Asian century throws up the question once again of the nation’s military defence capability

As Asian power rises, its time to ask ourselves: how capable is Australia’s military?

Formation exercise conducted by HMA ships during the transit to Hawaii to take part in Exercise RIMPAC 18.

Can Australia defend itself? It is an old question. We have faced it ­before — in the uncertain years before 1914, again as the clouds gathered before 1939, and as our allies faltered in Asia in the 1960s.

But today we confront the old question in new circumstances. They are new, and indeed unprecedented, because never before has the power of the West, on which until now we have always depended for our security, faced such a serious challenge in Asia.

The West has never encountered Asian powers as rich and strong as China is today and as India will be in the decades ahead. The simple historical fact is Western powers, especially our great allies Britain and the US, have been able to dominate Asia strategically and keep Australia safe because they have been far richer, stronger and more technologically advanced than any Asian rival.

The rise of these immense Asian powers means those ­material foundations of Western preponderance have decayed and without them the Western position in Asia, which we have taken for granted and depended on for so long, cannot last.

Indeed, its passing is already far advanced. This changes fundamentally the nature of Australia’s strategic choices.

Hugh White's book How to Defend Australia.

For the first time we have to contemplate defending ourselves independently, not just from small local threats that our great allies may overlook, but from whatever threats to us may arise here in the world’s most powerful, dynamic and potentially dangerous region.

It means defending ourselves must now encompass defending ourselves from a major Asian power without the substantive help of a major-power ally, or committing our forces alongside those of Asian neighbours rather than relying on Western allies to protect our strategic interests. We have never had to contemplate these things seriously before.

Can we do it? The answer is a qualified yes. We probably can ­defend ourselves independently if we choose to do so and if we go about it the right way, which means adopting a military strategy that exploits the advantages of our geography and trends in the technology of warfare.

But the yes is qualified because whether that strategy can be made to work depends not only on our choices but on several factors outside our control. Those factors include, first, how powerful our potential adversaries become in the decades ahead — how fast their economies grow, how far their strategic influence spreads, how strong their militaries become and how much their power is counterbalanced by competitors.

Second, it depends on how new technologies affect the conduct of military and maritime operations. On balance, Australia has benefited from the way technology has reshaped warfare in the past century or more. That may not be so in the future: it remains unclear what the implications will be of new tech­nologies such as AI and ­hypersonics.

Third, it depends on whether we can get access to the technologies that we would need to make our military strategy work.

And finally, it depends on how our own economy fares, which will determine how much we would have to sacrifice to build the forces required to defend ourselves. Whatever happens, this last factor will probably catch up with us eventually if, as seems likely, our economy continues to shrink relative to those of our Asian neighbours. As that happens, the fiscal burden of maintaining forces strong enough to defend ourselves will inexorably rise, so that at some stage — perhaps sometime in the second half of the century — it may become too large to bear.

In the meantime, for the next three or four decades at least, we have a good chance of being able to ­defend ourselves at a heavy but not insupportable cost, as long as the first three factors work out OK, which they probably will.

The choice we face today is whether we should take that chance and try to develop an independent defence for the next few decades or let the opportunity pass. Should Australia defend itself? Our choice is not an easy one. Just because we probably can build the forces to defend ourselves does not mean we necessarily should. As we have seen, the costs would be very high, and it is not a foregone conclusion that the benefits outweigh those costs.

Let us start by reminding ourselves what those benefits are. At its simplest, we could deter or repel a ­direct military attack against us by a major Asian power such as China, India or perhaps Japan or Indonesia. That in turn means we could resist pressure applied to us by explicit or implicit threat of such attack.

It also means we could defend our key strategic interests, so that we could help prevent developments that made it easier for a potential adversary to attack us directly. We could do that especially by helping our neighbours in the southwest Pacific and maritime Southeast Asia to resist pressure from major powers too. And our capacity to do that militarily would increase our diplomatic ­capacity to influence regional ­developments to our advantage.

This is the kind of independent strategic weight that we would need if we are to be a middle power in the decades ahead. But why does it matter whether we can do these things — or matter enough to justify what it will cost?

Some part of the answer to that question may be found by looking inward, at ourselves as a country. For many of us, this is a matter of national identity and self-respect. For these people, an Australia that could not stand up for itself wouldn’t really be Australia — or not the Australia they think they know and love.

This idea — that a nation’s identity and moral worth are inextricably tied up with the capacity of its armed forces — has deep roots, and not just here in Australia, so it is not to be dismissed lightly. But in thinking how far it should dictate our decisions on defence, it is worth bearing in mind that the vast majority of countries are small powers with little or no ­capacity to defend themselves or influence their international setting with armed force. An Australia that chose to join this majority by deciding not to make a major investment in armed force would be a different country to one that did, but not necessarily a worse one. In any case, the most important factor to consider is not what we think about ourselves but how we see the world around us and the strategic risks it poses.

These risks are hard to assess dispassionately. Some people see looming threats right now, while others dismiss entirely the idea that we might ever face a serious armed attack. Both are wrong as far as Australia is concerned. We face no present threat of direct attack and a lot would have to change in our region for Australia to face such a threat. But a lot has changed already and the risks — the chances such a threat could emerge — are much higher than they were a decade or two ago.

Hugh White is emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University. This is an edited extract from How to Defend Australia, published by La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc, out July 2.