Social licence is key to building defence in the north

Defence must improve its social licence in the Northern Territory to operate more effectively and tackle under-utilisation and under-development of local capability. The increase in military investment and activities that is underway in the Territory provides an opportunity to shift the dial beyond simply generating more work for Territorians to building enduring partnerships between Defence and the local community.

In short, Defence must cooperate more closely with the north to improve infrastructure and supply chain resilience, as called for in the National Defence Strategy.

While current Defence spending contributes at least 10 percent of the territory’s gross product, the economic and social contribution of Defence and national security activities in the north remain under-recognised by local residents and operate below potential. Likewise, the capability benefits accrued from greater local integration of defence and security activities are being lost.

The $14 billion investment in northern Defence facilities, as outlined in the National Defence Strategy, presents a significant opportunity to embed Defence more firmly within northern Australia’s social and economic fabric. In turn, this would benefit defence capability, economic growth and social development.

The more Territorians see defence forces engaging with local businesses and workers, the more they will recognise Defence as a key part of the northern economy and communities. They will also welcome collaboration with Defence if it provides infrastructure and services that benefit everyone. They will be more understanding of the inconveniences that can result from defence activity, such as loud aircraft noise and traffic hold-ups behind convoys, and more likely to accept the trade-offs inherent in housing developments for defence personnel.

A partnership approach needs to go well beyond localising spending on defence construction projects. Defence capability must be built through improving local industrial capacity as well as expanding and upskilling the workforce.

Long-term commitments for collaboration must be pledged by Defence and the governments of the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland. They must establish lasting partnerships that enhance local capacity, improve the effectiveness of defence industry and benefit local organisations and businesses.

There are many fields in which cooperation and collaboration could deliver sustained benefits.

To start with, Defence should build logistics bases in the north and employ Territorians, rather than establishing them in Victoria, which seems to be the preference.

Another area for collaboration is building resilient supply chains, which would benefit not only Defence capabilities but also local access to more reliable and affordable supermarket supplies. The north’s road and rail routes are vulnerable to disruption through extreme weather, accidents and pandemics, resulting in delays, shortages and higher costs. We need a balanced solution that includes the southern logistics node of Bandiana and serious assessment of a central node such as Alice Springs (used by a variety of airlines for storage during the Covid-19 pandemic), plus northern nodes that utilise available land in Greater Darwin close to bases, ports, airports and multi-user loading facilities.

Another area for greater collaboration is improving the north’s liveability. Defence forces in the north suffer high rates of transfer requests, resulting in loss of skilled personnel. Defence members and their families cite difficulties in spouse employment and inadequate defence housing, as well as poor access to and quality of education and health and family services. Some of these issues are improving, but others, such as air connectivity and affordability, are getting worse, and we must continue to lean in.

Defence and the north must also collaborate on building accommodation for the workers engaged in the construction of military facilities. Although many will be on short-term contracts, travelling from elsewhere in Australia, they still need quality housing. Authorities should reach out to local Darwin companies who have the means to establish off-grid, fully self-contained camps.

Greater engagement with First Nations people is also needed as defence capability is built across the north.

As the tempo of defence activities and multi-nation joint exercises continues to increase, so too will the need for enhanced medical services. Defence is already investing in day-to-day medical centres to care for Australian and foreign personnel. This has benefitted local healthcare through increased availability of defence-contracted medical personnel who want to remain current in community medicine. Investments must continue to be made in the north’s rapid medical evacuation services and critical care facilities.

There are good reasons why successful approaches to local procurement need to evolve further. A more collaborative approach between Defence and its contractors would better address the challenges in achieving on-time and on-budget delivery in the north. Defence must establish cooperation in the early stages of project design and throughout delivery and avoid adversarial relationships that can sometimes characterise traditional contracting.

The economic impact of greater local engagement is highlighted in a 2023 study by the Master Builders Association. This involves maintaining and growing the Northern Territory’s share of Defence contracts, continuing to improve contract conditions for local firms, and training more workers locally and attracting them from interstate. There also needs to be a strategy to engage Northern Territory firms in advanced manufacturing of equipment and parts.

Deeper collaboration with the north would not only strengthen Defence capability but also improve social licence with local businesses, communities and defence personnel, which in turn will help align them in supporting a stronger, more sustainable Defence presence in the region—a key direction of the National Defence Strategy.

 

Australian superannuation can be a source of national security capital

Australia needs to invest more heavily in defence and national security, yet the government is struggling to match rhetoric with reality in the May federal budget.

The budget showed that Australia is pushing back the necessary investment and injection of additional resources to bolster a sovereign defence industry and workforce. One potential solution is to use the A$3.5 trillion that Australians hold in superannuation savings—which is 140 percent of Australia’s $2.5 trillion annual gross domestic product.

There is growing engagement with this idea within the Australian government. Both Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy have publicly supported the use of superannuation funds to invest in defence capabilities. Similarly, the Defence Strategic Review (DSR), the National Defence Strategy (NDS) and the Integrated Investment Program (IIP), while not outright identifying superannuation capital pools, have emphasised the role of the investment community that superannuation funds belong to in supporting Australia’s national security.

There is a compelling case for directing private capital into national security, particularly as the government navigates the strategic necessity of investing in advanced technology leadership while domestic cost of living challenges continue to intensify. Incentivising private capital investment into national priority areas isn’t new to the government. However, to date, the main focus areas have been in sectors such as housing or green energy.

While the funding of the defence industry is often politically contentious, it is important that nuance is given to this narrative and the government takes a forward-leaning role in identifying areas of national security more broadly that need private capital support, such as advanced manufacturing and dual-use technologies.

The primary duty of super funds is to maximise returns for their members, as their capital is the sum of individual Australians’ hard work and savings for their future retirement. As baby boomers retire, priorities are now shifting to low-risk investments. Therefore, the challenge is to ensure that projects are attractive to suitable superannuation investors.

The Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) is an interesting case study of the problems of thinking that superannuation is a pool available for government policy initiatives. Due to the strict requirements necessary to meet members’ needs, there were issues with engagement with the HAFF. Even industry superannuation funds have historically struggled to participate despite their political and ideological alignment with the present Labor government and self-interest in housing.

This is a subtle point missed by many: approaching the superannuation industry and asking chief executives of companies that are trustees of regulated superannuation funds to support an initiative is largely meaningless. Neither bank nor superannuation fund CEOs can tilt the rules of their organisations away from prudence and safe custody, no matter how often they are asked or how interested they may be in government projects.

