THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY Andrew O’Neill

alliance.ussc.edu.au October 2012

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ■■

No state today has the potential to seriously rival the US as a global military power and this is unlikely to change over the next one to two decades.

■■

US nuclear planning has become more conscious of the need to address China’s ability to potentially hold American and allied targets at ransom during any escalation contingency in the region.

■■

Whilst Australia assumes the US would extend its nuclear umbrella in the event that Australia was ever subject to nuclear coercion or attack, this has never been formally confirmed.

Whilst the contemporary US-Australia alliance has been historically strong, it reached a high point during the decade 2001-2011 as the relationship became more global in its focus. Since then, alliance relations have continued to intensify with successive AUSMIN communiqués and President Obama’s 2011 visit to Australia as part of the broader Asia pivot strategy. There is however a distinctive tendency among supporters of the US-Australia alliance to focus on present and past achievements and to overlook the potential issues that may confront the alliance in the future. Particularly overlooked are three key challenges revolving around the ‘alliance security dilemma’, itself characterized by the dual fears of abandonment and entrapment. Managing alliance burden sharing, China and the risks of containment, and credibility and extended nuclear deterrence poses a strategic challenge to the alliance. Australia should adopt a more proactive position in pushing for enhanced dialogue with the US on these issues.

The Alliance 21 Program is a multi-year research initiative that examines the historically strong Australia-United States relationship and works to address the challenges and opportunities ahead as the alliance evolves in a changing Asia. Based within the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, the program was launched by the Australian Prime Minister in 2011 as a public-private partnership to develop new insights and policy ideas. The Australian Government and corporate partners Boral, Dow, News Corp Australia, and Northrop Grumman Australia support the program’s second phase, which commenced in July 2015 and is focused on the following core research areas: defence and security; resource sustainability; alliance systems in Asia; and trade, investment, and business innovation.

Cover image: “150703-O-ZZ999-001” by U.S. Pacific Fleet, licensed under CC BY 2.0. The Alliance 21 Program receives funding support from the following partners. Research conclusions are derived independently and authors represent their own view, rather than an institutional one of the United States Studies Centre.

United States Studies Centre Institute Building (H03) The University of Sydney NSW 2006 T: +61 2 9351 7249 E: [email protected] W: ussc.edu.au

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

While the alliance between the United States and Australia can be traced to John Curtin’s famous ‘call to America’ speech in 1941, the contemporary relationship has its foundations in the post Cold War era of international relations. The past twenty years of the bilateral alliance have seen it go from strength to strength, but ironically, the termination of the Cold War introduced a degree of uncertainty into the relationship. Australia’s modest military support for the US-led war against Iraq in 1991 signalled a commitment to back American-led military operations outside the Asia-Pacific theatre. Yet, the shared hesitancy of the G. H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations to chart a coherent future role for the United States in Asia triggered doubts in Australian policy making circles about Washington’s long term commitment to Asia. Reaffirmation in the 1995 East Asia Strategic Review (widely referred to as ‘the Nye Report’) that the United States was committed strategically to Asia for the long term helped to mitigate anxiety among Australian policy makers, and the Clinton administration’s endeavour to bolster regional alliances coincided with the advent of the Howard Coalition Government in 1996. Australia’s support for the dispatch of a US aircraft carrier battle group to the Taiwan Strait to deter Chinese intimidation of Taiwan the same year confirmed the new government’s strong support for the alliance at a time when few other regional states were prepared to publicly support US action in defence of Taiwan. By the late 1990s, the alliance appeared to have largely recovered from the scratchiness of the early post Cold War period, with Washington playing a key role in persuading Indonesia (through a combination of diplomatic arm twisting and economic pressure) to allow the introduction of an Australian-led international force (INTERFET) to restore peace and stability following elections on autonomy in the Indonesian province of East Timor. The terrorist attacks in September 2001 marked the end of the post-Cold War era, but they were also a turning point in the alliance relationship between Australia and the United States. In response to the attacks, the Howard Government invoked Article 4 of the ANZUS Treaty. Justifying the decision to invoke the Treaty for

