Blog 1 - Pitched Battle

Pitched Battle

Australia Must Prepare for Geographically Concentrated Defence Risks

Foreword

The return of potential great power conflict to Australian strategic thought has brought about a sea change in Australian policymaking, eroding previous policy taboos and increasing pressure for a greater defence budget throughout the 2020s. Australian policymakers have not yet, however, made a decisive break with past assumptions around the geographic context in which Australia’s defence is affected, though there has been some inconsistent revival of defence acquisitions based on an as yet unarticulated need to operate beyond previous geographic thresholds. The AUKUS program has been launched to provide assets with lethal capability and unlimited range to the ADF. Although this article and future articles will concur absolutely with the rational for their acquisition, it will make clear that the outdated geographic foundations of Australian defence policy have left inconsistencies in the publicly stated rational for acquiring nuclear powered attack submarines. The new analysis of Australia’s geography and its implications for the Australian Defence Force in this article will provide a defence of the acquisition of AUKUS submarines but make clear that there are other ways in which the Australian Defence Force should react to the changing nature of its operating environment, to be laid out in another article which will be published in succession. Futhermore, this article will attempt to revise preconceived notions of geography present in Australian strategic thinking and challenge the broad notion of Northern Approaches which has become obselescent but continued in use in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review.

Introduction

In 1987, the Government of Australia commissioned the 1987 White Paper, titled The Defence of Australia, which focussed the nation’s military capabilities on being able to deny use of the sea lines of communication surrounding Australia’s North to regional or expeditionary great power forces. The conception of Australia’s strategic geography as the “Northern Approaches” between Sumatra and the Solomon Islands was adequate for assessing threats and requirements of the defence of Australia era but ultimately flawed. Australia’s security indeed does depend on the ability of its armed forces to deter hostile military buildup in the Malay or Oceanic archipelagoes, but the threats present in Australia’s near abroad are fundamentally influenced by the power projection and influence of states further abroad acting on the geography of the Asia-Pacific. As a geographic concept, the Asia-Pacific should not be retired from Australian strategic thinking as it implies a very real historic process whereby land based powers of the Asian continent take to the sea and thereby influence the Pacific. Although the concept of the Indo-Pacific is also viable and essential for the security policies of nations such as Australia with interests in both oceans – and the points where they intersect – the geography of the Asia Pacific retains its relevance in the 21st century. Australian strategic analysis of its region and hemisphere have historically failed to consider the ways in which geography facilitates the evolution of continental powers into sea-borne powers. Alfred Thayer Mahan argues in his works on sea power that British policymakers and geopolitical analysts have long cultivated such a view of their own region, having laid down analyses of the ways in which occupation of the Belgian and Dutch ports, and particularly of the Scheldt estuary, would allow first Spanish, then French and finally German continental hegemony to monopolise trading power, and thereby shipbuilding resources and wealth, on the continent. Mahan argues that British statesmen thus understood that British security could be threatened by conquests not directly infringing on or adjacent to British territory itself due to the maritime geography of Europe in relation to the British Isles.

The threats posed to Australia from East Asia in the 21st century have come about as a result of both the way in which the People's Republic of China has engaged American allies in its overarching rivalry with the United States and its conduct towards smaller states in their own rights. Chinese attempts at political subversion in Australia, policies of trade coercion aimed at Australia, expansionism in sensitive maritime areas important to Australian trade and its attempt to subvert Australian security in Oceania to isolate it from the United States and weaken American power in Asia have created a need for a China-centric threat analysis in Australia. Consensus has been reached that the ADF should be tailored to respond to ways in which China may attempt to further disrupt Australia's security environment in the future. The Asian Maritime Condominium is a concept of Asia-Pacific geography put forward here as an example of Mahanian analysis of geography in Australia’s hemisphere and the ways in which it may affect Australia’s defences against the returning threat of great power expeditionary forces and power projection.

New Geographic Analysis

The Asian Maritime Condominium is a series of Islands and Archipelagoes which begin in Taiwan, run through the Philippines and extend in two branches into the Malay Archipelago and the Oceanic Archipelagoes. This geographic feature is dominated by sea power in a hemisphere where continental power otherwise reigns supreme, as historically only the islands of Luzon, Java, Southern Sumatara and The Northern Moluccas have permitted development of states strong enough to sometimes effect rather than be affected by the exercise of sea power. The Asian Maritime Condominium therefore represents the foremost route by which East Asian states can project power across the Pacific ocean. The foundational geopolitics of the Asian Maritime Condominium are reflected in its historical influence as a common path of expansion by sea for Austronesian seafarers, Dutch merchants and the Japanese Empire.

