Faith, Hope but Not Much Charity

There is in fact no requirement in the ANZUS treaty for it to be invoked. If there were, it would have been more appropriate for the United States as the party under attack to invoke, that is to call upon, the aid of its treaty partners. Howard’s invocation was little more than political spin driven as much by emotion as anything else. The treaty does not require invocation in response to any particular event; the treaty is always in effect.

Two years earlier, another of Australia’s treaty partners tore up the security agreement negotiated between Australia and Indonesia over Australia’s part in securing the independence of East Timor. Paul Keating’s much maligned but fundamentally sensible agreement with Indonesia’s Suharto government fell foul of that country’s internal politics.

The two events should cast some light on the place of defence treaties or similar agreements in Australia’s security architecture. Australia has a range of such agreements with various countries including the United States, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Papua New Guinea and, once again, Indonesia. Beyond what might be called the headline agreements, however, lies a vast number of less significant memoranda of understanding, technical agreements, intelligence-sharing arrangements, status-of-forces agreements and commercial agreements for the supply or purchase of military equipment. Other arrangements provide for consultation between military chiefs that are designed to provide insights into the thinking even of potential enemies. All these play a part to a greater or lesser degree in providing a framework for Australia’s defence programs.

The essential question is to determine the value of each. To what extent does each contribute certainty? Can their value be quantified in any way, for example by reducing Australia’s defence outlays? To what extent do they commit Australia to assist treaty partners who might be under threat? And how robust is each one? All these issues are basic to any analysis of value but discussion even in the defence community is virtually non-existent.

The formal defence treaties Australia has are all characterised by one factor, misunderstood in public discussion but basic to all security treaties. Thus there is no automatic commitment to military action in the event of hostile action against one or other of the partners. There is a commitment only to consultation. Thus, in the case of the attacks on the United States, the Australia–USA treaty was in effect because of an attack on the territory of the United States but Australia was bound to no more than consulting with the United States on how this country might assist. This justifies Australian involvement in Afghanistan, but not in Iraq, for which a separate justification was required.

Australia’s security treaties all have that limitation, but the treaties are also different in that they are between countries of differing relative power. These might be categorised as treaties with dependent or less powerful countries, with equals, those of (roughly) equivalent military power, and with what might very loosely be termed the guarantors, those whose military power provides the rock on which Australia’s security depends in the event of a potentially overwhelming challenge.

The Dependants

The defence relationship is very close and is underpinned by a myriad of agreements covering equipment, training, joint exercises and strategic responsibilities in the South and South-West Pacific. Nevertheless, there exists considerable uncertainty in Australia over New Zealand’s commitment to any given strategic challenge, while the New Zealand attitude is based heavily upon the perception, put to me by a former NZ prime minister, that “as long as Australia is secure, New Zealand is secure”, with the implication that New Zealand does not have to contribute much to the security relationship.

This has led to a substantial reshaping of the New Zealand Defence Force away from war fighting to constabulary and peacekeeping capabilities, failing to recognise that a force capable of war fighting can be good at constabulary tasks but the reverse is rarely true. New Zealand is of course a much smaller country, with roughly 20 per cent of Australia’s population albeit in a much smaller territory. Yet, like Australia, New Zealand has extensive overseas interests but does little to contribute to their security. The Australia–New Zealand security relationship is manifestly one of inequality, with New Zealand contributing little and depending heavily upon Australia’s security—and Australia’s security relationships. Of course, in the event of a significant threat to Australia’s security interests, New Zealand support is virtually assured.

Australia and Papua New Guinea have signed a Joint Declaration of Principles which includes a defence section that provides for consultation in the event of a security threat to either party. As with New Zealand, this is an agreement between unequal partners and essentially commits Australia to underwrite Papua New Guinea’s security. Of course, this reflects less the fragile security agreement than the reality that a serious threat to Papua New Guinea’s security cannot be regarded as other than a threat to Australia’s security.