the first time in fifty years, Prime Minister Howard noted that ‘Australia stands ready to cooperate within the limits of its capability concerning any response that the United States may regard as necessary in consultation with her allies’. The Howard government’s main motive for invoking the treaty seems to have been a desire to underscore the operational dimension of the formal security clause enshrined in the document in the expectation that Washington would recognize the two-way significance of the commitment. The fact that Prime Minister Howard had deliberately used the phrase ‘within the limits of its capability’ showed that, like US administrations during the 1960s that sought to place limits on Australian expectations of support in possible regional contingencies, Australia chose its words carefully in formal pronouncements relating to ANZUS. In a media conference in Beijing three years later, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer suggested that Australia would not necessarily feel bound by its ANZUS alliance obligations to support the United States in the event of a Taiwan Strait contingency involving America and China. These remarks provoked a sharp response from Washington and were subsequently ‘clarified’ by Howard himself, but the implication of Downer’s comments was clear: the US could not automatically count on Australia’s support for the United States in a conflict against China over Taiwan or, by implication, conflicts in other theatres. However, it is fair to say that the US-Australia alliance reached a high point during the decade from 2001 to 2011. Over this timeframe, the alliance relationship became more global in its focus. The Howard government’s commitment of modest military support for US operations in Afghanistan, and Australia’s role as one of only several countries to support the US invasion of Iraq were far removed from the narrow regional contingencies that had preoccupied Australian policy makers during the period of Konfrontasi with Indonesia in the early 1960s. The conclusion 2

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

of a US-Australia Free Trade Agreement in 2005 was highly coveted by the Howard government, and its passage through Congress made undoubtedly easier by Australia’s unwavering support for the United States after 9/11. The famously close relationship between George W. Bush and John Howard was certainly a key factor in solidifying the alliance relationship after 9/11. Yet, the intensity of alliance relations actually appears to have increased following the respective departures of Bush and Howard from office. This has been evident in successive AUSMIN communiqués, which have emphasized an increasing convergence of views on the need for China to enhance transparency of its military modernization program and for Beijing to exercise restraint in its dealings with regional states on territorial issues.1 President Obama’s 2011 visit to Australia was accompanied by an announcement that the United States would begin rotating marine forces through the northern port city of Darwin as part of its broader Asia pivot strategy. The primary significance of the decision lay in the message it conveyed about the strategic value of the bilateral alliance even as Australia’s economic wellbeing was becoming more dependent each year on China which, along with Indonesia, publicly condemned the rotation decision. As Nick Bisley observes, ‘In spite of the wide-ranging debate about how it might manage the perceived conflict between its strategic orientation and its economic interests, Australia made clear that it would continue to cleave very tightly to the US alliance, expand its military links and more broadly work to advance the USA’s conception of regional order’.

21st Century Challenges? There is a distinctive tendency among supporters of the US-Australia alliance to focus on present and past achievements in the relationship while overlooking the potential challenges the alliance confronts in the rapidly evolving strategic environment of the twenty-first century. One of the major strengths of the bilateral alliance is its normative dynamism: the people of both countries share core values and beliefs about liberal democracy as the preferred ordering framework for good governance. Overlapping views about the optimum form of domestic governance are reinforced by highly complementary perspectives on security, (most) economic issues, and international relations more generally.

