{"id":87249,"date":"2024-06-04T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T20:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=87249"},"modified":"2024-06-03T18:54:32","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T08:54:32","slug":"anzus-and-the-fabric-of-peace-in-the-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/anzus-and-the-fabric-of-peace-in-the-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"ANZUS and the fabric of peace in the Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"
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China is seeking to establish itself as the hegemonic power in Asia, using coercion and intimidation, and by challenging US primacy. It appears to be willing to use force to achieve its aims, perhaps from 2027. It is deepening its military alliance with Russia. If China continues on its present course, the likelihood of major war occurring before 2030 in the \u2018Pacific Area\u2019 is at least 10 percent, if not higher.<\/span><\/p>\n

The term \u2018Pacific Area\u2019 is used in the Security Treaty between Australia and the United States (known as ANZUS, although the United States suspended its treaty obligations to New Zealand in 1986). The Treaty alliance was created in 1951 for the purpose of collective defence against armed attack in the \u2018Pacific Area\u2019. While not necessarily the most immediately useful starting point for dealing with this risk of war, thinking about the issue through the prism of the Treaty text yields rewarding insights and concrete suggestions for action.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through its drive for hegemony in Asia, China is damaging \u2018the fabric of peace in the Pacific Area\u2019 (first recital in the Treaty). As part of a broader regional strategy of integrated deterrence, Australia and the United States should commence urgent consultations, under Article III, on how best to deal with the threat posed by China to the territorial integrity, political independence and security of Australia and the United States in the Pacific (to use the terms of Article III). Thereafter, pursuing agreed actions would signal a credible commitment on the part of Australia and the United States to act collectively under their military alliance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It might be argued that the Treaty does not create an automatic obligation on either of the parties to go to war, insofar as the Treaty does not provide for an attack on one ally being considered to be an attack on the other. Better, some might argue, to leave consideration of hypothetical obligations well enough alone. Seeking to avoid the issue in this way would be to misread the Treaty, and misjudge our interests.<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of the Treaty, Australia is obliged to recognise that an armed attack on the United States \u2018in the Pacific Area\u2019 would be dangerous to its own peace and safety (Article IV). This would include an armed attack on the \u2018metropolitan territory\u2019 of the United States, the island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific, or on its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific (Article V). A US-China war would involve some, if not all, of these elements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Article IV provides that each ally would \u2018act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes\u2019. This means that Australia would have the right to determine whether an \u2018armed attack\u2019 had occurred, within the meaning of Articles IV and V, as well as what action to take to \u2018meet the common danger\u2019, under Article IV. However, any attempt to parse the meaning of terms such as \u2018armed attack\u2019, \u2018Pacific Area\u2019, or \u2018act to meet the common danger\u2019, or to otherwise read down Australia\u2019s obligations with a view to avoiding involvement in a war with China, would be seen by the United States as a betrayal of the trust which necessarily sits at the heart of such an alliance. The United States would expect us to meet our obligations. Australia could, of course, insist that it was not obliged to go to war – and it would have to accept the consequences of its choice.<\/span><\/p>\n

While consideration of obligations matter, of far greater importance would be Australia\u2019s own strategic interests. Australia has an abiding strategic interest in the preservation of US primacy in the Indo Pacific region, which means countering the establishment of Chinese hegemony. In order to secure this overarching interest, Australia has an interest in contributing to a regional system of deterrence. Australia also has an interest in the United States being able to deter nuclear attack by China, against itself and, through extended deterrence, against its allies in the Indo Pacific.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is unfamiliar territory for Australian grand strategy. In the 1950s and 1960s, Australia\u2019s \u2018fear of abandonment\u2019 (to use Allan Gyngell\u2019s phrase) led it to seek unrealistic levels of protection through the Treaty. After 1969, Australia gradually decided that it could not rely upon US combat assistance in its own defence, short of major war \u2013 although it took until 1987 for this approach to be properly institutionalised in policy, strategy, capability and doctrine. In the 1970s and 1980s, Australia developed a different \u2018fear\u2019. This was said to be a \u2018fear of entrapment\u2019 in US nuclear warfighting strategies, due to the hosting of certain US capabilities in Australia, strategies which were seen as the dark underside of US deterrence.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1990s and the 2000s, Australia sought \u2018security in Asia\u2019, without seeking to displace the US alliance. At the time, it was assumed that China would be a \u2018responsible stakeholder\u2019, admitted into the World Trade Organisation, and engaged positively in an emerging regional architecture, anchored in Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and the ASEAN Regional Forum.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 2010s, Australia entered a new strategic era. Far from being an abandoned backwater, we became for the United States a strategic bastion and secure base. The strategy of defence self-reliance of the 1980s, which was predicated on the prospect of lower levels of conflict (when there was no credible threat of a conventional attack on Australia by the Soviet Union), started to evolve around 2008-09 in anticipation of the prospect of a US-China war. We entered a period of strategic warning, but then did not build the force that we now desperately need.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Today, the defence of Australia in a US-China war would be a coalition effort \u2013 for us in the existential defence of our homeland, and for the United States in the defence of vital strategic space. Moreover, we cannot seek \u2018security in Asia\u2019, when Asia itself is being fractured by China\u2019s hegemonic drive. Instead of somehow triangulating peace in the region, through a vain attempt to seek an \u2018equilibrium\u2019 between the two competing great powers, whose tensions roil the region, we have in fact chosen a side. We are today party to the steady creation of a system of regional deterrence which is predicated on US primacy. We are doing so in league with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and potentially others. We all have an interest in the preservation of US primacy, and resisting Chinese hegemony, the establishment of which would be the basis for national subjugation, regional subordination, and enduring global tension.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, four different strands of policy \u2013 defence self-reliance, the ANZUS Treaty alliance, a US- centred regional security system, and US extended nuclear deterrence, together with the AUKUS technology pact \u2013 are coming together, in fits and starts, in a new Australian grand strategy. It is happening, although not quickly enough, and without it being explained in such direct and undiplomatic terms.<\/span><\/p>\n

