The cracks in Australia’s defence policy: For us, deterrence isn’t about waving a big stick

This is part of an ongoing series interrogating the flaws in the foundation of Australia’s defence policy. Albert Palazzo served as director of war studies for the Australian Army for 15 years and has written widely on warfare in the modern age.

The Defence Department makes a lot of noise about the role of deterrence in ensuring Australia’s security in its 2026 National Defence Strategy, calling for the nation to be able to “deter a potential adversary from taking actions that would be inimical to Australia’s interests”. The country that Australia aims to deter is, of course, China.

For deterrence to be successful, a country must possess sufficient military force for an aggressor to question the cost of war. Deterrence exists in the realm of the psychological: states must believe the message their potential adversaries are transmitting, and thereby be discouraged from violence.

But the would-be deterrer must also correctly assess the totality of its own strength, namely the military power it can generate, but also the willingness of its wider society to endure the horrors of war. Both of these assessments must be made honestly, since posturing and bravado are false foundations for deterrence.

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The leaders of the Australian Defence Force and the nation’s political class know that Australia does not have sufficient power to deter a country as strong as China. It is delusional to believe otherwise. Viewing the situation from Beijing, it is hard to see how the Chinese could be intimidated by Australia’s minuscule military force.

Australia squares this imbalance the way it has always done: by relying on the protection of a great power. Our deterrence strategy is really a subset of the willingness of the US to deter China. Australia’s citizens must accept that the ADF is not intended to defend Australia. The purpose of Australia’s military is to augment that of the US by offering forces that can be subsumed into US-commanded task forces.

The question of Australia’s deterrence vis-à-vis China, therefore, is a function of the desire and capability of the US to deter China. The question for Australians to consider is the extent to which China responds. If Chinese leadership does not believe in America’s power to deter, then Australia’s entire defence edifice is little more than a house of cards. Moreover, the capacity of the US to deter China is not as great as it is claimed to be.

America possesses the world’s most powerful military, yet it appears to lack one very important trait: wisdom. As the recent fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran show, the US can start wars, but it struggles to win them, even against comparatively minor opponents. China is of a different order of magnitude than these military minnows, and the US would need to tread carefully against an opponent of such stature.

The US lacks another critical element in a prospective war with China: a pathway to victory. Even if America were to gain control of the East China Sea or turn back a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, for example, the effect on Beijing is unlikely to be especially severe. The Chinese people, secure on their vast landmass, would continue to use missiles to attack American ships, knowing full well that the US could never apply the existential pressure of a land invasion. Without the US being able to directly threaten China’s home soil, the war would continue until the Americans got tired and gave up — the likely outcome of its present war with Iran.

In addition, the Chinese have more at stake than the Americans. China is an Asian power; the US is not. While Beijing would be fighting to preserve vital interests, Washington’s incentives would always be of a lesser magnitude. Having experienced the Taiping Rebellion, the Japanese invasion in World War II and the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese people know how to endure. It is doubtful that ordinary Americans would be willing to sacrifice everything to save Taiwan, or to protect Australia.

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Finally, there is the nuclear question. To deter China, the US must be willing to fight a full nuclear war. It is a truism that nuclear powers cannot afford to go to war, because to do so would risk the entire human project. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which the US would risk a nuclear exchange in order to protect Australia.

So if deterrence is not a viable prospect against China, why is it one of the foundations of Australia’s defence policy?

The answer is that, for our political leaders, it is a way to maintain Australia’s subservience to the US without having to admit that this is what they are doing. Claiming deterrence as a priority is, in effect, a ruse perpetrated on the Australian people for the political class to stay within their comfort zone of dependence on a foreign power.

To do otherwise would require our leaders to rise to the challenge of actually defending Australia. As with addressing climate change, housing shortages, declining educational standards and income inequality, that falls into the too-hard basket.