The importance of shared norms and values—as distinct from simple transactional interests—in providing underlying strength in alliances is strangely absent from much of the literature. But history shows that shared norms provide significant ballast for international partnerships during periods of change and transition and that they are particularly important in encouraging senior officials to emphasize common strategic interests while minimizing differences. Key networks of exchange between supporters of the alliance, most prominently the 1.5 track American Australian Leadership Dialogue, help to reinforce its normative dynamism, which in turn is underpinned by consistently favourable public opinion in the United States and Australia reflecting positive perceptions of the value of the alliance for both countries. Because of this, within Australia at least, the alliance is rarely There is a distinctive tendency examined in detached terms. The among supporters of the US-Australia shrill response to Hugh White’s balanced intervention in 2010 alliance to focus on present and past on the subject of China’s rise, acheivements in the relationship America’s perceived decline, while overlooking the potential and the recommendation that challenges the alliance confronts Australia seek to persuade the US to share power with Beijing in Asia, confirmed the essential brittleness of Australia’s intellectual engagement with long term questions about the future of the alliance. Most analysis has the tone of either being ‘for’ or ‘against’ the alliance and few observers remain agnostic about its perceived costs and benefits. Given the often polarised domestic views on the value of alignment with the United States in countries that maintain formal security alliances with Washington, this is not particularly unique. Despite a significant majority of Australian public opinion consistently supportive of the alliance, there is a sizeable minority that questions whether Australia is able to exercise its sovereignty fully in interacting with its great and powerful friend. This strain of public opinion was evident during the Cold War, with questions being raised about whether the presence of US intelligence facilities 3

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

on Australian soil (which remained largely under exclusive American control until the mid 1980s) was incompatible with notions of sovereignty. More recently, questions about Australian sovereignty within the alliance came to the fore during the War on Terror, with claims by some that the Howard Government simply fell in lockstep with US policy, particularly in relation to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the bilateral alliance is widely portrayed as being rock solid by its supporters, it confronts some potential challenges in the years ahead. For the most part, these challenges will revolve around the tensions inherent in what Glenn Snyder has defined as ‘the alliance security dilemma’. Snyder argues that modern alliances are characterized by the dual fears of abandonment and entrapment. The client state is consistently focused on avoiding being abandoned by its major power protector, which may include the latter ‘failing to make good on explicit commitments’, or being entrapped in an alliance, when the client state is ‘dragged into a conflict over a [major power] ally’s interests’ that the client state ‘does not share, or shares only partially’. Like individuals and cognitive dissonance, smaller alliance partners can possess seemingly contradictory anxieties simultaneously. A good example of the coexistence of fear of abandonment was Australia’s Vietnam War commitment in the mid 1960s. This occurred at the same time as Canberra was increasingly concerned that the United States might choose not to activate ANZUS if Australia found itself in a conflict against Indonesia. However, exhibiting apprehension about the potential for entrapment, successive governments in Canberra—from Menzies to McMahon—sought to carefully calibrate the level of Vietnam force commitments to avoid heavy costs. While Australia’s overall alliance strategy was relatively clear during the Cold War period, and has been for much of the post-Cold War era—i.e. to consistently demonstrate Australia’s commitment to the US alliance in order to promote the prospects of an American commitment to defend Australia’s existential security over the long term—recent trends in Asia and policy shifts in the United States and Australia raise questions about the continued viability of this strategy. These developments are accentuating, rather than lessening, the alliance dilemma for

Australia and will be reflected in three primary challenges over the coming decades.

Alliance Burden Sharing Due to significant projected defence budget cuts over time, the United States will almost certainly become a more demanding ally. This should come as no surprise, and given America’s leadership in providing for the defence of key allies during the Cold War, these allies should themselves be willing to shoulder more of the alliance burden to help out Washington. Yet, there are few indications that any American ally is willing to play this role. Burden sharing has been on NATO’s agenda ever since the alliance was founded in 1949, and many of the intra-alliance tensions can be directly attributed to Washington’s view that a number of European allies have been free riding on the US security guarantee by keeping their defence budgets low in order to maintain ambitious social welfare programs domestically. In his valedictory speech to the NATO Council in 2011, former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates underscored the importance of burden sharing in Europe and the need for non-US NATO members to increase their defence budgets in spite of domestic fiscal pressures caused by the financial crisis. In many ways, however, such burden sharing logic is even more applicable to America’s Asian allies because of Washington’s emerging rivalry with Beijing and the rising economic constraints the United States faces in countering the China challenge in Asia. America’s domestic fiscal crisis, precipitated by record debt levels and a weakening dollar, has triggered a wholesale review of US military spending. Significantly, cutting defence expenditure is a core part of the Obama administration’s deficit reduction strategy and the military budget is due to be cut by almost half a trillion dollars over the next decade. This will result in deep cuts of between ten to twelve per cent, with potentially deleterious implications for US power projection capabilities. Over the long term, the strategic consequences of this for the US and its allies could be profound. No state today has the potential to seriously rival the United States as a global military power, and this is unlikely to change over the next one to two decades. But it is highly likely that China will continue to make inroads into challenging US military ascendancy in Asia, despite President Obama’s assurance 4

