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As debate over Australia’s defence spending intensifies, a glimmer of clarity emerged: strategic policy expert Sam Roggeveen has challenged the alignment between our national strategy and how we fund it.
Long-term readers will no doubt be familiar with a favourite bugbear of mine, that being Australia’s default position of letting our budget circumstances drive our defence strategy.
This has been the case explicitly since the end of the Cold War and the “collapse” of potential major conflict between the world’s major powers, as the world celebrated the “End of History” and the ensuing “Peace Dividend” which flavoured defence planning well into the 21st century.
Today, however, we know that those heady days of optimistic triumphalism were misguided as revisionist powers consolidated themselves and set about to leverage the post-Second World War economic, political and strategic order to undermine it from within.
While this process undoubtedly took time, the strategic patience and “century vision” of emerging powers, particularly that of the People’s Republic of China, have given way to far more provocative and coercive efforts to reshape the world order in their own image.
Flanked by nations like Russia, Iran and a growing constellation of other emerging powers, including India, Indonesia, Brazil, each with their own unique ambitions, designs and grievances against the Western World, in particular, the United States and its position as global hegemon.
Emboldened by the seemingly lethargic response by many Western nations, we have borne witness to the fraying of the post-war order and the severe lack of preparedness, resilience and resolve across the Western alliance network (particularly in the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine).
This conveniently brings us to Australia and it’s default “strategy” since the effective castration of the Australian armed forces beginning in the early 1980s, with the myopic emphasis on continental defence and the vaunted “Sea-Air Gap”, which can be best summarised as: “Don’t worry, the Yanks will show up to do the heavy lifting.”
A provocative statement to make, I know, but as the old saying goes, a bomber gets the heaviest flak when it is over the target.
In recent days, this appears to have been reinforced (at least in part) by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who, when pushed about requests made by the Trump administration via its Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, that Australia accelerate defence spending to at least 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) (up from the current projection of 2.33 per cent by 2033–34), effectively spat the dummy.
"We determine our defence policy here. We’re a sovereign nation that needs to have pride in our sovereignty and in our capacity to make decisions in our national interest," the Prime Minister shot back at journalists in Perth.
Adding further fuel to the claims that the Prime Minister was spitting the dummy is his response to prompts about the recently announced British Strategic Defence Review and plans to lift its defence spending to 3 per cent by 2030, with “Good on them. The UK is in a different place from Australia.”
Bringing us back to the never-ending debate about how much is enough for Australia and the intersection of spending with Australia’s “strategy” and questions about what Australia should be doing to guarantee its defence, with Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen in a piece titled The case against ramping up Australia’s defence spending: It’s not about the money, it’s about strategy.
Roggeveen began his analysis, saying, “There is near universal agreement that Australia should spend more money on defence. The big political parties want to spend more. The defence commentariat overwhelmingly agrees. And earlier this week, the United States made its views plain, with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth curtly telling Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles that ‘Australia should increase its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of its GDP as soon as possible’.”
Making the case
While setting the scene and establishing that there is at least some broad consensus on the state of the nation’s defence spending, Roggeveen quickly veered into a different but familiar camouflaged introduction central thesis (for those familiar with Roggeveen’s positions), namely, Australia embracing an “Echidna Strategy” focused almost exclusively on continental defence.
Roggeveen began this slide into advocating for his “Echidna Strategy”, saying, “Don’t get too hung up on the figures – measuring defence spending as a percentage of GDP is a ropey business. But for the record, the government has pledged to raise defence spending to 2.4 per cent, and at the last election, the Liberal Party said it would go to 3 per cent within a decade.
“Given that current spending is just over 2 per cent of GDP, moving up to 3.5 per cent is a major lift that would require the government to either borrow more, cut spending, increase taxation, or all three. Neither side of politics has the political will for that.”
This led into Roggeveen and his fellow “Echidna Strategy” enthusiast, Hugh White, to begin an attack on America’s commitment to the global order writ large, but specifically, its willingness to not only directly confront China in the Indo-Pacific, let alone defend Australia’s interests at the detriment of America’s national interests.