Australian superannuation funds are governed by several pieces of legislation, which together provide a framework for the operation, management and standards of the funds. They are regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Taxation Office. The regulations subject funds to various risk requirements to ensure the security and stability of members’ investments. Compliance with those requirements is essential for maintaining the trust and confidence of members and regulators and the integrity of the system.

The funds have discretion over the investments they choose or reject within the laws and rules of their investment thesis and strategy. This siloed approach is logical, given the scale of assets under management and the diversity of expertise required to manage the funds, but it does create additional complexity for those seeking to engage, especially if the opportunity does not fit neatly into a single bucket. This is likely to be one of the key challenges for government-sponsored projects seeking backing of superannuation funds, as they are often not restricted to a single investment category.

Navigating superannuation funds’ processes and policies to meet the risk and return requirements on investments is important, but investment opportunities must also be shaped to meet investors’ requirements. For example, while funds can invest at their discretion, many also have environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment policies that may restrict or prohibit investments in specific industries or companies involved in controversial activities, such as weapons manufacturing.

While there are challenges in using superannuation funds for defence investment, there are ways to resolve them. Understanding industries that are dual-use and serve national security writ large is an important distinction in the Australian narrative.

First, governments looking to mobilise superannuation funds to invest in national security must understand that any investments made by a fund must come from the bottom up through the investment process, not top-down through management strategy or influence. If the government wants to effectively leverage private capital (including superannuation funds) in its strategic projects, then it must develop a way to understand what projects have the best chance of making it through those processes and facilitate them.

Second, many defence capabilities rely on manufacturing that broadly benefits national security, such as advanced production of semiconductors or processing critical minerals. Those industries are dual-use: while they support defence capability needs, they are commercially viable and essential for maintaining Australia’s quality of life. For the Australian government, navigating ESG and other investment filters requires a strong knowledge of the investment process and could be resolved through dual-use technology projects.

Third, one option is to create an Uplift Project Office to coordinate engagement with the investment community and government departments tasked with executing strategies that support the whole-of-nation efforts needed to meet national-security goals as outlined in the DSR.

The government already has access to knowledge from a world-class, prudent and scaled investment process through Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund. The Future Fund is not a superannuation fund; it is a sovereign wealth fund that is independently managed to strengthen the government’s long-term financial position through profitable investments. This should be used as an investment template to familiarise the government with the processes and requirements associated with mobilising private-sector capital for national-security-related investments.

Therefore, the Uplift Project Office should sit under the minister for defence to ensure that national-security priorities are embedded in the office’s bottom-up activities and align with complementary top-down activities under the newly established IIP. An advisory council made up of senior individuals actively working across Australian, US and British investment sectors should also be established to assist in setting up and running the Uplift Project Office .

Australia has one of the world’s largest underutilised pools of capital sitting in its superannuation funds. The 2024–25 federal budget needs to provide more to meet the goals of the NDS and IIP. There is a window of opportunity for the Australian government and private capital to work hand in hand to reconcile investment requirements with national-security imperatives. Doing so will be key in ensuring Australia is fortified for the future.

India and Japan take small steps towards stronger ties

India and Japan have just concluded their 2+2 ministerial dialogue. On the one hand, the talks demonstrated significant progress in the relationship over the past few years—a positive trend from Australia’s point of view. On the other, it is difficult to avoid the sense that most of the accomplishments were the low-hanging fruit in the relationship, and progress in further deepening ties would require significant political investment on both sides, which is not yet visible.

The India-Japan 2+2 began in 2019, one of several such dialogues that India and its partners initiated in the Indo-Pacific. Though it was meant to be an annual affair, this was the only the third such meeting since 2019. Nevertheless, the joint statement listed an impressive set of achievements. These included Japanese participation in bilateral and multilateral air exercises hosted by the Indian Air Force, and bilateral military exercises by all three services in 2023—the first time this has happened in a  single calendar year.

In addition, there has been a steady drumbeat of dialogues on issues including disarmament and non-proliferation; cyber security and counterterrorism. A particular emphasis for both countries is the UN Security Council reform. Even though this still seems a somewhat distant ambition, both sides continue to discuss pathways forward in promoting such reforms.

As well as security cooperation, India is clearly interested in technology transfers from Japan—an area that New Delhi has been keen to develop with other strategic partners, especially those with access to high-end technology such as its Quad partners, the United States, Japan and Australia.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar emphasised this point in his statement, asking that Japan ‘look into the current regulatory bottlenecks’ that might be standing in the way of such technology sharing. India has stressed that, rather than simply buying Japanese defence platforms, it is more interested in joint research, design, development, testing and production. This would likely enhance India’s own technological base. But technology sharing is always difficult because even close security partners guard their national technological assets jealously. For example, despite Jaishankar’s request, the joint statement made no reference to any progress on this issue.

Moreover, it is unclear how much progress was made in previous efforts. For example, India and Japan collaborated in a joint research project on unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) robotics—though it seems possible this did not lead to the development of any actual vehicles. The collaboration was revealed by the first 2+2 ministerial dialogue in 2019 and mentioned again in 2020 by the Japanese Ministry of Defense as an example of defence equipment and technology co-operation with partner countries. The initiative was quite forward-looking, considering the development of such UGVs in the context of the Ukraine war.

The latest joint statement says the project is complete, but what this means is unclear. Japan has contracted for three THeMIS UGVs from Estonian firm Milrem Robotics, which suggests that the India-Japan research project has not produced any UGVs. The two countries did announce transfer of the unified complex radio antenna (UNICORN) and related technologies, communication gear that are deployed on Japanese stealth warships.

India’s other partners in the Quad and in the Indo-Pacific such as Australia should be pleased with the progress in India-Japan security ties. They all have an interest in creating a mesh of security partnerships to maintain greater stability in the region. Such a security mesh will be strengthened significantly if India is part of it. Indeed, other bilateral and minilateral partnerships have been accelerating in the region, including AUKUS, the Japan-Australia defence agreement, the UK-Japan defence agreement and the growing security ties between Japan and South Korea.

Nevertheless, Jaishankar’s press release and the joint statement, read together, suggest that while progress has been made, there are no major initiatives in the works to propel the relationship to the next stage. Again, this might have parallels with India’s other security partnerships, including with Australia and even the US. India and its partners can only do so many military exercises and bilateral and minilateral dialogues.

It is possible that New Delhi is satisfied with what it has achieved already, and does not want to further deepen security ties beyond its desire for technology. But this leads to a quandary because India’s partners may not be willing to transfer the kind of technology that India wants at the current level of partnership.

