Australia’s National Defence Strategy
The risks and opportunities of its conventional deterrence by denial strategy
My new commentary our Australia’s national defence strategy has just been published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.
A new National Defence Strategy (NDS) was recently released by the Australian government. The document is aligned with the 2023 Defence Strategic Review and was released alongside a Defence Integrated Investment Program, which includes platform and weapons priorities.
One of the foundational ideas of the document is that Australia is adopting what is described as a “strategy of denial” as a key pillar of defense planning. Placing deterrence at the center of defense strategy is hardly a new concept, but it is one that has not been well developed in Australia’s defense thinking. In the Australian context, deterrence is a term that has generally lacked the specificity and investment that is characteristic of other powers such as the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
Deterrence, or the phrase “to deter,” is also frequently used in Australia’s contemporary strategic documents, especially in the no-longer-produced defense white papers. The 1994 defense white papernoted that “defence capabilities will be developed so we can continue to be able to deter or defeat any credible armed attack.” The 2009 defense white paper described how “the principal task for the ADF is to deter and defeat armed attacks on Australia.” In 2016, this strategic task was described as the need to “deter, deny and defeat attacks on or threats to Australia and its national interests.”
The 2020 Defence Strategic Update noted that “it is the Government’s intent that Australia take greater responsibility for . . . [its] own security. It is therefore essential that the ADF grow its self-reliant ability to deliver deterrent effects.” But as Stephan Fruhling and Andrew O’Neil write in Alliances, Nuclear Weapons and Escalation, “in Australia’s case, deterrence has emerged as a prominent concept in the country’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update. Yet, the underlying concept remains highly abstract and focused on capabilities rather than the political credibility or circumstances underlying how these capabilities would be used.”
The new National Defence Strategy goes some way in addressing this issue. However, the lack of a theory of conventional deterrence for middle powers reflects an intellectual gap in contemporary deterrence and strategic studies. It is a topic that would benefit from additional investment.
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