From Peter Hartcher today:
If any country were to launch a nuclear attack on the US, America would receive its first warning through Pine Gap.
The US network of satellites that “stares” at the Eurasian land mass looking for the tell-tale flare of a nuclear missile launch sends its findings to the Pine Gap base.
This is the indispensable communication conduit that the US depends on in the event that North Korea, Russia, China or Iran should decide to strike.
It is the quiet core of the Australian alliance with the US, the only essential US asset in Australia that it could not replace with some other facility in some other place.
The US has thought about replacing it. A former senior CIA official told me in the 1990s with casual confidence that if ever Australia became politically “unreliable”, the US could replicate its functions by simply putting up another satellite.
The Americans did later flirt with doing exactly that, but the physics of replacing of Pine Gap with a satellite proved impossible, according to informed officials.
…But above and beyond that, everything else in the ANZUS alliance is pretty much discretionary for the Americans.
…Now that the US has elected a leader who, for the first time, has been prepared to put the US global alliance system into play as a political object, it’s a good time for a deep examination of the alliance. And Australia’s alternatives.
…Australia is poorly prepared; it has invested everything in the US alliance and now faces a US president with nothing invested in Australia, beyond the bare minimum of Pine Gap.
…Turnbull needs to be working on a Plan B in case Trump is not the ally he hopes he is, and Shorten should be thinking about a Plan B in the event that Trump turns out to be the ally he fears he is.
It’s not entirely fair to say that Australia has no Plan B. Though you’d be hard pressed to call it a plan exactly, the economic trajectory of the nation is certainly a strategic path. It is to make Australia an outlying Chinese province, made rich for capital and land holders via dirt exports and people imports, which over decades will transform Australia from an Anglophone liberal democracy to a Chinese-directed multi-cultural retirement colony.
The question of what Australia ought to do if the US walks away from ANZUS, which I think is very unlikely, is are we happy to be the above? If so, let’s get on with putting to the people and preparing them accordingly rather than just drifting that way because Do-nothing Malcolm has no better idea.
If we are not happy with the destiny of geriatric Chinese client state then what’s the alternative path ex-ANZUS? Paul Hubbard at the AFR reckons:
If strategic rivalry between China and the United States were to escalate, Australia would face uncomfortable choices that could leave one or both partners unsatisfied. But it is wrong to frame this as a trade-off between national security and economic prosperity, as if strategic strength were born from economic pain. National security and economic prosperity are both vital national interests and deeply symbiotic. A stable international order underwrites economic prosperity; international economic engagement supports a stable order.
Unfortunately, economists and strategists have trouble talking on the same terms. The starting point for economists is usually an abstract model that assumes the security infrastructure and norms needed for markets to thrive. If economists think about armed conflict it is usually as a ‘tail risk’ – potentially catastrophic, but highly unlikely. But take away a stable national, regional or global order and the business and commerce that generate material prosperity will evaporate.
Security thinkers don’t sit around and assume thriving societies. Instead they are paid to detect threats and contemplate worst-case scenarios. Mitigating these requires clear thinking, well-resourced diplomacy and defence capability. This in turn depends on a prosperous economy.
Australia can afford multi-billion dollar submarines and joint strike fighters because it has a $US1.2 trillion economy. The Defence White Paper’s $US32 billion funding target for 2020–2021 assumes that the Australian economy will continue growing faster than that of the United States, the Euro Area or Japan until then. Achieving this requires deeper economic engagement with a fast-growing Asia.
True enough. But only if your efforts to become rich don’t make you too dependent upon one strategic ally. Which we are doing. So the first thing we must do for an ANZUS Plan B that sustains Australian independence is dislocate Australian growth from Chinese. No easy task but quite possible if we:
- restrict Chinese investment to only raw materials;
- police foreign investment in property properly;
- reform foreign political donations law and install a federal corruption watchdog, and
- cut immigration.
This would result in an adjustment period as the Australia economy deflated its way to greater competitiveness and shifted its growth drivers from domestic debt to tradable sectors. But we’re quite capable of doing it.
Second, what you would do is attempt to enmesh China in regional diplomatic infrastructure that brings together an Asian concert of powers that can counter-balance the regional hegemon. After all, there are many Asian powers that are suspicious of Chinese strategic objectives, most of which are also middle powers. They are also suspicious of one another making it all the more imperative to bring them together or China will dominate by default. This is where Australia’s foreign policy has been appallingly lax since 1996.
Third, you probably need to discuss whether or not Australia needs a nuclear deterrent.
