http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/op ... 6000381520
THE AUSTRALIAN
Time to beat China at its own game
* Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor
* From: The Australian
* February 05, 2011
THERE is an almost mathematical elegance to Ross Babbage's vitally important new paper, Australia's Strategic Edge in 2030, to be published on Monday.
The veteran defence analyst wants Australia to do to China what China is doing to the US. China recognises that it could never defeat the US in a full-on, force-on-force conflict. But it can make it incredibly costly and dangerous for the US to operate its military in the western Pacific.
China achieves this by adopting "asymmetric" warfare. Asymmetry simply means big versus small. Asymmetric warfare is a way for the weaker party in a conflict to inflict crippling costs on the strong party.
China is doing this to the US through cyber warfare, space warfare, submarines and missiles. The Chinese strategy is called anti-access area denial. It is aimed at destroying US computer-based capabilities through cyber warfare. It is aimed at destroying US satellites through space warfare.
As Babbage comments, the Western way of war depends on vast flows of digital information from the battle space via satellite so that precision weapons can be targeted at the enemy. If in a conflict China can destroy US satellites, it can destroy a good measure of US technical superiority and dominance.
Then there are missiles. China can use missiles, and submarines, to threaten US aircraft carrier battle groups that deploy in Asia.
Missiles have another particular application for China. Much of the US military position in Asia rests on the giant US bases in Okinawa and Guam.
If Beijing decided to strike the US pre-emptively, it could rain down missiles on these two islands, destroying many of the US's regional military assets.
All up, Babbage believes that the massive build-up of China's People's Liberation Army has transformed the strategic environment in Asia so that US military superiority in the region, and Australia's own security, are profoundly threatened.
Here is where the elegance in Babbage's thinking comes in. There are certain, vitally important, things we can do to help sustain the US position in Asia. One of the most important is to host more US forces here. This makes the US presence in Asia more dispersed, harder to hit, more survivable.
But the other thing we can do, according to Babbage, is to emulate the Chinese themselves. We cannot replicate the full range of Chinese military capabilities. We have neither the size nor the money to do so.
Instead, we should develop our own asymmetric approach to China, such that Australia could inflict massive cost and damage on China in the event of a conflict.
It is important to emphasise that Babbage is not advocating confrontation with China. He does not believe conflict between the US and China is either imminent or even likely. He favours the strongest positive engagement with China, and also with its neighbours.
But Beijing has built all these new military assets in order to give it the ability to strike and hurt the US, and perhaps cripple the US military in Asia, if it wants to.
In doing all this, Beijing has transformed the strategic environment. It can hardly object if other nations hedge against this possibility by developing their own capabilities.
In order to maximise our asymmetric position against China, Babbage proposes significant changes to our force structure.
He wants a massive investment in cyber warfare capabilities, in order to protect our own assets and if necessary attack Chinese systems. While the detail of this would be kept secret, the broad scope of the program would be known, and would give any potential adversary pause.
Babbage would like us to acquire a fleet of 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines from the US. This would have countless advantages for Australia. We wouldn't have all the financial and technical risk of developing our own orphan class of subs, as we did with the Collins class subs. Being well-established US kit, the maintenance of the nuclear subs would be straightforward.
Top-of-the-line US nuclear subs are the queens of the species. They run deeper, faster and quieter than conventional subs. They're hard to hit, and deadly. They also offer this particular advantage. They would be a massive force multiplier to the US position in the region. Indeed, Babbage thinks they would be a game-changer. And we would supplement them with smaller, unmanned submarine capabilities.
But if for some reason we ever did need to mount a serious operation on our own, without active US involvement, the nuclear sub fleet gives us an awesome capability of our own. They work for us with the Americans, or without.
And because they are an established part of an existing US capability, we would have a much greater chance of keeping nine or so of them in the water at any one time. This is in great contrast to the Collins subs, where we have often struggled to have one or two boats in the water out of a notional six.
