Of all the credible contingencies facing Australia in the foreseeable future, the most challenging would undoubtedly be our involvement with the US in countering a major Chinese attack on Taiwan.

For obvious reasons, our politicians have refused to be drawn into public discussion about such a serious conflict. They prefer instead to resort to the ‘we do not discuss such theoretical contingencies’ as an understandable let-out. Discussion of this subject in academic publications in Australia has invariably tended to paint only the downsides of our involvement with the US in a war with China over Taiwan.

This article takes a different line and argues that if China were attacking US forces in a major military conflict across the Taiwan Strait and Australia refused to be involved,  the very existence of the ANZUS alliance would be at risk.

President Xi Jinping has recently reiterated China’s threat to use military force against Taiwan. On 2 January 2019, he warned that China would not rule out the threat of military action to reclaim Taiwan: ‘We make no promise to give up the use of military force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means.’ Since taking office in 2012, Xi has made it clear that taking back Taiwan would be the crowning achievement in his vision to restore China’s place as a great power.

The key question now is whether Xi will come under more pressure this year to invade Taiwan because of the rising tensions he is facing—both domestically with declining economic performance and internationally with an increasingly assertive America. Resorting to a serious external crisis over Taiwan would serve to divert the attention of the Chinese people to a major issue of national pride.

There can be no doubt that China is developing the military means to attack Taiwan decisively. The US assessment is that the People’s Liberation Army is capable of increasingly sophisticated military actions against Taiwan and is overcoming its historical inability to project power across the Taiwan Strait, which is the natural geographic advantage of the island’s defence. Beijing’s options include a maritime blockade, an intense air and missile campaign to degrade Taiwan’s defences, and an outright amphibious invasion to seize and occupy key targets or the entire island.

Even so, large-scale amphibious invasion is one of the most complicated and difficult of military operations.  An attempt to invade Taiwan would ‘strain China’s armed forces and invite international intervention’, making an amphibious invasion of Taiwan ‘a significant political and military risk’.  Beijing needs to be aware of the huge international opposition that would be generated by its occupation of a vibrant democracy of 24 million people. However, the longer Beijing defers using military force, the stronger a unique sense of Taiwanese identity is becoming. In that respect, time is not on Beijing’s side.

From America’s point of view, it must recognise that any military conflict with China in such proximity to the mainland will increasingly work to Beijing’s advantage as it develops the modern, advanced capabilities to project military power. But we tend to underestimate the importance the US puts on the defence of Taiwan. Australians see Taiwan as more marginal than do the Americans.

There is now a consensus across the political, security and economic communities in Washington that China is America’s major adversary. As Vice President Mike Pence made plain in his speech to the Hudson Institute last October, China wants nothing less than to push the United States from the Western Pacific and ‘attempt to prevent us from coming to the aid of our allies’. The days are gone of the US not standing up to an increasingly aggressive China.

However, two of my colleagues at the ANU, Professors Hugh White and Brendan Taylor, are of the view that the game is over for Taiwan. White argues that no American leader can dismiss the risk that a conflict over Taiwan would escalate to a nuclear exchange ‘involving devastating strikes on US cities’, which he asserts would prevent the US from coming to Taiwan’s defence. He also believes that strategically it’s hard to see that reunification harms US interests ‘because possession of Taiwan by China would not make any real difference to the strategic balance between the US and China in the Western Pacific’.

Such a complacent attitude ignores the grave implications for extended nuclear deterrence for US allies such as Japan and Australia. Abandoning Taiwan to a Chinese military takeover would threaten the balance of power in the region by significantly undermining the trust and confidence of US allies.

Taylor holds the view that America’s ability to intervene in the Taiwan Strait is receding and is already at its limit. Any US advantage will likely be gone in a decade, he claims, thus allowing Beijing to deny America access to the theatre, while an attempt by the US to re-engage carries the risk of sparking ‘a war like no other’.

