1
00:00:01,340 --> 00:00:08,540
It's a great pleasure to introduce Hugh White. He has actually been around Oxford rather a lot already this term.

2
00:00:08,960 --> 00:00:14,330
When I asked him to speak or he volunteered to speak to this group, I said, Great, you could do two or three other things at the same time.

3
00:00:14,330 --> 00:00:22,310
But I didn't imagine it was really going to drag you up to London, from London to Oxford as often during his month over in the UK.

4
00:00:22,940 --> 00:00:28,060
But it's great that he has managed to get here for the third time.

5
00:00:28,070 --> 00:00:30,080
He goes back to Australia this weekend.

6
00:00:30,650 --> 00:00:40,160
He is Professor of Strategic Studies at the ANU and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute and he has been in government himself.

7
00:00:40,160 --> 00:00:42,410
He's been an advisor to Kim Beazley.

8
00:00:42,410 --> 00:00:49,219
Where is Defence Minister and Bob Hawke when he was Prime Minister and he's been a Deputy Secretary for strategy and intelligence

9
00:00:49,220 --> 00:00:56,750
in the Department of Defence before going on to being the first director of at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

10
00:00:58,100 --> 00:01:02,990
He was the principal author of the Australian 2000 Defence White Paper.

11
00:01:04,010 --> 00:01:05,059
I think it'd be fair to say, Hugh,

12
00:01:05,060 --> 00:01:16,190
you're not quite on the same page as the most recent white paper and he has just published The China Choice Why America Should Share Power.

13
00:01:16,190 --> 00:01:21,360
So I'm taking that moment to plug this, and I'm sure it's a snap.

14
00:01:22,580 --> 00:01:30,650
Excellent value. So value. His title today is the end of the Anglo-Saxon Era Australia's defence of the Asian Century.

15
00:01:30,800 --> 00:01:35,720
That's it. Well, thanks very much. It's a great pleasure to be here for that.

16
00:01:36,620 --> 00:01:45,020
And it's no trip. It's no no trouble at all coming back to Oxford three times in a month.

17
00:01:46,850 --> 00:01:51,710
Yeah. So it's nice to come back to this town. I have very happy memories of it and thanks for coming.

18
00:01:52,400 --> 00:01:59,180
I really appreciate it. I should also thank Kings College London, who have been kind enough to shout me a month in the UK,

19
00:01:59,180 --> 00:02:03,500
which is by far and away the longest time I've spent in the UK since I was a student here myself a long time ago,

20
00:02:03,920 --> 00:02:05,540
and I must say I've enjoyed it enormously.

21
00:02:06,650 --> 00:02:14,570
What I want to talk about today is what's happening in Asia strategically and what that means for Australian defence policy.

22
00:02:15,440 --> 00:02:19,700
And by defence policy I'm going to mean something fairly specific and austere.

23
00:02:20,480 --> 00:02:29,780
That is the decisions that governments make and in a sense through governments that communities make, societies make about the kinds of capabilities,

24
00:02:30,410 --> 00:02:38,120
military capabilities that build the kinds of military operations that appear to undertake and the kind of money they spend on defence.

25
00:02:39,470 --> 00:02:47,660
And I want to relate the choices that Australia now faces on those sets of questions to some

26
00:02:47,660 --> 00:02:51,440
judgements about the trajectory of strategic affairs in the Asia Pacific at the moment.

27
00:02:52,850 --> 00:02:59,210
But first, by way of kind of here, I want to just offer a slightly generic.

28
00:02:59,600 --> 00:03:06,350
She had a comment about what seem to me to be some characteristic problems amongst

29
00:03:06,350 --> 00:03:10,669
Western societies in general as they approach these questions of defence policy.

30
00:03:10,670 --> 00:03:12,340
The questions that you sketched out,

31
00:03:13,040 --> 00:03:21,409
because it does seem to me that many of many of our countries are facing in different ways a fairly similar set of

32
00:03:21,410 --> 00:03:27,980
questions about the way they think about the future of their armed forces and the shape of their defence budgets and so on.

33
00:03:29,150 --> 00:03:33,920
And I think it provides a helpful frame for the specific point I want to make Australia about Australia situations.

34
00:03:34,910 --> 00:03:41,270
The core question that has to be asked perhaps said before you can get down to the nitty gritty of deciding what kind of armed forces you want,

35
00:03:41,270 --> 00:03:43,130
what kind of military operation do you want to undertake,

36
00:03:43,640 --> 00:03:47,870
what sort of money you want to spend is the most obvious one and still the hardest to answer.

37
00:03:47,870 --> 00:03:53,029
That is what is armed force for? What are the circumstances under which societies like ours actually want to use lethal

38
00:03:53,030 --> 00:03:59,570
force or capabilities capable of delivering lethal force to achieve policy ends?

39
00:04:00,380 --> 00:04:07,280
I think, to be fair to say that since the end of the Cold War and that for a long time before

40
00:04:07,280 --> 00:04:12,919
that the ways of answering that question can be divided into two seemingly artificial,

41
00:04:12,920 --> 00:04:14,660
but I think actually quite robust categories.

42
00:04:15,380 --> 00:04:26,480
The first is that there are big wars, old wars, state on state wars, a classic conception of war that we all, so to speak,

43
00:04:26,480 --> 00:04:34,640
came out of the 20th century with such wars, particularly in the last century or even a century and a half,

44
00:04:35,300 --> 00:04:41,270
have not characteristically been wars of choice. Of course, there's always choices that governments make about where they go into wars.

45
00:04:41,270 --> 00:04:49,430
But the very fact that those wars are undertaken with a sense that there is a very fundamental national interests at stake,

46
00:04:50,510 --> 00:04:57,260
often questions of national survival and so on, and that within a pretty broad definition there is these are not because of choice.

47
00:04:57,260 --> 00:05:00,650
Their wars of compulsion under World War One and World War Two are.

48
00:05:00,890 --> 00:05:11,180
In a different ways. The classic examples and in discussions of such wars, at least beforehand and afterwards, do not always during them.

49
00:05:11,930 --> 00:05:16,070
Discussion of issues of interests tend to come to the fore.

50
00:05:16,320 --> 00:05:19,880
And the second category, of course, of what we might call the new wars, but they're not really new at all.

51
00:05:20,120 --> 00:05:25,489
They're the small wars that are wars in which the administration not necessarily state acted often outside act as if they are state actors.

52
00:05:25,490 --> 00:05:31,670
They are relatively small and weak states, not big, strong ones. They tend to be wars of choice in a much stronger sense.

53
00:05:31,670 --> 00:05:39,500
That is, there are there may well be interests involved, but more often they're pursuing objectives that are defined in terms of values.

54
00:05:39,920 --> 00:05:44,870
And they often they often happen further from home, so to speak.

55
00:05:46,130 --> 00:05:53,780
Now, after the Cold War, obviously, there was a very strong sense that big wars, old wars, were a thing of the past.

