BY NORM DIXON
On December 6, the Australian government released its long-awaited defence white paper, "Defence 2000 — Our Future Defence Force", to almost unanimous acclaim from ruling class commentators and the big business media's op-ed analysts.
"Our armed forces are not simply a service provided by government", states the white paper 's writers, "The ADF [Australian Defence Force] reflects the kind of country we are, the role we seek to play in the world, and the way we see ourselves."
That is a very correct statement: the white paper plainly reflects Australia's role as a regional imperialist power that is in close political and military partnership with the world's largest economic and military power, the United States of America.
Keeping the Asia-Pacific region secure for Australian and US big business is the core goal outlined in the white paper. Despite the obligatory declaration that the Australian military's prime objective is to "defend Australia from direct military attack", the white paper sets out a hugely expensive program of weapons acquisitions, force restructuring and an increase in personnel numbers that is clearly aimed at enabling the Australian military to intervene more decisively in its near region on its own and in the wider South-East Asian area in tandem with US forces.
Under the terms of the white paper, the federal government will boost defence spending over the next decade, beginning with a $500 million boost next financial year and an extra $1 billion in the following year. After that, military spending will increase every year by an average 3% in real terms until 2010, when it will be almost $17 billion annually in today's dollars (i.e. not including the impact of inflation — it is likely to be well above $20 billion a year if an average 2% inflation rate prevails over the decade), compared to the present level of $12.2 billion a year.
Between the financial years 2000-01 and 2009-2010, approximately $162 billion in today's dollars will have been spent on the Australian military!
There were no doubts among the ruling class's pundits about the implications of the white paper. For example, the Sydney Morning Herald's defence correspondent David Lague and senior political writer Michelle Grattan noted on December 6:
"The white paper ... combines a capacity to defend the continent with sufficient improved resources for Australia to undertake regional roles, such as peace-keeping in East Timor and the Solomons ... Defence officials said defence thinking had gradually evolved over the past decade to consider the military having a bigger role than simply defending Australian territory, and this was clearly set out in the White paper . 'The message is that the Government will use military force where it feels that it has a legitimate and realistic way of securing its interests", one official said."
The SMH's December 7 editorial claimed that it "was the pace of recent changes in Australia's immediate region — the Asian economic crisis, the fall of Soeharto, the Timor crisis and other upheavals stretching from Aceh to Fiji — that made this white paper exercise essential."
The editorial then stated approvingly: "The white paper makes the point that more than in the recent past, Australia needs two sorts of effective military capability. The one that attracted most attention from governments until Timor was the need for the Air Force and Navy to have sophisticated and costly 'platforms' and weapons systems to protect the nation's air and sea approaches and, occasionally, to contribute to 'higher intensity' conflicts abroad as junior partners in coalition operations.
"The second need is for better-resourced, combat-ready land forces, and the ships and aircraft to transport and support them, so that they can contribute to regional security or peacekeeping in places such as East Timor, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands, or other potential hot spots."
Alan Dupont, director of the Asia-Pacific security program at the Australian National University's Strategic and defence Studies Centre, wrote in the December 7 Australian that the white paper "will help restore the ADF's capability as well as clarify its role in the new century.
"The white paper correctly observes that our defence interest, as distinct from our broader national interest, is most directly engaged in South-east Asia and the south-west Pacific. As Australia's strategic back yard, this is where our defence effort should be concentrated ...
"The white paper's explicit recognition that the ADF must be better prepared to deal with the spill-over effects of intra-state conflicts in developing states, and to play a more active role in preventing and resolving conflict, is long overdue, given the instability that has permeated the region of late ... So is the decision to acquire versatile multiple-purpose equipment, more soldiers, and the ships and aircraft to move, protect and sustain them over extended periods."
The white paper reflects the ruling class consensus that supports Australia having a military force that is technologically capable, resourced enough and able to be integrated into US-led wars to protect the interests of imperialism as well as being able to put down insurgencies, revolts, revolutions and to threaten independent governments that dare to challenge Australian imperialism's exploitation in its self-proclaimed "sphere of influence".
It is this latter function that dominates the white paper. The government states that Australia must expect to be "the largest force contributor" for operations in PNG and the Pacific island states.
