Conversations: The echidna argument

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In Singapore, when you come into the city centre from Changi Airport,

you see a whole lot of flower beds in drums,

and they're all clustered together to form the central reservation on the expressway.

A Singaporean once told me that those drums are there

instead of a concrete barrier for national defence purposes.

The idea is that if Singapore ever came under attack,

the drums could be quickly pushed aside

to turn the expressway into an airstrip for fighter aircraft.

And this is all part of Singapore's long-standing defence position

that's called the Poison Shrimp Doctrine.

Singapore's founder Lee Kuan Yew said,

in a world where the big fish eat small fish and the small fish eat shrimps,

Singapore must become a poisonous shrimp.

Sam Rogovine is here today. Sam is an Australian strategic analyst.

He's based at the Lowy Institute.

And Sam thinks Australia should likewise set up our defences

to make any attack on Australia too painful for the would-be attacker

to even contemplate.

He calls this the echidna strategy, which is the title of his new book.

Sam Rogovine says that despite everything the US has been saying recently

about China and the need to contain Chinese power in the Pacific,

the US will inevitably step back from the Asia Pacific.

And with that, Australia will gradually lose our great power protection from America,

and we need to be ready for this.

Sam argues that Australia can defend itself against the challenge of a rising China,

and it doesn't have to cost more than we spend already.

But all this has made him something of an outsider amongst national security circles in Australia.

Hello, Sam.

Hello, Richard.

How did you come to be involved in this world of national security in the first place?

Well, I guess it started at high school, like many boys of my generation.

I was fascinated by fighter aircraft and military kit, but particularly fighters.

And I guess this was a time of top gun as well when I was in high school.

I never got very far in that interest because the Air Force decided my eyesight wasn't good enough to become a pilot.

I wasn't interested in doing very much else in the Air Force.

And by that stage, my interests were kind of developing into broader issues of strategic studies.

So, yeah, I developed an interest really in the more political aspects of military force and of war,

and beyond that, international relations as a whole and politics.

And so that's really at the heart of it.

You worked for a while at the Office of National Assessments and at another Defence Intelligence...

Defence Intelligence Organisation.

Yeah, yeah, we have about four or something of these intelligence organisations in Australia,

or maybe more, I think.

No, it's more than that.

There are two main ones that do intelligence analysis.

So there are others that do the collection, but the main national intelligence agencies are DIO,

the Defence Intelligence Organisation, and ONI.

Used to be called ONA, the Office of National Assessments.

Now the Office of National Intelligence.

What was your role at the ONA, which is now the ONI?

Yeah, so I was a senior analyst at the Office of National Assessments,

and my role was really to assess all of the intelligence that came in on particular subjects.

My area of expertise was North Asian security issues, nuclear proliferation, I looked at as well.

So there was this flood of information daily that came in,

not only from media sources and academic sources, etc., but also from the secret squirrel stuff, you know,

the signals intelligence, satellite photos would come in,

and my job was to analyse it and to synthesise it and to write reports for the Prime Minister

and for the Cabinet to say, OK, this is what all of this means,

and these are the issues you need to be worried about.

These days you work for the Lowy Institute, whereby these matters are often for public discussion.

Is there part of your brain that has to go, mustn't talk about this

because this is one of those official secrets that shouldn't be talked about in public?

Not so much anymore in the sense that I'm so far removed from that intelligence world,

but certainly in the sense that, you know, the Lowy Institute's a think tank,

and think tanks operate in this unusual space between government and media and the public,

and so, you know, like many people have to work in areas where they respect confidences,

my work's no different.

Yeah, there is a little bit of that that goes on.

In the last couple of years, all of our assumptions about Australia Defence

have been overturned by the announcement of the Orcus Alliance between Australia,

the UK and the United States.

It seems we'll be getting three new nuclear powered,

not nuclear armed, but nuclear powered submarines within the next decade.

What will these new nuclear powered subs allow our military to do that we can't do now, Sam?

All right, well, let's...

If you forgive me, Richard, let me start by just interrogating the question a little bit

because you referred to Orcus as an alliance.

Now, the Orcus advocates in particular are very keen to tell people that this is not an alliance.

This is a military technological sharing agreement.

A partnership, in other words.

Yeah, I very much feel that there's a distinction without a difference here.

When we're talking about nuclear submarines,

that implies a partnership of such depth and of such intimacy

that it implicitly comes with political strings attached.

Right, it becomes a de facto alliance of sorts.

Of course, we already have an alliance with the United States,

but this implies, I think, a pretty dramatic deepening of it.

As to the submarines themselves,

three, and perhaps as many as five, American Virginia-class nuclear powered submarines,

and then following on from that, a new class of submarines,

which we're designing mostly with the Brits, but with American help too,

at the moment called SSN Orcus, which exists only on paper at the moment.

