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Hugh White

Why Australia's strategic situation is far worse than we think

For all the dire warnings in last week's defence review, its chief fault lies in being far too optimistic.

The federal government’s new Defence Strategy and Force Structure Review, released last week, paints a gloomy picture of Australia’s strategic circumstances. It warns of rising strategic rivalry, expanding military capabilities, and a growing risk of high-intensity conflict. But in fact, the review is not nearly gloomy enough, because it still makes a lot of unrealistically optimistic assumptions about what is happening strategically in Asia, and how Australia should be responding. That leaves the government’s new defence policy quite inadequate to the challenges ahead.

Australia can no longer assume America will come to our aid if there is conflict in the Asia-Pacific region. 

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Hugh White is the author of The China Choice and How To Defend Australia, and the Quarterly Essays Power Shift, Without America and Sleepwalk to War. He is emeritus professor of strategic studies at ANU.

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    Original URL: https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/why-australia-s-strategic-situation-is-far-worse-than-we-think-20200705-p5594m