Over the past couple of years sophisticated and informed critiques of Australia’s security policies have become increasingly common. Unfortunately, however, there seems to be an inverse relationship between persuasive analysis and its impact on policymakers and their advisors in the Canberra bubble.
While Albert Palazzo’s significant new contribution to this literature, The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security, has more chance of being taken seriously, or at least read, given his status as a former insider, it’s unlikely to change things. As Palazzo mournfully notes, “genuine innovation and new ideas fail to gain traction” among Australia’s strategic elites.
The chances of having a serious, open-ended debate about what it means to be secure in Australia in the twenty-first century are still remote, despite former prime ministers and senior members of the military lining up to tell their current counterparts where they’re going wrong. In some ways, Palazzo ought to be at the front of the queue; in others, he is a reminder of how difficult it is to escape from the strategic orthodoxy in which he was once immersed.
The Big Fix makes two compelling arguments that really ought to be required reading and the basis for policymaking in this country and beyond. First, and most importantly in my view, he argues that “climate change and the threat it represents to Australia’s interests, if not its very survival as a nation, is underappreciated by those responsible for national security.”
Given that climate change is already wreaking havoc in this country, taking lives and decimating wildlife, not to mention damaging the economy, one might think that policymakers would consider the threat it represents now and into the future to be the government’s primary concern and responsibility. One might be disappointed. And yet, as Palazzo points out, “unless the world’s major greenhouse gas economies, of which Australia is one, rapidly reduce emissions, the future world looks like a more violent one.”
Put differently, if Palazzo is right about a future characterised by an increasingly brutal struggle for survival in the absence of meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the national and international level — as I’m sure he is — then environmental crises are unambiguously the greatest, most likely and most immediate security threat we face.
Given the fires, floods and heatwaves afflicting the world with increasing frequency, the direction of travel ought to be apparent to even the dimmest and most compromised of political leaders. After all, Australia can even manage to be under water and on fire at the same time. But in this regard, as in many others, we seem to be taking the lead from the United States and its climate-denying, fossil-fuel-loving president.
It’s easy to despair about the intellectual capacity, morality and honesty of Donald Trump, who seems to see the presidency as a literally heaven-sent business opportunity for himself and his family. The fact that a convicted felon and former real estate salesman — who “scares the shit out of” Anthony Albanese — managed to become the most powerful man in the world ought to have at least encouraged a debate about policy options in Canberra. Independence of thought or action is noteworthy for its absence, however.
The consequence of Australia’s political class being unable to imagine any security policy other than relying on the US, Palazzo argues, is that “the nation [is] locked into dependency with its sovereignty compromised and our future in the hands of a transactional US leadership that lacks a moral code and a sense of loyalty.” And yet, there are alternatives, even if they remain unthinkable for policymakers in this country.
Despite Palazzo clearly recognising the critical importance of climate change as a threat to national and global security — he wrote a book on that, too — the bulk of The Big Fix is taken up with making the case for an alternative to Austraia’s current defence policy, which he considers to be “broken.” It’s an approach that has its strengths and weaknesses.
On the plus side, Palazzo provides an excoriating critique of current policy and the continuing reliance on the US. The increasingly controversial and unlikely AUKUS project understandably features prominently, especially the role of the “leaders of both parties [who] displayed a lack of critical judgement and national loyalty in their rush to profess their allegiance and their enthusiasm.”
A number of other commentators have drawn attention to the problematic, politically opportunistic origins of AUKUS, growing concerns about its feasibility, and doubts about whether the submarines at its centre will ever be delivered. Palazzo is in no doubt about its possible worth: “AUKUS has made Australia less safe instead of more so… [it] is simply a continuation of the policy of exchanging dependency for the promise of security.”
But rather than simply pointing out that AUKUS confirms Australia’s “sub-imperial” status by making itself “hostage to US policy,” Palazzo offers a different model for national security, one that “puts Australian security first and does so with a lower degree of risk and cost than is presently the case.” It is quite a claim and one that ought to be taken seriously by the nation’s defence planners.