China\u2019s calculus matters too. In its planning, it would assess that Australia holds significant geostrategic utility for the United States, as a bastion, and as a secure base from which to project military power, by way of US combat operations being mounted from, or through, Australia. Our long-standing military and intelligence cooperation, which dates back to 1942, and the close political, economic and cultural ties otherwise between Australia and the United States, would be regarded adversely in Chinese war planning. It should be assumed that there would be high probability of Australia being subjected to armed attack, cyberattack, and cognitive operations in any US-China war.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, there are functions undertaken in Australia that are structurally integrated into the deterrence and warfighting capability of the United States. Since 1963, these functions have been progressively established in Australia, specifically to support the United States\u2019 global complex of communications, intelligence and surveillance. Agreement given to the establishment of facilities at North West Cape (1963), Pine Gap (1966) and Nurrungar (1969) were central to this development. Other facilities were also established, concerned with geological and geophysical research, satellite communications, solar observation, and space surveillance.<\/span><\/p>\n

While policy discourse in Australia has tended to emphasise the deterrent and stabilising functions of these facilities (see, for instance, the ministerial statement by Bob Hawke on 22 November 1988), their contribution to US conventional and nuclear warfighting capability has tended to be less appreciated. Deterrence and warfighting are two sides of the one coin. Deterrence, and any resultant stability, can only be achieved if it is underpinned by a warfighting capability that is seen by potential adversaries as being effective and potent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Absent credible options to act decisively, with a mix of conventional and nuclear weapons, the United States cannot deter armed attack on itself or its allies. As an active enabler of US deterrence (for instance, in supporting ballistic missile early warning through Pine Gap), Australia is a contributor to global stability, and to US extended deterrence. Enabling US deterrence means materially supporting US warfighting. Deterrence and warfighting are enmeshed.<\/span><\/p>\n

By dint of these functions being located on Australian territory, with Australia\u2019s concurrence, Australia would be seen as being a vicarious belligerent in a war involving the United States, even if it was not a combatant. In order to achieve neutrality in such a war, Australia would have to exercise its rights to terminate relevant agreements, close these facilities, and cease supporting the functions with which they are associated.<\/span><\/p>\n

For 50 years, Australia has accepted its vicarious association with US warfighting capability. This ought to be better known. Not having been advised of the putting of the North West Cape naval communications station on a higher level of defence alert during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, the Whitlam Government entertained the idea of seeking to establish joint control of the station, such that the Australian Government could exercise a veto over its use.<\/span><\/p>\n

By January 1974 it had become clear, after extensive discussions between Defence Minister Lance Barnard and US Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, that joint substantive control or an Australian veto was not achievable, and especially not in relation to the control or vetoing of orders to US submarines to launch nuclear missiles. Barnard did, however, win assurances from Schlesinger regarding timely notification of, and meaningful consultation on, strategic and operational issues connected with the use of North West Cape (see Gough Whitlam\u2019s account in <\/span>The Whitlam Government: 1972-1975 <\/span><\/i>[1985]).<\/span><\/p>\n

Barnard\u2019s eyes were open to the implications, for instance in relation to supporting selective nuclear targeting by the United States. After 1974, both major political parties accepted that Australia would have to be prepared to be vicariously associated with US warfighting, even if grudgingly, and consequently needed to do more to inform itself as to the totality of the uses of these functions (see Barnard\u2019s letter to Whitlam of 16 October 1974, classified SECRET and since declassified, available online through the website of the National Archives of Australia).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This laid the foundation for the policy of Australia having full knowledge of, and concurring in, these functions, which was later more enduringly institutionalised by the Hawke Government (see his ministerial statement of 22 November 1988). Building on the foundation of the Barnard\/Schlesinger agreement of 1974, Kim Beazley set the standard for how Australia should better inform itself about strategic and operational developments related to these facilities, particularly with regard to US nuclear war planning. At his direction, Australia sought and obtained more regular relevant briefings from the US Department of Defence, including on sensitive nuclear issues (see Beazley\u2019s note for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, <\/span>The Strategist<\/span><\/i>, 18 August 2021).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent years, more information about the functions of these facilities has been placed on the public record, building on the disclosures contained in the 1988 ministerial statement. Taking that earlier ministerial statement together with the ministerial statements by Brendan Nelson (20 September 2007), Stephen Smith (26 June 2013), Christopher Pyne (20 February 2019) and Richard Marles (9 February 2023), it can be inferred that Australia is structurally integrated into the following elements of US warfighting capability:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n