In the Cold War, there were the same sorts of arguments about the overwhelming ability of Soviet military power to occupy West Germany. Washington’s response was to develop nuclear weapons with the specific mission to destroy the Soviet leadership. America has never resiled from contemplating the use of nuclear weapons and, moreover, possesses unique conventional prompt global strike weapons.

This brings me to the implications for Australia of a war between the US and China over Taiwan. My view is quite simple: in the event of an unprovoked Chinese attack, if the US doesn’t come to the defence of Taiwan, that will mark the end of the alliance system in the Asia–Pacific region. Japan and South Korea would be likely to quickly develop their own nuclear weapons. If America does defend Taiwan and Australia refuses to make a military contribution, that will threaten the very raison d’être for ANZUS.

My reasoning here is no other American ally—except Japan—will commit to the military defence of Taiwan. Let’s go through the list of countries that will look the other way: they include South Korea and every Southeast Asian country, New Zealand and most likely Canada, and probably every NATO country—including the UK.

However, Japan might well consider making a significant military contribution because of its close relations with Taiwan and the fact that a PRC-occupied Taiwan would massively complicate its own defence problems. Possession of Taiwan would give Beijing a forward military presence to threaten the Ryukyu (Nansei) Islands, which include Okinawa, and Japan itself, as well as providing a deep-water bastion off Taiwan’s east coast for China’s SSBNs.

For Australia, Taiwan certainly comes within the ANZUS Treaty’s definition of an armed attack in ‘the Pacific Area’. Australia is a stand-out as the only Five Eyes ally the US should be able to depend on. Our refusal would be seen in Washington as the ultimate betrayal of our alliance commitment in our own region of primary strategic concern.

It’s in our interest to stand up for the defence of a successful democracy of 24 million people living on an island. If Taiwan isn’t worth defending, why would anyone come to Australia’s defence?

In this podcast Madeleine Nyst talks to Michael Shoebridge on the connections between human rights and global security, and Donald Trump’s pick for the role of US ambassador to Australia. Also in this episode, Danielle Cave, Fergus Ryan and Nathan Ruser from ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre discuss their research into China’s rapidly growing ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang and Brendan Nicholson discusses the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

When Australians remember 1918, the climactic year of World War I, they give a prominent place to the Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918. Often celebrated as the perfect battle, Hamel gave the newly appointed commander of the Australian Corps, General John Monash, the chance to display his consummate skills as a planner and military leader on the Western Front. Beyond that, Hamel had the distinction of being the first, and effective, collaboration between the Australian Imperial Force and the American Expeditionary Force.

Less well known is the next occasion on which the two national forces served under Monash’s command, the Battle of the Hindenburg Line in late September 1918. This was a far more significant battle strategically than Hamel, and one that went much less according to Monash’s plans. Indeed, as one of Monash’s biographers, Geoffrey Serle, has said, the battle came ‘close to being a disaster’ (p. 363). And relations between the Australian and US commanders were much less harmonious.

By September 1918, the Allied armies had managed to stop the dramatic German offensives of the spring and summer of 1918—offensives that had broken the stalemate on the Western Front and for a short time seemed to give Germany a chance of winning the war. The Allied powers were now in a position to recapture the territory that Germany had seized in the first offensives of the war in 1914.

The Allied command launched three major offensives in late September. In the south, American and French forces attacked between Rheims and Verdun along the Meuse and through the Argonne Forest. It was a battle that continued until the armistice of 11 November and ultimately captured Sedan, the place where the French had suffered a humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. In the north, on 28 September, a multinational force of Belgians, French and British launched the final of five battles around Ypres, recapturing Mount Kemmel, Messines and Passchendaele Ridge and driving towards Ghent. In the centre, the British Fourth Army, including the Australian Corps, attacked the most powerful section of the Hindenburg Line between Cambrai and St Quentin on 29 September.