56
00:05:54,590 --> 00:06:00,889
There was a lot of evidence that new wars and small wars were not just a theoretical possibility, but something that was going to keep us very busy.

57
00:06:00,890 --> 00:06:06,310
We had a lot of peculiar reasons. We had a lot of different exposures to various kinds of small wars,

58
00:06:08,540 --> 00:06:12,739
and it seemed very natural to conclude that the principal purpose which countries

59
00:06:12,740 --> 00:06:16,220
like ours developed armed forces in a post-Cold War era was to fight small wars,

60
00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:25,870
new wars, not develop wars. It's worth bearing in mind, if you look back at what actually happened to force development in the 1990 and the 2000,

61
00:06:26,480 --> 00:06:32,270
it didn't actually follow that very few countries. I think New Zealand, perhaps the most striking exception,

62
00:06:32,570 --> 00:06:39,980
really reconceived their armed forces around the idea that in future they're going to be used for small wars rather than big wars.

63
00:06:41,340 --> 00:06:47,420
Well, sometimes this was not often this was, so to speak, presented or managed,

64
00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:55,120
you might even say fudged by the set of ideas that became encapsulated by cruel, I guess, the phrase block war.

65
00:06:55,130 --> 00:06:59,630
That is the idea that actually not that much difference between big and small wars. Could you end up doing the same thing at the same time?

66
00:07:00,410 --> 00:07:07,220
I've got to say, I can't I can't think of hand of a sillier proposition than the three block war.

67
00:07:08,780 --> 00:07:17,420
It might well be true that when you're doing a stabilisation operation, you might be at the same time as the phrase block war suggested,

68
00:07:17,810 --> 00:07:23,060
doing something like having a more intense firefight at the other end of the street or in the next block.

69
00:07:23,930 --> 00:07:30,530
But the idea that in a high intensity, continental scale conflict, you're also doing stabilisation operations.

70
00:07:30,770 --> 00:07:41,030
That's a fantasy that that shows that people are forgetting remarkably quickly what a big war looks like and what a very serious thing it is.

71
00:07:41,480 --> 00:07:47,660
They're very different. Big wars and big wars and small wars are both a new world, a very different concept of human activities,

72
00:07:47,760 --> 00:07:51,079
making very different demands on our countries and on our armed forces,

73
00:07:51,080 --> 00:07:57,110
and with hugely different implications for the kinds of forces we build now with.

74
00:07:58,340 --> 00:08:01,790
As I say, at the end of the Cold War, even up until quite recently,

75
00:08:01,790 --> 00:08:08,749
it seemed very natural for people to argue that the small wars were the wars of the future and the old wars with the wars of the past,

76
00:08:08,750 --> 00:08:13,520
the big water laws of past. I think that is now not so clear for two quite different reasons.

77
00:08:14,450 --> 00:08:23,659
The first is our confidence that armed force could effectively be used in small war type operations to achieve the kind of broad stabilisation

78
00:08:23,660 --> 00:08:32,060
objectives that such wars character characteristic they have has been at least damaged by some of our experience in the last decade or so.

79
00:08:33,710 --> 00:08:40,820
And I think the question about whether armed force actually works as a way of achieving the kinds of

80
00:08:40,820 --> 00:08:46,310
stabilisation objectives which has often been used in some some circumstances clearly does work.

81
00:08:46,940 --> 00:08:53,810
I think historians will judge Libya fairly kindly. For example, Kosovo is campaign possibly as well.

82
00:08:53,900 --> 00:09:00,230
In other circumstances, they clearly don't. I think it's an interesting factor that it works best when it's small.

83
00:09:00,500 --> 00:09:02,930
So small, small war work better than big small wars.

84
00:09:03,200 --> 00:09:08,000
And some of the small wars we've fought in the last decade have been quite big, not by big world standards,

85
00:09:08,390 --> 00:09:11,150
but by the standards of what people had in mind when they talked about small wars.

86
00:09:12,410 --> 00:09:16,010
You know, Afghanistan started as a small war and well, where we are.

87
00:09:17,090 --> 00:09:20,510
So I think there is a question and, you know, it's sort of trite to say it,

88
00:09:20,510 --> 00:09:25,249
but I think Afghanistan is going to an Iraq and it's why they're going to stand as very

89
00:09:25,250 --> 00:09:33,920
significant cautions to people contemplating building armed forces for large scale small wars.

90
00:09:34,970 --> 00:09:41,000
And the trouble with building armed forces for small amounts of small scale small wars because forces end up being very small.

91
00:09:43,050 --> 00:09:47,090
And so the first reason why I think the focus on small was another fear that was

92
00:09:47,090 --> 00:09:52,310
is that small wars maybe don't work as quick as much as we as much as we thought.

93
00:09:52,580 --> 00:10:00,650
The second reason is that the prospect of major conflict of old fashioned wars.

94
00:10:01,310 --> 00:10:07,760
Now seems less remote than it did for most of the nineties and the last decade.

95
00:10:09,350 --> 00:10:16,399
And that's because we're perhaps less confident today that than we were for the first couple of post-Cold War decades about the

96
00:10:16,400 --> 00:10:22,940
durability of the very stable state of relations between the world's strongest states that emerged from the end of the Cold War.

97
00:10:23,450 --> 00:10:29,540
And, of course, it sort of goes without saying, but the thing that drives big wars, bad relations between big states.

98
00:10:29,870 --> 00:10:37,069
You don't get a big war unless you have very big states at war, at war with one another, as it's bad relationship between very big states,

99
00:10:37,070 --> 00:10:43,790
which presents the dangers of big wars and our confidence that we weren't going to have big walls were very strongly

100
00:10:43,790 --> 00:10:48,770
embedded in a set of judgements about the kind of relationships the world's strongest states were going to have.

101
00:10:50,150 --> 00:10:57,740
And I think, though, the lower level of confidence today about the kind of world recovery and defining and future reflect a

102
00:10:57,740 --> 00:11:02,240
lower level of confidence in the long term trajectory of relations between the world's strongest states.

103
00:11:04,220 --> 00:11:08,690
And if you were saying that the future of everyone's defence policy depends on how

104
00:11:08,690 --> 00:11:13,130
we clarify two sets of resolving questions if that set of obligations arrived.

105
00:11:13,670 --> 00:11:18,170
The first is we do have to ask what small wars are we really going to fight in the future?

106
00:11:19,280 --> 00:11:22,969
It's going to be, I think, much more limited than, for example,

107
00:11:22,970 --> 00:11:31,940
Tony Blair's push for good concept back in the late nineties suggested and his questioned about not

108
00:11:31,940 --> 00:11:35,929
just does armed force work to achieve the objectives we're trying to set ourselves in places like,

109
00:11:35,930 --> 00:11:40,550
for example Afghanistan but do our interests in those situations.

