{"id":26936,"date":"2016-06-02T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T20:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=26936"},"modified":"2016-06-02T15:13:05","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T05:13:05","slug":"agenda-change-2016-come-yall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/agenda-change-2016-come-yall\/","title":{"rendered":"Agenda for Change 2016: come on over, y’all"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

This piece is drawn from ASPI\u2019s forthcoming publication,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Agenda for Change 2016: strategic choices for the next government.<\/em><\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s defence strategy is a topic much loved by academics, and there\u2019s a rich literature about its various evolutions. In the 1960s the posture du jour was \u2018<\/span>forward defence<\/span><\/a>\u2019. Australia was exercised about communist insurgencies throughout Southeast Asia and the ADF was deployed in Malaya, Indonesia and Vietnam. After Vietnam, we got \u2018defence of Australia\u2019\u2014effectively a locally focussed strategy gifted to us by President Nixon\u2019s<\/span> Guam Doctrine<\/span><\/a>. The last few defence white papers have been couched in terms of geographic \u2018concentric circles\u2019 with Australia\u2019s security interests and defence posture being defined by distance from our shores.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not that any of those had much effect on the ADF\u2019s force structure. Regardless of the story being told, the ADF has continued to bear a remarkable resemblance to that assembled by the Menzies government in the 1960s. Budgets have been less resilient to changes of strategic circumstance; the ADF\u2019s size and readiness slowly dwindled during the lean times of the defence of Australia era. Nonetheless, the centrepiece force elements\u2014except for the aircraft carriers\u2014continued on, as Mirages were replaced by Hornets, the Navy\u2019s six Oberon submarines became six Collins boats, and Army moved from Centurion tanks to Leopards. Similarly, the ADF tends to expand when there\u2019s more money. The Howard government’s mining boom fuelled largesse saw defence acquire a slew of capable new platforms, though with no radical departures in the force structure.<\/span><\/p>\n

So we shouldn\u2019t put much store in the narrative description of Australia\u2019s strategic circumstance and the declaratory defence strategy at the front of white papers\u2014the money and what it\u2019s spent on counts for more. DWP2016 is in many ways more of the same\u2014there\u2019s extra money, so we\u2019ll get more of what we already have. But there\u2019s also a significant difference: this time around there\u2019s a lot more said about Australia\u2019s alliance with the United States and the importance of other partners. That\u2019s in response to the strategic outlook section, which identifies as our major challenge the growing competition between major powers in \u2018our region\u2019 (somewhat expansively used to describe pretty much the whole of the western Pacific and half the Indian Ocean).<\/span><\/p>\n

While not explicit, the strategy that underpins this White Paper is to keep the US regionally engaged to help balance the baleful influence of China (spoken sotto voice). We want the American rebalance to Asia to be real and enduring, and to help make it so we\u2019ll step up our spending to be more like a capable partner than a freeloader. The technologically refreshed and expanded ADF, developed with interoperability in mind, should work well in an alliance framework.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s one other thing we could do that\u2019s technically easy and will cost only a fraction of the promised<\/span> $195 billion of spending on defence capability over the next decade<\/span><\/a>. Simply, we need to be better hosts to US force elements. We should stop arguing about who pays for the facilities they use in Australia and encourage them to come on down and settle in. We should stump up the cash and be grateful for the strategic bargain we\u2019re getting\u2014a strong local American presence is far better value than an extra submarine or two.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This piece is drawn from ASPI\u2019s forthcoming publication,\u00a0Agenda for Change 2016: strategic choices for the next government. Australia\u2019s defence strategy is a topic much loved by academics, and there\u2019s a rich literature about its various …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":26937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1712,338,279,31],"class_list":["post-26936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-agenda-for-change-2016","tag-defence-policy","tag-force-structure","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAgenda for Change 2016: come on over, y'all | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/agenda-change-2016-come-yall\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Agenda for Change 2016: come on over, y'all | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This piece is drawn from ASPI\u2019s forthcoming publication,\u00a0Agenda for Change 2016: strategic choices for the next government. 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