Brand Rudd's fantasy Defence White Paper

The Rudd Government appears to lack substance. Many grand pronouncements are made but these are like the arguments that scholastic philosophers and theologians made for the existence of God; they somehow seem fishy and unreal.

This is a government, it might be said, that is largely driven by spin and the media cycle. It was but a few weeks ago that on ABC Lateline an entire episode was devoted to political communication, which featured an extensive interview with two representatives from the advertising industry.

One of those guests kept on harking about the Rudd "brand". The persona of the Prime Minister in itself has become a kind of fantasy fashioned by the public relations industry. We can say that Brand Rudd leads a fantasy government. Just consider some of the main emerging, and contradictory, policy themes of the Rudd Government.

The government promises to fund a raft of large spending programs, all of which are packaged under a brand. The "education revolution" promises to massively increase funding for higher education. The government claims it seeks to spend big on infrastructure as a part of a vast "nation building" project. At the same time the government pledges to maintain a budget surplus over the economic cycle and to deliver its promised tax cuts, which are skewed towards the well off. The Henry tax review promises further tax "relief" for big business and investors while equity and fairness in the tax system nowhere to be heard of. Despite that Brand Rudd insists he opposes "neoliberalism" and seeks a new "philosophical" theory that underpins the role of the state in a social democracy.

It is only appropriate therefore that Brand Rudd's fantasy government has just handed down a largely fantasy Defence White Paper. Hugh White has argued, correctly, that the Paper is "muddled". In fact, so was Brand Rudd's national security statement. This muddle, it might be argued, is a good measure of the role that the Prime Minister's Office played in the creation of this White Paper.

The underlying conceptual framework of the White Paper is of fundamental importance, and much can be said and will be said on the topic. We can question the analysis on China, as does our intelligence agencies, the idea that there is an arms race in the region or that the system of interlocking US alliances is the best security construct to ensure regional stability.

An argument could be made that this construct is the leading source of regional instability, which would be similar to the situation in Europe where the exclusion of Russia through the primacy of NATO invites instability.

The security architecture of both Europe and East Asia needs to move beyond cold war era structures. Washington forms the leading obstacle to this. This is one of the most important factors that underpins the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Of the current major centres of global power it is only the United States that reserves the right to use large scale military force, a reservation reflected in planning, when, where and how it chooses. Brand Rudd frequently speaks of a "rules based world order", but by retaining the option of engaging in joint operations with the US the government demonstrates the hollow nature of such declarations.

The centrepiece of this Paper is the beefing up of strategic strike deterrence.

The strategic strike mission of the Australian Defence Force is meant to deter aggression against Australia or its interests. Hitherto this has been achieved by the F-111 aircraft. Although the government has announced it will purchase 100 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, a Howard era program, this White Paper sees a relative shift towards the delivery of strategic strike by cruise missiles launched from new naval assets. In particular, by larger submarines able to conduct sustained patrols far from home shore.

This has been presented as providing Canberra a capability to project "strategic" power independently into North-East Asia. This is widely interpreted as a reference to China.

It is fantasy to suppose that such a capability can deliver strategic deterrence. China is a nuclear weapons state, which makes small scale cruise missile strikes on the Chinese homeland by Australia an absurdly fantastic notion. Because any sane Chinese planner knows this, the purported deterrent effect would not really have him quaking in his boots.

To be sure, the White Paper states that the US extends nuclear deterrence to Australia. However, US extended deterrence in every other instance follows on from a formal treaty commitment, which does not exist in the Australia case. This undermines the credibility of the White Paper's assurance on extended deterrence.

China has reportedly assisted with Russia's upgrading of the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, known as the S-400. It is reported by the Russian military that the recently deployed S-400 has the ability to shoot down both cruise missiles and low radar cross section aircraft such as the F-35. Beijing might very well be able to thereby blunt any independent strike by Australia against high value targets. An S-500 follow-on system is being seriously discussed.

The aspects of the White Paper dealing with China only make sense in the context of a joint operation in North-East Asia led by the United States. To believe otherwise is to believe in fantasy. A more weary position on China was actually formally flagged in the Howard government's last Defence Update, which was handed down in 2007.

China is very much focused on economic modernisation and its vast internal problems. Of the four modernisations announced by the leadership in 1978 defence modernisation has received by far the least attention. In the nuclear field China has deliberately eschewed a build up despite US provocation.

Beijing does not constitute a military threat. The threat that Beijing poses is its example of an alternative model of economic development that runs counter to the neoliberal models of industrialisation that have been developed to suit the interests of dominant centres of global financial and economic power. China also provides breathing room for less developed states to reject the economic austerity programs, promoted in the interests of western investors, that have long been a feature of the Washington Consensus.

