulations that would otherwise stifle the prospect of progress under AUKUS Pillar 2.

These include greater integration between the US and Australia on defence innovation, and enhanced co-operation within the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise to enable co-development of long-range missile capabilities to facilitate ‘impactful projection’. Of key importance is an agreement on securing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on building the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), and continued work on developing hypersonic weapons, with both supporting the urgent requirement for greater long-range strike capabilities for the ADF and also for the US military.

AUSMIN has produced an opportunity for greater co-operation to counter threats in new domains such as space and cyberspace. For example, AUSMIN has reinforced the importance of norms of responsible behaviour in space, and opposed Russia’s development of a nuclear weapons-based anti-satellite capability. Given the importance of the space domain for Australia’s security and prosperity, it’s vital that states stand together to oppose and deter any move by Moscow to deploy such a destabilising weapon, that would effectively destroy the 1967 Outer Space Treaty even if the weapon itself was never used, and in doing so, ensure that space was a battleground in future wars.

The government’s approach to AUSMIN is a welcome one, which recognises the importance of the US-Australia alliance, and which is based on undertaking practical steps that strengthen Australia’s ability to support the US in deterring a major power crisis. Key defence capabilities such as the nuclear powered but conventionally armed submarines, won’t appear until the mid-2030s, so its important for government to work with the US and other allies to strengthen defence capabilities now. In this uncertain environment, dialogues such as AUSMIN that generate practical steps towards enhanced defence co-operation are more important than ever.

Defence rhetoric is mismatched with lack of action on investment

3 June 2024

Australia needs to spend more on defence – and it needs to do so immediately. The strategic imperative has been firmly established in the government’s own major defence documents.

The Albanese government and the Coalition opposition agree that we are in the gravest geopolitical period in generations and it is only going to intensify.

But the rhetorical urgency is not being matched by action in the form of defence investment.

The May budget is the latest demonstration of this mismatch, lacking spending for swift increases in capabilities that the Australian Defence Force would need if our region were to deteriorate quickly.

In particular, this year’s budget priorities are not directed towards strengthening the ADF’s ability to fight in the next decade.

This is not doom-mongering; the government has acknowledged that the warning time before any conflict, which had long been set at 10 years, has shrunk to effectively zero.

This year’s budget priorities are not directed towards strengthening the Australian Defence Force’s ability to fight in the next decade.

We have war in Ukraine and the Middle East, aggression and increasingly dangerous and unprofessional behaviour from China causing instability and confrontation in the South China Sea and across the Taiwan Strait, erosion of the rule of law and revisionist agendas from authoritarians.

Instability is heightened by foreign interference, economic coercion and artificial intelligence-enabled dangers such as cyberattacks and disinformation.

If war were to break out at any time in the next 10 years, our military would essentially fight with the force it has today. Based on current resourcing, nothing significant will change over the decade.

Most of the major new capabilities in the government’s defence investment blueprint are two decades away from being fully fielded. That blueprint does contain some shorter-term enhancements, but these will not be fielded until the 2030s.

The welcome $5.7 billion in new defence spending over the four-year forward estimates period is devoted to just three priorities: the AUKUS submarines; the next fleet of surface warships; and investment in long-range strike, targeting and autonomous systems.

But two-thirds of this funding doesn’t arrive until 2027-28.

The relatively impressive longer-term plan leaves us vulnerable in the immediate period ahead. More money immediately is not a silver bullet, and ambition must be balanced with how much Defence can actually spend each year.

But the nation’s security requires a two-pronged strategy of enhancing our existing force to meet threats within the decade while investing in long-term capabilities.

No credible pathway forward

Other countries are furiously pursuing new capabilities that can be put into action quickly – such as creating masses of small drones and prototyping and developing new technologies.

We talk about technology and asymmetric advantage – playing to your strengths and using them to overcome your adversaries’ strengths – yet lack a credible pathway to bring them into operation to bolster the force we have today.

Over the longer term, the picture starts gradually to improve.

The $50 billion in additional spending over the next decade is an important commitment, even if far away. The plan for a complete recapitalisation of the surface combatant fleet will eventually give us the biggest and most capable navy Australia has had since World War II.

