Strategic thinking key to boosting regional security

Few interviews or speeches by overseas diplomats in recent years have been as pertinent or prescient as Japanese ambassador Shingo Yamagami’s exclusive interview with this newspaper, published on Tuesday’s front page. While welcoming Beijing’s more constructive tone in recent times as “a good step forward”, Mr Yamagami warned that both Australia and Japan needed to remain vigilant towards China. Its change in tone, he said, had yet to be matched by a shift in behaviour, citing Beijing’s threats of retaliation against nations imposing Covid-19 tests on Chinese arrivals amid a serious outbreak of the virus in China. Canberra, Tokyo and Washington needed to work closely, he said, to hold China to account as it sought to portray itself in a better light after years of coercive conduct. Mr Yamagami’s speaking out is highly unusual. He did so, he told Ben Packham, amid growing threats facing Japan, with the country’s fighter jets forced to scramble twice a day in recent months to respond to Chinese jets approaching the country’s airspace. The situation was “beyond imagination” for Australia, he said, but “this is the kind of environment we are facing right now”. A new bilateral defence agreement between Australia and Japan, he said, would greatly increase the nations’ military co-operation.

Japan’s new national security policy, unveiled last month, labelled China as the country’s “greatest strategic challenge”. It doubled defence spending and introduced a new “counter-strike” doctrine. At a time when the Indo-Pacific is on a 1930s-style slide to high risk and low security, as Peter Jennings writes on these pages, Australia’s strengthening military ties with Japan and with the US are vital. Mr Yamagami likened his country’s new hardline security policy to Australia’s push to rapidly obtain new long-range strike weapons, arguing the countries faced similar threats despite Australia’s geographic remoteness. “You cannot sit on the luxury of long distance any more,” he said. In Tokyo recently, Defence Minister Richard Marles rightly described Japan as an indispensable partner to Australia. Both nations have streamlined movement of defence personnel and equipment between them. For the first time, Australian F-35 fighter jets will participate in Japan’s Exercise Bushido Guardian this year, while Japanese F-35s will visit Australia on rotational deployments. That engagement mirrors Australia’s alliance with the US, allowing American strategic bombers to operate from Top End airfields. “This is the kind of co-operation we can now embark on,” Mr Yamagami said.

The ambassador’s appreciation of military alliances appears to surpass that of Malcolm Turnbull. The former prime minister, who should be better attuned to the sensibilities of strategic relationships, took to Twitter on Monday in an apparent fit of limelight deprivation. He claimed that the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine agreement would undermine Australian sovereignty. The “nuclear-powered submarines to be acquired from the US will not be able to be operated or maintained without the supervision of the US Navy”, he tweeted. Retired rear admiral Peter Clarke, the only Australian to have commanded both a nuclear and a diesel-electric submarine, stepped in to set the record straight, dismissing Mr Turnbull’s criticism as “complete nonsense”. Mr Clarke pointed out that Australia “cannot do everything ourselves” and “we have alliances, agreements and treaties so we get greater benefit from the amalgamation of skills and knowledge and technical ability of our allies”. Mr Clarke said while Mr Turnbull’s comments were “bizarre” and “unhelpful”, the warnings about the US defence industry being stretched showed Australia’s quest to obtain nuclear-powered submarines was “not going to be easy”. “Of course it will stretch US industrial capability,” he said. “That’s why we need to have this agreement and why we need to work together.” The debate over AUKUS was reignited after US Senate armed services committee chairman Jack Reed, a Democrat, and recently retired senator James Inhofe, formerly the committee’s Republican ranking member, wrote to Joe Biden advising the President against supplying Australia with off-the-shelf nuclear-powered submarines. AUKUS risked stretching the US industrial base “to breaking point”, they warned. Mr Turnbull’s opinions will not be helpful to the AUKUS agenda. As Jennings writes, that agenda is so vital that Anthony Albanese needs to lead it, including visiting the US this year.

Another facet of Australia’s strategic relationships has surfaced with news of a friendly takeover bid by Chinese lithium giant Tianqi and IGO for West Australian lithium company Essential Metals. IGO and Tianqi have won the support of the Essential board for the offer, which targets the company’s Pioneer Dome lithium project, 130km south of Kalgoorlie. Tianqi is listed on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges. The 50c-a-share cash bid values Essential at $136m, a 45 per cent premium on the company’s last trading price – a “great outcome” for shareholders, Essential managing director Tim Spencer says. More than money is at stake. The bid for Essential falls below the $310m threshold that would otherwise require approval from the FIRB. The Australian understands Tianqi has been advised it will not need FIRB approval to close the acquisition if shareholders approve the bid. Be that as it may, the importance of critical minerals to sectors such as defence, aerospace, electric vehicles, batteries, renewable energy industries, medicine and telecommunications makes it crucial to national and regional security. That concern must be front and centre when takeover bids in the critical minerals sector need to be assessed. Australia’s current circumstances demand the kind of broad, strategic thinking shown by Mr Yamagami.