Opinion & Commentary
Reduced defence spending may well be sound public policy
Defence suffered one of the biggest cuts in the 2012 budget. These cuts, totalling $5.4 billion, came after the announcement that the acquisition of fifth-generation Joint Strike Fighters would be delayed.
This prompted The Australian's Greg Sheridan to exclaim that we had witnessed the ''worst day for Australia's national security since the fall of Saigon in 1975''. Setting aside Sheridan's hyperbole, taking the razor to defence spending might be judged unwise given a rapidly rising China and increased geo-political jockeying in Asia.
These geo-strategic developments are indeed causing consternation in defence and foreign policy circles. Experts like the Australian National University's Professor Hugh White have repeatedly warned that without a more beefed-up defence policy, we will lose our middle-power status and jeopardise our ability to fend off an attack from a major power.
There are, however, reasons for thinking that reduced defence spending is sound public policy. Not only is the world increasingly peaceful, but Australia also remains safe under America's security embrace.
We are in the midst of the longest period of major-power peace in centuries. Notwithstanding chatter about a US-China confrontation, this peace between major powers is likely to continue.
Maintaining peaceful relations between the world's major powers will admittedly require careful manoeuvring. Just as the United States will need to accommodate China's rise, China must not seek to dismantle the architecture of the Pax Americana under which Asia has prospered.
As deft as the requisite diplomatic and security posturing might be, there is every reason to think that Beijing and Washington have the necessary policy acumen.
Peaceful major power relations to one side, the world at large is also a more peaceful place. There were fewer deaths from war in the first decade of this century than in any decade last century. Today, wars are typically low-intensity conflicts that kill approximately 90 per cent fewer people than the wars of the 1950s.
Perhaps most importantly, even if the world was not increasingly pacific, it is unlikely that Australia's security would be seriously threatened. As a party to the ANZUS treaty, Australia sits under a thick US security blanket.
The US military remains pre-eminent: the US defence budget is larger than the combined defence budgets of the next 14 countries, and the United States maintains a weapons system that was designed to combat a global superpower. Although China has pretensions to military grandeur, and recently announced an 11 per cent increase in military spending, one of our closest allies will remain the global situation for the foreseeable future.
This optimistic assessment of course assumes that China's rise will not follow the trajectory of Biskmarckian Germany.
If China aggressively confronts American military supremacy in the Asia-Pacific as it overtakes the United States economically, such a laissez-faire defence policy will be untenable.
The way in which Foreign Minister Bob Carr was chastised on his recent visit to Beijing was, at least in diplomatic terms, bracing.
China's vocal criticism of Australia's decision to host 2000 US Marines in Darwin suggests that our number-one export destination is hungry for the foreign-policy influence that comes with economic clout.
However, a rebuke from China is no reason to think Beijing is going to start directing our foreign policy or morph into an existential security threat.
It is therefore far too soon to think that we risk becoming a tributary of a revitalised and belligerent Middle Kingdom. What is more, past examples of violent recalibrations of the global balance of power - think of the rise of imperial Germany and Japan - are not good guides to China's rise.
As the head of the ANU China Institute, Professor Richard Rigby, has pointed out, China's massive civilisation and historical weight mean that it is a unique entity.
At the start of what looks to be an unprecedentedly peaceful century, the federal government's embrace of a more modest defence program is not necessarily cause for alarm.
The optimistic approach to defence policy planning also seems to be the realistic one.
Benjamin Herscovitch is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.
