by Brian Toohey
After Britain decided in April 2019 to allow Huawei to supply part of its 5G networks, subject to tests of the equipment, The Economist said Australia’s policy was ‘wrongheaded’, partly because there was no public evidence of spying by Huawei. It said, ‘If an open system for global commerce is to be saved, a framework has to be built for countries to engage economically even if they are rivals.’26 The highly regarded commentator Jeffrey Sachs has noted that the US government has provided no evidence that Huawei has engaged in spying.27
But Australian journalists described approvingly how members of the Anglo-Saxon ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence club ate a lobster dinner at a Nova Scotia resort in July 2018 while devising a campaign to destroy Huawei by warning everyone to boycott its equipment. The increasingly hubristic heads of the agencies at the dinner actively conduct illegal electronic espionage themselves.
Australia’s national security zealots also try to attack China’s economy by advocating bans on Chinese foreign investment, often on spurious national security grounds. The campaign against a Chinese company leasing a commercial wharf in Darwin’s port included warnings that US and Australian warships would have to get Chinese permission to enter the port.28 However, the ADF and ASIO stated that there would be no national security problems as all foreign ships need government permission to enter Australian ports.29
Another false alarm occurred after the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ census website collapsed on 9 August 2016 because it couldn’t cope with the volume of census forms submitted. Yet the ABC repeatedly reported the next day that the crash had been due to a foreign ‘denial of service’ cyber-attack, despite the fact that reliable information was widely available that morning showing that no such attack had occurred.30 Peter Jennings, the director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which is partly funded by the US arms industry, wrongly told the ABC’s 7.30 program that night that China’s government was most likely responsible. The following day Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull publicly acknowledged that the crash had been due to a failure by the ABS and IBM.
In 2017 the media made repeated claims that Chinese students in Australia were berating university lecturers for criticising China, but gave few examples. Christopher Kremmer, who teaches Chinese students in a postgraduate class at the University of New South Wales, says, ‘I generally find them extremely respectful of their teachers. They are mainly interested in passing their courses and having fun.’31 Another lecturer, David Brophy, said that in his Chinese history courses at Sydney University, ‘I regularly touch on sensitive issues, including Tibet and Xinjiang. My students from China have never been anything but respectful and engaged.’32 In contrast, one University of Sydney tutor relinquished his teaching duties after Chinese students complained he’d called them ‘pigs’ and cheats ‘due to low IQs’. He kept his research job.33
The accusations against China multiplied in Clive Hamilton’s 2018 book Silent Invasion. The ABC reported that Hamilton said, ‘Thousands of agents of the Chinese state have integrated themselves into Australian public life—from the high spheres of politics, academia and business all the way down to suburban churches and local writers groups.’34 Hamilton, a professor of ethics, presented no evidence for this wild assertion. None of the 300 Chinese entities in the China Chamber of Commerce in Australia have made donations to political parties, and only 2 per cent of campaign donations come from any foreign source.35
There is no evidence of an Australian government succumbing to clandestine Chinese influence. But any attempts by Beijing to bully Chinese Australians are unacceptable. So are evidence-free media accusations that Chinese Australians are effectively fifth columnists.
The media went into overdrive on 8 February 2019 after presiding officers calmly announced that an unknown source had made a cyberattack on the parliamentary computer network, but that it had been swiftly blocked and there was no evidence it had been an attempt to influence parliamentary processes or the forthcoming federal election. The officers also made plain that the attack had not affected the computer systems of government ministers and their staff, which are heavily protected against hacking. This did not stop the ABC reporting that a Canberra University ‘expert’ said that Parliament House contains the ‘crown jewels’ for those looking for state secrets.36 Why this expert’s demonstrable nonsense was reported is a mystery. It is widely known that access to classified ministerial communications, let alone the ‘crown jewels’, is not possible via the parliamentary computer system.
