It should be clear by now that people who work in financial markets have trouble predicting the future. But this has come as a tremendous shock to those who claimed to know the precise risks involved in trading immensely complicated financial products in a rapidly changing world. Predicting how human events will unfold is often much harder than making projections about what will happen to inanimate objects in the physical sciences.
But has not stopped the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from chancing his arm about the defence outlook as far away as 2050. In a speech in Townsville in September, Rudd predicted what would happen in Asia by 2050, and even specified the sort of military equipment Australia would need (more ships and submarines). Some of his predictions are already looking shaky.
Looking ahead to 2050, Rudd said in Townsville that the US “will remain strategically dominant given the vast array of military capabilities available to future administrations.” Maybe. But it is worth pondering what strategic dominance means when the US, its NATO allies, and Australia, can’t defeat Taliban rebels in Afghanistan. Although the Taliban lacks widespread popularity, a British commander Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith recently said victory was not possible, so a negotiated settlement should be sought. Provided the Taliban agreed to distance itself from international terrorism, such a settlement would have few adverse consequences for the rest of the world.
With the US confronted by a worsening financial crisis, there is no way it could pour 100,000 troops into Afghanistan to try to achieve victory. On the contrary, it is highly likely that the US will have to cut its military spending — almost half the world's total — to control the huge blow-out in its budget deficit caused by the bail-out of Wall St and the impending recession.
A big cut would still leave it with far more military power than any other country. But this is of limited utility against countries such as China which fund a large slice of the US deficit. China could pull the rug from under the American economy if tensions rose. Yet Rudd has privately told he journalists that he sees China as potential adversary, while still arguing that the US will remain strategically dominant for the next 40 years.
The British political philosopher John Gray does not see the US as remaining dominant. Gray wrote recently that the current financial crisis underscores a “historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over”.
No one knows for sure what will happen. Which is why Rudd may turn out to be wrong in stating bluntly in his Townsville speech, “China will be the most dynamic major economy in the first half of this century — followed by India”. There are signs that this dynamism is more fragile than often assumed. We should hope not. Continued Chinese and Indian success will have the great advantage of lifting millions of people out of poverty. Their improved purchasing power will also add to Australia’s prosperity.
In the 1950s and 60s, many Australian politicians saw terrible poverty in Asia as leading to political instability that would pose a threat to Australia. Now, some defence analysts conclude that rising prosperity in Asia is a threat because it allows countries to buy more weapons. In Townsville, Rudd noted that it was not unusual for countries to update their military forces as they become more affluent. But he was happy for other comments to be interpreted as meaning an arms build-up in Asia creates a threat to Australia.
In extreme circumstances, it might. This only means that Australia’s defence planning should focus squarely what’s needed to keep the country secure, regardless of the relative strength of countries such as the US and China 40 years from now. Provided we don’t get diverted by grandiose shopping lists for what Australia needs to participate in an amphibious assault upon the Chinese mainland, some basic requirements can be discerned no matter who the enemy might be.
It would be prudent to assume that Australia will still need to deter potential aggressors in future decades by relying on air power capable of attacking targets well beyond our shores. How much longer manned fighter jets are needed is different matter. Perhaps pilotless planes, or cruise missiles fired from land and submarines, will increasingly be able to do the job. Maybe electronic warfare measures will be able to neutralise key command and control centers without using high explosive warheads. If anti-shipping missiles continue to improve, however, there would seem little point in buying more air warfare destroyers — as Rudd seems determined to do.
The Howard Government had been planning to buy “up to” 100 Joint Strike Fighters from the US. But that was before it bought 24 Super Hornets to complement the RAAF’s 71 “classic” Hornet fighters. Even if pressures on the US budget mean the production run for the JSF is cut — and unit costs rise sharply — there is no need to rush a decision on whether to buy any of these planes which are still to meet their original performance criteria. We could safely wait until much closer to 2020 before deciding on the best mix of air power options to met our needs.
Regardless of how the emerging technological options are assessed, not a lot is gained by making confident predictions about how major geopolitical changes will pan out — or assuming that only dire consequences will follow if an Asian giant can afford to spend more than us on defence.
Fortunately, Australia remains an extremely hard country to attack and subdue. For wealthy Asian giants it will remain much cheaper to buy Australian commodities than to acquire them by conquest. If a ragtag bunch of Taliban can deny victory to NATO, a much bigger number of prosperous, patriotic Australians should prevail against any future enemy.
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