We need to be in the room before the US takes us to war
No self-respecting sovereign nation can accept that it might be enlisted involuntarily into a war. It’s time for a frank discussion with our strategic partner about mutual expectations.
Australia hosts several joint Australian-American facilities and provides the US with privileged access to a range of functions that are performed at Australian facilities. As a consequence, Australia is deeply integrated into US strategies of deterrence and warfighting.
Any adversary that was at war with the US would have to assume that Australia was a co-belligerent with its US ally, even if we were not an active combatant in the conflict. China almost certainly would take this view in the event of a US-China war, whether or not Australian forces were involved.
To avoid being treated as a belligerent in such a war, Australia would have to do more than simply not engage actively in combat. It would have to terminate the relevant agreements that it has with the US, close the joint facilities and cease supporting the US through certain functions that are performed at Australian facilities.
There is a long history to how this has come to be. With the agreement of Australian governments to the establishment of certain facilities at North West Cape (1963), Pine Gap (1966) and Nurrungar (1969), several crucial US strategic functions were progressively located in Australia in the 1960s. In the years since, more such facilities and functions have been established while some older functions have been modified – for instance, with the closure of Nurrungar and the transfer of its functions to Pine Gap in 1999.
Across 50 years, a significant amount of information about these facilities and functions has been placed on the public record through statements to the Australian parliament, from defence minister Lance Barnard’s statement of February 28, 1973, through to, most recently, Defence Minister Richard Marles’s statement of February 9, 2023.
From these statements, it is clear that through its hosting of certain facilities and functions, Australia is structurally integrated into several crucial US intelligence, surveillance and communications systems concerned with:
• Satellite-based collection of intelligence on military and weapons developments.
• Ballistic missile early warning (of both long-range strategic missiles and short-range battlefield missiles).
• Battlespace characterisation by way of space-based infra-red means.
• Detection of nuclear explosions by space-based and geological and geophysical means.
• Communication with submarines, including by way of the relaying of US orders to launch missiles.
• Satellite-based communications and other forms of communications support.
• Identification and tracking of objects in space.
• Monitoring of solar and space weather.
While the beneficial role that these facilities and functions play in the deterrence of conflict, global nuclear stability and arms control verification is real enough, it has been a policy artifice for successive Australian governments to emphasise these “peaceful” objectives. This has minimised awareness of the structural contribution that Australia makes to the ability of the US to wage war.
Take ballistic missile early warning as an example. Through our hosting of this mission at Pine Gap, Australia supports the ability of the US to both deter and wage nuclear war. Early warning from Pine Gap of a nuclear missile launch would trigger a series of steps whereby the US president would have to decide, in a matter of minutes, whether and how to respond in the face of the incoming strike. Pine Gap’s early warning data would be crucial to informing the president’s decision about which nuclear strike packages to authorise, and specifically whether to launch a massive retaliatory nuclear strike or to employ smaller, more selective nuclear strikes.
From the outset, Australia’s potential contribution to US warfighting, and especially US nuclear warfare capabilities, was controversial.
In 1963, the Menzies government agreed to a US proposal to build a naval communications station at North West Cape in Western Australia. This station would close a geographical gap in the coverage of the global network of US naval communications stations, which were being built at the time for the purpose of relaying missile firing orders to the Polaris ballistic missile submarines that were then entering US Navy service.
The Menzies government was willing to allow the US to operate the station without any significant degree of Australian control.
The Labor opposition, led by Arthur Calwell and his deputy Gough Whitlam, while not necessarily opposed to the station, was outraged at the prospect of there being no effective joint control of the station.
In fact, some caucus members went further and were actively opposed to the hosting of the station under any circumstances, with Tom Uren being one of the loudest voices.
The ALP called a special party conference for March 18-21, 1963, to resolve the party’s position on the matter. Even though they were elected federal leaders, Calwell and Whitlam were not delegates to the conference, which was held at the Kingston Hotel in Canberra and attended by 36 state-based Labor delegates.
Having addressed the conference, Calwell and Whitlam had to leave the meeting while the conference delegates deliberated on the matter. Alan Reid of The Daily Telegraph immortalised the scene in one of the most sensational news stories in Australian political history. Menzies later lambasted the “36 faceless men” who he said ran the ALP.
In the early hours of Thursday, March 21, 1963, while Calwell and Whitlam waited anxiously outside, the conference narrowly resolved to support the hosting of the station. The vote was 19-17.
However, Labor’s support would be subject to several crucial conditions. There had to be joint Australia-US control of the station. It could not be used for holding armaments. Most important, as Australia needed to retain always the sole right to make decisions regarding its involvement in war, the agreement with the US could not commit Australia automatically to involvement in war.
Once Labor won office in 1972, it soon became apparent to Whitlam and Barnard that in the absence of a veto power over the relaying of US messages through the station, the Australian government effectively would have to “concur” in US use of the station, whether or not it agreed with the actions and consequences that might ensue.
This could well mean Australia’s automatic involvement in a war, in breach of the most critical of the conditions that had been set out in the 1963 ALP conference resolution. While Labor was opposed to Australia becoming involved in any war “without itself having any power of decision”, as Barnard put it to the House of Representatives on February 28, 1973, in practical terms this would not be possible without Australian control of US messages passing through the station, which was something the US would never accept.
In January 1974, after extensive discussions between Barnard and US defence secretary James Schlesinger, the Australian government accepted that an Australian veto power was not viable and especially not in relation to the vetoing of nuclear missile firing orders.
So was established the policy concept of Australia’s “concurrence” in the use by the US of the mutually agreed functions that are performed by these facilities, even in cases where the Australian government does not necessarily agree with individual US tasks and activities. This “concurrence” formula has been the cornerstone of Australian policy regarding these facilities and functions ever since.
