Down Under responds

A note from ANU's John Blaxland

Dear Readers,

Professor John Blaxland, from the Australian National University, who is currently serving as ANU’s liaison officer in the US, and who is a former Australian army officer, has written a response to yesterday’s substack on the Australian National Defence Strategy.

I think you will find it of interest. He originally posted it on LinkedIn and I am reposting it here with a couple of additional notes he sent me, all with his permission:

John writes:

It’s fascinating to read Wesley Wark‘s take on the Defence Australia “National Defence Strategy” (https://lnkd.in/esnvy986) as it pertains to its True North Canadian ‘strategic cousins’ (https://lnkd.in/ez4dWhFt). He notes the emphasis on drones, the network of enhanced regional security partners and the doubling down on ties with the USA. There’s certainly plenty of points of similarity and commonality that make the comparison worthwhile.

Wark notes:
“Given that Australia and Canada are in the same military modernization and growth race, there is still value in paying close attention to defence developments ‘down under.’ But where the two countries diverge is in their approach to geopolitics and especially to security dependency on the United States. Where Australia seeks to deepen that dependency, Canada seeks fundamentally to lessen it. Canada can look to new security and defence coalitions with the Nordics, NATO partners, and the EU, as we lean towards Europe and away from the United States. Australia clearly feels it doesn’t have the luxury of any decoupling from the United States. That may be realism, Australian-style, but it needs to be accompanied by a clearer-eyed view of the US and more ambition to be a truly “influential” (and independent) middle power.”

Wark suggests Australia needs a “a clearer-eyed view”. My sense is that this is in fact already happening. The new security pacts that Australia has recently been signing with PNG [Papua New Guinea], Indonesia, Japan, and the Philippines, let alone deepening ties and collaborative ventures with Pacific partners and stronger ROK [Republic of Korea] ties suggest Australia is doing as much as it can diplomatically (including with Defence diplomacy) under the circumstances to ride the stormy waters of what I describe as the current poly-crisis — encapsulating great power competition, looming environmental catastrophe, a spectrum of governance challenges and the accelerating effects of technological disruption associated with AI and the Fourt Industrial Revolution (as I argued here https://sldinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/NationalSecurityStrategyMay2024.pdf).

I say, yes, this is Australian realism, marked by our ‘fear of abandonment’ (https://lnkd.in/eJxphkQ8) and a pronounced reluctance to significantly rock the boat (and dramatically increase defence spending in the near term beyond current projections). Most Australian national security pundits acknowledge that greater self-reliance implies greater costs. For a country heavily invested in compatibility with US counterparts, that would be problematic.

We in Australia have long had a fear of abandonment which drives us to maintain relations with the United States as a top priority, Canada has the opposite problem. Nils Orvik articulated the idea of Defence Against Help. My reading of it is that Canada is required to maintain a sufficiently robust defence force so that your southern neighbour doesn’t feel like they can or should step in and do it for you. My sense is that for the past decade or so, Canada forgot or stopped believing in the efficacy of Orvik’s thesis and is now paying the price for that suspension of belief. We managed to avoid it by spending a significantly higher margin of GDP on defence but also by studiously avoiding incumbent office holders causing offence with our surprisingly sensitive “great and powerful friend”. Ironically, critics would suggest that is what Australia should have done and should do, joining in the chorus. But beyond venting one’s spleen and perhaps temporarily making oneself feel better, what would that do to further Australia’s interests? Very little, I hazard to guess. In fact to the contrary.

Perhaps there is something in there for Canada’s policy makers to take to heart as well.

Of course, Australia has not been the focus of the scale and type of criticism levelled at Canada. My sense is that’s at least in part because of Australia as the “suitable piece of real estate” (as my late great colleague at The Australian National University‘s Desmond Ball used to say). That applies not just with the Joint facilities at Pine Gap, but also the USAF access to Tindal, the Marines in Darwin and the US Navy SSNs in Perth/Fremantle. Too far away to be a 51st or 52nd state, but also, because of the distance (and place on the globe) a particularly useful partner. The US looks to retain and strengthen that access with a view to managing and deterring what remains for them their “pacing threat”.

https://lnkd.in/eNjeh6wb