Australia’s next Defence White Paper
An ASPI Update
Peter Abigail
A maritime geo-strategic setting
ADF Primary OperationalEnvironment
Australia’s ‘abiding strategic interests’
• a secure Australia
• a secure immediate neighbourhood
• strategic stability in Asia-Pacific
• a stable, rules-based global security order
• Key strategic aspiration
• Key strategic assumption
• Key strategic enabler
The strategic environment challenges Australia’s:
• Ensuring Australia’s strategic weight and role in the region
• Managing shifts in US strategic primacy in the region
• Sustaining adequate Defence funding
Implicit strategic objectives
• China’s ‘charm offensive’ stumbled
• US ‘awakening’: a recalibration of strategy and ‘re-invigoration’ of regional relationships
• Australia has confirmed its strategic ‘choice’
• The Indian Ocean is getting more attention
• Indonesia is starting to contemplate its future role
• Arab ‘Spring’: too early to tell
• Global Economic Crisis (Mk 2)?
• Force 2030 will be late, anyway
What has changed since 2009?
• Does Australia seek security from Asia, security with Asia, or some selective combination?
• What are the strategic implications of an extended global economic contraction?
• What more can we do to maintain strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region over the next 15 years?
• How can we best reassure the United States?
• How should our Army be optimised?
• Should Australia have a national capability to design, build, integrate and sustain bespoke submarines?
• Does the ADF have the capacity to be parent services of bespoke advanced systems and capabilities?
• What ADF capability, other than for current operations, is urgent?
Eight questions leading to the next Defence White Paper