In the prehistory of the region seafaring Austronesian explorers migrated from Taiwan South through the Philippines. Their ethnolinguistic cohesion split between Polynesian and Malay cultures due to separation into groups migrating South-East into Oceania and migrations moving South West into the Malay Archipelago. In the 17th century Dutch merchants had arrived in Asia late by comparison with the Iberian monarchies, yet they exploited the geography of the Asian Maritime Condominium by using the conquest of Taiwan in the 1620s to wrest influence in China and Japan from the Iberians. The Dutch conquest of Indonesia was possible because East Asian and Iberian influences were divided, contained within respective territories and subject to individual subjection of force after the Dutch put a cork in the neck of the bottle of the condominium by occupying Taiwan and, through that island, controlling the flow of sea power and trade across the Western Pacific. Although Dutch rule over Formosa ended in the latter half of the 17th century, the preceding decades had seen them compromise Iberian access to East Asian markets from the Philippines, monopolise European access to Japan, establish themselves in China and usurp Portuguese hegemony in the East Indies. The Empire of Japan began with the conquest of Taiwan in 1898 and in 1941-42 it advanced through the Philippines into the Malay and Oceanic archipelagos simultaneously because defensible urbanised and developed bases south of Taiwan were too geographically isolated to be mutually supportive. Manila, Singapore and Batavia each fell in succession due to the inability of Allied forces to coordinate a defence across such a vast area without command of the sea. Important to note for Australian defence is that the expansion of Japanese expeditionary forces into the Oceanic Archipelagoes began before the conquest of the Philippines was completed, with Bataan outlasting Rabaul by 3 months; the Bismarck Archipelago, across the Southern Philippine Sea, is vulnerable to the flow of Sea Power through the condominium when the Philippines is neutralised, not when it is subdued.

The beginning of the Asian Maritime Condominium and its first chokepoint therefore lie in Taiwan and its two branches begin South of the Philippine Archipelago, continuing into the Malay Archipelago and Oceanic archipelagos respectively. One can therefore see that Australia’s “Northern Approaches” do not exist or experience change in a vacuum but can be affected by the geopolitics of East Asia through the application of sea power through a particular set of geographic conduits.

Sea Change in the Northern Approaches

Borneo, alike Indonesia as a whole, has become a wavebreaker in the Asia-Pacific, and the effects of Indonesia’s new capital on South West Pacific geopolitics as it shifts power in the Java Sea away from the shoreline and littoral further inland into the centre of Kalimantan must be understood in its implications for Australian defence. Historically, wealth, infrastructure, allegiances and power in Borneo have coalesced in state form around the Island’s shoreline, but now the spontaneous construction of a new national capital, with vast amounts of associated infrastructure and associated military presence will give strategic depth to Borneo which sea power cannot easily affect. New airfields with dual military uses, lines of communication, a transplanted population loyal to Indonesia and the relocation of military units to support the foundation of the New Capital City will create a fortress in the Borneo jungles overnight. Furthermore, Indonesia and South East Asia more broadly have developed at a much faster pace than the smaller nations of the South West Pacific, resulting in more advanced defence capabilities and greater capacity to resist both military and economic coercion. Indonesian policymaking, informed by both a long tradition of non-alignment and historical experiences is likely to forego participation on either side of geopolitical clashes where it is not directly involved. Indonesian defence programs and foreign policy over the past decade suggest an adoption of a stance of armed neutrality to preserve the interests of the state against the spillover of any such conflicts in its near abroad. Indonesia has in this period ordered or received orders of 5 diesel electric attack submarines, 10 frigates, 5 missile corvettes and 42 Rafale fighter jets, all of modern construction, in addition to acquisition and modernisation of numerous older platforms. Additional orders may be placed in coming years for another 3 diesel electric attack submarines, numerous new frigate programs and as many as 36 upgraded F15 fighter jets. Indonesian military power is now capable of enforcing such an armed neutrality against the attempts of any conflicting powers to involve it or act against its interests in regional disputes. Australian policymaking must therefore realise that the vulnerable and fragile state which sat to its North during the past two decades is no longer a viable target for hegemons operating in the Asian Maritime Condominium, and thus the Indonesian sea lanes included in Australia’s “Northern Approaches” no longer need to be watched with concern by the ADF.