It's not a real boat.

We're not even close to starting the building of that submarine yet.

Eventually, the idea is that we'll have eight of these submarines,

and these submarines are incredibly powerful.

They are the apex predators of the ocean.

If this was the natural world, these would be the big sharks at the top of the food chain.

They're incredibly powerful.

They can sink basically any ship at sea.

They can fire missiles onto land targets,

and they are incredibly persistent because they can stay at sea for months on end.

The fact that they're powered by a nuclear reactor

means that the only thing that forces these submarines to eventually come back to a naval base

is that the endurance of the crew runs out,

or they run out of food on board the boat.

But other than that, they could stay at sea more or less indefinitely.

So this is a big question, but what are some of the strategic assumptions

that sit behind acquiring these boats?

Is it that they would be used primarily to thwart an attack within our region,

immediate region in Australia,

or to participate in coalition warfare beyond our immediate region?

For example, in repelling a potential invasion of Taiwan or South Korea, for example?

Well, the first thing to say about that is that we don't know because the government hasn't told us.

Neither this government nor the last government has offered a really clear statement

about why we are getting nuclear-powered submarines,

why we are investing somewhere between $268 and $368 billion with a B in nuclear-powered submarines.

That, to me, is an extraordinary gap in Australia's public conversation

that neither Prime Minister Morrison nor Prime Minister Albanese

has offered a fully strategic justification for this capability.

Well, then let me ask you, if you're standing outside of Australia

and you hear of this decision and you don't know the stated justifications,

what would you assume we were trying to do in acquiring these boats?

I think, to me, the most plausible justification is that Australia is developing a capability

that allows us to operate incredibly closely alongside the US Navy.

So if we were buying conventional submarines, that is diesel-electric submarines,

not powered by nuclear reactors,

it would be much easier to make the case that we are purely developing military capabilities

to defend the sea and air approaches to Australia

because those kind of boats really aren't that well suited to operating thousands of kilometres to our north.

But these nuclear-powered submarines, that is what they're best at, right?

They could be used to defend the air and sea approaches to Australia,

but that's not really what they're best suited to.

What they're best suited to is operating thousands of kilometres to Australia's north

for months at a time,

and that, to me, carries the implication that we'll be operating alongside the United States

because there is no way, it seems to me,

that we would ever want to operate independently that far north

against an adversary as powerful as China.

How has the announcement that we're acquiring nuclear submarines

gone over with the near-neighbours like Indonesia and Malaysia and Singapore and countries like that?

The problem here is that they say one thing publicly and another thing privately,

and it's just not clear which one we should take to be the sincere position.

My sense is that privately there's a concern among our South-East Asian neighbours

that Australia is bringing this new Cold War into their part of the world

and that we are creating trouble where they would prefer to avoid it

and perhaps forcing choices on them, which they would prefer to avoid.

And then publicly, they're a little bit more supportive.

It's simply not clear to me which of those to believe,

whether it's the private or the public.

Maybe there's a split within those nations themselves

amongst the leadership on this matter.

Quite possibly.

I mean, I definitely think that South-East Asian nations,

look, in a sense, we're all in the same boat, right?

We all want to see a region in which Chinese power is balanced,

but we all have massive economic interests in China, in the Chinese economy.

Nobody really wants to disturb that. Everybody wants to avoid choosing.

It's balanced to euphemism. Don't you mean constrained?

I don't think it has to be euphemism.

Yes, well, it does mean constrained to some degree, yes.

So I think the objective for Australia and for our partners in the region

ought to be that Chinese power is never dominant in our part of the world.

That's different to China being a leader.

I think that's almost impossible.

China will inevitably become a leader in this region,

including in the military sphere.

But it is definitely within our power in Australia and with partners like Indonesia

to ensure that China is never the dominant power in maritime South-East Asia.

Before the AUKUS announcement, it's possible I don't really know Sam.

There might have been a couple of blogs, Australian military blogs,

saying what this country really needs is a couple of nuclear-powered submarines.

We weren't hearing calls for nuclear-powered submarines

in the defence establishment in Australia.

And yet, as soon as the AUKUS decision was announced,

a very quick consensus formed that we do, that we should have these things.

And that's now very much the consensus.

It's a consensus shared by the major parties, the Labor Party and the coalition.

How did this happen, this quick consensus form around something

that very few people, if any, were calling for before the announcement?

There's a charitable way to interpret this in a less charitable way.

The charitable way to interpret this, and I think that this is partially true,

is that the reason that there was no major push for nuclear-powered submarines

before AUKUS was announced is that most people, including myself,

assumed that it was just not possible.

No one was ever going to sell us this technology,

so why even bother pushing for it, right?