But, so far, we are failing to grasp the opportunity to link our traditional large platforms such as submarines and warships to more modern developments in warfare: drones and various small uncrewed and smart capabilities.

AI, robotics, electronic warfare and space capabilities remain aspirational, without any pathway for inclusion and integration into a truly focused force capable of meaningful deterrence and war fighting.

That is why it is so important to realise AUKUS Pillar II, which is dealing with these capabilities.

It’s easy to criticise; harder to do. All governments are grappling with tight budgets amid competing demands and the unremitting expectations of voters and taxpayers.

As a nation, we need to accept the need for higher defence spending. Hoping conflict won’t come is not a viable strategy. If we are prepared for war, we have a better chance of deterring and hence averting it.

Europe is living that lesson now, having put all hope in the judgment that global trade and economic entanglement would bring security. Now it is clear that only military investment can deter war or best prepare nations for it.

The government has a vital responsibility to speak plainly to the nation about the geopolitical risks and the possibility of conflict.

We need to grasp the challenge that is in front of us today, not in three or five years’ time. Otherwise, we risk delivering on General Douglas MacArthur’s famous two-word warning. “The history of failure in war can almost always be summed up in two words, ‘Too late’.

“Too late in comprehending the deadly enemy. Too late in realising the mortal danger. Too late in preparedness. Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance.”

Why take the risk of only acting after a crisis and saying better late than never? The world in turmoil demands we act in real time to deter crises and be best prepared for them.

Why we need a national security adviser

11 April 2024

On 16 December the Canberra Times published a short version of Danielle Cave’s article that argues Australia needs a national security adviser. The long version of the article was then published on the ASPI Strategist on 18 December and is available here:

The review of Australia’s intelligence community that’s now underway—as long as it is delivered with ambition so it remains relevant years from now—is one tool that will help prepare the government to confront the speed of global change. In the current environment, maintaining a strategic and technological edge over our adversaries, remaining a sought-after and valuable partner that can keep pace with bigger and better-resourced intelligence communities, and attracting and retaining top workforce talent (for which industry is also fiercely competing) will continue to become harder.

Both the domestic and international stakes are higher for this intelligence review than the terms of reference let on, so the review’s output should be watched closely. But it likely won’t look at a gap in Australia’s security architecture that has been filled in almost all counterpart nations—a dedicated and autonomous national security adviser (NSA). An Australian NSA would report to the prime minister and speak publicly with a trusted voice both internationally and domestically on Australia’s most pressing interests and priorities.

Without such a position, Australia is missing out on a seat at the table at key global meetings, which provide the best opportunities to exercise the kind of influence we want, need and deserve. What’s more, the lack of an NSA means the government lacks an authoritative representative who can help set the tone and focus of our strategic communications across all international security issues.

Most countries—including our most important partners—have an NSA. These roles are as senior as it gets, often equivalent to a department head or sometimes even a minister. NSAs have the ears of their leaders, often travel with them and are always available for briefings and policy advice. Critically, most NSAs also maintain their own remits of policy work and their own busy travel schedules separate from their presidents or prime ministers.

On 20 December former Director-General of ASIS Paul Symon responded with an article on the ASPI Strategist titled ‘Yes, Australia does need a national security adviser.’ Head of the ANU National Security College also joined the debate in the Australian Financial Review on 27 December.

Australia can’t talk defence by not mentioning China

15 February 2024

Writing in The Australian Financial Review on February 5, my former Australian Strategic Policy Institute colleague Jennifer Parker put forward an excellent argument for granting more leeway to serving Defence personnel to speak out on defence affairs, raising public understanding of threats, and building the social licence for increased defence spending. However, one essential word was missing from her argument: China.

China is the state that poses the greatest danger to Australia and the stability of our region. We will not generate or sustain public consent for increased defence spending and the whole-of-nation effort required in the years ahead until our national security establishment stops publicly treating China as taboo.