110
00:11:41,240 --> 00:11:49,220
Let's leave the values to one side, to our interest in situations warrant the scale of investment required investment in lives as well as in money.

111
00:11:50,330 --> 00:11:56,569
And the second set of questions is how do we balance the probability of major war and a collapse in

112
00:11:56,570 --> 00:12:02,390
the order amongst the world's strongest states against the cost of preparing to fight such wars?

113
00:12:03,530 --> 00:12:13,249
And does is the probability of old fashioned conflicts of that kind high enough to justify us in spending what would presumably

114
00:12:13,250 --> 00:12:18,170
be the immense amounts of money building very different kinds of defence forces to fight those kinds of wars again.

115
00:12:19,610 --> 00:12:24,350
Now I think both those challenges, I say this was a person from the other side of the world.

116
00:12:24,420 --> 00:12:31,399
Seems to me when I look at UK defence policy, I think both of those challenges are very live in the questions that confront British

117
00:12:31,400 --> 00:12:36,590
strategic policymakers today when I think about the future of the UK armed forces.

118
00:12:37,430 --> 00:12:45,830
The question about whether or not the UK is going to fight more Afghanistans seems very pertinent one.

119
00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:51,800
But it also seems to me the question as to whether the United Kingdom or what place in UK defence policy should

120
00:12:51,800 --> 00:13:02,330
be taken by the possibility that they state the order between the strongest states in Europe breaks down.

121
00:13:03,650 --> 00:13:07,730
How that should be addressed and approach seems to me to be a really critical question.

122
00:13:08,460 --> 00:13:16,250
I'm not sure about Europe, but it seems to me that the likelihood of the relationships between the states of Western Europe,

123
00:13:16,250 --> 00:13:21,290
the strong states and Western Europe breaking down is vanishingly low. I personally, if I was a defence policymaker,

124
00:13:21,290 --> 00:13:27,619
I'd dismiss it not with worrying about I think myself that the risks of Russia at some stage

125
00:13:27,620 --> 00:13:31,970
choosing to contest the post-Cold War order on its western borders is not nearly as low.

126
00:13:32,120 --> 00:13:33,079
I don't think it's very high,

127
00:13:33,080 --> 00:13:40,010
but not nearly as low as the possibility of going back to the bad old days of Western Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

128
00:13:40,400 --> 00:13:45,410
And it does seem to me to be an interesting question for British defence policy and for that matter, for other European defence policy.

129
00:13:45,420 --> 00:13:55,010
What Pike Place in Britain's defence policy is taken by the question What do we need to do?

130
00:13:55,220 --> 00:14:03,490
Do we want to be in a position to do anything in the event that Russia contests the present order on its on its borders?

131
00:14:03,500 --> 00:14:09,020
That I seem to me to be a very difficult question. But let me focus on what it means for Australia,

132
00:14:10,340 --> 00:14:16,550
because both of these questions about small wars and big wars hit home for Australia in a particularly acute way.

133
00:14:17,420 --> 00:14:23,210
The question about small wars hits home for Australia because although I've said of small wars ten characteristically more wars of choice,

134
00:14:23,720 --> 00:14:30,980
one of the reasons for that, as I touched on, is that small wars, characteristically for Western countries have been fought to distance.

135
00:14:33,170 --> 00:14:39,470
They involve weak or failing or dysfunctional or rogue states.

136
00:14:40,610 --> 00:14:44,780
And although Libya is quite close, obviously lost some members of the EU.

137
00:14:46,940 --> 00:14:49,759
Australia is the only always see the country other than the United States.

138
00:14:49,760 --> 00:14:53,180
It has what you might call a weakened, failing state as its closest neighbours.

139
00:14:54,320 --> 00:15:00,590
And we do have weaker phone states that close neighbours take what they're for weak and failing states.

140
00:15:00,630 --> 00:15:05,520
They're relatively benign, but they do cause us a great deal of trouble and heartache.

141
00:15:05,520 --> 00:15:10,860
And when Australians think about stabilisation operations, we don't think first and foremost of going to Afghanistan or to Africa.

142
00:15:11,700 --> 00:15:15,840
We think of going to East Timor or Solomon Islands or Papua New Guinea.

143
00:15:17,280 --> 00:15:21,250
And so for us, the small wars are less wars of choice.

144
00:15:21,270 --> 00:15:26,630
If something badly goes wrong in Papua New Guinea, then it's, it's,

145
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:32,490
it's not clear how much choice Australia has as to whether it's going to intervene when something went wrong in East Timor.

146
00:15:33,420 --> 00:15:36,060
Most people in Australia felt this was not a war of choice for us,

147
00:15:36,100 --> 00:15:42,900
which didn't turn into a war, but there was a certain compulsion for us to be about this.

148
00:15:44,100 --> 00:15:49,200
Now the good news about about that aspect of it is that if we decide to the point that we decide that small wars are central to it,

149
00:15:49,200 --> 00:15:52,410
particularly in our immediate neighbourhood, I don't find it very hard to say what we need to do,

150
00:15:53,670 --> 00:15:58,020
at least so far as armed forces concerns are very be questioned about what you do in broader national policy,

151
00:15:58,800 --> 00:16:07,140
because the extent to which countries like Australia can effectively mobilise efforts, aid, trade,

152
00:16:07,380 --> 00:16:14,790
the whole gamut to really make a difference to weak and failing states does seem to me to be, after a couple of decades of trying, still very unclear.

153
00:16:15,060 --> 00:16:19,890
I don't think we're very good at this. One thing we know is that it's not a story for armed forces alone.

154
00:16:20,850 --> 00:16:24,749
One thing we know is it needs to be all sorts of other elements we haven't yet worked out a good formula for.

155
00:16:24,750 --> 00:16:27,659
Hey, we're like the other elements and we haven't worked out a very good formula for what

156
00:16:27,660 --> 00:16:30,810
exactly the armed forces are meant to do and how they relate to policing and so on.

157
00:16:31,440 --> 00:16:36,329
But I think nonetheless, I reckon I can tell you what have needs to happen to the ADF to the extent that we prioritise

158
00:16:36,330 --> 00:16:40,440
fighting those small wars in our immediate neighbourhood as a core focus for our defence policy,

159
00:16:40,950 --> 00:16:46,440
and that is we end up with a substantially bigger and lighter army and more people in it,

160
00:16:47,460 --> 00:16:51,990
and more of the money spent on those people and less the money spent on firepower, protection and mobility,

161
00:16:53,520 --> 00:16:57,510
the sort of things that you'd spend much more money on if you were preparing to fight a major continental war.

162
00:16:57,870 --> 00:17:01,790
You've put much more effort into what you might broadly call training and policing type functions.

163
00:17:01,800 --> 00:17:06,130
You put a large amount of effort into language training in local languages rather than

164
00:17:06,210 --> 00:17:09,570
Pushtun or Arabic or some of the other languages we've been trying to pick up recently.

