OPINION:
There’s a little good news from Down Under, and it comes when the West needs good news. Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia is moving up by three years the work on building a fleet of advanced frigates, at a cost of nearly $12 billion, expressed in American currency. It’s part of his plan to raise defense spending to 2 percent of Australia’s gross domestic product, up from 1.8 percent. This adds $2.6 billion a year to the current $23 billion military budget.
It’s reassuring that the United States has a solid ally, one with a clear understanding of the stakes, to oppose Chinese aggression in the region. The Australian initiative will produce a modernized fleet of 40 surface war ships and submarines to answer China’s thrust into the South China Sea. With threat to its southern shores a thousand miles away, China is scraping up and converting coral reefs and shoals to dry land in Southeast Asia, transforming them into military bases athwart one of the world’s most important sea lanes.
Australia is the canary in the Asian coal mine. Its economy is feeling the effects of China’s slowing economy and the collapse of commodity prices. If China descends further into crisis, a strong possibility, the effects will eventually be felt by all of China’s trading partners, and at a time when Australia’s allies — Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States — are cutting defense spending.
The growing integration of American, Australian and Japanese strategies in East Asia now will be accomplished by the American Navy, which once bore almost alone the responsibility for keeping the vast sea lanes of the region free for all. President Obama has shrunk the Navy to its smallest size since the end of World War I, and with it, responsibility.
Australia is not alone looking to its own defense in the region. The ambitions of the Chinese for strategic advantage is sending ripples throughout Southeast Asia, where the smaller nations have lived for years with the aphorism that “when China spits, Asia swims.” China is the first trading partner for many of these swimming nations.
Australia is further expanding its strategic and tactical relationships with the United States. Moving across a longtime red line in its own history, the Australian government has enabled the opening of a base for the U.S. Marines in Darwin, on the north coast and the gateway to Southeast Asia. The base will eventually be home to the largest fleet of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters in all of Asia, Boeing P-8A Poseidon submarine-hunting planes and a dozen Growler electronic warfare jamming aircraft. These are the first to be based outside the United States.
The Australian initiatives are taken in recognition of the Aussies’ exposed position as a wealthy society, close by Asian neighbors who aren’t as wealthy, developing further prosperity at a rapid rate. The nation is nevertheless beset with severe internal problems and old rivalries. The Obama Administration can be grateful that any ally is picking up some of the slack left by the shrinking of the Navy, but it’s a reminder to the wary that Mr. Obama’s military cutbacks are reducing if not eliminating American resources and capabilities in a world that is more dangerous than ever.
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