In South-East Asia, the white paper states that Australia "would want to be able to make a substantial contribution to any regional coalition we decided to support" and does not rule out being the leading force in any such coalition.
In the "wider Asia Pacific region", the document states that Australia "would want to make a significant contribution to any coalition" but "in most cases" the US would lead such a coalition.
"Beyond the Asia Pacific region", the white paper adds, Australia "would normally consider only a relatively modest contribution to any wider UN or US-led coalition". Such a contribution would be restricted to air and naval forces rather than troops in the case of "higher intensity" operations, however Australian troops "would be ideally suited to provide contributions to lower intensity operations including peace enforcement, peacekeeping" and "humanitarian" operations.
For the first time in two decades, Australian government policy is to increase the number of military personnel — from 51,000 to 54,000. Some $5 billion extra will be spent on the army over the next decade.
More importantly, Australian troops will be ready to mobilise for action in the region at much shorter notice; the structure of the military will be geared primarily for "lower intensity" conflicts in the near region.
The white paper provides for six battalions of about 1000 troops each to be always ready for action within 90 days, and most in less than 30 days. The elite Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) will also be on high readiness.
It is also envisaged that the Australian army will be geared "to sustain one major deployment and undertake a lesser deployment at the same time".
The ADF reserves will play a greater role in military operations. In what will be the largest increase in the militarisation of Australian society since the abandonment of conscription in 1972, legislation will have to be passed to allow the reserves — which make up 42% of the ADF — to be called out for combat and other active duty.
In a related move (as well as being an added subsidy to private schools), an extra $30 million annually from 2002 will be pumped into the school cadet scheme. There are presently 25,000 cadets, overwhelmingly at expensive private schools.
Twenty-four helicopter gun ships will be purchased to provide "high-precision firepower and reconnaissance to ground forces". An additional 12 troop-carrying helicopters, to be based in Darwin and Townsville, will be provided to rapidly deploy Australian troops to regional "trouble spots". New fixed-wing troop carriers will be introduced. The army's landing ships will also be upgraded and replaced. A new guerrilla-war training base will be established in Townsville.
Australian troops are to be equipped with state of the art night-vision goggles, shoulder-fired missiles, high-tech communications and computer equipment and body armour, and new battlefield air defence missile systems.
The 15 Fremantle class patrol boats will be replaced with a new class of vessel from 2004. These vessels will be ideal for use in the Pacific islands (as was shown by the PNG Defence Force's use of its Australian-supplied patrols boats against Bougainville rebels), as well as boosting the ability of the military to intercept refugees before they can land in Australia (keeping refugees out of the "Lucky Country" is a stated goal of Australian "defence" policy).
'Pro-active defence'
The white paper repackages Australia's aggressive Cold War-era"forward defence" military policy — the ability to attack any South-East Asian or Pacific island country — as "pro-active defence".
Australia's 75 F/A-18 fighter jets — already among the most advanced warplanes in Asia and unrivaled by any South-East Asian air force — will be replaced by state of the art jet fighters by 2012. The RAAF's specialist "strike" fighter-bombers, its 25 F-111s, will be replaced by a strike version of the same warplane that replaces the F/A-18s. This alone will come at the cost of $7 billion.
"Strike" is military boffin-speak for weapons that are designed to attack other countries. Up to five new air-to-air refueling aircraft will be purchased that will, in practice, give all proposed 100 new warplanes the capability to bomb any major city or installation in Asia and the Pacific Ocean.
The Australian military's already dominant technological and firepower edge will be further enhanced by acquisitions designed to neutralise the regions' air defences. Four airborne early warning and control aircraft (AWACs) and a possible three more are to be purchased.
Among the billions to be spent on 29 new naval vessels will be funds for three new high-tech "air-warfare" Navy destroyers designed to eliminate aircraft over the horizon.
The massive enhancement of the RAAF's air-strike capability, as well as the navy's and air force's extra capacity to intercept aircraft would ensure, as the white paper so subtly states: "the capability to contribute to the defence of Australia by attacking military targets within a wide radius of Australia."
But the white paper's own very clear statement as to the chances of an attack on Australia gives the game away. The document states: "The chances of an attack on Australian remain low. A full-scale invasion of Australia, aimed at the seizure of our country and the erasure and subjugation of our national polity, is the least likely military contingency Australia might face. No country has either the intent or the ability to undertake such a massive task."