165
00:17:10,230 --> 00:17:11,219
And you spend money,

166
00:17:11,220 --> 00:17:19,260
but not very much money on the air and naval capabilities required to deploy and sustain those forces around the archipelagos in Australia's region,

167
00:17:20,430 --> 00:17:24,390
essentially in uncontested air and sea space.

168
00:17:24,900 --> 00:17:28,200
That is, you don't need to spend money trying to deploy forces to Papua New Guinea or

169
00:17:28,980 --> 00:17:33,480
or the Solomon Islands or East Timor against an a capable naval adversary.

170
00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:38,790
You just need to build to build the force that can get them there unopposed.

171
00:17:40,170 --> 00:17:44,220
And in some ways if you look at the ADF capability development today, there are some elements of that can be seen.

172
00:17:44,910 --> 00:17:50,850
The question about what you do in relation to big wars is much bigger and much harder and that's what I

173
00:17:50,850 --> 00:17:59,999
want to touch on now because to the extent that the question for Australia as to how much effort we put

174
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:05,549
into developing capabilities to be closed obviously depends very heavily on our judgements about the

175
00:18:05,550 --> 00:18:09,900
future of the Asian order and in particular the future of the relationship between Asia strongest states.

176
00:18:10,470 --> 00:18:12,930
It's a very big subject. I'm just going to touch on it very briefly.

177
00:18:13,590 --> 00:18:19,980
But suffice to say that the most important characteristic of Asia is that for the last 40 years we have enjoyed the most stable era in Asia's history,

178
00:18:20,820 --> 00:18:25,830
and that that has been based on a remarkably stable period of relations between Asia,

179
00:18:25,830 --> 00:18:30,620
strongest states and the foundation of that stability has been a really remarkable thing.

180
00:18:30,630 --> 00:18:37,200
That is an era in which American primacy in Asia has not been contested by any of the other major powers in Asia, in particular by China and Japan,

181
00:18:37,650 --> 00:18:44,220
the two great powers that are contested, American primacy in Asia before and which because so much of the strategic drama in the Western Pacific,

182
00:18:44,730 --> 00:18:55,050
successively in the 20th century, in 1972, in different ways, both China and Japan and Japan, having initially initially done it from 1945,

183
00:18:55,740 --> 00:18:58,770
decided to accept American primacy as a foundation for the Asian order,

184
00:18:58,770 --> 00:19:05,339
and that has produced the stability which has made Asia the story it is today for Australia.

185
00:19:05,340 --> 00:19:06,990
This has been returned to the 19th century.

186
00:19:07,650 --> 00:19:14,060
19th century was a very stable and peaceful era for Australia and actually in a way quite a stable and peaceful era for Asia because

187
00:19:14,080 --> 00:19:22,020
UK British maritime primacy in the Western Pacific was essentially uncontested until the intrusion of some other European powers,

188
00:19:22,530 --> 00:19:27,500
the rise of Japan, of course, and the intrusion of the United States, but further.

189
00:19:27,510 --> 00:19:35,280
But that only happened right at the end of the century though Australia sort of characteristic first century experience over its first century after

190
00:19:35,280 --> 00:19:41,009
settlement and not a century was of uncontested Anglo-Saxon primacy in the Western

191
00:19:41,010 --> 00:19:45,750
Pacific and for a little Anglo-Saxon outpost that was just perfect for us.

192
00:19:46,350 --> 00:19:53,910
And the restoration of uncontested Anglo-Saxon primacy in the Western Pacific after 1972 has been just perfect for us.

193
00:19:56,850 --> 00:20:04,950
Now, it's a kind of long story short that era is passing. A slightly provocative title of my talk into the Anglo-Saxon era.

194
00:20:06,840 --> 00:20:09,970
I and I'm going to cover a lot of ground very quickly here.

195
00:20:09,990 --> 00:20:17,520
I think China's rise constitutes a fundamental shift in the distribution of economic, white and strategic power in Asia.

196
00:20:18,780 --> 00:20:26,190
As that occurs, I think China is now again contesting US primacy as the foundation of the Asian order.

197
00:20:27,120 --> 00:20:30,300
I think that challenge is a very serious one.

198
00:20:31,230 --> 00:20:34,560
I think it's a challenge which the United States is unlikely to be able to resist.

199
00:20:35,370 --> 00:20:38,880
I'll talk later about how I might respond to it. But if that is true,

200
00:20:39,510 --> 00:20:44,130
then the order which we have enjoyed in Asia for the last 40 years and which very strongly shapes

201
00:20:44,670 --> 00:20:48,930
our thinking about the way I should work and which has absolutely shaped Australian defence policy.

202
00:20:48,930 --> 00:20:54,570
Today won't last. There will be a new order.

203
00:20:56,010 --> 00:21:00,690
And what that order will look like will depend primarily on the choices made by Asia stronger states.

204
00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:08,100
And I would say, particularly though Japan has to be part of this, particularly the choice of the US and China.

205
00:21:08,620 --> 00:21:11,850
And I think the best way to capture what those choices are is to focus on a US aspect.

206
00:21:12,030 --> 00:21:16,860
You could tell the same story in relation to China if you wanted to. The US has really only three choices.

207
00:21:17,850 --> 00:21:19,770
It can withdraw from Asia.

208
00:21:19,770 --> 00:21:28,860
That is, you can concede China's challenge or that completely not, I think very likely, but particularly over the longer term.

209
00:21:30,090 --> 00:21:38,760
We should never rule it out. We actually cannot take for granted that the United States continues to play a primary

210
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:43,140
or substantial role in the strategic affairs of the Western Pacific in the longer term.

211
00:21:44,700 --> 00:21:48,179
Second possibility is that America doesn't concede completely to China's challenge,

212
00:21:48,180 --> 00:21:57,059
but can shoot a little bit and aims to establish a kind of a sharing arrangement with China whereby America exercises less power,

213
00:21:57,060 --> 00:22:03,600
China exercises more power, but until it continues to exercise a great deal of power and in the amount of power that China exercises,

214
00:22:03,600 --> 00:22:09,690
there's a very strong limited by the fact that America is still there. This is, I think, an extremely difficult outcome to achieve.

215
00:22:10,800 --> 00:22:11,550
I've written elsewhere.

216
00:22:11,550 --> 00:22:16,860
That's what the book's really about as to why I think it's by far and away the best outcome for Asia and the best outcome for America.

217
00:22:16,890 --> 00:22:19,230
And by a long way, the best outcome for Australia.

218
00:22:20,190 --> 00:22:27,120
But it's extremely hard to achieve and the only reason to think that there might be a chance of achieving it is that the alternatives look so lousy.

219
00:22:28,830 --> 00:22:31,709
There's a third option. The one I think is by far and away.

220
00:22:31,710 --> 00:22:39,690
The most likely outcome is that the US doesn't concede to China at all, that it resists China's challenge to its primacy,

221
00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:46,350
seeks to preserve strategic primacy as the as the organising principle for the Asian order and a foundation of its role in Asia.

