The Australia-Us Alliance: Addressing Strategic Challenges in the 21St Century

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. The Alliance 21 Program is a multi-year research initiative ■■ US nuclear planning has become more conscious of the need to that examines the historically strong Australia-United address China’s ability to potentially hold American and allied targets States relationship and works to address the challenges at ransom during any escalation contingency in the region. and opportunities ahead as the alliance evolves in a ■■ Whilst Australia assumes the US would extend its nuclear umbrella in the event that Australia changing Asia. Based within the United States Studies was ever subject to nuclear coercion or attack, this has never been formally confirmed. Centre at the University of Sydney, the program was launched by the Australian Prime Minister in 2011 as a Whilst the contemporary US-Australia alliance has been historically strong, it reached a high point during the public-private partnership to develop new insights and decade 2001-2011 as the relationship became more global in its focus. Since then, alliance relations have policy ideas. continued to intensify with successive AUSMIN communiqués and President Obama’s 2011 visit to Australia as The Australian Government and corporate partners Boral, part of the broader Asia pivot strategy. Dow, News Corp Australia, and Northrop Grumman There is however a distinctive tendency among supporters of the US-Australia alliance to focus on present and Australia support the program’s second phase, which past achievements and to overlook the potential issues that may confront the alliance in the future. Particularly commenced in July 2015 and is focused on the following overlooked are three key challenges revolving around the ‘alliance security dilemma’, itself characterized by core research areas: defence and security; resource the dual fears of abandonment and entrapment. Managing alliance burden sharing, China and the risks sustainability; alliance systems in Asia; and trade, of containment, and credibility and extended nuclear deterrence poses a strategic challenge to the alliance. investment, and business innovation. Australia should adopt a more proactive position in pushing for enhanced dialogue with the US on these issues.

Cover image: “150703-O-ZZ999-001” by U.S. Pacific Fleet, licensed under CC BY 2.0. United States Studies Centre The Alliance 21 Program receives funding support from the following partners. Research conclusions are derived Institute Building (H03) independently and authors represent their own view, rather than an institutional one of the United States Studies Centre. 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 the first time in fifty years, Prime Minister Howard noted that ‘Australia stands strength, but ironically, the termination of the Cold War introduced a degree of ready to cooperate within the limits of its capability concerning any response that uncertainty into the relationship. Australia’s modest military support for the US-led the United States may regard as necessary in consultation with her allies’. The war against Iraq in 1991 signalled a commitment to back American-led military Howard government’s main motive for invoking the treaty seems to have been operations outside the Asia-Pacific theatre. Yet, the shared hesitancy of the G. a desire to underscore the operational dimension of the formal security clause H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations to chart a coherent future role for the enshrined in the document in the expectation that Washington would recognize United States in Asia triggered doubts in Australian policy making circles about the two-way significance of the commitment. The fact that Prime Minister Howard Washington’s long term commitment to Asia. Reaffirmation in the 1995 East Asia had deliberately used the phrase ‘within the limits of its capability’ showed that, Strategic Review (widely referred to as ‘the Nye Report’) that the United States was like US administrations during the 1960s that sought to place limits on Australian committed strategically to Asia for the long term helped to mitigate anxiety among expectations of support in possible regional contingencies, Australia chose its Australian policy makers, and the Clinton administration’s endeavour to bolster words carefully in formal pronouncements relating to ANZUS. In a media conference regional alliances coincided with the advent of the Howard Coalition Government in Beijing three years later, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer suggested that in 1996. Australia’s support for the dispatch of a US aircraft carrier battle group to Australia would not necessarily feel bound by its ANZUS alliance obligations to the Taiwan Strait to deter Chinese intimidation of Taiwan the same year confirmed support the United States in the event of a Taiwan Strait contingency involving the new government’s strong support for the alliance at a time when few other America and China. These remarks provoked a sharp response from Washington and regional states were prepared to publicly support US action in defence of Taiwan. 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 By the late 1990s, the alliance appeared to have largely recovered from the for the United States in a conflict against China over Taiwan or, by implication, scratchiness of the early post Cold War period, with Washington playing a key role conflicts in other theatres. in persuading Indonesia (through a combination of diplomatic arm twisting and economic pressure) to allow the introduction of an Australian-led international force However, it is fair to say that the US-Australia alliance reached a high point during the (INTERFET) to restore peace and stability following elections on autonomy in the decade from 2001 to 2011. Over this timeframe, the alliance relationship became Indonesian province of East Timor. 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 The terrorist attacks in September 2001 marked the end of the post-Cold War era, only several countries to support the US invasion of Iraq were far removed from but they were also a turning point in the alliance relationship between Australia and the narrow regional contingencies that had preoccupied Australian policy makers the United States. In response to the attacks, the Howard Government invoked during the period of Konfrontasi with Indonesia in the early 1960s. The conclusion Article 4 of the ANZUS Treaty. Justifying the decision to invoke the Treaty for