I think the other way to interpret this is that once the government announces a position,

the easiest thing to do is simply to muck in behind it.

And there's not an awful lot to be gained from standing outside of it.

It could be a combination of both, but I do think it's an important factor

that we all thought this was just impossible, that this would never happen.

And it really was an extraordinarily dramatic piece of diplomacy

by the Morrison government and of policy to actually get the United States to agree to this.

You write that our participation in AUKUS constitutes a big bet on America.

How closely does AUKUS tie our defense systems to America's defense systems

and American foreign policy, American strategic policy?

Well, it seems to me impossible for something that's this long-lasting,

that's this expensive, and that's this intimate in terms of technology sharing

to come with no strings attached.

So the United States has only ever shared this kind of technology

with one other country in the past, and that was the United Kingdom,

I think the late 1950s.

So this is entirely, well, this is almost completely novel for the United States to do this.

And you don't do this with a country that you don't trust intimately.

I think actually that that was part of the Australian motive,

the Morrison government's motive in announcing this agreement,

was to actually tie the US more tightly to the region.

It seems to me difficult to imagine that having acquired these capabilities,

and let's remember it, it's a long while off before we get them,

but once we acquire these capabilities, it becomes very difficult to say no to the United States.

Should they ever want to call on them?

Capability can drive policy.

So if we never have these submarines, if we don't have a choice,

then of course the question never arises.

The United States will never ask us for something we can't provide.

But once we do have the military capability,

then we're in a position where if the United States should ever call on us,

we'd be forced to say no.

Your argument is that the United States probably won't do that.

The United States is now inclined to retreat from the region.

There won't be a grand announcement.

It'll just be this slow kind of sunset of American power in the Asia Pacific region.

It's a really interesting thing to say at a time when,

as we've seen in recent years, in the face of growing Chinese belligerence,

the United States has forged much closer defence relations

between Japan and South Korea, which was previously unthinkable.

America's getting closer to Vietnam.

The Philippines is taking a greater interest.

We certainly are.

The United States has had a lot of success in persuading other countries in the regions

that their interests are threatened by growing Chinese military power,

growing Chinese belligerence.

And America seems very present at the moment in acting to contain Chinese power.

Why do you predict America in the coming decade or so, or decades,

will retreat from the region?

Yeah, I agree.

The evidence you present is very strong and there is clearly a story to be told

about America's growing awareness of China's rise and of China's threat.

In fact, you know, a lot of analysts, I've heard them say that in a time

of unprecedented division in Washington, the one thing that brings policymakers

from the Republican and Democratic side together is China.

That's the one thing they can agree on.

So, yes, my argument on its face does sound a little like it's going against

the grain of the evidence where the evidence takes us.

The big missing piece for me is military.

So the United States has, yes, everything you list there plus more.

But what's missing is an increased military presence in the increased American military presence

in the region.

So essentially, since the end of the Cold War, American force structure in Asia

hasn't changed all that much.

Lots of new basing arrangements, including in Australia in recent years.

They've announced that they're going to put more bombers into Northern Australia

and there's going to be a submarine facility in Western Australia.

But essentially, they're moving pieces around the chessboard.

They're not adding more pieces in.

And that's in the face of the largest military modernization that we've ever seen

since World War II of any country.

That is, of course, China undertaking that.

So what you're saying is that America isn't really contributing more,

but it is setting up other nations in the region to align with itself

and its view of China and the need to create stability through

a more coordinated approach to that?

Yeah, what I'm saying is the United States itself hasn't made any

what you might call costly signals.

So selling weapons to Australia, for instance, isn't terribly expensive

for the United States.

In fact, it's all upside.

Moving forces around the region costs a little bit,

but is not terribly expensive.

It's not a massive commitment.

So we've long since, I think, reached the point where China's military rise

is so significant that a really dramatic gesture

would have been called for from America.

For instance, the United States could have announced that it was pulling

all its forces out of Europe and moving them to Asia.

I mean, really, the scale of China's military rise does demand a response like that.

And yet it hasn't happened.

In fact, it's not even close.

Well, you've got the invasion of Ukraine and that's been a factor too, surely.

Ah, that's been a factor.

But look, you know, the combined European economies are roughly 10 times

as big as that of Russia.

This is not beyond the Europeans to deal with themselves.

They very much could if they wanted to.

But it's very comfortable for them, of course,

to leave most of the work to the United States.

You think in the long run, America will conclude that China poses

no serious threat to it militarily.

What makes you say that?

Given that we do know that China will have long range

nuclear missiles that could certainly at least reach their West Coast cities.

Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego.

What makes you think or say that America will conclude that China doesn't present

a real military threat to mainland America?

