‘We don’t know it but China has already declared war on the West’
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Australia cannot be passive in the face of China’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region. Next month Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be greeted in Washington with the same message, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Optimists cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago as the end of the Cold War but in reality war is continuing under other names — and we in the West are losing.
That’s why US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Australia was timely and his message critical.
The heavy hitter from the White House warned that Australia cannot be passive in the face of China’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region.
Next month Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be greeted in Washington with drum rolls and fife bands — and the same message.
But the drumbeat has been steadily building. Barely two months ago, the Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell quoted Leon Trotsky to make an extremely serious point.
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you,” he told an international conference held by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute at which participants were asked to contemplate war in 2025.
General Campbell drew heavily on research carried out by Professor Ross Babbage from the US Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
MORE FROM PIERS AKERMAN:
ScoMo should ignore fake news and play his Trump card
Truth the first victim in ‘indigenous voice’ campaign
Professor Babbage, an Australian, in a paper titled Winning Without Fighting wrote as long as regimes “… did not trigger Western governments to switch from ‘peace’ to ‘war’ and confront them directly with conventional force, they could dominate the political warfare battlefield with little, if any, resistance”.
Professor Babbage personally delivered that paper in Washington a fortnight ago.
Its full title is “Winning Without Fighting — Chinese and Russian political warfare campaigns and how the West can prevail” and if they’re not reading it in Canberra, they should be because it is being studied in other capitals.
It argues that authoritarian regimes find the environment for new-generation political warfare to be permissive and enticing, they see the line of least or no resistance and they exploit it. Western societies are open, diverse, organic and liberal; in a word — exposed, was General Campbell’s take on the paper’s message.
The West has been asleep until very recently and saw many of these activities as unconnected and only mildly irritating. In short, they were simply not worth the risk of escalation.
Moscow and Beijing are using intense information campaigns, diverse espionage and cyber operations, the theft of large troves of intellectual property, the use of economic inducements and economic pressures, programs of geostrategic manoeuvre, coercion by military and paramilitary forces, the seizure and militarisation of contested territory, and the assertive use of legal and paralegal instruments, all backed by propaganda programs to help justify their international interference and their rewriting of history and international laws.
These operations are directly controlled by regime leaders.
The Russian and Chinese regimes are conducting these operations with a wider variety of instruments than are used, or even possessed, by the West.
The authoritative report contains eight case studies prepared by international experts and they are chilling reading.
They cover Russia’s operations against Estonia and the Baltic Republics; Russia’s Political Warfare Operations in the annexation of Crimea; China’s operations in the US island territories in the Western Pacific; China’s activities in the island states of the South Pacific; China’s political warfare operations in New Zealand; China’s political warfare operations in Australia; China’s political warfare operations in Indonesia; and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Russia and China have used a diverse mix of unconventional instruments to subvert the cohesion of the Western allies and their partners; erode their economic, political, and social resilience; and undermine the West’s strategic positions in key regions. Alarmingly, China has already advanced significantly toward its goal to achieve political and economic domination in our region and the degree to which it has amassed influence in New Zealand is staggering.
The West has little recent experience of conducting political warfare, no coherent strategy or structures for waging such campaigns, and, until recently, even lacked an appreciation of the nature, scope, and scale of the Russian and Chinese political warfare challenge.
It’s time the scale of the Fifth Column working against our national interest was called out for what it is and actively engaged.
Black Friday ahead for retailers
Let’s call this rail dispute for what it is. It’s industrial warfare that is a dagger to the heart of our city and its still struggling economy, writes Paul Nicolaou.
Transport minister Jo Haylen’s service could be terminated by train stoppage
Sydney’s train strike has not come as any surprise. The transport minister had weeks to plan for this but instead basked in the glory of a Metro she did nothing to build, writes James O’Doherty.