The Maritime condominium which runs from Taiwan to Java through Borneo and the Philippines is therefore now closed, while underdevelopment, smaller populations, sparse resources and government instability ensure that the alternative historical route of expansion through the Philippines across the Southern Philippine Sea into the Bismarck Archipelago and then Melanesia and Polynesia remains open. Australian policymakers must therefore acknowledge that Indonesia’s archipelago will no longer be vulnerable to maritime power projection from the North once the new capital city, Nusantara, is opened. The secession of Bougainville and protracted unrest in PNG, political and ethnic tensions in the Solomon Islands and the expanding effects of climate change, on the other hand, ensure that the Southwest Pacific Island states of Oceania remain tempting targets for subversion, coercion and overt power projection. While the last two decades have seen a dramatic shift in the vulnerability and capability of Australia’s Northern neighbour, other nearby states in the Oceanic archipelagoes remain incapable of defending themselves against deliberate foreign coercion.

Pressure Points in Australian Defence

China is a revisionist and, at times, an expansionist great power, but its officials borrow heavily from the strategies advocated by Western maritime intellectuals such as Alfred Thayer Mahan which favour pursuit of national power by sea. The Mahanian view of maritime history, to which the Chinese government and military ascribe, posits that sea power is a spontaneous force which favours expansion into power vacuums rather than challenging power centres, creating alternative power bases in rivalries with other more geographically entrenched states. China views the Indo Pacific through an Asia-Pacific lense of Mahanian sea power and statecraft, and therefore Australia must too so long as China remains the principal disruptor of and a plausible threat to Australian security. If Chinese sea power spreads like fire along the path of least resistance then, from a military standpoint, Indonesia is now wet cardboard while the island nations of Oceania are dry tinder.

Australia must possess the capability to disrupt continental power projection running through the Asian Maritime Condominium so that it can be comprehensively defeated in an area of decisive effect by both fundamental geographic advantages and favourable circumstances afforded by political effort and sound force design. This means finding the place in which the Asian Maritime Condominium continues into the Oceanic Archipelagoes through a geographical bottleneck closer to Australia where the Australian Defence Force would therefore hold the advantages of engaging with home advantage. This area of decisive effect lies in the Bismarck Sea and Bismarck Archipelago, as the area lies closest to potential hostile staging areas in the Southern Philippines which may be, by seizure or neutralisation of nearby islands, used by a hostile expeditionary force to expand across the Southern Philippine Sea into Oceania. The Bismarck Sea and Bismarck Archipelago region, or the common Bismarck Sea Littoral they form together, can allow or deny access into other areas which are crucial for Australia’s defence. From the Bismarck Sea Littoral a hostile sea power can interrupt the US-Australian alliance by interdicting shipping or seizing bases in the Solomon Islands Archipelago and creating an area of sea denial separating Australia and US bases in the Central Pacific. A hostile force located there might also threaten other territories of Papua New Guinea, with the former battlegrounds of Port Moresby and Milne Bay being as crucial to the defence of Northern Australia now as they were in the 20th century. In contrast, if the Australian Defence Force can work with other regional forces, particularly the Papua New Guinea and New Zealand Defence Forces to deny use or capture of facilities in the Bismarck Sea Littoral to a hostile force, any other military presence elsewhere in the South West Pacific, be it in the fragile and divided Solomon Islands or the nascent and unstable Bougainville would be cut off from support by maritime forces operating elsewhere in the Asian Maritime Condominium.

Studying the Area of Decisive Effect

The approach Australian policymakers should take towards the problems and solutions laid out above ought to be broad. Sea power is itself a broad field, and often involves the use of more than mere naval forces. The “Northern Approaches” laid out in the 1987 White Paper included requirements to operate in the Java Sea. This is a littoral girt by land, where carrier-borne air power struggles to compete with land based airpower massed on ubiquitous airfields, where the shallow straits north of Surabaya limit movement for Submarines and where strategic depth for land based forces is warped by the accessibility of the rugged interiors of the massive Malay islands. The opportunity for the Australian Defence Force to now abandon the need to guard this region against expeditionary forces operating out of North East Asia may allow it to focus on the specific requirements of operating in the area of decisive effect. The Asian Maritime Condominium can be exploited through covert maritime subversion as well as overt maritime power projection, and so fishing trawlers, aid vessels and patrol boats can have as much a part to play in shifting the balance of power in the region as capital ships. The political atmosphere of the South West Pacific has shifted greatly over recent years, yet there is still little desire or need to meet the current challenges of the region through deployments of capital ships and first rate military hardware. Therefore, the appropriate philosophies by which the Australian Defence Force should be designed to optimise its chances of winning military conflicts of any kind in the area of decisive effect require further elaboration.