Asia a key trading partner to Australia

Asia a key trading partner to Australia

Australia is looking at Asia as a potentially valuable trading partner, but also sees possible threats to its security there. Kunda Dixit of Inter Press Service reports.

CANBERRA (IPS): At the same time that Australia is trying to hitch itself on to the galloping economies of its Asian neighbors to the north, it is also preparing to better defend itself against them.

The end of the Cold War has left the U.S. security umbrella over the Western Pacific somewhat in tatters, and the regions's region's affluent dragon economies are bristling with newly- acquired weapons systems.

Australians have been brought up reading history of the near- invasion by the Japanese during the Pacific War, and many think the country should be better prepared.

In early December, Canberra unveiled its first post-Cold War military blueprint with a 15-year plan to expand and modernize the country's military machine.

The Defense White Paper scans the strategic military situation into the next century, and takes the view that although rapid economic growth has brought stability to East Asia future competition for scarce resources could undermine it.

Australian officials are worried that the country's security environment could be seriously threatened after the year 2000, and the country to watch will be China.

"The main question is what will happen to China in the next two decades: Will it be a peaceful, trading nation or will its hunger for resources make it expansionist?" asks a senior official here.

In a statement to parliament here, Defense Minister Robert Ray said Asia's present period of peace may not last, and recognized China's role as the region's main economic and military power in the next century.

"As the constraints imposed by the Cold War are lifted and the economic and technical means to acquire military power become more widespread, so the use of that power to attain national objectives and international influence may grow," said the White Paper.

The need to guard strategic sea lanes in the Pacific and Indian Ocean region could see the interests of Japan, China and India overlap. Two years after U.S. troops withdrew from their two big bases in the Philippines, there is competition to fill the vacuum.

The United States has tried to reassert itself as the military top dog in the region, but its recent failure to get Asian nations even to allow military supply ships to anchor offshore has proved Washington's wish is no longer the region's command.

The Australians realize that the next time they are threatened by a regional power as they were 50 years ago, the United States and Britain may not rush to their aid -- therefore the emphasis in the White Paper on self-reliance and regional defense cooperation.

"Australia's security is not so vital to other nations that we can assume others would commit substantial forces to our defense," the report warns bluntly, but predicts it will be 10 years before any regional country would have the ability to launch an attack on Australia.

It hints where a future threat to Australia's security may come from: the countries with which the report wants defense cooperation and dialog -- Japan, China and India.

But the report cites immediate northern neighbor Indonesia as Australia's most important partner: "Our defense relationship with Indonesia is our most important in the region and a key element in Australia's approach to regional defense engagement."

Australia is about twice the size of India but has only 18 million people. Indonesia is the world's fourth largest country with 180 million people, and its officials have often voiced misgivings about Australian military build-up.

The Defense White Paper recommends that Australia should keep on spending two percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense till the end of the century.

But it was immediately attacked by the opposition for being unclear about how to fund the modernization. "The document is rich in rhetoric but lacks substance," the opposition spokesman on defense, Jocelyn Newman, said.

Some defense analysts here also see a fundamental flaw in the report: it presumes that the end of the Cold War has transformed Australia's strategic environment.

"In fact, the Cold War was never as important in Asia as it was in Europe," says The Australian newspaper's Greg Sheridan. "And any facile assumption that the United States will automatically become less relevant to Asian security is probably wrong."

Other defense hawks say the new reality of East Asian means that Australia's military should not only be preoccupied with defending the country's shores but also have the ability to hit targets in Asia if need be.

They also want defense expenditure raised from two percent of GDP to 2.6-3.0 percent, and argue that Australia must set its economy in order in able to afford a better fighting machine.

The White Paper itself has given the green light for a US$25 billion upgrade of the Australian Defense Force (ADF). The money will buy a fifth infantry battalion, replace existing Leopard tanks, buy 12 new C-130 Hercules transports, upgrade the F/A-18 fighters and P3C maritime patrol aircraft and buy an airborne early-warning plane.

Last year, Australia bought 19 surplus F-111 swing-wing bombers from the United States Air Force, which is phasing them out. Australia now has 40 of the aircraft.

The Australians saved a lot of money, and said the bombers were part of a new strategy to give Australia an offensive capability as a deterrence to would-be aggressors. But announcement of the deal made its Asian neighbors nervous. The F- 111 has a range of 5,000 km, and with mid-air refueling can fly from Darwin to Hong Kong and back.