A weak Australia will attract more intimidation from Beijing, not less

Heaven help us if the sum of American war planning is to ­rotate six B-52s from the Tindal airbase near Katherine. Picture: David Caird

American B-52 bombers have been flying missions to and from Australia since the 1970s, when the Fraser government granted staging rights through Darwin. Anti-alliance activists have been opposed to the B-52s for almost as long. “Australia remains a loyal cog in the United States military machine”, rails a 1990 study on my bookshelf.

There is a long lineage to the criticism, voiced in the ABC’s Four Corners report on Monday night, that Australia is “going along with American planning for a war with China”.

Heaven help us if the sum of American war planning is to ­rotate six B-52s from the Tindal airbase near Katherine.

The Gillard government announced plans to increase US Air Force rotations through northern Australia back in 2010.

It has taken a dozen years to start installing jet fuel reserves in Darwin and to build hard stands for B-52s at Tindal. In that time, the annual rotation of US ­Marine Corps troops has grown from 200 to a little over 2000 personnel.

That leads Four Corners to breathlessly conclude: “As the drums of war beat louder, Australia is in lockstep with the United States in a dangerous and unstable region.”

Viewers might conclude it is Canberra, not Beijing, that seeks to overturn the strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific, to establish a naval base in the Solomon Islands, to militarise the South China Sea and that routinely threatens aircraft with lasers.

Four Corners quotes the Chinese Communist Party’s Victor Gao, a previous translator for Deng Xiaoping, saying: “China is a force not to be bullied.” Gao is an ABC favourite, having earlier told the China Tonight program that “idiot” Australians “will be a target for possible nuclear attacks in the future” because of support for the AUKUS agreement on nuclear propulsion.

Four Corners should at least be recognised for piecing together the B-52 story from American tender documents. A question to mystify Australians is why the Morrison and Albanese governments chose not to announce ­delivering a bipartisan strengthening of the US alliance.

America’s growing interest in the strategic value of northern Australia is the most powerful deterrent added to our security in the past 20 years. The aim is to prevent war, not start it. Australian governments are strengthening the American alliance in the face of a worsening strategic outlook.

This is unambiguously a good story, but one our governments seem fearful to tell. If we avoid a conflict with an aggressive Beijing in the next half-decade it will be because the US and its allies strengthened deterrence by building credible military forces.

The aim is to persuade Xi Jinping that attacking Taiwan and coercing Southeast Asia are risks not worth taking. The alternative is to succumb to the bullying that Gao so colourfully deploys. There is no security for Australia in weakening our military co-operation with the US, and in not acquiring nuclear propulsion and longer-range weapons. A weak Australia will attract more intimidation from Beijing, not less.

It is desperately important for the Albanese government to ­develop a full-throated public defence of increased alliance co-operation and defence spending. This should include making a case for Australian support of America’s extended nuclear ­deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region. Extended nuclear deterrence (END) has been a reluctantly ­acknowledged corner­stone of Australian security for decades. However, Australian governments struggle to publicly explain END, preferring the look and feel of advocating nuclear disarmament.

The case for END was last put in the Coalition’s 2016 defence white paper: “Australia’s security is underpinned by the ANZUS Treaty, United States extended deterrence and access to advanced US technology and information. Only the nuclear and conventional military capabilities of the United States can offer effective deterrence against the possibility of nuclear threats against Australia.”

We have yet to see how Labor will approach END. There is cause for alarm because last weekend the Albanese government reversed a long-standing Australian position by abstaining instead of opposing a routine UN vote on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear ­Weapons.

To be clear, this is not the ­Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that has been backed by Australia for decades, but a 2017 UN document opposed by all nuclear weapons powers, NATO and America’s key allies because it lacks any real means to deliver or verify disarmament.

If we avoid a conflict with an aggressive Beijing in the next half-decade it will be because the US and its allies strengthened deterrence by building credible military forces.

The TPNW is the ultimate feel-good treaty, enabling non-nuclear powers to indulge in an anti-nuclear vibe safe in the knowledge that it cannot be enforced. The risk of the treaty is that it pressures democracies in ways that do not affect authoritarian Russia and China.

So, the government’s approach will disappoint both our key ally and progressive disarmers. But given our current strategic outlook, Washington’s view is more consequential.

Late last week, the Biden administration released its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, which marks an important shift in American thinking on nuclear weapons. The review says that, “By the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries. This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control and risk reduction.”

The American solution is to emphasise the role of key allies in building a shared approach to extended nuclear deterrence “by giving allies and partners confidence that they can resist strategic threats and remain secure without acquiring nuclear weapons of their own”.

As China rapidly expands its own nuclear arsenal, the American policy recognises that “it may be necessary to consider ­nuclear strategy and force adjustments to assure our ability to achieve deterrence and other ­objectives for the PRC”.

The nuclear balance between China and the US is becoming more like the old cold war relationship between Washington and Moscow. Like it or not, Australia’s geography and alliance relationship with the US make us a part of that balance.

The TNPW is at best a statement of disarmament intent with no real content, but disarmament substance is in the US Nuclear Posture Review: Washington has chosen to retire an entire class of nuclear weapons, the B83-1 gravity bomb.

Joe Biden will get zero credit for that, but we can watch America’s opponents get excited about a decision to make the F-35A joint strike fighter “dual capable” of carrying nuclear weapons. Of course, this is the fighter aircraft Australia is currently bringing into service.

Although there is no plan for this to happen in Australia, among participating NATO partners dual-capable F-35A aircraft forward deployed in Europe will now have the capacity to carry nuclear weapons.

Australia is just weeks away from potentially deciding on submarine nuclear propulsion, which will become our most complex and expensive defence equipment project ever and deliverable only because of Washington’s support.

This, rather than empty UN anti-nuclear treaties, is where our focus should be. A clear line of policy effort is vital, along with the language to explain our ­national purpose to the Australian people.