We’re a target. What to do?

Australians should take special heed of the analysis of the noted defence strategist Peter Jennings and then draw the exact opposite conclusion from his about what should be done.

Jennings, who for 10 years was executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and was a deputy secretary of the Department of Defence, was one of five defence experts lined up by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in a series titled Red Alert. Its aim was to provide a more public discussion about Australia’s defence needs than what will come out of the secretive Defence Strategic Review. And it was widely taken up by other media.

The five’s conclusion was to expect war with China sooner rather than later because China was determined to take over Taiwan by force if necessary. The US would then move militarily to defend Taiwan and Australia would have to join in.

Jennings pointed out that in the first 72 hours China could fire missiles (with or without nuclear warheads) on the naval fleet bases in Sydney and Perth, on RAAF bases near Brisbane and Darwin, and on communications bases near Alice Springs and Exmouth, among other targets.

The five concluded that war with China was almost inevitable and Australia needed an urgent massive upgrade and spend on its military and must maintain and strengthen its alliance with the US.

Those conclusions defy logic. Surely if Australian cities are going to be bombed because we are mad enough to follow the US blindly into a conflict which has nothing to do with us, the better course of action would be not to follow the US into that war and to loosen the ties with the US so that Australia could have its own defence policy and aims.

And the main aim should be to avoid war.

Let’s take a cold hard look at Taiwan. Like most Australians, I like democracy and Taiwan is democratic. But I would rather see Taiwan go under the communist yoke than see Australian cities bombed possibly with nuclear weapons (think Hiroshima and picture Sydney looking like that destroyed city in 1945).

We should look at the aims of the US, Australia and China? There are many possibilities.

Will the US President go to war to: preserve democracy; save a nation from invasion by a foreign power; ensure that it rather than China is the dominant military and economic force in the world; preserve the international rules-based order and freedom of navigation; or to ensure that the President does not lose the next election for failing to act?

Will Australia join the US because: we have to join with the US in is military interventions so the US will help us if we are ever attacked; we want to protect Taiwanese democracy; we want to stand up to China; or our government wants to be seen to be better at national security so it will be re-elected?

What are the Chinese Government’s motives? First is for the Communist Party to retain power. Everything is subject to that. If Taiwan declares its independence, it will be a major (perhaps fatal) blow to the party’s prestige and hold on power.

An over-riding aim of all three nations, of course, should be peace and prosperity. But the three governments do not look like they are behaving that way. In the words of Hugh White, we are sleepwalking to war.

The parallel is 1914 when the European powers started an utterly unnecessary war which achieved nothing for any of them but death, destruction and misery.

This is not like Ukraine, which is more akin to 1939 when a mad, evil, unrelenting dictator had to be defeated.

Going back to the motives. If it is defending democracy, why aren’t we intervening in any number of hellish dictatorships to install democracy? The motive cannot be to save a nation state from invasion because Taiwan is part of China. The US and Australia have recognised that since 1972.

You have to ask: in what circumstances should you support a separatist movement however democratic and respectful of human rights against a central power however murderous and dictatorial?

This war with China is neither necessary nor inevitable. Rather it is unnecessary and avoidable.

Even if the aim is the cynical US desire to remain the military and economic leader of the world, there is a more intelligent way to go about it. If the Chinese Communist Party is stupid enough to invade Taiwan, the US and Australia should do nothing militarily. We should just apply massive economic sanctions.

It would be painful, but less painful than missile attacks on our cities or our blood spilled on Taiwan’s shores.

As events in Ukraine prove, a small, gutsy community can inflict an enormous cost on an invading bully. And the Chinese Communist Party well knows that it is more likely to lose power because of an invasion than to lose power because it did not invade. An invasion would cost too much in blood and treasure for the party to hold on to its legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

And then we have to look at what history tells us about US interventions in the name of democracy and the rules-based order. Since World War II its major interventions have almost all ended in chaos and autocracy: Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Lebanon, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and the list goes on all over the world. When will we learn? China at least sticks to its own immediate area.

Typically, with war there is a huge amount of jingoistic rah-rah at the beginning and the populace gives it support. Then war weariness and reality set in and leaders in democracies have to choose between defeat at the ballot box or defeat in a war.

Australia does not have to be bullied by China. We have proven that. We do not have to condone its breaches of human rights; theft of intellectual property; or abuse of international law in the South China Sea. We can do all of that without going to war. All we have to do is continue the face-saving formula that Taiwan is part of China.

The biggest danger for Australia now is not China itself, but a massive propaganda exercise by the arms industry via its donations to political parties.

Be alert. Be alarmed. But don’t be duped.

Crispin Hull

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 13 March 2023.