Tag Archive for: grand strategy

The geography of American power

The United States is a secure power. Situated in a hemispheric citadel, and protected by wide oceans, the US could comfortably withdraw from being the arbiter of the geopolitical fate of Eurasia and still enjoy a significant margin of security. Such a US could still project power around the globe. However, it would do so selectively, in the pursuit of narrowly defined interests and objectives. It would need few, if any, allies.  It would remain a powerful global economic actor—fuelled by a massive domestic market, deep private wealth, leading edge innovation, and high population growth.

A locationally withdrawn US would have to be willing to accept the risk of the likely emergence of a hegemonic power in Eurasia. Such a hegemon would be able to establish strategic and military dominion over the population, resources, markets, infrastructure, and polities of Eurasia – from Vladivostok in Pacific Russia to Lisbon in Portugal, and from Nordkapp in Norway to Cape Town in South Africa. It could do so by way of intimidation, coercion, and leverage, where this was necessary. However, such sharp strategies would not be necessarily needed in significant measure. Many nations of Eurasia would probably resign themselves to a new strategic reality, as they came to accept, over time, the reality of economic and military overlordship.

Such a hegemon would become the leading global power. The goal of ‘making America great again’ would ring hollow in a world where a Eurasian hegemon dominated the heartland of the world, and where it could almost always deliver a ‘better deal’ to nations under its dominion—whether or not they were pleased with the terms of the deal.

If the US was not willing to accept its own subordination, it would have to continue to engage ‘forward’ in the affairs of Eurasia, including by way leveraging the significant economic and military resources of the European Union, Britain, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, Canada, and others to contain the emergence of such a hegemonic power.

This would be a sound geopolitical strategy. Geopolitics is the intersection of geography and power. It is concerned with questions of world order, national power, and coalitions of power. Separately, and irrespectively of whether or not the US continues to engage ‘forward’, there is a related geostrategic issue that confronts Washington. Geostrategy is the intersection of geography and capability, and especially military power. Whether the US withdraws, or continues to lean forward, it must build a sea-air barrier around Eurasia. It has to do so for its own defence and security, and in order to project power into, and around, Eurasia, should it have to do so.

In order to explain the idea of such a sea-air barrier, we need to start with a map.  Specifically, the map projection that US geographer Richard Edes Harrison made famous in 1942, which is known as the ‘One World, One War’ map. Harrison argued that on the traditional Mercator projection of the world, the US appeared to be isolated from the two major wartime strategic theatres of Europe and Asia. Harrison argued that while the Mercator projection was useful in the age of sail and steam, with the advent of air power, an ‘azimuthal equidistant projection’, pivoted around the North Pole, was required to better depict the strategic position of the US in the 1940s. Such a spherical conception of the Earth, viewed from above the North Pole, would better reveal the strong points, the sea areas, and the lines of approach that the US would have to secure and protect for its own defence, as well as for broader strategic purposes. With the coming of the missile age in the 1950s, Harrison’s theories were proven correct.

At the same time as Harrison was working on his maps, Nicolas J. Spykman was coming to similar conclusions, which he laid out in his last book, The Geography of the Peace, in 1944. For Spykman, the geography of Eurasia and the Western Hemisphere was the engine room of history. He argued that history was the eternal process of great powers clashing with one another in the rimlands of Eurasia—that is, Europe, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent, East Asia, and the littoral ‘inner seas’ of the Mediterranean, the South China Sea, the Philippine Sea, and the East China Sea. The recurring question for US strategy would always be the same—how to control the rimlands and littoral seas of Eurasia, in order to contain and, if necessary, defeat emerging powers, and whether to do so from afar, or in close?

Adapting this thinking, we can today describe a modern sea-air barrier around Eurasia as a series of strong points and areas of control that trace a line around these contested areas. Control of this barrier would allow the US to protect itself from approaching threats, and to more securely project power, whether in its own defence, or for broader purposes, such as protecting its allies.

