Last week’s NATO summit in Madrid produced what successive US presidents have called for and failed to deliver; an expanding alliance, spending more on defence, putting more troops on the ground and focusing on real threats. NATO has even written a coherent strategy. In 11 clearly written pages, the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept makes it clear Russia and China present the greatest threat to Europe’s interests. “The Euro-Atlantic area is not at peace … We cannot discount the possibility of an attack against allies’ sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
NATO has responded with a “new force model” increasing deployed high-readiness forces from 40,000 to 100,000 troops and, by next year, plans to have between 300,000 and half a million military personnel held at short notice. Significant additional forces will be based in the Baltic states and NATO’s eastern flank.
After centuries of neutrality Sweden will join NATO, as will Finland, neutral since the end of World War II. One of Vladimir Putin’s confected strategic reasons to attack Ukraine was to prevent NATO creeping closer to Russia’s borders. Finland’s joining more than doubles the land border between NATO countries and Russia, from about 1250km to almost 2600km.
One of the most useful parts of the NATO Strategic Concept is its language on the People’s Republic of China. In less than 250 words the statement sharply orients NATO against Beijing: “The PRC’s malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric and disinformation target allies and harm alliance security.” The statement confounds the hope some European states held that they could engage with China without strategic risk because the “PRC seeks to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains. It uses economic leverage to create strategic dependen-cies and enhance its influence”.
Australia has been living this reality for years. It is remarkable how so many parts of our public service, business community, state governments and university administrators still refuse to acknowledge what the NATO document so clearly observes. Even today Treasury’s Foreign Investment Review Board blithely sticks to the fiction that investment from China is no different than from any other country. The tipping point for NATO on China was the signing of the “no-limits pact” between Beijing and Moscow just before the invasion of Ukraine. The Strategic Concept judges Russia and China’s “deepening strategic partnership … and … mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests”.
Our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, usually dominated by Euro-sceptic “Asia hands”, has for decades underinvested in Europe. We should give a little credit where it is due. NATO under immense pressure is getting its act together. That is immensely important for Australia because it means we are not alone in a relentless bilateral struggle with Beijing.
Attending the NATO summit was a worthwhile investment of time for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. From the meeting we have the creation of yet another multilateral grouping, the Asia-Pacific Four, or AP4, comprised of the prime ministers of Australia, Japan and New Zealand, and South Korea’s President. According to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The four leaders concurred to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Based on the recognition that the security of the Indo-Pacific and Europe is indivisible, they also shared the view that they will closely co-ordinate and promote their co-operation as NATO partners.”
Beijing is rattled by NATO’s attention. Chinese English-language newspapers have run an intense campaign against the NATO meeting and the AP4, including a blunt assessment in a China Daily editorial. Albanese was attacked for “his lack of diplomatic nous and poor grasp of political realities”. It claimed that by drawing a “parallel between Taiwan and Ukraine”, Albanese risked “the opportunity to reset Australia’s ties with China”.
Albanese seems to be drawing confidence from his international engagements. In just a few weeks in office he has established personal connections with Quad leaders Joe Biden, Fumio Kishida and Narendra Modi, with Jacinda Ardern and South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol and key NATO leaders.
On each of these occasions the message being relayed is that the democracies are, in the words of the NATO summit declaration, “tackling shared security challenges”. Albanese said in Spain: “We need to reassert our democratic values … that has occurred at this NATO summit.”
That approach is likely to lessen any temptation to accommodate Beijing’s hint of a thawing in relations in return for a quieter, more acquiescent Canberra.
What would Albanese need to do to please Beijing? According to the China Daily, he should not have said “the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been a ‘strategic failure’ for Russia that has made it a ‘global pariah’ ”. Nor should he have said “it was something about which China should take note”.
Further, Albanese should avoid “deliberately playing up and smearing China’s normal security co-operation with the Solomon Islands” and “letting the US-led NATO summit fill his head with nonsense”.
The NATO Strategic Concept paper says “we remain open to constructive engagement with the PRC, including to build reciprocal transparency”. This should be Australia’s approach, but harbouring no illusions that engagement will change China’s behaviour or ours.
On Monday we will find out if Albanese has accepted Volodymyr Zelensky’s invitation to visit Kyiv. I sincerely hope he does, because that experience could come to define his approach to international security. Albanese understands why the defence of Ukraine is important to Australia. He said in Madrid: “This is a struggle that must be won because it’s not just about Ukraine and Russia. It is also about whether the rules-based international order will continue to apply. It’s about a breach of that order by one of the UN permanent Security Council members. It’s about whether the UN Charter means something. And that’s why this attack, unprovoked, by Russia, must be resisted.” He then connected this to China: “China must look at what is happening and look at the resolve that is there from throughout the world.”
With fine words must come action. Albanese needs to pay close attention to NATO’s rapid increase in ready military forces. Australia must quickly lift its own defence game. This requires a shedding of the pretence that the glacial delivery of ships and submarines a decade from now somehow adds to our immediate security. It doesn’t. NATO has revealed its “new force model” which is “to be completed in 2023”. Australia should do the same thing. What’s our defence plan for next year?
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