{"id":82271,"date":"2023-09-14T15:15:59","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T05:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=82271"},"modified":"2023-09-14T15:20:24","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T05:20:24","slug":"disruption-deterrence-and-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/disruption-deterrence-and-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"Disruption, deterrence and dollars"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

\u2018Strategy without money is just hot air.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles speaking at ASPI\u2019s 2023 conference, 14 September, Canberra<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At ASPI\u2019s national conference, the deputy PM and defence minister was doing \u2018d\u2019 alliteration\u2014disruption, deterrence and dollars.<\/p>\n

The Richard Marles line on dollars channels a famous Canberra creed, uttered in sharp and grumpy tones by the man who created the modern defence department, Arthur Tange: \u2018Until you\u2019re talking dollars, you\u2019re not talking defence.\u2019<\/p>\n

The minister\u2019s view of \u2018hot air\u2019 is an important policy balloon that translates as a Labor target. Track the dollars in the days to come to measure the actual power of the policy.<\/p>\n

The last time Labor was in government, especially under Julia Gillard, it looted the defence budget for other purposes (including getting Australia through the 2008\u201309 global financial crisis). While not referencing that history, Marles painted a picture of a different Labor government dedicated to lifting defence spending.<\/p>\n

The change reflects darkly different times.<\/p>\n

A decade ago, the Gillard government built policy on a happy vision of the bounties flowing from the \u2018Asian century<\/a>\u2019. Today, Marles describes a threatening Indo-Pacific where deterrence and defence must be linked to the hopes of diplomacy: \u2018If we want to maintain peace and stability, then getting the hard-power equation right is a critical component of that. And certainly that\u2019s how we think about it in terms of our own strategic landscape now, which is very complex and not a little threatening.\u2019<\/p>\n

Marles\u2019s description of the way the world has changed is also a description of what\u2019s changed in Labor\u2019s worldview.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s budget history since federation, he said, reflected a \u2018binary sense of war and peace\u2019. In peace, defence spending went down; in war it jumps. \u2018I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the world we\u2019re in now. I think the grey zone is much bigger.\u2019 The end of the binary divide, Marles said, meant old norms no longer applied.<\/p>\n

On the budget, Marles is talking future dollars some years out, because the projection in the May budget didn\u2019t reflect the urgency of the demands<\/a> on defence. ASPI\u2019s 2023\u201324 defence budget brief<\/a>\u00a0called it \u2018the big squeeze\u2019. The only increase over the next three years is compensation for the increased cost of imported military equipment flowing from a fall in the value of the Australian dollar.<\/p>\n

Marles said Labor was working with the three-year forward estimates bequeathed by the previous Coalition government:<\/p>\n

In a rational world, defence spending is a function of strategic threat. And we aspire to be a rational government, and that\u2019s why you\u2019re seeing an increase in defence spending. What we inherited when we came to government was an increase. That increase is maintained through the forwards. And so we actually went to the election saying we would commit to precisely the same funding the former government had established and that\u2019s what we are doing over the forward estimates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Taking that as Labor\u2019s starting point, a key measure of the difference between hard strategy and hot air will be how the spending line keeps rising. And that\u2019s where the government\u2019s promise to lift defence spending to 2.3% of GDP over a decade becomes the target to monitor, as Marles explained:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll stay on the same pathway of increase over the next four years. Through the next 10 we\u2019re going to increase the trajectory. So, to put numbers on that, basically defence spending was somewhere below 2% [of GDP]; it\u2019s about 2% now under the trajectory that we inherited from the former government with their 2.1% within a decade.<\/p>\n

We are taking 2.3% because of the strategic threat that we perceive. I guess the question then, given the strategic threat, if you seek to be rational, is 2.3% the right answer? We think it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the defence minister mused, 2.3% of GDP is a response to what Australia sees before it. If the view changes, the dollar ambition will have to change too:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t sit here thinking that we are on the eve of conflict. I sit here thinking that we are in the midst of uncertainty, that predicting the next 10 years is very difficult.<\/p>\n

I can completely imagine a peaceful trajectory over the next decade and beyond. I think that\u2019s entirely in the realm of possibility and that\u2019s obviously what we should all be seeking. The difficulty is I can imagine something else and it\u2019s the uncertainty of that which gives rise to the fact that we are seeing an upswing in our defence spending.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In questions, ASPI\u2019s Jennifer Parker pushed Marles on the dollars, pointing out that the defence funding profile still rests on a frame going back to the 2016 defence white paper. Much had changed. Had the time come to rethink the funding profile?<\/p>\n

\u2018Strategy without money is just hot air,\u2019 Marles replied. \u2018We\u2019re talking about a 10% increase on what was intended to be committed just 17 months ago, over the course of the next decade. Instead of 2.1%\u20142.3% of GDP. That is a very significant step. And it is a very significant step in historic terms.\u2019<\/p>\n

The final question was about the content of the classified version of the defence strategic review and a new focus on how Australia needs to plan to mobilise businesses and the private sector for defence purposes.<\/p>\n

Marles said the full version of the review discusses mobilisation: \u2018It\u2019s really the first discussion of that kind of issue in a defence document\u2014a document that Defence has embraced\u2014probably since the end of the Second World War. It\u2019s a hugely significant analysis.\u2019<\/p>\n

Australia is already digesting the reality of a lot more money for defence. The emerging questions centre on the nation\u2019s risk appetite in uncertain times to deliver deterrence. And what would \u2018mobilisation for defence purposes\u2019 mean for Australia? Even if you don\u2019t see all that as a great disruption, it\u2019s certainly different. And it is delivering a different Labor government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Strategy without money is just hot air.\u2019 \u2014 Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles speaking at ASPI\u2019s 2023 conference, 14 September, Canberra At ASPI\u2019s national conference, the deputy PM and defence minister was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":82274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3630,1823,26,3337,3321],"class_list":["post-82271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-aspi-conference","tag-defence-budget","tag-defence-spending","tag-defence-strategic-review","tag-richard-marles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDisruption, deterrence and dollars | 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\" 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