The media quickly concluded that China was responsible. Perhaps it was, but attributing responsibility is no longer easy when intelligence agencies can make it wrongly appear that cyber-attacks come from their adversaries.
There is a good chance India will flex its muscles as it becomes stronger. Nor should an increasingly powerful Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, be ignored. Indonesia is a lively democracy and is well located to attack or harass Australia. It is not a threat on present indications. That could change if Australians continue to ignore its sensitivities—for example, by loudly demanding it immediately release drug dealers from jail. Shortly after becoming prime minister, Scott Morrison, in a failed effort to win a by-election in October 2018, proposed shifting Australia’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The proposed shift was a hot issue in Indonesia, but Morrison showed no sign he’d given this a moment’s thought. The Australia–US decision to use Papua New Guinea’s Lombrum naval base for their ships also drew criticism in Indonesia.37
Future leaders should be reminded that past Defence Department strategists such as Bill Pritchett made a convincing argument that Australia could not be confident the US would come to Australia’s aid in a clash with Indonesia.38 Nothing has changed in that regard.
60
GOING TO WAR AGAINST CHINA
‘The US has used force 160 times since the Cold War ended in 1991.’
US Congressional Research Service1
No iron law states that the current arms build-up in the Asia-Pacific must trigger a clash between a rising and a declining power that escalates until it kills millions. It’s much too glib, however, to assume that more military spending will always minimise the risks of a catastrophe.
The core strategic reality is that the US doesn’t need to be the dominant power in Asia to maintain its own national security. Unlike the US, China must remain part of Asia. Although China’s growing economic and military power gives it added clout in its neighbourhood, it could never pose a serious military threat to the US homeland. Even if the US cut its own military spending by two-thirds, it would still be higher than the combined total for China and Russia.2
Strategic studies professor Hugh White says, ‘America has no real reason to fight China for primacy in Asia, shows little real interest in doing so, and has no chance of succeeding if it tries.’3 But many American politicians want the US to remain militarily dominant in the Asia-Pacific and seem to assume that ‘boots on the ground’ won’t be needed in any conflict.
China, unlike the US, is strategically weak. Much of China’s trade, including 80 per cent of its oil imports, goes through the easily blockaded Strait of Malacca, and it’s surrounded by potential adversaries, such as India, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and possibly Russia and North Korea. Although its forces are improving, it will be decades before China has anything like the US’s ability to project power around the globe (even if it chooses to). Its last prolonged military experience was in the Korean War in the early 1950s. The US has fought numerous wars since then. Admittedly, the US fared badly in Afghanistan against ragged bands of peasants equipped with clapped-out rifles and homemade explosive devices.
Now US military planners believe its forces would be better suited to high-end warfare against China. This was the premise of its publicly announced 2010 AirSea Battle plan. Apart from a total trade embargo that would devastate Australian exports, the plan included deep missile strikes into China, guarantee
ing the conflict would escalate. A serving American naval officer, Commodore Matthew Harper, warned that it would quickly collapse the global economy, saying, ‘Focusing solely on Chinese military capabilities clouds the critical challenge of preventing a catastrophic Sino-American conflict.’4 When I mentioned this article to a senior Australian naval officer, he asked for a copy and then sent a note saying, ‘Anyone contemplating a war with China is insane.’ This perspective hasn’t stopped successive governments secretly authorising the Australian military to help with planning for participating in such a conflict.5 A tight blockade on Australian exports to China remains in the plans.
Despite its immense power, the US could struggle to win an ultimate victory over China. It would be fighting far from home against a nation with impressive cyber-warfare capabilities, and anti-shipping missiles and torpedoes that could sink US carrier battle groups. Even if China lost the initial battle, it would be highly likely to rebuild its strength before resuming hostilities. The only way for the US and its allies to achieve an enduring victory would be to invade China, occupy hundreds of major cities for decades, and win a relentless guerilla war. A nuclear war might circumvent an invasion but could kill huge numbers of Americans and Chinese.
