AUKUS makes a US-China war more likely
By giving the United States greater military access to Australia, AUKUS has changed the strategic geography of any future conflict with China – and may have increased both the likelihood of war and Australia’s chances of being drawn into it.
It is already clear that AUKUS has made Australia less secure on a host of grounds. The pact is aimed at China, thereby antagonising Australia’s most important trading partner. It provides the United States with bases on Australian territory from which its military can project force against China, turning Australia into a target for retaliation. Even more worryingly, if the United States and China do go to war, it will be virtually impossible for Australia to avoid committing the Australian Defence Force to the fray. Worst of all, Australia would then find itself caught in the crossfire between two nuclear-armed powers and unable to do anything about it.
At the same time as it makes Australia less secure, AUKUS has also managed to make a Sino-US war more likely, and appears to have no idea that it has done so. Before the AUKUS agreement, the US position in the western Pacific focused on the first and second island chains, from which it would project power against China from bases on Guam, Okinawa and the Japanese home islands, as well as the distant Pearl Harbor. These bases all share one targeting feature – they lie to the east of China. This means that all potential US attacks on China would have to come from roughly the same direction, something which simplifies China’s defence problem, as well as making its own power projection easier.
Most of these US bases are well within the range of Chinese missiles and would likely take heavy damage if the two countries went to war. To protect its strike assets, the US has begun dispersing its weapons, which is why it has sought access to the Philippines, with plans to install more high-tech missile systems. Now Australia is also becoming a dispersal field for the American military.
By obtaining bases in Australia, the US has greatly complicated the war-fighting dilemma facing China’s leaders and its military commanders, while making America’s own position more potent. It will be able to strike from two directions (east and south) from more bases, as well as being in a position to more easily sever China’s maritime sea lanes across the Indian Ocean and its access to Middle East oil. These two axes of attack make the Chinese response to any potential war considerably more difficult – leaving it forced to fight on two fronts, in two directions.
AUKUS has changed the geography of a future Sino-US war to the advantage of the United States, thereby shifting the odds in its favour. An American victory is more achievable in a two-front war than a one-front war. At first glance, this might sound good – a stronger position for our most important ally. The risk is, however, that having an advantage over China may make America’s leaders more interested in resolving the China challenge through violence rather than diplomacy, economic relationship building or simple acceptance of a new global power balance. So far this year, and it is only September, the US has unilaterally invaded two countries and not bothered to alert its allies in advance. Despite a huge budget deficit, the US has again increased its defence spending while Trump plants the American flag on countries from Mexico to Iceland and renames international waterways.
All this means that, paradoxically, in making the security choices they have, Australia’s leaders have actually made war more probable, and virtually guaranteed the nation’s involvement in a struggle that could devastate its own territory. Our leaders have made much of their desire to deter and deny China’s militarism, not realising that they may have incited America’s.
It is worth asking how the Australian government could implement a policy that is so contrary to the fundamental goals of national security. Our leaders have helped create a situation that is reminiscent of the guarantee that Germany gave to Austria regarding the latter’s plan to punish Serbia for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. From that guarantee came the tragedy of the First World War. Australia’s actions may or may not precipitate a similar catastrophe, but history is replete with small careless acts that generate large calamitous events.
So how did Australia end up in the position of being a war enabler? The answer is that the origins of AUKUS lie in a falsehood. When it was first announced, AUKUS was presented as a defence policy, but that was not the case. Morrison sprang AUKUS on the opposition as a party-political policy designed to trap them. Albanese may have dodged the trap, but in doing so he tied himself to a project that is ill-suited to serve as the defence strategy which it subsequently became.
Since AUKUS was only ever meant to be intramural point-scoring between the major political parties, there was never any need to debate it, explain its lack of internal logic, or resolve any of its internal contradictions.
Unfortunately, it quickly became official defence policy, and the consequences of this continue to reverberate today and will do into the future. There is still time to have an open debate on the issue. In fact, there is a public inquiry presently underway, which gives the Australian people the chance to voice their concerns and fears. Perhaps the government could listen to what is being said and rethink its policy, instead of blithely raising the risk of a war between nuclear-armed opponents.
- Republished from Crikey
is a research fellow in the School of History at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Sydney, Australia.