To be fair, our women and men in uniform and our Defence and national security officials do not have their heads in the sand about Xi Jinping’s China. ADF personnel literally risk their lives to confront the day-to-day reality of Chinese coercion and brinkmanship, as shown by the PLA’s dangerous use of sonar against divers from HMAS Toowoomba and the release of chaff into the path of an RAAF surveillance aircraft.

The public must tap the military’s experience to build our understanding of Chinese sharp power, especially as it seems grimly inevitable that Beijing’s recklessness will lead to a deadly incident sooner or later, plunging us into a crisis for which the nation is sorely unprepared.

While senior Defence staff should become more visible and vocal in our public debate, Defence must also engage at the grassroots, with our veterans, reservists and regulars at all ranks given opportunities for community engagement. This is even more important as the Commonwealth and state governments work to backfill the military’s role in domestic disaster relief. This is necessary to preserve the ADF for its primary duties of deterrence and preparedness for war, but the trust and compact between the military and the nation must not be inadvertent casualties of these changes.

A good starting place for Defence to be candid about the threat posed by China is the forthcoming national defence strategy (NDS). The published version of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) that laid the groundwork for the NDS made shrewd observations about China’s growing military capabilities and coercive playbook. But it followed the tendency in our public debate to use abstractions like our deteriorating strategic circumstances. Such abstractions cloud public understanding of the fact it is Beijing’s actions that are threatening our security and destabilising our region, not amorphous concepts like great power rivalry.

Xi Jinping must learn to accept that democracies, unlike the CCP, have a duty to tell their public the truth.

Greater candour about China also needs to extend into closed-door discussions within government. For instance, the classified version of the DSR was probably restricted to senior echelons of need-to-know ministries because it was clear-eyed on China. And while it was encouraging to hear Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles tell the ASPI conference last year that the DSR includes the most comprehensive review of mobilisation since the Second World War, it’s telling that none of this was deemed suitable for public consumption. This is not a sound foundation for a genuinely national approach to defence.

Being candid about China is not alarmist. Government openness about the threat posed by Soviet communism underpinned public consent for substantially higher levels of defence spending as a percentage of national income during the Cold War, including during Bob Hawke’s Labor government in the 1980s when Defence estimated that we would have a 10-year warning against non-nuclear attack. Our officials, ministers and allies tell us that we now face greater danger, and that attack could come without warning. Yet, the government dons kid gloves when it comes to publicly acknowledging that China is the primary threat.

Plain language on China would also help apportion the scarce resources of Defence and other parts of the national security ecosystem across a range of threats. The DSR calls for an ADF focused on “the nation’s most significant military risks”. But without clarity about which capabilities are required to counter China, there is a risk that the ADF will lose the scale and flexibility to fulfil other essential roles, as shown recently when ships were not available for collective maritime security operations in the Red Sea.

The main impediment to the government being more open about China is China. Labor’s stabilisation of the bilateral relationship is already being sorely tested, as Australian academic Yang Hengjun’s death sentence reminded us. Beijing would doubtless apply further pressure if the Australian government, including Defence, were honest with the Australian public about the scale and urgency of the threat China poses. But Beijing has shown that it will pressure us regardless, so leaving the nation unprepared is unacceptable.

Australia does not seek an adversarial relationship with China, but Xi Jinping must learn to accept that democracies, unlike the CCP, have a duty to tell their public the truth.

Wong is in an exquisite predicament. She must make China fear her response

7 February 2024

Hostage diplomacy is an apt name for the exquisite predicament in which Australia finds itself. An Australian citizen, Yang Hengjun, is held arbitrarily and then, in a shocking decision, sentenced to death. But with the diabolical twist that the sentence is suspended for two years dependent on good behaviour.

Whose good behaviour? Not Yang’s but ours – Australia’s. With Yang as a hostage, Australia is being blackmailed into submission and silence.

Beijing is masterful at planting self-doubt in the minds of rivals. If we speak out against Chinese bullying of neighbours in the South China Sea, will Yang be executed? If we name China as a perpetrator of cyberattacks, will Yang be executed?

If you are worried about what another party might do, they are in control. So, we need to make Beijing worry more about what we might do.