It is doubtful if China’s relatively small nuclear forces could survive a US attack. The US has a total of 6550 warheads—1350 deployed on long-range missiles and bombers—compared to China’s total of 280.6 Ever since George W. Bush unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the US has deployed conventional missiles on ships and land that can destroy nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Its attack submarines can track and sink China’s four ballistic-missile submarines.7 This means China must expand its nuclear forces to ensure that enough retaliatory missiles would survive to deter a first strike.
Taiwan and the South China Sea are usually considered potential flashpoints for a war. Almost all countries, including the US and Australia, recognise China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, but the US also remains committed to defending Taiwan. China tolerates the offshore island having its own armed forces and a democratic political system and welcomes its big investments on the mainland, but is adamant it will never accept a formal Taiwanese declaration of independence. For China, using force against one of its own provinces is not the same as attacking another country. There is no requirement under ANZUS for Australia to join this fight, and it shouldn’t do so, particularly if Taiwan provokes a war.
Ideally, whether a province gains independence should depend on a referendum, which China would not accept. Likewise, the US wouldn’t allow a referendum for the indigenous population of Guam, its Pacific Island territory/colony that hosts big air-force and navy bases.
China’s abrasive behaviour in the South China Sea has aroused concerns about its intentions, although its activities are more limited than often assumed. The disputes are between littoral states that claim territorial waters in a sea covering about 3.5 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean’s 162 million square kilometres. Former Australian Navy captain Sam Bateman, an eminent scholar on the subject, says, ‘It’s simply not true to say that Beijing claims almost all the South China Sea and islands within it as sovereign Chinese territory. It may claim all the “features” [uninhabited rocks, shoals, islets and reefs etc.], but only claim sovereign rights over resources of the sea. These rights are not to be confused with the sovereignty a country exercises over its land territory and territorial sea.’8
In pursuing its claims, China hasn’t killed anyone or invaded another country, unlike the US, the UK and Australia when they invaded Iraq in violation of all the rules. Nevertheless, China should have accepted the 2016 international tribunal ruling in The Hague against its claim to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around some ‘features’ near the Philippines. The tribunal applied the treaty resulting from the 1994 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to deny EEZ claims by littoral states to small offshore features. It didn’t consider the building of artificial islands.9 Unlike the US, China has ratified the treaty, but it behaved like a great power by rejecting the 2016 ruling. The US lost an international case after illegally dropping mines in Nicaraguan harbours in the 1980s, but ignored the ruling. Australia is not without sin: when Timor-Leste became independent, Australia withdrew from international maritime jurisdictions to try to stop it taking legal action over disputed petroleum fields.10 The tribunal in the Philippines–China case also ruled that UNCLOS extinguished all historic claims.
Britain continues to assert its historic claims to the Falkland Islands, 13,000 kilometres from the UK. In March 2016, a UN commission on continental shelves expanded Argentina’s maritime territory to include the Falklands, which are only 480 kilometres from its shoreline. Britain rejects the commission’s finding.
Because it is a major beneficiary of trade, China doesn’t deny freedom of commercial navigation in the South China Sea. Most of Australia’s trade with China and North Asia doesn’t even go through that sea.11 US Freedom of Navigation patrols assert a right of passage for warships within 12 nautical miles of Chinese-claimed reefs and rocks in the South China Sea. Bateman says for Australia to conduct similar patrols ‘as a push-back against China would serve no useful purpose. Rather these operations could help destabilise a situation that is looking increasingly more stable.’12 He also says the South China Sea is not ‘international waters’ as it is almost entirely covered by the littoral states’ EEZs for exploiting natural resources. Rules apply to passage through these zones.13
The Chinese government is under intense nationalistic pressure to keep asserting the same claims that Chiang Kai-shek’s US-supported Nationalist government made in the 1940s. Chiang fled to Taiwan in 1949, and Taiwan still makes these claims today without attracting the same opprobrium as China. Taiwan has a military presence on Pratas Island, 850 kilometres from its capital, Taipei. Taiwanese patrol boats trying to land activists on disputed islands between Japan and China bumped into Japan Coast Guard vessels in July 2012.14 Japan is not blameless: it has an implausible claim to an EEZ around Okinotori, a scattering of tiny rocks in the Philippine Sea, 1700 kilometres from Tokyo. The Japan Coast Guard clashed with Taiwanese fishing boats there in 2016.
