BY NORM DIXON
On November 7, the federal Coalition government announced multi-billion-dollar, high-tech military purchases that will give the Australian Defence Force (ADF) the ability to launch major unilateral military aggressions in the Asia-Pacific region.
The acquisitions will also boost the ADF's capacity to be integrated into future US-led military invasions in other parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East and north Asia.
Flanked by the chiefs of the army, navy and air force, defence minister Senator Robert Hill announced a shopping list of military purchases from now until 2015 that will prime the ADF for significant overseas interventions. The announcements flowed from the government's Defence Capability Review.
New hardware
The military's new hardware will include two 20,000-tonne ships each able to transport 1000 troops and combat equipment, as well as up to six helicopters on deck, to "trouble spots" near and far, and a smaller "sealift" ship. They will replace the navy's current troop-transport ships, the 3300-tonne HMAS Tobruk and the 7000-tonne HMAS Kanimbla and HMAS Manoora.
Three powerful new "air warfare destroyers", equipped with US Aegis missile systems, will also be purchased for a total cost of up to $12 billion. They will be more than adequate for protecting the new "helicopter carriers" during long-distance deployments of troops. According to the review document, the air war destroyers can "track large numbers of aircraft at extended range and ... can simultaneously destroy multiple aircraft at ranges in excess of 150 kilometres".
Four of the navy's existing FFG-class frigates will also be equipped with the latest surface-to-air missile systems.
The army will receive up to 100 new tanks, with ADF chief General Peter Cosgrove pushing for the heavier and more expensive US M1 Abrams model (which would cost more than $800 million), used in the Iraq invasion, rather than the lighter and cheaper German Leopard or British Challenger.
The government also announced that the retirement of the 1960s-era F-111 fighter-bomber fleet would be delayed by four years, to 2010, until their "long-range strike" role — the capability to bomb any major city or installation in Asia and the Pacific Ocean from Australia — is taken over by the air force's upgraded F/A-18 Hornets — at the cost of $1 billion.
New early warning aircraft and air-to-air refueling aircraft (costing $2 billion), as well as new satellite- and laser-guided bombs, will boost the 75 Hornets' capacity for long-distance attack. In 2012, around 100 new US F-35 Joint Strike Force fighters will begin to come into service. The F-35s will cost $12-15 billion.
Hill claimed that the Defence Capability Review's recommended purchases "reaffirmed that the defence of Australia and regional requirements should be the primary drivers of force structure". Yet, the nature of the ADF's proposed new hardware makes it plain that they have little to do with "defending" the Australian continent. They are designed almost exclusively for military aggression in the Asia-Pacific region, and to enable the ADF to join forces with the US military in parts of the world remote from Australia.
Hill also stated that "the importance to the government of the ability to safely deploy, lodge and sustain Australian forces offshore has been reaffirmed" in the review.
As the November 9 edition of the pro-military Australia/NZ Defence Industry and Aerospace Report noted, the review represents a "shift of the navy's prime function of open sea/maritime warfare to a force honed to support the army in amphibious operations". It adds that the army will be "better prepared for regional intervention roles". No South-East Asian country will be able to match the RAAF's firepower.
White Paper
The Defence Capability Review is the latest installment in the Australian government's massive militarisation drive, launched with the defence white paper in December 2000. The white paper reflected Australia's position as both a regional imperialist power and a close political and military partner of the world's main imperialist power, the United States of America.
Being militarily able to keep the Asia-Pacific region secure for Australian and US big business was the core goal outlined in the white paper. Despite its obligatory declaration that the military's prime objective is to "defend Australia from direct military attack", an event it admitted was extremely unlikely, the white paper proposed a huge and expensive program of weapons acquisitions, force restructuring and an increase in personnel designed for more frequent overseas operations. Overall military spending was to be massively boosted.
The paper reflected the Australian ruling class's consensus that the ADF has to be technologically capable and resourced enough to be integrated into US-led wars to protect the interests of the imperialist powers, as well as being able to put down insurgencies, revolts, revolutions and to threaten independent governments that dare to challenge Australian capitalism's exploitation of its own self-proclaimed "sphere of influence", the western Pacific and Indonesia.