It is therefore possible that India and its security partners—including Japan—need to figure out a new equilibrium in their strategic partnership that satisfies the needs of both sides.

Territorial integrity is the base of European security

Since 2014, Russia has brazenly violated Ukraine’s territorial integrity with incursions, illegal annexations and a full-scale invasion. And now Ukraine is violating Russia’s territorial integrity with its own incursion into the Kursk region.

There is, of course, a substantial difference between the two cases. The Russian Federation has officially, albeit illegally, absorbed Crimea and conquered territory in Ukraine’s Donbas region, and Vladimir Putin makes no secret of his intention to subjugate all of Ukraine. By contrast, Ukraine has made no territorial claims on any Russian land.

Still, for Europeans, territorial integrity is key, and Ukraine’s counteroffensive has brought the issue back into focus. While countries may have different reasons for supporting Ukraine in the conflict, defending the principle of territorial integrity is a shared imperative. After all, most of Europe’s borders were drawn in blood, and allowing them to be redrawn now would invite even more bloodshed. For decades, the current borders have been sacrosanct, because everyone understands that territorial integrity is the foundation underpinning peace on a continent that, until 1945, had been ravaged by centuries of war.

When the multinational, polyglot state of the Soviet Union broke up more than three decades ago, this principle was fundamental to achieving a mostly peaceful transition. In drafting the Belovezha Accords in December 1991, the leaders of key Soviet republics agreed that existing borders must be fully respected, even though many of them did not follow any ethnic or geographic logic. Uzbekistan’s Fergana Valley might be the most obvious example, and a dangerous insurrection did erupt there three decades ago. Similarly, Crimea was a highly controversial territorial issue at the time.

Nonetheless, those overseeing the post-Soviet transition were keenly aware that the alternative to accepting existing borders would be widespread mayhem. Thus, despite opposition from more ardently nationalist voices, the Russian parliament duly ratified the accord and accepted all the borders outlined therein.

Meanwhile, leaders of what was then the European Community had organised a commission of eminent jurists, led by the Frenchman Robert Badinter, to draw up principles for managing the emerging crisis in Yugoslavia. Once again, borders were the central issue. The Balkans had always been a linguistic, ethnic, and confessional mosaic of peoples, and the borders established over the course of the preceding centuries did not reflect these distinctions. The Badinter Commission concluded that they must be respected nonetheless, lest the region descend into chaos and bloodshed.

European leaders duly accepted the commission’s recommendation and made territorial integrity a cornerstone of their effort to manage the breakup of Yugoslavia. There would still be complications, of course. The status of Kosovo was contested, since it had not quite been a full republic along with the others. If it had been granted a status similar to the other former Yugoslav republics back in 1991, recognising its independence would have been straightforward.

But that didn’t happen. Not until 2008, following several extensive diplomatic efforts both within and outside the United Nations, did some countries accept that recognising Kosovo’s independence was the only realistic way forward. Even here, though, borders were deemed sacrosanct.

To be sure, some borders were redrawn without violence during this period, such as when Czechoslovakia harmoniously divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. But this process followed a mutual agreement among all concerned, and the principle of territorial integrity remained paramount.

Similarly, when large-scale rebellions broke out in Chechnya in the mid-1990s and again in 1999, resulting in two extremely bloody wars, European leaders never even hinted that they would recognise any declarations of independence by those hoping to break away from the Russian Federation.

But then, in 2008, Russia itself violated the principle of territorial integrity by recognising, and militarily supporting, declarations of independence from Georgia by Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This redrawing of borders fooled no one, with not even Belarus recognising the breakaway regions’ independence. But it was a sign of what was yet to come in Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

It is all too easy to dust off an old map and lay claim to some territory that might have flown a different flag once upon a time. In Europe, this impulse has been the source of many wars. In the case of Kursk, the region was once part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, which dominated the area for centuries. But that is irrelevant now, as is Catherine the Great’s annexation of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire in 1783.

Respect for territorial integrity is the base on which European peace, security, and prosperity stand. If this principle no longer holds, neither will the world we take for granted.

Kishida’s departure is not all bad news for Australia

At face value, the impending resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida next month might worry Australian policy pundits who favour continuity. But a new leader, set to be elected on 27 September, may be empowered to launch bolder reforms on national security policy in ways that Kishida presently is not. That would ultimately benefit Japan’s regional security partners, including Australia.

Kishida’s 14 August announcement that he would not seek re-election as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the position that makes him prime minister, is not surprising. His party has suffered political funding scandals, and Japan’s economic performance is only middling. These factors saw support rates for both Kishida and the LDP plunge to a record low of in June, leading Kishida to judge that he would not have enough party support to remain as leader.

Nonetheless, he will leave office with a relatively successful foreign and defence policy record. Kishida enhanced the US–Japan alliance, revived Japan–South Korea bilateral relations and trilateral activities with the United States, and upgraded the Australia–Japan relationship to a quasi-alliance. On defence, he overhauled Japan’s security posture, championing major funding increases and force structure changes, including the procurement of long-range strike weapons, mobilising support with the adage ‘Ukraine may be the East Asia of tomorrow’.

Australia wants that trajectory to continue, so it needs Kishida’s successor to be bold on policy and, ideally, politically durable. Similar to when former prime minister Yoshihide Suga resigned in 2021, there are concerns that a return to revolving-door leadership could stall Japan’s ambitious defence reform agenda and blunt its regional foreign policy edge.

Notwithstanding that risk, Kishida’s departure could yet prove beneficial for Australia if his successor is empowered to tackle difficult policy challenges.

It’s true that the leadership change comes at a time when Japan has become increasingly central to Australian regional strategy, marked by the elevation of the strategic partnership in the 2022 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation. Kishida implemented crucial defence and foreign policy initiatives, improving practical cooperation between the two countries. If these efforts are stalled, it may perpetuate the views of some in Australia’s policy community that Japan is incapable of moving faster or undertaking ambitious policy reform.

On the other hand, Kishida’s ability and willingness to make difficult policy trade-offs has waned significantly with his declining political fortunes in office. Some also argue that Kishida pursued security policy reforms for reasons of domestic political survival, rather than his own beliefs. Indeed, despite overseeing a revolution in Japanese national security, he may be better remembered for implementing the strategic vision and policy agenda of Shinzo Abe rather than his own. If Kishida had stayed on and failed to revive his public and party standing, his policy ambiguity and dwindling influence could have complicated complex decisions such as Japan’s potential engagement with AUKUS.