222
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:51,930
And I think if that occurs,

223
00:22:53,220 --> 00:23:03,120
the probability of escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China is very high because I think the chances of China accepting America's side,

224
00:23:03,120 --> 00:23:11,999
of conceding America's contest and saying, okay, if you're not going to peacefully allow us to to take a get bigger role in Asia,

225
00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:15,390
we'll forget about the whole idea and get back into our posture. I think the chance of that happening a very low.

226
00:23:15,510 --> 00:23:24,690
I think China will push back against America's resistance to the Chinese challenge and strategic, rather, would escalate.

227
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:27,720
This is not a prediction. This is a description of what's going on at the moment.

228
00:23:28,260 --> 00:23:37,650
I think the Burma speech about Barack Obama's speech about China in Canberra a year ago, almost a year ago in November last year,

229
00:23:38,370 --> 00:23:45,690
was a very clear statement of of America's determination to preserve promises, a foundation for the Asian order, its primacy.

230
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:52,000
And I think the Chinese a lot of Chinese conduct since then has been a clear indication of its determination to push back to that.

231
00:23:52,020 --> 00:23:59,819
So I think escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China is a clear current phenomenon and I think the risk of

232
00:23:59,820 --> 00:24:08,490
it continuing and escalating further is quite high and that therefore poses very big questions to everyone in Asia,

233
00:24:08,850 --> 00:24:16,379
including to Australia, about what it means for the future of, of, of a stable Asian order,

234
00:24:16,380 --> 00:24:22,510
and therefore the risks that Australia might find itself drawn into a make a big war.

235
00:24:23,100 --> 00:24:30,570
But it's worth bearing in mind the defence policy that Australia has today, based on the self-reliant defence of the continent,

236
00:24:32,670 --> 00:24:38,970
absolutely derives from that era of uncontested primacy that was initiated in 1972.

237
00:24:39,780 --> 00:24:46,980
That set of ideas started coming into Australian defence policy at the end of our Vietnam commitment, which was in 1972.

238
00:24:47,330 --> 00:24:52,260
It was a subject of vigorous debate in in Canberra and around Australia for the following

239
00:24:52,260 --> 00:24:57,299
few years in 1976 and the then Fraser government introduced the Defence White Paper,

240
00:24:57,300 --> 00:25:03,959
which which articulated the self-reliant defence of the continent. As the foundation of the Australian as Australian defence policy.

241
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:09,870
That remains the case today and the principal judgement that underpinned that reformulation of

242
00:25:09,870 --> 00:25:14,670
Australian defence policy was a judgement spelled out quite explicitly and in the 76 white paper,

243
00:25:14,940 --> 00:25:21,840
and that is, and this is not a quote, is a very close paraphrase, no more than the former great powers of Europe.

244
00:25:23,010 --> 00:25:26,489
I don't know whether what the draft is meant by former that seemed a little bit shaky to me,

245
00:25:26,490 --> 00:25:28,890
but no more than the former great powers of Europe, comma.

246
00:25:30,990 --> 00:25:41,040
What will will Australia's strategic risks over coming decades be be directly determined by the actions of the Asian great powers?

247
00:25:42,810 --> 00:25:49,260
76 Australia excluded Asia's great powers from thinking about a strategic situation,

248
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:55,850
and that's because of the impact of that era of uncontested primacy that emerged in 1972.

249
00:25:55,860 --> 00:26:00,150
We've we to afford to do that. And it worked for us for the last 40 years, at 40 years to come to an end.

250
00:26:01,230 --> 00:26:09,719
One other dynamic that I just need to touch on, and that is that although China's rise is in a sense,

251
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:14,940
the biggest story in Asia, it's not the only story in Asia. India's rise is another very interesting story in Asia.

252
00:26:15,150 --> 00:26:22,350
I won't go there for sake of brevity, but in considering Australian defence policy, another part of the story is very important and that is Indonesia.

253
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:27,899
One of the things that makes Australia rather gives Australia's strategic situation a rather

254
00:26:27,900 --> 00:26:35,700
distinctive flavour is that all of our neighbours are much smaller than weaker and weaker than we are.

255
00:26:35,730 --> 00:26:43,770
We're a big country geographically and relatively large economically surrounded by states which with one exception, a much smaller market.

256
00:26:43,770 --> 00:26:51,060
And we where an exception of course is Indonesia, which is much bigger than us demographically,

257
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:57,270
but has always been and remains in our minds, a poor, weak state.

258
00:26:58,530 --> 00:27:03,270
Well, it's not anymore particularly richer than Australia is and on present trends.

259
00:27:04,050 --> 00:27:13,770
And that means this is not a promise. But serious economists will tell you that Indonesia has a chance of being, according to one estimate,

260
00:27:13,770 --> 00:27:22,650
the fourth largest economy in the world in 2014, the fourth largest in the world based on phenomenal demographics.

261
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:26,910
It's got the fourth biggest population, actually. That's simple as that.

262
00:27:30,120 --> 00:27:34,590
Now, that might not make that, but it's got a good chance of being the sixth or seventh or eighth.

263
00:27:36,060 --> 00:27:40,590
It's got a very good chance of having an economy twice or three times or on some estimates, four times.

264
00:27:40,590 --> 00:27:44,280
The size of Australia is within the timeframes that are relevant to the decisions that

265
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:48,300
Australian governments must now make about Australia's future defence capabilities.

266
00:27:48,540 --> 00:27:53,330
That doesn't mean these are going to be a threat, it might mean it's going to be a big asset.

267
00:27:54,270 --> 00:27:58,890
It's got to be very different that we're going to have. We can have a great power next door for the first time in our history.

268
00:27:59,050 --> 00:28:06,570
Okay, so what does that mean about Australia's choices? Australia faces a very profound set of choices.

269
00:28:06,810 --> 00:28:10,260
I would argue about the way in which our defence policy and for that matter our

270
00:28:10,260 --> 00:28:13,739
broader strategic and foreign policy respond to the shift in the Asian order,

271
00:28:13,740 --> 00:28:16,110
which I've sketched with almost impertinent brevity.

272
00:28:18,120 --> 00:28:23,819
The first is do we urge the United States to go for the second of the two options I mentioned that is sharing

273
00:28:23,820 --> 00:28:30,360
power with China for all the dangers and allays and complications and uncertainties that that entails?

274
00:28:30,930 --> 00:28:37,950
Or do we do what Australia has traditionally done? And that is urge the United States and before that the United Kingdom to preserve primacy.

