{"id":51750,"date":"2019-11-07T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T19:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=51750"},"modified":"2019-11-06T21:14:49","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T10:14:49","slug":"australia-china-relations-and-the-logic-of-conventional-deterrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-china-relations-and-the-logic-of-conventional-deterrence\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2013China relations and the logic of conventional deterrence"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Until China\u2019s emergence as a genuine military great power, conventional military threats to Australia were considered remote, yet there had to be some rationale for developing strategic policy. In practice, the Australian Defence Force prepared for a conflict that was never going to happen. There was never a credible threat.<\/p>\n

An illusory adversary was created that generated a number of important concepts to justify significant defence expenditure but also pay deference to the reality. These included the notion of warning time\u2014that necessary preparations by an adversary would give Australia sufficient time to get ready to respond. This in turn gave rise to the concept of an expansion force\u2014that the ADF should be structured to be the skeleton of a much larger and easily assembled force.<\/p>\n

A subsequent set of truisms emerged to help inform the defence investment program. It was believed that any attack on Australia would need to come from or through the archipelago to the north. An assault across the renowned sea\u2013air gap would necessarily require an adversary to establish bases in the region. The priorities, therefore, were to have a maritime strike capability<\/a> to intercept enemy forces on approach and a land strike capability<\/a> to prevent the establishment of, or to destroy, enemy bases.<\/p>\n

These were practical and artful steps to assist governments in shaping and defending their investment in defence at a time of little real threat. What\u2019s remarkable is the tenacity and persistence<\/a> of these inventive notions in today\u2019s completely different geostrategic situation. The faraway Soviet Union\u2014the putative threat back then\u2014has now been replaced by China, a real regional great power that has, or will soon have, the ability to exert significant military force against Australia.<\/p>\n

In this context, Australia must be clear about the signal, explicit or implied, that force structure and force posture send to the Chinese.<\/p>\n

There appear to be two key strands in current strategic thinking. Australia would automatically join the US<\/a> in any conflict with China, or the ADF must be able independently to deter a conventional attack on Australia by China. While the government\u2019s public position appears to be the former, the latter case raises the practicality of conventional deterrence.<\/p>\n

The message for strategic policymakers is not that China represents a current military threat to Australia\u2014it\u2019s difficult to imagine a cause that would involve China\u2019s national interests\u2014but that they need to shed the habit of falling back on outdated and now irrelevant concepts. If China did decide to attack Australia, there would be no meaningful warning time as the People\u2019s Liberation Army\u2019s force-in-being would prove sufficient.<\/p>\n

Against an ADF positioned to defend the sea\u2013air gap and Australia\u2019s northern and western approaches vigorously, the PLA would have other options, including stand-off attacks on major east coast urban centres and vital infrastructure from far out in the Pacific. It\u2019s hard to see why they would attack our northern approaches.<\/p>\n

The idea that Australia might pre-emptively attack Chinese bases on foreign soil, initiating a conflict and involving a neighbouring state, is unrealistic.<\/p>\n

Conventional deterrence was the subject of the 2018 RAND Corporation report What deters and why<\/em><\/a>. Deterrence was examined from the perspective of a global superpower considering ways to deter potential aggressors abroad from attacking America\u2019s allies. The report analysed \u2018strategies for preventing interstate aggression in areas far removed from the deterrer\u2019s home territory\u2019.<\/p>\n

The report identified three elements to consider. A deterrence strategy is \u2018much less effective without attention to the larger geostrategic context\u2019. Deterrence must be seen \u2018primarily as an effort to shape the thinking of a potential aggressor\u2019. And aggression that leads to conflict \u2018typically results from a complex decision process that unfolds gradually and is not characterized by a single decision point\u2019.<\/p>\n

For Australia to find itself confronting China without the prospect of US support, there would have to have been a tectonic shift in geostrategic circumstances in the Pacific. The US would have had to have withdrawn from contesting East Asia with China, either because of a lack of political will or because of a realisation that it wasn\u2019t going to prevail or that coming to Australia\u2019s aid would create an unacceptable risk to the US homeland\u2014scenarios in which there would be few restraints on China.<\/p>\n

In either situation, there would be little prospect of a China with a sufficiently strong motive being militarily deterred by Australia. Avoiding conflict would call for a diplomatic effort.<\/p>\n

This brings in the RAND report\u2019s third point: avoiding situations in which Australia is likely to be confronted by overwhelming military force is a project that requires hard and continuous diplomatic work<\/a> in building up shared understandings, channels of communications and robust relationships. Foreign and economic policy should be long-sighted and its implementation aligned with the realities of strategic policy.<\/p>\n

The evolving geostrategic situation in East Asia and the profound doubts that now circle the reliability of the US as an ally present Australia with a difficult strategic conundrum. Australians wouldn\u2019t tolerate submission to a Chinese suzerain or the role of mendicant or supplicant in Canberra\u2019s relations with Beijing. On the other hand, to think Australia\u2019s military strength is ever going to be sufficient to deter China from attacking is a fantasy.<\/p>\n

Much of the responsibility for Australia\u2019s future security will be borne by our diplomats and the foreign policy they are charged with pursuing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until China\u2019s emergence as a genuine military great power, conventional military threats to Australia were considered remote, yet there had to be some rationale for developing strategic policy. In practice, the Australian Defence Force prepared …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":51756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,2212,1114,1755],"class_list":["post-51750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-australia-china-relations","tag-defence","tag-deterrence"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAustralia\u2013China relations and the logic of conventional deterrence | 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\/australia-china-relations-and-the-logic-of-conventional-deterrence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Australia\u2013China relations and the logic of conventional deterrence | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Until China\u2019s emergence as a genuine military great power, conventional military threats to Australia were considered remote, yet there had to be some rationale for developing strategic policy. 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