The Albanese government’s strategic review takes place entirely in the shadow of China’s extreme aggression around Taiwan. These are times, and currents in history, of immense importance for Australia. Nothing cataclysmic is likely to happen in the immediate future but once more we have been delivered the most colossal wake-up call.
The day after tomorrow is clouded in uncertainty and deepening risk. It is likely the worst will be avoided. But the worst is now a serious prospect. It’s impossible to overstate the potential gravity of what’s happening. If we don’t try our very best to understand it, and make our own provisions arising from that understanding, we are a nation of fools.
Why has China undertaken massive military reaction to US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan? Don’t trust anyone too dogmatic on this. Western intelligence hasn’t a clue about top Chinese leadership deliberations.
Some years ago Washington asked Australia to open a residential embassy in Pyongyang to assist with allied intelligence and strategic assessments of North Korea. Canberra (in my view wrongly) declined. One argument was that a residential embassy wouldn’t learn much anyway – look at the vast US and Australian diplomatic establishments in Beijing and consider how very little idea we have of what actually gets discussed and decided in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing.
Nonetheless, we can reasonably speculate on Beijing’s purposes today. The first, but probably least important, factor is Chinese domestic politics. Xi Jinping will be confirmed for a third leadership term at a Communist Party congress in November. He can look tough in the lead-up to that congress and also distract Chinese from the relative failure of his economic policies. This economic failure has many causes but one is the restrictive and deadening economic impact of severely enhanced repression and hi-tech Stalinist control that Xi’s regime has pursued.
Second, Beijing surely wants to scare its neighbours, including Taiwan. It would like to develop a constituency within Taiwan, and indeed in the US, for pre-emptive surrender. Beijing is sending the message: resistance is futile, or at least the cost of resistance would be greater than any benefit you might derive from resistance.
The psychology of this is genuinely complex. I greatly admire Taiwan. It is one of the most prosperous, dynamic, peaceful and successful societies on earth. Part of its genius is to live normally, despite the constant threat from mainland China. But it is also an unavoidable fact Taiwan has not done everything it can reasonably do to maximise its self-defence capabilities. I’ve spent a lot of time in South Korea and Israel. These are two societies superb at living normal lives despite existential threats on their doorstep. Yet both societies, while allies of the US, also take every reasonable measure to ensure their own security.
Israel in particular, under its own resources, could meet any threat from any nation. Taiwan is a much bigger economy than Israel. It does not make a similar effort at military preparedness. Like most US allies, it is psychologically profoundly dependent on the Americans. This is dangerous.
For the moment, hostility to the Communist Party regime in Beijing is bipartisan in the US. But this past week there was Donald Trump again telling us what a strong leader Xi is, and how Trump and Xi did such a great deal, though in fact this deal was never honoured and did the US no discernible good at all. John Bolton was Trump’s national security adviser for just on 18 months, an epic duration by the standards of the Trump administration. His truly alarming White House memoir, The Room Where It Happened, details at length Trump’s repeated inclination to sell out Taiwan if he could get the right trade deal from Beijing.
On the other side of politics, Joe Biden has generally had a fairly good China policy, somewhat disabled by the incoherence of the President’s pronouncements. But in the eye-watering billions upon billions, towards trillions, of extra money Biden has spent, and tried to spend, there has been no meaningful increase in his requests for US military spending.
The US now has a smaller navy than China (though still more powerful). The US needs a lot more subs, ships and missiles in the Indo-Pacific. The Pentagon recognises this and often speaks about it. But US policy movement in this direction is desperately slow. Therefore, it’s reasonable to guess that one purpose of Beijing’s vast military exercises in response to the Pelosi visit is to set off discussions on both sides of US politics about whether it is actually worth trying to preserve Taiwan’s de facto independence.
And finally, Beijing’s military manoeuvres appear to have a clear military purpose, to rehearse a militarily complex blockade and possible attack on Taiwan. Beijing would prefer to take control of Taiwan, even if that was over some decades, without a conflict, which would impose massive costs on China and which it could well lose. But at the very least it is also considering direct military action. It may calculate it can prevail militarily and bear the economic costs.
That might be a miscalculation. Beijing’s rulers are certainly rational actors. But throughout history most terrible strategic miscalculations have been enacted by rational actors.
Given all that, the grotesque multi-generation failure of Australian governments of both persuasions to produce meaningful military capabilities is a national drama of almost criminal neglect.
If there were a conflict between the US and China over Taiwan, the only significant military contribution Australia could make would still be our Collins-class submarines, commissioned by the Hawke government more than 30 years ago. Our main contribution to the alliance is just our plain dumb geography, a location for US communications facilities and for some dispersed US troops, like the US marine rotations in Darwin. We need defence capabilities that can make it more likely the US and its allies would prevail in any conflict, and that could deter enemies and defend our maritime approaches.
The Morrison government talked far too much and far too airily about going to war while making absolutely no provision at all to acquire anything that would make it more likely that we could prevail, or even survive, such a war. Our nuclear-powered subs, splendid as they will be, on any conceivable timeline arrive after the period of most acute danger. It is a striking irony of history that it now falls to the Albanese government to generate meaningful military capabilities in the shortest possible time.
More Coverage
Retail union fund owes a refund
A retail worker who admitted charging a customer for something they did not purchase, but only refunded the payment if asked, would not be in their job for long.
Hospitals ill-prepared to cope with terror attack
A mass casualty event would expose chronic shortcomings in our emergency response.