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Since the end of the Cold War, much of the world has operated under the aegis of the US strategic umbrella. Now, in an increasingly contested and multipolar world, can Australia and the region benefit from a distinctly Australian strategic umbrella?
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It is an undisputable fact that much of the peace, prosperity and stability of the post-Second World War paradigm came as a direct result of the US-led global order.
By putting an end to the often-ancient rivalries between varying imperial powers, the United States, through its post-war might, guaranteed the freedom of the seas and promoted an explosion of free trade across the globe paving the way for the modern, interconnected global economy and period of innovation we enjoy today.
Through this might, both conventional in its strategic arsenal, the United States established what has become known as a “strategic umbrella” where for greater input into their ally’s security policy and easier access to their markets, the United States would do the heavy lifting on the global geostrategic stage.
Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Western Europe have served as the beneficiaries of this new globalised world and radically new approach, ironed out at the Bretton Woods Conference, and then more drastically implemented through policies like the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe following the devastation of the Second World War, this golden era of the Pax Americana is now coming to an end.
This epochal end was reinforced by comments made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 22 December 2022, when he stated: “When it comes to Russia’s war against Ukraine, if we were still in Afghanistan, it would have, I think, made much more complicated the support that we’ve been able to give and that others have been able to give Ukraine to resist and push back against the Russian aggression.”
Ready or not, this new paradigm presents new challenges for Australia’s geostrategic policy community and the planning surrounding the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) as for the first time in lived memory, both we and our great and powerful friend, the United States, face an increasingly contested and competitive world.
Equally to these challenges, this new paradigm presents new opportunities for Australia to entrench itself as an economic, political, and strategic leader, benefactor and critically, beneficiary in the fastest growing region of the world.
Nowhere is this more clearly articulated then by former prime minister Robert Menzies, who in 1950, outlined not just a call to action for Australia, but also identified the nation’s responsibility to support the development and maintenance of a peaceful world, saying: “If we want to make our contribution to the pacification of the world, it is our duty to present to the world the spectacle of a rich country with a great people, with an adequate population — with a population which may justly say to the rest of the world: ‘We are here; we propose to maintain our integrity as a nation; and our warrant for that is that we are using the resources which God has given into our hands’.”
Defining our area of responsibility
Central to understanding Australia's role as a true strategic benefactor in the Indo-Pacific, we need to clearly identify our primary area of responsibility. While many analysts, commentators and political decision makers continue to place growing emphasis on the South Pacific as Australia's historic primary area of responsibility, largely due to recent decades of Australian intervention, neglecting the shifting dynamics across Southeast Asia and through to the Indian Ocean.
Despite the recent emphasis on the South Pacific, the radically different power dynamics between these disparate areas presents real challenges and opportunities for Australia's strategic policy makers to grapple with and plan for accordingly, particularly as rival great powers and emerging middle powers compete for resource access and work to build spheres of influence throughout the region.
Accordingly, the growing economic importance of the nations bordering the Indian Ocean and throughout Southeast Asia up to the Philippines, combined with the well understood strategic importance of these areas require expanded and significant focus for Australia moving forward - while costly, the benefits of establishing Australia as a neutral, strategic benefactor and 'offshore' balancer provides immense benefits in the face of mounting strategic challenges.
The rapidly deteriorating circumstances from the east coast of Africa to the Bismarck Archipelago and up to the Philippines, which include Australia's strategically vital sea lines of communication and resupply, particularly for liquid energy, as well as market access for our raw materials and agricultural produce will require significant capability investment to ensure Australia's national security and resilience remains intact.
Learning from lived experience
Australia as both a continent and a nation is unique in its position, enjoying relative geographic isolation from the flash points of global and regional conflagrations of the 20th century. Blessed with unrivalled resource wealth and with the growing pace of automation, industrial potential, the nation has been able to embrace vastly different approaches to the nation’s strategic role and responsibilities.
Tactical and strategic realities, largely the nation’s dependence on a “great power” benefactor, have ensured that Australia and its regional neighbours have enjoyed the stability afforded to them by the strategic umbrella of the UK, prior to the Second World War and the US in the aftermath.
Despite this, the nation has at times exercised a degree of tactical and strategic independence within the confines of this umbrella, which empowered Australia to directly engage in regional strategic and security affairs, actively deterring aggression and hostility in Malaya during the Konfrontasi and communist aggression in Korea and Vietnam as part of the “Forward Defence” policy.
Growing domestic political changes following Vietnam saw a dramatic shift in the nation’s defence policy and the rise of the “Defence of Australia” doctrine. This shift in doctrine resulted in a departure from the hard-earned lessons of the pre-World War II years, with Australia abrogating its responsibilities and interests through Southeast Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific for the safety and security of a larger role for the United States.
Today, the regional geopolitical and strategic situation is eerily similar to the decade preceding the Second World War with serious questions raised about Australia’s preparedness, resilience and capacity to resist a rival great power with limited input from its primary security benefactor.
However, unlike the decades preceding the Second World War, Australia has lived experience of both living under a strategic umbrella and operating one as it did in large part during the decade immediately following the end of the War in the Pacific, providing a unique understanding of the benefits of establishing such a structure in concert with regional partners led by Australia.
