{"id":38546,"date":"2018-04-14T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T20:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=38546"},"modified":"2018-04-13T16:56:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T06:56:47","slug":"china-builds-military-base-vanuatu-implications-australias-defence-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/china-builds-military-base-vanuatu-implications-australias-defence-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"If China builds a military base in Vanuatu, what are the implications for Australia\u2019s defence planning?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The revelation by the Fairfax Press<\/a>\u2014which hasn\u2019t been confirmed by any other source\u2014that China may be interested in building a military base in Vanuatu has raised a storm of negative commentary. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed \u2018grave concern\u2019 for Australia\u2019s interests that the South Pacific not be militarised in this way.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the reasons why such a development\u2014were it to occur\u2014would be a serious worry for our defence planning. As Penny Wong has stated, it would be a game changer. Thirty years ago, the 1987 Defence White Paper observed that countries in the South-West Pacific region lie across important trade routes and approaches to Australia\u2019s east coast, where most of our major population centres are located.<\/p>\n

It went on to say that \u2018an unfriendly maritime power\u2019 in the area could inhibit our freedom of movement through these approaches and place in doubt the security of Australia\u2019s supply of military equipment and other strategic materiel from the United States.<\/p>\n

In the Cold War, the activities of the Soviet Union came under scrutiny because a number of developments affecting the South Pacific had increased the region\u2019s potential to pose strategic problems for Australia. Among these developments were the establishment of links between some regional states and external powers \u2018with strategic interests potentially inimical to Australia\u2019s\u2019. In particular, the Soviet Union had fisheries agreements with Kiribati and Vanuatu. We knew that Soviet fisheries vessels, mother ships and so-called hydrography research ships had intelligence collection tasks.<\/p>\n

The 1987 white paper proclaimed that further access by the Soviet Union, \u2018especially the establishment of a presence ashore\u2019, would be an unwelcome development because of its potential to enhance Soviet influence in the region. Although Soviet involvement in the region in fact remained at a relatively low level, there was continuing concern that \u2018the fragile and narrowly based economies\u2019 of the South Pacific would continue to present opportunities for exploitation by external powers.<\/p>\n

As a result, a program of Australian P3C Orion long-range maritime patrol deployments was commenced in 1983, and RAN ship visits to the South Pacific were increased. The latter was a policy decision taken to emphasise the South Pacific at the expense of some of our more distant deployments, reflecting how important it was.<\/p>\n

By the mid-1980s, Canberra was acutely concerned by the fact that the Soviet Union had established a major naval base\u2014the largest outside of the Warsaw Pact area\u2014at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. This base hosted Soviet warships and submarines, bombers and an advanced signals intelligence facility. Throughout the 1980s, it was a prime target for Australian covert submarine operations and P3C Orion activities. The US Vice President, Dick Cheney, told me in the White House in 2002 just how important our submarine operations were against the Soviet Navy at that time.<\/p>\n

All that was a long time ago. But the historical record shows how seriously Australia has reacted to potential adverse military developments in our neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

For the future, in the most drastic of circumstances, Australia might have to contend with a major-power adversary operating in our approaches, including as a consequence of wider conflict in the Asia\u2013Pacific region. Were such an adversary to have access to a major military base, Australia would need maritime strike forces giving us an acceptable margin of confidence that hostile military operations in our region of primary military concern could be contested effectively and substantial costs imposed.<\/p>\n

China claims it has no overseas military bases, although it\u2019s constructing what it calls an \u2018overseas logistics base\u2019 in Djibouti and is actively looking in such places as Pakistan and Sri Lanka for other bases in the Indian Ocean. Were China to acquire a military base in the South Pacific or the Southeast Asian archipelago (for example in East Timor, which is only 400\u00a0kilometres from Australian territory), the strategic consequences for us would be serious.<\/p>\n

We have long acknowledged in our defence planning that if a potentially hostile power were to secure a military base in our neighbourhood that would greatly improve the capacity of such a power to use military force against us. If Australian intelligence were to detect the development of such a military base by China, it would be vital that we possessed the military capability\u2014if required\u2014to deny it.<\/p>\n

All of this isn\u2019t to treat China as our inevitable adversary. But neither should we pretend that our strategic circumstances wouldn\u2019t change dramatically if China established a military base in Vanuatu. Such a base would be evidence that China aims to use its military power to expand its strategic space at very considerable distance from its homeland in an area of little strategic concern to it.<\/p>\n

The fact is that attacks on Australia of an intensity and duration sufficient to be a serious threat to our national way of life would be possible only by forces with access to bases and facilities in our immediate neighbourhood. A sharp lift in our strike capabilities would be essential in those circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The revelation by the Fairfax Press\u2014which hasn\u2019t been confirmed by any other source\u2014that China may be interested in building a military base in Vanuatu has raised a storm of negative commentary. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":38547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,338,2160],"class_list":["post-38546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-defence-policy","tag-pacific-islands"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIf China builds a military base in Vanuatu, what are the implications for Australia\u2019s defence planning? | 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\/china-builds-military-base-vanuatu-implications-australias-defence-planning\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If China builds a military base in Vanuatu, what are the implications for Australia\u2019s defence planning? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The revelation by the Fairfax Press\u2014which hasn\u2019t been confirmed by any other source\u2014that China may be interested in building a military base in Vanuatu has raised a storm of negative commentary. 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