Erin Molan: Strength is the greatest deterrent of them all

Using diplomacy is one thing but only from a position of strength will Australia be able to counter any potential threats, writes Erin Molan.

In a perfect world, there’d be no war, no conflict, no poverty nor pain. In a perfect world there’d be no need for any kind of defence force and AUKUS wouldn’t even have been a gleam in former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s eye, the concept dismissed by any lucky citizen of this perfect world as ridiculous and unnecessary.

I sat down this week with the former US Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer, who, and just let me make an unqualified assumption here, might know a little bit more about defence than, say, an Australian Greens senator.

The Greens are a party which refuses to have a “defence spokesperson” but appoints instead a “spokesperson for peace and disarmament”.

As well as my chat, which will feature on Sky News on Friday at 5pm, Spencer also featured on Monday’s Q+A episode.

In this august forum, Greens Senator Jordan Steele-John authoritatively informed Spencer that our nation’s proposed military build-up was not the answer to our vulnerable strategic environment and when pushed on how he might suggest we keep this country safe, he responded with one word — “diplomacy”.

Former secretary of the US Navy Richard Spencer at the National Press Club. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Let’s take a look at this word, the one that the Greens believe is the comprehensive answer to all the current threats we face as a nation.

What does “diplomacy” actually mean? The Oxford dictionary defines diplomacy as “the profession, activity or skill of managing international relations’’. Okay. So that makes sense. The next obvious question I’d have thought would be — how do we best “manage” these international relations?

Negotiation would have to be front and centre of this type of management, right? Whether it’s for a pay rise, a purchase or peace, the principles really remain the same.

The stronger your position heading in, the better the outcome you can legitimately expect. When it comes to national security, the more deterrents you have in your defence arsenal, the more integrity clearly evident in your society’s structures and processes, the greater reason your opponents have to fear you resorting to hostilities and the greater incentive they have to keep talking.

Very sadly Russia’s abandonment of “talks” and subsequent occupation of Ukraine has provided for us a contemporary case study of the high price a nation, a region and the world pays for the invasion of a weaker country by a more powerful one.

Former Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey.

With tens of thousands of deaths on both sides, and over eight million people — almost 25 per cent of the population — displaced and having fled their homeland, the human cost is catastrophic.

Coupled with this tragedy are effects that, according to the International Monetary Fund, “compound a number of pre-existing adverse global economic trends, including rising inflation, extreme poverty, increasing food insecurity, deglobalisation and worsening environmental degradation’’.

These effects have reached Australia’s far shores of course, with this conflict impacting our commodity markets and supply chains.

Former Treasurer Joe Hockey, who also joined me during the week and features on my show on Friday, is cognisant of the risks to Australia and sagely reminded us of the lessons of history – as he said: “Anyone who has studied World War II will look at the warnings Churchill gave his own government about the build-up in Germany and they nearly lost their entire army in France because of the speed and incredible ruthlessness of the German military.’’

The other argument against AUKUS that’s been peddled out this week, including by some who should know better, is that our role in it is only aggravating our relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.

These advocates warn that by strengthening our own defence force and relationships with the US and UK, we are actively antagonising the CCP into becoming more aggressive.

Senator Jordan Steele-John in the Senate Chamber at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture Kym Smith

Both experts and amateurs who have monitored this situation for longer than a hot minute emphatically confirm that the Chinese government has been building its own lethal forces for many years. Anyone who has listened to Xi Xin Ping speak over the past few years would be chillingly aware of intentions regarding Taiwan. The rhetoric was already there.

Of course the CCP aren’t going to like the fact that other countries are bolstering their own defence forces in response but they’d be baffled if we weren’t. It is simplistic, naive and, to be frank, incredibly dangerous to think the best way to ensure peace is to do nothing and hope those capable of doing us harm leave us alone.

To be sitting ducks in this current climate would be the greatest failure of government, potentially in the history of this country.

The time to act WAS decades ago and the second best time is now.

If the Greens think we can be effectively diplomatic without immense strength behind us then they are severely deluded.

If this were a perfect world then it would be full of perfect humans and Aussies wouldn’t have lost half a billion dollars in scams last year, at least one quarter of our school kids wouldn’t be bullied each year, jails wouldn’t be full and the list goes on.

Those countries with even the most basic funding to discharge their responsibility to keep their population safe understand that the greatest deterrent to conflict is strength. Strategically speaking, we ignore that at our peril.