The ruling class is under no illusion that this is for "defence" from "attackers". It knows it is firmly aimed at internal unrest ("the spill-over effects of intra-state conflict", as the ANU's Alan Dupont coyly terms it) in the countries of Australia's neo-colonial realm.
As the Melbourne Age's Garry Barker wrote on December 7: " 'Surgical' techniques supported by technology will be needed, the experts say, because in the urban environments in which, even in the Pacific and South East Asia, Australia is most likely to be involved, it will not be possible artillery, air strikes or mortars ...
"Therefore, tacticians and strategists believe, the future for our forces lies with small SAS-style, highly trained, flexible, mobile and closely integrated infantry units equipped with highly efficient communications systems and sophisticated anti-terrorist gear ... Short of another world war involving the use of weapons of mass destruction, they say, future conflicts will be against guerrilla-style groups operating in and around urban environments."
What are the sources of potential "insecurity" in Australia's "immediate neighbourhood" identified by the white paper? The paper says that threats of attack by one South East Asian or Pacific island country on another, or from outside the region, are "highly unlikely", and instead notes that "Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and the island states of the south-west Pacific face large economic and structural challenges ... We would be concerned about major internal [emphasis added.] challenges that threatened the stability and cohesion of any of these countries."
Indonesia
The white paper states that the government "is committed to working with the Indonesian government to establish, over time, a new defence relationship that will serve our enduring shared strategic interests", despite what it refers to as "lingering misunderstandings" over the recent events in East Timor. The white paper warns that "Indonesia's size, its huge potential and its traditional leadership role in South-East Asia mean that adverse developments there could affect the security of the whole of [Australia's] nearer region and beyond ... Were [such adverse developments] to occur, Australia's security could be affected."
What are these "shared strategic interests" and potential "adverse developments"? Canberra identifies Indonesia's three main challenges as being: 1. "The challenge of political evolution through democratisation and decentralisation" (translation: Can the Indonesian elite and military keep control of the Indonesian people's demand for greater democracy?); 2. "The need for wide-ranging economic reforms to put Indonesia back on the path of sustainable growth" (translation: Can the Indonesian elite successfully impose the IMF/Western-imposed austerity programs demanded by western capital without sparking general unrest?); and 3. "The resolution of religious, separatist and other challenges to the cohesion and stability of Indonesia" (translation: Can the Indonesian elite and military defeat those peoples within its state demanding national self-determination, and defuse social tensions made worse by poverty and misery that austerity will trigger?)
The white paper bluntly states the Australian government's "deep support for Indonesia's national cohesion and territorial integrity", i.e. that Australian imperialism's and the Indonesian political and military elite's "shared strategic interests" are the defeat of the movements for national self-determination in West Papua and Aceh and the crushing of the anti-austerity movement. That will be the basis of the "new defence relationship" that Canberra is seeking to establish with Jakarta.
The Australian government, and other Western governments, are concerned with how to manage the social unrest and dissent that will continue to arise from the implementation of neo-liberal deregulation.
The Australian government is preparing for possible military interventions if unrest and political instability threaten in any part of its 'back yard', which it defines as the "arc" of islands from the Indonesian archipelago into the South Pacific Ocean.
This is the real meaning of the white paper. The Australian ruling class can be expected to take an increasingly aggressive stance in the region to resolve, in its and the West's favour, crises like those that have recently recurred or erupted in Bougainville, East Timor, West Papua, the Solomon Islands and Fiji. Such crises are likely to continue to arise and intensify.
International Monetary Fund/World Bank/Asian Development Bank-imposed neo-liberal austerity programs will intensify the social tensions within Asian and Pacific island countries, triggering national, ethnic, religious, "settler versus indigenous" and class antagonisms that the narrow, undemocratic elites may not be able to cope with.
The increase in Australia's military budget should be opposed. It should be slashed to the bone, not expanded. As the government concedes, Australia does not face a military threat.
The military forces of the Australian imperialist state do not defend the security of the majority of people in Australia. They defend the security of the Australian capitalist class — its property and profits — against working people both within Australia and abroad, especially Asia and the Pacific.