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B-21s for Australia? Not on the basis of defending against a Chinese base in Australia’s nearer region.

Defence policy often proceeds under a number of heroic and muddled assumptions. Most likely, the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) will also. These must be tested.

BY Mike Scrafton

Defence policymakers often make assumptions about potential adversaries that are convenient for their own purposes. Adversaries are expected to attack or invade Australia in a manner that validates preconceived preferences. More problematically, they assume deterrence only works in one direction.

In their ASPI report ‘Impactful projection’: Long-range strike options for Australia former Defence officials Marcus Hellyer and Andrew Nicholls follow this well-worn formula. As the Minister has already foreshadowed that the DSR will recommend acquisition of greater long-distance strike capability, Hellyer and Nicholls construct an argument for the new USAF B-21 Raider long-range bomber in this role.

In this, more interesting is their assumption that “The ADF will need to have the ability to prevent PLA forces establishing themselves in our near region and to destroy or degrade them if they do” than their analysis of the B-21. And yes, China is the putative adversary. They claim a “forward operating base in the archipelago to our north or in the Southwest Pacific would allow the PLA to target Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne”, interdict trade, and generally coerce Australia.

The need for an Australian sovereign capability is neatly accounted for by the additional limp assumption that “the US may lack the capacity to meet all possible military contingencies in the Indo-Pacific due to its global commitments”.

The adversary base in the archipelago bogeyman has long been useful for Australian force-structurers. But now the proposition that the ADF has to prevent, destroy, or degrade an adversary base is risible.

Hellyer and Nicholls suggest the ADF should be capable of attacking “an adversary’s supply lines, logistics hubs, forward operating bases, air bases, deployed air defence networks and command and control systems in Australia’s nearer region and approaches”. The ADF should be able to degrade “an adversary’s ability to conduct operations that directly threaten Australia, our friends and neighbours in the region”. Just possessing a long-range strike capability, they claim, would give Australia “self-reliant deterrent effects”, and “convince an adversary that the cost of acting militarily against [Australia] isn’t worth any gains that might be made”.

A case of designing a problem that fits the predetermined solution.

According to Hellyer and Nicholls a modest Australian B-21 operational capability is achievable by mid-2030s. The Hunter Class frigates should become operational about then and followed a decade or so later the nuclear-powered submarines. This is public knowledge. So, the Chinese would have at least a decade-and-a-half to build a base, and to plan, prepare, develop, and acquire the assets and tactical skills to counter Australia’s future capability.

Moreover, the cost calculation by China would depend on the importance of their strategic objective. If it was critical they would invest the inordinate amount of time and money required, and bring the firepower necessary to prevail. But only if that was their only option. In addition, either Indonesia or PNG would have to willingly permit China to do this; otherwise, a widespread major conflict is already underway and that’s a very different situation. Practically, would Australia bomb and violate Indonesia’s or PNG’s sovereignty while construction of a base was in progress?

Clearly China would not be deterred by Australia. The enormous discrepancy between Australia and China’s current and prospective military power is abundantly clear from the Pentagon’s 2022 Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China. If anything, and if deterrence works, Australia would sensibly be deterred from pre-emptively attacking any Chinese forces anywhere.

By the time Australia might have these bombers available China will inevitably have extended the reach of its own long-range strike capabilities in the maritime, air and missile domains and be able to threaten targets in Australia without going to the trouble of building expensive and vulnerable bases in the region. China is already “developing new medium- and long-range stealth bombers to strike regional and global targets” and by the mid-2030s their capability will be formidable. Even beyond the mid-2030s the costs China could impose on Australia will be greatly disproportionate to Australia’s so-called “self-reliant deterrent effects”.

In light of the prevailing strategic realities, the archipelago base assumption is a wildly improbable scenario. Perhaps, as Hugh White suggests, Defence mistakenly thinks that big expensive assets “impress allies and deter enemies”, but to a potential adversary it just signals “that Australia is not serious about preparing to fight a real war in its own defence”.

The lesson to be taken from the analysis by Hellyer and Nicholls is not that Australia needs or doesn’t need B-21s, but that the DSR needs to avoid retrospectively producing justifications that are unrealistic in order to justify very costly investments. Perhaps the DSR will break with the tradition of a long line of strategic reviews. However, experience indicates that the DSR will be replete with references to threats from the North, deterrence, warning time, capability gaps, and other shibboleths and jargon to support further militarisation.

It will be important, however, that whatever justifications and arguments the DSR rolls out are examined and interrogated rigorously. The judgements on which the DSR’s recommendations are based must be tested against commonsense and the strategic realities. The media would be meeting its responsibilities if it did this, rather than being swept up by the inevitable glossy-brochure presentations of new shiny and potent sounding weapons systems.

Read more on the Defence Strategic Review.

https://johnmenadue.com/b-21s-for-australia-not-on-the-basis-of-defending-against-a-chinese-base-in-australias-nearer-region/

hypocrite experts.....

By Paul Malone

When watching or listening to experts on international affairs—especially those speaking on China or Russia and the war in Ukraine — there’s one question you should keep asking yourself. How do they know?

Take for example, an interview run on the ABC’s World Today on 28 December 2022.

Rowan Callick, Industry fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute was giving his expert opinion on the Chinese Government’s decision to relax its Covid 19 rules. Callick said the Chinese had no narrative to explain the sudden change in direction.

