The Echidna Strategy: Australia's Search for Power and Peace

By Sam Roggeveen

In the wake of a shift in the global power balance, how can Australia best protect itself?

The Echidna Strategy overturns the conventional wisdom about Australia's security. Australia will need to defend itself without American help, but this doesn't need to cost more.

The truth, which no Australian political leader is willing to confront, is that America's security is not threatened by China's rise. Once we accept that conclusion, the entire edifice on which our security has been built crumbles, and we need to start afresh.

Yet, despite the rapid growth of China's military, defending Australia need not be particularly difficult. Our leaders insist on making it expensive and hard. Even worse, in the name of the US alliance, they expose our country to more danger.

The Echidna Strategy sheds new light on the contest for leadership in Asia and the strategy Australia needs to thrive. This includes a radically different approach to defence. Above all, it means a bolder Australian foreign policy, with three goals: leadership in the Pacific; a much stronger relationship with Indonesia; and a regional order centred on a gathering of its great powers.

'Essential reading for anyone interested in our nation's security in an uncertain world where the enduring supremacy of the United States cannot be assumed or assured.' ––Malcolm Turnbull

'Here is a voice, bold in its conclusions and forensic in its logic, which defies the echo chamber of current strategic policy.' ––Peter Varghese

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Inc. Books
• Release date: Aug 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781743823279

Sam Roggeveen

Sam Roggeveen is director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program. He was the founding editor of The Interpreter and is editor of the Lowy Institute Papers. Before joining the Lowy Institute, Sam was a senior analyst in Australia's peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments. His forthcoming book is The Echidna Strategy.

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Praise for The Echidna Strategy

‘Neither alarmist nor complacent, Sam Roggeveen’s clear-eyed analysis of Australia’s strategic strengths – and vulnerabilities – is essential reading for anyone interested in our nation’s security in an uncertain world where the enduring supremacy of the United States cannot be assumed or assured.’

—MALCOLM TURNBULL

‘Here is a voice, bold in its conclusions and forensic in its logic, which defies the echo chamber of current strategic policy. Sam Roggeveen not only asks the uncomfortable questions but also provides answers which many will find equally uncomfortable. But the issues he raises in this original and courageous dismantling of Australia’s strategic orthodoxies are precisely the discussion we need to have.

‘This is a cogent call from a self-confessed liberal conservative for an Australian defence policy built on deterrence – affordable and, most controversially, without the safety net of the US alliance. Roggeveen asks whether, far from saving us, the alliance risks dragging Australia into a catastrophic nuclear war.’

—PETER VARGHESE

Published by La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc.

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La Trobe University plays an integral role in Australia’s public intellectual life, and is recognised globally for its research excellence and commitment to ideas and debate. La Trobe University Press publishes books of high intellectual quality, aimed at general readers. Titles range across the humanities and sciences, and are written by distinguished and innovative scholars. La Trobe University Press books are produced in conjunction with Black Inc., an independent Australian publishing house. The members of the LTUP Editorial Board are Vice-Chancellor’s Fellows Emeritus Professor Robert Manne and Dr Elizabeth Finkel, and Morry Schwartz and Chris Feik of Black Inc.

Copyright © Sam Roggeveen 2023

Sam Roggeveen asserts his right to be known as the author of this work.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

9781760643683 (paperback)

9781743823279 (ebook)