What line would such a sea-air barrier follow? Starting along the length of Canada’s Arctic coast, the line would run through Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands (which belong to Denmark), and Scotland, an area that forms the ‘GIUK Gap’ (to use its Cold War title).  The US needs to control the GIUK Gap, and have access to Svalbard (which belongs to Norway), in order to contain the threat of Russian sea power in the Atlantic.  From Britain, the line would run to Gibraltar and then to the British bases in Cyprus, so that the US could access the Mediterranean and protect the northern end of the Suez Canal. Through the canal, the line would run through the Red Sea to Diego Garcia, which is the most important US strategic base in the Indian Ocean, vital for projecting power into the Middle East, Central Asia, and eastern Africa.

From there the line would run to Cocos (Keeling) and Christmas Islands, which are Australian offshore territories.  The line would then run through Exmouth, Darwin, and Townsville (which are all in Australia), up to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, and then to Guam and other key US island territories in the Pacific, as well as the US state of Hawaii.  Finally, the line would run along the Aleutian chain, and then through the US state of Alaska proper, and before linking with the starting point of the line, Canada’s Arctic coast.

From the security of this barrier, the US could project power and protect its approaches, especially in the North Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Arctic Ocean, protect its trade routes and its undersea infrastructure, secure itself in relation to space warfare and missile attack, launch military operations in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, rescue its citizens, and strike at its adversaries.

Control of the barrier would require the sustainment of a few trusted relationships, especially with Canada, Britain, and Australia (which would become the CAUKUS grouping), and with Norway and Denmark. The barrier would be built upon a global network of key points of presence, and would not require the US to hold significant amounts of territory, or maintain an extensive network of expensive overseas bases. Coupled with its nuclear forces, and its space and cyber defences, the barrier would render the US virtually invulnerable, outside of a massive, planet-destroying nuclear strike, which would also see the attacker destroyed.

Australia’s geography is an integral part of the barrier, as it provides a vital base for US operations around the rimlands and littoral waters of southeastern Eurasia, and a swing point for power projection from the Pacific Ocean into the Indian Ocean. The immense value of Australia’s strategic geography is better appreciated in Washington and Beijing than it is in Canberra. In any US-China military conflict, PLA strikes would be conducted against Australian bases and facilities, including in the southern parts of Australia, the latter of which would provide depth and security for US-led coalition operations in the Indo-Pacific region. The recent PLAN task group mission to waters off Australia would have had as its principal military operational objective the conduct of land attack rehearsal activities, targeting bases, facilities, and infrastructure across Australia.

The Western Hemisphere is also crucial for the US from a geostrategic point of view.  Even with the sea-air barrier in place, the US would not be fully secure were Mexico, the Caribbean (especially Cuba), Central America, the Panama Canal zone, northern South America (especially Venezuela), and Brazil to be in various states of dysfunctionality, or were they to be actively hostile to the US, perhaps to the extent of hosting significant Russian or Chinese forces, or both. Further south, the Falkland Islands are critically located for sea control in the South Atlantic, should the Panama Canal become inoperable. Hemispheric defence on the near side of the sea-air barrier would therefore remain an important task for the US.

Whether the US remains forward, or it consolidates itself in its citadel, it has to secure this sea-air barrier.  Being forward makes more sense, as it allows the US to create more favourable strategic positions of strength, to the benefit of US trade, technology, and investment, and for its own security and defence. Being forward is in the interests of the US. However, being forward means that the US has to rely on more partners, most of whom have not been willing, until recently at least, to take on a greater share of the common burden of defence and security. Most have instead preferred to expand social benefits for their own citizens, and pursue economic development, while selfishly consuming US security.

Put another way, the US would be more secure if it were able to control the rimlands and littorals of Eurasia on the far side of its protective oceans—in places such as Japan, Taiwan, The Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics, and the Nordic countries. However, such a grand strategy would require constant alliance management, and a willingness on the part of US allies and partners to be prepared to significantly enhance their military capabilities, and to do more to counter the emergence of a hegemonic power in Eurasia. Were the US to decide one day that it could effectively secure itself behind its sea-air barrier, withdraw from Eurasia’s contested zones, and partner with a handful of geostrategically critical allies, many of these beneficiaries of US security would long for the glory days of US primacy and preponderance.