275
00:28:39,150 --> 00:28:43,320
Or you could say 234 years since the Philippine issue or in 1788,

276
00:28:44,700 --> 00:28:49,950
the necessary and sufficient condition for Australian security, in our view and Australia's view,

277
00:28:49,980 --> 00:28:53,580
has been the maintenance of Anglo-Saxon maritime primacy in the Western Pacific,

278
00:28:54,450 --> 00:29:00,389
and I hesitate to say this in front of such a distinguished historian of the First World War, but at least from my reading of it,

279
00:29:00,390 --> 00:29:06,690
the reason Australia was at Gallipoli and there on the Western Front was very,

280
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:12,900
very clearly framed by the fact that if Britain had been defeated in Europe, its capacity to preserve,

281
00:29:13,380 --> 00:29:17,700
to preserve its dominant position in the Western Pacific already then under great

282
00:29:17,700 --> 00:29:21,779
pressure of course would have been devastated and Australia would have been,

283
00:29:21,780 --> 00:29:27,030
I felt honourable to Japan and that argument is there all through the whole, through the Australian record.

284
00:29:27,390 --> 00:29:30,970
So this is a very, very old idea for Australia.

285
00:29:30,990 --> 00:29:37,050
If in doubt, Australia supports the maintenance of Anglo-Saxon primacy in the Western Pacific that we've never faced in the Western Pacific,

286
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:44,639
a non Anglo-Saxon power as powerful as China, Japan, imperial Japan at its height,

287
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:47,870
probably didn't have an economy bigger than about a fifth or sixth the size of America.

288
00:29:47,870 --> 00:29:54,839
But a lot of it could be a lesson that even the Soviet Union was never much more than a half on very

289
00:29:54,840 --> 00:30:00,300
generous interpretation two thirds which China's economy will most probably overtake the United States.

290
00:30:00,500 --> 00:30:05,270
I'm an ex couple of years and could be double the size of America's on plausible economic

291
00:30:05,270 --> 00:30:09,830
estimates within the time frames that are relevant to the sorts of choices we're making.

292
00:30:11,180 --> 00:30:17,690
So we don't have to ask whether it's better for us if the United States does what it's doing at the moment, then contests China's challenge.

293
00:30:17,690 --> 00:30:23,780
Absolutely. Or whether it tries to negotiate with China. It's a very big it's a very big call for Australia.

294
00:30:23,810 --> 00:30:32,180
I think we should urge America to share power. I think I'm the only person in Australia who thinks that and I'm not even in Australia at the moment.

295
00:30:32,180 --> 00:30:37,490
So nobody in Australia thinks that at the moment. When I get home, the number will go up again by one.

296
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:47,330
But what I want to talk about now is this is the second question that is okay, irrespective of what Australia urges America to do.

297
00:30:50,990 --> 00:31:00,530
What how does Australia respond? How should Australia's defence thinking respond to what we do to the phenomena I'm talking about?

298
00:31:00,980 --> 00:31:08,690
And my argument there is pretty plain that although I think we should strongly argue for a power sharing arrangement, what I call a concert of Asia.

299
00:31:09,290 --> 00:31:13,609
I don't predict it will occur. I predict we'll see escalating strategic, strategic rivalry.

300
00:31:13,610 --> 00:31:16,310
And the key question for Australia then is what should we do in the face of that?

301
00:31:18,710 --> 00:31:24,560
I think we've roughly speaking got four options if strategic road between the US and China escalates.

302
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:31,399
Australia has four choices. It could continue to support the United States as the United States has drawn more

303
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:36,410
and more deeply into a more and more intensely contested relationship with China.

304
00:31:38,630 --> 00:31:44,090
And too many people and many people in Australia, that looks like continuity. We've always supported the United States and support them in the future.

305
00:31:44,300 --> 00:31:48,620
But it's not continuity. It's very different because China is a very different kind of adversary,

306
00:31:49,150 --> 00:31:54,610
a very different kind of adversary from the ones we've faced in the last 40 years.

307
00:31:54,620 --> 00:31:57,740
In fact, in the last 40 years. And the United States has in place in adversary.

308
00:31:57,860 --> 00:32:02,540
So it be a very different kind of relationship, a very different kind of alliance with the United States,

309
00:32:02,540 --> 00:32:06,919
one that was, again, strongly oriented around an Asian major power adversary.

310
00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:11,780
And this time the major power adversary will be much, much stronger and also much more important to Australia.

311
00:32:12,110 --> 00:32:22,219
This country is, after all, our major trading partner. And I think what we'd see as an alliance became much, much more demanding of Australia,

312
00:32:22,220 --> 00:32:25,850
and it would increasingly drive Australia to make a significant choices about the

313
00:32:25,850 --> 00:32:28,760
extent to which we're prepared to support the United States on these sorts of things.

314
00:32:29,150 --> 00:32:38,660
And the decision announced in November last year to base Marines at Darwin is, I think, the very clearly the first down payment of that process.

315
00:32:39,380 --> 00:32:41,620
We should expect more of those sorts of demands.

316
00:32:41,810 --> 00:32:47,090
An alliance with the United States in escalating strategic robbery with China would be a very different alliance from the one

317
00:32:47,090 --> 00:32:55,540
we've known and which cost Australia a great deal and would also of course have very big effects on our relationships with China.

318
00:32:55,580 --> 00:33:02,930
So the second option for Australia is to forego the alliance and to adopt one much second of neutrality.

319
00:33:05,390 --> 00:33:09,830
In some ways you look at Australia, a big continent, fairly isolated, big trading country,

320
00:33:11,150 --> 00:33:15,050
and neutrality might actually be a, you know, relatively plausible for Australia.

321
00:33:16,100 --> 00:33:20,150
In some ways you might say we have some of the essential requirements, the geographical requirements for it.

322
00:33:22,070 --> 00:33:25,760
Well, for reasons I'll touch on in a minute, the neutrality bid can look quite attractive.

323
00:33:26,540 --> 00:33:32,360
The armed bid look very hard. But if I am neutrality, you mean a kind of Swiss or Swedish model?

324
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:37,280
As you prepare yourself to be able to defend your own, you don't align with anybody else, but you're prepared.

325
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:39,110
You should be able to defend your own country. Absolutely.

326
00:33:39,650 --> 00:33:43,940
If you can make it work, that could be an attractive model and it had a kind of resonance for Australia,

327
00:33:43,940 --> 00:33:48,860
which I think is, well, it's near on their right now.

328
00:33:49,310 --> 00:33:54,230
The third possibility is to seek allies in Asia, just not the United States.

329
00:33:55,130 --> 00:34:01,040
And I think although there's a there's a longer argument to be made here, I think this is where Indonesia comes back into the picture.

330
00:34:03,020 --> 00:34:07,280
Indonesia is potentially in an era in which Australia no longer feels allied with the United States.

331
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:13,730
Indonesia is potentially the most important strategic partner for Australia because our geographical proximity gives us,

332
00:34:14,570 --> 00:34:19,970
as well as an inherently competitive relationship or relationship, we will always have elements of unease about them.

333
00:34:20,510 --> 00:34:25,160
It also gives us an unusually close alignment of strategic interests in relation to powers further away.