Cover design by Alex Ross

Cover image Eric Isselee / Shutterstock

Author photograph by Petri Kurkaa

For Kate, Ellie and Andie

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

America: Rich, Powerful and Unmotivated

Chapter 2

The Long In-Between

Chapter 3

China’s Military, and What It Could Do to Australia

Chapter 4

Three Priorities for Australian Statecraft

Chapter 5

AUKUS and the Australian Cult of the Offensive

Chapter 6

Spiky, but Unthreatening: An Echidna Defence Force

Chapter 7

The Causes of the Separation

Further Reading

Acknowledgements

Index

Introduction

ON 15 SEPTEMBER 2021, THE AUSTRALIAN government set the nation on a profoundly new course when it announced a partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. This was a major new direction not just for Australia’s military – nuclear-powered submarines would give our defence force unparalleled new capabilities – but also for the world. Australia was proposing to reorder the global hierarchy of military power. Nuclear-powered attack submarines are some of the most potent vessels any navy can boast, equivalent to battleships in an earlier age. Now Australia proposed to acquire a fleet larger than that of France or Britain, both considered great powers owing to their nuclear weapons and permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

The announcement was freighted with subtext about how the Australian government saw the world. Such a radical break with Australia’s historical aversion to nuclear technology, and with global norms on nuclear power to which Australia had previously shown great deference, suggested that Australia’s strategic circumstances were changing dramatically. But there were many ways Australia might have responded to such a change. The fact that the government chose this course revealed not just its assessment of the threat but its judgement about its friends.

It was, above all, a big bet on America. Quickly forgotten around the hype on submarines, the AUKUS agreement also promised new levels of cooperation and military integration with the United States. There would be regular rotations of US Navy and UK Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarines to Australia’s west coast, as well as technological collaboration on autonomous underwater vehicles, quantum technology, cyber technology, artificial intelligence and hypersonic weapons. Separately, the government also announced new facilities to host American bombers, allowing them to fly combat missions from an Australian air base.

Australia’s alliance with the United States was already at a historic high point when AUKUS was launched. Australia moved in political lockstep with the George W. Bush administration on its global war on terror and secured a free trade agreement with America in 2005. In 2011, the United States announced that it would have a fixed presence in the Northern Territory, with up to 2,500 Marines rotating through a new training facility. This was also the year in which the Obama administration launched its ‘pivot’ to Asia, which it described as a major reorientation of US economic, diplomatic and military efforts to the region. As a measure of the closeness of the relationship, the Obama administration chose Australia as the setting to announce this initiative.

In short, relations between Australia and the US have never been closer, and as AUKUS matures they will become closer still. Altogether, then, this is a strange moment to write a book about what happens to Australian national security when we can no longer rely on the United States. This book will explain why America is unlikely to remain the leading strategic power in Asia, why Asia will be led by Asian great powers, and how to secure Australia in an era in which its alliance with the US diminishes in importance.

It is radical to consider a future in which Australia is not tied to a great power. Throughout its history, Australia has grasped independence incrementally, sometimes reluctantly. At times, Australia has been forced to be free – Britain’s retreat from Singapore in 1941 and its entry into the European Common Market in 1972, overturning Australia’s economic model at a stroke, are the prime examples. Australia has always feared abandonment by its great-power protector.

For these reasons, a sudden breach with the United States is unlikely. What this book describes is the completion of a historical process. As at other moments in our history, great-power protection is likely to be withdrawn, compelling Australia to take a more independent path out of necessity rather than choice. There won’t be a principled declaration of independence, but a hesitant and gradual process of separation triggered by America’s declining interest and motivation to protect Australia. All of this is conceivable over the remainder of the first half of this century, which means it should directly influence the defence investments and foreign policy decisions we are making now.

Yet there are circumstances in which Australia will need to take decisive action to loosen or even sever the bonds that have connected us with the United States. That scenario seems distant from the reality of Australian politics today, in which both major parties are more committed than ever to the alliance. Even in extreme circumstances, such as the prospect of a war between the United States and China, the instinct to preserve the alliance may push our politicians towards accommodating US interests when we ought to ignore or oppose them. The service this book offers is to demonstrate that such a breach, should it become necessary, would not be ruinous for Australia. The more expensive and riskier it looks to leave the alliance behind, the less likely we are to do it. My proposal shows that it won’t be dangerous or inordinately costly to leave the alliance, and that in some circumstances we absolutely should.