Although Papua New Guinea is larger and more populous than New Zealand, it is also poverty stricken and cannot afford an effective defence force. Like New Zealand, its small military establishment has an even less effective constabulary capability. Australia’s involvement with the PNG Defence Force has been very limited and, indeed, many Australian policy-makers have tried to persuade Papua New Guinea that it should absorb its defence force into the police. Naturally this would make Papua New Guinea even more dependent upon Australia, a fact that appears to have escaped those Australian policy-makers but not those of a fiercely nationalistic Papua New Guinea. In real terms, the defence relationship is in bad state and needs a good deal of work to make it one of even modest substance.

The Equals

The FPDA is much more a relationship between equals and, while the need for the agreements is less evident in the new century, there are advantages for all parties. While the UK is increasingly a sleeping partner and New Zealand’s involvement is more declaratory than real, for Australia the involvement of Malaysia and Singapore in securing the Malacca Straits and their vital oil traffic is very important to Australia’s most important trading partners and therefore to Australia.

For Malaysia and Singapore, there is value in the relationship’s contribution to the professionalism of their military but perhaps the most important political aspect is the linking of Malaysia and Singapore’s security to the United States through the mutual arrangement with Australia without their having to make a serious alliance relationship with the USA. This is perhaps more important for Malaysia’s relationship with the Muslim world than it is for Singapore but, with more recent defence-related agreements directly with the United States, the latter country may be showing signs of a more sceptical view of Australia’s capability and reliability.

There is a further element. Malaysia and Singapore traditionally have a relationship characterised by some tension. Australia’s role has been to help build confidence and co-operation between the two regional powers, acting to some extent as an honest broker.

Australia has had a love-hate relationship with Indonesia ever since—even before—the establishment of that country in 1949. Australians tend to see Indonesia as very large, which it is, and very powerful, which it is not, at least in military terms. For most Australians, Indonesia has always been seen as our most likely adversary in the event of hostilities. The quarter-century of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor reinforced this perception, as did the earlier tension over Indonesia’s campaign to gain control of West New Guinea. These perceptions led to the growth of a whole set of myths about Indonesia’s designs on Australia, most of which had their origin in bar rooms in both countries.

The uncertainty was not helped by Indonesian policies directed against the Dutch in West New Guinea, Malaysia (which was seen to be a British construct) or the Portuguese in East Timor. President Sukarno’s erratic adventurism was unsettling and the stability that came with the New Order regime of President Suharto failed to engender confidence in the broader community, especially among those on the Left.

Led by the then prime minister, Paul Keating, Australia signed a security agreement with Indonesia in December 1995. In substance, the agreement was as bland and non-committal as any other but it did represent a sea change in Indonesian international relations. Never before had Indonesia signed a security treaty with any other country and this represented a dramatic change of policy. Many Indonesians were uncomfortable with this about-face but their concerns were drowned by the outrage, mostly but certainly not exclusively, from the Left in Australia. The hostility was driven by a number of factors: Indonesia’s invasion and occupation of East Timor, Suharto’s role in the destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party, the secrecy with which the treaty was developed and, of course, the underlying discomfort with a large and unstable neighbour.

Nevertheless, the treaty went into effect and provided a basis for developing relations between the military forces of both countries. The Left’s hostility focused strongly on the use of Australian special forces in training Indonesia’s Kopassus special force units, generally in counter-terrorism. Kopassus was held to be responsible for Indonesian repression in East Timor and West New Guinea and became a convenient whipping boy. In fact, the most important element of the relationship was in the increasingly intimate co-operation between the two navies. Given that Indonesia is an archipelagic state and that the greater proportion of Australia’s vital exports to East Asia pass through Indonesian waters, this development was eminently sensible and the Keating government deserves high marks for its initiative.

