No Echidna Strategy for Australia

Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute has advocated that Australia adopt an “Echidna Strategy” for its national security. By this he means that, like the echidna, Australia should cultivate a non-threatening posture, and employ deterrence by making itself so “prickly” as to make the costs of an attack excessively high.

In this context, Roggeveen argues that Australia should prepare for the US’s likely retreat from Asia, and that AUKUS is not the right policy for Australia. His contrarian views are very much in the spirit of Hugh White in his publication “Sleepwalk to War: Australia’s Unthinking Alliance with America”. And Roggeveen has recently been given further air in the Australian Foreign Affairs Journal, and in the Lowy Interpreter.

America’s core security interests are not threatened by China’s rise, according to Roggeveen. The US would live in a relatively benign security environment thanks to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and its non-threatening neighbours of Canada and Mexico. One fine day, the US will wake up to the immense costs of its security investments in the Indo-Pacific, and begin withdrawing. This would leave treaty allies like Australia and Japan unprotected by a big friend.

In reality, US security is very much threatened by a rising China due to the US's open society, business ecosystem, and politics. The Chinese Communist Party sees the US and its democracy as an existential threat to its survival. Thus, China is very active in seeking to destabilise the US through cyber-crime, financial crime, influence and interference operations, disinformation campaigns, and intellectual property theft. Perhaps the most egregious activity is China’s export of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances to the US which is killing more Americans between the age of 18 and 49 than any other public health issues.

In short, the US has every reason to continue working with its allies, partners and friends in the Indo-Pacific, who are similarly vulnerable, to counter these nefarious activities by China. China’s support for other rogue regimes, notably Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine, and also North Korea and Iran, are such that they represent a threat to the whole world, including the US. Further, if the US were to vacate the Indo-Pacific, both Japan and South Korea could develop nuclear weapons, with dramatic impacts on global security and stability.

It is true, as Roggeveen notes, that US military investments in the Indo-Pacific have ironically flagged over the period since President Obama announced his “Pivot” to Asia in 2011. But there has been little sign of the US withdrawing from the Indo-Pacific, especially under President Biden. It is responding to security threats by several means like trade and investment restrictions, sanctions, tighter visa requirements, and strengthened partnerships.

The AUKUS partnership between the US, UK and Australia is important and could see a growing number of participants. The Quad meeting has been elevated to the summit level. Another emerging regional group, “the Squad”, involves Australia, Japan, the Philippines and the US. Relations have been boosted with several Asian countries such as through the first ASEAN summit in Washington, the strengthening of the US Alliance with Japan, and partnerships like US/Japan/Korea and US/Japan/Philippines. In short, Biden recognises that the US can only compete with China with help from its allies, partners and friends.

Roggeveen spills much ink on issues pertaining to the Chinese military, even though he believes that China is unlikely to invade Australia. He sees distance as being Australia’s key strategic asset. In reality, rather than invading Australia militarily, China is more interested in subjugating Australian politics and society, and making them compliant with China’s wishes. Its most important objective is “regime security”, which it would prefer to ensure by winning without fighting.

To this end, China employs “grey zone” activities like cyber attacks, political interference and influence operations, surveillance and coercion of Chinese expatriates, hiring influential locals to do its bidding (“China’s useful idiots"), hostage diplomacy, disinformation campaigns, and economic and other coercion. Geographic distance cannot save Australia from these threats. Indeed, Australia has much to gain in terms of access to intelligence and technology from its alliance with the US in order to defend itself against China’s grey zone activities.

Although he believes that distance is Australia’s great strategic asset, Roggeveen is concerned about the possibility of China dominating Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, which could enable it to overcome Australia’s advantage of distance. In this regard, he argues that security of Australia and the Indo-Pacific would be greatly improved by negotiating a military pact with Indonesia, a South Pacific union with New Zealand and their island neighbours, and a European style “concert of powers”, by which the region’s great powers could restrain and subdue the contest for power in Asia.

But in making the case for these initiatives, Roggeveen highlights so many enormous challenges involved to achieve these initiatives that this reader is wholly unconvinced. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that trying to keep the US engaged in the Indo-Pacific is the most realistic, practical option to ensure Australia’s security, even though there will always be reason to worry, especially at the time of changing administrations.

Roggeveen is very critical of the AUKUS trilateral security partnership, focusing on the proposed acquisition of nuclear-propelled submarines. And there is much that could be said about AUKUS. But I think that the key point is that it is an Australian initiative which helps anchor the US in the region and gives Australia some leverage to help shape the US approach to the region. The argument that AUKUS compromises Australia’s sovereignty does not hold water, because Australia’s participation was made by a sovereign choice.

Roggeveen’s argument in favour of an “Echidna Strategy” is an intriguing one. If such a strategy were ever relevant, it would be in the context of traditional military threats, not in a context where China is trying to subjugate Australia by grey-zone activities.

Acknowledgements

This book review was written by John West.