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

in his 2011 speech to the Australian Parliament that ‘reductions in US defence spending will not come at the expense of the Asia Pacific’. China’s ability to impose serious costs on the United States in littoral zone conflicts is exemplified by Beijing’s major investment in asymmetric warfare technologies aimed specifically at deterring US intervention in a Taiwan Strait scenario. Of concern to America’s Asian allies must be the fact that China’s increasingly credible area denial and antiaccess capabilities have improved during a period where US defence expenditure was not declining. As Travis Sharp points out, with automatic cuts to the defence budget taking effect over the next ten years, ‘the United States will find it harder to spend the money required to research, develop, test, field, and protect military technologies that will outpace those its future enemies’. The broader implications of this are potentially quite significant. One leading American realist scholar, Christopher Layne, has recently concluded that: ‘Between now and 2025, the looming debt and dollar crises almost certainly will compel the United States to retrench strategically, and to begin scaling back its overseas military commitments’. What does this mean for US allies, including Australia? While the US-Australia alliance has been largely free of the tensions over burden sharing that have characterized debates within NATO, there are grounds for arguing that this could become an issue in the years to come. In operational terms, it is unlikely Australia will face a direct conventional threat to its sovereign territory over the next two decades, and it is probable that Washington would extend its nuclear deterrent as part of the bilateral security alliance were Australia ever threatened directly with nuclear coercion. The more likely challenge may emerge if and when Washington expects Canberra to step up to a large scale coalition operation with a meaningful force commitment to compensate for America’s own, or its other allies’, inability to cover all military contingencies. The fiscally straitened environment in Australia has led to major cuts in defence expenditure to a point where the latter is now lower as a proportion of GDP than at any time since 1938. The 2013 Defence White Paper ambitiously committed Australia to playing an active role in promoting stability in the so-called ‘Indo-Pacific’, but failed to pledge any new resources to achieve this goal. Historically low levels of defence expenditure raise concerns about Australia’s future ability to support US-led military operations in Asia and beyond, even at

the traditionally modest levels of the past. Notably, the chief of the US Pacific Command has identified publicly that Australia’s defence budget is lower than the NATO Europe average, expressing his hope that Australia possesses ‘a long-term view of defence planning that has the proper levels of resources behind it’.

China and the Risks of Containment The Obama administration has been at pains to reassure Beijing, and the international community more generally, that it has no intention of containing China. While many Chinese analysts argue that America’s actions through its rebalance to Asia undermine Washington’s reassuring rhetoric, it is difficult to make a sustainable case that the United States is engaged in a grand strategy analogous to that which it pursued against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Obama administration has The fiscally straitened environment certainly been intent on pushing in Australia has led to major cuts in back assertively—and largely effectively—against China’s defence expenditure to a point where attempts to promote a neothe latter is now lower as a proportion tributary framework to guide of GDP than at any time since 1938 its relations with other Asian states. It has also accelerated development of a coherent Air-Sea Battle Plan to counter Chinese asymmetric warfare gains in Asia’s littoral zones, and increasingly many of the Pentagon’s acquisitions are aimed directly at nullifying any potential PLA advantage in specific conflict scenarios. There is also some evidence that US nuclear planning has become more conscious of the need to address China’s ability, through its increasingly sophisticated mobile missile program, to potentially hold American and allied targets at ransom during any escalation contingency in the region. However, none of these actions constitute containment, a strategy that would make no logical sense given the profound interdependence of the US and Chinese economies. As Robert Art points 5

