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Strategic and the Changing Indo-Pacific: Lesson from Australia by Juniawan Priyono and Purnomo Yusgiantoro Indonesia Defence University e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper reflects a revolution in the way in which Australia thinks about its strategic geography. Strategic geography refers to the control of, or access to, spatial areas that has an impact on the security and economic prosperity of nations. The “Indo-Pacific” has now decisively displaced the “Asia-Pacific” as defence planners’ preferred term for describing their neighborhood. The Indo-Pacific can be understood as a maritime super-region with its geographical center in Southeast Asia. The reawakening of the Indo-Pacific reflects three wider realities, first, its geographically-defined interests and economic-societal enmeshment with Asia. Second, the rebalancing imperatives of the US alliance. Third, the fact that the major states of Asia have some fundamental economic and strategic drivers.

1. Introduction Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper (DWP) marks the return of geography to defence planning. The Turnbull government’s DWP clearly recognises geographical strategic imperatives. It lists Australia’s strategic defence interests as: (i) a secure, resilient Australia, with secure northern approaches and proximate sea lines of communication; (ii) a secure nearer region, encompassing maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific; and (iii) a stable Indo-Pacific region and a rules-based global order. According to Dibb (2016), it seems that they now have close to bipartisan agreement on the geographical priorities that support Australian defence planning. Certainly, the Indo-Pacific has gained considerable currency of late. Its acceptance as a distinct biogeographic region in marine science is of long standing. But in geopolitics, the term lay dormant for decades, until its recent re-emergence in a gathering tempo of speeches, press reports, government documents and think-tank reports (Medcalf, 2012). Over the past ten years, having previously seen it deployed in an internal Australian government think piece around 2005, Richardson (2005) presciently wrote that the nascent East Asia Summit could be the emerging capstone for an Indo-Pacific order. A broadly-agreed definition is a work in progress (Medcalf et al., 2012), which “an emerging Asian strategic system that encompasses both the Pacific and Indian Oceans, defined in part by the geographically

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expanding interests and reach of China and India, and the continued strategic role and presence of the United States in both”. Todays, the Turnbull government makes it clear that Australia’s security isn’t linked only to their geography or to confronting threats solely in their maritime approaches. It recognises the reality that Australia also has the responsibility and the capability to respond the threats to the rules-based global order. This sweeping assertion needs to be qualified by the recog-nition that there are distinct limits to Australia’s defence capacity. As the Australian Government drafts a new defence white paper, the aim of this paper is to analyze the fundamentals of Australian strategic geography. It will suggest some defects in current strategy and identify a number of steps that need to be taken to reset Australia’s defence strategy given the evolving Indo-Pacific environment.

2. Theory: Strategic Geography Strategic geography refers to the control of, or access to, spatial areas (land, water and air; including outer space) that has an impact—either positive or negative—on the security and economic prosperity of nations. It embraces all dimensions of geography, which includes both physical and (Kemp & Harkafy, 1997). This is a more focused definition than the classical concepts of geopolitics succinctly defined by Cohen as "the relation of international political power to the geographical setting" (after Sen, 1975). It has a more specific meaning in that it is more directed at the tactical elements of geography that contribute to grand strategy. The physical geography of a region generally changes very slowly, though some features change at different rates than others. Over centuries topographical features such as mountains, lakes, river, and shore lines can be altered significantly—with far-reaching consequences—and the climate of a region can change, often more rapidly than its topography. Some physical changes can occur within decades, such as the depletion of natural resources, and some can happen over ten to fifteen years, which is the approximate time range covered (Kemp & Harkafy, 1997). The human geography of a region—which can and does change very rapidly, depending upon a number of factors—can be broken down into dozens of subcategories. For our purposes, we will focus on three of them. describes the control and organization of territory, including people and assets. refers to the infra-

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structure and industrial and rural facilities that contribute to the economy of a region, including roads, ports, airports, pipelines, energy utilities, factories, farms and patterns of trade. concerns the deployment and power projection of military assets as they relate to space, time and distance; and the impact that physical constraints have upon both offensive and defensive military operations (Kemp & Harkafy, 1997). Military geography has been strongly influenced over the centuries by developments in technology. Ports and routes that were essential for navies during the age of sail ceased to be important once steamships dominated fleets, and instead coal bunker ports and access to coal supplies became critical. But in less than sixty years oil had replaced coal as the best fuel for ship propulsion and a new set of logistical priorities to provide oil for ships became important. Britain's interest in the Persian Gulf evolved rapidly in the early twentieth century because of its desire to control Mesopotamian oil and not be dependent on the United States. In the 1950s the development of nuclear propulsion for ships virtually eliminated the need for overseas base access for U.S. nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers (Kemp & Harkafy, 1997).