In extremis, a fleet of 12 nuclear subs could do terrible damage to the Chinese navy, or to Chinese shipping more generally. It hardly needs be said that Babbage, like all civilised human beings, wants profoundly to avoid any conflict with China. The existence of an Australian fleet of nuclear submarines would help the Chinese avoid tragic miscalculation.
Another asymmetric capability Babbage would acquire is missiles; ballistic and cruise missiles that could be fired from Australian "arsenal ships".
The Chinese have made a massive investment in missiles as a quintessential asymmetric weapon. Missiles with conventional warheads offer many benefits to militaries. They allow very rapid, very powerful strikes on almost any part of any battlefield.
They can have a strategic effect when used in large numbers, as say the Chinese taking out US bases in Guam or Okinawa. But even in lesser numbers, they can have strategic effects - for example in degrading command and control structures, or even targeting a national leadership.
Above all, any potential adversary never knows in advance what you will do with your missiles.
Even Babbage's proposal for Australia to host more US bases has an asymmetric element. The US alliance is the most important element of Australia's security. If the US position in Asia weakens, however, there might be some doubt about US participation in a dispute involving Australia. The increased presence of US facilities here would make any potential adversary think it more likely that fighting Australia would also engage the Americans.
Put this, and much else that Babbage suggests, all together and Australia has a serious capacity, should circumstances ever require, to inflict substantial damage on China. This in itself would make conflict much less likely ever to occur.
While Babbage's recommendations for Australia's force structure are likely to gain most attention, it is actually his crisp, detailed and brilliant exposition of what the Chinese have done to the strategic environment that really deserves most consideration.
In fact, there is no single document on China that I would more strongly recommend all Australians to read than Babbage's paper.
His bottom-line strategic assessment is that the "challenge posed by the rising PLA is arguably one of the most serious that has confronted Australia's national security planners since the second world war".
Babbage does not consider at length the motivation of China's leaders for building such a vast military force. Chinese motivation is impossible to calculate definitively. And in any event motivation can change over time. For defence planners, capability is more important than motivation. It is also worth noting that seldom in history has a military the size of China's been built and not used.
But although it is widely known that China has expanded its military, few are aware of the staggering scale of this transformation.
Babbage reels off some of the changes the Chinese have wrought: "The assumption that the United States and its close allies will continue to enjoy an operational sanctuary in space is in serious doubt. The PLA is actively engaged in programs to degrade or destroy the US command, control and communications, the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and the navigational systems that are mostly space-based and critical for US and Australian military operations."
Or: "The assumption that US operational bases in Guam, Japan and elsewhere will enjoy high levels of security is crumbling. This is primarily because the PLA is fielding ballistic and cruise missiles . . . designed to strike all these locations with precision."
Or: "US aircraft carrier strike groups and other surface vessels are becoming increasingly vulnerable up to 1200 nautical miles from China's coast."
A couple of other facts are worth noting. Babbage doesn't make much of it but China is on course to double or triple its nuclear weapons arsenal by 2030. Why is it, alone among the nuclear powers, doing this?
Already, Australia is in direct range of many Chinese weapons, so the PLA's expansion directly affects the defence of continental Australia.
While Babbage's report is very sobering, it is hardly as if the Americans are asleep while all this Chinese military activity is going on.
The Americans are developing their own air-sea battle plan that would seek to wipe out many of China's capabilities at the start of a conflict.
One of the areas Beijing is most active in is cyber warfare, with reports of tens of thousands of Chinese cyber infiltration attacks every day.
It is impossible to know how the cyber element of a conflict would play out. But it would be important. It could, as Babbage suggests, be as important as the enigma code-breaking efforts were in World War II.
Babbage has written one of the most important, deeply considered and logically compelling strategic documents ever seen in Australia.
It should be the starting point of a broad national debate.
NOTE: Ross Babbage's paper on Australia's Strategic Edge in 2030 is a priced publication -- details available at
http://www.kokodafoundation.org/Latest- ... bmi=516733
However, I think that is being a wee bit pessimistic. Firstly India is still a democracy, and there is no reason to give up hope on future govts. Secondly even a WKK level govt like the current ones may respond different if US is replaced by China.
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