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

out: ‘Stopping the rise of Chinese power means containing Chinese power. That, in turn, requires halting or drastically curtailing China’s economic growth, upon which all else depends, and thwarting its rising influence, regionally and globally’. However, this is not to say that containment is completely off the agenda of US grand strategic options. Dealing with an authoritarian China that is embarking on an ambitious military modernisation program aimed in no small part at raising the costs of US intervention in Asia at a time when the spectre of US declinism is (once again) popular in many quarters may make American policy makers more sympathetic to characterising US-China rivalry as analogous to the US-Soviet relationship. Already within the Republican Party, the intersection between assertive US nationalism and anxieties about American decline has produced at times sharp rhetoric about the challenge from China. Moderate Republicans, including the 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, favour the continuation of the Bush-Obama strategy of engagement and hedging in US policy towards China, but the influence of procontainment forces could gain rapid traction in the event of a serious downturn in bilateral relations between Beijing and Washington. The United States has more mechanisms for high level bilateral dialogue with China than does any other country. This includes the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue chaired by the US Secretaries of State and Treasury and their Chinese counterparts. However, it is important to note that the United States pursued the grand strategy of containment during the Cold War while at the same time engaging in wide ranging strategic dialogue with the Soviet Union across a host of key policy areas. Any US drift towards containing China would raise serious concerns among Australian policy makers. Of particular concern would be any expectation on the part of Washington that America’s allies pitch in to support the strategy. Both Australia and the US have a lot to lose from a serious deterioration in relations with China, but Australia is particularly vulnerable economically. Approximately one quarter of Australia’s two -way trade is with China and Chinese investment in Australia, while still well behind US levels of investment, is growing rapidly. The Australian Treasury has estimated that Australia will become even more dependent on maintaining close economic relations with China in coming years as

structural weaknesses in the US, European, and Japanese economies begin to bite in earnest. While any US attempt to enlist Australia in a containment strategy against China would probably not be explicit—indeed, US policy makers be loathe to even use the word ‘containment’—there would nevertheless be an expectation that traditionally loyal allies such as Australia furnish their support rhetorically and potentially in other, more tangible, ways. Balancing these expectations with the desire to build and expand the bilateral relationship with China, in the economic realm especially, would be a major policy headache for Australian policy makers.

Credibility and Extended Nuclear Deterrence2 Of the three challenges outlined here, the issue of credibility and extended nuclear deterrence is the least pressing, but it still has the potential to cause Both Australia and the US tension in the bilateral alliance. Successive Australian have a lot to lose from a governments have assumed that the United States serious deterioration in would extend its nuclear umbrella in the event that Australia was ever subject to nuclear coercion or relations with China, but attack. For most of the Cold War, this assumption Australia is particularly existed because of the presence of US intelligence vulnerable economically installations in Australia; if Australian territory was ever threatened with nuclear attack, by definition these installations would be placed at risk. Since 1993, Australian strategic guidance statements have stated that Australia relies on the US nuclear arsenal for security against potential nuclear threats, but it is notable that no US administration has ever publically confirmed the existence of the nuclear umbrella in Australia’s case, in marked contrast to its other Asian allies, Japan and South Korea. The fact that Australian statements concerning extended nuclear deterrence have not been contradicted by US policy makers—and confirmation by some former and current Australian officials that discussion about the nuclear umbrella occasionally occurs behind closed doors—seems to provide sufficient assurance that the nuclear umbrella probably applies in the Australian case.