Gradually, then suddenly: in geopolitics, decades can happen in weeks

Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises (1926) that bankruptcy occurs gradually and then suddenly. This should be treated as a rule of geopolitical affairs.

For centuries, political structures and hierarchies of power that once were thought to be unchanging often suddenly vanished. Demise was gradual but collapse was sudden.

The Russian Empire (abolished in September 1917) and the Soviet Russian empire (dissolved in December 1991) both exhibited permanence—until they did not. So did the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (abolished in October 1918) and the Ottoman Empire (abolished in November 1922).

Only last month we witnessed the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Rulers in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Havana and elsewhere nervously understand the Hemingway rule, even if they have never read him.

There is another way to express this rule. After decades when nothing happens, decades can suddenly happen in weeks (a saying that is attributed to Vladimir Lenin). While we expressed hope on New Year’s Eve for a more peaceful and less chaotic world, one senses that as 2025 unfolds we will see decades suddenly happen in a blaze of geopolitical twists, turns and transformations.

The scene is bewildering. What will happen in the Russo-Ukrainian war? Will a peace deal be reached? Will Vladimir Putin keep his grip on power? Will Israel go to war against Iran? Will Iran recover from recent setbacks or will the regime start to unravel? Will it make a dash for nuclear weapons?

Will a dramatic Middle East peace deal, and a Palestinian homeland, emerge as a result of a regional realignment involving the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and other key players and a freezing out of Iran? Will Islamic State or al-Qaida (or both) manage to galvanise supporters into launching a new wave of terrorist attacks in the West, perhaps by mobilising Muslim anger over the plight of the Palestinians? Will the India-China border remain quiet? What is Kim Jong-un plotting? Does he sense opportunity in South Korea’s political crisis?

What will happen in the seas of the Western Pacific, especially around Japan, Taiwan and The Philippines? Or in the next phase of US-China strategic competition? What of China’s calculations about its objectives and timelines, especially given the return of Donald Trump to the White House? Will China’s economic and social fragility combine with internal political tensions to shake Xi Jinping’s hold on power? Will Trump’s second term dramatically transform the role of the US in the world?

In the grey space between peace and war, will we see an acceleration of cyber attacks, sabotage (including against undersea infrastructure), covert disinformation and propaganda campaigns, and other forms of intimidation by Russia and China against the democracies of the West, in a bid to throw them off balance, to fracture their social cohesion and undermine the national confidence of their populations? At the other end of the spectrum, will nuclear weapons be used for the first time since 1945?

On some of these issues, there will be still months and years to play out. Some, however, will play out within weeks.

As Henry Kissinger often said, in the face of a wide range of uncertainties and imponderables, often action has to be taken when the opportunities and threats are only incompletely glimpsed, and when the probabilities and consequences cannot be calculated precisely. If we wait for time to play out, we are likely to be surprised when things happen suddenly.

As Australia grapples with this bewildering range of contingencies, it will need to focus its efforts on that which matters most. For Australia, the gradual and then sudden establishment of Chinese hegemony and a US strategic withdrawal from our region (whether by choice or through military defeat) would be the most adverse geopolitical occurrence in our history.

Everything else listed above matters. This would matter most. A hegemonic China, technologically dominant and militarily unchecked, with the US looking on from its hemispheric citadel, would be for Australia a more demanding overlord than Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or Soviet Russia would have been had any one of them managed to achieve mastery in Eurasia. A dominant China would expect to get its way, and resisting would incur high costs.

Australian policy must be constantly directed to the challenge of working with others to prevent such an outcome.

In part, this will mean intensifying and accelerating our military, civil defence and national cyber defence preparations.

In the months and years ahead, there is a significant chance of a US-China military crisis in Asia, similar to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

If China continues to pursue a course of preparing for a blockade of Taiwan, the odds of this are likely to be at least 50 per cent. In the worst possible case, war might break out, gradually in the grey space between peace and war, and then suddenly with weapons being launched with little or no warning. The odds of this occurring between now and 2030 are likely to be about 10 to 20 per cent.