Much of the subsequent discussion revolves around the appropriate roles for the army, navy and air force in an era of great power competition and rapid, technologically driven advances in the art of war. The respective services are unlikely to be thrilled, as many of the suggestions involve less prominent and less glamorous roles for military personnel and leaders.
Palazzo argues that Australia needs its own “grand strategy” based on what he describes as a policy of “Strategic Defensive” (with capitals), which is predicated on being a status quo power without hostile designs and dedicated to exploiting the advantages that accrue to defenders in any foreseeable conflict.
Gearing up to fight China is clearly not something Australia can do on its own, but if it weren’t for the alliance and the need to demonstrate loyalty, we wouldn’t need to. A more “sensible” and “realistic” policy could emerge from an independent grand strategy in which Australia avoids being drawn into the growing rivalry between China and the US — a potential conflict in which Australia could make no material difference, of course.
Welcome as such a bracing corrective to the unquestioned ruling orthodoxy may be, the book doesn’t really explain why such myopia and group think prevails, or how the proposed changes are likely to address the key problem: climate change. On the contrary, Palazzo’s focus on the nation state as the foundation of our security reproduces much of the conventional wisdom, albeit with the addition of a sophisticated cost–benefit analysis and a more accurate estimation of Australia’s unique geographical and historical circumstances.
Any analysis of security that recognises the looming environmental catastrophe is a welcome step forward. If preparing for environmental anarchy and defending our arbitrarily defined bit of the planet is the best we can hope for, however, it’s not a great improvement. Surely the point of a persuasive critique of the conventional wisdom ought to be pointing toward an alternative that might be sustainable and preserve our very privileged existence in Australia?
In this context, nation states are as much a part of the problem as they are any putative solution. True, states have an unparalleled capacity to enact policy for better or worse, but any meaningful effort to halt global warming and stabilise the environment would seem to necessitate unprecedented and frankly unimaginable levels of cooperation between the great powers and their followers.
Without a more imaginative, expansive and inclusive conception of the “national interest” this is simply not going to happen. The Albanese government’s decision to allow Woodside to detonate a “carbon bomb” in the Northwest Shelf offers a timely reminder of what happens when states only consider their own welfare, even when that is partly determined by foreign multinationals.
For all his strategic wisdom and insights Palazzo is a product of a security culture that accepts certain ideas as incontrovertible. Consequently, “we” need subs, but not expensive ones. We need armed forces, but they should be more appropriately equipped. Maybe. But New Zealand has exited from the ANZUS alliance and suffered no diminution in its security, despite spending little on defending itself. Costa Rica doesn’t even have an army, and Switzerland demonstrates that neutrality doesn’t need to be costly.
Alternatives are possible, but as Palazzo rightly points out, Australia’s political elites suffer from a lack of imagination and confidence. This country has the potential to model good international behaviour by cooperating with other countries for the common good. Yes, that would include China, which is currently providing the world with affordable solar power.
That’s not nothing and compares favourably with the current approach in the US where fossil fuel companies are being given carte blanche. China may be a bully and suffer from delusions of past and future grandeur, but at least Xi Jinping talks about creating an “ecological civilisation.” Perhaps he could be persuaded to spend even more on saving the world rather than on preparing to destroy it.
As Palazzo points out, “deterrence theory may not be the panacea its enthusiasts claim.” Indeed: it only needs to fail once. Given Australia can do absolutely nothing to deter China, why even bother trying? Sure, let’s have a suitably modest and cheap defensive capability to pacify the “realists,” but we should also remember that’s not the main game anymore. Without a liveable global environment nothing else really matters. If that’s not a security issue, it’s hard to know what is. •
The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security
By Albert Palazzo | Melbourne University Press | $29.99 | 184 pages