3. Discussion Applying the concept of strategic geography to the Indo-Pacific, we can identify a great many contemporary examples of its continuing importance, such as Australia’s lessons learnt.

3.1 From Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific The map of Asia is being reimagined. The idea of the Asia-Pacific, which made good sense as a framework for regional order in the late twentieth century, is giving way to another construct: the Indo-Pacific. This changing use of geographic terms has real-world consequences for how states and leaders perceive the regional strategic order, the challenges it faces, and the ways to address them (Medcalf, 2015a). Accordingly, a contest is emerging over how to define Asia conceptually, including choice of terminology. This will have strategic implications, not least on managing the growth of China’s power and interests (Medcalf, 2015b). Leaders and senior policy figures from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States are increasingly using the term “Indo-Pacific” or similar language in

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speeches and statements. Even where the precise wording differs there is increasingly an intersection between the idea of the Indo-Pacific and terminology used by policy leaders to describe the changing regional order. Notable among these is the “Maritime Silk Road” idea, which China under President Xi Jinping has promoted since late 2013 as a way to define its economic and diplomatic engagement across the Indian Ocean and beyond (Xi, 2013). The evolution of India’s “Look East” policy to an “Act East” agenda under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is part of a serious effort by India to become a more influential power east of Malacca. Since 2007, Japanese policy speeches and statements have occasionally referred to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s formulation of the “confluence of two seas” (Abe, 2007). And Indonesian President Joko Widodo has, since his inauguration speech in late 2014, defined his archipelagic nation as a strategically important maritime nexus between the Indian and Pacific oceans (Witular, 2014). Other Asian middle powers, such as the Republic of Korea, while not necessarily yet embracing Indo-Pacific terminology, are acknowledging their economic and strategic dependence on developments across a much wider maritime region, from the Middle East to the U.S. (Yun, 2014). According to Medcalf (2015b), Indo-Pacific tendency is much more than a matter of superficial or semantic difference. The way policymakers define and imagine regions can affect, among other things, the allocation of resources and high - level attention; the prioritization of security partners among countries; and the membership and agendas of regional diplomatic institutions. Thus, the increasing use of the term Indo-Pacific carries implications for the way countries approach security competition or cooperation in maritime Asia. This has ramifications for how countries manage and incorporate China’s rise in a regional order. Whether the region’s strategic future is dominated by competition or develops in a more cooperative fashion, the game is likely to unfold increasingly in a super-region connecting two oceans. There will, thus, be a growing imperative for the region’s powers to develop what might be termed an Indo-Pacific strategy, difficult though such a comprehensive approach may be. The idea of an Indo-Pacific region involves recognizing that the growing economic, geopolitical, and security connections between the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean regions are creating a single “strategic system” (Medcalf, 2013). At its

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simplest, this can be understood as a set of geopolitical power relationships among nations where major changes in one part of the system affects what happens in the others. In this sense, the Indo-Pacific can be understood as a maritime “super-region” with its geographical center in Southeast Asia. This should not be mistaken a s some kind of effort to reduce the centrality of Asia in regional conceptions; rather, it is a region with maritime Asia at its core (Medcalf, 2013). The reality of an Indo-Pacific region has been brought about by a confluence of economic and strategic factors. A principal driver has been the rise of China and India as powers that have become increasingly outward-looking in their economic and military affairs. This has led to the rapid expansion of their economic interests and, therefore, of their strategic and diplomatic imperatives into what the other might once have considered its primary maritime zone of interest—China’s into the Indian Ocean and India’s, to a lesser but growing degree, into the Pacific (Mohan, 2012). Even so, the Indo-Pacific power narrative is not only about China and India. The region involves the intersecting interests of at least four major powers—China, India, Japan, and the United States—as well as significant middle players including Australia, South Korea, and the most substantial of the Southeast Asian countries (Medcalf, 2013). According to Rumley et al. (2012), a viable strategic definition of Asia cannot be based solely on what the United States and its allies think. The enduring validity of an Indo-Pacific way of seeing and acting strategically in Asia will rest also on the perspective, choices and behavior of other countries, most notably China. Some observers suggest that the Indo-Pacific idea, particularly as presented by American voices in the context of the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific, is unlikely to appeal to China and could even heighten its perceptions that it is the target of a US-led containment strategy.