Aside from intensifying preparations for such eventualities, the other arm of policy that needs to be mobilised is our regional diplomacy. Australia last faced such dire prospects in the 1930s. In the face of the growing menace of Imperial Japan, it chose not to re-arm in time and as a result was defenceless in 1941, when John Curtin was forced to ‘look to America’. Neither did Australia act confidently and effectively enough in terms of its statecraft, even though it was more seized than was the British government of the growing threat posed by Imperial Japan.

We can learn the lessons of the ’30s. In the 90 years that have since passed, we have built a deep store of regional connections and we go to the region as a different Australia, independent and confident. We should engage with our neighbours on the need to stand together against Chinese coercion and aggression.

In doing so, we would not be seeking security from Asia but seeking it in Asia.

Our neighbours are highly attuned to geopolitical realities. Almost without exception, even if they do not say it, they are not keen to see China emerge as a hegemon. Equally, they would prefer to see the US remain engaged in the region, knowing that any regional power arrangement that had China at its head would be a vehicle for China to dominate.

However, most are not ready to tackle directly the question of China’s aggression and coercion. They see no need to do so—not perhaps until Chinese naval and coastguard vessels appear off their shores to assert Chinese sovereignty in disputed waters.

Short of them being directly threatened, attempts to enlist most of our neighbours into an anti-China coalition will not work. Here is where astute Australian foreign policy could have a significant impact. No one in the region believes that Australia is seriously trying to navigate US-China strategic competition. That it is trying not to choose a side.

Most believe Australia has already made its choice without being vocal about it. Australia’s presumed choice can be seen in our longstanding alliance with the US; the hosting of US strategic facilities in Australia; the basing arrangements that have been put in place for US military operations from Australia; Australia’s plan under AUKUS to acquire long-range nuclear-propelled attack submarines; and our participation in the growing US-led system of regional deterrence to counter China. While we have stabilised relations with China in recent years, our neighbours believe we are still working to thwart China’s rise as regional hegemon.

That certainty regarding Australian policy is credit in the strategic bank. We should leverage that credit. Instead of sliding and hedging, our message in the capitals of Asia and the Pacific should be a confident one of strategic solidarity. We should declare that we will stand with our neighbours in the face of Chinese aggression and coercion. This Australian pledge of solidarity should be extended to the following: Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Brunei in Southeast Asia; farther afield to Japan, South Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, New Zealand and East Timor; the sovereign nations of the Pacific Islands Forum; and possibly others in the Indo-Pacific region. In a carefully couched and suitably adapted form that recognised current Australian policy on its status, the pledge even could be extended to Taiwan.

We would not ask any regional partner to take sides in US-China great power competition or in an anti-China coalition. Neither would the pledge involve or require the agreeing of a military alliance with Australia, although in some cases that might be considered as well and especially so in the case of Indonesia.

Specifically, Australia would pledge that were Chinese grey-zone aggression and coercion to occur in relation to the territorial integrity or national sovereignty of a neighbour, we would consult immediately with them on the best ways in which assistance might be provided by Australia in terms of diplomatic, economic, technical, intelligence and material support. Subject to there being in place a military alliance between our nations, this could involve defence assistance.

Australia would be pledging to deploy all elements of power to assist its neighbours.

In making this pledge, and by not taking the easy road of cowering in our sheltered land, relieved that the dragon was breathing fire on someone else, Australia would be undertaking its most significant independent strategic initiative in the region. The pledge would remove from the table the possibility that Australia might sit back and calculate the advantages for itself in silently acquiescing in, or even tacitly condoning, Chinese aggression and coercion against our neighbours.

The pledge would commit us to doing no more than a resolute and confident Australia would be likely to do in our own interests in the applicable circumstances. By making an explicit declaration now, before the eruption of a sudden crisis, Australia would be signalling that it was serious about contributing to collective security and resilience in the region, and that it was prepared to forgo hedging and ambiguity. With those neighbours that desired it, discreet planning could take place that would save time in a crisis.

Were others in the region to make similar and hopefully mutual pledges to their neighbours, Beijing’s calculations would become vastly more complicated. This would not be an act of altruism on Australia’s part. A more resilient region that was better able to withstand Chinese aggression and coercion, preferably through a web of mutual pledges of solidarity, would make for a more secure Australia.