Regrettably this did not last. Suharto was replaced by his chosen successor, Dr B.J. Habibie, who proved to be as erratic as his predecessor was constant. The relationship collapsed over the 1999 independence vote in East Timor and Australia’s leadership of the United Nations-authorised intervention in that territory. Habibie tore up the security agreement but, fortunately, soon lost his job. Since then, Indonesia has experienced growing democratisation and considerable political stability. The value of a security agreement between Australia and Indonesia was so obvious to both that a new agreement was signed at Lombok in 2006. Needless to say, the usual suspects remain unhappy.

Like all others, the treaty has no automatic provisions, merely commitments to co-operation and consultation. For Australia, the value of the treaty lies in its ability to foster the development of mutual security in the region and especially the security of Australia’s vital sea—and air—lines of communication. For Indonesia, whose security preoccupation is with China, the agreement gives confidence that Indonesia will face no threat from its rear.

Although categorised here as a treaty between equals, Australia is substantially more powerful militarily, especially in naval and air power. Both countries lack a serious power projection capability so that they pose no significant threat to each other or, for that matter, to anyone else. The treaty does, however, add value to both countries’ strategic posture, and its reinstatement of the 1995 agreement is good for both.

Australia’s security relationship with the United Kingdom is of course as old as Australia, and the two countries have fought together in many conflicts as allies, the major exception being Vietnam. On the other hand, the Fraser government not only kept Australia out of the 1982 Falklands war with Argentina but, in a thoroughly pusillanimous act, refused to allow Australian personnel serving on exchange in the UK forces to accompany their units.

Australia has no formal security treaty with the UK, but what is an intimate defence relationship is backed by a vast number of agreements and regular meetings of defence ministers. While categorised here as a relationship between equals, the UK armed forces are very much larger than ours. Professionally, however, they are on a par although both would claim excellence over the other, a product more of friendly rivalry than anything else. There is a considerable exchange of personnel at many levels.

While the UK has no military presence in this part of the world, it is capable of deploying forces to the region if its interests required that. It retains membership of the Five Power Defence Agreements and has some separate commitment to Brunei. In any serious conflict, the UK would act according to its perception of its interests at that time. No more can be expected of any modern security treaty, but the depth of the relationship adds to the uncertainty that any aggressor must factor into his calculations. On the other hand, Britain is unlikely to consider Australian involvement in a conflict in Europe.

The Guarantors

While ANZUS is considered to be the cornerstone of Australia’s security structure, the defence relationship with the United States hardly depends upon it. The relationship would be close, almost intimate, for quite other reasons. ANZUS was Australia’s quid pro quo for signing the American-designed peace treaty with Japan after the Second World War while, for the Americans, there was benefit in gaining a Pacific ally in the Cold War. When it was signed, Australia had already committed naval, ground and air units to the American-led force defending South Korea.

Australian-American defence co-operation has a long history. It is somewhat fanciful to see the visit 100 years ago of America’s Great White Fleet as somehow launching that co-operation, although certainly it served both parties’ interests at the time. There was closer co-operation on the battlefield in France in 1917 and 1918 when newly arrived American troops were integrated with Australians mainly as a learning exercise and until the American commander, General Pershing, put a stop to it. True co-operation did not begin until 1942 when the vital interests of both countries in dealing with Japanese aggression merged.

Australia is of course much the smaller partner in the alliance. Our contribution to such conflicts as Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East and Afghanistan has been little more than token and certainly not proportionate to that of the United States. Until now, the Americans do not seem to have objected. Their praise and gratitude have ever been fulsome, certainly greater than warranted by the scale of the Australian commitment. As long as the Cold War was alive—as in Korea and Vietnam—the Americans seemed to be grateful to have an additional flag to fly outside their headquarters demonstrating that they were not alone in their crusade.

More recently, as American power becomes stretched by the unending conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are rumbles from Washington that Australia’s rhetoric is not matched by its performance. Despite the depth and breadth of the relationship, those rumbles need to be taken seriously. Australians need to realise that ANZUS does not excuse Australia from pulling its weight in alliance conflicts, nor does it excuse Australia from doing more in its own defence. Since 1944 when Australia began to run down its defence forces well before the end of the Second World War, Australia has never seriously provided for its own military security.