Roggeveen detailed this, saying, "As Hugh White says in his new Quarterly Essay, ‘Republican China hawks imagine that Trump has deserted Ukraine, abandoned Europe and courted Putin so that he can focus on defeating China to defend US regional and global leadership. But Trump has never believed that any of that really matters for America’.”
Now in some ways, the pair is 100 per cent correct. How can Australia and Australians expect another nation to prioritise our national interests over their own, when we won’t (or don’t) put act in such a way.
This position directly feeds into one of the central pillars of Roggeveen’s justification for an “Echidna Strategy” that being that the United States, as a whole, is less reliable, and will, as Chinese and other nation’s power continues to increase relatively, will become less reliable for allies who depend on the economic, political and strategic might of the US.
He said, “An alternative case for higher defence spending is that Australia needs to spend more precisely because the US is less reliable. That’s a more respectable argument. But it does raise uncomfortable questions about AUKUS, the plan to build eight nuclear-powered submarines for Australia’s navy, since those submarines really only make sense if Australia sees itself as an adjunct to a US-led military force.
“If Australia is going to revert to self-reliance, cancelling that submarine order would be a good start, because it would instantly free up a huge chunk of the defence budget. So would abandoning the planned big new warships for the navy, which are hopelessly vulnerable under modern combat conditions, as Russia has discovered in the Black Sea,” Roggeveen added.
Bringing Roggeveen to the “threat” assessments that are used to “make the case” for Australia – increasing our defence spending as requested by great power partners, like the United States.
Roggeveen said, “Finally, we should talk about a surprisingly neglected topic: the threat. The only real reason to raise defence spending is if you think the danger of military attack has gone up. Has it?
“Governments led by both major parties have produced policy papers which go some way to describing an increased threat from China … Defence commentators don’t have that excuse, yet to my knowledge, no major piece of research has been produced which details the military threat China poses to Australia.”
Seeking to push back against the public rhetoric around the real or perceived threat to Australia posed by China and its ambitions for the Indo-Pacific, Roggeveen said, “China’s military is formidable, but that’s no reason to abandon judgements about Australia’s defence that have stood the test of time. Defence planners have long recognised that the only way to project serious amounts of military force against Australia is to cross the vast sea-air gap to the north. Australia’s mission should be to defend that sea-air gap by maintaining forces which can shoot down planes and missiles, and sink ships and submarines, that encroach upon it.”
And that is where Roggeveen bells the cat, revealing his true motive, that being encouraging Australia to once again retreat into a “fortress Australia” posture, that can be charitably defined as “armed neutrality” at best, or cowardice at worst, making the debate far more simplistic and attractive to the majority of the Australian public.
But that doesn’t mean that Roggeveen’s point about our major problems beginning with strategy or rather our lack of a coherent, consistent and national strategy and articulated ambition for the nation isn’t wrong, quite the contrary, this point is incredibly valid and simply throwing more money at the problem hoping it goes away, without defining it is a recipe for disaster.
Final thoughts
If Australians are serious about building true “independence” in the Indo-Pacific – and thriving in a more competitive, disrupted global order – we need to think bigger, bolder and more strategically as a nation.
Defence spending alone won’t get us there. To hold our ground in tomorrow’s contested power landscape, we must sharpen our economic edge – boost resilience, grow capacity and drive competitiveness. The government’s mission should be unambiguous: supercharge the economy, create new opportunities and build a shield against economic coercion. In this era, economic strength is our ultimate deterrent.
That means embracing radical transparency, fostering a culture of innovation and forging real collaboration between policymakers, leaders and the public. Australians must be brought back into the fold – with a stake in the future and a voice in shaping national strategy.
We also need an identity check. Are we satisfied being a second rate, regional “middle power”? Or are we ready to step up, claim our place at the top table and fight for the best outcomes for the next generation?
In an age of great-power rivalry, band-aid solutions won’t cut it. We need a bold, long-term vision to secure Australia’s prosperity, security and freedom for decades to come.
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 at
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.
