Companion Threads:



September 14, 2011 5:06 pm
US and Australia tighten military ties

By Anna Fifield in Washington, Peter Smith in Sydney and Kathrin Hille in Beijing

Military ties between the US and Australia are set to take the biggest leap forward in 30 years, with defence and security officials from the two countries meeting in San Francisco on Thursday to lay the groundwork for much closer co-operation.

Washington and Canberra are set to finalise agreements that will give the US military unfettered access to bases in Australia, a big step forward that will provide the US with a foothold between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

More

On this story


Beijing is likely to be wary that an expanded US military presence in the Asia-Pacific is meant to contain its own growing military clout, but the development will be welcomed by other countries living in China’s shadow.

“Australia will be a pivotal anchor in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Patrick Cronin, an east Asia military expert at the Center for a New American Security.

“This will go beyond training and access – it will provide a psychological element that will be reassuring for most of the region.”

Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton, the American secretaries of defence and state respectively, will on Thursday hold talks with Stephen Smith and Kevin Rudd, their Australian counterparts.

Mr Smith this month described the agreements being negotiated as the “single biggest change or advancement” of the Australian-US alliance in 30 years. Although they are likely to cement months of work on allowing greater American access to Australian military bases, the official announcement is likely to be made in November, when President Barack Obama makes a long-awaited visit to Australia.

Analysts said the progress was significant. “What we are seeing is the beginning of the hard evidence that the US security fulcrum is moving from the Middle East to Asia,” said Ernest Bower, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The two governments have been working for years on the agreements that would give the US military access to a naval base at Stirling in Western Australia, an army base near Townsville in the north, and a port in Darwin.

The countries are also discussing greater US access to Australian training and test ranges and pre-positioning of US equipment on Australian soil. This comes as part of a broader rejig of US military operations worldwide. “The US is increasingly trying to spread out itself out and prepare for a better foothold away from the first island chain that will come into the range of increasingly sophisticated Chinese systems,” Mr Cronin said.

Washington and Canberra already have strong military ties and one of the closest intelligence sharing relationships, thanks to the joint satellite tracking operation at Pine Gap.

Last year the two capitals signed a defence trade treaty that gave Australia full access to US military hardware, putting it on the same footing as only the UK. Canberra is now in the process of buying as many as 100 F-35 joint strike fighters from the US in a $16bn deal.

A recent poll by the Lowy Institute, a respected Sydney think-tank, found that an astounding 55 per cent of respondents had a favourable view about the US basing military forces in their country.

Rory Medcalf, a former Australian diplomat and intelligence analyst at the Lowy Institute, said the US was likely to adopt a “places not bases” model in Australia along similar lines to its agreement with Singapore.

“It avoids the hard sell of Japan and South Korea where the US maintains large full time forces on large bases in other countries,” he said.

But Chinese analysts said such moves would have an impact on China’s military power.

“China is definitely vigilant towards military co-operation between the US and countries including Australia, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and India,” said Chu Shulong, a professor at the school of public policy and management at Tsinghua University.

Several of China’s neighbours have voiced concern over China’s rapid military modernisation.

At a regional security summit in June, Robert Gates, then secretary of defence, addressed such worries with an assurance that the US would reinforce its military posture in Asia. He mentioned deployment of a new littoral combat ship in the region, sending more naval vessels to Singapore and stepping up joint military exercises with Australia.

Capabilities aimed at putting US bases at risk and denying US military ships and planes access to regional waters have been one focus of the People’s Liberation Army’s military modernisation.

China’s military has repeatedly warned Washington not to interfere in what it sees as its own sphere of influence, demanding the US Navy end surveying activities in China’s exclusive economic zone and sharply criticising joint exercises between the US and South Korea in the Yellow Sea, an area Beijing has called its “coastal waters”.

But Chinese experts said Beijing was unlikely openly to criticise a deal that merely expanded an existing military alliance and concerned activities much further away from China.

“The US and Australia are military allies anyway, so [such co-operation] is quite natural,” said Prof Chu. “They are not co-operating in the South China Sea or close to Taiwan. Unless that were the case or they said explicitly that the co-operation was aimed at China, China is not going to express concern.”