Australia’s next Defence White Paper

An ASPI Update

Peter Abigail

A maritime geo-strategic setting

ADF Primary OperationalEnvironment

Australia’s ‘abiding strategic interests’

• a secure Australia

• a secure immediate neighbourhood

• strategic stability in Asia-Pacific

• a stable, rules-based global security order

• Key strategic aspiration

• Key strategic assumption

• Key strategic enabler

The strategic environment challenges Australia’s:

• Ensuring Australia’s strategic weight and role in the region

• Managing shifts in US strategic primacy in the region

• Sustaining adequate Defence funding

Implicit strategic objectives

• China’s ‘charm offensive’ stumbled

• US ‘awakening’: a recalibration of strategy and ‘re-invigoration’ of regional relationships

• Australia has confirmed its strategic ‘choice’

• The Indian Ocean is getting more attention

• Indonesia is starting to contemplate its future role

• Arab ‘Spring’: too early to tell

• Global Economic Crisis (Mk 2)?

• Force 2030 will be late, anyway

What has changed since 2009?

• Does Australia seek security from Asia, security with Asia, or some selective combination?

• What are the strategic implications of an extended global economic contraction?

• What more can we do to maintain strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region over the next 15 years?

• How can we best reassure the United States?

• How should our Army be optimised?

• Should Australia have a national capability to design, build, integrate and sustain bespoke submarines?

• Does the ADF have the capacity to be parent services of bespoke advanced systems and capabilities?

• What ADF capability, other than for current operations, is urgent?

Eight questions leading to the next Defence White Paper