3.2 Geography as Dogma These messaging deficiencies are compounded by flaws in the thinking and assumptions that underpin defence strategy. At the broadest level, Australia’s defence strategy has two main purposes: to help shape the regional and international security environment in support of a rules-based, liberal democratic order; and to deter and, if

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necessary, defeat armed attacks against the nation’s territory, people and vital interests (Duppont, 2015). The same could not be said of Australia’s military strategy where official thinking is still infected by an overly rigid, determinist approach to strategic risk management. This distorts both our strategy, and the structure of the ADF, by placing undue emphasis on defending Australia from conven-tional military attacks and persisting with the illusion that geography provides Australia with immutable and abiding strategic benefits (Duppont, 2015). According to Duppont (2015), there is no doubt that Australia’s geography once afforded Australians a measure of protection from military threats due to the continent’s relative distance from most global conflicts and transnational challenges. But distance and location are far less of a barrier today. In some respects, they are no barrier at all because globalisation is continuing to shrink physical space at an ever-accelerating rate. Australia’s heightened vulnerability to global threats is also a function of the rapidly increasing range of modern weapon systems, particularly conventional and ballistic missiles; the emergence of powerful, trans-national actors capable of operating across borders with little or no regard for sovereignty; and the growing importance of space and cyber space as new arenas for strategic competition and conflict. The consistent declaratory position of recent white papers is that the near region should be prioritised over more distant areas in our strategy, deployments and force structure. Attempts to codify this contestable assumption have produced impressive sounding constructs such as “our area of direct military interest,” “primary area of strategic interest” and “primary operational environment” (Department of Defence, 2009). In practice, the ADF’s actual deployments have been more distant than near.

3.3 Australia’s Strategic Geography Australia’s unique strategic geography first came to prominence in the 1972 Australian Defence Review. That document was the precursor to the 1976 DWP, and identified geography as having “a compelling influence on Australian security” and that Australia needed to be able to defend the continent “if need be, alone”. Self-reliance in situations of less than global or major international concern were stated to be “a central feature in the future development of Australia’s defence policy”. These concepts were elaborated in the seminal 1976 White Paper which stated increased self-reliance to be a

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primary requirement. The 1976 document observed the US alliance didn’t free Australia from the responsibility to make adequate provision for its own security, or to help support stability and security in its own neighbourhood (Dibb, 2016). These central defence planning concepts were elaborated in more or less detail, and with differing interpretations of their area of primary strategic concern, in the 1987, 1994 and 2000 efforts. The 2000 DWP developed concepts that were characterised by its critics as “concentric circles” for defence planning. They identified a strategic objectives as the defence of Australia and its direct approaches; the security of immediate neighbourhood; stability in Southeast Asia; the support of strategic stability in the wider Asia—Pacific region; and global security, in that order. According to Dibb (2016), the Rudd government’s 2009 DWP focused on a similar ordering of strategic priorities. But it also usefully observed that the strategic geography hierarchy reflected Australia’s “realistic capacity for influence through the employment of military power”. That’s an important policy judgement. The fact remains that it’s closer to home where we are able to do something decisive about military contingen-cies as “no-one else would have as deep an interest in acting”. The air-sea gap to the north was described as “at the strategic centre of primary operational environment” and the document outlined the need to maintain a strong capability to project military power utilising forward operating bases in northern Australia. The 2016 DWP focuses on Australia’s internal geography more than its predecessors did. The Rudd document noted that northern Australia, with its long coastline, remote population centres, substantial economic resources and relatively underdeveloped infrastructure, will always command a significant place in Australia’s military contingency planning. It stated that they need to maintain a strong capability to project military power from mounting bases and forward operating bases in northern Australia. These sentiments were repeated in the 2013 effort, which affirmed that an effective, visible force posture in northern Australia and northern and western approaches is necessary to demonstrate their capacity and will to defend sovereign territory. According to Dibb (2016), the Gillard government had commissioned a major review of the ADF’s force posture in 2011 to assess whether the ADF was correctly positioned geographically to meet Australia’s strategic challenges. That review found that the capacity of ADF bases and training areas, particularly in the north and west of the continent, needed to be upgraded to

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sustain high-tempo operations in northern Australia and their approaches, as well as the immediate neighbourhood and wider Indo-Pacific region. However, little appears to have been done before the change of government in 2014 to improve capacities. The good news is that the 2016 DWP has promised some serious investments to correct these deficiencies in northern basing. Northern Australia receives particular mention as one of the Key Enablers in this White Paper with a statement that the Government is committed to a strengthened defence presence in the north, including significant upgrades to Navy bases there. The 2016 Defence White Paper marks a significant return to the importance of geography in Australia’s strategic defence planning, both externally and within the continent itself and especially in the north.