In some respects the White Paper is more nuanced than commonly perceived. These nuanced features are the Paper's strongest points; it seems that here the perspective of the Foreign Affairs Department carried the day.

It has barely been mentioned that the government has, in a welcome move, rejected Australian participation in sea-based North-East Asian Ballistic Missile Defence alongside Japan and the United States, which the Howard government was all but set to enter into. This would have been of much more strategic import with respect to China than cruise missiles.

The rejection of BMD is an implicit repudiation of the notion that US primacy promotes regional stability. As stated previously, the idea that US primacy provides strategic stability is one of the constitutive principles of the Paper. This demonstrates the muddled nature of the Paper, but one not readily acknowledged by analysts. In Realist International Relations theory, which seemingly undergirds a lot of the discussion in the White Paper, unipolarity is the most unstable structure that any state system can possess. This intellectual contradiction makes for more muddle.

In a further welcome development the Paper adopts a nuanced position on space, which one of us (Marko) has previously discussed as being of importance.

In so far as strategic strike is concerned we would strongly suggest that the reader see this also in the context of the Howard doctrine which envisaged Australia playing a deputy sheriff role in South-East Asia. Much of the Australian military build up is made intelligible with reference to the Howard doctrine, indeed the military build up largely follows on from Howard era programs.

Indonesia and the Straits of Malacca are of vital importance here given concerns about the role energy security will play in international relations over the medium to long term.

Furthermore, it speaks volumes that Indonesia hardly got a mention in the White Paper. The build up would not give Canberra the ability to independently hurt China, but it may leave us with the ability to independently deliver significant military firepower in our immediate region.

We are of the view that the downfall of Suharto, which was not really welcomed in Canberra, and the subsequent East Timor crisis has played a more important role in Australian strategic planning than commonly realised. The current order in Indonesia, though welcomed, remains fragile.

Whether the announced build up would actually provide deterrence is another matter. In the 1990s the Clinton Administration, what was called "cruise control" diplomacy, was fond of lobbing cruise missiles to little political effect.

The Defence White Paper would have the Australian Defence Force do everything bar create an outpost on the Moon. This aspect of the Paper the government labels as "concurrency". For instance, the government would have the ADF inter alia; deploy a brigade "group" in one area of our "primary operational environment;” a battalion "group" in another; projecting power through strategic strike beyond this area; maintaining sea and air control within that area; provide tailored contributions, including at battalion "group" level, in support of US global operations and "lead" military coalitions in our immediate neighbourhood.

Under concurrency the government would have the ADF do all this and more at the same time if deemed necessary. Such fantastically ambitious operational planning is a recipe for disaster. No plan survives contact with the enemy. What happens if on one front things do not go according to plan? Concurrency could lead to an overstretched force being defeated at one point along a ludicrously inflated battle space.

We should note further that concurrency, it is said, requires Australia to have an adaptive and flexible force structure. However, how flexible is a force structure that appears geared towards heavy weaponry? Actually, as should be clear from the above, most of the combat burden under concurrency would fall upon the Army. A land force structure built around heavy tanks and 155mm artillery, including self-propelled artillery, is hardly "adaptable and "flexible".

Many have focused on the fact that the funding strategy that is meant to underpin the planned military build up has been poorly developed.

The government is relying on forecasts of economic growth above the trend average during recovery to bring the budget back into surplus. It is argued that there exists ample spare capacity in the economy that will fuel such growth on the up-turn. However, given the financial breakdown, it is quite possible that credit growth will remain weak in which case past experience of rapid and sustained GDP growth post a recession might not be replicated.

If the government's budget strategy flounders because of overly optimistic growth projections then policy commitments that rely on large public expenditures, such as the defence strategy would be at risk.

The government has argued that it will be able to make savings in the defence budget to offset the spending commitments on equipment; however, seasoned observers, such as Hugh White, have pointed out that the defence department has a poor track record in making cost savings.

Moreover, defence acquisition programs have a tendency to go well over budget. Can a streamlined department keep acquisition costs under control?

It could well be possible that growth projections will not be realised, the necessary level of savings in the defence budget will not eventuate and that procurement costs will be greater than supposed. Should such events come to pass the "Force 2030" will be all but blown out of the water. The Chinese Navy might not really be necessary to do this after all.

The government's strategy is based on false premises, it overplays the China card, obscures the real intent underpinning policy, asks far too much of our armed forces and is based on a risky financial strategy.

No wonder it was released on a Saturday, buried by the climate policy back flip on the Monday and became but a distant memory after the budget was handed down.

Perhaps "Force 2030" will just end up being another brand.