The Hindenburg Line was a formidable defensive line to which the Germans had retreated across the Western Front in early 1917 after the bitterly contested battles of Verdun and the Somme had failed to end the war in 1916. Facing the Australian Corps in late 1918 was the usual jungle of barbed wire, pillboxes, trenches and underground bunkers; but incorporated into that was another daunting obstacle, the St Quentin Canal. It was 30 metres wide and 15 metres deep, had a water depth of 2 to 3 metres and sides too steep for tanks to negotiate. Although the canal went underground for 5,500 metres south of the village of Bellicourt, that only gave the German defenders a natural bunker. There they could shelter from the Allied bombardment, wait for an attack to pass over them and then emerge from airshafts and concealed passages to counterattack the advancing forces from the rear. The surface ‘bridge’ above the tunnel was itself heavily fortified with multiple lines of defences, including anti-tank guns.

To break through the forbidding line of defences, Monash was given command of a vast multinational force: in the centre were three Australian infantry divisions (the 2nd, 3rd and 5th); on the right, the British 46th Division; and on the left, two fresh American divisions, the 27th and 30th, from the II Corps. These large US divisions had been offered to replace the 1st and 4th divisions of the Australian Corps, which were resting after an exhausting few months of battle. Although it was the preference of the commander of the American Expeditionary Force, General John Pershing, that his forces fight as a national unit, the two US divisions stayed with the British Army throughout the war.

The plan to break the Hindenburg Line was complex, and, in some ways, risky, given the inexperience of the Americans who were to attack across the canal–tunnel surface, capturing the villages of Nauroy and La Catelet. The Australian 5th and 3rd divisions would follow, leapfrogging the Americans and taking the final (Beaurevoir) line of the German defences 4 kilometres further on. At the same time, the British IX Corps would cross the open canal to the south, using collapsible boats, life jackets, ladders and even floating bridges. (The crossing of the canal was added to the plans by the commander of the Fourth Army, General Henry Rawlinson, against Monash’s advice.) If all this succeeded, the advance would be exploited with cavalry, a force still awaiting that glorious moment when they would break out and unravel the enemy lines. Monash would later call commanding these operations one of the most arduous, difficult and responsible tasks he undertook during the war.

In a remarkable demonstration of good sense and self-effacement, the US commander of the II Corps, General George Windle Read, agreed to place his inexperienced troops and staff under Monash’s direct control. That involved Read’s swallowing his pride and probably abandoning hope of favour and preferment in his own army. As the eminent American military historian Dennis Showalter has written, he accepted ‘“makee-learn” status for the good of the service and the sake of the men he commanded’ (p. 464).

To coach the Americans in Australian methods, Monash set up a mission of 200 officers and non-commissioned officers from the two Australian divisions not involved in the battle. The American generals and brigadiers also attended Monash’s pre-battle briefing conferences, including one on 23 September at which every detail of the planned operations was explained. Monash later recalled:

No one present will soon forget the tense interest and confident expectancy which characterized that meeting. America, a great English-speaking democracy on one shore of the Pacific, was to co-operate with Australia, its younger sister democracy on the opposite shore, in what was the greatest and what might be the most decisive battle of the great European War. [p. 250]

Monash stressed to all present at the meeting the importance of teamwork, of adhering strictly to prescribed objectives, of disseminating orders to junior officers and of making appropriate provision for the troops, including adequate food and sufficient sleep. In particular—and this would become an issue during the subsequent battle—he emphasised the need to mop up pockets of German resistance before moving forward.

Accounts of how Monash’s briefing was received vary. The US Commander of the 27th Division, General J.F. O’Ryan, recalled that there were ‘not more than five or six questions asked in all by the American officers present … General Monash’s conversation and explanations were so lengthy and detailed that there did not seem to be necessity to ask many questions’ (p. 256). Serle, however, notes that another account described such a rain of questions that Monash spent three hours with blackboard and chalk, maps and diagrams attempting to explain the logic and risks of the forthcoming operation (p. 364).

For all of Monash’s meticulous planning, operations started to go awry even before the main offensive started. The problem was that, in the lead-up to the battle, the British III Corps had failed to straighten the line held by Allied forces to the north. That left the US 27th Division short of its assigned start line for the main attack on 29 September. Rawlinson therefore decided that the Americans should capture some critical points—the Knoll, Gillemont Farm and Quennemont Farm—even before the main assault began.

