Defence think tank warns Australia can’t rely on ‘great and powerful friends’ as critical period approaches
Analysts have painted a grim picture for Australia as the drums of war beat overseas. They all point to a dangerous window where we will be especially vulnerable.
A new report from the country’s leading defence think tank says Australia must stop thinking like a conventional middle power and more like a scrappy survivor as global uncertainties continue to stack up.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) warns there is a dangerous and uncertain gap in the nation’s ability to deter threats from China, Russia and beyond.
Australia is already in the midst of its largest peacetime military expansion. But the ASPI report suggests that size alone is not the issue.
In a new report released Wednesday, the think tank argues that our traditional reliance on “big boy” allies is no longer enough to guarantee security in the region.
The institute receives funding from both Australia’s Defence Department and the US State Department.
It says the country urgently needs to adopt “unconventional deterrence” inspired by guerrilla insurgencies, cyber resistance, and the survival strategies of small states.
“Australia’s traditional reliance upon ‘great and powerful friends’ and extended nuclear deterrence now seems no longer assured,” the report warns.
“Australia has options to fill today’s deterrence gap: we just need to look beyond conventional paradigms.”
Under the high-profile AUKUS security pact with Washington and London, Australia will eventually acquire at least three Virginia-class nuclear submarines. The only problem is that the first boats are not expected for years, with some estimates claiming we won’t have the whole fleet until 2040.
The report also ominously points to 2027, the year China’s President Xi Jinping has instructed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan.
“The medium-term acquisition of nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines under AUKUS, intended to deter conflict, is irrelevant to the short-term problem of maintaining deterrence through the coming five-year period of heightened risk (2027–2032),” the report says.
The plan to build a sovereign fleet also remains decades away. Until then, ASPI analysts say Australia is theoretically exposed.
The $235 billion price tag attached to the submarine program has sparked an ongoing political debate over effective use of taxpayer dollars, all while the United States continues to press Canberra to lift overall defence spending from a projected 2.4 per cent of GDP to something closer to Washington’s “new global standard” of 3.5 per cent.
The Pentagon has also warned Australia that without the extra spending, it risks failing to meet its AUKUS commitments and could become vulnerable.
The Pentagon has also suggested Australia’s current defence spending is not high enough to maintain the incoming Virginia-class submarine fleet while also modernising the ADF.
So the drums of war appear to be beating abroad, but with no immediate open conflict in the region, the broader consensus over Australia’s defence strategy is split. Some say the constant discussion is creating an unnecessary air of panic, while others say we are grossly underprepared for a “s**t hits the fan” scenario.
Going guerrilla
With the submarines still years away, the authors of the ASPI report say Australia must learn from smaller-scale conflicts from decades past.
They point to examples such as the Chechen resistance against Russia in the 1990s, where smaller fighters inflicted disproportionate damage on a major military power.
Beijing’s increasing use of so-called grey-zone tactics like cyber intrusions, coercion, and political subversion is cited as further proof that traditional models of deterrence are outdated.
“Australian concepts of deterrence don’t address the nature of competition as currently practised by China and other autocratic regimes such as Russia, North Korea and Iran,” the report says.
One of the more memorable passages calls on Canberra to study the lessons of small states. Former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew once described his island nation as a “poisonous shrimp”, meaning it is tiny but dangerous to swallow.
He was adamant that a weak state must make itself so hazardous to attack that larger neighbours think twice before attacking.
Over time, Singapore evolved this idea into what strategists called the “porcupine” posture -- a small nation can still be a big problem if it’s bristling with spines.
The concept can also be likened to Switzerland and the Baltic states, which focus primarily on dispersing defensive assets, hardening infrastructure, and training citizen reserves to make any invasion costly and drawn-out.
Military analysts say that the “porcupine” strategy avoids trying to match a larger adversary’s firepower directly. Instead, it invests in swarms of drones, mobile missile units, mines, cyber capabilities and localised defences that complicate an aggressor’s plans.
Taiwan has adopted a similar doctrine in the face of China’s political rhetoric.
For Australia, which is neither a microstate nor landlocked, the lesson isn’t necessarily about copying these models note for note, but to adopt their spirit by preparing to potentially fight and deter unconventionally.
ASPI has also called for structural changes in Canberra. The report argues for reinstating a National Security Adviser with authority to coordinate the intelligence community, and for updating espionage and defence laws to enable more flexible responses to hostile activity.
Whether Australia chooses to become a shrimp that poisons the predator, or a porcupine bristling with defensive spines, will determine how it navigates the uncertain decades before AUKUS submarines arrive in port.
“We don’t suggest in this paper that unconventional deterrence can replace traditional, conventional deterrent capabilities,” the report says.
“Rather, we argue that in combination, conventional and unconventional concepts executed together, whether unilaterally or alongside allies and partners, might yield an integrated deterrence effect greater than the sum of its parts.”
Originally published as Defence think tank warns Australia can’t rely on ‘great and powerful friends’ as critical period approaches