For Australia, then, what matters is the extent to which Kishida’s successor can make bold national security policy decisions, rather than simply stay the course.

Many potential candidates have substantial national security experience, including former defence minister and LDP secretary general Shigeru Ishiba, and former foreign minister and current LDP Secretary General Toshimitsu Motegi. The list also includes cabinet ministers Taro Kono, Yoshimasa Hayashi, Ken Saito, Sanae Takaichi and Yoko Kamikawa, as well as such other influential politicians as Kato Katsunobu, Shinjiro Koizumi, Takayuki Kobayashi and Shigeharu Aoyama.

Some public surveys place Ishiba at the head of the pack. But the sheer volume of potential candidates and complex LDP factional dynamics means the race is hard to pick.

On national security, conservatives like Ishiba, Takaichi and Aoyama are quite forward-leaning, arguing for bold amendments to Article 9 of the constitution and for transforming Japan’s defence-oriented policy. Ishiba, for instance, has questioned the concept of ‘minimum necessary force’ derived from the constitution’s prohibition of maintaining ‘war potential’, asking whether the minimum threshold for deterring North Korea should be the same for China.

Meanwhile, moderate realists such as Motegi, Kono, Kamikawa, Koizumi and Kobayashi would likely inherit Kishida’s foreign policy brand, balancing defence investments and enhancements to the US–Japan alliance against stable relations with China. Kono, for instance, is known both for his unusual bluntness in framing China-related security challenges and his straight talking on tricky alliance issues.

Whoever replaces Kishida, Canberra and Tokyo will keep working closely with each other and with Washington to manage the deteriorating strategic balance in the region. The key variable for Australia will be the capacity of Japan’s new leader to act swiftly and decisively on policy implementation.

GCAP: a big fighter designed for Pacific (and Australian) distances

BAE Systems and its Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) partners pulled off a coup of technology theatre at the Farnborough air show in July, unveiling a new design for their GCAP figher, in full-scale model form, that looked very different from any other existing or proposed aircraft. Surprises for the combat aircraft community included the aircraft’s size, much larger than the Typhoon or F-35 fighters, and a quite enormous, moderately swept delta wing.

GCAP is supposed to become the mainstay of Japan’s combat aircraft force after entering service in 2035, as well as the chief fighter of partners Britain and Italy. The stealthy aircraft is also a clear candidate as Australia’s next fighter.

What we see from the design is a long-range fighter that far better suits Pacific (and Australian) distances than aircraft now available, though it lacks extreme flight performance, which is looking ever less useful in air combat.

GCAP also has room for growth in capability.

The team at the air show did not disclose dimensions, and a journalist who produced a tape measure in the exhibit was, I am told, encouraged to leave at his earliest convenience. GCAP has been described as one-third bigger than Typhoon—roughly F-15 size, perhaps 20 metres long, but with a 50-degree swept classic delta wing spanning around 16.5 metres and having twice the area of the F-15’s.

GCAP leaders were firm that the model reflected the evolution of the design. The design has probably changed to meet changing requirements.

First macro-observation: the requirements are different from anything else. The last generation of European fighters were essentially F-16 or F/A-18-type fighters with added capabilities. South Korean and Turkish designs today, and the Shenyang FC-31, are US-inspired. Not so GCAP, formed to a Euro-Japanese requirement that edges towards the light-bomber end of the fighter spectrum, with an emphasis on payload and range, in a way we have not seen since the 1960s and the (much bigger) F-111.

The wing’s shape and size contribute to performance in two ways: massive fuel volume and low drag in cruising flight. Both promote range. It’s not a classic delta in the style of the Mirage III’s; it’s more like the capacious wing of the promising but never built F-16U, from 1995, or that of the Boeing X-32 contender for the Joint Strike Fighter program. The F-16U carried 80 percent more internal fuel than the standard aircraft; the X-32 wing, only half the area of the GCAP wing, could accommodate 9 tonnes of fuel, compared with 3.2 tonnes in the F-16C, for example.

The GCAP should have a usefully greater combat radius on internal fuel than most other current combat aircraft can manage with external tanks, while leaving space in the lower fuselage for weapons. That makes a lot of sense for a stealth aircraft, where fuel and bulky weapons must be carried internally.

Among the tactical opportunities of greater range is use of bases farther from the territory of the opponent–say, China. They would be more costly to attack with missiles and easier to defend.

The large span and area of the GCAP’s wing contribute to efficiency in cruising flight and good turn performance. The relative size of the engine inlets and exhausts and the smallness of the vertical stabilisers suggest that, to dominate the fight, the designers are not going for ultimate agility but are relying on sensors, long-range weapons and even teaming the fighter with uncrewed aircraft. (An aircraft this size could carry uncrewed vehicles into the fight under its wings, releasing them outside detection range.)

One wonders whether the European and Japanese planners have read the air combat study by researcher and former US Air Force pilot John Stillion, which pointed to a trend to longer-range engagements and declining instances of turning fights.

The wing sweep angle doesn’t seem to be optimised for supersonic cruise—supercruise. A fighter that can supercruise has much greater opportunity to make intercepts, but the feature has costs: it needs either an engine design that isn’t ideal for subsonic speed (one reason for the F-22’s non-stellar range) or one that has the complex and costly feature called ‘variable cycle’ (which has not been mentioned at all in the GCAP context).

Supercruise makes the airframe hot and therefore detectable, with a unique thermal signature that can be used to identify the aircraft. GCAP planners appreciate this: mindful of high-power radar-jamming from Soviet strike aircraft in the Cold War, the Royal Air Force was eager to get an infra-red search and track sensor (IRST) for the Typhoon. The one that’s on the Typhoon, the Leonardo Pirate, is as good as IRST gets, with a neural-net processor to filter false alarms.

Against such sensors, supercruising aircraft are not stealthy. That explains the apparent decision to forgo the capability.

Managing heat inside a fighter is a huge challenge. If it builds up faster than it can be dissipated through the skin, it can be stored for a while in the fuel. The Lockheed Martin F-35 program has struggled with this, but GCAP will try to get it right at the outset.

Engine company Rolls-Royce has demonstrated an embedded starter-generator and describes a system in which fuel and oil pumps are electrically driven and energy storage is provided for peak requirements. Meanwhile, the wing’s large surface area will help to offload heat without the skin getting too hot (and therefore too detectable).

