The Guardian 3 September, 2008
Defending Australia
Dr Hannah Middleton
"War is mangled bodies and shattered minds. It is the stomach-churning reek of decaying corpses, of burning flesh and faeces. It is rape, disease and displacement. It is terrible beyond comprehension, but it is not senseless. Wars are purposeful. They are fought for resources, lebensraum, oil, gold, food and water or peculiarly abstract and imaginary goods like God, honour, race, democracy and destiny."
(The Most Dangerous Animal by David Livingstone Smith)
Many Australians hoped that significant changes would follow the election of the Rudd Labor government on November 24, 2007, not least people active in the movements for peace and social justice. Nine months later little remains of those hopes.
New thinking about defence and security does not seem to be on the Labor government’s agenda. The only exception to this is Rudd’s indication that Australia’s national security policy will be updated to encompass a broader spectrum of non-traditional security issues.
The Rudd government has said that Australia’s alliance with the US is "the first pillar of our foreign policy and the strategic bedrock of our foreign and security policy".
This is not new. As William Tow points out: "Australia has long practised a ‘dual strategy’ approach to security, seeking alliance relationships with the dominant Western maritime power while simultaneously cultivating friendly ties with its regional neighbours. Australia’s new Labor government has retained this approach."
Changing strategic environment
Prime Minister Rudd recently highlighted the rapid growth of China and India and pointed out that by 2020 Asia will account for around 45 percent of global GDP and for around one-third of global trade. The region’s population is projected to be 4.6 billion, out of a total global population of 7.7 billion, by 2020.
The Asia-Pacific region now spends more than $285 billion a year on defence (more than NATO, excluding the US) with China accounting for $128 billion of this amount, Japan $43 billion, South Korea $26 billion and India $24 billion. A regional arms race is underway.
This situation has raised fears that as "regional armed forces become more potent, Australia’s defence force is on the brink of losing the technology edge it has traditionally enjoyed over neighbouring states in Southeast Asia". But do we really need this edge?
The regional strategic environment is clearly complex and changing but this does not necessarily mean it is more dangerous.
Robert Ayson underlies this point when he writes: "… it might be asked whether an Asian giant can eventually become Australia’s next great and powerful friend?.... if an Asian giant ended up offering significant protection for Australian interests in the event of a regional crisis …, what seems unlikely today might become plausible tomorrow."
Alan Behm, former head of the ADF’s international policy unit, says "I don’t think Australia is as threatened by terrorist events as the previous government found it convenient to suggest".
"Clearly, the ‘war on terrorism’, as conceived and run since September 11, 2001, has not added to our sense of security, and may have added to the threat."
The challenge is to confront the reasons for acts of terrorism and to develop policies to overcome or at least ameliorate them.
Spending
Overall military spending on the military and security forces in the 2008-09 Budget is $22,690.3 billion plus $1.78 billion for the Australian Federal Police, $37.8 million for the Office of National Assessment (ONA), $358.38 million for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and $220 million for ASIS.
The Rudd government has made a promise of a three percent annual increase in military spending to 2018.
Increasing Australia’s military spending will inevitably convey a more threatening posture in its region, creating insecurity in some countries and encouraging them to devote even more of their wealth to their own military capabilities.
Australia’s current military spending of over $60 million a day steals the resources which should be funding human and social needs.
US alliance
The alliance with "our great and powerful friend" allegedly serves Australia’s security needs but this has never been tested. On the other side of the ledger is the human and financial cost to Australians of the alliance.
The US-Australia military alliance distorts our society. Instead of a focus on sustainable development, socially useful production and the needs of the community, priority is given to supporting US foreign policy, military spending and increasingly repressive social control. The beneficiaries are not our people but the US and Australian militaries together with huge US corporations and some Australian companies.
The US alliance has embroiled Australia in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Rudd government has honoured its election promise to withdraw troops from Iraq, a policy which reflects the wishes of the 70 plus percent of the Australian people who opposed the war. However, about 1,000 Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel remain in Iraq and the Persian Gulf area and $215.7 million is allocated in the 2008-09 Federal Budget for this.
United States bases and joint war games on Australia’s soil contribute to the US’s war fighting capacity. They assist the US to prosecute wars and help swell the list of Australia’s enemies.
Integration into the US war machine brings with it massive secrecy and denial of national sovereignty. The Australian parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has complained that MPs are kept in the dark about the US base at Pine Gap and are "entrusted with less information than can be found in a public library".
Military exercises impact negatively on tourism and fishing industries, local populations, and have far reaching environmental impacts. Is it reasonable to add to the existing pressure on Australia’s unique environment by allowing the US to use valuable and sensitive areas for destructive and polluting military exercises?
Around the world, US bases are the centre of major social problems. The Australian experience is similar. An Anglican Church report from Hobart details frequent sexual assaults on juvenile men and women by US service people.
Security
Discussing national security, Carl Ungerer, Director of the National Security Project at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, writes that national security "is related to defence, but it is more than the application of military force to protect our territory from physical attack".
Defence doctrines, foreign affairs, and economic questions are closely inter-related policies for any government. Their fundamental purpose should be to ensure the sovereignty, security and economic and social well-being of a country and its people.
If Australia’s security is to be assured, the Australian government must adopt a foreign policy commitment to friendly and mutually beneficial relations with all countries. This must be combined with an independent and non-aligned defence policy which should be efficient, affordable and serve both the defence needs of our country and the need for peace and stability in our region. Australia’s national security rests on pursuing a genuinely defensive, non-offensive, non-provocative defence stance.
Security is often interpreted to mean military security. However, human security also relies on addressing the causes of social disadvantage, political injustice and environmental degradation. Real and enduring security comes with jobs, steady food supplies, homes, clean water, warmth, education and health care, democracy and human rights.
While defence of a state is necessary, the cost cannot be too high (economically, socially, democratically, environmentally, etc.) or there is little or nothing left worth defending. There is a point past which military strength becomes a source of insecurity.
Rethinking policy
There is an urgent need for government and defence planners to start thinking in new, creative and positive ways about Australia’s security. We need to rethink what we mean by security, develop different relationships with regional states, reassess the weapons systems required to satisfy our security interests, and increase aid to our regional neighbours.
A rational reassessment of our security priorities would lead to a number of conclusions which would contribute to Australia’s security.
These could include such things as using more defensive and less costly systems as opposed to the long-range, aggressive capabilities currently in use; focussing on dual-use equipment (for example, aircraft which can be used for water bombing bushfires as well as for coastal surveillance and interception); investing time and effort in regional arms control; working to develop transparency and confidence building in the region and to restrict a regional arms race; increasing the share of GDP allocated to overseas aid; and expanding trade and co-operation.
We have better things to do with our tax dollars than spend billions on aggressive equipment required to fight in United States-led coalitions.
A proportion of the military budget can and should be redirected to upgrading schools, reducing the cost of university education, supporting childcare, developing Medicare, assisting the needy in our community, maximising employment opportunities, solving the water crisis, and so on. It has been suggested that two weeks military spending, about $700 million, spent on public hospitals each year would overcome their critical shortcomings.
We can either continue the arms race or move towards more stable and balanced social and economic development within a more sustainable international economic and political order. We cannot do both.
Draft letters to the Federal Minister for Defence about the forthcoming Defence White Paper can be found at www.anti-bases.org.
Please send your version in before the October 1st deadline.