Going into action on 27 September, the Americans met heavy opposition and became disoriented by the fog and smoke of the intense artillery fire, which made visibility non-existent. Soon they splintered into small groups and were pushed back as Germans emerged from hiding places to counterattack. Their casualties were huge: in one battalion, every company officer was killed or wounded.

Even more problematically, some American troops became stranded in the very area where the barrage for the main attack two days later would fall. Their precise location was unknown and, as O’Ryan argued, it would have been ’repulsive to the mass of the officers and men’ if the barrage had been laid down as planned, given that this risked killing the stranded men (p. 300). The barrage for the main attack therefore had to be targeted a thousand metres ahead of where the 27th Division would actually start their attack. It had been proven, time and again, on the Western Front that infantry could succeed only when supported by a strong and accurate creeping barrage; so this put the Americans at a huge disadvantage on 29 September. It was a decision that reduced Monash to a ‘state of despair’ (Serle, p. 365).

He had reason to be concerned. When, at 5.55 am on 29 September the US troops set off again, with the Australian 3rd and 5th divisions following, they had to advance a thousand metres without the protection of a creeping barrage. Many faltered well short of their objectives. All their tanks were knocked out by German guns or by mines of a former British minefield that hadn’t been detected. The 3rd Division soon found that it could not leapfrog the Americans, as planned, and drive for the second-stage targets; instead, they found themselves caught up in confused and difficult fighting without artillery or tanks and in broad daylight. (A useful account of the battle can be found in Peter S. Sadler, The Paladin: A life of Major-General Sir John Gellibrand.)

Ahead of the Australian 5th Division things were a little less chaotic, since the US 30th Division, which did have the support of a creeping barrage, captured one entrance of the tunnel. But as they pushed on, the 5th Division got ahead of the 3rd Division and met German reinforcements streaming down from positions that the US 27th Division was meant to have captured.

Only in the south was real success achieved. Helped by the fog and extraordinarily accurate artillery barrage which demolished German defences—the banks of the St Quentin Canal were so shattered that some troops could cross without getting their feet wet—the British 46th Division crossed the canal and captured the Riqueval bridge intact. By mid-afternoon the Hindenburg Line in that sector had been breached.

With progress stalling in the centre and north, however, Monash found that his carefully prepared plans were unravelling. He directed the Australian divisions to swing to the north along the main Hindenburg Line system with the goal of capturing Bony and the northern end of the tunnel. This redeployment during the night of 29–30 September was horrific. Infantry, tanks and ammunition supply columns struggled in the heavy rain to get across land full of old wire. The battle descended into a ‘slow and methodical hand to hand fighting, in a perfect tangle of trenches’, as Monash put it (Serle, p. 366).

Under pressure, Monash became erratic and bullying, and he vented on the Americans. Charles Bean, the official Australian war correspondent, noted after attending a briefing on the evening before the main battle:

[Monash] was very insistent on the fact that he doubted whether the Americans would succeed in carrying out their objectives … It struck all of us [war correspondents] that John was hedging against a possible defeat, in which case he would be able to throw the blame onto the Americans.

Monash would soon become openly scathing about the Americans, claiming that they rushed on blindly towards their objectives, while disregarding his warning about the importance of careful mopping up of pockets of resistance. Bean records that Monash told him on 30 September that the Americans had ‘sold us a pup … They’re simply unspeakable’.

It was not Monash’s finest hour. He not only blamed the Americans but argued with the commander of the Australian 3rd Division, General John Gellibrand, who had different views about how to read the battle and react to the unfolding situation. Gellibrand, writes Sadler, believed that Monash struggled to ‘face defeat with determined coolness of mind and conduct’ (p. 181). Certainly, Monash’s chief of staff, Thomas Blamey, lost his cool. Serle notes that not only did he refuse to accept Gellibrand’s assessment of the situation, but he abused an American divisional commander, swearing at him ‘like a bullock driver’ (p. 366). Blamey was the man who would have responsibility more than 20 years later, when commander-in-chief of the Australian Military Forces, for managing the alliance with the United States that ensured Australia’s security from Japanese attack.