3.3 Solving The Problems: Priorities, Planning, Perception The greatest danger of the Indo-Pacific concept lies in treating the Indian Ocean and East Asian regions as of equivalent strategic importance. While the resources trade linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans is growing in importance, the inter-state conflicts that most immediately impinge on Australia’s interests remain concentrated in East and especially northeast Asia. An increasingly poisonous Sino-Japanese relationship, and a nuclear armed North Korea, threaten stability in that part of Asia that continues to be the primary engine of Australian prosperity. Short of an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war, no security challenge west of the Strait of Malacca comes close to threatening Australia’s interests as seriously as does the spectre of a Northeast Asian Great Power conflict. For Australia, the main security and economic game will remain centered on the Sino-Japanese-Korean triangle for at least the next decade. Thus the language we use to describe our strategic landscape should reflect this reality as faithfully as possible (Phillips, 2013). In lumping the Indian and Pacific Ocean theatres together, the White Paper’s authors conflate two very different environments. Since the 1970s, Australia has pursued a strategy in East Asia based on participation in America’s “hub and spokes” system of bilateral alliances and engagement with an ASEAN-centred regional security architecture. The Indian Ocean presents a more complicated challenge for Canberra. It lacks a coherent US-centred alliance system for Australia to plug in to, or a local equivalent of the veritable “alphabet soup” of multilateral security fora now present in East Asia. Australia must engage the Indian Ocean

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region, and the White Paper rightly prioritises turbo-charging bilateral partnerships with India and Indonesia as a means of achieving this goal. But a mere extension of Australia’s tried and tested “dual track” technique of regional order-building from an Asia-Pacific to an Indian Ocean is likely to fail (Phillips, 2013). The most recent White Paper has won praise for abandoning a needlessly provocative approach of casting China’s rise as a potential source of regional instability. But Canberra’s focus on the Indo-Pacific risks undermining this progress. This is because Australia-watchers in Beijing will be aware of the concept’s early association with voices that advocated containing China through the formation of a league of maritime democracies including India, Australia, Japan and the U.S. To be fair, most Indo-Pacific boosters—both within and outside of government—have consistently and correctly repudiated ambitions to contain China as being both unrealistic and counter-productive. According to Phillips (2013), in the likely event that the Indo-Pacific becomes a permanent part of Australia’s defence and foreign policy, a special effort will be needed to privately reassure Beijing that the concept includes an inclusive vision of regional order, as opposed to a dog-whistle to partisans agitating for an anti-China “Axis of Good”.

4. Conclussions Australia’s strategic environment is changing rapidly, and the White Paper have shown considerable in trying to capture the changes now re-shaping region. Stretching Australia’s strategic geography out to an Indo-Pacific scale carries dangers as well as opportunities—the concept requires further intellectual refinement. Broadening Australia’s strategic focus may merely further dilute limited resources and compromise capacity to shape their region. For Australians, the most immediate is their distinct two-ocean geography and the extension of interests this entails if they are serious about engaging full region in this so- called Asian Century. Turning to Australia’s strategic and foreign policy discourse, the recent reawakening of the Indo-Pacific reflects three wider realities. Australia is entering an Indo-Pacific age by dint of, first, her geographically-defined interests and her economic-societal enmeshment with Asia, including India. Second, the rebalancing imperatives of the US alliance. Third and most importantly, the fact that the major states of Asia now have some fundamental economic and strategic drivers—many involving the sea—that compel them to look to each

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other’s neighbourhoods, beyond the erstwhile barriers of Southeast Asia’s straits and archipelagos.

5. Acknowledgement This research paper was partially supported by Australian Government funding. We thank our colleagues from National Security College, Australian National University—especially Prof. Rory Medcalf—who provided insight during short course last June 2016 in Canberra.

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