AUSTRALIA: Wary of Asia Pacific’s Modernising Militaries

September 23rd, 2008

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, September 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Sep 23 (IPS) - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has warned that Australia needs to prepare for ”the increased militarisation” of the Asia-Pacific.

In a speech to the Returned and Services League’s (RSL) national congress on Sep.9, Rudd spoke of the need for Australia to build up its defence capabilities as the region becomes wealthier.

”The Asia-Pacific region will become more prosperous and its population will continue to grow,” Rudd told his audience.

He said that the ”region will be home to the largest and most dynamic economies in the world” by 2030. ”As nations grow and become more affluent, they also update their military forces,” argued Rudd.

The Australian leader’s assertions have garnered considerable attention here, where historic fears of the nation’s Asian neighbours have been somewhat compounded by the resurgence of China.

Figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) show that military expenditure in the region — based on market exchange rates — is indeed on the rise. Nations in Asia and Oceania allocated funding worth 219 billion US dollars to their militaries in 2007, representing a 52 percent increase on 1998 levels.

But while this increase is indicative of global trends — all regions have increased military spending since 1998, according to SIPRI. The Americas saw the biggest leap, up 63 percent, while Europe’s increase was the smallest, up 16 percent — there are concerns in Australia that the nation is at risk of falling behind its neighbours.

Ron Huisken, from the school of Pacific and Asian studies at the Australian National University, says that as a general rule, when a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) increases, so does its military budget.

”And everybody’s GDP is going up in Asia. Most of them are going up faster than ours,” he says.

Despite this, Australia was ranked 14th in the world by SIPRI in 2007 in terms of overall military expenditure.

While the United States — which was responsible for a massive 45 percent of the world’s military spending last year — headed the list, other nations in the Asia-Pacific region were also among the world’s big spenders in terms of defence budgets. China, Japan, India and South Korea all spent considerably more than Australia.

But South-east Asian nations have also boosted their military capabilities, particularly in their navies and air forces, according to Lachlan Colquhoun, assistant secretary of Southeast Asia affairs in the Australian defence department’s international policy division.

Fronting a parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s relationship with ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) on Sept.12 — three days after the Prime Minister’s speech — Colquhoun acknowledged the investments in military forces made by Australia’s immediate neighbours, but cautioned against describing the situation as an arms race.

”I think it is fair to say that we do not see an arms race in the region, but there is a substantial military modernisation,” he told the parliamentary committee.

This comes at a time of increasing concern that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is being spread too thinly. Currently, some 4,000 ADF personnel are on duty in operations around the world, including major deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Solomon Islands, and East Timor, with smaller components in Sudan, the Sinai, and Israel, among other places.

In order for Australia to prepare for what he described as ”the emerging security environment” in the Asia-Pacific region, the Prime Minister said that the acquisition and development of military technology is to be the rock on which Australia’s future security lies.

Rudd wants such technology to be supported by the development of key capabilities — enhanced naval and air force capabilities and ”the best trained, best commanded forces possible.”

To pay for the ADF’s update, the Prime Minister has signalled an increase in ”the real growth of the defence budget by three percent per annum to 2017-18.”

According to Huisken, however, this amounts to a paltry increase in spending.

”That means the ADF will never get above two percent of GDP and there are pronounced limits on how many capabilities you can ask them to excel at,” he opines.

”There is a huge difference in an ADF which is specialised to do Solomon Islands-type operations [where Australian forces lead the regional assistance mission, known by its acronym, RAMSI] or large-scale disaster relief, humanitarian operations like tsunami-response, and an ADF that can help cool animosities in the Taiwan Strait, for example, at some point in the future,” says Huisken.

But with Rudd wanting to prepare Australia for an altered security environment in the Asia-Pacific in the coming years — ”the demographic changes in our region will mean that by 2020 when we look to our north, we will see a very different region to the one we see now. One where population, food, water and energy resource pressures will be great,” he said — he is keen to build on Australia’s existing relations with its neighbours through diplomatic means.

Although he noted that Australia’s alliance with the U.S. ”will remain the bedrock of our strategic policy,” Rudd wants Australia to comprehensively engage with Asia and the Pacific.

Economically, Asia is becoming more important to Australia, with China now the nation’s biggest trading partner and Japan also a major market for Australian products, as well as a large supplier.

Australia has been keen to conclude free trade agreements (FTA) in the region too. The country has existing FTAs with Thailand and Malaysia, and last month finalised negotiations for a region-wide FTA with ASEAN and New Zealand.

But Australia also has defence ties with many nations in the region — including Japan and most of the ASEAN nations — and Kevin Rudd wants to expand security cooperation with the regional giants, China and India.

Although this burgeoning interconnection between Australia and its neighbours may yet be crucial in avoiding conflict in the region, it will not guarantee the prevention of hostilities, says Huisken.

He cautions that prior to the First World War, interdependence among nations rivalled that of today.

”And yet that conflict still broke out,” he says.