Size and integrated energy and cooling will give GCAP room for growth. There is an interesting lesson here from the F-35. The JSF requirement was written when the Moore’s-law-driven development of electronics over two decades had vastly improved the F-16’s capabilities; it seemed clear that the development of electronic technology would continue, and it did. But what was not recognised was that, in a tightly packed and thermally sealed airframe, the limit on increased performance of electronics was not their volume and weight but getting rid of their heat. GCAP’s designers seem to have taken this to heart.

The power could be used in novel ways. There have been persistent reports of British work on high-power microwave (HPM) technology since the early 2000s. And Leonardo and the British Ministry of Defence expensively launched development of the latest radar for the Typhoon without foreign cooperation. A radar antenna could become an HPM weapon—and now Rolls-Royce says GCAP needs generators with the extraordinary output of around 2 megawatts. All that seems to add up to GCAP using HPM.

HPM attack can disrupt or damage radio-frequency systems—sensors and communications. HPM systems have challenges, including a risk of damaging friendly aircraft, but if they can be made to work they could be a powerful weapon for suppressing ground defences.

GCAP is different, better adapted to the Pacific than shorter-range jets, and has growth potential. As the largest Europe–Asia joint defense project and a major technological advance for all parties, the program faces challenges. But the design seen at Farnborough suggests that the requirement has been well thought through. It’s a promising start.

Royal Australian Navy tests the Swiss army knife of missiles

HMAS Sydney, one of Australia’s three Hobart-class air warfare destroyers this month became the first Australian warship to test fire Raytheon’s RIM-174A SM-6 missile, during Exercise Pacific Dragon off Hawaii. This followed hot on the heels of HMAS Sydney’s first launch of Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile (NSM) against a target ship during the biennial RIMPAC exercise. It is not clear what was the target for the SM-6 test.

Both of these missile types are earmarked to enter service with the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). The SM-6 will be added to the missile armament aboard the Hobart-class destroyers and eventually the Hunter-class frigates.

Australia’s government has touted these tests as a demonstration of greater depth and range in the Australian Defence Force’s missile armoury, as it seeks to realise the more focused and lethal force mandated in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review and this year’s National Defence Strategy.

Both missiles are potent additions to the RAN’s firepower. However, what sets the SM-6 apart in Australia’s modestly sized missile arsenal is the impressive versatility in capability that it brings.

Like the SM-2 and ESSM, which are also carried by Australian warships and are fired from the same vertical launch cells, the SM-6 was primarily designed as an air-defence weapon. Defending against incoming aircraft and cruise missiles remains one of its functions. It is also capable of ballistic-missile defence in conjunction with the Aegis Baseline 9 combat system, with which the Hobarts will be upgraded.

Although official Australian statements have emphasised the SM-6’s air defence role, the missile can also target ships. Its effective range in that mode is not known but is likely to be significantly longer than the advertised 185km reach of the NSM, which is already an improvement upon the Harpoon missile that is being phased out as the Anzac-class frigates are progressively decommissioned. SM-6’s anti-ship function is attractive for the RAN, as the missile’s range and speed promise to restore a tactical edge in case of surface encounters with well-armed adversaries. China’s large and expanding navy is the likely benchmark.

The downsides of employing the SM-6 in this role are the high unit-cost of the missile, US$4.3 million, and its relatively small warhead. The NSM, which is half the price but is a slower-moving cruise missile, will serve as the RAN’s mainstay anti-ship missile in future. Still, the versality of the SM-6 makes it a handy force multiplier for the RAN, since its ships carry few missiles and could be reloaded only at long intervals when deployed forward. A missile that can perform several different tasks is very useful when sailing into harm’s way, as an adversary must take the all-round capability into account.

The versatility of the SM-6 now extends into the air domain, with the US Navy showing it at RIMPAC mounted on an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet as an air-to-air missile.  With an estimated range of 400 km, the AIM-174B, the air-launched version of SM-6, promises to fill a significant gap in US air defence capability by reaching aerial threats that couldn’t formerly be intercepted. While other US Navy and Air Force contenders to fill this requirement are under development, the AIM-174B could be an attractive and readily available option for the Australian air force to acquire from its ally. Australia also operates the Super Hornet, the avionics of which should be readily adaptable to controlling the AIM-174B.

Australia may not be making progress in retooling the ADF’s lethality as fast as many observers would like. But the successful testing of the NSM and SM-6 certainly point in the right direction for the navy. Their combined and complementary anti-ship capabilities are likely to be highly prized. The SM-6’s multi-functionality does not come cheap, but it appears to be a prudent investment in the current and future combat capability of Australia’s surface naval force.

Artificial intelligence at war

There’s a global arms race under way to work out how best to use artificial intelligence for military purposes. The Gaza and Ukraine wars are now accelerating this. These conflicts might inform Australia and others in the region as they prepare for a possible AI-fuelled ‘hyperwar’ closer to home, given that China envisages fighting wars using automated decision-making under the rubric of what it calls ‘intelligentization’.

The Gaza war has shown that the use of AI in tactical targeting can drive military strategy by encouraging decision-making bias. At the start of the conflict, an Israeli Defence Force AI system called Lavender apparently identified 37,000 people linked to Hamas. Its function quickly shifted from gathering long-term intelligence to rapidly identifying individual operatives to target. Foot soldiers were easier to swiftly locate and attack than senior commanders, so they dominated the attack schedule.

Lavender created a simplified digital model of the battlefield, allowing dramatically faster targeting and much higher rates of attacks than in earlier conflicts. Human analysts did review Lavender’s recommendations before authorising attacks, but they quickly grew to trust it, considering it more reliable. Humans often spent only 20 seconds considering Lavender’s target recommendations before approving them.

These human analysts displayed automation bias and action bias. Indeed, it could be said that Lavender was encouraging and amplifying these biases. In a way, the humans offloaded their thinking to the machine.

Human-machine teams are considered by many, including the Australian Defence Force, to be central to future warfighting. The way Lavender’s tactical targeting drove military strategy suggests that the AI machine part should be designed to work with humans on the task they are undertaking, not be treated as a part able to be quickly switched between different functions. Otherwise, humans might lose sight of the strategic or operational context and instead focus on the machine-generated answers.

For example, the purpose-designed Ukrainian GIS Arta system takes a bottom-up approach to target selection by giving people a well-fused picture of the battlespace, not a recommendation derived opaquely of what to attack. It’s described as ‘Uber for artillery’. Human users apply the context as they understand it to decide what is to be targeted.