China’s land-reclamation works in the South China Sea to create sand islands are highly contentious. Vietnam and the Philippines also put military forces on disputed islands and engage in minor land reclamation. Although China can use these small platforms for military purposes, they are hard to defend against nearby Filipino or other forces. Admiral Dennis Blair, a former head of the US Pacific Command, says resolving the disputes calls for ‘coordinated diplomacy rather than a military response’.15 At the time of writing, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries and China are working on a code of conduct to set a framework to resolve disputes.16
One diplomatic solution would be for all parties directly involved to freeze their claims and agree to share any resources in a sustainable manner. It’s not impossible. Presidents Eisenhower and Khrushchev jointly promoted the much tougher 1961 Antarctic Treaty, which put all territorial claims on indefinite hold, banned militarisation and encouraged scientific cooperation anywhere on the continent.
Despite the near-impossibility of a long-term victory in a catastrophic conventional or nuclear war with China—a war with no bearing on US security—Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper wants the US to take a bigger military role in the Indo [Asia] Pacific.17 It also hopes an increasingly powerful India would be a counterweight to China.18 However, if Australia expects India to be its next big protector, it’s likely to be disappointed. India had long been a culturally rich and prosperous civilisation before it was plundered during almost two centuries of British rule that left it impoverished and de-industrialised.19 The Indian economist Ulsa Patnaik calculates that India lost over £9 trillion to Britain between 1765 and 1938, the bulk of it from the heavily taxed Indian peasantry.20
Alexander Davis, who researches Indi
an foreign policy, says, ‘India desires a multipolar or polycentric world order, which is fundamentally different to the current (post) imperial “liberal international order” in which the US underwrites most of the rules.’21
Nevertheless, India is worth appreciating by Westerners, regardless of its strategic utility. It has much to offer visitors, usually tolerates freedom of expression, and produces a rich English-language literature. It is also a democracy where corruption is rife, leaders ignore widespread poverty, women are badly treated, the caste system survives, and Hindu militancy promotes violence against Muslims. It also oppresses the Kashmiri population.
India might reach a tacit understanding with China in which each has its own sphere of influence. Hugh White says neither would have the power to contest the other’s sphere ‘except at immense cost, and it is not clear why either would choose to do so’.22 Australian foreign policy makers would then have to live with two headstrong rising powers, not just one.
The White Paper acknowledges that the risk of a direct threat to Australia is low, but frets about the future. Apart from its primary goal of maintaining internal security, China’s military forces have been designed to stop a potential enemy getting close to the mainland rather than for fighting far away. So were Australia’s. Their primary job was to control access to the sea–air gap around the nation, but they are now increasingly integrated into the US’s more wide-ranging forces.23 Rather than global domination, the Pentagon sees China as having a limited goal of being able to ‘ultimately re-acquire regional pre-eminence’.24 This requires China to project power relatively long distances from its coast—the Australian Navy has been able to do this since 1913. Two former Defence heads, Allan Hawke and Rick Smith, have explained why China has no motive to undertake the extremely costly endeavour of trying to invade Australia. They say, ‘Global markets provide a far more cost-effective means of obtaining resources than military force.’25 No one has identified any other plausible motive for China to attack Australia, unless we were participating in a US war against China. The joint US–Australian SIGINT bases in Australia already put a big effort into identifying targets for conventional and cyber warfare against China.