The idea that cutting ourselves free of the alliance with the US is financially and militarily manageable for Australia will surprise many. There is a tendency in Australia to assume that China is so powerful that resisting it without American help is pointless. The Albanese government’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review says, ‘Australia does not have effective defence capabilities relative to higher threat levels. In the present strategic circumstances, this can only be achieved by Australia working with the United States.’ Former defence minister Kim Beazley has written that ‘the cost of managing without [the alliance] is simply unsustainable. The alternative is effectively not to defend ourselves or contemplate a nuclear defence.’ Journalist Paul Kelly writes that trying to deny China regional strategic primacy is an ‘unprecedented policy ambition, unique in Australia’s history and not necessarily achievable’. Kelly says this in the context of a continuing alliance with the US and American commitment to the region. The task of doing it without American help is thus presumably beyond serious consideration.

But threatening Australia with force is not easy, and raising the cost of such action is, by contrast, achievable and affordable for Australia. Australia’s security commentators project their anxieties about Australia, their lack of confidence in it, onto China. They think we can’t manage the challenge of China alone because we’re not strong or mature enough. I say we are, and I say we can.

This book tries to find a balance between realism about China’s rise – this is a once-in-a-century shift of economic and strategic power with major implications for Australia’s security – and the fear it inspires in Australia today, fear that is triggering missteps likely to make Australia poorer and ultimately less safe. This book offers a hopeful message: Australia can defend itself against the might of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), even without American help, and it doesn’t need to bankrupt us. In fact, the way we choose to defend Australia can contribute to reducing the risk of catastrophic war in our region.

Why choose the echidna as the metaphor for such a book? An echidna is no threat to anything other than ants and termites, so cannot induce fear among larger creatures. But by its sharp quills, it does warn them to keep their distance. It does signal to them that, should they decide to attack, the costs are likely to exceed the benefits. The echidna is the oldest surviving mammal on the planet, which speaks to its endurance and resilience. It is also an Australian original (or near enough; it is also found in New Guinea), and this book lays out an approach to Australian defence and foreign policy unique to Australia. Singapore has its ‘poisonous shrimp’ – as Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew put it in 1966, ‘In a world where the big fish eat small fish and the small fish eat shrimps, Singapore must become a poisonous shrimp’ – and Taiwan has begun to embrace what strategists dub a ‘porcupine strategy’ to deter mainland Chinese military threats. In 1951, General Dwight Eisenhower suggested NATO countries make themselves ‘into a hedgehog of defense’, and for a time the creature was unofficially adopted by NATO countries as their symbol for collective defence. In Australia, strategist Allan Behm has suggested the box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, taipan and funnel-web spider as models because they are ‘defensive in their habits and virulently lethal when provoked’. But the echidna, a staple of Australian children’s literature, has a friendlier image. Echidnas are undeniably endearing, even if you wouldn’t want to pat one.

Lastly, the metaphor works because the echidna is a solitary creature, and this book argues that Australia will be more alone than it has been in its history. For the first time we will have to attend to our own security with a much diminished role for a great-power ally, and maybe even in the absence of one.

Every metaphor has its limits, and this book doesn’t argue that Australia needs to be entirely solitary. Indeed, Australia’s most urgent national security priority is to pursue much closer relations with Indonesia, something approaching a formal alliance with a high degree of joint military activity and even the regular deployment of Australian forces on Indonesian territory. As you will read, Indonesia will ultimately be more consequential for Australia’s future, and for its prospects for peace, than China. The question of whether Australia can create an unprecedented new joint security structure with Indonesia will largely determine the question of whether we can secure ourselves in a post-American future.

On the surface, the argument of the book will sound counterintuitive. I say China will be too strong for the United States, and that Washington won’t resist China’s bid for leadership in Asia. Yet I also argue that the Chinese threat to Australia has been overstated, and that the case for increasing defence spending exaggerates the danger to our territory and interests. Australia can defend itself against the challenge of a rising China, and it doesn’t have to cost more than we spend already. I break with the consensus in Australian defence commentary that Australia needs to spend significantly more on defence. We don’t, although we should spend our money very differently. And there’s a further twist, which is that Indonesia will become more important to our security than China, and that Australia needs to launch a major initiative to bring our two nations into a closer security embrace.