334
00:34:26,810 --> 00:34:32,120
And I think that there is a prospect for Australia to build a strong strategic alliance with Indonesia,

335
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:36,260
which will become a stronger and stronger the more threatening the rest of the region seemed.

336
00:34:36,260 --> 00:34:40,520
But to realise it would require Australia to reconceive its relationship with Indonesia very fundamentally.

337
00:34:43,370 --> 00:34:47,780
And the last option is what I somewhat unkindly call the New Zealand option,

338
00:34:48,740 --> 00:34:52,940
and that is the option of saying, okay, well we're going to worry about this,

339
00:34:54,170 --> 00:35:00,230
we'll be a good international citizen, we'll get a seat on the Security Council, for example, that will make us a global power.

340
00:35:00,330 --> 00:35:06,900
In our own right, along with Luxembourg and now like the Security Council, really?

341
00:35:09,690 --> 00:35:14,250
This is a perfectly credible possibility for Australia. Australia is very strongly think of themselves as a middle power.

342
00:35:14,670 --> 00:35:17,190
It's very, you know, very much part of our national identity.

343
00:35:18,210 --> 00:35:25,500
But we don't really have much experience of acting as a middle power that is really functioning independently of a great power on the world stage.

344
00:35:26,260 --> 00:35:34,530
But we've always had a great and powerful friend and Anglo-Saxon power to help frame the debate around us in our favour.

345
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:39,030
And it might well be that being a middle power is not something that Australia is

346
00:35:39,030 --> 00:35:43,080
going to manage in the Asian century and we'll find ourselves without wanting to,

347
00:35:43,590 --> 00:35:44,580
going the New Zealand route.

348
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:52,860
Now actually I am one of the few people in our Australian defence community who thinks New Zealand's defence policy is quite good for New Zealand.

349
00:35:55,260 --> 00:35:58,380
So I don't what I call the New Zealand option. I don't mean it necessarily as a term of abuse.

350
00:35:58,980 --> 00:36:04,200
But I do make what would be very different for Australia to decide that it was not going to try

351
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:11,700
and shape the world around it and particularly defend its own security with its own armed forces.

352
00:36:13,020 --> 00:36:18,390
And if you look at that list, being a US ally in a more contested Asia, being on a neutral, being a regional ally,

353
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:25,200
any of those first three require us to build what you might broadly call the armed force of middle power.

354
00:36:27,180 --> 00:36:35,159
The beauty of the New Zealand options, that's the only one that doesn't require us to do anything to be a substantial allies of the United States.

355
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:44,100
To stand by ourselves or to be a significant ally to to a regional partner like Indonesia would require us to have substantial armed forces.

356
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:51,390
And the big question for Australia as well, are we up for that? What would it cost and how would we do it?

357
00:36:52,410 --> 00:36:56,580
Well, let me just offer you very quickly a sketch for how I think those questions could be answered.

358
00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:02,009
But again, I'm going to cover I'm going to be impertinent, brief here.

359
00:37:02,010 --> 00:37:07,350
But I think in military terms, a middle power has to be able to both defend its own territory,

360
00:37:08,340 --> 00:37:13,380
including against a major power, at least up to a point,

361
00:37:13,620 --> 00:37:18,990
raise the costs and risks to a major power to the point where it significantly affects the major powers judgement about attacking it.

362
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:24,330
And it also needs to make a significant contribution to regional coalitions like the Canada middle playing ability.

363
00:37:24,330 --> 00:37:28,020
Both of those things. Yeah, let me look at it separately.

364
00:37:28,980 --> 00:37:34,410
What's required for Australia to be able to defend its own territory independently against a major Asian power I think just

365
00:37:34,410 --> 00:37:39,540
becomes a kind of a test case for Australia's defence policy in the Asian century if we're going to be a middle power or not.

366
00:37:42,210 --> 00:37:45,480
Most Australians, when they look at our circumstances, see the continents very big.

367
00:37:45,720 --> 00:37:48,960
We're very few. We can't defend ourselves. We have to rely on our allies.

368
00:37:49,530 --> 00:37:53,610
But actually the geography works to our advantage in many ways.

369
00:37:54,660 --> 00:38:00,240
We're remote. It's a big continent. That's actually make it quite a difficult place to take on.

370
00:38:00,930 --> 00:38:02,820
And we have long air and sea approaches.

371
00:38:05,430 --> 00:38:10,229
Now, it does seem to me that using those long air and sea approaches, taking advantage of the scale of our geography,

372
00:38:10,230 --> 00:38:14,730
taking advantage of the way that modern surveillance technologies turns all of that space from being

373
00:38:14,730 --> 00:38:19,260
an operational liability to being an operational asset gives you a huge amount of strategic depth.

374
00:38:19,530 --> 00:38:22,890
If you're transparent, Australia is very well placed,

375
00:38:24,330 --> 00:38:30,690
relatively well placed to build to build a posture to deny our air and sea approaches to potential adversaries.

376
00:38:32,970 --> 00:38:40,320
And so you can frame that broader question I asked a minute ago in more specific terms what will be required for

377
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:48,000
Australia to build armed forces that would be able to deny our maritime approaches to a major power adversary,

378
00:38:48,240 --> 00:38:52,830
or rather to be a bit more precise than they are in maritime approaches to the

379
00:38:52,830 --> 00:38:57,210
forces that a major power adversary could deploy and sustain in our approaches.

380
00:38:58,860 --> 00:39:02,429
And what that means depends a lot on how close the major power is and what

381
00:39:02,430 --> 00:39:07,440
sort of basing I have available and to the point not say the student to them,

382
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:11,579
but to the point we raise the costs and risks to a major power, obviously, of trying to penetrate our area.

383
00:39:11,580 --> 00:39:14,940
Maritime pressure to the point that it's not worth their while. You don't have to win this war.

384
00:39:15,720 --> 00:39:20,180
You just have to raise the customers to the point where it's where the adversary is point of view.

385
00:39:20,190 --> 00:39:27,570
It's no longer worth pursuing. That's how it's how middle powers succeed against great powers strategically that don't win.

386
00:39:28,110 --> 00:39:37,290
They just prevent the other guy from achieving their objectives. Now that's that's a fairly traditional idea for Australia.

387
00:39:37,290 --> 00:39:43,020
The idea of us, of a strategy of essentially maritime denial, of foundation, of Australian defence policy goes back a long way.

388
00:39:44,220 --> 00:39:47,879
The second part of it though is much more contentious and that is how do we think

389
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:51,450
about the kind of contribution we should make to coalition operations in Asia?

390
00:39:52,740 --> 00:39:56,060
Traditionally, Australia's approach to coalition operation has been very straightforward.

391
00:39:56,070 --> 00:40:00,090
We deploy land forces to.

392
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:07,780
Join coalition operations, coalition law enforcement run by other people, and that's the whole sort of story of Australian military history.