In his discussions with Schlesinger, Barnard at least won an assurance of timely notification of, and meaningful consultation on, strategic and operational issues connected with the use of North West Cape.
Barnard was particularly concerned about the implications of Australia indirectly supporting selective targeting by the US under a strategy of limited nuclear war, which the Australian government did not support. He decided that Australia had to inform itself more actively as to the totality of the functions that were being performed at these facilities. So was born the concept of Australia having “full knowledge” of these functions, which has also remained as a cornerstone policy to this day.
Bob Hawke did the most to put the policy of “full knowledge and concurrence” on a comprehensive basis by extending it to the other facilities at Pine Gap and Nurrungar, and ensuring that there was more meaningful Australian involvement in the management of these facilities (see his statements to the house of June 6, 1984, and especially November 22, 1988).
Building on the foundation of the Barnard-Schlesinger agreement of 1974 regarding improved consultation, as well as two later agreements of 1979 and 1983, Kim Beazley set the gold standard for how Australia should comprehensively inform itself about strategic developments related to these facilities and functions, including with regard to US nuclear war planning. At his direction, Australia sought and obtained more regular relevant US briefings, including on the most sensitive issues (see Beazley, “ANZUS at 70: The Joint Facilities in the 1980s”, The Strategist, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, August 18, 2021).
Until 2011, with the advent of the US force posture initiatives that were announced in that year, and institutionalised in the 2014 Force Posture Agreement, it could be said that Australia’s integration with US deterrence and warfighting capabilities had an indirect character, in that in a time of war various facilities and functions located in Australia might provide “invisible” support to the US in the functional areas discussed above.
However, under the US force posture program, direct combat support facilities and infrastructure assets are being built, such as extended runways, fuel installations, warehouses, workshops and so on. Any US use of these facilities and assets in wartime would be visible and would involve Australia providing direct support to US combat forces that might be operating from, or through, our territory.
As I argued recently (in Inquirer on June 21), through this program we effectively are building a wartime operating base for US combat forces. Policy will have to evolve to accommodate this dramatic change. In addition to the likelihood of Australia providing indirect intelligence, surveillance and communications support to the US in wartime, there is now a real prospect of Australia potentially providing the US with direct combat support from its territory.
The policy of full knowledge and concurrence has meant that while being fully aware of, and concurring with, all relevant functions that are hosted on Australian territory, Australian governments have not necessarily had to agree with every US activity performed in Australia. However, it surely cannot be accepted that Australia as a sovereign nation would simply “concur” with US combat forces operating during wartime from, or through, Australia, in the absence of the government of the day taking active and specific decisions to allow this to occur.
As the ALP resolved in March 1963, and as Barnard expressed it in 1973, Australia has to retain at all times the “power of decision” about whether to become involved in an armed conflict.
In February 2023, Marles put it as follows: “Any decision for Australia to go to war or to use Australian territory or assets in an armed conflict remains solely a decision for the commonwealth government of the day.”
The policy of full knowledge and concurrence is not fit for this purpose. As a result, there is now an acute dilemma in our alliance with the US. US war planning cannot assume that Australia’s “concurrence” to the force posture program would automatically translate into Australian support for the specific wartime use by the US of force posture facilities and assets. Indeed, the US has probably been discouraged by Australia from making any such assumption, as it is highly likely the Australian government has not wanted to engage in addressing hypothetical questions regarding wartime contingencies.
No doubt, the Australian government has been keen to maintain maximum decision-making discretion and flexibility on such questions. In part, this has been motivated by a desire to avoid the risk of offending China, which would object stridently to any suggestion that concrete Australia-US planning was under way in relation to the wartime use by the US of facilities and assets in Australia.
Domestic political sensitivities also would be a factor. One can only imagine what a modern-day Uren would say in today’s Labor caucus about such war planning! Notwithstanding these difficulties, the US would probably prefer that such deliberate planning took place. US planners would wish to have a high degree of certainty about how US combat operations might be able to take place from, or through, Australian territory.
Were such planning to be authorised by both governments, it would allow for frank staff discussions to occur regarding mutual expectations and operational options.
Any such process would be the subject of strict political control, as it would have to be authorised and overseen by the Australian defence minister and the US defence secretary. Australia would be the greater beneficiary of such a planning process. While Australia and the US are becoming ever more deeply integrated in military-strategic terms, in our alliance with the US we are not in control of the conflict initiation, escalation and de-escalation decision process.
As a result, Australia therefore has a profound interest in engaging with the US on its intentions and strategies, in clarifying expectations and in realising Australian interests, as far as practicable, in operational arrangements and plans.
Rather than diminishing our space for discretion and flexibility, an institutionalised war planning process would enlarge the space for Australia to advance and protect its own interests.
Better to do this now, calmly and deliberately, rather than possibly having to rush to war one day, where in the chaos of a crisis Australia might find that its voice was not being properly heard.
Were such war planning to be authorised, the Australian government still would have every right to avoid giving definitive political commitments about going to war. It would properly reserve for itself the right to judge the circumstances and our interests on the day, just as the US does.
Short of war, the policy of “full knowledge and concurrence” should continue to be applied in relation to the facilities and functions that have been established in Australia since 1963, including under 2014 Force Posture Agreement.
However, no self-respecting sovereign nation can accept that it might be enlisted involuntarily into a war. Engagement in war planning would be the best way for Australia to signal that it reserves the right to exercise the “power of decision” regarding going to war, and to set out its interests and conditions.
The alternative is that in a future crisis, an Australian prime minister would be waiting docilely outside the room while matters of war and peace that affected Australia were being decided by the US.
We need to be in the room, with a say in our own fate.
Michael Pezzullo is a former deputy secretary of the Department of Defence and was secretary of the Department of Home Affairs until November 2023.
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