{"id":4267,"date":"2013-03-01T13:58:26","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T03:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=4267"},"modified":"2013-03-04T19:00:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T09:00:06","slug":"marines-in-darwin-make-it-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/marines-in-darwin-make-it-so\/","title":{"rendered":"Marines in Darwin \u2013 make it so"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/20120403adf8144078_030.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4274\" title=\"The first contingent of the United States Marine Corps are greeted by Australia's Minister for Defence, Stephen Smith and United States Ambassador for Australia, His Excellency Jeffrey L. Bleich as they arrive at RAAF Base Darwin.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/20120403adf8144078_030.jpg\" alt=\"The first contingent of the United States Marine Corps are greeted by Australia's Minister for Defence, Stephen Smith and United States Ambassador for Australia, His Excellency Jeffrey L. Bleich as they arrive at RAAF Base Darwin.\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/20120403adf8144078_030.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/20120403adf8144078_030-205x137.jpg 205w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/20120403adf8144078_030-332x221.jpg 332w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<p>We\u2019re in Washington this week for the\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alliance21.org.au\/about\" target=\"_blank\">Alliance 21<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>project being run by the <a href=\"http:\/\/ussc.edu.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney<\/a>.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0an interesting time to be in Washington. Over the next 24 hours the US\u00a0budget negotiations\u00a0will come to a head,\u00a0potentially\u00a0resulting\u00a0in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/whats-happening-to-the-us-defence-budget\/\" target=\"_blank\">substantial cuts to US defence spending<\/a>\u00a0by way of sequestration.<\/p>\n<p>To say that the situation has the attention of American defence planners is putting it mildly. The\u00a0prospective cuts to come are likely to be deep and potentially long-term.\u00a0Civilians in the Pentagon could see their working days (and income) reduced, and\u00a0service personnel are facing a period of reduced training and limited promotion opportunities.\u00a0As grim as those possibilities are for the individuals concerned, the impact of most interest to Australia and other American allies and partners is the potential\u00a0reduction in the preparedness and\u00a0capability of America\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n<p>This possibility\u00a0comes at a particularly unfortunate time as far as the\u00a0United States\u2019\u00a0pivot\/rebalance to the Asia\u2013Pacific is concerned. After talking a big game, there\u2019s now a real question mark over their ability to follow through. Further cuts to US defence spending would\u00a0likely\u00a0have two major effects. First, the ability of US forces to substantially change their\u00a0force structure,\u00a0let alone ramp up numbers in\u00a0the region,\u00a0would be in\u00a0doubt. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/publications\/publication_details.aspx?ContentID=311\" target=\"_blank\">Moving forces around is expensive<\/a>, especially when substantial facilities are required.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Second, and probably more importantly for Australia,\u00a0sequestration would only make\u00a0Washington\u00a0even more eager\u00a0for\u00a0its partners in the Asia\u2013Pacific\u00a0to\u00a0step up and provide some of the resources required to\u00a0execute\u00a0the\u00a0US rebalance.\u00a0Already, with sequestration only a possibility, it\u2019s\u00a0clear to us that there\u2019s disappointment\u00a0in Washington about\u00a0the\u00a0allied\u00a0response to date\u2014and Australia has been mentioned in this respect more than once.<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, it\u2019s not a case of finger wagging or reprimanding, and <a href=\"http:\/\/csis.org\/expert\/michael-j-green\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Green of CSIS<\/a> provided the best one-liner of the week when he said that \u2018Washington isn\u2019t in a position to export political will at the moment, because there\u2019s a deficit here as well\u2019. Be that as it may,\u00a0the fact is that America sees itself as the hardest\u00a0working member of a\u00a0team and it\u2019s looking for a higher rate of effort from the rest.<\/p>\n<p>For a variety\u00a0of reasons, Australia is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/hard-times\/\" target=\"_blank\">unlikely to significantly increase its defence budget in the near term<\/a>. But there are some things we can do at relatively little cost that will have\u00a0the dual benefit of making the US\u00a0rebalance a\u00a0little easier for them while providing us an excellent return on investment, in terms of both security and alliance good will.<\/p>\n<p>Back in November 2011, President Obama announced that, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/national\/obama-to-send-marines-to-darwin-20111116-1njd7.html\" target=\"_blank\">part of the rebalance<\/a>, 2,500 USMC personnel would rotate through the North Territory on an ongoing basis. The footprint of such a force is substantial, and they\u2019ll need facilities both for the Marines themselves, and\u00a0also for the storage and maintenance of their equipment.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re in the early stages of\u00a0building momentum in this initiative\u00a0and it\u2019s still very much a work in progress, with only 250 Marines involved in the first rotation. But the budget woes\u00a0in Washington mean that the cost\u00a0of proceeding\u00a0is\u00a0competing with\u00a0a\u00a0myriad of other calls on resources. The difficulty of getting that done has been mentioned to us more than once this week.<\/p>\n<p>This is where the Australian Government could do its ally\u2014and itself\u2014a big favour by\u00a0putting some money on the table\u00a0to properly support the establishment and ongoing maintenance of the US training mission to Northern Australia. On the scale of defence expenditure it\u2019s not a biggie, but it would send a clear signal that Australia is prepared to put some resources behind its public\u00a0rhetoric in support of\u00a0the rebalance.<\/p>\n<p>That would make good sense\u00a0for us strategically.\u00a0An ongoing\u00a0US\u00a0presence in the Asia\u2013Pacific is unambiguously\u00a0in our interest;\u00a0we get a security benefit from\u00a0the alliance\u00a0far in excess of our modest defence spending (presently 1.56% of GDP compared with America\u2019s\u00a04.7%).\u00a0It follows that spending a little extra to help secure the presence of US forces in our\u00a0region should be a no-brainer,\u00a0even in a period of fiscal stringency.<\/p>\n<p><em>Over forthcoming weeks, we\u2019ll be running a series of posts based on various contributions to the Alliance 21 project.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Andrew Davies is a senior analyst for defence capability and executive editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Strategist<em>, and\u00a0<em>Mark Thomson\u00a0is senior analyst for defence economics<\/em><em>\u00a0at ASPI. Image courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/images.defence.gov.au\/20120403adf8144078_030.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Department of Defence<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re in Washington this week for the\u00a0Alliance 21\u00a0project being run by the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0an interesting time to be in Washington. Over the next 24 hours the US\u00a0budget negotiations\u00a0will come &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[40,17,26,185,31,368],"class_list":["post-4267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policy-guns-and-money","tag-alliance-2","tag-australia","tag-defence-spending","tag-sequestration","tag-united-states","tag-us-marines"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Marines in Darwin \u2013 make it so | 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\/marines-in-darwin-make-it-so\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Marines in Darwin \u2013 make it so | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We\u2019re in Washington this week for the\u00a0Alliance 21\u00a0project being run by the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0an interesting time to be in Washington. 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