The Turnbull government will spend $195 billion to expand Australia’s military might in the next decade to ensure it becomes “powerful on land and in the skies and more commanding both on the seas and beneath them”.
Under a swathe of new spending programs announced on Thursday, Mr Turnbull said Australia needed to invest in its defence forces and industries to preserve peace and prosperity in its region.
The big splurge – announced in the 2016 Defence White Paper – is bound to exert more pressure on other areas of government spending because the cost of Mr Turnbull’s proposals will add at least $30 billion to the former Abbott government’s estimates for the defence budget over the next 10 years.
Mr Turnbull said the massive spend was necessary because Australia was now facing its greatest defence challenges since the Second World War.
“In the next two decades, half of the world’s submarines and at least half of the world’s advanced combat aircraft will be operating in the Indo-Pacific region, in our region,” he said.
“And this complicates the outlook for our security and strategic planning.”
....
Mark Beeson Professor of International Politics, University of Western Australia comments:
The white paper makes the rather large assumption that the US remains committed to, and the backbone of, a rules-based international order. One sincerely hopes this idea remains valid, as it is clearly in the interest of a secondary state like Australia that such an order continues.
And yet we need to remember that the US has a long history of flouting international rules and agreements when it suits it. The US’s refusal to sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, for example, rather undermines its authority when dealing with China in an arena of pivotal importance to Australia.
Now, however, we have the real possibility that the US could be led by someone who is entirely contemptuous of the prevailing international order and enthusiastic about utilising American power for exclusively national ends – no matter what impact this may have on friend and foe alike.
The idea that Australia needs to update its defence capabilities to continue playing its supporting role looks less convincing as a consequence – not that this is likely to impinge on the conventional wisdom in Canberra.
The one slightly surprising feature of the white paper was the idea that an Australian defence industry might be an integral part of a national industry policy. While this is potentially welcome, one has to wonder whether electoral rather than strategic motivations didn’t inform this initiative.
More importantly, perhaps, while there may be much to be said for maintaining a manufacturing capability in this country, is military hardware the only thing we can think of? The weapons will almost certainly never be used and will only contribute to an escalating – ultimately futile – regional arms race in the meantime.
Under a swathe of new spending programs announced on Thursday, Mr Turnbull said Australia needed to invest in its defence forces and industries to preserve peace and prosperity in its region.
The big splurge – announced in the 2016 Defence White Paper – is bound to exert more pressure on other areas of government spending because the cost of Mr Turnbull’s proposals will add at least $30 billion to the former Abbott government’s estimates for the defence budget over the next 10 years.
Mr Turnbull said the massive spend was necessary because Australia was now facing its greatest defence challenges since the Second World War.
“In the next two decades, half of the world’s submarines and at least half of the world’s advanced combat aircraft will be operating in the Indo-Pacific region, in our region,” he said.
“And this complicates the outlook for our security and strategic planning.”
....
Mark Beeson Professor of International Politics, University of Western Australia comments:
The white paper makes the rather large assumption that the US remains committed to, and the backbone of, a rules-based international order. One sincerely hopes this idea remains valid, as it is clearly in the interest of a secondary state like Australia that such an order continues.
And yet we need to remember that the US has a long history of flouting international rules and agreements when it suits it. The US’s refusal to sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, for example, rather undermines its authority when dealing with China in an arena of pivotal importance to Australia.
Now, however, we have the real possibility that the US could be led by someone who is entirely contemptuous of the prevailing international order and enthusiastic about utilising American power for exclusively national ends – no matter what impact this may have on friend and foe alike.
The idea that Australia needs to update its defence capabilities to continue playing its supporting role looks less convincing as a consequence – not that this is likely to impinge on the conventional wisdom in Canberra.
The one slightly surprising feature of the white paper was the idea that an Australian defence industry might be an integral part of a national industry policy. While this is potentially welcome, one has to wonder whether electoral rather than strategic motivations didn’t inform this initiative.
More importantly, perhaps, while there may be much to be said for maintaining a manufacturing capability in this country, is military hardware the only thing we can think of? The weapons will almost certainly never be used and will only contribute to an escalating – ultimately futile – regional arms race in the meantime.
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