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of a US-Australia Free Trade Agreement in 2005 was highly coveted by the Howard The importance of shared norms and values—as distinct from simple transactional government, and its passage through Congress made undoubtedly easier by interests—in providing underlying strength in alliances is strangely absent from Australia’s unwavering support for the United States after 9/11. The famously close much of the literature. But history shows that shared norms provide significant relationship between George W. Bush and John Howard was certainly a key factor ballast for international partnerships during periods of change and transition and in solidifying the alliance relationship after 9/11. Yet, the intensity of alliance relations that they are particularly important in encouraging senior officials to emphasize actually appears to have increased following the respective departures of Bush and common strategic interests while minimizing differences. Key networks of exchange Howard from office. This has been evident in successive AUSMIN communiqués, between supporters of the alliance, most prominently the 1.5 track American which have emphasized an increasing convergence of views on the need for China Australian Leadership Dialogue, help to reinforce its normative dynamism, which in to enhance transparency of its military modernization program and for Beijing to turn is underpinned by consistently favourable public opinion in the United States exercise restraint in its dealings with regional states on territorial issues.1 President and Australia reflecting positive perceptions of the value of the alliance for both Obama’s 2011 visit to Australia was accompanied by an announcement that the countries. United States would begin rotating marine forces through the northern port city of Because of this, within Australia Darwin as part of its broader Asia pivot strategy. The primary significance of the at least, the alliance is rarely decision lay in the message it conveyed about the strategic value of the bilateral There is a distinctive tendency examined in detached terms. The alliance even as Australia’s economic wellbeing was becoming more dependent shrill response to Hugh White’s among supporters of the US-Australia each year on China which, along with Indonesia, publicly condemned the rotation balanced intervention in 2010 decision. As Nick Bisley observes, ‘In spite of the wide-ranging debate about how alliance to focus on present and past on the subject of China’s rise, it might manage the perceived conflict between its strategic orientation and its acheivements in the relationship America’s perceived decline, economic interests, Australia made clear that it would continue to cleave very tightly while overlooking the potential and the recommendation that to the US alliance, expand its military links and more broadly work to advance the Australia seek to persuade the challenges the alliance confronts USA’s conception of regional order’. US to share power with Beijing 21st Century Challenges? in Asia, confirmed the essential brittleness of Australia’s intellectual engagement with long term questions about the There is a distinctive tendency among supporters of the US-Australia alliance to future of the alliance. Most analysis has the tone of either being ‘for’ or ‘against’ the focus on present and past achievements in the relationship while overlooking alliance and few observers remain agnostic about its perceived costs and benefits. the potential challenges the alliance confronts in the rapidly evolving strategic Given the often polarised domestic views on the value of alignment with the United environment of the twenty-first century. One of the major strengths of the bilateral States in countries that maintain formal security alliances with Washington, this is alliance is its normative dynamism: the people of both countries share core values not particularly unique. Despite a significant majority of Australian public opinion and beliefs about liberal democracy as the preferred ordering framework for good consistently supportive of the alliance, there is a sizeable minority that questions governance. Overlapping views about the optimum form of domestic governance whether Australia is able to exercise its sovereignty fully in interacting with its great are reinforced by highly complementary perspectives on security, (most) economic and powerful friend. This strain of public opinion was evident during the Cold War, issues, and international relations more generally. with questions being raised about whether the presence of US intelligence facilities

