Asymmetric warfare in the defence of Australia

Australia must leverage its asymmetric advantages to influence and manipulate the decision-making capabilities of future adversaries and protect national sovereignty. These advantages are numerous and include agriculture, mining and historical relationships with our Indo-Pacific neighbours to name just a few, and must be wielded as a deterrent for any future security threats to Australian sovereignty.

This was the opinion of ADFA’s Professor David Kilcullen in ASPI’s The Strategist this week. Professor Kilcullen served in the Australian Army achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, has worked as Chief Strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the US State Department and advised General David Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq. Recently, Professor Kilcullen published his fifth book, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West.

There is no shortage of proponents of this strategy, Professor Kilcullen illustrates.

“In 2009, senior Australian Army officer Chris Field wrote that, for the Australian Defence Force to win in 21st century conflicts, we must ‘recognise that asymmetry is not the sole province of our enemies. We must take the fight to the enemy and use our own national asymmetric advantages to greatest effect.’”

Despite Field’s assertions, Australia has refused to engage in asymmetric warfare to this day. Indeed, one of the greatest benefits of asymmetric warfare is to narrow the decision-making matrix of our adversaries to force them into making predictable and less disastrous decisions. Kilcullen cited the Norway Arctic strategy as a critical example of forcing the decisions of an adversary to one’s benefit.

“Norway can’t prevent an invasion if Moscow chooses to mount one — but the strategy (which includes rapid reinforcement, layered surveillance, resistance warfare and a suite of economic, cyber and information tools) aims to influence Russian planners to take that choice off the table,” Professor Kilcullen argues.

To place this in an Australian context, Professor Kilcullen argues that Australia would be unable to stop a Sino-American war, but can minimise the disastrous outcomes for Australian security by minimising the PRC’s threat to the nation. This would best be achieved by leveraging Australian resource capabilities that are critical for the Chinese economy including resources and agriculture, and using them as a ransom.

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Two methods for economic coercion, according to Professor Kilcullen, would be expanding Australia’s exports to China across rare-earth minerals, copper and gold to improve Australia’s influence over the Chinese economy. Alternatively, Australia could momentarily shock the export of critical resources to China, with the government compensating lost productivity. While this would hurt the Australian economy, it sends a critical signal to Beijing that Australia has the capability to deliver economic retribution to the PRC.

Professor Kilcullen further argues that Australia should use Chinese economic assets in Australia to the nation’s advantage.

“It’s tempting to see this solely as a threat, but Chinese assets in Australia also represent points of leverage that could be held at risk during crises or used to impose costs during pre-conflict shaping. Strategic assets might seem like a Chinese fifth column, but they are thus also an array of metaphorical hostages that can be traded for good behaviour,” he suggests.

Australia’s asymmetric response must also leverage the nation’s existing relationships across the Indo-Pacific, which Professor Kilcullen noted had been softened following China’s “vaccine diplomacy”.

“Opportunities to develop regional leverage, especially in countries that have relied heavily on Chinese vaccines, must of course take second place to humanitarian concerns in helping Australia’s neighbours, but with no end in sight for COVID-19 in the developing world, this could become a key point of leverage for Australia,” Professor Kilcullen argues.

In conjunction with humanitarian aid and assistance, Australia must engage in an information campaign across the Indo-Pacific to build a Pax Australis, which the country successfully surrendered over recent decades. Indeed, it appears that Australia has made several errors in the information war across the region, namely the removal of ABC shortwave radio which was swiftly replaced by do-it-yourself media commentators. Few examples are more pertinent than the growth of conspiracy theories in Papua New Guinea.

Sue Ahearn, founder of The Pacific Newsroom, in a March article for the Devpolicy Blog and appearing on The Strategist wrote that misinformation is so rampant in the South Pacific that “posts claim that the disease is an invention of the West to control population, that Papua New Guineans are guinea pigs for vaccines and that God is protecting Melanesians from catching COVID-19”.

Australia must leverage historical relationships with regional partners to build an impactful information service throughout the region, coupled with large scale humanitarian programs to re-establish a Pax Australis and dissuade any actions from potential adversaries.

Indeed, Professor Kilcullen finishes by arguing that Australia must finally take a front footed approach to security.

“Instead of perpetually playing goalkeeper, we need a mindset shift to start seeing ourselves as the asymmetric threat. As I noted in a recent book, Australian jungle warfare expert Brigadier Ted Serong observed in 1962 that ‘conventional soldiers think of the jungle as being full of lurking enemies. Under our system, we will do the lurking.’ If we are to build leverage in this emerging environment of great-power competition, Australian strategic thinkers too need to start getting out into the asymmetric jungle, and ‘do the lurking’,” he noted.

These are critical lessons to ensure the ongoing security of Australia.

It is clear that Australia must grasp onto these opportunities, front-foot our defence and minimise the decision-making abilities of our potential adversaries. Asymmetric warfare does not always need to be violent, but it will secure safety and prosperity for Australia.

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