Monash’s diatribe against the ‘unspeakable’ Americans was unfair. Whatever the failures of the US infantry and their communications systems on 27 September, the distance that the troops had to cover during the battle was almost certainly too great. The breadth of their attack also made the leading waves very thin. Monash seems to have known that and asked Rawlinson for a day’s delay in the main battle to rectify the situation caused by the failure of the initial American attack (Rawlinson refused).

Pershing, therefore, argued after the war that the problem was not the inexperience of the 27th Division but the distance it had to cover. Showalter, too, argued that Monash ‘was expecting a longer advance from the Americans than he had ever demanded of his Australians, and against fixed defences’ (p. 466). Monash, he claimed, relied on artillery and tanks to compensate for the Americans’ inexperience, even though firepower had never proven enough in earlier battles of the war to do that. Moreover, the deployments of Monash’s plan of attack, Showalter argued, meant that the 27th and 30th divisions were handed ‘the sharp and sticky end of the job’.

Fortunately, the situation on the battleground improved as German resistance began to ebb. The Americans were taken out of the line on 1 October and the British 32nd Division, which had crossed the canal, began to outflank the Germans, forcing them to evacuate the tunnel. Bony fell and the 3rd and 5th divisions pushed their way through towards the Beaurevoir line. The 2nd Division relieved them and, although undermanned and weakened by gas attacks, made a frontal attack at dawn and took the Beaurevoir line.

Given the tensions that the battle created, it was not an exemplar of harmonious Australian–US military collaboration. But the frustrations seem to have had no lasting effect, at least in that conflict. The Australian and US troops would not fight together again on the Western Front. On 5 October the Australians Corps, exhausted and very much understrength, was removed from the line, and would not return before the armistice. The US II Corps, despite their failure of 27 and 29 September, relieved the Australians a week after the battle, and fought on until 20 October, during which time they suffered over 13,000 casualties. The 30th Division ultimately was awarded 12 Congressional Medals of Honor, more than any other American division.

Moreover, given that the Battle of the Hindenburg Line ended, after all, in victory, the recriminations made in the heat of battle were elided in retrospect. Monash was willing to say in his post-war account, The Australian victories in France in 1918, that, despite the partial failure of the two US divisions to carry out his battle plan, he had:

no hesitation in saying that they fought most bravely, and advanced to the assault most fearlessly; … the leaders, from the Divisional Generals downwards, did the utmost within their powers to ensure success. Nor must the very bad conditions under which the 27th Division had to start be forgotten. Our American Allies are, all things considered, entitled to high credit for a fine effort. [p. 265]

The US commanders were equally diplomatic. In a report of 18 December 1918, Read was willing to concede, as Monash claimed, that his corps had tactical shortcomings, which he ascribed in part to training in open warfare that emphasised headlong advances but neglected liaison and mopping up operations. But Read also commended the British Fourth Army for its policy of supplying the II Corps ‘with every possible assistance and [protecting] American lives every whit as carefully as the lives of British troops’ (Showalter, p. 468).

Meanwhile, O’Ryan’s history of the 27th Division published in 1921 acknowledged the many difficult questions that the management of the campaign had raised but offered no criticisms of Monash. Rather, O’Ryan concluded that ‘the decisions made by the 4th Army Commander [Rawlinson] and by the Commander of the Australian Corps in relation to the conduct of the battle were fully justified by the results of the battle’ (p. 339). Moreover, he inserted into this chapter a peon of praise to the Australian soldier and the staff of the Australian Corps.

The operations and the supply technique of the Australian divisions were of the very best, and so it was that the rough-and-ready fighting spirit of the Australians had become refined by an experienced battle technique supported by staff work of the highest order … The Australians were probably the most effective troops employed in the war on either side. [p. 340]

This was a generous ally indeed!

Some have argued that the US–Australia alliance exists simply out of inertia or, worse yet, sentimentality. Shared sacrifice and longstanding habits of cooperation may play a role, but they’re not the basis upon which sovereign states determine their national interests.

