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Former defence department official Ross Babbage has issued a powerful warning for Australian and allied strategic planners as they seek to respond to the rising power, influence and coercion of Beijing in the Indo-Pacific – our own hubris should not be underestimated.
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When the forces of Persian Emperor Xerxes surged into Greece and were confronted by a small band of elite Spartans, hubris and arrogance saw tens of thousands of Persians fall to the shields, spears and swords of Leonidas and his three hundred.
A similar sense of hubris and arrogance saw the British boldly deploy a small naval task force to “support” Singapore in December 1941 to counter the rampaging Imperial Japanese Army, confident that not only would the Japanese be ill-equipped to fight a European force, but their technology, doctrine and will would pale in comparison to that of the British and their Commonwealth allies.
The pages of history are filled with similar such incidents, when the pre-eminent power underestimated both the will, the capacity and capability of an adversary, costing them dearly at both a tactical and strategic level.
Today, the way in which the United States and its Western Allies conduct warfare is the distillation of almost 500 years of perfecting the art of war, as if guided by a myriad of ancient war gods, the skill at arms and perfect synthesis of technology, manpower, administrative and command and control efforts have made them peerless, but is that all about to end as our own hubris leaves us vulnerable to an ancient power?
For Australia, many within the nation’s national security and strategic policy communities would argue that from the moment of its release, the 2016 Defence White Paper was obsolete – overshadowed by the rapidly evolving geostrategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific.
Nevertheless, the Defence White Paper and subsequent supporting Defence Industry Plan, Naval Shipbuilding Plan and Sovereign Industrial Capability Priorities have all served as critical foundational documents for the 2020 Defence Strategy Update and 2020 Force Structure Plan announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds.
These respective documents are designed to account for the rapidly deteriorating economic, political and strategic environment in both the Indo-Pacific and the broader globe as nations continue to struggle with the impact of COVID-19, economic devastation, social upheaval and mounting great power tensions characterised by increased “grey-zone conflict” and “whole-of-government” attacks on the post-Second World War order.
This emphasis is highlighted by the Prime Minister, who stated, “This simple truth is this: even as we stare down the COVID pandemic at home, we need to also prepare for a post-COVID world that is poorer, that is more dangerous, and that is more disorderly.
“We have been a favoured isle, with many natural advantages for many decades, but we have not seen the conflation of global, economic and strategic uncertainty now being experienced here in Australia in our region since the existential threat we faced when the global and regional order collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s.
“That is a sobering thought, and it‘s something I have reflected on quite a lot lately, as we‘ve considered the dire economic circumstances we face. That period of the 1930s has been something I have been revisiting on a very regular basis, and when you connect both the economic challenges and the global uncertainty, it can be very haunting,” the Prime Minister added.
In response to growing public and strategic policy community concern, former defence department official Ross Babbage has penned a thought-provoking analysis of the challenges arrayed against Australia and its allies as they seek to confront an increasingly belligerent and coercive Chinese government.
Babbage’s piece for the Australian Journal of Defence and Strategic Studies titled, “Ten questionable assumptions about future war in the Indo-Pacific” articulates 10 critical assumptions that need to be considered by the nation’s political and strategic leaders and critically discussed with the nation’s key allies.
Setting the scene, Babbage states: “If there is to be a major war in the Indo-Pacific, it is likely to involve a struggle between China and a small number of supporters on the one hand and the United States and its allies and partners on the other.
“The precise sequence of events in such a catastrophe is difficult to predict, but it is certain that Beijing will have as much, or even more, say over the shape of the conflict as Washington.
“This is a serious problem for the West because the core agencies of the Chinese government bring strategic cultures, strategies, operational concepts and priorities to the Indo-Pacific that are markedly different from our own.
“When viewed in this context, even an advanced version of conventional Western strategies and operations could prove seriously inadequate. The Western allies need to ensure they plan to deter and, if necessary, to fight and win a future war, not just a part of a war, or even the wrong war. There are at least 10 reasons for doubting that the West’s perception of future war in the Indo-Pacific is sound.”
Assumption Number 1: The Chinese way of war is similar to the West’s
For Babbage, this approach echoes the mistakes made by the British and the early stages of America’s campaign against the Japanese during the Pacific Campaign of the Second World War, namely that, “Chinese strategic culture, campaign planning and military orders of battle are simply an oriental version of their own. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Expanding on this, Babbage states, “The Chinese have launched five major categories of political warfare operation in recent years. The first has been intensive information and propaganda activities.
“The second has been the use of diplomacy, technology exports and the Belt and Road Initiative to win geostrategic gains. The third has been the extensive use of economic instruments to build dependencies, to coerce political compliance and to secure strategic positions. Within this category have been extensive programs to steal and/or purchase intellectual property to accelerate China’s efforts to lead the world in key technology and industry sectors.