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on Australian soil (which remained largely under exclusive American control until Australia and will be reflected in three primary challenges over the coming decades. the mid 1980s) was incompatible with notions of sovereignty. More recently, questions about Australian sovereignty within the alliance came to the fore during Alliance Burden Sharing the War on Terror, with claims by some that the Howard Government simply fell in Due to significant projected defence budget cuts over time, the United States will lockstep with US policy, particularly in relation to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. almost certainly become a more demanding ally. This should come as no surprise, While the bilateral alliance is widely portrayed as being rock solid by its supporters, and given America’s leadership in providing for the defence of key allies during the it confronts some potential challenges in the years ahead. For the most part, these Cold War, these allies should themselves be willing to shoulder more of the alliance challenges will revolve around the tensions inherent in what Glenn Snyder has burden to help out Washington. Yet, there are few indications that any American defined as ‘the alliance security dilemma’. 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 Snyder argues that modern alliances are characterized by the dual fears of be directly attributed to Washington’s view that a number of European allies have abandonment and entrapment. The client state is consistently focused on avoiding been free riding on the US security guarantee by keeping their defence budgets being abandoned by its major power protector, which may include the latter ‘failing low in order to maintain ambitious social welfare programs domestically. 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 In his valedictory speech to the NATO Council in 2011, former US Defense Secretary client state ‘does not share, or shares only partially’. Like individuals and cognitive Robert Gates underscored the importance of burden sharing in Europe and the dissonance, smaller alliance partners can possess seemingly contradictory anxieties need for non-US NATO members to increase their defence budgets in spite of simultaneously. A good example of the coexistence of fear of abandonment was domestic fiscal pressures caused by the financial crisis. In many ways, however, Australia’s Vietnam War commitment in the mid 1960s. This occurred at the same such burden sharing logic is even more applicable to America’s Asian allies because time as Canberra was increasingly concerned that the United States might choose of Washington’s emerging rivalry with Beijing and the rising economic constraints not to activate ANZUS if Australia found itself in a conflict against Indonesia. the United States faces in countering the China challenge in Asia. America’s However, exhibiting apprehension about the potential for entrapment, successive domestic fiscal crisis, precipitated by record debt levels and a weakening dollar, governments in Canberra—from Menzies to McMahon—sought to carefully has triggered a wholesale review of US military spending. Significantly, cutting calibrate the level of Vietnam force commitments to avoid heavy costs. 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 While Australia’s overall alliance strategy was relatively clear during the Cold War the next decade. This will result in deep cuts of between ten to twelve per cent, period, and has been for much of the post-Cold War era—i.e. to consistently with potentially deleterious implications for US power projection capabilities. 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, the strategic consequences of this for the US and its allies over the long term—recent trends in Asia and policy shifts in the United States could be profound. No state today has the potential to seriously rival the United and Australia raise questions about the continued viability of this strategy. These States as a global military power, and this is unlikely to change over the next one developments are accentuating, rather than lessening, the alliance dilemma for 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