Australia has long had a strong Asia consciousness. For instance, in 1934 the government of prime minister Joseph Lyons dispatched the first ministerial goodwill diplomatic tour of China, Japan, the Netherlands East Indies, French Indochina, Malaya, Hong Kong and The Philippines. It did not yield useful results, for reasons already mentioned, but it showed that we were at least willing to act on identifiably Australian interests in the region.

After World War II, a more distinctively Australian approach to the region began to be fashioned. By the ’90s, the Keating government was speaking of Australia finding security in Asia.

Building on this tradition of engagement, we should now make starkly clear that, amid all the flux, we are deeply committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific, where all nations are free to make their choices within rules that everyone has agreed. The Australian pledge as described here would give force to this commitment.

In today’s chaotic geopolitical world, the actions that we take now will echo for decades to come.

Hemingway wrote of bankruptcy. In our region we are strategically solvent after decades of engagement. Will we use our credit to help to build a more secure region, even as events unfold at a dizzying pace?

The defence gaps in Australia’s emerging grand strategies

The world is again a dangerous place. A very real war is underway in Europe, while in the Indo-Pacific China is undertaking a rapid arms build-up, the political leadership in Beijing is making bellicose statements and aggressive grey-zone actions are being undertaken. Some hold that China might soon use military force to resolve issues such as Taiwan. In response, many governments are doing some hard thinking and crafting grand strategies. Japan and South Korea are just two. Australia is now busy as well.

The idea of grand strategy is simple. First, a grand strategy applies national power to try to improve the relationship one nation has with another. Second, a grand strategy doesn’t just apply power—it also builds the type of national power needed. Grand strategies are most important to states with limited power. These nations need to focus their scarce resources on their main concerns rather than waste them on trivial matters.

Australia has devised a balance-of-power grand strategy that, ‘underwritten by military capability’, will be of a scale ‘sufficient … to deter aggression and coercion’ and generate ‘a strategic equilibrium’. Such a grand strategy assumes that superior power determines outcomes. Superior power requires a nation to build up its military and economic power, form collective defence alliances with others, or both. This is a strategy of deterrence focused at the great-power level; Foreign Minister Penny Wong declares that the United States ‘is central to [this] balancing’.

Building the power needed to implement the grand strategy is most apparent in initiatives such as Australia’s acquisition of nuclear attack submarines under AUKUS, in announcements about new long-range missiles, in plans to upgrade Australia’s northern defence bases and in the offensive cyber capabilities being developed.

Less obvious are the steps to harden Australia against attack by strengthening societal resilience. This includes updating national security laws concerning foreign interference, espionage and sabotage; creating a powerful Department of Home Affairs; toughening the rules related to foreign investment and critical infrastructure; and introducing measures to protect Australians from misinformation and disinformation.

Looking beyond the great powers, Australia has also devised an accompanying engagement grand strategy focused on middle and small powers. This grand strategy involves working with others to achieve common goals. Australia says it will work with Southeast Asia and the Pacific ‘to enhance our collective security and prosperity’. Building the power needed for this is well underway. In the past few years, numerous bilateral and multilateral economic agreements have been reached with regional states. An Office of the Pacific and the Australia Pacific Security College have been set up. A national strategy seeking greater trade and investment between Australia and Southeast Asia has been announced.

The two grand strategies are considered not as alternatives but as ‘mutually reinforcing’. Supporting regional states to be more resilient to outside pressures is in harmony with the balance-of-power grand strategy. In this, having different strategies to achieve different outcomes is important. One grand strategy cannot alone achieve all a state seeks.

On the other hand, combining two different, contradictory approaches to grand strategy is problematic. Trying to stop others while working with them is inherently incoherent, as Britain’s grand strategy to manage Nazi Germany in the 1930s illustrated.

Some defence-related issues arise from the two grand strategies.

First, a balance-of-power grand strategy works by threatening or using violence. Australia accordingly needs to be ready—and to be seen to be ready—to wage war in conjunction with the other states. Collective defence means a coalition war; that’s a necessity because Australia can’t fight nuclear-armed great powers by itself.