393
00:40:08,110 --> 00:40:13,090
But of course traditionally our great and powerful friends have been dominant military powers in the western Pacific.

394
00:40:13,690 --> 00:40:19,030
So traditionally we've been able to use the CIA to deploy our forces overseas to sustain them, to recover them and so on.

395
00:40:19,510 --> 00:40:25,510
We have had sea control. We've not Australia where our allies have had sea control.

396
00:40:27,460 --> 00:40:29,920
That seems to me to be one of the things that's shifting very fast.

397
00:40:31,390 --> 00:40:37,810
One of the reasons why I think China's challenge to American primacy in Asia is so significant

398
00:40:38,470 --> 00:40:43,120
is that I think notwithstanding this overall superiority of the American armed forces,

399
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:48,740
China has, as I think, already acquired a capacity to raise the custom issue,

400
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:57,309
the United States of projecting power policy in the Western Pacific very significantly and will continue to do so.

401
00:40:57,310 --> 00:41:00,310
In other words, it has deprived the United States of the sea control,

402
00:41:00,310 --> 00:41:05,470
which has been the foundation of its position in the Western Pacific, and it's achieved a significant level of sea denial itself.

403
00:41:07,060 --> 00:41:14,560
I think the same is true of Australia in spades. I think Australia's chance of being able to deploy and sustain forces by sea in the face of

404
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:19,630
opposition from major power adversary over the next few decades are low and are going to get lower.

405
00:41:19,930 --> 00:41:25,959
And so our traditional model of deploying forces by sea is landfall.

406
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:36,520
By sea is, I think, very suspect. The second argument, second reason why I think that traditional model doesn't work is that, well,

407
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:46,210
it would it would presuppose that Australia would raise and sustain land forces on a scale which it's never done before,

408
00:41:46,270 --> 00:41:53,560
or at least not since the First World War. The West actually has never been a big land player in Asia.

409
00:41:54,130 --> 00:41:57,880
Western Western strategic power in the Western Pacific has always been primarily maritime.

410
00:41:58,810 --> 00:42:06,610
I think the chances of there being significant Western land campaigns in Asia in the future are very low.

411
00:42:06,610 --> 00:42:09,280
And so the chances of Australia being able to make much of a contribution to

412
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:14,500
coalition operations in Asia with with large continental forces are very low.

413
00:42:15,250 --> 00:42:19,240
If Australia is going to achieve its strategic objectives, I think it's going to achieve them at sea.

414
00:42:20,470 --> 00:42:28,750
Both of those things make me think that the approach Australia needs to take is not to think about doing actually what we're doing right now.

415
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:39,100
That is building for the first time in quite a few decades an attempt at a a relatively high end amphibious operation and operational capability

416
00:42:39,100 --> 00:42:47,020
in the form of two very big amphibious ships and a reshaping of the army around them to make it into a kind of Marine Corps rather than do that.

417
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:50,380
I think we need to think about what CEDA now can do for us.

418
00:42:51,790 --> 00:42:59,080
And in broad terms, I think we, if we can, the kind of state and our forces which you can use for the defence of the continent,

419
00:42:59,770 --> 00:43:05,980
can also give us options to prevent others projecting power by sea and in the broader Western Pacific.

420
00:43:07,240 --> 00:43:16,570
And that's probably all we can achieve, contributing to coalition operations for sea fishing denial operations in the Western Pacific.

421
00:43:17,140 --> 00:43:21,940
And that's a feature, of course, of the geography of Asia with its very strong maritime focus.

422
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:29,860
So if that's right, Australia, if Australia can could be a middle power in the Asian century, I think it'll do it.

423
00:43:30,490 --> 00:43:35,410
It can only do it or can do find a way at most cost, effectively using a seat in our posture.

424
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:40,510
Now that kind of seat in our posture would be very different from what we prepare for at

425
00:43:40,510 --> 00:43:47,169
the moment and require a very different kind of defence force that has eight in our works,

426
00:43:47,170 --> 00:43:52,900
a very big and complex subject in itself. But just to give you a sense of the scale, at the moment Australia has a fleet of six submarines.

427
00:43:53,590 --> 00:43:59,290
It's planned to expand that from 6 to 12 over the next 30 years in order to provide the kind of

428
00:43:59,290 --> 00:44:03,579
seat in our capabilities which are implied by the operational construct I've just talked about.

429
00:44:03,580 --> 00:44:08,530
We'd be talking about 24 or 36 or more.

430
00:44:08,830 --> 00:44:12,940
This is a much, much bigger demand of submarines than we've had hitherto.

431
00:44:13,090 --> 00:44:18,520
And it will be looking at front line combat aircraft capability, not at 100, which is roughly speaking,

432
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:25,810
what we're looking at at the moment, but of 200 or more, we'll be looking at a much bigger investment in surveillance and so on.

433
00:44:25,900 --> 00:44:29,049
This is a very different ADF than the one Australia has today and a very

434
00:44:29,050 --> 00:44:33,130
different idea from the one that's had well really ever before in our history.

435
00:44:33,490 --> 00:44:40,090
But that's because I would argue our strategic circumstances are very different from anything before we've seen and we've seen before in our history.

436
00:44:40,540 --> 00:44:47,590
It would also cost a lot more. I don't know how much it would cost precisely would depend how much we prepared to do without.

437
00:44:48,070 --> 00:44:52,420
But I'd be. I'm sure it couldn't be done for less than 3% of GDP.

438
00:44:52,420 --> 00:44:58,120
At the moment we're spending about 1.8. I suspect it couldn't be done for less than 4% of GDP.

439
00:44:59,050 --> 00:44:59,860
So we'd be talking about a.

440
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:07,510
Much bigger share of Australia's national wealth being spent on defence and is at the moment not much bigger than we've seen in the past,

441
00:45:07,550 --> 00:45:10,630
nor for that matter, much bigger than the UK has spent in recent memory.

442
00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:16,110
In the 1950s and 1960s, Australia's defence spending averaged about 3.7% of GDP.

443
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:21,510
That was the last time we saw ourselves functioning in an Asia in which major power relations was contested.

444
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:27,390
And it didn't stop our economy growing pretty briskly. Three or 4% is doable, but it's very different.

445
00:45:29,610 --> 00:45:38,160
Now these are the questions that the 2009 White Paper, which as you mentioned, of which you've mentioned, I'm not a great fan,

446
00:45:38,490 --> 00:45:50,730
walked up to and then stepped away from the questions to the 2013 White Paper, which is the government has commissioned will need to address.

447
00:45:51,570 --> 00:45:57,270
I've got to say, I think that I think it probably won't. I think we probably will miss the opportunity to do much about it.

448
00:45:57,270 --> 00:46:02,520
So I think the likelihood is Australia will end up not as a middle power but as a small power in the Asian century.

449
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:08,280
I hope New Zealand will be kind to us when we join them. Thank you very much.