There is fortunately another reason for the alliance to retain some strength. Since the end of the Cold War, the Anglophone countries of the United States, Britain, Australia and, to a lesser extent, Canada and New Zealand have been active in seeking jointly or separately to enforce a degree of global stability whether that be through active intervention in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor, or less successfully through the United Nations in its peacekeeping role. This reflects the reality that, following the Cold War and its coincidental communications revolution, any significant threat even to local security affects the global interest. The United States has attempted with limited success to engage the non-Anglo nations of NATO in a process that has gone so far as to see an Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, with no standing in NATO calling upon the Council of that organisation to do more in Afghanistan. This is somewhat presumptuous not only because Australia is not a member of NATO but also because our own contribution is negligible except in the minds of the spin doctors.

Australia has a range of less important security relations with countries such as Japan and India. To a large extent, these are currently little more than exploratory, with each country gaining insight into the outlook of the other. They may—and probably should—develop into something closer, especially as China becomes more assertive and less responsive to the concerns of others in regional and global security affairs. China understandably and probably correctly sees such discussions as harbingers of a “China containment” policy in the region, but China’s tenderness should not be a deterrent.

Under the Charter of the United Nations, Article 2 requires inter alia that “All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter”, while Article 43 requires that:

“All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.”

Australia has frequently provided such forces for peacekeeping and peace enforcement. This was particularly the case during the 1990s when the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to usher in a new world order that would allow the UN to achieve its peacekeeping mandate. In actual practice, the UN proved incapable of effectively keeping the peace. Too many national elements of its forces were characterised by incompetence, corruption or timidity and they became little more than observers of a continuing conflict. To be fair, they were often hampered by rules of engagement written by diplomats whose stock in trade was a horror of military force, especially their own. Increasingly, Australia insisted upon conditions that the UN was reluctant to accept while, in 1999 with the collapse of order in East Timor, Australia demanded a peace enforcement mandate that allowed the use of force. The UN’s record in places such as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia is so bad as to discourage any militarily competent country from contributing to UN peacekeeping. This is a disgraceful situation but, pending serious reforms, it will continue with every failure further reducing whatever credibility remains to the UN’s peacekeeping mandate.

Challenges

For Australia, the immediate problem lies in the so-called arc of instability, that group of mini-states in the South-West Pacific which are either failed or failing. They are states by courtesy only because, while they have all the panoply of the much larger nations that they try to imitate, they lack the fundamental national unity that characterises the legitimate state. The challenge is to support these states, to help them keep domestic peace in the face of internal stresses and external criminal or larger pressures. As we can see in East Timor and the Solomons at least, the task is seemingly endless.

The tendency in such cases is to use military forces to maintain peace and to provide some degree of developmental assistance. As I have argued in Quadrant (“Australia and the Arc of Instability”, November 2006), what is needed is less military involvement and more social development coupled with administrative reform using some kind of Australian Peace Corps. Even then, the fundamental problem posed by Australia’s regional great power status will remain and Australia will—must in our own interest—continue to be the effective guarantor of the security of those states including Papua New Guinea.

The modernisation of China in recent years has seen close attention paid to the strategic implications. China is investing heavily in modern military capabilities although it is still one or two generations behind the United States. The focus of commentary has tended to be on China’s military capabilities rather than on the strategic intentions it might be inclined to form. Certainly, the tension between China and Taiwan is perceived as raising the odds of armed conflict but both parties have been at pains to limit the dispute to rhetorical levels. There are other territorial disputes with China’s neighbours over island territories in the East and South China seas. It may well be that China is preparing the military capabilities to resolve these disputes by force but even if that were to happen, the strategic picture would not change much. By capturing those islands, China would improve its capacity to interdict shipping bound for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan but such interdiction would be a two-edged sword that would inevitably engage an American intervention. China’s dependence upon commodity imports is almost as great as Japan’s, so trade interruption would rebound to considerable effect.