In such a great war, it will be important for Australia to win—with winning defined as gaining a better peace after the war than before. For that, Australia needs to develop a war-winning military strategy. The 2023 defence strategic review advocated a defence strategy (about defence acquisitions) but not the necessary military strategy (about using military force). Michael Scott, a colonel in the Australian Army, argues that this is because of misunderstandings about what strategy is, a lack of recent military strategy formulation, and governmental organisational shortcomings. The national defence strategy coming in 2024 is unlikely to develop the military strategy that’s required to focus the raising, training and sustaining of Australia’s armed forces.

Second, the building-power side of defence seems underdone in both grand strategies. They each identify the need for a whole-of-nation effort, but in different ways. Two elements need early attention. Australian defence industry and defence innovation (technical and organisational) need to be integrated into each grand strategy. At the moment, these elements are seen as a ‘good’ in and of themselves, but they need to have a clear linkage to the strategies that explains what they are for, how they should be developed and what they should produce. Without understanding these aspects, allocating resources appropriately is at best serendipitous.

Finally, the balance-of-power strategy focuses on state security—the defence of Canberra’s parliamentary triangle, if you will. However, in recent years the defence organisation has been most active in human security—the protection of the Australian people. This is readily apparent in the domestic support given by the Australian Defence Force following natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and cyclones and during the pandemic, but it has been long undertaken in areas like border security, which deeply involves ADF maritime assets.

Overlaying this, the new engagement grand strategy would probably involve military activities related mainly to human security as a way to build friends and improve their national capabilities. This might include humanitarian assistance and disaster relief activities, search and rescue training, fisheries patrols and counter-piracy tasks.

State and human security overlap and they are both essential, but Defence arguably has inadequate resources to simultaneously address both sets of tasking given the increasing demands of each. Defence could be expanded or such tasks passed to new organisations, such as a new national coastguard.

Designing an Australian grand strategy for China

For Australia, China looms large, but the reverse is not necessarily true. The Chinese Communist Party has many pressing issues domestically in managing 1.3 billion people and the world’s second largest economy, and internationally with the Covid-19 pandemic, a volatile US president and exasperated neighbours. In Beijing, Australia must seem a distant land of limited positive or negative import.

Paradoxically, this gives Australia real agency in the relationship. Australia’s greater concern and attention towards China provides more freedom of manoeuvre than the apparent economic and military power imbalance suggest. Consequently, Australia’s grand strategy for managing its China relationship may be decisive.

A grand strategy involves developing and applying national power to improve the relationship our nation has with another. This whole-of-nation activity integrates multiple interests while using diverse forms of power including diplomatic, economic, societal, cyber and military. Australia’s grand strategic thinking on China should be framed around three key factors.

First, the Australia–China relationship is primarily one of mutually beneficial economic interdependence, not security issues. The two national economies are complementary rather than duplicative. This asymmetry gives scope for economic coercion where one nation threatens to break a valuable linkage unless certain action is taken. Such coercion carries risks, as disrupting even a single link may cause a cascade affecting many others. This becomes more likely when political tensions rise and emotions are inflamed.

China continues to see economic coercion as advantageous even if it gives some in the US a rationale for decoupling from China. The US economy is structurally quite different to Australia’s, but there would be strong pressure to follow any such US move, possibly without any recompense.

Given decoupling’s logic is zero-sum, with any linkage seen as ‘bad’, it’s hard to determine what criteria to use to justify decoupling some sectors but not others. For example, some favour iron ore sales but not scientific research, and yet Australia’s apocryphal tale of decoupling’s importance is the selling of scrap iron to Japan that was ‘returned‘ as bombs in World War II. Decoupling sounds easy but it’s a blunt approach.

An Australian grand strategy should centre on Australia–China economic interdependence not security issues. It needs to manage China’s fondness for economic coercion, remembering this vulnerability cuts and can be exploited both ways, and understanding that threats to this interdependence don’t emanate solely from China.

Second, this economic interdependence is built on China’s modernisation plans, now evolving to focus on technological development. The ‘Made in China 2025’ plan aims to create an innovative nation that avoids the middle-income trap in which developing nations stagnate with continuing high poverty levels. This advanced manufacturing policy intends to mobilise state-owned and private businesses to fabricate leading-edge technology including electric vehicles, quantum computers, artificial intelligence, 5G communication systems and advanced robotics.

