No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Through the ANZUS alliance, Australia, like Japan and South Korea, has been a key part of the United States “hub-and-spokes” Asia-Pacific alliance structure for more than sixty years, dating back to the earliest years of the Cold War and the conclusion of post-war peace with Japan. An historical chameleon, the shape of the alliance has continually shifted - from its original purpose for the Menzies government as a US guarantee against post-war Japanese remilitarisation, to an imagined southern bastion of the Free World in the global division of the Cold War, on to a niche commitment in the Global War On Terror, to its current role in the imaginings of a faux containment revenant against rising China. As one hinge in the Obama administration's Pacific pivot, Australia is now more deeply embedded strategically and militarily into US global military planning, especially in Asia, than ever before. As in Japan and Korea, this involves Australia governments identifying Australian national interests with those of its American ally, the integration of Australian military forces organizationally and technologically with US forces, and a rapid and extensive expansion of an American military presence in Australia itself. This alliance pattern of asymmetrical cooperation, especially in the context of US policy towards China, raises the urgent question of what alternative policy an Australian government concerned to maintain an autonomous path towards securing both its genuine national interests and the global human interest should be following.
1 Originally titled “Lily pads and networks: the implications of Northern Australian integration with US strategic planning” for presentation at the symposium organised by The Northern Institute of Charles Darwin University on Defending Australia: the US Military Presence in Northern Australia, Parliament House, Darwin, 23 August 2013. My thanks to the Institute and its director, Professor Ruth Wallace, for the invitation to participate in the symposium, and to those participating in the subsequent discussions. I am grateful, as ever, to Mark Selden for his patient and constructive editing. I am also grateful to Malcolm Fraser for stimulating argument and discussion of many of the issues in this paper. Detailed documentation of certain sections of this talk is available in Richard Tanter, The Joint Facilities” revisited - Desmond Ball, democratic debate on security, and the human interest, Special Report, Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, 12 December 2012.
2 Captain David C. Chandler, Jr., “’Lily-Pad’ Basing Concept Put to the Test”, Army Logistician, PB 70005-2 Vol. 37, March-April 2005.
3 Lauren Ploch, Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa, Congressional Research Service, 22 July 2011, pp. 9-10.
4 “Tomgram: Nick Turse, AFRICOM's Gigantic ‘Small Footprint’ “, TomDisptach.com, 5 September 2013.
5 Nick Turse, “Empire of Bases 2.0. Does the Pentagon Really Have 1,180 Foreign Bases?” Tomgram: The Pentagon's Planet of Bases, TomDispatch.com, 9 January 2011.
6 Department of Defense, Base Structure Report FY 2013 Baseline.
7 Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004).
8 For details see the careful review for study conducted for the Pentagon by the RAND Corporation: Michael J. Lostumbo et al, Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces: An Assessment of Relative Costs and Strategic Benefits, Report Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, RAND Corporation, 2013.
9 Hilary Rodham Clinton, “ America's Pacific Century”, Foreign Policy, 11 October 2011.
10 For an elegant exploration of just how primitive these approaches are, see Steve Chan, China, the US, and the Power-Transition Theory, Routledge, 2009.
11 The current parties to the negotiations are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam.
12 See Ganeshan Wignaraja, “ Why the RCEP matters for Asia and the world”, East Asia Forum, 15 May 2013; and Demetri Sevastopulo, Shawn Donnan, and Ben Bland, “Obama's absence boosts China trade deal”, Financial Times, 15 October 2013.
13 Despite much commentary, there is remarkably little sustained and informed discussion of Australian strategic options. The most important recent reflection remains Hugh White's 2010 Quarterly Essay “Power Shift: Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing”, Quarterly Essay 39, September 2010. Prior to that, three key contributions still relevant today are the Review of Australia's Defence Capabilities (the 1986 Dibb report, reflecting earlier conceptual work by Dibb, Desmond Ball, J.O. Langtry, and Kim Beazley); Ball's own highly condensed argument in his “The Strategic Essence”, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2001; and David Martin's maverick but central 1984 contribution, Armed Neutrality for Australia, Dove Communications.
14 On the Vietnam case see Michael Sexton, War For the Asking: Australia's Vietnam Secrets, Penguin, 1981, and subsequent debate. This includes the official history by Peter Edwards, Crises and Commitments, Allen & Unwin, 1992; and a number of interventions by Gary Woodard, including his “Asian alternatives: Going to war in the 1960s”, Public lecture for the National Archives of Australia, presented in Canberra, 30 May 2003.
15 See Craig Whitlock, “ US, Australia plan expansion of military ties amid pivot to SE Asia”, Washington Post, 26 March 2012; and Brendan Nicholson, “US seeks deeper military ties”, The Australian, 28 March 2012.
16 Australia-United States Exchange of Letters Relating to Harold E. Holt Naval Communications Station, AUSMIN 2010, Department of Foreign of Affairs and Trade. For discussion of the phrasing see Richard Tanter “North by North West Cape: Eyes on China”, Nautilus Institute, Austral Policy Forum 10-02A, 14 December 2010.
17 For details see Richard Tanter, “After Obama - The New Joint Facilities”, Arena Magazine, May 2012; and Richard Tanter, The “Joint Facilities” revisited - Desmond Ball, democratic debate on security, and the human interest, Special Report, Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, 12 December 2012 (abridged earlier version appeared as “American bases in Australia revisited”, in Brendan Taylor, Nicholas Farrelly and Sheryn Lee (eds.) Insurgent Intellectual: Essays in honour of Professor Desmond Ball, (ISEAS, December 2012), found here.