6

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

However, the re-emergence of nuclear disarmament as a long-term policy goal under the Obama administration, including indications that it intends pursuing this objective more forthrightly during its second term, raises some interesting questions for Australia. While Labor governments, like their Democratic colleagues in the US, have been more enthusiastic about the goal of nuclear disarmament, Coalition governments (like US Republicans) have been more inclined to underscore the important role of nuclear weapons in ensuring strategic stability. Given that we could see the ascendancy of Democratic administrations in Washington and Coalition governments in Canberra in coming years, there is real potential for a widening policy gap on deterrence and disarmament. Australia may become increasingly vigilant about any perceived weakening of the credibility of US extended nuclear deterrence assurances to its Asian allies in the event the Obama administration, and its putative Democratic successors, push ahead with nuclear reductions. Even for the Rudd Labor Government, which publically endorsed President Obama’s 2009 Prague speech, it was clear that the credibility of US nuclear commitments to allies was an issue. In its submission to the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the Australian Government placed great significance on the nuclear umbrella and its role ‘in assuring very close allies, like Australia, that they do not need to develop their own nuclear weapons’. The submission also noted that ‘should Washington consider moving towards a more restrictive doctrine guiding the use of nuclear weapons, Australia would want to be closely consulted on the details’. This followed an earlier submission by the Department of Defence to the 2009 Congressional Commission that warned: ‘In order to maintain confidence in extended deterrence, the US will need to make clear that it would respond in kind to nations that employ nuclear weapons against friends and allies of the US, even when there is no existential threat to the US itself’. None of this is to suggest that the Australia-US alliance will at any point face a crisis over extended nuclear deterrence. In marked contrast to Japan, Australia exhibits a ‘relaxed and comfortable’ demeanour when it comes to the nuclear umbrella. That said, future Australian Governments will be privately concerned if US administrations begin to de-emphasise the role of nuclear weapons in their security assurances to allies. A return to the late 1960s when Prime Minister John

Gorton and a few senior advisers seriously discussed the prospect of an Australian bomb is high unlikely, but as Stephan Fruhling points out, discussion of a potential Australian nuclear weapon has never disappeared completely from the calculations of Australian strategists, including those within government. The last government figure to admit raising the topic of a national nuclear weapons option in private conversations with cabinet colleagues was former Foreign Minister Bill Hayden, a strong supporter of nuclear disarmament, but who, like Gorton, remained wary of the value of the US alliance in the event Australia found itself directly threatened in its regional neighbourhood.

Some Policy Recommendations To prepare the alliance for the key strategic challenges outlined in this paper, it is important that Australia adopt a more proactive position in pushing for enhanced dialogue with the United States on these challenges. Alliances are built on a series of bargains about anticipated benefits for each party and there is a tendency to assume that the outcome of intra-alliance bargaining will simply reflect the power asymmetries inherent in individual alliances. However, the relative material strength of a state is not always a reliable indicator of how much influence it enjoys in particular contexts. More than forty years ago, Robert Keohane observed in relation to America’s postwar security relationships in Europe and Asia that ‘alliances have in curious ways increased the leverage of the little in their dealings with the big’. While the US-Australia alliance will never be a dialogue of equals, the fact that the alliance is permeated by a normative dynamism that the United States shares with very few of its allies provides Australia with a great opportunity to raise sensitive issues in bilateral discussions. Smaller states can sometimes influence their major power allies in unexpected ways. Against this background, Australian officials should pursue the following lines of discussion in interactions with their American counterparts: 1. Although Australian supporters of the US alliance have been pretty effective in promoting its normative dynamism, there is less evidence they have been effective in promoting a realistic exchange of views with US 7