If that sounds complicated when summarised, the book itself is designed to be approachable and understandable to non-expert readers. What holds it together is a simple set of moral and political principles.

First, The Echidna Strategy is grounded in the belief that defence spending of any scale, while necessary, is a tragic waste. No political leader has made a more powerful and eloquent case for thinking about defence spending as a moral problem than President Dwight Eisenhower, in his Cross of Iron speech in 1953. Eisenhower had served as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II, so no one understood better than he that the use of military force is necessary to preserve freedom and defeat tyranny. Yet as president, he warned that:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

Defence spending is theft. It is striking to hear such language from an American conservative. Even political leaders from America’s Democratic Party could not endorse such radicalism today, and neither will you hear it from an Australian politician. But limiting the cost of defending Australia is a moral imperative. Every dollar spent on defence reduces our opportunities to contribute to human flourishing at home and among our neighbours.

However, defending Australia is a moral imperative too. This nation is worth protecting from predation and exploitation by foreign powers. Certainly, Australia has committed crimes, both against foreign nations and its own people. But it has also achieved goodness and greatness, and we can say with confidence that the chances of ever righting Australia’s historical wrongs will not be improved if it becomes a vassal or dependency of a foreign power. Defence of this nation is an unequivocal moral good. In fact, it would be a moral crime not to defend Australia against aggression.

That task falls, in large part, to our military forces. But contrary to popular belief, we don’t need to defend ourselves against invasion. As you will read, this will remain beyond the capabilities of any rival military force for the indefinite future, and even if it becomes achievable, it will remain unnecessary and even counterproductive for the aggressor. Rather, the task of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is essentially to negate the coercive potential of an adversary. In other words, the ADF should be big enough and strong enough that any adversary will judge that it cannot credibly threaten the use of force against Australia because it knows that making good on such threats won’t be worth the cost. When the cost is zero, a foreign nation can make any kind of threat, to which Australia would need to acquiesce lest it be carried out. Indeed, we would quickly reach the point where Australia automatically elevated the foreign power’s interests above its own without any overt pressure needing to be applied at all. Australia would be a tributary state. If we have the power to impose unacceptable costs on those making threats, they are unlikely to make them in the first place. Thus, a space for negotiation is created – solutions can be arrived at by way of compromise. But without the means of causing unacceptable damage, the other party has an incentive to coerce rather than to compromise, because coercion is likely to be less costly. So, defence spending is not only morally and politically defensible but essential. It is the irreducible basis upon which Australia can play a fitting independent role in world affairs.

There is a third moral imperative at play, which is that Australia ought to take reasonable measures to reduce the risk of war. There cannot be an absolute injunction against warfare – war is unquestionably a terrible thing, but it is not always the most terrible thing. As the people of Ukraine understand, when the alternative to war is subjugation and cruelty, then war is not just morally defensible but imperative. Yet in the environment Australia is entering – where China and the United States might come to blows – war itself ought to be considered the main enemy. War between America and China would likely be the most terrible since World War II, and could escalate to a nuclear confrontation that would risk the extinction of the human species.

So, the final task of this book is to make the case for a foreign policy which increases the prospects for peace between the great powers. Naturally, Australia’s role will be limited by our relatively small size and influence – whether the United States and China come to blows will ultimately be decided in Washington and Beijing. But Australia can make a major contribution to improving the prospects for peaceful competition and co-operation between the great powers and reducing the chances of descending into war by encouraging the forging in Asia of what I will call a conservative order.

That term, ‘conservative’, raises the final piece of business for this introduction, which is to declare a political perspective. Typically, criticism of higher defence spending and a more