“The fourth has been the use of military, paramilitary and cyber forces to occupy vacant or contested spaces, to deter escalation, to spread disinformation and to help coerce political actions that accord with Beijing’s interests.
“And finally, the fifth has been China’s use of legal and paralegal instruments to assert territorial and other claims, intimidate smaller countries and shape international debates.
“So, while China and the Western allies are all investing in modern conventional military capabilities, Beijing is simultaneously expending substantial energy on penetrating and undermining its rivals through highly sophisticated, diverse and persistent political and hybrid warfare operations,” each of these are important points of difference for intense scrutiny and consideration.
Assumption Number 2: The West is currently in a ‘competition’
The idea of a “strategic competition” with Beijing is something that has been increasingly repeated by political leaders and strategic policy experts around the West and the broader Indo-Pacific as nations grapple with the rising antagonism and willingness of the rising superpower.
"Western leaders routinely describe the rivalry with China as a ‘competition’. This Western allusion to a sporting contest or a rivalry between business enterprises has very little relevance to the strategic situation in the Indo-Pacific.
“The Chinese political and military leaderships rarely talk about a ‘competition’ with the West. The leadership in Beijing considers their country to be in a continuous ‘struggle’ and engaged in ‘a new Long March’ against the West. The current state of play is routinely described as being ‘united front’ political warfare, ‘new generation war’ or ‘non-war warfare’. Xi Jinping has reportedly stated that he regards the new normal for the relationship with the West as ‘embracing while fighting’.
Babbage adds, “There are many consequences that flow from the West’s poor choice of language. One of the most important is to mislead the publics of Western countries into believing that their relationship with the Chinese regime is normal, largely benign and not warranting serious concern.
“Another consequence of visioning the challenge as a ‘competition’ has been to encourage some Western allies to adopt timid and reactive modes, which have almost always ceded the initiative to Beijing. This, in turn, has resulted in China winning substantial territorial, psychological and political gains through its political and hybrid warfare operations without encountering robust resistance.”
Assumption Number 3: China is not a serious rival because its defence spending is a quarter the size of the United States’ defence budget
The US is the undisputed global leader in defence expenditure, spending the equivalent of the next 10 nations combined. However, as economic troubles have lashed the US economy over the past decade, combined with rising wealth in China, the spending gap has narrowed significantly, causing many to worry that Washington can ill afford another Cold War-style arms race, especially one where it carries the majority of the burden.
Nevertheless, despite the disparity between the US and China’s defence expenditure, Babbage believes that the metrics used to measure the spending rate is flawed and leaves the West significantly more vulnerable to surprise at the hands of Beijing, stating: “If one compares China’s official defence expenditure with that of the United States using market exchange rates for the respective currencies, China’s spending is, indeed, about 26 per cent that of the US.
“However, a strong case can be made that a more accurate measure of Chinese defence spending is gained by applying the Purchase Power Parity methodology. This formula accords equal value to the production of like products and removes the vagaries of international currency distortions. Using Purchase Power Parity calculations, China’s defence spending rises to about 70 per cent that of the US.”
Babbage expands on this stating, “A key conclusion is that accurately comparing United States and Chinese defence spending is like comparing apples with oranges. They are substantially different entities, structured and trained to conduct markedly different types of war, using dissimilar mixes of instruments over different timeframes. Certainly, China’s level of investment is sufficiently large to pose a serious challenge to the Western allies. Underestimating its scale and sophistication risks generating complacency in the West.”
Assumption Number 4: Beijing’s initiation of a major war against the Western allies would be so risky that it is very unlikely to happen
Almost as if taking a leaf out of the “game theory” thinking of the pre-First World War European leaders encapsulated in the book The Guns of August, this thinking places increasing stock in the belief that all actors will act rationally, logically and in their best interests, forgetting ancient enmities, historic persecutions and genocides and the societal support for correcting “past humiliations”.
Babbage explains this, stating, “A Chinese decision to initiate a conventional kinetic war with the Western allies may result from a set of circumstances where Xi Jinping or his successor is placed under exceptionally strong domestic and/or international pressure.
“Were the regime confronted by a failing economy, a rapidly ageing workforce, a resurgent United States, rising dissent in the Party or any other direct challenge to its survival, the leadership might conclude that drastic action was needed to unite the country and deliver the ‘China dream’, ‘reunify Taiwan with the motherland’ or launch another international adventure. Such a step would likely be a product of the dynamics at the top of the regime.”
