Stephen Fallon, Foreign Affairs, Defence
and Security
Key issue
As a middle power in an era of increasing great-power competition, Australia lacks the strategic weight to single-handedly ensure its own security. Throughout its history, it has chosen to ally with great powers: initially Great Britain, before realigning towards the US during the Second World War. Australia has fought alongside them as a junior partner in conflicts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to forge enduring relationships and maximise the probability that they would defend Australia were it threatened.
Australian concerns about the trajectory of a more aggressive China have driven the ANZUS alliance, typically referred to as the Alliance, to greater levels of intimacy. However, Australia’s efforts to build stronger relationships with both old and new partners, such as Japan and India, suggests that it has long-term concerns about the reliability of its alliance with the US and is seeking to mitigate future risks by diversifying its range of security partners.
The ANZUS alliance
Australia’s alliance with the US is the
cornerstone of its strategic policy. Its close ties to the US provide it with a
variety of benefits, including access to US intelligence, cutting-edge
military technology, military
exercise opportunities and access
to US defence and foreign affairs decision-makers that is arguably
disproportionate for a country with Australia’s limited strategic weight. The
alliance enhances the lethality of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) via
access to intelligence and military technology, while defence analysts broadly
agree that achieving strategic independence would cost
more but fail to deliver a similar level of defence capability.
History
The ANZUS alliance was formed in 1951 by a
trilateral security treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the US. Designed
to ensure the security of the Pacific region throughout the Cold War, the treaty
has only been formally invoked once – by former
Australian prime minister, John Howard, in response to the September 11
attacks on the US.
The treaty was energetically pursued by Australia
(and New Zealand), with the US demonstrating some reluctance. Australia’s
desire for a security treaty with the US was driven by
concerns about US plans to rebuild Japan as a bulwark against communism.
Notably, it was the first example of Australia forming a political alliance
without British involvement. Though Britain believed it should be included as
the head of the Commonwealth, and campaigned to be a signatory, Australia, New
Zealand and the US rebuffed its efforts.
Though Australia and New Zealand participated in Cold
War conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam wars, they did not do so under the
framework of ANZUS. The alliance was
challenged after the 1984 New Zealand general election, which brought the
New Zealand Labour Party to power with a commitment to make New Zealand
‘nuclear free’. As a result, the New Zealand Government refused to permit US
naval vessels it considered could possibly carry nuclear weapons to visit New
Zealand. This clashed with US policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence
of nuclear weapons aboard visiting vessels. Consequently, in 1986, the US
suspended its security obligation to New Zealand. However, Australia and the US
quickly re-affirmed their bilateral relationship.
Today, Australia enjoys bilateral security
relationships with both New Zealand and the US under ANZUS. The treaty, while not
formally revoked after the US- New Zealand nuclear dispute, no longer fully
exists in practice. Nevertheless, a security relationship between the US and
New Zealand exists as members of the Five Eyes intelligence community,
discussed later in this article.
What does the ANZUS Treaty require of its
signatories?
The ANZUS
Treaty is somewhat less watertight than some Australians likely believe.
Unlike the North
Atlantic Treaty that established NATO, which commits its members to collective
defence under Article 5, ANZUS provides a significant degree of flexibility.
For example, Article
III of the ANZUS Treaty states that the allies will ‘consult together
whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political
independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened in the Pacific’.
The use of the word ‘consult’ suggests that neither side is obliged to commit
to military action. It is feasible that in the event of a crisis, Australia (or
the US), may choose not to commit military forces.
Further reducing any sense of obligation, Article
IV of the treaty also notes that each ally will meet ‘common danger in
accordance with its constitutional processes’. This suggests, for example, that
the US Congress may vote not to declare war in a crisis. Similarly, Australian leaders
could decide against a military response, even if the US called for one.
Key Australian decision-makers have highlighted the
ambiguity at the heart of ANZUS. In 2004, Foreign Minister Alexander
Downer observed that ANZUS would be invoked in the event of an attack on
the US or Australian mainland, but not necessarily by military activity
elsewhere, and indicated that Australia would not consider itself obligated to assist
a US defence of Taiwan. More recently, former Defence Minister Peter Dutton argued it
was ‘inconceivable’
that Australia would not fight alongside the US to defend Taiwan, before
softening his language by claiming that Australia would decide
what is in its best interests if such a scenario occurred.
