Page 41 - AAPT March 2019

Defence

for our region, our prosperity and our China is also developing larger, was the result.
security. more advanced vessels capable of It is dangerous to think that the US
The biggest challenge for our longer-range operations. China’s still dominates the world as it once
region and the world is the emergence second—and its first domestically did, given its global responsibilities,
of China as a great power. built—aircraft carrier will enter service its diminished defence capability,
China’s military is being soon. It’s been suggested that the its unpredictable national decision-
restructured into one with a greater PLAN could eventually field up to six making and the increasing strength
balance between its land, sea, air and increasingly sophisticated carriers. of those that challenge it. This has
rocket components, and we all know China is also commissioning new monumental implications for Australian
how good China’s cyber forces are. amphibious assault ships capable of security when the US is still seen as
A major part of the restructure transporting marines and helicopters. the ‘centre pole’ of our defence.
is the priority given to the People’s A new line of cruisers, similar to the The Coalition government’s
Liberation Army Navy. Recently, US Navy’s Ticonderoga-class Aegis- spending on defence is wise, but a
Chinese President Xi Jinping declared equipped cruisers, is being launched, root-and-branch analysis resulting
that ‘the task of building a powerful as are new models of destroyers, in an Australian national security
navy has never been as urgent as it is frigates, corvettes and submarines. strategy is the only way that Australia
today’ and urged the PLAN to ‘prepare These are all ‘comparable in many can assess whether our spend is
for war’. Chinese military leaders talk respects to most modern Western enough, whether what we are buying
often and openly about the PLAN’s warships’. We are witnessing the birth is appropriate, and if we can afford to
ambition ‘to gain an ability like the US of a Chinese ‘blue water’ navy that will wait decades to rearm our military to
Navy so that it can conduct different be able to conduct operations far from deter conflict. The last thing we need is
operations globally’, and about how to China’s coastline. a new defence white paper. That would
defeat the US in the Pacific by sinking This is not about the South China merely delay important decisions that
its aircraft carriers. China is investing Sea or other territorial waters claimed are required now.
massive resources into the PLAN, by the PRC. It is driven by a desire to Given that anything in Australian
which is growing rapidly in its size and project power on a global scale. defence takes decades to mature, an
sophistication. While he acknowledges that war upcoming election is the perfect time
Analysis from the Center for is not inevitable, Graham Allison to talk about the issue of defence and
Strategic and International Studies cautions that ‘war between the US security.
shows that the PLAN already has and China in the decades ahead is Jim Molan is a Liberal senator for New
more deployable vessels than the US not just possible but much more likely South Wales. He was a major general in
Navy. In the past five years, China than currently recognized’, and that the Australian Army and served as chief of
launched more new vessels than the ‘by underestimating the danger … operations for the Multinational Force in Iraq
entire Royal Navy has. It was able to we add to the risk’. Over the last 500 from 2004 to 2005.
do that through large-scale investment years, there have been 16 occasions Courtesy of ASPI The Strategist.
in dual-use shipbuilding facilities as the when a rising power has overtaken the www.aspistrategist.org.au
world’s largest commercial shipbuilder. dominant power. In 12 of them, war Defence images

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