18 Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations and General James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps, “The Future of Maritime Forces”, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 11 July 2013.
19 To take one example, from the Howard years, see the Ministerial Statement on the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap made by the then Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, on 20 September 2007.
20 “ New $927m satellite boosts defence network”, AAP, The Australian (8 August 2013]; and “The $927 million US satellite you funded launches off from Cape Canaveral in Florida”, AAP, Perth Now (8 August 2013).
21 Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt (North West Cape), Australian Defence Facilities Briefing Book, Nautilus Institute.
22 JP 3029 Integrated Capability Network Infrastructure, Phase 1 Space Surveillance, Defence Capability Plan 2012 (Public Version), Department of Defence, pp, 166-7; “Don't touch their junk: USAF's SSA tracking space debris”, Defense Industry Daily (updated 15 August 2013); USA Moves Ahead with Next-Generation “Space Fence” Tracking, Defense Industry Daily (updated 14 November 2012); and Basing of first U.S. Space Fence facility announced, U.S. Air Force, (25 September 2012).
23 Global Space Situational Awareness Sensors, Brian Weeden et al, Secure World Foundation, AMOS 2010, p. 8.
24 Space Surveillance Telescope (SST), Tactical Technology Office, DARPA.
25 U.S. to Locate Key Space Systems in Australia, Defense Aerospace.com, (US Department of Defense media release, 14 November 2012).
26 DARPA telescope headed to Australia to help track space debris, Nanowerk News (19 November 2012).
27 United States and Australia Advance Space Partnership, News Release, Department of Defense, No. 895-12 (14 November 2012); and “Australia-Based U.S. Radar To Watch China Launches”, Bradley Perrett, Aviation Week & Space Technology (25 March 2013).
28 David Uren, The Kingdom and the Quarry: China, Australia, Fear and Greed, (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2012), p.128: “Part of the defence thinking is that in the event of a conflict with the United States, China would attempt to destroy Pine Gap…”. See Richard Tanter, “Possibilities and effects of a nuclear missile attack on Pine Gap”, Australian Defence Facilities, Nautilus Institute, 30 October 2013. For further discussion see Richard Tanter, The Joint Facilities” revisited - Desmond Ball, democratic debate on security, and the human interest, Special Report, Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, 12 December 2012, pp. 41 ff.
29 The organizations involved are the Australian office of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights Law Centre in Melbourne. See Oliver Laughland, “Pine Gap's role in US drone strikes should be investigated - rights groups”, The Guardian (19 August 2013); and Joint Letter from Human Rights Watch and Human Rights Law Centre to Ben Emmerson, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 16 August 2013.
30 For example, see the reply by Senator John Faulkner, Minister of Defence to a question from Senator Scott Ludlam: “The activities at the Pine Gap facility take place with the full knowledge and concurrence of the Australian Government.” Defence: Pine Gap, Question on Notice 2495, The Senate, 23 February 2010, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates.
31 The Australian Navy in particular values regional ship-to-ship missile launch surveillance capacities through the Remote Ground Station for SBIRS and DSP satellites, directly through the ADF's own ground terminals at the northern edge of Pine Gap. Intelligence analysts who have left government have talked in general terms of the very large quantity and significant quality of intelligence Australia receives from being in the UKUSA Five Eyes club, much if not most of which Australia would not receive in the absence of the agreements to host Pine Gap in particular.
32 Oliver Laughland, “ Pine Gap's role in US drone strikes should be investigated - rights groups”, The Guardian, 19 August 2013.
33 Desmond Ball, Pine Gap: Australia and the US Geostationary Signals Intelligence Satellite Program, Sydney: Allen and Unwin Australia, 1988.
34 The technical basis for this argument is spelled out in the last sections of Richard Tanter, The Joint Facilities” revisited - Desmond Ball, democratic debate on security, and the human interest, Special Report, Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, 12 December 2012.
35 Richard Tanter, “A question of accountability as HMAS Sydney joins USN Carrier Strike Group”, Campaign for an Iraq War Inquiry, 20 May 2013.
36 C. Douglas Lummis,” It Would Make No Sense for Article 9 to Mean What it Says, Therefore It Doesn't. The Transformation of Japan's Constitution,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 39, No. 2, September 30, 2013.
37 See Why Did We Go to War in Iraq? A call for an Australian inquiry, Campaign for an Iraq War Inquiry, here.
38 Hugh White, The China Choice, (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2013).
39 For further argument see Richard Tanter, “Shared problems, shared interests: reframing Australia-Indonesia security relations”, in Jemma Purdey (editor), Knowing Indonesia: Intersections of Self, Discipline and Nation, (Monash University Press).
40 Text in Appendix A of Gary Brown, Frank Frost and Stephen Sherlock, “The Australian- Indonesian Security Agreement - Issues and Implications”, Parliamentary Library Research Paper 25 - 1995-96, Parliament of Australia.
41 Dr H Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, “ An Architecture for Durable Peace in the Asia-Pacific”, Shangri-La Dialogue 2012 Keynote Address, 1 June 2012.
42 Leon Panetta, “ The US Rebalance Towards the Asia-Pacific”, Shangri-La Dialogue 2012 First Plenary Session, 1 June 2012.
You have
Access
Open access