Yeah, it looks China can already project force through nuclear weapons

onto the American landmass.

That's true.

But the United States can do that to China as well.

It's effectively deterred from striking each other with nuclear weapons.

The reason I think that Australia needs to worry about American resolve,

its political will to maintain its leadership in Asia,

is that ultimately China's rise does not threaten the United States.

America is an incredibly secure country, inherently very secure.

It's separated by a vast ocean from China, which is very difficult to cross.

America has all the ingredients for sustained economic growth into the future.

Very young population, very innovative economy.

So it will remain capable of funding a large military effort.

So it'll have a huge military force for the indefinite future.

Thousands of nuclear weapons separated by a vast ocean.

As I say, you know, as big as China is going to be,

it's not going to overcome those kind of disadvantages.

So America is incredibly secure.

And in the end, I think that speaks to America's motivation.

Why would the United States make huge sacrifices on behalf of its allies

to protect them against China?

That's the thing I think Australia needs to think about.

When you talk like this, I'm sort of imagining something a little bit like

the British retreat from Asia that only really became apparent

when Push came to shove with growing Japanese militarism

during the outset of the Second World War.

Britain couldn't afford to sustain a military outpost in East Asia.

Is this the kind of thing you're talking about that will come a point

when America hollows out its commitments to the region so much,

it'll become apparent that they have withdrawn from the region,

that they really have no interest in maintaining their dominance

in this part of the world?

Well, I think actually that a physical withdrawal of American forces

is kind of the last manifestation.

I don't actually see that happening in the near future at all.

So I think America's military commitment,

the troops, the ships, the aircraft that they have stationed in the region,

the air bases, those will remain indefinitely.

I don't see that changing.

And there are all sorts of bureaucratic reasons why that won't change.

Really, I think the way that America's declining resolve manifests

is in the minds of its friends and its adversaries.

And it goes back to the point that I was making just a few minutes ago.

For alliances to work, for America's security commitment to Asia to work,

its friends, but also its adversaries, potential adversaries,

have to believe that America is prepared to make major sacrifices

to defend its interests in the region.

So let's take Korea as an example here.

The United States has tens of thousands of troops, air bases in South Korea,

has a security treaty with South Korea that's dedicated to defending it

against the North Korean threat.

Now, North Korea now has, like China, but in smaller numbers,

has missiles that can land a nuclear warhead on an American city.

So since that has happened, we are being asked,

both America's friends and its adversaries,

are being asked to buy the proposition that in the event of a war,

the United States would be prepared to sacrifice one of its cities,

Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, in order to save Seoul and the rest of South Korea.

Does that seem plausible to anyone? It doesn't to me.

I mean, South Korea is, I think, the seventh largest economy in the OECD.

North Korea is a tiny economy.

The South Koreans ought to be able to do this by themselves.

It's not really fair to ask the Americans to make that kind of sacrifice on their behalf.

And I don't think it's believable anymore.

And that problem, I think, is true throughout the region

and is true for the China threat as well.

You know, if no vital U.S. interests are at stake,

it's really not fair for us to ask the United States to make major sacrifices on our behalf.

And ultimately, I don't think they will.

China has been using its growing military and economic strength to practice

a fair bit of attempted intimidation, perhaps even coercion,

on neighbouring countries.

It's built military installations out of freshly created atolls in the South China Sea.

Wouldn't the United States see growing Chinese control

of the shipping lanes in the South China Sea and in the region

as a threat to its economic interests?

I think the argument about shipping lanes is a little overwrought.

I mean, there is in Australia, for instance, a school of thought

that, you know, we shouldn't just be worried about our territorial security.

We should be worried about the sea lanes that connect us to the world.

And yes, I think what you're talking about is a version of that argument.

I mean, for the United States, firstly,

I think the counterargument is pretty straightforward.

The United States is not hugely trade dependent with Asia anyway

or, in fact, with any part of the world,

comparing it to other OECD economies.

The United States is one of the most self-sufficient economies out there.

It is not, you know, vitally trade dependent on Asia.

It's very reliant on Taiwan for microprocessors for the moment anyway.

Absolutely, yes. All nations around the world are.

I think over 90% of microprocessors that are sold around the world

are coming out of Taiwan. That's true.

The reason these trade routes are so vital

is because the narrow straits through which these trade routes run

are the most efficient way of getting goods from point A to point B.

But of course, you can choose slightly less efficient ways to do it.

If one trade route is blocked, then ships can move.

They can, you know, they can choose another route.

So protecting all of these trade routes is incredibly difficult,

but also stopping trade, blockading trade, is also incredibly difficult.

The third point I'd make is that China is much more vulnerable

in this regard than the United States is.

So should China ever threaten America's sea lines, its trading lanes,

then the United States could threaten to do the same thing to China.

