Our defence strategy: all the way with USA

Australia has backed a new US defence strategy naming Russia and China as greater threat to security than Islamic ­terrorism.

Defence Minister Marise Payne. Picture: AAP

Australia has backed a new US defence strategy naming Russia and China as a greater threat to national security than Islamic ­terrorism in a move experts have ­labelled a watershed moment in Washington’s strategic planning with potential long-term impli­cations for regional security.

Defence Minister Marise Payne said while terrorism would remain an enduring threat, and while rising powers such as China had every right to question the existing order, Australia shared strategic concerns being expressed in Washington.

“It is for the US to determine what is of concern in relation to its national security, but I would note that Australia shares similar concerns,’’ Senator Payne told The Weekend Australian.

Her comments come just a week after US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis released the 2018 ­­­­­­­Nat­ional Defence Strategy, described by Australian strategic experts as one of the most significant documents to emerge from the Pentagon since the Cold War.

The strategy, written by Mr Mattis, named Russia and China as “revisionist powers’’ intent on shaping the world according to their “authoritarian’’ model.

Competition with these two countries would henceforth be the primary focus of Washington’s strategic planning, eclipsing the long fight against Islamic ­terrorism that began with the September 11 terrorist attacks more than 16 years ago.

“We are emerging from a ­period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military ­advantage has been eroding,’’ Mr Mattis writes. “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security.’’

Australian National Univer­sity professor Paul Dibb, author of the 1987 defence white paper, said Washington’s new doctrine was “extremely significant’’.

“Not since the Cold War when the Soviet Union was at its military peak has a defence strategy been as brutally clear as this one as identifying threats in such strong, clear language,’’ Professor Dibb said.

“I think both America and ourselves have taken our eye off the ball as if the only thing that mattered in our strategic outlook is Afghanistan, Iraq, al-Qa’ida and (the Islamic State).

Former head of the Australian Army Peter Leahy said the ramp-up was likely to see a greater US engagement with the region.

“I think we’re seeing more meat on the bone with the pivot to Asia. I think what we’ll see is a pushback against what the Americans see as Chinese aggression,’’ he said.

However, he disputed Mr Mattis’s central proposition — that great power competition represented a bigger threat than ­Islamic terrorism. He said while China was rapidly developing its military capabilities, many were defensive in nature. “I’ve yet to see the clear intent that China is against the US,’’ he said.

The director of defence, foreign and strategic policy at the US Studies Centre, Ashley Towns­hend, said such an explicit repurposing of US priorities was “extremely significant’’ for Australia. “If implemented, inter-state competition with China will become a permanent fixture in our daily lives in a way that may come to resemble the Cold War era,’’ he said. “I don’t think Australia has really realised that.’’

Unlike its predecessor, the 2014 Quadrennial Defence Review, last week’s document is short, blunt and written by Mr Mattis himself, a detail analysts say gives it greater weight.

Its release comes at a time when Russia is seeking to reclaim its Cold War status as a global power to rival the US, launching unilateral military action in Syria, annexing Crimea and meddling in the 2016 presidential elections.

China has been seeking to project greater influence throughout the region, militarising parts of the South China Sea and embarking on its One Belt, One Road strategy, a decades-long infrastructure program aimed in part at deepening Beijing’s economic leverage over its neighbours.

Mr Mattis said the liberal internationalist order built in the wake of World War II was resilient “but weakening’’, and was under threat from Moscow and Beijing. “China and Russia are now undermining the inter­national order from within the system by exploiting its benefits while simultaneously undercutting its principles and ‘rules of the road’,’’ he noted.

In an apparent reference to China and Russia, Senator Payne said some states were seeking to undermine the post-war global order “through use of proxies, covert and paramilitary operations, economic coercion, cyber-attacks and misinformation and media manipulation’’.

“Rising powers have, of course, every right to question and seek to adjust this order to better meet their needs, but this must be done in a productive way, in collaboration with all, not by force of the few.’’

Senator Payne said the US would retain its military advantage “for the foreseeable future’’ and Canberra’s goal was to encourage China’s peaceful rise and to foster co-operation, not conflict, with Beijing. But she agreed the global order was fraying, saying while the post-war inter­national architecture had delivered unprecedented prosperity and security, it was “now being tested in new ways’’.