The ironies in Australia's 2020 Defence Update
The ironies in Australia's 2020 Defence Update
WRITTEN BY ALAN TIDWELL
6 July 2020
The tyranny of distance has long shaped Australian strategic thinking. The defence of Australia has been challenged by and benefitted from that distance. Today, the US-China rivalry plays out in and around Australia, dramatically shrinking Canberra’s capacity to manoeuvre. The eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic has similarly altered Australian thinking about the world. To keep pace with these changes the Morrison Government released on 01 July, the 2020 Defence Strategic Update.
The 2020 Update lays out a ten-year spending timeline. Total defence expenditures from now until 2029/30 will be around A$575 billion, including roughly A$270 billion in defence capability. The planned expenditure exceeds the old target of 2 per cent of GDP and is no longer is pinned to GDP.
Marcus Hellyer, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, explains the Update effectively extends the ten-year timeline envisioned in the 2016 Defence White Paper to 2030. The Update reveals the government sees no budgetary impact by COVID-19 on planned defence spending through to 2030. Significantly, the Update also acknowledges the deepening tensions between Washington and Beijing. These tensions are unlikely to vanish after the November 2020 US election, regardless of who wins. As a result, the Update also addresses the need to deter potential aggressors and shape the region to Australia’s immediate north.
The Morrison government sees a sharpening of the strategic competition between the US and China and signals a continued deepening of the American alliance. At the same time, the Update also points to other like-minded partners, which are also friends and allies of the US-Japan and Singapore for example – with whom Australia can work with.
Viewed from Washington the 2020 Defence Update should put a final nail in the coffin of the China choice. The Morrison government sees a sharpening of the strategic competition between the US and China and signals a continued deepening of the American alliance. At the same time, the Update also points to other like-minded partners, which are also friends and allies of the US-Japan and Singapore for example – with whom Australia can work with. The point should not be lost on anyone, this is an acknowledgement that should the Americans falter or get mired in COVID-19 infused isolationism, that alternatives do exist.
Still, the Update does leave open several questions embodied in three ironies. The first is that defence planners see COVID-19 seeding instability elsewhere in the distant region, whereas in Australia, COVID-19 appears to have little impact. Second, cyber, space and missiles all shrink the world, yet Australia will deter at a distance. And, third, Australia has always had long supply lines and been dependent upon trade, but only now does there seem to be any recognition that the lack of domestic capacity has defence implications.
The government has made plans that envision no reduction in defence spending, despite a blow out in expenditures in the face of COVID-19. Ironically, however, authors of the 2020 Update acknowledge that the COVID-19 fall out could destabilise the region, yet, somehow, Australia is left untouched. How can this be?
According to the International Monetary Fund, Canberra’s COVID-19 fiscal stimulus amounted to 7 per cent of GDP, with 3.5 per cent of GDP going to wage subsidies. Australian unemployment exceeds 7 per cent, even though the country has seen very low COVID-19 infection rates. This is likely only the tip of the budget iceberg. As an illustration of COVID-19’s longer-term budgetary impact, consider Australia’s education sector. Most of the country’s 40 university’s rely upon international students to subsidize budgets, and many of these students come from the PRC.
The A$40 billion export business has collapsed in the short-term due to the pandemic and may well never fully recover. This alone puts considerable pressure on the commonwealth budget and is illustrative of other challenges legislators will face in the coming years.
The second irony concerns the ways in which military technology continues to shrink the world, yet the Update envisions the acquisition of technology that will provide Australia with the capacity to deter at a distance. As Hugh White observed, the “… aim of Australia’s defence posture should be to raise the costs and risks to an adversary of attacks against Australia to the point that they exceed any potential benefits.” To be fair, this is the goal of any country’s defence; it is a noncontentious point, but in Australia’s case the Update envisions doing this at a distance. Rather than being the tyranny of distance, it is deterrence at a distance. The question, of course, is whether Australia can deliver deterrence at a distance against an opponent with very high thresholds of costs and risks.
The Update also calls for greater domestic productive capacity of defence material. COVID-19 helped to remind Australians that they are a trading nation and that their supply lines are long. This has been true for at least 200 years, and it is hard to think of a time when this was not the case. John Blackburn, former Vice Air Chief, Chairman of the Institute for Integrated Economic Research – Australia, has been a powerful advocate in recent years of the need to address Australia’s lack of oil refining capacity for example. When COVID-19 exposed Australia’s lack of productive capacity of personal protective equipment and its reliance on imported medicines, Blackburn’s argument became all the more apparent. The irony is that Australians needed to be reminded of what should be patently obvious and underlines the failings of Aussie leadership.
Today, no less so than in the past, the tyranny of distance continues to shape Australian fortunes. Whether and how leaders resolve the ironic challenges will say much about the prospects of Australian defence.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Alan C. Tidwell is currently the Director of the Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies located in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Image credit: Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Defense.