Podcast, broadcast and online.

This is Conversations with Richard Feidler on ABC Radio.

Sam, you argue that when it comes to defending Australia,

which always needs to be front of mind, distance is our greatest ally.

Can you explain what you mean by that?

The simplest way to think about this is to note that

Beijing is closer to Berlin than it is to Sydney.

This is often forgotten in the Australian National Security Debate.

We hear sometimes that when it comes to China, danger is on our doorstep,

or I think it was Barnaby Joyce who said something like

that we're in danger of being encircled by Chinese power.

I mean, we're a long way away from that.

I don't know. We don't know what they're up to in Antarctica though, Sam, do we?

Actually, that's an interesting subject in of itself.

China is very ambitious in Antarctica.

Fair enough.

But look, distance is our greatest friend.

So let me offer just a simple illustration of that.

As impressive as China's military modernisation has been over the last 30 years,

no nation, China included, has overcome the restrictions

that are imposed upon every military force by distance.

It's a critical factor in determining how much military power you can project.

So if a military commander needs to put 500 kilograms of high explosives onto a target,

if that targets over the next hill,

well, you could probably truck it there under the dead of night

and detonate it remotely.

If the target is 5,000 metres away, you need an artillery piece.

If it's 500 kilometres away, you need a fighter aircraft

with an airfield and all the crews and all the support stuff that comes along with it.

If it's 5,000 kilometres away, you need an intercontinental ballistic missile,

and that is itself incredibly expensive.

So at every step along that continuum,

it gets much more expensive and technically much more difficult.

And yet the actual military effect that you're achieving remains constant.

It's 500 kilograms of high explosives all along the way.

So in a nutshell, that's why it's so important for Australia to preserve that distance

because the further away we are,

the more difficult and the more expensive it is to project military force against us.

And the thing that I'm worried about with AUKUS is that

instead of exploiting the distance between us and China,

we're effectively trying to compress it

because we're buying weapons that are designed to operate very far from our shores.

And my simple argument is that in the unlikely event that China ever wants to use military force against Australia,

let them come to us.

Let them overcome that tyranny of distance rather than us doing it for them.

Could Australia ever realistically defend itself against an attack

without help from the United States?

The short answer is yes and that's the hopeful message of the book.

The slightly longer answer is that it's hard to conceive

that it would ever be totally without help from the United States.

So if you look at Ukraine at the moment, for instance,

this is a nation that is not a formal ally of the United States

and yet it's still getting lots of help from the US.

I think we can assume for the indefinite future

that something like that kind of relationship at the very least

would continue between Australia and the United States.

But I think the question you're asking is,

can Australia defend itself against a major power, probably China,

where we don't have American combat help,

where American forces wouldn't come to our aid?

And I think actually the answer is yes and it is because of that issue of distance.

China, of course, is a huge military power and getting bigger all the time.

Still has major ambitions to grow its military power,

but distance helps us.

It is very difficult for China to bring very much of that military force

within our sphere and within our surrounds.

Perhaps we should talk a bit more about that word threat too.

I don't think there's anyone who seriously thinks Australia

is in danger of invasion from anyone at this point.

The Australian mainland is in danger of military invasion

for a start attacking power from the north

that have to climb over Indonesia to be able to do that.

That's not what we're talking about here

when we're talking about a threat, a military threat to Australia.

What do we mean?

What do defence analysts mean when they talk about a threat to Australia?

A nuclear missile aimed at Pine Gap, for example,

or defence installations in the north of Australia?

That's certainly a possibility,

although in circumstances where China is firing nuclear-tipped missiles at Pine Gap,

then we're already in World War III at that point.

So the threats to the Australian mainland are probably secondary there.

I think we're talking about a planetary emergency at that point.

But look, I think more realistically what I'm thinking of

is that China uses missiles,

whether fired from the Chinese mainland

or fired from bomber aircraft

or fired from ships and submarines

to attack the military facilities

and perhaps some economic infrastructure to our north.

The decisions we've made in the last year or so

about inviting more American bombers and submarines

onto Australian shores actually increases the risk

that Australia would be hit in a wartime scenario.

At the moment, if the United States and China went to war,

I think Australia would be really a secondary target.

We wouldn't be at the forefront of China's thinking at all.

But if American bombers are flying combat missions from Tindall Air Force Base

and if American submarines are being re-armed

and replenished from a base in Western Australia,

then yeah, I can easily see that Australia would work its way up

the Chinese targeting list.

You say in the light of all this

a key absolutely critical element in our forward defence planning

ought to be to get much closer to Indonesia.

Tell me a bit about what you have in mind for that.

Yeah, this is probably the most ambitious

and some of the people I've talked to about this book,

the least realistic aspect of the argument that I make in the book.