Ukraine offers further insights into the application of AI for knowing what is happening on the battlefield. Advanced digital technology has made the close and deep battlespace almost transparent. Strategy is now formed around finding enemy forces while fooling their surveillance systems to avoid being targeted. The result is that the frontline between the two forces, out to about 40km on either side, is now a very deadly zone through which neither side can break through to win.

This tactical crisis appears likely to deepen as present semi-autonomous air, land and sea systems are progressively updated by Ukraine and Russia with AI. This will make these robots much less vulnerable to electronic warfare jamming and allow them to autonomously recognise a hostile target and attack. Sensing the significant battlefield advantages, the US has launched the large-scale Replicator program aiming to field ‘autonomous systems at scale of multiple thousands, in multiple domains, within the next 18 to 24 months’.

Given AI’s use in Gaza and Ukraine, it appears likely that in a potential war with China the principal utility of AI similarly will be find-and-fool. Consider clashes over the first island chain, which runs from Indonesia to Taiwan and through Okinawa to mainland Japan. With China to the west and the United States to the east, military forces would use AI’s ability to quickly find items within a background full of clutter while attempting to fool the enemy’s AI systems.

Helped by AI, US-led coalition kill webs and Chinese kill webs will readily find and target hostile air and naval forces on their respective sides of the island chain. The first island chain might then become a stabilised but very dangerous land, sea and air battlespace, with US and allied forces dominating on the eastern side and Chinese forces dominating on the western side. The island chain would become a no man’s land that neither side could pass through without suffering prohibitive losses.

How to win in a war so driven and influenced by AI may be the major question facing defence forces today. The Ukraine war suggests some strategies: wearing the other side down in a protracted attrition battle; using mass frontal attacks to overwhelm the adversary in a weakly defended area; infiltrating using small assault groups with heavy firepower support; or quickly exploiting some fleeting technological advantage to break through. Such options may become practicable as more and more AI-enabled weapon systems enter service.

The operational balance seems to have swung to favour defence over offence, to the advantage of status quo powers, such as India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia. But this may prompt a revisionist power like China to seize territory before others can respond, making it difficult to push back. As Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida  warned, ‘Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow.’

NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners should cooperate to increase arms output

NATO and its four Indo-Pacific partners should cooperate and coordinate to ease a munitions shortage by increasing production of basic supplies, such as artillery shells, and further easing rules that restrict trade in more sophisticated weapons. Cooperative action is all the more necessary as support for Ukraine empties ammunition stocks and as NATO and its Indo-Pacific friends look warily at the risks of wars erupting simultaneously.

Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine since 2022 has made clear to NATO, Japan, South Korea and others that their post-Cold War demilitarisation and reduced capacity for production of ammunition and weapons have left them vulnerable.

NATO’s four Indo-Pacific partners are Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, collectively called the IP4 (and until recently known as the Asia-Pacific partners, or AP4). The grouping is loose and informal and based on shared geopolitical outlooks. The AP4 countries have all responded firmly against the war in Ukraine and are making efforts to limit Russia’s aggression that are laudable, given their distance from the conflict. They also share similar interests in their own region, with Australia, New Zealand and South Korea supporting Japan’s ambition for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

NATO and the IP4 need a more thorough platform of coordination and cooperation on key security matters. This is particularly important, because there are no plans for an Indo-Pacific alliance in the style of NATO. The most pressing issue is munitions production, in which the IP4 countries severely lag behind adversaries in the region: China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. Not only would the IP4 be able to support each other; they could also expect reciprocal help from NATO members.

Amid the shortage of supplies, making basic ammunition is an obvious opportunity for cooperation. Scarcity is so dire that NATO states have been unable to send Ukraine all that it needs, and even the EU has allocated funds to double annual shell production among its members. This may still not be enough to counter Russia’s robust war economy.

So NATO members and the IP4 must intensify efforts. It is in their mutual interest to increase cooperation, especially on munitions and arms that are not subject to such tight export restrictions and secrecy requirements as advanced weaponry is. Meanwhile, for the long term, easing restrictions between like-minded countries for transfers of more advanced weaponry, such as air defense systems, may be especially important for the Indo-Pacific region.

Among the many lessons of the war in Ukraine is that conventional artillery is still important in land warfare. Ukraine urgently needs more artillery and ammunition for it. A similar situation could emerge on the Korean peninsula if the truce that has endured since the end of the Korean War broke.

Meanwhile, Russian aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities has destroyed critical infrastructure. Defense systems, such as the US Patriot surface-to-air missile system, have been both crucial and scarce. This would also be an issue in a conflict in the Taiwan Strait or elsewhere in China’s vicinity and could make or break defensive efforts.

Japan has eased its restrictive export regime to indirectly supply Ukraine with domestically made Patriot systems. It is also considering easing restrictions on exporting explosives needed for artillery shells. Australia is likewise looking to increase its defense production over the long term, including missile development cooperation with the US. South Korea has increased its arms exports to Europe, and sees the trend continuing. New Zealand is small and has a very limited defence industry, but its potential, could be used optimally by coordinating with NATO and the rest of the IP4.

Conception and conjecture in statecraft: insights from Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger made his name in the 1950s as a scholar of ‘statesmen’, always using the masculine noun. He was especially interested in the intellectual ‘conceptions’ that guide the actions of statesmen, and how they have to use ‘conjecture’ in the absence of certainty. 

Before he was appointed in January 1969 to be the United States national security adviser, Kissinger wrote a number of iconoclastic papers that still speak to us today. Thanks to Niall Ferguson’s biography, Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist (2015), we have been reintroduced to those papers. While they should be seen for what they are—the thoughts of a brilliant but self-regarding intellectual—they nonetheless contain enduring insights on statecraft and policymaking.  

Among the insights relevant today is that the essence of ‘statesmanship’ is to be found in having the courage and the character to take consequential decisions and act boldly, when opportunities and threats are of necessity only incompletely glimpsed, and when probabilities and consequences cannot be calculated precisely. The ultimate test of such statesmanship is to grapple with the prospect of war—both deterring it and being ready for it—and to persuade the public of the conception on which the nation’s grand strategy is founded. 

The system that empowers such a statesman needs to support this conjectural thinking and the statesman’s ability to communicate the possible consequences—both of action and inaction—to the public. Bureaucracy, for Kissinger, leads to decisions being avoided until a crisis, or some other imperative, forces an issue, when events have largely removed ambiguity. Such crisis is also the moment when the scope for creative action is certain to be at a minimum.  