The value of the alliance is its preservation of something that may seem intangible, and yet nevertheless is essential to the security, prosperity and values of both of our nations: support for a rules-based order. Without a doubt that sounds abstract, and can present a challenge to its defenders. But a rules-based order means that it is not simple raw power that determines outcomes.

Rules as the basis for order, backed by the power of the US and its partners to promote the rules, have delivered tangible benefits that bear repeating: preventing a great-power war; promoting an open and prosperous global economy; advancing democracy and human rights; and fighting to protect a system where rules are respected, territorial integrity preserved, and political independence maintained. These goals can only be achieved with strong alliances.

Given the intensifying challenges that various authoritarian regimes are putting on the international order created by America and its friends, and the shocks generated by Donald Trump, it will take working in concert with other like-minded states to defend and renew the rules and behaviours that will ensure our future prosperity and security.

I would suggest three specific ideas for refocusing the alliance. This will require reorienting the alliance’s geographic focus while broadening its scope beyond security, and expanding the joint efforts globally.

Geographically, a shift in focus to Asia is overdue. China’s rise to power is upending decades of relative stability in the region. While China’s rise has been beneficial in many ways, Beijing’s increasingly assertive military operations, use of various forms of economic coercion and attempts to intervene in other countries’ domestic affairs—and the challenges to the rules-based order that propelled China’s rise in the first place—have heightened regional concerns.

There’s much that Australia and America, in partnership and focused on the Asia–Pacific, can do to help stabilise the region. In the Pacific part of the Asia–Pacific, both countries can increase their efforts to promote sustainable development in the Pacific island states.

In the Indian Ocean part of the Indo-Pacific, there’s more they can do to partner with and encourage a rising India. And, perhaps most acutely in Southeast Asia—a region likely to become one of the world’s largest drivers of growth over the next several decades—there’s much that can be done to facilitate growth, promote sustainable development, and shore up sovereignty. Aligning Australian and American strategies in these sub-regions will likely amplify the individual efforts of each country.

Just as the geographic focus needs to move to Asia, the scope of the alliance needs to move beyond security. Without a shift, both Australia and the US are likely to harden the mistaken perception that nations must choose between their economic and security interests.

In support of the region’s vision of an open and integrated economic community, Canberra and Washington can help unlock access to private capital and investment, facilitate trade into and between the nations of Southeast Asia, and promote public–private partnerships that can underwrite physical and digital infrastructure projects. Doing so is likely to advance sustainable development in this dynamic region, contribute to transparency and the rule of law, raise environmental and labour standards, and provide better market access for Australian and American businesses.

Critically, such efforts would strengthen the resilience of institutions—political, economic and civil society. Both governments have efforts underway in this area. Thinking through how their economic and financial assets can augment each other, where to prioritise their efforts, and how best to deconflict resource allocation is the logical next step.

A final idea is to think globally—in a strategic and collaborative manner. This means seeking out more coalitions of the willing, drawn from the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific ocean regions, who see a need, have the will and possess the capabilities that can sustain an open and free order.

On the face of it, this suggestion seemingly cuts against the idea that the Australian–American alliance needs to narrow its geographic focus. But multiple regions of the world have a stake in underwriting a stable and prosperous Asia. Australia and America, perhaps in concert with Japan, can do much to draw other nations into their efforts and harness their strengths. This is not to suggest that this would be an alliance in the near term, but rather an effort to work more regularly with other like-minded states.

The immediate challenge will be that Washington isn’t currently providing leadership and stability in these areas as it has done in the past. And yet, despite the temptation to seek distance from a White House that radiates instability, the impulse of America’s allies should be the exact opposite. This is even more crucial in light of the actions being taken by authoritarian powers, bent on carving out their own spheres of influence in which to exercise diplomatic, economic and military primacy.

If there is concern that the White House has stepped back from its role as guarantor of the postwar order, and if allied nations believe that this order, for all its flaws, is still in their interests, they must step up to the defence of it—to Washington and to others.