What I'm calling for is something akin to an alliance with Indonesia.

At the very least, a much closer strategic partnership.

We may never call it an alliance

because that has all sorts of domestic implications for Indonesia

and traditionally very allergic to that kind of idea.

But yes, in a world in which, A, we can have less trust

that the United States will be there for us

and where B, we want to maintain that advantage of distance

it makes perfect sense for Australia to partner with Indonesia

really with one core strategic goal in mind

and that is to make sure that China never dominates maritime Southeast Asia.

As I said earlier, we can't guarantee that China won't be a leading power

perhaps the leading power, but we can together with Indonesia

I think make sure China isn't the dominant military power

and that's not a terribly ambitious military strategy.

Where do you see Indonesian power going in the next 20, 30 years?

Look, there are realistic forecasts

that Indonesia will be the fourth biggest economy in the world

by the middle of the century, bigger than Japan.

So I think what we have to expect is that Indonesia becomes

truly a great power over the course of the next 30 years

and that ought to be a good news story for Australia

if Indonesia is on our side.

Because at the moment actually from the point of view of defending ourselves

against China's ambitions and China's rise

Southeast Asia is somewhat unique.

Everywhere that China looks around its periphery

there are other great powers that are going to constrain its ambitions

India, Russia, Japan, the United States in North Asia.

Southeast Asia is exceptional because there's no great power in Southeast Asia.

So I think it's in Australia's interest for Indonesia to be that great power

and actually it's the only realistic candidate

because it's got the economic potential

and it's got the population size to be a great power.

So I think Australia ought to be encouraging that.

The Keating government had a defence treaty with Indonesia

but it fell apart very quickly over East Timor during the Howard government years

but that's no longer the case, is it?

And does that mean the way is open for much closer relations

without those intervening problems putting West Papua to one side as well?

Yeah, I agree. Yes, that's largely behind us

and the bilateral relationship is in very good shape at the moment

but nevertheless this would be, what I'm describing would be a major step

and something we've never really done before.

The response I have to people who have told me that this is too ambitious

that this is wishful thinking is to say, well, you know,

circumstances can impose themselves very, very quickly

and the example I use is Germany which changed its position

incredibly quickly after Russia invaded Ukraine

so, you know, policy can move very fast when circumstances change

so Russia invaded Ukraine on a Thursday

by the following Sunday the German Chancellor was giving a speech

in which he promised implacable opposition to Russia's military goals

it was going to arm Ukraine which it had never done

it had never sent arms abroad before

and it was going to wean itself away from Russian energy

basically a complete reversion of German foreign policy

and defence policy for the 20 years previous

that happened in four days.

Now, I'm not saying China is going to do anything as silly as what the Russians have done in Ukraine

but circumstances can impose themselves in ways that demand new action from governments

and I do think that at some point Indonesia's interests

are going to clash so directly with those of Beijing

that Indonesia will have a choice imposed upon it

So that's step one you're calling for, a much closer defence arrangement with Indonesia

Step two is the Pacific Islands

tell me what you're proposing that Australia should do in regards to the Pacific Islands

Well, again, I think Europe is a model here

when we look at the European Union this was essentially

the roots of the European Union were an economic response to a security challenge

but after the Second World War the Europeans said to themselves never again

we're never going to fight like this again

and how do we do that?

Well, we tie ourselves together economically in ways that make it impossible for us ever to fight

and ever closer union as the phrase goes

on a much more modest level I'm proposing something similar for the Pacific Islands region

and I'm not new in this, I mean the Rudd government and plenty of others have suggested

an EU style arrangement for Australia with the Pacific Islands region

to essentially ensure that the Pacific Islands countries remain not tied to Australia

but essentially make it impossible for Pacific Island countries to bargain

between us and China and to bargain between us and the United States and China

and to make sure that they can never effectively defect in a security sense

I think the one thing that's held this back in the past that's held back this idea

is that Australia hasn't been prepared to make enough sacrifice

so the Pacific Islands countries look at these proposals and say well what's in this for us

why on earth would we do this?

