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Dr Rod Lyon
Regional reactions to the Australian Defence White Paper 2009: an introduction
In early May, the Prime Minister released Australia’s 2009 Defence White Paper in Sydney, on board HMAS Stuart at Garden Island. The paper, Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030, presents a detailed statement of Australian strategic policy in a complex international and regional security environment. While the White Paper has attracted its fair share of commentary from within Australia, ASPI wanted to solicit a range of opinions from regional commentators, and so provide some insights into how the White Paper is being viewed around the region. To this end, we contracted a small collection of prominent strategic analysts from around the region to send us their views. |
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Rizal Sukma
Australian Defence White Paper 2009: An Indonesian perspective
Indonesia’s reaction to the release of Australia’s latest Defence White Paper (DWP 2009), Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century: Force 2030, is a curious one. Unlike previous releases, the document did not attract much discussion among Indonesian officials, defence analysts or Australia watchers. Media reports on the document have also been sparse, focusing primarily on the event when the document was officially released, rather than on the document itself. The only official statement came from Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono who confirmed that Indonesia is not worried about Australia’s plan to boost its defence capability. He even maintained that the plan is ‘natural’ and ‘will not threaten regional stability.’ In the absence of public reactions from others in Indonesia, Minister Sudarsono’s views suggest, overall, a positive reaction to Australia’s DWP 2009. |
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Teruhiko Fukushima
The 2009 Defence White Paper’s messages for Japan
As a Tokyo-based ‘Australia watcher’, I was a bit surprised that the weight given to Japan in the 2009 Defence White Paper (DWP) was larger than I expected. Paragraph 4.21, for example, raises a concern that without the reliance on the US alliance, Japan’s ‘strategic outlook would be dramatically different, and it would be compelled to re-examine its strategic posture and capabilities’. On the other hand, paragraph 11.13 hails Japan as ‘a critical strategic partner in our region’, and advocates a more active contribution by Japan both to ‘the security and reconstruction of fragile states’ and to humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and peacekeeping operations. |
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Dr Zhang Chun
Rebuilding middle power leadership for Australia
The 2009 Australian Defence White Paper has raised fundamental questions about what role Australia will play in the future and how to balance its relationship with China, the potential great power, and the USA, the current great power. These questions are common for most of the middle powers that once played a leading role in the Cold War period. Within the context of a transformational international system, middle powers are finding new opportunities to rebuild their leadership roles. As far as Australia is concerned, the White Paper is the most recent effort. |
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Commodore Uday Bhaskar
Australia’s Defence White Paper 2009: One view from India
Australia’s Defence White Paper 2009 (DWP 09) is a comprehensive document and this initiative is to be commended—more so for it seeks to grapple with a very complex subject—national defence. The document is courageous—for in the face of many imponderables and uncertainties about threats to Australian national security, it goes to the extent of outlining a force level for 2030 with a clear objective: ‘capable of meeting every contingency the ADF may be required to meet in the coming two decades.’ |
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See Seng Tan
Australia’s new Defence White Paper: Not quite grand strategy, but part of one?
In a key sense, the ongoing debate over Australia’s latest Defence White Paper, launched in May 2009, can be understood as the latest edition of a longstanding deliberation about ‘Australia’s project in the world’, to use defence analyst Alan Dupont’s phrase. Have the trustees of Australia’s national defence devised a coherent security strategy—one that befits the country’s self-image as an influential middle power—or are they muddling through as they have hitherto done? The surfeit of intense reactions to the White Paper suggests that few if any among the company of Australian security intellectuals seem convinced that the document amounts to a national strategy, let alone a grand one. |
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Thomas-Durrell Young
2009 Defence White Paper: Something for everyone?
The 2009 Defence White Paper is an impressive document, both in terms of its length, and in terms of the Rudd government’s almost tortuous intellectual struggle to find that illusive objective that has long obsessed Australian defence planners. That is, a pragmatic balance between a long-standing Australian desire (some might describe it an ‘obsession’) to create an ADF capable of defending Australian sovereignty, whilst also being capable of supporting the country’s desire to be a responsible and responsive member of the Western world. Given obvious finite resources and the ADF’s immense geographical area of responsibility, it should not be surprising that there has raged an intellectual battle between those who would have the ADF’s orientation and capabilities limited by geography (‘defence of Australia’: DoA), and those who would argue that priority should be given to structuring the ADF to undertake those missions for which the ADF has been historically employed (expeditionary).
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Lance Beath
Regional reactions to the 2009 Australian Defence White Paper: New Zealand reactions
The New Zealand reaction to the publication of the 2009 Australian Defence White Paper in early May was predictably low key. NZ Defence Minister, the Hon. Wayne Mapp, interviewed on television, confined himself to the observation that New Zealand, in conducting its own Defence Review and White Paper exercise this year, would probably take a more restrained view of its future defence capability requirements than had Australia. He did not think that New Zealand would be likely to want to significantly increase the size of its current investments in Defence (currently running at around 1% of GDP or a little less). |
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