Boosting the ADF's capacity to intervene in this region was emphasised because, at the time the paper was formulated, there was concern among Australia's capitalist elite that the ADF was not properly equipped to police Australian imperialism's regional interests.
9/11
However, this emphasis changed after September 11, 2001. Washington exploited the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US to fasttrack its preexisting policy of aggressively extending US political, economic and military domination of the world.
Washington rapidly moved to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, establishing military bases throughout Central Asia in the process, and quickly began to prepare for its long-planned invasion of Iraq. Then the US called on Canberra to fully participate in this invasion, and it did so eagerly.
The Australian government released its Defence Update 2003 in February, essentially an addendum to the white paper. It announced that, "while the principles set out in the defence white paper remain sound", because of the "changed global strategic environment ... shaped by the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" and the increased "likelihood that Australian national interests could be affected by events outside Australia's immediate neighbourhood ... some rebalancing of [military] capability and expenditure will be necessary." The update also argued that the ADF should develop "important niche capabilities" for "coalition" operations.
The white paper instituted a decade-long, $30 billion plan to massively build-up the ADF's firepower, the Defence Capability Plan, with an annual Defence Capability Review to schedule major acquisitions or make changes to the overall plan.
It was clear that when the current review began last February, Canberra had decided that the ADF place greater emphasis on building its capacity to fight in US imperialism's wars. Central to this is what is called "interoperability" — the use of the same weapons systems and communications equipment as the US military uses. This is also referred to as "network-centric warfare" in military boffin-speak.
This is what Hill meant when he delivered this mouthful: "[The ADF] must be networked, flexible and adaptable with modern versatile, multi-role capabilities that can contribute to joint and combined operations across the spectrum of conflicts."
Very soon, the ADF will fly the same planes, armed with the same weapons, use the same ship-based missiles and, in all probability, drive the same heavy-duty Abrams tanks. RAAF chief Houston stated at the review release that the fleet of F-35 fighters will be "ideally suited to the network warfare of the future".
While pro-militarist groups have welcomed the government's commitment to developing the ADF's offensive "blue water" capabilities, they complained that the review also included the retirement of some navy ships and the mothballing of others.
"That affects our ability to run concurrent operations and that's a worrying thing", Aldo Borgu, from the right-wing, semi-official Australian Strategic Policy Institute, whined to the November 8 Sydney Morning Herald.
The Australian Defence Association's Neil James told ABC radio's AM that the ADF was still underfunded, needing another $107 billion to make up for spending "shortfalls" since 1987!
Rather than oppose the government's boosting of the ADF's ability to wage offensive war, federal Labor's defence spokesperson Chris Evans echoed the criticisms of the militarists. He claimed that Hill's "rebalancing" of the ADF was in fact "a cost-cutting exercise" and complained about the retirement of ships and the F-111 fleet "compromises major [ADF] capabilities".
US base
Australia's commitment to "network warfare", as its privileged role as Washington's appointed "sheriff" in the Asia-Pacific region, was underlined on November 18, when the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Canberra is "seriously considering" establishing a joint "logistics and training facility" with the US. According to the SMH, the US wants to station 100 Abram tanks, artillery, other vehicles and ammunition at the ADF's Robertson Barracks near Darwin.
This is not the first time such a proposal has been floated. According to the May 22 Australian, Canberra was approached to provide bases for US soldiers and combat aircraft "as part of a bold plan to bolster the war on terror in southeast Asia ... related to concerns in Washington over threats to Indonesia's stability from fundamentalist Islamic groups and separatist movements, such as in Aceh".
Murdoch's flagship reported that Washington wanted to base US F-16 jets at the RAAF's Tindal base near Katherine in the NT, and station up to 5000 US troops at "an Australian army base".
The "sea swap" program in WA, in which crew changeovers and resupplying of US warships takes place there rather than on the mainland US or Hawaii, has also raised concerns that Cockburn Sound will be converted in a virtual US navy base.
Well before 9/11, the right-wing US government faction that controls the US administration was eyeing Australia as a possible location for US bases. In its Rebuilding America's Defenses, released in September 2000, the Project for a New American Century think tank — closely linked with US vice-president Dick Cheney and US war secretary Donald Rumsfeld — proposed that US forces be permanently "repositioned" to Australia.
From Green Left Weekly, December 3, 2003.
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