Alliance with US ‘more important than ever’, says Kim Beazley

Australia cannot defend itself without the help of the US, says former ambassador to the US Kim Beazley.

Former ambassador to the US Kim Beazley. Picture: Gary Ramage

Former ambassador to the US Kim Beazley says Australia’s ­alliance with America is more ­important than ever, and the ­nation could not defend itself without the help of the US.

The former Labor leader ­delivered the assessment while launching a report warning that closer ties between China and Russia posed a growing threat to the West, and Australia could be drawn into a US-China war over Taiwan. The West Australia governor said the US’s “gargantuan” intelligence capabilities and its military edge were vital. “Australia cannot be defended without the alliance with the US. It’s as simple as that,” Mr Beazley said.

“If you know the math, if you know the capability, and if you know what we can actually spend … to contemplate a situation without them, you can forget it.”

The report by Paul Dibb warns that the US could find itself at war with both China and Russia, and “some conflicts might involve Australia more directly”.

“China and Russia are now ­allied in a quest to refashion a world order that’s safe for their respective authoritarian systems,” Professor Dibb says in the report for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “Both their leaders have reasons to be gratified by global trends and the fact that they’re ‘out-gaming’ the West.

“Beijing and Moscow probably believe that now is a time of great strategic opportunity, with the Western alliance in disarray.”

This could lead both countries to try to regain lost territories such as Taiwan and Ukraine.

Professor Dibb says if China sought to take Taiwan by force and the US did not come to its ­defence, it would “mark the end of the alliance system in the Asia-­Pacific … If America does defend Taiwan and Australia refuses to make a military contribution, that will threaten the existence of the ANZUS Treaty. So there are big stakes here for Japan, South Korea and Australia.”

Mr Beazley said China and Russia’s increasingly close military relationship was a key risk that would undoubtedly be preoccupying the nation’s defence and intelligence establishment.

The scenario was unlikely to feature in the next defence white paper but “you could be absolutely certain that many of the judgments (Professor Dibb) arrives at, the risks he identifies, would feature in the non-public version of the same white paper”.

The report backs the growing consensus among strategic experts that the US cannot fight two major regional conflicts at the same time.

However, Mr Beazley, a defence minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, said the US was more formidable than was generally thought. While its capabilities had in the past been on full display as a potent deterrent, its technological edge was now largely hidden, he said.