As a smaller nation that abides by rules and norms, the way to do that lies in collective action. Rather than try to walk this treacherous tightrope alone, Australia needs to work with liberal democracies to establish a coalition of nations that can respond to hostage diplomacy and impose a cost – from economic to reputational – on nations that abuse the rule of law this way.

And we are not starting from scratch. In 2021, the democratic world signed the Canada-led Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention. Canada was driven by the experience of having two of its citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, detained arbitrarily because Ottawa agreed to consider an extradition request by the United States for Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer to the telco giant Huawei, whom US authorities accused of fraud.

Canada’s stoutness demonstrated that when a country stands up to bullying, it is standing up not just for itself but for everyone who believes in rules and norms.

The 2021 declaration was a good start, but it needs enforcement mechanisms to stop it being toothless. Australia should start with the Five Eyes group – our partnership with Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States – and the G7 nations, which adds France, Germany, Italy and Japan. It should also encourage participation from other countries that have citizens arbitrarily detained, such as Sweden with Hong Kong publisher Gui Minhai held since 2015. Countries that have experienced Moscow’s and Beijing’s bullying, like Lithuania and other European Union members, would also be powerful partners.

It must be clear to Beijing, and all totalitarian regimes such as Iran, that it will be held to account when it tries to blackmail another country through hostage diplomacy. The only way to deter a malign actor is to convince it that its actions won’t work, and moreover there will be costs. A good recent example of such collective action was Australia, Britain and the US’ use of Magnitsky sanctions laws to target the Russian hacker behind the Medibank breach. Coordinated sanctions help tighten the net around a criminal’s assets.

No one should doubt this is a tough balancing act for Foreign Minister Penny Wong. She is rightly prioritising Yang’s welfare, and therefore the immediate step is to continue the most strenuous representations for Yang’s health and wellbeing.

That means medical care, books, contact with his family and a pathway to him being freed and returned to Australia. He should never have been jailed, and he certainly should not have been sentenced to death. His detention in reportedly harsh and even cruel conditions is a continuing abuse of a man in his late 50s with significant medical ailments who is likely not getting adequate care.

Wong rightly responded on Monday with a clear denunciation of Yang’s sentence. She also trod carefully, saying this was a decision by the Chinese legal system. In truth, there’s no separation between the party-state and the courts in China, but Wong’s language may give the Chinese government space to step in and commute the death sentence.

Yet, this must not mean any kind of backward step by Australia on issues key to our values and long-term interests. If we let ourselves be tugged into a slippery slope of submitting to Beijing’s coercive will, the coercion will continue. And unlike, say Iran, which has taken prisoners as bargaining chips in straight out government-to-government transactions, Beijing tends not to offer any kind of clear exchange but rather builds pressure for long-term submission to its core strategic objectives.

Hence, for Wong, there are short and long-term goals that arise from the Yang case.

Long-term, it’s about having as many countries on our side as possible so that Beijing recognises that to execute an innocent citizen of another country is no longer just a bilateral issue with a smaller power, but a global issue. The risk-benefit calculation changes dramatically.

It’s time for Beijing to stop assuming it can worry Australia, and start worrying about what Australia might do. In this case, we can fight for Yang and our democratic sovereignty.

Australia Day: We just need to get our values straight

24 January 2024

As Australia Day approaches, there will be passionate debates about the suitability of the day and the historical context for First Australians in particular.

But within those debates we should all agree to unite around the importance of preserving, defending and nurturing our country’s democratic values.

We enjoy the rights to speak freely, protest against beliefs with which we disagree, practise any or no religion, hold a range of ideological positions, and enjoy a reasonable degree of privacy.

We also have a collective security that safeguards these freedoms, either through laws or social norms by which society protects us – provided we are not hurting others – while carefully avoiding the centralisation of power in a way that could lead to its arbitrary abuse. Ideally, we leave each other alone while also looking out for each other.

The question worth pondering on Australia Day – and the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – is whether we are preserving the proper appreciation of these freedoms and rights, which were hard won during and after World War II, but are still enjoyed by only a minority – and democracy-watchers suggest a shrinking minority – of people around the world.