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in his 2011 speech to the Australian Parliament that ‘reductions in US defence the traditionally modest levels of the past. Notably, the chief of the US Pacific spending will not come at the expense of the Asia Pacific’. China’s ability to impose Command has identified publicly that Australia’s defence budget is lower than the serious costs on the United States in littoral zone conflicts is exemplified by NATO Europe average, expressing his hope that Australia possesses ‘a long-term Beijing’s major investment in asymmetric warfare technologies aimed specifically view of defence planning that has the proper levels of resources behind it’. 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 anti- China and the Risks of Containment access capabilities have improved during a period where US defence expenditure The Obama administration has been at pains to reassure Beijing, and the international was not declining. As Travis Sharp points out, with automatic cuts to the defence community more generally, that it has no intention of containing China. While budget taking effect over the next ten years, ‘the United States will find it harder many Chinese analysts argue that America’s actions through its rebalance to Asia to spend the money required to research, develop, test, field, and protect military undermine Washington’s reassuring rhetoric, it is difficult to make a sustainable technologies that will outpace those its future enemies’. The broader implications case that the United States is engaged in a grand strategy analogous to that which of this are potentially quite significant. One leading American realist scholar, it pursued against the Soviet Christopher Layne, has recently concluded that: ‘Between now and 2025, the Union during the Cold War. looming debt and dollar crises almost certainly will compel the United States to The Obama administration has retrench strategically, and to begin scaling back its overseas military commitments’. The fiscally straitened environment certainly been intent on pushing What does this mean for US allies, including Australia? While the US-Australia back assertively—and largely in Australia has led to major cuts in alliance has been largely free of the tensions over burden sharing that have effectively—against China’s defence expenditure to a point where characterized debates within NATO, there are grounds for arguing that this could attempts to promote a neo- the latter is now lower as a proportion become an issue in the years to come. In operational terms, it is unlikely Australia tributary framework to guide of GDP than at any time since 1938 will face a direct conventional threat to its sovereign territory over the next two its relations with other Asian decades, and it is probable that Washington would extend its nuclear deterrent as states. It has also accelerated part of the bilateral security alliance were Australia ever threatened directly with development of a coherent nuclear coercion. The more likely challenge may emerge if and when Washington Air-Sea Battle Plan to counter Chinese asymmetric warfare gains in Asia’s littoral expects Canberra to step up to a large scale coalition operation with a meaningful zones, and increasingly many of the Pentagon’s acquisitions are aimed directly at force commitment to compensate for America’s own, or its other allies’, inability to nullifying any potential PLA advantage in specific conflict scenarios. cover all military contingencies. The fiscally straitened environment in Australia has There is also some evidence that US nuclear planning has become more conscious led to major cuts in defence expenditure to a point where the latter is now lower as of the need to address China’s ability, through its increasingly sophisticated a proportion of GDP than at any time since 1938. The 2013 Defence White Paper mobile missile program, to potentially hold American and allied targets at ransom ambitiously committed Australia to playing an active role in promoting stability in during any escalation contingency in the region. However, none of these actions the so-called ‘Indo-Pacific’, but failed to pledge any new resources to achieve this constitute containment, a strategy that would make no logical sense given the goal. Historically low levels of defence expenditure raise concerns about Australia’s profound interdependence of the US and Chinese economies. As Robert Art points future ability to support US-led military operations in Asia and beyond, even at