Accept the truth — strategic umbrellas are inherently transactional arrangements
Whether Australia’s political and strategic leaders want to admit it or not, the post-war era of economic prosperity and political and strategic stability is dependent upon a transactional relationship between the United States and smaller powers, whether they be traditional “great powers” like the United Kingdom, or middle powers like Australia, with this new era spelling trouble for the future.
This is perhaps best explained by US geostrategic analyst and author Peter Zeihan, who explains, “Today’s economic landscape isn’t so much dependent upon as it is eminently addicted to American strategic and tactical overwatch ... Globalisation was always dependent upon the Americans’ commitment to the global order and that order hasn’t served Americans’ strategic interests since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Without the Americans riding herd on everyone, it is only a matter of time before something in East Asia or the Middle East or the Russian periphery (like, I don’t know, say, a war) breaks the global system beyond repair.”
Expanding on this, Zeihan adds, “Most people think of the Bretton Woods system as a sort of Pax Americana. The American Century, if you will. But that’s simply not the case. The entire concept of the order is that the United States disadvantages itself economically in order to purchase the loyalty of a global alliance. That is what globalisation is. The past several decades haven’t been an American Century. They’ve been an American sacrifice.”
This is particularly troubling for the US-led world, as an increasing number of countries begin to shift away from the dollar-backed trading system, driven by growing uptake by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economic, quasi-security bloc that continues to expand its influence across the Middle East, Africa, South America and to a lesser extent, Southeast Asia, effectively undermining the economic balance of power much of the world has become dependent upon.
While Zeihan paints a particularly grim picture of the US strategic umbrella, particularly for the US as the leading strategic benefactor for the global order, Australia can learn from the weakness of the US-designed system, while leveraging its strengths, providing the United States with a period of respite to regather its strength and resilience.
Such a shift in Australian doctrine requires a dramatic shift in thinking, relationship building and most importantly, policy making across domestic, industrial development and competitiveness, defence, and foreign affairs — with massive potential benefits for Australia’s economic prosperity, national security and resilience in the face of mounting geopolitical competition.
What constitutes an Australian ‘strategic umbrella’?
Contrary to what seems to be the unwritten rule of contemporary Australian strategic planning and diplomatic thinking, Australia embracing a more independent, almost selfish approach to strategic and defence policy would not be the end of Australia’s long-term security agreement with the United States. This underlying belief that if Australia were to act in defence and furtherance of its own objectives would draw American ire lands somewhere in the realm of naivete.
Broadly speaking, Australia shares the same objectives for the Indo-Pacific as the United States, Japan and South Korea. Looking further abroad, Australia also supports the continuation of the post-Second World War economic, political and strategic order — in fact, the nation’s wealth, security and stability are built upon the type of rules-based order in the style the US established.
So what building blocks does Australia need to lay in order to provide a regional strategic umbrella? Well in this instance, success leaves clues, and thankfully, historical forebears have identified the key “hard power” factors that underpin a “strategic umbrella”, namely:
- Conventional military capabilities – including air, land and sea-based power projection capabilities;
- Strategic deterrence capabilities – including but not limited to a nuclear triad, strategic bomber and naval strategic force multipliers; and
- Economic power – focused on maintaining strategic industries with a focus on being globally competitive across manufacturing, resource and energy, innovation and research and development.
As a nation, Australia is at a precipice and both the Australian public and the nation’s political and strategic leaders need to decide what they want the nation to be: do they want the nation to become an economic, political and strategic backwater caught between two competing great empires and a growing cluster of periphery great powers? Or does Australia “have a crack” and actively establish itself as a regional great power with all the benefits it entails?
Let us know in the comments if you’d like us to take a closer look at each of these factors in the Australian context for how they can be leveraged to maximise Australia’s geopolitical impact, economic resilience and national security.
Lessons for Australia’s future strategic planning
There is no doubt that Australia’s position and responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific region will depend on the nation’s ability to sustain itself economically, strategically and politically in the face of rising regional and global competition. Despite the nation’s virtually unrivalled wealth of natural resources, agricultural and industrial potential, there is a lack of a cohesive national security strategy integrating the development of individual, yet complementary public policy strategies to support a more robust Australian role in the region.
While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the socio-political and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.
Enhancing Australia’s capacity to act as an independent power, incorporating great power-style strategic economic, diplomatic and military capability serves as a powerful symbol of Australia’s sovereignty and evolving responsibilities in supporting and enhancing the security and prosperity of Indo-Pacific Asia, this is particularly well explained by Peter Zeihan, who explains: "A deglobalised world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies. Economically speaking, the whole was stronger for the inclusion of all its parts. It is where we have gotten our wealth and pace of improvement and speed. Now the parts will be weaker for their separation."
Accordingly, shifting the public discussion and debate away from the default Australian position of “it is all a little too difficult, so let’s not bother” will provide unprecedented economic, diplomatic, political and strategic opportunities for the nation.
As events continue to unfold throughout the region and China continues to throw its economic, political and strategic weight around, can Australia afford to remain a secondary power, or does it need to embrace a larger, more independent role in an era of increasing great power competition?
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch
Stephen Kuper
Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.
