Reality Check: China
Australia’s current foreign policy with respect to Asia is characterised by dangerously wishful thinking, and a lack of achievable and meaningful strategic objectives.
This point has been made convincingly by highly respected minds from across the political spectrum, most notably Hugh White (emeritus professor at ANU and author of Australia’s Defence White Paper 2000), the late Jim Molan (former Liberal senator and author of Danger on our Doorstep), Sam Roggeveen (Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program) and Paul Keating.
The Liberal Party needs to move beyond a simplistic anti-China narrative and develop a plan for how best to position ourselves in our region, not based on wishful thinking about the world as we would like it to be – but based on the potential scenarios that we are likely to face.
There are a number of lines of wishful thinking that have underpinned our foreign policy that need to be challenged. The first is that America can and will continue to dominate the western Pacific as it has since World War 2. This is the premise upon which our absolute alignment with the US is based: a desire to maintain the US-led, rules-based global order, with China included as a ‘Responsible Stakeholder’.
The problem is that there is a very good chance that the US can’t continue to dominate, or even avoid being dominated by China in this region. China has been underestimated for decades, with pundits pronouncing that it will get old before it gets rich, or its economy will crash, or there will be an uprising, et cetera. China has consistently defied these naysayers and has already surpassed the size of the US economy. Before long, its economy will be double the US. This matters a lot. It was the enormous productive capacity of the US economy that won them two world wars, and that productive capacity is now exceeded by China. China have also made great strides in technology and research, another increasingly important factor in military power.
Even in a scenario where China’s economy falters and remains on par with the US, they still have a massive home-turf advantage. This has been shown to be extremely important in almost every recent war from Vietnam to Ukraine. If America could not win the wars in Vietnam or Afghanistan, against much weaker enemies, what hope does it have of winning a war against China in its own backyard?
It is also wishful thinking to assume that America would even try to do so. If they were not prepared to fight a war in Ukraine, why would they fight one over Taiwan where their losses would be massive? Surely not out of goodwill towards the Taiwanese or a desire to preserve democracy. Were that the case they would still be in Afghanistan and would have invaded Hong Kong, Myanmar and countless other democracies are under threat.
There is also a growing fatigue within America over the ‘forever wars’, and a return to Trump would mean a return to the isolationism that he stands for.
There are those who would seek to portray the situation in Taiwan as analogous to Poland and the start of WW2, claiming that Taiwan is just like Australia or any other democracy, and that a threat to Taiwan is a threat to democracy everywhere. This stems from either ignorance or misunderstanding of the history and politics of Taiwan. Taiwan is known officially as the Republic of China (ROC) because its government claims to be the true government of all of China. The split between China and Taiwan was the result of a still unresolved civil war. Taiwanese are Chinese in the same way that the Confederates were American. Most Taiwanese want neither reunification nor independence but would prefer the status quo.
I am not making this point to suggest that forceful reunification would be in any way justified, but to show that the situation is far more nuanced than ‘big country invades small country and will probably invade us next’. Would America really be willing to risk total annihilation in nuclear war over another country’s civil war?
The fixation over Taiwan is also a product of wishful thinking. It is wishful thinking to assume that a war between China and the United States will probably be triggered by a crisis over Taiwan, that it will be a conventional war and that we will have time to come to America’s aid.
As Jim Molan points out, China would be foolish to attempt to take Taiwan with American air bases still in place. Furthermore, the pushing out of the US from the region would be an even greater achievement for the Chinese than reunification with Taiwan.
Molan argues, and I agree, that a more likely scenario is that China attempts to completely wipe out all or most of America’s bases in the region in a massive surprise missile, cyber and space attack.
This map showing the range of China’s land based missiles shows how vulnerable the US is to such an attack.
It is not enough to simply have missiles though, equally important is the ability to identify and hit targets. This is why in any such war, the ability to seek and destroy the satellites and drones that enable missile strikes will be of the utmost importance. Developing these, and other capabilities that mitigate and defend against China’s missile capabilities would seem like a much better use for the billions we are spending on submarines.
Our decision to buy submarines to help the US project power and potentially fight a war in the Western Pacific clearly proceeds from a fair amount of wishful thinking. It assumes that America would fight a war with China and could win, and that the contest between US and China will still be undecided in more than 20 years time. It assumes that naval power would be a deciding factor in a future war and submarines a strong deterrent, despite China’s ability to project enormous power without a single ship in the water.
Realistic Thinking
Instead of wishful thinking, what we need is a strategy based on rational thinking that accounts for the various scenarios we might find ourselves in the coming decades.
To begin with, we must have clear and achievable objectives, and our policy must proceed from these objectives.