Presenter Sally Sara asked: Why don’t you think there’s a narrative?

“I think actually he’s [Xi] surrounded by a group of people who do tend to tell him everything he does is great. This is part of the problem. He’s restructured the party in a way so that decision making only relies on an inner circle. I think they’re actually not sure how to represent things, how to repackage things.”

In a series of emails I put the question to Callick. How did he know that Xi was surrounded by a group of people who told him what he does was great?

He replied providing a series of links to articles in the Australian Financial Review, the New York Times (NYT), the Guardian and the Economist.

Reading these I found the articles quoted a number of people, mostly based outside China, with a few based in Hong Kong. So the question remains: how do they know?

In answer to this query Callick replied that it was inevitable that commentary about the party was most lively outside the PRC, simply because there was no room tolerated for public discussion within.

He said one of the commentators, Chris Buckley, the NYT chief China correspondent, who grew up in Sydney, was an extraordinarily well-connected correspondent who had a PhD in Chinese governance issues and had lived for 25 years in China. Willy Lam, a Hong Konger and senior fellow at the US-based Jamestown Foundation, was famously well-connected, politically. Callick also pointed out that he had worked in Beijing for six years, and had written a book on the party and had his own contacts and understanding of how the party worked.

Most of these commentators agree that the Chinese system of government lacks transparency. For example, Chris Buckley, said so in so many words, when writing on Hong Kong in 2021 in the New York Times and referring to the “Communist Party’s usual calculated opacity.”

Opaque, and yet the experts based at the Hong Kong Baptist University, Seton Hall University, a US Catholic university, or the University of Chicago somehow know what’s going on?

When I worked as a political correspondent in Canberra I found it a challenge finding out what was going on in our Cabinet room. I spoke the language. I knew the ministers and members of their staff. I could bump into them in the corridors of Parliament House, or at the supermarket. Sometimes I and other journalists heard of the arguments. But on many matters we didn’t know what was going on.

I don’t believe these commentators know about the internal debates in the Chinese government. They can speculate. They can guess. But they simply don’t know and should qualify all their comments by saying so.

If the Chinese inner circle are all yes men, how is it that the government did change its Covid Rules? A debate must surely have taken place?

Can Xi really be on top of everything, laying down the law/policy on infrastructure planning projects, rice and steel production, health policy/Covid, the economy, Russia/Ukraine; floods, droughts, US threats, South China Sea, Taiwan, Australia, Pacific Islands, etc.?

Can all these policy decisions be made without debate?

I simply do not believe it.

But if there are problems with the commentators on China, it’s even worse when it comes to commentators on Russia and the war in Ukraine.

News reporting is one thing. Commentary another. Ukrainian President Zelensky is often quoted on the record, as he should be. Other senior Ukrainian officials also get a run. Russian President Putin is less often quoted directly. Reports of actual missile and drone attacks, casualties and destruction are appropriately covered.

But commentary and analysis are another thing. Statements from Western government representatives who may well be spinning a line, are frequently taken at face value.

In April the UK’s Financial Times headlined an article “Russia running short of precision missiles, say western officials”. Then on May 5 we had the Sun newspaper reporting the head of Britain’s Armed Forces, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, saying that a humiliated Vladimir Putin was running out of missiles trying to defeat Ukraine.

The more reputable New York Times joined the clamour quoting Max Bergmann, a former American diplomat at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington saying there were several signs that Russia was running low on precision-guided weapons and “it’s not clear that they have huge reserves.”

But what has happened since these expert insights? The Russians have launched a series of the heaviest of missile attacks.

The language used in the reports is interesting. The Russians are said to be using “kamikaze” drones. The use of the term is clearly intended to imply some sort of crazy, suicidal behaviour. But since when has a drone made a decision to take its own life?

Such descriptions are not neutral or accidental. The Syrians used evil “barrel bombs” in their war. The Americans used “smart weapons.”

Russians target “civilian infrastructure” in Ukraine and it’s said that this may be a war crime. Forget the fact that electricity generated from power stations is used by the military, as are railways, roads and bridges.

Were the Dam Busters war criminals for their World War II actions? Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki purely military targets? And what of Baghdad? In response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, for example, the US dropped 88,500 tons of bombs in one month in 1991, destroying both military and civilian infrastructure.

Where were the calls for war crimes trials for the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure then?

https://johnmenadue.com/western-commentators-are-blind-to-their-limits-on-china-russiapay-wall-link/

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By Gus Leonisky at 6 Jan 2023 - 7:40am
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nuke sub shortage....

Two key US senators recently raised major concerns about the AUKUS pact with President Joe Biden, saying the plan to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarine technology risked stressing America’s industrial base to its “breaking point”.

The intervention, which comes just three months before the Albanese government unveils its submarine plan, is the first time members of Congress from either party have expressed significant misgivings about AUKUS, which has so far enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Washington.

In a letter to Biden sent on December 21, Democratic Senator Jack Reed and Republican Senator James Inhofe explicitly warned against any plan to sell or transfer Virginia-class submarines to Australia before the US Navy meets its current requirements.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/leaked-senators-letter-warns-aukus-deal-could-harm-us-submarine-industry-20230106-p5cary.html

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By Gus Leonisky at 6 Jan 2023 - 3:17pm
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