{"id":1842,"date":"2012-10-24T12:33:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T02:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=1842"},"modified":"2013-07-08T13:49:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T03:49:42","slug":"pine-gap-technically-speaking-australia-has-a-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pine-gap-technically-speaking-australia-has-a-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"Pine Gap \u2013 technically speaking, Australia has a choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cam Hawker\u2019s recent Strategist<\/em> post<\/a>, \u2018Stuck in the middle with you\u2019, suffers from five major fallacies. First, it assumes that Australia\u2013US joint facilities predetermine the strategic relationship between Canberra and Washington. Second, it assumes that the facilities\u2019 predetermination of policy is automatic\u2014meaning, as Cam puts it, that \u2018there is no choice and has not been for decades.\u2019 Third, it argues that the pre-eminence of the joint facilities \u2018hardwires\u2019 Australian decisions about the use of force to US decisions\u2014that once the US goes to war, Australia must follow. Fourth, it insists that in the typical rush to war, Australia would in any case have no time to think through possible constraints on the use of the joint facilities in a conflict to which Australia was not a party. And fifth, it suggests that recent signs of innovation within ANZUS, like the stationing of the US marines in Darwin, are largely irrelevant because our strategic policy is already a prisoner of Washington\u2019s.<\/p>\n

These are big, meaty assertions. Cam\u2019s piece is one of the strongest examples I\u2019ve seen in recent times of what\u2019s called \u2018the dependency thesis\u2019\u2014that Australian strategic and defence policy is dependent upon that of its great and powerful ally. But on all five points the article is fundamentally wrong-headed. The Australia\u2013US strategic relationship is a broad one, and its character and content is not predetermined by the existence of the joint facilities. True, the facilities began their life as actual US bases, but evolved into joint facilities during the 1980s. As joint facilities, they serve both US and Australian defence forces, and US and Australian national interests. Changing US submarine deployment patterns have, over the years, made the Northwest Cape communication facility less relevant to the US and more relevant to us. And technological innovation meant the functions of the Nurrungar defence satellite support facility<\/a> could essentially be fulfilled from the Pine Gap site. Pine Gap remains an important facility, but thinking that the arcane SIGINT relationship runs the broader strategic one is simply mistaken.<\/p>\n

The notion that the joint facilities have deprived Australian governments of choices for decades, as Cam asserts, would probably come as a surprise to a whole range of Australian governments elected over the years. This notion of automaticity of decision-making, paralleled by the claims of hard-wiring in decisions about use of force, overstates the case. Cam argues, for example, that Australia would have no choice but to follow the US into a war over Taiwan\u2014because of technical reasons more than alliance ones. That\u2019s not true. ANZUS itself isn\u2019t clear about what role we might have in a conflict over Taiwan. But there\u2019s certainly nothing that technically \u2018hardwires\u2019 us into going to war just because the US chooses to do so.<\/p>\n

The joint facilities are governed by a set of arrangements that both governments have devised over the years. As Defence Minister Smith observed in a speech in Fremantle last November<\/a>, \u2018All activities at Pine Gap are managed to ensure they are consistent with Australian interests. The activities take place with the full knowledge and concurrence of the Australian government.\u2019 So it wouldn\u2019t be unreasonable to assume those arrangements anticipate the facilities\u2019 possible involvement in future conflict. Australia wouldn\u2019t be attempting to play catch-up once a war had already broken out\u2014or at least we wouldn\u2019t be trying to catch up on the core understandings of when and how the facilities might be involved. Could Pine Gap be a target during any conflict involving the US? Perhaps. But it isn\u2019t an easy target to hit. And it\u2019s merely one of a string of important US facilities across the region. Moreover, some of its functions could be transferred to other US facilities around the world, so weakening an attacker\u2019s incentive to target it anyway.<\/p>\n

Finally, it\u2019s wrong to devalue new steps within the alliance on the flawed belief that the joint facilities are already the be-all and end-all of the Australia\u2013US strategic relationship. The new steps reposition the alliance for an Asia in which strategic weight is gradually but steadily shifting south-west from its traditional northeast Asian centre of gravity. Indeed, once we move away from the idea of technical automaticity at the heart of our strategic relationship with Washington, the more important the willingness of both parties to explore new forms of cooperation becomes. The bilateral relationship is one where choices matter very much. The reality is the exact opposite of the one Cam portrays.<\/p>\n

Rod Lyon is a non-residential fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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