When the scope for creative action is greatest, by contrast, bureaucracies are typically anxious that knowledge upon which to base action is minimal, or ambiguous. As a result, they are hidebound and inert. When relevant knowledge becomes available to a standard that is deemed to be acceptable to a risk-averse bureaucracy, the capacity of the statesman to affect events is usually at a minimum. 

For Kissinger, the best statecraft involves acting successfully in accordance with a long term conception. This means not just recognising the trends of the times, but the act of conceiving an optimal world order, and then harnessing the trends of the times in the pursuit of that conception. For Kissinger, thought and action has to be integrated. That is why, for him, the term ‘conception’ means, simultaneously, the mind’s capacity to conceive and imagine; the purposive act of devising a design; and the resultant idea that can both explain a reality and inform actions within that reality, such as the idea of a balance of power.  

However, while Kissinger lauded the virtuosity of the statesman who is able to turn ideas into action, he also understood that they are nonetheless prisoners of their time. This is especially so in relation to the ‘problem of politics’, as Kissinger termed it. Statesmen are always political leaders, and as such are constrained by the prevailing domestic structure of politics. As politicians, their focus, especially in modern democracies, is on the domestic needs and aspirations of their citizens, who hold the ultimate power over their ability to function—namely, being able to deny them office. Issues of statecraft typically hold no interest for parochially minded citizens, who prefer tranquillity over foreign entanglements. The politician-as-statesman who outruns the people will fail in achieving a domestic consensus, however wise their policies.  Kissinger was, of course, writing during the Vietnam War.  

Given their personal traits (always seeking political power, ever calculating their electoral interests), politicians are too often inclined to use known methods—those they use to achieve high office—when they turn their hand to statecraft. Such methods are, however, often ill-suited for this purpose. Domestic levers and tools, and domestic experience, are not applicable when dealing with international situations, which are often far removed from the typical politician’s expertise and knowledge.  

The civic consciousness of the politician—which Kissinger saw in the lawyers and businesspeople who went into government service in the 1950s and 1960s, and which today might also be seen in those who go into national politics through university politics, local government, community activism, and so on—is often ill-suited to comprehending and acting in the world of diplomacy, alliances, and war. Here, completely different conceptions are required.  

The politician, who should be no stranger to making difficult decisions, finds the contingency of statecraft especially challenging and unnerving. Here success depends on making conjectural estimates about a future in the absence of comprehensive data, which are more readily available in domestic policy areas. For instance, deterrence aims to cause something not to happen. Its success can only be measured conjecturally, and over a longer time horizon than the typical span of political achievement.  

We come here to the second of Kissinger’s key notions, ‘conjecture’. Conjecture requires an ability and willingness to project beyond what is known, with often very little to guide the statesman, apart from convictions, common sense, and historical perspective. The problem of conjecture means that actions have to be geared to assessments that cannot be proved when they are made.  

In this regard, Kissinger was scathing of bureaucracies, and especially the US departments and agencies of the 1950s and 1960s. Bureaucracies typically resist conjecture. Decisions that need to be made do not typically get considered until they appear as an administrative imperative. Perhaps departments and agencies cannot agree, major budget or procurement decisions have to be taken, international visits or meetings loom, and so on.  Statecraft, however, requires conjecture about the future, and the consideration of hypothetical cases. Administrators are too busy with actual cases to devote time to what they consider to be hypothetical cases. They tolerate policy planning only insofar as it has no practical consequence. Studying a policy problem at lower organisational levels becomes a substitute for coming to grips with it.  

Moreover, the workload in managing the bureaucratic machine means that even when the most profound issues are surfaced, they are reduced to brief, focused discussions in committees that are overly reliant on the consideration of succinct papers and presentations, which inevitably brings a reductive approach to inherently complex problems. (Kissinger wrote presciently about this problem in 1959.)  

Kissinger was especially scathing of policymaking-by-committee. In any committee process, the quest for consensus becomes the test of the validity of ideas. Committees act as consumers of ideas rather than creators of them.  Policymaking-by-committee involves the distillation of differences that are finely balanced, where the merits seem fairly even.  However, this is likely to mean that bolder ideas have already been discarded before the commencement of the committee stage proper, because when consensus, conformity, and collegiality are privileged as an absolute value, boldness of conception, risk-taking, and daring are filtered out, like the outlier scores of judges in a sporting competition. Policy thus becomes an averaging activity, on the assumption that the correct course is likely to be found in the moderation of already moderated viewpoints. 

The bureaucrat is a neutral personality in this process, neither brimming with ideas, nor given to boldness of action. When policymaking becomes an administrative process—rather than a creative one, characterised by virtuosity—it can only move at the pace of the conversation. The worst of all possible worlds is thus achieved. The significance of issues is not appreciated until it is too late.  Then events force decisions to be hurriedly taken under pressure, which extinguishes the opportunity for creative action.  

Unsurprisingly, Kissinger thought that ‘the intellectual’ could assist. Whereas bureaucracy involves projecting the familiar into the future, rather than risking new departures, the intellectual can provide ‘boldness of conception’, through subject mastery, analysis, conceptual frameworks, analogies from history, and so on—all of which are likely to be more useful than the inert thinking of the bureaucracy.  He was concerned, however, that once drawn in—and typically too late in the process—intellectuals could find themselves burdened by having to operate at the hurried pace of executive action, which by that stage is often meaningless and ineffectual. The intellectual’s task is to provide creative perspectives, without becoming as harassed as those they advise, while at the same time avoiding being entranced by an academic quest for universality, which leads to dogmatism in the gritty and parochial world of imperfect policy choices. They have to be brilliant and practical, at the same time.  

Looking back on these insights, we can appreciate their force without accepting them in full.  Not all committees make, or recommend, bad decisions.  Not all brilliant mavericks are correct. There are many bureaucrats who, when enabled and supported, are able to engage in both bold thinking and daring action. There is an intrinsic value in the process of orderly and collective deliberation, even where some participants are engaged uncritically, perhaps in the pursuit of the sectional interests of their departments. A leadership style that is cautious, prudent, analytical, and geared to the moderation of ideas and policies has its place, if only to temper and head off the unforeseen and unintended consequences of bold conceptions. Think here of Churchill and the Dardanelles campaign of 1915.  

The more important issue, and the challenge at the core of Kissinger’s critique of the feckless politician and the inert bureaucrat, is the question of how best to gear the decision process such that effective action can be taken conjecturally ahead of time—that is, when still more analysis, and more bureaucratic steps and meetings, would not add to the prospects of bettering the outcome and might even open the door to worse.  