All of these have dual commercial–military application. The US is deeply concerned about the damage such an activist state policy will have on both US companies and US military superiority. This perspective reinforces the decoupling impetus, as continuing trade with China only exacerbates these apparent problems.

China’s technological capabilities can, however, be exaggerated. China is often only the final assembly point of many high-technology items, since many components are made in Western and other East Asian countries. And as Chinese labour costs rise, companies are outsourcing production to neighbouring lower-cost states. China is part of the supply chain but not all of it. It’s as sensitive to accidental or deliberate supply-chain disruptions as others.

An Australian grand strategy should factor in China’s high-tech ambitions, rising US concerns over maintaining technological pre-eminence and an appreciation that keeping China sensitive to disruptions in global supply chains brings strategic advantages.

Third, Australia–China relations are becoming more dynamic. China’s preferred relationship with most is not ideological or through multilateral channels but rather economic and bilateral. This plays to China’s self-perceived strengths but undercuts its other means of building stable relationships. The rise of China’s belligerent ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy, its exacerbation of border disputes, and its use of coercion domestically all play poorly internationally. There seems a dark side to the ‘China dream’ that is erratic, capricious and immature.

The CCP’s dark side creates uncertainty. Making political or economic commitments that only bring returns over the longer term is beginning to look ill-advised. Commercially, companies are investing in both diversifying their supply chains to avoid sole reliance on China and building duplicate facilities: one inside China to cater to its giant market, the other outside for safety and security.

An Australian grand strategy needs to be devised to succeed even though China is apparently attracted to being simultaneously friendly and adversarial. Agreements made today may not be honoured tomorrow and perhaps the relationship should privilege the near term over the far term.

Australia is vitally interested in its China relationship. Its complicated and complex nature calls for a well-designed grand strategy that maximises the benefits while limiting the costs. This design needs to be shaped by the three factors of economic interdependence, Chinese technological aspirations and increasing unpredictability. The future of the relationship is in our hands as much as China’s. Australia has real agency; let’s use it.

Grand strategy, strategy and Australia

Damaged USS Yorktown (CV-5) and Astoria (CA-34) at Midway 1942. Historically, the existential threats and serious risks to Australia have come by or over the sea. The maritime supremacy established by the US at Midway in 1942 has underpinned Australia's wellbeing for most of the last century.When discussing what ‘strategy’ is—or isn’t—we surely need to distinguish between strategy and grand strategy, not least because of the longer timescales, wider disciplines and deeper understandings involved with the latter.

Australian grand strategy stems from our enduring geographic, demographic and economic underpinnings. It also takes account of potentially less-enduring aspects, such as international law and practice, and domestic constitutional, political and socio-cultural inputs. Our grand-strategic goal for the next century or longer is perhaps best summarised as maximising our sovereign freedom of action as a nation-state. Read more

The Australian National Security Strategy: still under construction?

Australia's National Security Strategy: still under construction?

The new National Security Strategy has much to commend it in terms of ambition and intent, although its real strength is probably as a comprehensive public information overview document. This is an important matter in a democracy, where the great Departments of State expend society’s resources in trying to achieve agreed national goals.

There’ll be many who will comment on the Strategy’s judgments on the strategic environment and threats, but the conceptual framework it’s built upon will probably escape much scrutiny. While a less exciting aspect, it’s worth examining how the framework sharply constrains the Strategy and unfortunately diminishes its overall value.

Firstly, the Strategy isn’t a grand strategy unlike, for instance, the American National Security Strategy (PDF). A grand strategy is concerned with the development and allocation of resources—manpower, money, materiel, legitimacy and soft power. The Australian National Security Strategy glances backwards to last year’s budget allocations but otherwise is uninhibited by resource considerations. Also, rather than guiding the full range of the instruments of national power, the Australian Strategy focuses strongly on hard power instruments, including border security and law enforcement as well as the ADF. There’s little mention of the economic, diplomatic or informational instruments. Read more