ANALYSIS
CANBERRA MUSINGS
AUSTRALIA’S DANGEROUS AND UNCERTAIN DECADE AHEAD By James Goldrick,
RADM (Rtd), Adjunct Professor at SDSC, Australian National University and at UNSW Canberra (ADFA).
We live in interesting times. Australia and its friends face the prospect of an increasingly powerful and authoritarian China bent on re-setting the global order and achieving dominance of its surrounding region.
FESTERING TENSIONS Taiwan is increasingly a point of tension, and one that carries far greater risk of precipitating major conflict than China’s claims in the South China Sea. As the centenary anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party confirmed, China is determined to reincorporate Taiwan into China. An armed conflict between China and Taiwan would be in no one’s interests, least of all China itself, but there remains the danger that both external and domestic pressures, including China’s internal narrative of ultra-nationalism, may see events spiral out of control. Furthermore, possession of the island has a new significance for China since it would give its naval forces unfettered access to the deep waters of the Pacific and thus to the world’s oceans.
This would create immediate problems not only for the United States but for Japan as well; a seadependent nation whose maritime approaches would be at much greater risk from an all-round threat. Japan’s increasingly robust attitude to the regional deployment of its own navy and recent public statements indicate that it is increasingly aware of its own interests in the continuing independence of Taiwan.
TESTING THE ALLIANCE The implication for Australia is huge: if Japan should be open in its support for Taiwan, a crisis over the island may rapidly become a test not only of our alliance with the US, but of our nascent security relationship with Japan.
Ships from the Australian, United States, Japanese and Indian navies sail in formation in the Indian Ocean at the start of phase two of Exercise MALABAR 2020. © Department of Defence.
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EDITION 4 • 2021-22