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

colleagues about what America’s future role in Asia might look like beyond sweeping assurances that ‘the US is here to stay’. This is admittedly a tough assignment because in many ways it cuts to the heart of the alliance; a less Asian engaged US would inevitably make for a US less engaged in its alliance with Australia. Even if the Christopher Laynes and Hugh Whites of the world are only half right, due to fiscal pressures we are likely to witness a declining US military footprint in Asia over the coming decades. Aside from attempting to share the burden of regional commitments among allies, what is Washington’s strategy for managing this shift as China’s relative strategic weight expands? 2. To echo Mark Thomson’s recommendation contained in his Alliance 21 paper, greater attention needs to be devoted to developing more open dialogue between Canberra and Washington about mutual expectations with respect to burden sharing. Tensions over burden sharing can prove corrosive in alliance contexts over the long term and it is particularly important in an increasingly austere fiscal climate that Australia and the United States address how they plan to circumvent potential future strains over tangible commitments and perceptions of free riding on the part of the smaller alliance partner. Even at the risk of eliciting answers they may not want to hear, Australian officials should press their American counterparts on what Washington expects from Australia in terms of practical support within the framework of the alliance. Since World War Two, Australia has established a consistent track record of getting in quick and getting in small with military commitments to US-led operations, but this anti-entrapment strategy may become less feasible in managing the alliance if constraints grow on US power projection capabilities. 3. Emulating the South Korean and Japanese examples, Australia should propose that bilateral interactions with the US over extended deterrence be formalised as part of the alliance process. As America’s conventional military presence in Asia changes shape, it is likely that the US nuclear arsenal will become more important as a tool of assurance for regional allies. North Korea’s emergence as a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state and China’s more assertive posture

in the region have introduced a new strategic dimension at the same time as questions are being raised about the nature of America’s longer term commitment in Asia. Australia is unlikely to be immune from the insecurities felt by smaller allies during periods of strategic uncertainty, and this will probably manifest itself in a desire for more explicit forms of assurance from Washington. Instituting a US-Australia Extended Deterrence Policy Committee would be a useful way to build greater assurance into the alliance over the long term, with the obvious caveats that Washington may see such an arrangement as creating an unnecessary form of entrapment in an equivalent way that Australia would see it as mitigating the threat of abandonment. Ultimately, having greater confidence in mutual expectations can only strengthen the USAustralia alliance in the twenty-first century.

Further Reading Alagappa, Muthiah, ‘A Changing Asia: Prospects for War, Peace, Cooperation and Order’, Political Science, 63(2), 2011. Art, Robert, ‘The United States and the Rise of China: Implications for the Long Haul’, Political Science Quarterly, 125(3), 2010. Bisley, Nick, ‘An Ally for All the Years to Come’: Why Australia is Not a Conflicted US Ally’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 67(4), 2013. Christensen, Thomas, ‘The Meaning of the Nuclear Evolution: China’s Strategic Modernization and US- China Security Relations’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 35(4), 2012, pp. 447-487. Department of Defence, Defence White Paper 2013: Defending Australia and Its National Interests, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 2013. Fruhling, Stephan, ‘Never Say Never: Considerations About the Possibility of Australia Acquiring Nuclear Weapons’, Asian Security, 6(2), 2010. 8

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Gilley, Bruce and Andrew O’Neil, ‘Seeing China’s Rise Through the Middle Power Lens’, Unpublished paper, October 2012.

O’Neil, Andrew, Asia, the United States and Extended Nuclear Deterrence: Atomic Umbrellas in the 21st Century, Routledge, London and New York, 2013.

Heath, Timothy, ‘What Does China Want? Discerning the PRC’s National Strategy’, Asian Security, 8(1), 2012.

O’Neil, Andrew, ‘Defence White Paper Pulls Its Punches on China’, The Interpreter, 6 May 2013, http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/05/06/Defence-WhitePaper-pulls-its-punches-on-China.aspx.