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out: ‘Stopping the rise of Chinese power means containing Chinese power. That, in structural weaknesses in the US, European, and Japanese economies begin to turn, requires halting or drastically curtailing China’s economic growth, upon which bite in earnest. While any US attempt to enlist Australia in a containment strategy all else depends, and thwarting its rising influence, regionally and globally’. 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 However, this is not to say that containment is completely off the agenda of US that traditionally loyal allies such as Australia furnish their support rhetorically and grand strategic options. Dealing with an authoritarian China that is embarking on an potentially in other, more tangible, ways. Balancing these expectations with the ambitious military modernisation program aimed in no small part at raising the costs desire to build and expand the bilateral relationship with China, in the economic of US intervention in Asia at a time when the spectre of US declinism is (once again) realm especially, would be a major policy headache for Australian policy makers. popular in many quarters may make American policy makers more sympathetic to characterising US-China rivalry as analogous to the US-Soviet relationship. Already Credibility and Extended Nuclear Deterrence2 within the Republican Party, the intersection between assertive US nationalism and anxieties about American decline has produced at times sharp rhetoric about Of the three challenges outlined here, the issue of the challenge from China. Moderate Republicans, including the 2012 presidential credibility and extended nuclear deterrence is the candidate Mitt Romney, favour the continuation of the Bush-Obama strategy of least pressing, but it still has the potential to cause Both Australia and the US engagement and hedging in US policy towards China, but the influence of pro- tension in the bilateral alliance. Successive Australian have a lot to lose from a containment forces could gain rapid traction in the event of a serious downturn governments have assumed that the United States in bilateral relations between Beijing and Washington. The United States has would extend its nuclear umbrella in the event that serious deterioration in more mechanisms for high level bilateral dialogue with China than does any other Australia was ever subject to nuclear coercion or relations with China, but country. This includes the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue chaired by the attack. For most of the Cold War, this assumption Australia is particularly US Secretaries of State and Treasury and their Chinese counterparts. However, it is existed because of the presence of US intelligence important to note that the United States pursued the grand strategy of containment installations in Australia; if Australian territory was vulnerable economically during the Cold War while at the same time engaging in wide ranging strategic ever threatened with nuclear attack, by definition dialogue with the Soviet Union across a host of key policy areas. these installations would be placed at risk. Since 1993, Australian strategic guidance statements have stated that Australia relies on Any US drift towards containing China would raise serious concerns among the US nuclear arsenal for security against potential nuclear threats, but it is notable Australian policy makers. Of particular concern would be any expectation on the that no US administration has ever publically confirmed the existence of the nuclear part of Washington that America’s allies pitch in to support the strategy. Both umbrella in Australia’s case, in marked contrast to its other Asian allies, Japan and Australia and the US have a lot to lose from a serious deterioration in relations with South Korea. The fact that Australian statements concerning extended nuclear China, but Australia is particularly vulnerable economically. deterrence have not been contradicted by US policy makers—and confirmation Approximately one quarter of Australia’s two -way trade is with China and Chinese by some former and current Australian officials that discussion about the nuclear investment in Australia, while still well behind US levels of investment, is growing umbrella occasionally occurs behind closed doors—seems to provide sufficient rapidly. The Australian Treasury has estimated that Australia will become even more assurance that the nuclear umbrella probably applies in the Australian case. dependent on maintaining close economic relations with China in coming years as

