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.