Australia’s defence thinking is based on outdated grand strategies. Adopting a complex interdependence grand strategy could create robust connections with many countries, enhancing national resilience to strategic, economic, technological and societal shocks.
Specifically, Defence would need to consider how to build resilience into its relationships to support Australian defence capabilities and industry.
Australia’s defence debates today generally assume that any proposals will readily fit within Australia’s current two grand strategies.
The balance-of-power grand strategy involves collective defence with the United States and implicitly targets China. The engagement grand strategy targets Southeast Asia and the Pacific through diplomatic, informational, military and economic links.
However, the world has changed. The US’s support in times of trouble is now doubtful. And while engagement is pragmatic, it misses the fact that Australia’s fastest growing two-way trading relations are generally elsewhere.
In an uncertain world, resilience is increasingly important as it allows a country to recover from major shocks, be they strategic, economic, technological, environmental or societal. To be sufficiently resilient, Australia must connect with other countries; no nation can thrive alone.
In a complex interdependence grand strategy, the objective would be sustaining international links that support national resilience. Achieving this will require formal and informal links with others that are problematic for them to break, whether intentionally as China is prone to, or carelessly as the US is now doing.
Developing such links involves creating asymmetrical interdependences that can be purposefully exploited to ensure robustness. Links with Australia must be in the hard-nosed self-interest of the other states to continue. Fuzzy talk of shared values or reminders that ‘we’ve always helped you’ fall apart in difficult times when international relationships are most threatened.
No single nation can provide the breadth or robustness of links that Australia’s resilience requires. This strategy would aim to weave a durable connective web of diverse relationships balanced to meet a range of possible shocks.
In devising this web, a starting point might be considering Australia’s significant two-way trading partners: China, Japan, the US, South Korea, India, Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Britain, Germany, Indonesia and Vietnam.
It is immediately apparent that this framework would consider security and prosperity in combination, rather than keeping them separate.
This has important implications for Australia’s defence.
Firstly, the focus of Defence would shift to building durable two-way links across multiple nations, rather than maintaining its heavy one-way reliance on the US. For example, this would mean favouring Japanese-designed frigates under Sea 3000. This would involve engaging Australian industry to build elements for use in both nations’ ships, such as Naval Strike Missiles, uncrewed submarines, towed sonar arrays and Nulka active decoys. Similarly, Australia might avoid buying more F-35 fighters in favour of joining the Global Combat Air Programme, a sixth-generation fighter project involving Britain, Italy and Japan.
Secondly, defending Australia’s international links would become a shared problem. This was not so in World War I and early in World War II, when others were unconcerned. For example, Australia should discuss with South Korea and Japan how to protect the large-scale seaborne trade in energy resources between them and Australia. Pragmatic, cooperative efforts to address this problem may help deepen other beneficial links.
Thirdly, Australia’s defence industry could deepen engagement with key countries. The industry is on the cusp of being a regional uncrewed system manufacturer, including high-end Ghost Bats and Ghost Sharks, and more affordable Speartooths and Bluebottles. Australian-made uncrewed systems have also been combat-proven in Ukraine. An ongoing effort to export uncrewed systems, or build them offshore bilaterally, could yield valuable links. Such export sales would also help maintain the viability of Australian defence industry as AUKUS dominates defence spending.
Such a grand strategy means that one or two nations would no longer dominate defence debates or decisions. Australia’s relationships should be shaped not by commercial pragmatism or defence alliance considerations, but by their robustness in times of strategic, economic, technological or societal shocks.