Australia entering biggest moment on the world stage, says top historian

Historian Sir Niall Ferguson has warned Australia is entering its most important moment on the world stage, confronting an expansionist China without new AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines that could arrive too late to deter the superpower from invading Taiwan.

The influential Stanford University author fears policymakers in London, Canberra and Washington have failed to bolster their militaries quickly enough to discourage China from attempting to take Taiwan, the democratically governed island it considers part of its territory, this decade.

Sir Niall Ferguson says Australia is more than “just a US base” because its political leaders were some of the first in the world to assert sovereignty in the face of Chinese pressure.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Ferguson said Australia would be central to any conflict in the Pacific due to its geographically important military bases and history of confronting China’s attempts to interfere in its affairs for almost a decade.

While Australian troops played a “heroic” role in world wars, the nation’s military and strategic influence would be more critical in a conflict in Asia.

“The coming Taiwan crisis will be Australia’s biggest moment in terms of geopolitics,” Ferguson said in an interview.

“If China becomes the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific, that will affect Australia economically and politically.

“Of all the conflicts that Australia has ever been drawn into, this is the one in which it has the most skin in the game.”

The 60-year-old Briton is in Australia to speak at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in Sydney and Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne this week, where he will be heard by influential Australian conservatives.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its territory and conducts regular military drills around the island. Experts differ on the likelihood and timing of any invasion, with US intelligence officials testifying last year that China did not want a military conflict.

Ferguson said the weak links in the AUKUS defence pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and United States were actually the UK and the long-term timeframe of the submarine and technology-sharing tie-up that may expand to include South Korea, New Zealand and Canada.

“The real danger is actually this decade,” he said.

“Before you really have the nuclear submarines, this decade is when we are most likely to see a Chinese bid for primacy in the Pacific with Taiwan and the Philippines as the kind of targets.

“I’m concerned that neither Washington nor London really understand how urgent this is.

“We could see that Russia was deterrable; we failed to deter Russia. Iran was deterrable; we failed to deter Iran. We’ve got to not fail with China.”

Australia’s 2021 commitment to AUKUS has been embraced by both sides of politics and came after the Turnbull government raised the alarm on Chinese interference in Australian affairs, leading to world-first laws in 2018 to counter Chinese Communist Party influence. Other nations have enacted similar laws since then.

Other experts have warned that the defining challenges for AUKUS are labour and production issues in the US, which is building about 1.3 submarines a year but will need to increase that to 2.3 to meet its targets under the tripartite pact. US naval leaders have dismissed fears the target will not be met, pointing to joint training programs.

The Labor government has come under fire from party luminaries such as Paul Keating, Gareth Evans and Bob Carr for its adoption of the AUKUS deal. Keating recently claimed the deal cast Australia as a “protectorate” of US interests in Asia when the country should be “celebrating the rise of China”.

Ferguson said Australia was more than “just a US base” because its political leaders were some of the first in the world to assert sovereignty in the face of Chinese pressure.

“In many ways, Australia saw this Cold War before the US did,” he said. “And I think Australia has actually played a leading role in helping Americans and Brits understand the nature of the Chinese challenge.

“Australia’s shifted the American debate in quite an important way, to see the nature of the challenge.”

Ferguson, who has influence with conservatives in the UK, US and Australia, has previously said the US was in a “late Soviet America” period and argued in 2019 that the West was in a new Cold War with China, a view that has become more widely embraced in the years since.

With migration featuring heavily in American, European and Australian debate, Ferguson said the issue would be central to political contests for years to come because the proportion of foreign-born people in Western countries was reaching similar levels to other points in history when social unrest broke out.

“And so, of course, the same pattern repeats where people feel the culture’s threatened. They think the numbers should be restricted. They want to see some kind of more aggressive assimilation,” he said.

The government and opposition have both flagged reductions to migration, including by reducing foreign student numbers.

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