We're having a great time playing one guy off against the other

Exactly, so for this to happen and again this is a long term proposition

but for this to happen Australia will have to make major sacrifices

and that includes giving Pacific Island countries a major say in how

an economic union like this actually comes about

and giving them rights to set the direction of this union

Sounds something a little like the Marshall Plan too

which was an economic proposal without all kinds of defence and strategic ramifications

Yeah indeed, I think that's right

I should say actually that even prior to this, I mean that is as I say a long term proposition

Even before we get to that point, Australia does have a lot of advantages in the Pacific Islands region

There's an awful lot of concern in Australia has been over the last few years about

China's growing interest in the region, delivering much more aid

There's a security agreement with the Solomon Islands

There was rumours a few years ago of China approaching Papua New Guinea

and Vanuatu about setting up a military base

I think actually those rumours were pretty well founded

This is not a panic on Australia's part

I think China does have real ambitions in this area

However, the Pacific Islands region is much closer to us than it is to China

So we're always going to get there quicker and be of more help than China will be

Our aid spending is far higher than China's is and China's aid spending has actually plateaued since 2016

And we have cultural, sporting and economic ties with the Pacific Islands region

that China can never match

So look, even short of the kind of agreement that I'm talking about, the Pacific Union idea

Australia has major advantages and we don't need to panic about Chinese power in this region just yet

I've been talking a little bit about the Second World War, the war on the Pacific

Australia's a very different country now

We have more than triple the population we did back then

We're vastly more multicultural

We look a lot more like the rest of the world in that sense

And we're much, much richer as well

Nonetheless, I suppose you're proposing that Australia become much more independent

Is this a difficult ask for Australia culturally?

Because Australia has only ever grasped independence warily bit by bit over the last century and a bit, hasn't it?

That's true in a security sense

I think in other senses we shouldn't underestimate how different Australia looks

I mean, politically for one thing, it's been a very gradual process, perhaps too gradual to notice

But in the Second World War, there was still an attitude that because the United Kingdom was at war, Australia, therefore Australia was at war

I mean, as late as the 1980s, Australians could still appeal to the Privy Council in London for important court cases

So the process of independence, political independence in Australia has been very gradual

But from a 30,000 foot perspective, it's been unmistakable

We've become a much more independent country politically

Economically too, our ties have shifted from the United Kingdom and the US to our own region

To Japan starting in the 1970s became our major trading partner, now China

And our foreign policy has become much more Asia focused and much less Anglo focused

Let's put it that way

So we've made major moves in that direction and it seems to me altogether fitting with that trend

Consistent with that trend that Australia should take a more independent defence posture as well

We've been, you're absolutely right, reluctant to do that over our history

But for me, it's possible to imagine circumstances in which we'd have to

If the United States' intent on, against all reason, is intent on maintaining its leadership in Asia

And is prepared to fight China, then I think we should be prepared to break the alliance

If we absolutely have to

I doubt it would come to that and I don't think it's in our interest to do that now

But I think absolutely, if the United States is committed to a course that puts it on a

Effectively on a path to war with China, then I think we have to think very seriously about the alliance

Much of those worries about war are centered around China invading Taiwan

If you were standing back and you thought that all leaders were rational

You'd think that for Xi Jinping to contemplate invading Taiwan, he'd have to be out of his mind

Because Taiwan is not contiguous to the Chinese mainland

They have an officer class that hasn't been in a shooting war since 1979

It would mean that Japan would get nuclear weapons, South Korea would get nuclear weapons

It would just be in the end economically ruinous

And probably could very well end up in military disaster as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has proved to be

Nonetheless, you do see over history dictators doing really dumb things like this

Like it was mad for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait

It was crazy in many ways for Russia to invade Ukraine

But often they're not getting good information, emotions over rule, ego over rules, common sense

And this happens anyway

Do you have a view on this, on the likelihood of China attempting something as full-hearty as an invasion of Taiwan?

I don't have a view on the likelihood

And I'd say just as a broader proposition there on making predictions or forecasts about that

That your listeners should never rely on political experts to make accurate predictions in this regard

And I'd point them to a political scientist by the name of Philip Tetlock

Who wrote a famous book called Expert Political Judgment

In which he proved conclusively that political experts of all kinds

While they have many uses and while they're very important for society in various different ways

They have a terrible record of making accurate predictions in their own fields of expertise

In fact, their record of accuracy of their predictions is not much better than flipping a coin

So I wouldn't rely on me for an accurate prediction about whether China is going to invade Taiwan

But all the reasons that you give for what's a terrible idea I think are absolutely right

It's worth adding that it's not just dictators who make terrible judgments in this regard

Democracies are known for it as well

I think perhaps our mental framework in regard to China

Is that because of the success they've achieved over the last 40 years as an economic power

That they don't make that many mistakes

Although clearly that reputation has been knocked about a little by COVID

But even if we take a slightly longer frame for just the period of communist dictatorship in China

It's clear that the leadership there is capable of colossal mistakes

Such as the Great Leap Forward, for instance

Cultural revolution

I would not put it past China to make a mistake of this kind

And clearly it is developing the military capabilities that can help them do it

I still think in pure capability terms there's some way off

And most analysts would agree with that

That they don't have the amphibious capabilities to pull off a full-scale invasion of Taiwan

So if they're attempting something slightly more modest like a blockade

Or let's say a permanent siege of Taiwan

Then yeah, it may be

But as you say, incredibly risky

A couple of years ago I had your mentor Hugh White on this program

Who shares similar views to you in many of the things you've been saying here

And he was of the view that if China did invade Taiwan

There would be a moment where the US President would be surrounded by his military chiefs

His national security experts

The discussion would come forward about how the United States might participate

The United States could offer conventional arms

Or even retaliate on those Chinese invading forces with their own weaponry

Their own force projection from their Pacific fleet

And then the President says, well what happens then?