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However, the re-emergence of nuclear disarmament as a long-term policy goal Gorton and a few senior advisers seriously discussed the prospect of an Australian under the Obama administration, including indications that it intends pursuing this bomb is high unlikely, but as Stephan Fruhling points out, discussion of a potential objective more forthrightly during its second term, raises some interesting questions Australian nuclear weapon has never disappeared completely from the calculations for Australia. While Labor governments, like their Democratic colleagues in the of Australian strategists, including those within government. The last government US, have been more enthusiastic about the goal of nuclear disarmament, Coalition figure to admit raising the topic of a national nuclear weapons option in private governments (like US Republicans) have been more inclined to underscore the conversations with cabinet colleagues was former Foreign Minister Bill Hayden, a important role of nuclear weapons in ensuring strategic stability. Given that we could strong supporter of nuclear disarmament, but who, like Gorton, remained wary of see the ascendancy of Democratic administrations in Washington and Coalition the value of the US alliance in the event Australia found itself directly threatened in governments in Canberra in coming years, there is real potential for a widening its regional neighbourhood. policy gap on deterrence and disarmament. Australia may become increasingly vigilant about any perceived weakening of the credibility of US extended nuclear Some Policy Recommendations deterrence assurances to its Asian allies in the event the Obama administration, and To prepare the alliance for the key strategic challenges outlined in this paper, it is its putative Democratic successors, push ahead with nuclear reductions. Even for important that Australia adopt a more proactive position in pushing for enhanced the Rudd Labor Government, which publically endorsed President Obama’s 2009 dialogue with the United States on these challenges. Alliances are built on a series Prague speech, it was clear that the credibility of US nuclear commitments to allies of bargains about anticipated benefits for each party and there is a tendency to was an issue. In its submission to the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the Australian assume that the outcome of intra-alliance bargaining will simply reflect the power Government placed great significance on the nuclear umbrella and its role ‘in asymmetries inherent in individual alliances. However, the relative material strength assuring very close allies, like Australia, that they do not need to develop their own of a state is not always a reliable indicator of how much influence it enjoys in nuclear weapons’. The submission also noted that ‘should Washington consider particular contexts. More than forty years ago, Robert Keohane observed in relation moving towards a more restrictive doctrine guiding the use of nuclear weapons, to America’s postwar security relationships in Europe and Asia that ‘alliances have Australia would want to be closely consulted on the details’. This followed an earlier in curious ways increased the leverage of the little in their dealings with the big’. submission by the Department of Defence to the 2009 Congressional Commission While the US-Australia alliance will never be a dialogue of equals, the fact that the that warned: ‘In order to maintain confidence in extended deterrence, the US will alliance is permeated by a normative dynamism that the United States shares with need to make clear that it would respond in kind to nations that employ nuclear very few of its allies provides Australia with a great opportunity to raise sensitive weapons against friends and allies of the US, even when there is no existential issues in bilateral discussions. Smaller states can sometimes influence their major threat to the US itself’. power allies in unexpected ways. None of this is to suggest that the Australia-US alliance will at any point face a Against this background, Australian officials should pursue the following lines of crisis over extended nuclear deterrence. In marked contrast to Japan, Australia discussion in interactions with their American counterparts: exhibits a ‘relaxed and comfortable’ demeanour when it comes to the nuclear umbrella. That said, future Australian Governments will be privately concerned if 1. Although Australian supporters of the US alliance have been pretty US administrations begin to de-emphasise the role of nuclear weapons in their effective in promoting its normative dynamism, there is less evidence they security assurances to allies. A return to the late 1960s when Prime Minister John have been effective in promoting a realistic exchange of views with US

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colleagues about what America’s future role in Asia might look like beyond in the region have introduced a new strategic dimension at the same time sweeping assurances that ‘the US is here to stay’. This is admittedly a tough as questions are being raised about the nature of America’s longer term assignment because in many ways it cuts to the heart of the alliance; a commitment in Asia. Australia is unlikely to be immune from the insecurities less Asian engaged US would inevitably make for a US less engaged in its felt by smaller allies during periods of strategic uncertainty, and this will alliance with Australia. Even if the Christopher Laynes and Hugh Whites probably manifest itself in a desire for more explicit forms of assurance from of the world are only half right, due to fiscal pressures we are likely to Washington. Instituting a US-Australia Extended Deterrence Policy Committee witness a declining US military footprint in Asia over the coming decades. would be a useful way to build greater assurance into the alliance over the long Aside from attempting to share the burden of regional commitments among term, with the obvious caveats that Washington may see such an arrangement allies, what is Washington’s strategy for managing this shift as China’s relative as creating an unnecessary form of entrapment in an equivalent way that strategic weight expands? Australia would see it as mitigating the threat of abandonment. Ultimately, having greater confidence in mutual expectations can only strengthen the US- 2. To echo Mark Thomson’s recommendation contained in his Alliance 21 paper, Australia alliance in the twenty-first century. 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 Further Reading austere fiscal climate that Australia and the United States address how they plan to circumvent potential future strains over tangible commitments and Alagappa, Muthiah, ‘A Changing Asia: Prospects for War, Peace, Cooperation and perceptions of free riding on the part of the smaller alliance partner. Even at the Order’, Political Science, 63(2), 2011. risk of eliciting answers they may not want to hear, Australian officials should Art, Robert, ‘The United States and the Rise of China: Implications for the Long press their American counterparts on what Washington expects from Australia Haul’, Political Science Quarterly, 125(3), 2010. 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 Bisley, Nick, ‘An Ally for All the Years to Come’: Why Australia is Not a Conflicted and getting in small with military commitments to US-led operations, but this US Ally’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 67(4), 2013. anti-entrapment strategy may become less feasible in managing the alliance if Christensen, Thomas, ‘The Meaning of the Nuclear Evolution: China’s Strategic constraints grow on US power projection capabilities. Modernization and US- China Security Relations’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 3. Emulating the South Korean and Japanese examples, Australia should propose 35(4), 2012, pp. 447-487. that bilateral interactions with the US over extended deterrence be formalised Department of Defence, Defence White Paper 2013: Defending Australia and Its as part of the alliance process. As America’s conventional military presence in National Interests, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 2013. 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 Fruhling, Stephan, ‘Never Say Never: Considerations About the Possibility of as a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state and China’s more assertive posture Australia Acquiring Nuclear Weapons’, Asian Security, 6(2), 2010.