It seems to me our primary objectives should be:
· Prevent the total domination of Asia by China
· Avoid war between China and the US
· Develop a capability to defend Australia and deter attack in the event that we must stand alone
Starting with the first objective, China can only dominate Asia in the case of a full retreat by the US. This could occur suddenly as a result of a decisive military strike, or slowly if America goes down a path of isolationism and China is able to undermine its military and business influence with other Asian countries (something it has been succeeding at based on Lowy Institute’s diplomatic influence data).
In Australia, we have an opportunity to mitigate both of these risks. Firstly, by disincentivising a fatal strike against US bases in the region by China. As long as China is forced to accept the US-led international order being imposed on them, they will have a strong incentive to get rid of the US. If instead China were recognised as the equal power that they are, and given equal opportunity to shape the international order, this incentive would be greatly reduced. This would mean an end to a number of double standards that most probably aren’t even aware of. For example, it is a double standard that America frequently sails its navy up and down the coast of China, when a similar move by China would provoke outrage and potentially war. It’s also a double standard to forbid Chinese construction of military bases on man-made islands when much of the US power in the pacific comes from islands thousands of kilometres away that they seized years ago. It’s a double standard that America has close relations with human rights abusers to which it turns a blind eye, but then seeks to single out China’s abuses for criticism, not to mention America’s position as being effectively above the law when it comes to its own alleged abuses.
Australia has a unique position of influence with the US, and consequently a unique opportunity to advocate for Americans to accept China as equals. We also have an opportunity to encourage free trade and discourage American protectionism which would reduce the risk of a slow retreat from Asia.
The second primary objective is avoiding war between China and the US. As a small country, we really have no way to meaningfully contribute to military deterrence of war. Our best tool is therefore diplomacy and de-escalation. Rather than egging on the Washington hawks and trumpeting our insignificant contributions to Chinese containment efforts like AUKUS and the Quad, we should be seeking to act as a conciliator and advocate for de-escalation. This would have the benefit of bringing us closer in line with other ASEAN countries whose main concern is not China, but the risk of war between the US and China. This leads to the final strategic objective: developing a strong capability to defend Australia and deter attack in the scenario that America is pushed out of our region.
There is no question that the countries of most importance to our defence in this situation are the ASEAN countries, especially Indonesia. We are extremely fortunate to have a free and democratic neighbour in Indonesia, with whom we share many values, especially a tolerance of different faiths, cultures and political views. We are also extremely fortunate to have an Indonesian president in Joko Widodo who has actively pursued greater ties with Australia and called us Indonesia’s “closest friend”, advocating for us to join ASEAN (an offer we should seriously consider).
We should be doing much more to become closer to Indonesia, both militarily and economically. We should be doing more to attract the best and brightest Indonesians to come to Australia either for study or business. We should be actively supporting industries that can export goods and services that Indonesia needs. There are major untapped opportunities in this area. To name just one, Indonesia imports $2b worth of soybeans from the American Midwest each year. Australia exports almost no soybeans even though we could easily grow them and would have a major competitive advantage given the greatly reduced cost of shipping.
Southeast Asia has been described as the fulcrum of Asia, upon which the major powers will be balanced. It is full of fast growing, dynamic, democratic economies. Most are not aligned with China or the US. We have a huge strategic advantage in our proximity to it, yet we do very little to capitalise on this advantage, instead we put all our eggs in the US basket. What we need is a pivot to ASEAN. We should be doing as much as we can to cooperate with ASEAN countries to secure our future in a scenario where the US does not dominate Asia.
The other key to securing our defence in this scenario is to adopt what Sam Roggeveen refers to in the title of his book ‘The Echidna Strategy’. That is, we should make ourselves simultaneously non-threatening and extremely painful to attack. We can do this by focusing our defence spending on the defence of mainland Australia and its approaches, in collaboration with Indonesia and Pacific Island nations. It’s just common sense that the greater our capability to attack China (e.g. with nuclear submarines) and the lesser our ability to defend our own region, the greater incentive China has to attack us during a war, and subjugate us if they succeed in ousting the US.
A lesson from history
Some of our biggest strategic mistakes as a nation have been the result of wishful thinking. In 1942, we believed our security could be guaranteed by the dominance of our great and powerful ally the British Empire, putting all of our eggs in one basket (a military base in Singapore), and when Singapore fell we were woefully unprepared for what followed. We should learn from that mistake and realise that although we can and should foster our alliance with our great and powerful ally the United States, we must start putting more eggs in more baskets.
As a party, there is no doubt that our anti-China rhetoric, even with all the caveats in the world, has been damaging to our vote with Chinese Australians. By advocating for a fairer role for China in the global order, and acknowledging the positive contributions it can and is making, we would be going a long way towards winning back the votes of Chinese Australians.
But ultimately this is about more than politics and what may or may not be popular with the electorate. This is about doing what is best for Australia. That is what our party is about.