Well then China retaliates

Will they retaliate with nuclear weapons?

Well that's a possibility Mr. President

And in that case I can't contemplate the destruction of the cities on the west coast of the United States

Or even beyond that

So in the end there's nothing much we can do to help Taiwan in this matter

Do you see that scenario playing out?

What do you think of that scenario?

Yeah, I think in fact it's very similar to the one I described earlier with regard to Korea

America has interests in Taiwan security

And clearly like Australia would prefer that Taiwan was never invaded

But is it important enough to make that kind of sacrifice for Taiwan?

Ultimately I think not

Where I differ with Hugh is that

He's made the argument that if America fails to make that commitment to Taiwan

Then essentially it's security guarantees to its other allies

To Japan, to Korea for instance

They are so degraded that the credibility of those guarantees is so damaged

That America's position in Asia will crumble as a result

I don't think that's true and in fact the opposite is true

That the United States, if the United States refuses to fight on Taiwan's behalf

It's quite possible to me to believe that Japan and Korea

And maybe even Australia would be quietly relieved

That the United States wasn't prepared to fight a major war on Taiwan's behalf

And would keep its power to dry for them

Especially because such a war

The United States is very likely to lose such a war now against China

Would they want to use the Ukraine model instead

Which is to tip a whole lot of ordnance and weaponry into Taiwan

And let the Taiwanese forces who I am pretty sure will fight like hell

I'm seeing a skeptical look on your face there Sam

I'm not as sure as you

I'm not an expert on Taiwan's military

What we do know from public opinion polling is that the Taiwanese people

Feel ever more Taiwanese and ever less Chinese

But I know just enough about the Taiwanese military to know that it has

I think for a long time invested in many of the wrong capabilities

And also that the Taiwanese army in particular

Not so much the Air Force and the Navy

But the Taiwanese army in particular is in not great odor with the Taiwanese public

I think largely because of its reputation as being tied to the old Taiwanese dictatorship

You know before Taiwan became a democracy

So it's actual combat capabilities of the Taiwanese army I think are open to question

You describe yourself as a liberal conservative

Which I think what you're meaning by that is you're a conservative who's not a reactionary

I think that's what you're trying to say

Is that right?

It sounds about right

I mean here's the comparison I draw

You said earlier I think that I've started to sound like a little bit of a radical on Orcus

Because I'm a little bit outside mainstream opinion on that question

But seems to me I'm the conservative one here

So there was the great American essayist William F. Buckley once said

That the job of the conservative is to stand a thwart history yelling stop

And so it seems to me it's the other team that's doing the radicalizing here

You know Orcus is a radical shift and a radical deepening of the US-Australia alliance

I'm the one who's standing a thwart that bit of history yelling stop

I mean it's not as if we were a terrible ally before

You know the United States had all sorts of complaints about its European allies

Not just Trump but every US president going back through the Cold War

Used to complain that the Europeans weren't doing enough for their own security

But Australia was always exempted from that

And so it wasn't the Americans who were calling for this

This was our idea and it seemed to me that you know we were being a pretty good ally even before this

Does your conservatism influence your views on the wickedness of war?

I think one of the real tragedies of the modern, the radicalization of the right

Particularly in the United States over the last, well let's refer to the Trump period

Although I think we can go back probably to the post Cold War

We can refer to it as a post Cold War period

One of the tragedies of that period is it has gone beyond valorization of military service

Which has always been I think an important component of conservative ideas

Towards something like fetishizing it

Where military force and military aggression have become proxies for you know masculine strength if you like

So I'm really uncomfortable with that

I don't think it's at all inconsistent with conservative beliefs to take pride in the military sacrifices

That previous generations have made, in fact that's perfectly consistent

I remember you've quoted something in your book

You've quoted Edmund Burke, the famous conservative British parliamentarian

You said something about how war aggregates the normal moral laws

And sort of makes it a kind of semi-permanent state

Yeah and I think many, many conservatives including Michael Oakshot

Who's a figure that I studied at university many years ago

Have warned about the effects of war to turn societies and turn governments into

To turn countries into perpetual garrison states

And that that does erode the liberties that we all enjoy living in democratic societies

Fantastic speaking with you Sam and fascinating, thank you so much

Thank you very much

You

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