Two worrying trends should galvanise us to invest as a society in our core democratic values. First, authoritarianism and illiberalism are on the march globally. From Beijing to Moscow to Tehran, powerful autocrats are flexing, demonstrating their aggression in places such as Ukraine, the South China Sea and Yemen, to carve out geopolitical spheres of influence in flagrant violation of international rules.

This is a security threat but not itself fatal to democracies. As history has shown, authoritarianism can be confronted and countered. If we destroy ourselves as a democracy, it will be from within, perhaps catalysed by external pressure but necessarily self-inflicted.

This is the second worrying trend: the declining self-confidence about the rightness of democratic values. The two trends are connected; self-doubt about our values is exactly what authoritarians want and the propaganda for which their useful idiots – from elements of the US MAGA right to far-left Western activists – become a conduit.

Think about the sorts of messages these strange bedfellows promote. International rules are naive and ineffectual, while collective strength to bolster freedom is a suspect notion. Democracies are so imperfect as to be indistinguishable from other political systems, with values a kind of sanctimony; short-term interests, achieved through transactionalism, are what we should go for.

In practice, it means the MAGA right and the far left can coalesce on foreign policy falsehoods such as NATO being to blame for Russia’s illegal war on democratic Ukraine. And elements of both extremes just want to put economic gain ahead of long-term security, and could abandon Taiwan to a unilateral takeover by the Chinese Communist Party because its precious worth as a democracy means less than the quick hit of trade and investment.

It is our values that provide a foundation for consistent policymaking and a bulwark against short-term caprice. Supporting Ukraine against Russia’s appalling aggression is no less right in 2024 than it was in 2022. Indeed, adherence to principles sends the message that dictators can’t just wait us out, as Vladimir Putin is trying, believing we lack the fortitude for the long game.

Values help us resist the transactionalism at which dictators tend to excel. Beijing would love nothing more than to split up the region and deal with each country individually so it can use its size to its advantage. Australia, following its values, must support democracies against the kind of bullying The Philippines is experiencing in the South China Sea and Taiwan constantly suffers from military aggression and political interference.

Consistency in defending international rules and friends abroad is inseparable from, and directly reflects, the strength of our domestic values and national resilience, including the promotion of free speech, the ability to disagree respectfully and never shying away from being a proud democracy.

There are elements in the federal bureaucracy that counsel downplaying our democratic values, out of fear it comes across as hectoring to non-democracies, especially in our Indo-Pacific region. This is a woeful misjudgment. If we lose self-respect, other countries will only respect us less.

The mistake is conflating the imposition of our values with having pride in them. We can champion them and, through our actions at home and abroad, demonstrate that they make us a more prosperous country and a better international partner. It’s not propaganda to say the world is safer for everyone when there is more democracy.

Why else do we expect higher standards from democracies – such as Israel – than authoritarian regimes such as Iran or terrorist groups such as Hamas? Because they have democratic values.

We need to make sure that as our society evolves through changes in demographics, economics and technology, we are bringing these enduring values with us.

We have faced these worrying trends and challenges to democracy before. It is a bipartisan view in Australia – from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy – that we are in a period comparable to the 1930s.

In September 1936, Winston Churchill made an impassioned plea for democracy. Leading democratic nations, he said, were “very much aware of the shortcomings of our civilisation, and the need of continual social betterment”.

However, he continued: “We believe fervently that our institutions are such as to enable us to improve conditions and correct abuses steadily, and to march every year and every decade forward upon a broader front into a better age.”

He concluded by imploring democratic societies to ask: “Are we taking every measure within our power to defend that cause?”

With war in Europe and the Middle East, and increased tension in our region, it is again time to ask this question and ensure that our protection and promotion of democracy, and the freedoms that come with it, are backed by the capability to deter and to make a meaningful contribution where the rule of law is challenged by authoritarians and terrorists.

This Australia Day, we should be proud to say it is our democratic values we live by and want to preserve for future generations.

Australia and China have very different notions of stability

18 January 2024

The remarks on Wednesday from Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian and other embassy officials confirm what many national security observers have been worried about for months.