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Gilley, Bruce and Andrew O’Neil, ‘Seeing China’s Rise Through the Middle Power O’Neil, Andrew, Asia, the United States and Extended Nuclear Deterrence: Atomic Lens’, Unpublished paper, October 2012. Umbrellas in the 21st Century, Routledge, London and New York, 2013.

Heath, Timothy, ‘What Does China Want? Discerning the PRC’s National Strategy’, O’Neil, Andrew, ‘Defence White Paper Pulls Its Punches on China’, The Interpreter, Asian Security, 8(1), 2012. 6 May 2013, http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/05/06/Defence-White- Paper-pulls-its-punches-on-China.aspx. Kang, David, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia, Columbia University Press, New York, 2007. 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’, Kastner, Scott and Phillip Saunders, ‘Is China a Status Quo or Revisionist State? Security Studies, 15(3), 2006. Leadership Travel as an Empirical Indicator of Foreign Policy Priorities’, International Studies Quarterly, 56(1), 2012. Sharp, Travis, ‘Over-promising and Over-delivering? Ambitions and Risks in US Defence Strategy’, International Affairs, 88(5), 2012. Keohane, Robert, ‘The Big Influence of Small Allies’, Foreign Policy, 2, 1971. Sheridan, Greg, The Partnership: The Inside Story of the US-Australian Alliance Kelton, Maryanne, ‘US Economic Statecraft in Asia’, International Relations of the Under Bush and Howard, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006. Asia Pacific, 8(2), 2008. Snyder, Glenn, ‘The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics’, World Politics, 36(4), Lawrence, Susan and David McDonald, ‘US-China Relations: Policy Issues’, 1984. Congressional Research Service, R41108, 2 August 2012. Thayer, Carlyle, Southeast Asia: Patterns of Security Cooperation, Canberra: Layne, Christopher, ‘This Time It’s Real: The End of Unipolarity and the Pax Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2010. Americana’, International Studies Quarterly, 56(2), 2012. Tow, William and Leisa Hay, ‘Australia, the United States and a “China Growing Lowy Institute for International Policy, Australia and the World: The Lowy Institute Strong”: Managing Conflict Avoidance, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Poll 2013, June 2013, http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/lowy-institute- 55(1), 2001. poll-2013. Walt, Stephen, The Origins of Alliances, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. Lyon, Rod and William Tow, ‘The Future of the US-Australian Security Relationship’, Asian Security, 1(1), 2005. Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw Hill, 1979.

Lyon, Rod and Christine Leah, ‘Three Visions of the Bomb: Australian Thinking White, Hugh, The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power, Black Inc, About Nuclear Weapons and Strategy’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Melbourne, 2012. 64(4), 2010.

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.

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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).

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About the Author

Andrew O’Neill Media Enquiries Professor and Head of the School of United States Studies Centre Institute Building (H03) Government and International Relations The University of Sydney NSW 2006 Griffith University T: +61 2 9351 7249 From 2010 to 2014, Andrew O’Neil was Director of the Griffith Asia E: [email protected] Institute and previously Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty W: ussc.edu.au of Social Sciences at Flinders University. Prior to entering academia in 2000, Andrew worked as a Commonwealth Public Servant.

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.