Kang, David, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia, Columbia University Press, New York, 2007. Kastner, Scott and Phillip Saunders, ‘Is China a Status Quo or Revisionist State? Leadership Travel as an Empirical Indicator of Foreign Policy Priorities’, International Studies Quarterly, 56(1), 2012. Keohane, Robert, ‘The Big Influence of Small Allies’, Foreign Policy, 2, 1971. Kelton, Maryanne, ‘US Economic Statecraft in Asia’, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, 8(2), 2008. Lawrence, Susan and David McDonald, ‘US-China Relations: Policy Issues’, Congressional Research Service, R41108, 2 August 2012. Layne, Christopher, ‘This Time It’s Real: The End of Unipolarity and the Pax Americana’, International Studies Quarterly, 56(2), 2012. Lowy Institute for International Policy, Australia and the World: The Lowy Institute Poll 2013, June 2013, http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/lowy-institutepoll-2013. Lyon, Rod and William Tow, ‘The Future of the US-Australian Security Relationship’, Asian Security, 1(1), 2005. Lyon, Rod and Christine Leah, ‘Three Visions of the Bomb: Australian Thinking About Nuclear Weapons and Strategy’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 64(4), 2010.

Pemberton, Gregory, All the Way: Australia’s Road to Vietnam, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1987. Ross, Robert, ‘Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China’, Security Studies, 15(3), 2006. Sharp, Travis, ‘Over-promising and Over-delivering? Ambitions and Risks in US Defence Strategy’, International Affairs, 88(5), 2012. Sheridan, Greg, The Partnership: The Inside Story of the US-Australian Alliance Under Bush and Howard, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006. Snyder, Glenn, ‘The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics’, World Politics, 36(4), 1984. Thayer, Carlyle, Southeast Asia: Patterns of Security Cooperation, Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2010. Tow, William and Leisa Hay, ‘Australia, the United States and a “China Growing Strong”: Managing Conflict Avoidance, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 55(1), 2001. Walt, Stephen, The Origins of Alliances, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw Hill, 1979. White, Hugh, The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power, Black Inc, Melbourne, 2012.

Manicom, James and Andrew O’Neil, ‘Accommodation, Realignment, or Business as Usual? Australia’s Response to a Rising China’, The Pacific Review, 23(1), 2010. 9

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Endnotes 1. The 2011 AUSMIN communiqué had an entire paragraph devoted to the South China Sea issue. See ‘Australia- United States Ministerial Consultations 2011 Joint Communique, San Francisco, September 15, 2011’, available at: http:// www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/09/172517.htm (last accessed: 9 July 2013). 2. This section draws on chapter 6 of the author’s book, Asia, the United States and Extended Nuclear Deterrence: Atomic Umbrellas in the 21st Century, Routledge, London and New York, 2013.

This report may be cited as: Andrew O’Neill, “The Australia-US Alliance: Addressing Strategic Challenges in the 21st Century,” Alliance 21 Report (United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, October 2012). 10

US STUDIES CENTRE | ALLIANCE 21 THE AUSTRALIA-US ALLIANCE: ADDRESSING STRATEGIC CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

About the Author Andrew O’Neill Professor and Head of the School of Government and International Relations Griffith University From 2010 to 2014, Andrew O’Neil was Director of the Griffith Asia Institute and previously Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Flinders University. Prior to entering academia in 2000, Andrew worked as a Commonwealth Public Servant.

Media Enquiries United States Studies Centre Institute Building (H03) The University of Sydney NSW 2006 T: +61 2 9351 7249 E: [email protected] W: ussc.edu.au

Andrew has taught and supervised at all levels in Australian universities and has delivered classes at Nankai, Hiroshima, and National Chengchi Universities. As part of research teams, he has won funding from the Australian Research Council (most recently for a Discovery Project on extended deterrence with Stephan Fruhling from ANU) and between 2009 and 2013 Andrew was editor-in-chief of the Australian Journal of international Affairs. He is the author of two sole authored books and two co-edited books, the most recent of which (with Bruce Gilley) is Middle Powers and the Rise of China to be published by Georgetown University Press in September 2014. Andrew is a former member of the Australian Foreign Minister’s National Consultative Committee on National Security Issues and is presently an advisory board member of the Lowy Institute’s G20 Studies Centre. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Intelligence History, the Korean Journal of International Studies, and Security Challenges.

11