If we pull our punches, if we subordinate our values and long-term interests to a short-term effort to orchestrate a trouble-free diplomatic relationship, we won’t actually buy stability. Rather we’ll find ourselves on a slope where nothing we do is good enough, and we will be eternally tempted to find unilateral compromises.

The embassy press conference demonstrated Beijing is looking for Australia to keep sliding ever closer to positions that will satisfy the Chinese Communist Party.

Questions about the sonar burst that our government says injured Australian naval personnel prompted an official to warn against making trouble on China’s doorstep.

Questions about the Taiwanese election elicited further demands that Australia stay silent when Taiwan freely elects a new leader.

These would be breaches of Australia’s core values. We have every right to operate in international waters as HMAS Toowoomba was doing in support of a United Nations mission late last year. And Australia should never shrink from championing the expression of democracy through free and fair elections, as we have through statements on Taiwan’s election that were actually fairly mild.

The day we fail to celebrate people’s participation in their own government – something mainland Chinese people don’t enjoy – is the day we might as well pack our bags and go home, geopolitically speaking. Xiao stated bluntly that Beijing could show no flexibility or compromise on Taiwan, meaning any shift to smooth the waters would have to come from Australia.

Stabilisation is the stated goal of the Australian government, but Beijing has a different definition of stability. Australia wants to co-operate where we can and disagree where we must, but Beijing doesn’t accept when we disagree. This was clear from Xiao’s opening remarks, which painted an ambitious picture of an ever deepening relationship that ignored differences and sought increased co-operation, including joint defence exercises.

Beijing is trying to achieve its strategic objectives through aggression, coercion and threats.

How could we seriously have joint exercises with a military that is bullying a democratic nation in the Philippines through steady and calculated harassment of its vessels in the South China Sea? We couldn’t speak out with a straight face the next time the Chinese navy used water cannon on a Philippines ship. But that’s the idea.

Beijing is trying to achieve its strategic objectives through aggression, coercion and threats. This is its own doing, not Australia’s. Xiao’s naked threat to Australia ahead of the Taiwan poll, warning that support for Taiwanese independence – which is not Australia’s position – would push the Australian people “over the edge of an abyss” should be intolerable.

For the sake of staking out consistent positions on core issues, Canberra should make clear that such remarks are unacceptable. While unlikely to change Beijing’s malign objectives, we would send a signal that stability, to us, doesn’t mean submission, but prioritising our own security, transparently and consistently.

Sonar attacks, threatening Australians with the abyss, unfair trade sanctions – they all demand condemnation because they are breaches of rules and norms that are essential to our region’s future. Inconsistent responses only contribute to the degradation of the rules that have helped keep us secure since 1945.

Xiao also continued the recent Chinese government effort to drive divisions between Australia and Japan, hinting preposterously that the Japanese Armed Forces might have been responsible for the sonar attack.

This points to another Beijing ambition – hamfisted though its execution might seem. It would prefer that regional partnerships are weakened so that it can manage others bilaterally, giving it a sizeable advantage.

But Australia needs friends, partners with whom we co-ordinate and collaborate. We can’t have regional stability unless we work together to balance and deter China, impose costs for its transgressions and gradually persuade it that bullying and coercion will be ineffectual and detrimental to its own interests. Stabilisation can’t become code for tolerating Beijing’s destabilising activity. The UK made this mistake in the 1930s, with disarmament and appeasement policies that tolerated German rearmament and illegal land grabs.

As we start 2024 with increasingly confident authoritarian regimes, wars in Europe and the Middle East and increased tension in the Indo-Pacific, democracies like Australia are faced with two roads diverging. The pathway ahead is not a confected improvement to the bilateral relationship with Beijing that rests on our biting our tongue and entering into arrangements that only leave us more vulnerable, such as returning to an excessive and risky trade dependence.

We are no longer in a period of stability to be maintained but an era of instability that means a business-as-usual approach will be insufficient. Our approach needs extra effort ranging from greater defence investment to diplomacy that manages tensions rather than ignoring them – because whatever the rhetorical niceties, our long-term values shouldn’t be sacrificed for short-term interests. Both roads cannot be travelled.