Future prospects
The reliability of the US alliance has been
questioned by some analysts due to 2 unfavourable trends. First, the Trump administration
brought into sharp relief the hyper-partisanship of domestic American politics
and the wavering commitment of one major party to international alliances.
Though President Biden has gone some way to rebuilding trust among US allies, doubts
are emerging about US staying power now that the populist, protectionist sentiments
that Trump brought into the mainstream seem set to endure.
Secondly, the shifting balance of power in East
Asia means that US primacy is no longer guaranteed as China emerges as a peer
competitor. Hugh White, a prominent Australian strategic analyst, has argued
that this shifting balance of power means that Australia
cannot rely on America and needs to prepare to fight alone to defend
itself. Another doyen of Australian strategic analysis, Paul Dibb, takes an
opposing view, contending that, regardless of who occupies the White House, the
alliance will remain the wellspring of Australia security, without which
the ADF would not be a credible military force. The Morrison Government appeared
to lean towards this view, as demonstrated by the signing of the AUKUS partnership,
discussed below.
Bilateral security relationships
Before considering AUKUS, it is worth
noting that Australia is also cultivating bilateral security relationships with
countries such as Japan, India and South Korea, consequential powers located in
the Indo-Pacific that share
concerns about
China’s strategic trajectory. These growing bilateral ties complement
cooperation between the partners in minilateral organisations, such as the
Quad, discussed later in this article. However, it is possible that Australia
is cultivating these relationships as a
hedge, in case US security commitments lose credibility in the future.
As the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade highlights,
Australia has built a broad security
relationship with Japan, which it elevated to a Special
Strategic Partnership in 2014. The 2 countries hold regular 2+2 meetings between
their ministers for defence and foreign affairs. Furthermore, the 2 countries
have signed a Reciprocal
Access Agreement. As the Australian
Institute of International Affairs observes, this is designed to facilitate:
… closer
and smoother practical military-to-military cooperation
between the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the Japan Self-Defense Force
(JSDF) by legislating sensitive areas, such as access to one another’s military
bases and ports, logistical streamlining, and harmonising relevant security
protocols. This is designed to facilitate joint military training and exercises
on Australian and Japanese territory by cutting some of the existing red tape.
Australian strategic ties with India are also
growing, with an Indian analyst, Dhruva Jaishankar, identifying rapid
developments since 2014 in the form of military exercises, civil nuclear
cooperation, and the establishment of dialogues at the ministerial level. This
relationship is widely understood to have been catalysed
by the challenge posed by China and it reached new heights in 2020 with the
establishment of a Comprehensive
Strategic Partnership and Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement designed to
promote interoperability between the 2 countries’ armed forces.
Australia also signed a Comprehensive
Strategic Partnership with South Korea in 2021, strengthening security
cooperation between the 2 countries. They also hold 2+2
meetings between their foreign and defence ministers to facilitate
discussion on areas of shared concern. Jada Fraser, a Johns Hopkins analyst,
has observed that, as 2 middle-powers, Australia and South Korea have shared
interests in maintaining stability in the Indo-Pacific and protecting the
rules-based international order. In this context, it is interesting to note
that Australia has recently purchased
howitzers from a Korean defence firm and may
yet buy infantry fighting vehicles from the same company.
Minilateral security relationships
AUKUS
Announced in September 2021, AUKUS
is a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK
and the US. The centrepiece of the partnership is the collaboration between the
3 parties to help Australia acquire a nuclear submarine capability. Achieving
this ambition will be an
expensive, complex endeavour with the first boat scheduled to be
commissioned by the late 2030s, though this timeline is subject to the delays
that often bedevil complex military procurement projects.
The AUKUS announcement also articulated other more readily
achievable outcomes, including enhanced interoperability between the 3 partners,
with efforts focused on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI),
quantum technologies, and additional undersea capabilities. Australia has perhaps
seen the first fruits of these endeavours in the announcement of the REDSPICE project,
which will expand
the Australian Signals Directorate’s cyber capabilities (p. 85) and the
announcement that Defence will partner with a firm called Anduril to build an
autonomous undersea warfare capability (an uncrewed submarine).
