picking a side or picking an outcome?
I share a very serious article by Hugh White, an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, about Penny Wong, Australia's Foreign Minister.
But first, and because it is my good pleasure
, I extract a part devoted to submarines:
And it is in the next part of the article that Penny Wong is mentioned:
For those who are interested, full, interesting and long article:
Penny Wong’s next big fight
(Thx to the original poster)
I share a very serious article by Hugh White, an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, about Penny Wong, Australia's Foreign Minister.
But first, and because it is my good pleasure
, I extract a part devoted to submarines:(…) Nuclear-powered submarines do not make strategic or operational sense for Australia. That is why, right up to the moment Morrison pulled AUKUS out of a hat in September 2021, governments on both sides of politics had always flatly rejected any suggestion that Australia might opt for them. They understood that for Australia’s needs, such vessels’ advantages in speed and stealth do not justify the enormous costs, risks, delays and safety issues involved in their building and operation. The scale of these downsides has become even more glaringly obvious since the extraordinarily complex program to acquire nuclear subs under AUKUS was announced. It shows why, for us, nuclear subs are less cost-effective than conventional ones. The government only started making inflated claims to the contrary – that our strategic and operational circumstances had suddenly changed so much that only nuclear subs would do – after AUKUS was announced.
In fact, the AUKUS program, with its multiple points of failure, may well end up destroying Australia’s submarine capability, as the old Collins-class boats leave service with nothing to take their place. But in the meantime, AUKUS will have created the most profound transformation of Australia’s alliance with America since the ANZUS Treaty was signed in 1951. The key to understanding this is to recognise the big gap that has always existed, until now, between the elaborate carapace of political rhetoric that surrounds the alliance and the much softer strategic and operational reality within. Leaders on both sides have long talked as if there has never been a closer or deeper mutual commitment between any two countries than we enjoy with America. But the reality has always been very different. We have been quick to fight alongside America in small, cheap wars such as those in Iraq or Afghanistan, but under ANZUS we have never – even at the height of the Cold War – committed ourselves to support America militarily in a full-scale war against a major, nuclear-armed power.
That has made us by far the least committed of any close US ally. Throughout the Cold War and still today, America’s NATO allies have remained absolutely committed to join America and other NATO partners in a war with Russia. They have accepted US forces based on their soil, forward deployed their forces with US forces in probable conflict zones, and locked themselves into contributing forces to carefully pre-planned operations in future contingencies. Australia had done none of this until recently. We had no US combat forces based on our soil, no Australian units permanently deployed to probable conflict zones, and we accepted no pre-ordained roles in US major war plans. In all these ways, our alliance has been very different, and much looser, than any of America’s NATO allies, or than its key Asian allies in South Korea and Japan.
This first began to shift gradually in 2011, when Julia Gillard welcomed US forces to undertake rotational training deployments through Darwin, but it has accelerated very quickly over the past couple of years, with initiatives such as the provision of operational basing for US long-range nuclear bombers in northern Australia. AUKUS has taken this a huge step further, because it centres around a radically strengthened commitment by Australia to fight alongside America in a major war in Asia. Defence Minister Richard Marles has said that Australia has made no promises, but the AUKUS program itself embodies Australia’s acceptance of America’s expectations. The US decision to give us access to its most sensitive military technologies, and especially to sell us Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines taken from the US Navy, is simply unthinkable unless it is sure that Australian forces would be fully committed to the fight if it goes to war with China. If we fail to meet those expectations, the AUKUS deal will be off, as Marles and his colleagues must understand. So, suddenly Australia has become something much more like one of America’s NATO allies, automatically committed to fight if war breaks out with America’s major regional rival. That is certainly the way Washington sees it. That’s why it has embraced AUKUS. Our siding with America against China has thus been taken to a whole new level. AUKUS guarantees that what Dutton said is right: if AUKUS stands, it is inconceivable that Australia would not fight by America’s side if America ever goes to war with China. This is an outcome that the Labor government seems to wholeheartedly embrace.
Labor, like the Coalition before it, tries to step around this reality by claiming that AUKUS will help prevent a war rather than compel us to fight one. It says that Australia’s strengthened capabilities and deeper commitment to fight will deter China from escalating its challenge to a military confrontation. That is wishful thinking. AUKUS will deliver no real increase in military capability until well into the 2040s at the very earliest. China won’t be deterred from attacking Taiwan in the next five or 10 years by the fear of a few new Australian subs that might come into service 10 years after that. (…)
(…) At the same time, the nature of a US–China war is becoming starkly clearer. The old comfortable assumptions about America’s unchallengeable military superiority over China are giving way to more realistic assessments of the balance of military advantage, and the news is not good. No one now expects America to score a swift and easy victory in a maritime war over Taiwan, and only those making heroically optimistic assumptions predict that America would win any kind of victory at all. Moreover, the risk of the war going nuclear is now better understood, as the scale and capability of China’s nuclear forces are more realistically assessed. It is now obvious that a US–China war could well be the biggest and most destructive since 1945, and is very likely to be nuclear. So, this is a war that, to quote Ronald Reagan, cannot be won and must never be fought. It is hard to imagine that Labor’s leaders do not understand this. (…)
And it is in the next part of the article that Penny Wong is mentioned:
(…) Wong is fond of saying that we need to deal with the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be. Over the past few years she has explored the outcomes Australia should realistically be seeking amid the turmoil that surrounds us today.(…) “within a decade, the Chinese economy is set to become nearly twice as large as the econom[y] of the US”. Few if any of our political leaders have acknowledged so frankly how far the distribution of wealth and power has shifted China’s way.
She went on to describe the “profound implications for our region and for the United States”, stating: “Over the next decades, neither the United States nor China will be able to exert undisputed primacy. They must be prepared to live with each other as major powers.” This is only to be expected, she said, because “As China’s relative economic weight increased, it is unsurprising that it would seek a greater say in the region.” Nor should we be too alarmed. “We recognise that China has a right to develop, and a right to a role in the region alongside other regional powers. We do not and should not pre-emptively frame China only as a threat.” In an earlier speech in Sydney, in July 2018, she spelt out the historic implications of all this when she quoted an observation from the then dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, Michael Wesley, that “this is the first time since European settlement that Australia has had to contemplate living in a region not dominated by a culturally similar ally”. (…)
(…) For Wong the correct response to this fundamental power shift is clear. Australia should seek a multipolar order in Asia, she has said, “a multipolar region in which the United States remains deeply and constructively engaged; in which China is a positive contributor; and in which the perspectives and contributions of smaller powers are respected and valued.” That means finding what she called “a settling point” between what she sees as two equally unsustainable extremes: continued US primacy on the one hand, or Chinese hegemony on the other. She was quite explicit about this when she spoke in Jakarta. She rejected “the notion of a binary choice: that the only alternatives are accepting a Chinese-led regional order or unconditional support for US-defined strategic competition with Beijing”. I have italicised that last clause because it so precisely expresses Wong’s repudiation, when she was in Opposition, of the approach that the Albanese government is now taking. (…)
For those who are interested, full, interesting and long article:
Penny Wong’s next big fight
(Thx to the original poster)