The assumption also believes that the same checks and balances that guided Western decision-making processes, including the decision to go to war, will be followed by the Chinese Communist regime.
Assumption Number 5: The West has superior strategies, operational concepts and forces
Echoing the hubris of the British at the beginning of the Pacific War, or the French during their conflict in Indo-China during the mid-1950s, this assumption is dangerously naive and borders on arrogance, which could result in the startling defeat of US and allied, including Australian, “superior strategies, operational concepts and forces”.
Indeed, every element of this assumption has startling parallels to virtually every conflict of the 20th century, whether it was the Schlieffen Plan of Imperial Germany and the resulting four years of bloody, devestating trench warfare where military planners had failed to account for technological advances or the advent of aircraft carriers and their supporting operational doctrines and tactics which won the Pacific war.
This is a particular sticking point for Babbage who states, “For most of the period since the Cold War, the predominant Western assessment concerning the strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific has been that while China had modernised and expanded its military, the US and its allies remained clearly superior.
“For instance, in 2015 the Rand Corporation’s US-China Military Scorecard report concluded that: Over the past two decades, China’s People’s Liberation Army has transformed itself from a large but antiquated force into a capable, modern military. Its technology and operational proficiency still lag behind those of the United States, but it has rapidly narrowed the gap.”
The West’s prioritisation of high-technology weapons systems, ranging from precision-guided munitions to nuclear attack submarines, stealth aircraft like the B-2 Spirit and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are all areas in which this overconfidence shows through, particularly when they’ve only been utilised against tier two militaries that are supported and equipped by near-peer competitors.
Babbage explains this faulty belief, explaining, “Assessments such as these understate the challenge posed by China, but they have been sufficient to shake Western complacency and stimulate efforts to design, develop and test a range of new strategies and operational concepts for the Indo-Pacific.”
Adding to this, and perhaps most concerningly for Australian and allied strategic planners, Babbage states: “Indeed, there is a strong prospect that by the mid-2020s the capabilities of the Western allies to conduct intensive conventional operations will be sufficiently enhanced to restore clear conventional military superiority to the allies in the Indo-Pacific.
“There is a danger, however, that Western decision-makers will assume that these greatly improved capabilities for advanced conventional operations promising favourable exchange ratios and other traditional measures of combat performance will produce victory in a major war. If the opponent loses 50 ships but you only lose 10, it does not necessarily mean that you are winning the war.
“Body count and equipment loss comparisons have borne little relationship to the achievement of theatre victories against determined opponents in Korea, Vietnam and a number of other conflicts. A large part of the problem is that strategic planners in the West routinely perceive the primary elements of power in a more shallow and limited manner than do the Chinese,” Babbage adds.
As Beijing continues to leverage the full scope and scale of state-craft to further its tactical and strategic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, Babbage believes many strategic planners and political leaders in the West fail to fully account for the impact of such operations when wielded against us.
“There is a sense in which the Chinese and Western conceptions of conflict and war in the Indo-Pacific have sets of goalposts that are of different shape and size and are positioned in different locations.
“The mixes of weapons, the concepts of operations and the investment priorities are also markedly different. The Chinese Communist Party regime simply plans to fight a different kind of war. In the event of a major conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the outcome is most likely to be determined by the relative strength and resilience of the two sides’ political will.
“The West’s relative inattention to this foundational dimension needs to be remedied if effective preparations are to be made to deter and fight a major war in this theatre,” Babbage explains.
Your thoughts
Australia is defined by its economic and strategic relationships with the Indo-Pacific and the access to the growing economies and to strategic sea lines of communication supporting over 90 per cent of global trade, a result of the cost-effective and reliable nature of sea transport.
Indo-Pacific Asia is at the epicentre of the 21st century’s era of great power competition and global maritime trade, with about US$5 trillion worth of trade flowing through the South China Sea and the strategic waterways and choke points of south-east Asia annually.
For Australia, a nation defined by this relationship with traditionally larger yet economically weaker regional neighbours, the growing economic prosperity of the region and corresponding arms build-up, combined with ancient and more recent enmities, competing geopolitical, economic and strategic interests, places the nation at the centre of the 21st century’s “great game”.
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.
Australia is consistently told that, as a nation, we are torn between our economic relationship with China and the longstanding strategic partnership with the US, placing the country at the epicentre of a great power rivalry – but what if it didn’t have to be that way?
In the next part of this short series, we will take a closer look at the final five assumptions identified by Ross Babbage in his analysis, “Ten questionable assumptions about future war in the Indo-Pacific”.
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of shaking up the nation’s approach to our regional partners.
We would also like to hear your thoughts on the avenues Australia should pursue to support long-term economic growth and development in support of national security in the comments section below, or get in touch with
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.