AUKUS has emerged from a confluence of interests between
the 3 parties. The Morrison Government, as highlighted above, appeared to
determine that it needs to draw even closer to the US, the only country with
the strategic weight required to balance the growing power of China. The new
Albanese Government appears to be following this line. The US, for its part, is
using AUKUS to cement the alliance with Australia, which some American
foreign policy officials had viewed as susceptible to ‘flipping’ and
leaning towards China. An Australian nuclear force will also, from the allies’
perspective, improve the correlation of forces in the
Indo-Pacific in the context of China’s rapidly growing navy. From Britain’s
perspective, AUKUS offers opportunities
for its defence industry and an opportunity to implement its blueprint for
‘Global Britain’ as a more globally-engaged
post-Brexit actor.
All parties will seek to benefit from economies of
scale, particularly Australia and the UK, which lack the resources to compete
at the cutting edge of emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing.
To put the challenge in context, China
spent $378 billion on research and development in 2020, according to CNBC,
and in 2021 announced that spending will increase by more than 7% per year
between 2021 and 2025.
As for the future of AUKUS, some analysts have
suggested that the scope of AUKUS could be widened to include collaboration
with other countries concerned about China’s direction. An AUKUS Plus
arrangement could include collaboration with states such as Japan,
India and South Korea, though this does not seem to be likely in the immediate
future. While the former Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has called upon
Japan to work
with AUKUS on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, and Japan’s
ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, has stated his country is willing to contribute
to AUKUS projects, both the US and Japan have denied
reports that Japan was invited to join the partnership. However, it is
possible that the issue of expanding AUKUS will be raised during the span of
the 47th Parliament, particularly if tensions with China grow as a consequence
of, for example, escalating border
conflict with India or increasing tensions
with Japan in the East China Sea.
The Five Eyes intelligence community
In addition to AUKUS, Australia, the US and UK are
also members of the Five Eyes intelligence community, along with Canada and New
Zealand. The community has its origins in the 1946 UKUSA Agreement, which the
RAND Corporation describes as
‘an unprecedented intelligence alliance that quickly incorporated
Australia, Canada, and New Zealand’. The UKUSA Agreement underpinning the
community – referred to interchangeably as a relationship,
alliance or partnership by members – is a formal arrangement to share
intelligence, including communications,
translations, analysis and code breaking information.
The community is based on intimate collaboration
and the understanding that intelligence-sharing is a valuable force multiplier
that provides significant advantages to each member. The community operated on
a global basis during the Cold War to meet the political and military threat
posed by the Soviet Union before pivoting to tackle the challenges posed by
transnational terrorism and to facilitate the military operations that followed
the September 11 attacks.
RAND highlights the complex
security environment the community faces today, noting:
… it no longer faces a single predominant
threat. The intelligence communities of all five nations must now contend with
self-radicalized terrorists at home, master an entire new domain of cyber
threats, and remain ahead of Russia and China. And the Five Eyes must do all
this while recruiting and retaining the best staff, allaying concerns over
civil liberties, and managing the wavering political will for international
cooperation.
In recognition of the growing challenges facing the
community and the benefits endowed by international cooperation –
contestability, a wider pool of expertise and the advantages of scale – some analysts have discussed the possibility of expanding
the community to ‘six eyes’ by inviting Japan to join. The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has
made supportive remarks, and Japan’s ambassador to
Australia has stated that he would ‘like
to see this idea become reality in the near future’.
An additional issue that may emerge is the
position of New Zealand within the community, with a
Canadian Security Intelligence Service report noting that an academic workshop had
considered New Zealand particularly vulnerable to Chinese influence, which
could risk exposing the Five Eyes network to unauthorised access.
New Zealand appears to be becoming something of an
outlier among Five Eyes countries due to its reticence to criticise China, with
one
academic claiming this lack of unity ‘gives China confidence that
its policies of divide and rule, its policies of effectively buying peoples’
and countries’ loyalties through major investment though special trade deals,
through guaranteeing access to China’s tourists, China’s dollars, China’s
market is working’.
The Quad
As its name suggests, the Quadrilateral Security
Dialogue, commonly termed the Quad, consists of 4 members – Australia, the US,
Japan and India. As the Council on
Foreign Relations highlights, maritime cooperation between these powers
began in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but cooperation has widened
to embrace a broader agenda, including security, economic and health issues.
The Quad is not a formal alliance and its efforts
have waxed
and waned in the past. However, from 2016, shared
concerns about the challenge that China poses to the US-led order in the
Indo-Pacific have encouraged greater cooperation between Quad members. They have
conducted
military exercises, assisted COVID-19
response efforts, identified
a role in addressing vaccine production, climate change and emerging
technologies, and seek to help the region develop
high-quality infrastructure, offering an alternative to China’s Belt and
Road Initiative.