China has tended to argue that the United States is intent upon “containing” China with a set of military arrangements that restrict any Chinese maritime freedom. It is a nonsense argument but China does have some reason for concern because it is surrounded by such traditional foes as Vietnam, Japan and Russia. America’s involvement in the region can certainly be characterised as protecting Taiwan but, even there, its aim is primarily to deter the use of force and to ensure the freedom of navigation.

Given China’s resurgence and its role a major trading partner, some commentators in Australia have wondered aloud whether Australia should not shift its security dependence from the United States to China as offering a surer bet for Australia’s future security. The thought was probably little more than an attempt to fly a kite with a touch of anti-Americanism but it quickly fell to ground. America’s military technological security and its global reach are so great that dumping the American alliance in favour of a highly speculative Chinese alliance would be akin to backing a three-legged brumby in a race for thoroughbreds.

The Treaty Basis of Australia’s Defence Policy

Since the end of the Vietnam War and the abandonment of any form of conscription, a parade of policy statements has presented little more than a collection of slogans including core force, self-reliance, defence of Australia and more. The definitions of each seemed to vary according to the moment but the only consistent feature, especially since 1973, was the erection of an immense, complicated, ponderous, costly and wasteful administrative system.

To be sure, there has been throughout the period something that could be characterised as a core force, that is a defence force of limited capability that is capable of expansion in time of emergency or recognised warning. The Australian Defence Force today is, however, not a core force. It has the limited capability but because of the very long lead times required for the acquisition of equipment and skills, it cannot be expanded in any timely way. It is a highly professional force but it is not capable of sustained operations on anything but a very small scale. Thus we boast of our short-term commitment of 5000-odd troops to East Timor in 1999 but forget that with a population one third of today’s, we deployed armed forces 100 times larger in 1943. Even so, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the force is not being used to the extent possible while, at the same time, some key personnel, especially in our special forces, are being used up to the point of exhaustion.

The OECD recently pointed out that Australia is the thirteenth-largest spender on defence in the world. It is a meaningless measure because ours is a high-wage, high-cost defence force but we don’t get much for all that money. Modern equipment is very expensive and so are well-trained military personnel. In fact, in terms of another less than useful but somewhat more credible measure, Australia ranks eighty-third in the world in the proportion of GDP devoted to defence.

One might not quite cynically argue that Australia’s real defence policy since 1945 has been to create treaty-based alliances but to make no more than token commitments when those alliances come under pressure of conflict. We cannot contribute much more than small niche capabilities to a coalition operation and, as with the special forces, those are being used up too quickly. In the meantime, the spin doctors pump out fulsome praise backed by the ever-polite Americans who are unable to fit us into their operations but like to have the Australian flag on the headquarters.

But we also sign up to alliances with mendicants who depend on us to bail them out of trouble. In our arc of instability, this has already created difficulties and could well do so in the future, especially if those mendicants perceive that we cannot match our rhetoric with deeds and proceed to look elsewhere for their security blanket.

There is a sense in Australia that all we have to do in our defence is sign up to alliances and make the token commitments. In the rhetoric, great play is made of shared values but not much of shared interests. Indeed, there is little discussion in Australia of just what our security interests are. Yet the reality is that, as Castlereagh once asserted: “A nation has neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.” Allies will support each other if their mutual interests are engaged but those interests will be the subject of calculation rather than wishful thinking.

Certainly, alliances have no little strategic value. Their value lies, however, less in their substance than in the creation of strategic uncertainty. While a threatened signatory to a treaty cannot be certain of its allies’ support, an aggressor’s confidence will be lessened by the need to factor in the existence of an alliance of which its target is a part. To exacerbate this uncertainty, we need to show that we are prepared and willing to do our share in case our bluff is called.