Kissinger’s last book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy (2022), written after a lifetime of engagement with these issues, provides a more rounded view than the papers that he wrote before he went into the arena himself in January 1969. In his compelling portraits of Adenauer, de Gaulle, Nixon, Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Thatcher, he focused on the ‘courage’ that they displayed in making bold and daring decisions, and the traits of ‘character’ that enabled them to hold to difficult courses of action.  

Grappling with the issue of war is perhaps the greatest test of the politician as ‘statesman’—that is, acting to avoid war without compromising vital national interests, while being prepared, if required, to fight one with resolve. Few come equipped for this test with the mettle of Churchill, de Gaulle, or Eisenhower—all of whom were, of course, soldiers. In the Australian context, Curtin is considered to be someone who met the test of wartime leadership. However, his decision space was significantly constrained. Australia was marginalised as the US war machine sprang into action after the attack on Pearl Harbor. MacArthur treated Curtin with respect, and accommodated his concerns, but not to the point of impairing the US campaign in the Pacific.  

Further, while venerated as a symbol of an independent military action in the defence of Australia, the Battle for Kokoda, properly understood, was in fact a heroic action in a subsidiary area of operation in a wider US-led theatre-wide war. As David Horner has shown in his masterful account, The War Game: Australian War Leadership from Gallipoli to Iraq (2022), Australian strategic and war leadership has always been a function of alliance constructs and imperatives. In the main, Australian politicians have had to make difficult and solemn decisions about whether to go to wars that were being conducted by others, and to what level of commitment.  

Australian political leaders have never been tested in the way that a modern-day war in the Indo-Pacific might yet test the nation. While the Second World War comes closest, its lessons are principally concerned with what happened when a nation in denial, as Australia was from at least 1937, had to scramble suddenly to ready itself for a foreseeable war without having an opportunity to contribute to allied strategic decision-making, much less being able to influence it. While the times do not call, yet at least, for a Churchill or a de Gaulle, they certainly cry out for more than the inert leadership that was demonstrated by the Lyons government in 1937 when, in the face of the formation of the Axis, and Imperial Japan’s full-scale invasion of China, too little was done while there was still time. Today, were a Churchill or a de Gaulle to stride onto the national stage, a puzzled and bemused population would wonder what the spectacle was all about. Some would protest at the beating of the ‘drums of war’. However, having a Joseph Lyons on the stage would be far worse.  

Drawing on Kissinger’s lifetime of insights, how might the dilemma be navigated? How best do we sensibly prepare for a war, while lessening its risk and, in doing so, avoid both the performative affectation that would be involved in channelling Churchill or de Gaulle on the one hand, or the listless inertia of Lyons on the other?  

Kissinger’s insights into statecraft and policymaking, and specifically conjecture and conception, can assist. Leaden bureaucratic processes have to be cast aside, for the reasons that Kissinger dissected. Today’s politicians will need to display the courage and character of the successful ‘statesmen’ of the past. This will involve devoting a great deal of time to thinking conjecturally about the most consequential strategic problem of the age—the possibility of war in the Indo-Pacific. Hypothetical cases will need to be considered, using wargaming techniques and simulated decision exercises. Urgent decisions will need to be taken on how to best prepare for war, while working at the same time to lessen its risk. Such decisions will have to be based on assessments that could not be proved, for now.  Intellectuals could have great impact here, as the defence intellectuals of the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre had in the 1970s and 1980s.  

These decisions will need to be carefully explained by the government, and articulated with clarity—not through a patchwork of meaningless euphemisms to be found in government talking points. This could be done with proper regard to military secrecy. Such purposeful public explanation would maintain optionality, leverage and ambiguity, where this suited our interests. Having a clear conception of Australia’s grand strategy would be critically important in this process. Current defence and foreign policy constructs are too rooted in earlier conceptions such as defence self-reliance, or ‘security in Asia’.      

One aspect of Australia’s strategic dilemma—and apparent response—especially cries out for the touch of a modern Kissinger, namely, what is the conception of how Australia sees US military power being projected from and through its territory? Future historians will have to reconstruct a remarkable change through which Australia is being transformed, in fits and starts, into a secure operating base for US military power projection against China. This transition from the declared policy of defence self-reliance to one of alliance-based power projection and, potentially, warfighting is as extraordinary in its steady realisation as it is breathtaking in its lack of transparency.  

Not that the elements have been withheld from the public. Since 2014, there has been a steady stream of bare announcements regarding initiatives to enable the US to operate militarily from or through Australia, across sea, land and air. What would not be clear to future historians from those announcements was the extent to which this was done purposefully, according to a clear conception. Those historians, working with the records, might—like archaeologists of knowledge—have to discover a conception, if it existed.   

US Congressman Michael McCaul is not in doubt.  He told The Weekend Australian (17 August 2024) that Australia has become ‘the central base of operations’ for deterrence of China militarily. Even if one disagrees strongly with him on the policy merits of this change, one can only agree with Paul Keating that this is being done without adequate debate. On questions such as the purpose of providing a base for these US forces or, relatedly, how the ANZUS Treaty might apply in the event of attacks on US forces in the ‘Pacific Area’—a term that is used, but not defined, in the Treaty—there have been no meaningful ministerial statements in the Parliament. With every AUSMIN communique, yet more building blocks of this new approach are announced. What is the underlying conception?  We are not told.  

Bringing the public along in relation to fundamental changes in the character of a military alliance is crucial, and especially so when there is no obvious threatening neighbour—something that focuses the mind in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Israel, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, Sweden, and elsewhere. For many Australians, local defence and an avoidance of distant entanglements would make a great deal of sense. The rationale for military alliances, and their evolving character, have to be explained, especially when an alliance seeks to achieve strategic effects over vast, oceanic distances, as distinct from providing protection against a threatening neighbour, of which Australia has none.   

No matter how wise the policy, public acceptance is crucial, and never more so than when a nation faces the prospect of war. Given the decline in historical knowledge, the atomising effects of technology, the fragmentation of the media, and what Kissinger termed the ‘impugning’ effect of identity politics—which undermines national self-perception—public discussion is becoming increasingly vacuous, and unconcerned, in meaningful ways, with substantive issues. 

Unless courage and character are shown by our ‘statesmen’ in addressing the related issues of a possible war in the Indo-Pacific, and a changing US alliance, an anxious Australian public—unconvinced by vacuous euphemisms, and apprehensive about a faraway war—might one day voice its opposition to Australia’s contributing to the military deterrence of China.

No matter how brilliant their conjectures and conceptions, or how wise their policies, the ‘statesman’ cannot outrun the people.