Some commentators have argued that the Quad should
be expanded to include other regional powers wary of China’s growing influence.
France, which controls significant territory in the Indo-Pacific, is often suggested
as a potential member. Some analysts have also recommended British
membership, citing
the UK’s growing strategic relationship with Japan, interest in maintaining
the existing order and existing status as a maritime power in the region.
Five Power Defence Arrangements
Like ANZUS, the 1971 Five Power
Defence Arrangements (FPDA) is a legacy of the Cold War. Consisting of
Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK, the FPDA commits its
members to consult
in the case of an attack on Malaysia or Singapore.
As the International Institute for Strategic
Studies (IISS) highlights, the FPDA was formed
during an era of conflict in Southeast Asia and when Indonesia’s ‘confrontation’
– a small, undeclared
war between Indonesia and Malaysia involving troops from Australia, New
Zealand and Britain – was a recent memory. The arrangements therefore tied
Australia, NZ and the UK to the defence of Singapore and Malaysia.
While it may appear somewhat dated, the IISS argues
that the FPDA holds particular
significance for Australia, ‘as a sub-treaty recognition that Peninsular
Malaysia is tied tangibly to its security and falls within Canberra’s outer
defence perimeter’. Australia today maintains
a military presence at the Royal Malaysian Air Force’s Base Butterworth.
A number of challenges face the FPDA. A key one is
the issue of interoperability, with countries such as New Zealand and Malaysia falling
far behind the other partners in terms of military capability, creating what
the IISS terms a 2-tier
grouping. The FPDA also suffers from a lack of attention, which is
typically focused on more high-profile security partnerships. The IISS observes
that the inclusion of Malaysia is crucial – if it loses interest in participating, ‘Australia,
the UK and New Zealand would lose
significant access for their armed forces in Southeast Asia’.
Finally, cooperation with other countries is complicated
by conservatism – Malaysia and Singapore fear expansion would dilute the
focus on defending them, while Australia, New Zealand and Britain fear it would
dilute their importance as security providers.
As the East Asia Forum observes, Southeast
Asia’s strategic circumstances have changed significantly since the FPDA
was established, with US-China competition intensifying across the region. As
China’s increasing assertiveness brings it into conflict with Malaysia’s South
China Sea claims and the risk of war rises in the context of great-power
competition, the little-known FPDA may gain increasing prominence.
Global security relationships – Australia’s
relationship with NATO
Though Australia is not a NATO member, its ties
to the organisation have grown as a result of ADF deployments to
Afghanistan under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. The 2
parties have signed a number of agreements to institutionalise their
relationship across a variety of themes, including defence capacity-building,
crisis management and Women, Peace and Security. Australia is one of NATO’s Enhanced
Opportunity Partners, a program that aims to maintain and deepen
cooperation between partners that have made significant contributions to
NATO-led operations and missions. This status includes enhanced access to
interoperability programs and exercises, and more sharing of information,
including lessons learned, which will help to improve the effectiveness of the
ADF.
Most recently, in April 2022, Foreign Minister
Marise Payne attended
a meeting of NATO foreign affairs ministers in Brussels to discuss the
coordinated response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, Minister
Payne also announced that Australia
will partner with the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence to
help strengthen NATOs capacity to address hybrid threats and to counter
disinformation. As part of this endeavour, Australia will initially contribute
to research conducted at the centre through a seconded Australian official.
Australia has also begun the process of becoming a longer-term contributing
partner of the centre.
Further reading
Michael Fullilove, ‘America and Australia are Back on the Same Page’, Lowy Institute, 11 February 2022.
Hugh White, ‘Australia Must Plan to Defend Itself Alone’, The Strategist (blog), 13 January 2020.
Emma Shortis, ‘The ANZUS Treaty Does Not Make Australia Safer. Rather, it Fuels a Fear of Perpetual Military Threat’, The Conversation, 1 September 2021.
Peter Dean, ‘ANZUS Pivot Points Reappraising “The Alliance” for a New Strategic Age’, Black Swan strategy paper, (Perth: UWA Defence & Security Institute, March 2022).
Alexander L. Vuving, ‘AUKUS is a Short-Term Mess but a Long-Term Win for Australia’, Foreign Policy, online, 11 October 2021.
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