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Former Australian diplomat John Lander has made explosive claims that Washington is setting Australia up for disaster in any confrontation — with Lander believing the US will be able to sit on the sidelines while Australia is left holding the bag.
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It is a unique relationship forged in the fires of conflict. While many credit the US-Australia relationship to the dark days of the Second World War in the Pacific following the collapse of the British Empire’s presence in the East following the fall of Singapore, the relationship between the two nations predates this, with Australian and US soldiers serving side-by-side during the First World War on the bloody fields of Hamel.
Through the decades, Australia has stood proudly by the side of the United States as its relationship of strategic dependence shifted from the British Empire to the world’s new post-Second World War superpower — from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, Australia has provided an invaluable, yet, small, niche capability to the United States.
As the global dynamics have changed and evolved, particularly in the aftermath of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, this relationship also evolved, seeing Australia become the “loyal deputy” to the United States’ sheriff in the Indo-Pacific, with Australia paying into the “insurance policy” to the US strategic alliance with many regional powers seeing Australia as somewhat of a tainted actor.
At the same time, Australia’s economic relationship shifted from a US and European-focused market, to a resource-driven export economy heavily dependent on the voracious appetite of the growing Indo-Pacific — central to this is Australia’s economic relationship with the world’s rising superpower, China, which in recent years has been marred by tensions following the previous government’s support for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
While this economic relationship has begun to thaw in recent months following the Australian federal election in May 2022, the strategic tensions between the two nations remain less then ideal, particularly as Beijing continues to remain belligerent toward the island nation of Taiwan, while also continuing to expand the capability of the People’s Liberation Army and its presence through the South China Sea.
These issues are further exacerbated by Beijing’s growing influence through the South Pacific, debt trap diplomacy across the Indian Ocean region and into Africa, and of course, the growing number of penetrations of American airspace by totally not-surveillance balloons — all of which highlight the increasing multipolarity of the world order.
Enter former Australian diplomat John Lander who has warned that Australia runs the risk of being turned into the “Ukraine” of the Indo-Pacific and eventually abandoned by the United States as it can afford to “can stand off on the sidelines” as a result of Washington’s increased influence over Australia’s growing “militarisation”.
Speaking to the Chinese Global Times news outlet, Lander, the former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s China Section during the official Australian recognition of Communist China in the early 1970s, has expressed major concerns about the future of Australia’s relationship with the world’s two most powerful nations.
US is not preparing to go to war, it’s preparing Australia to
Perhaps Lander’s most outrageous claim is the United States is manipulating Australia, its policymakers and the strategic policy community to prepare the nation to fight instead of the United States, when he states, “In its determination to preserve its hegemonic position, the United States has made it very clear that it will use all means, including military means, to sustain its position as No. 1. It also has made it very clear in many statements that in regard to the principal adversaries, as it calls Russia and China, both of whom are nuclear armed states, it will not engage directly in war with either. It will conduct its wars against Russia and against China by proxy.”
For Lander, this statement spells trouble, major trouble for Australia which he believes is unnecessarily sleepwalking towards catastrophe as a “proxy” which he further expands upon, stating, “The US has a fallback position of developing Australia as an alternative proxy adversary against China. We went along with that. Under the previous government, we were saying if Taiwan were to be attacked, then Australia would have to come to the defense of Taiwan, and we would be involved.
“So we had already accepted the United States’ plan to involve China in a war, specifically conducted in such a manner as to enable the United States to continually pretend that it itself is not actually engaged in such a war,” Lander’s statement details what he believes is the “ideological” capture of Australia’s policymakers and strategic policy community when it comes to responding to Beijing’s rising assertiveness in the region.
Adding to this further, Lander believes that the “so-called threat” posed by China is “not, in fact, a military threat by China at all. It is a challenge more than a threat by China to the US domination of the international financial system”. It is important to understand that China, like Australia has benefited immensely from the order they now seek to challenge, for the economic and industrial growth experienced by China since the modernisation efforts of the 1980s are all contingent on the US-led world order which has enabled the globalisation of capital and easy access to key industrial inputs.
Australian lessons from the Ukraine conflict
It is no secret that the conflict in Ukraine has dramatically reshaped the global power paradigms — while Russia has failed to perform the way many analysts and intelligence experts believed — they are fighting true to Russian doctrine, that is slow, grinding, manpower-heavy waves of heavy firepower — in contrast, the Western-backed Ukraine has shifted to a more Western way of fighting.
For Lander, Ukraine’s clear status as a US “proxy”, and thus “slave”, presents some serious concerns for Australia, expressing a concern that our “ruling elite” are clearly ideologically captured by the US, stating, “there is no one that I can see in our ruling elite, in the government, that appears to be willing to say no to the United States.
“There are plenty of reasons including historic ones. Most politicians in power in Australia are still afraid of the influence that America could exert in Australia to basically cause them to lose office. America is extremely skilled at conducting regime change operations all around the world. I think if Australia were to defy the United States, we would find ourselves in trouble in terms of potential destabilizing in Australia,” Lander states.
This wild accusation appears to be more based on Lander’s own political leanings rather than any basis in reality, Lander also seems to forget that Ukraine is a landlocked country and Australia, as an export-focused economy and nation is an island that can be relatively easily isolated and cut-off by any potentially adversary with a sizeable naval capability.
In overlooking this, but by also highlighting the lessons to be learned from the Ukraine conflict, Lander reinforces calls for Australia to embrace a greater policy of strategic and tactical independence — something that will require greater emphasis on economic, political and strategic independence and investment in the nation’s capacity to operate independently in the furtherance of its own interests in the Indo-Pacific.
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.
