Page 58 - Australian Defence Magazine June 2022

58 DEFENCE BUSINESS VIEW FROM CANBERRA
JULY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
VIEW FROM CANBERRA
The last time anyone tried to build a military base on the Solomons, the result was six months of utterly brutal fighting.
A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | CANBERRA
THIS was of course the Guadalcanal Campaign of WW2, which ran from August 1942 until February 1943 costing the lives of over 7,000 US and 20,000 Japanese personnel.
This was overwhelmingly an American fight, but there were Australians. Eighty-four crewmen from cruiser HMAS Canberra died in the Battle of Savo Island, fought with a Japanese naval battlegroup off Guadalcanal.
Though comparatively few Australians were involved, the campaign was all about Australia – specifically, protecting the busy sea lines of communication between the US and Australia.
In June 1942, Japanese forces began building an airstrip, which US and Australian forces speedily became aware of through breaking of Japanese codes and from direct observa- tion by coast watchers.
As Japanese forces occupied islands around PNG, some coastwatchers went bush at frightening risk, continuing to report ship and aircraft movements back to Australia. On Guadalcanal, it was British official Martin Clemens who confirmed an airfield was under construction, which would allow Japanese aircraft to interdict shipping travelling from the US to Australia and New Zealand, and that couldn’t be allowed. So followed the first major land offensive against Japan in the Pacific War.
You’d have to think a Chinese naval base on Guadalcanal, potentially making use of Henderson Field - the exact same airfield deemed intolerable in Japanese hands in 1942 - isn’t too much different.
This would become a very big deal in event of a significant regional conflict which could require Australia to dip into strategic fuel reserves held in the US.
Without fuel - and our onshore reserves are already lower than the 90 days of stocks recommended by the Internation- al Energy Agency – Australia, and any war we might happen to be waging at the time, would slow to a crawl.
Fuel reserves have hovered around 65 days of net imports with 33 days of petrol, 62 days for jet fuel but just three weeks for diesel - the most consumed fuel type and on which the nation’s transport system relies.
With rising global tensions, fuel security is now attract- ing attention as seldom before. Last year, federal parliament passed the Fuel Security Bill 2021 which specifies minimum stockholdings.
During the pandemic when fuel prices were at record lows, the government bought $94 million worth of crude oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
There it remains until we really need it. In the absence of sufficient onshore storage, that’s probably the best place for it. When we do need it, it would have to come aboard large tankers across the Pacific, potentially battling hostile air- craft and submarines, maybe staging from a Chinese base
on Guadalcanal.
Anyone curious about how this could work should read
Operation Pedestal by British historian Max Hastings. It is the story of a single convoy to the island of Malta in August 1942, precisely the same time the US Marines were landing on Guadalcanal. Without the convoy - particularly fuel from a single tanker - Malta would likely have fallen.
Could Australia end up in this predicament? It seems im- plausible - but no more implausible than Australia shipping arms to Ukraine might have seemed six months ago.
Thanks to China and its security agreement with the Solo- mons, national security became a wholly unexpected elec- tion issue, not exactly the best time for a dispassionate de- bate on a sensitive topic.
Scott Morrison declared Australia shared the “same red line” as the US when it came to China and the Solomons, in- terpreted by assorted analysts as Australia declaring it would take action if China began building a base on the Solomons.
That may just have been election talk but the reference to a “red line” came very close to another reference from mili- tary history – the thin red line - which is all quite topical as it’s also the title of a novel by US author James Jones about the fighting on Guadalcanal. ■
ABOVE: An RAAF C-17A Globemaster III at Honiara International Airport, Solomon Islands
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