One of the most intriguing lines in the Old Testament is the apparently random resolution, ‘We shall ride horses no more’. In fact, it is not random but spoke to a situation not unlike that now facing Australia. It renounced the policy of the Kingdoms of Israel to find security by forging alliances with Assyria, known for its cavalry. Prophets said they should have instead trusted in God. Whether by cause or coincidence, both kingdoms eventually lost their independence.
The line speaks to the present conversation in Australia about how to respond to the growing uncertainty about the reliability of its alliance with the United States. When the white knight whom you trust to ride to your rescue goes rogue, you naturally ask whether there is anyone on whom you can rely? This is a question about security.
In Australia, the question takes the form of asking whether Australia should seek to become militarily self-reliant. This question is not new. For many years, military strategists have argued that we should increase military expenditure to ensure our security. Over time, the concern for security fuelled the representation of China as a hostile power, the desire to build a nuclear industry with a view to develop nuclear weapons, and the anxiety to provide a reason for the United States to come to our rescue if needed.
The urgent need for ensuring our security has been pressed by former politicians with close links to the armaments industry, and by corporations with an interest in weapons making, in constructing nuclear reactors, and in mining uranium. The argument presumed that Australia and the United States share similar values and political tradition in contrast with such rival nations as Russia and China. It assumed that we would enjoy our relative self-reliance and security under the American shield.
The first months of the Trump presidency, however, have posed more starkly the questions about self-dependence. It has defined United States relationships with other nations in terms of relative power and self-interest, and has attacked the building blocks of a rule-based respect for law and for the international agreements and institutions that give it force. The United States will decide whether such agreements will be honoured and institutions recognised. Self-interest and relative power will be the final arbiter, as indeed they may have been previously.
As a result, Australian self-reliance can no longer be assumed to offer security if it depends on the protection of the United States flag. If it were in the United States’ interest to support China in a conflict with Australia, for example, Australian self-reliance would count for little. Nor would it be automatically in Australia’s interests to become involved in wilful and ill-conceived military adventures such as the invasion of Iraq that were corrosive of world order and peace. Military self-reliance might or might not contribute to Australian security, but in such a world it will not guarantee it.
This means that the possible timetables, limits, costs and benefits of military self-reliance must be weighed against the needs, costs and benefits of other Australian priorities. The benefits for the nation of increasing expenditure on military security are similar to those of any large and ambitious programs involving heavy government expenditure. The increased economic activity generated will provide employment, encourage investment, provide economic growth, and perhaps help unify the nation behind the flag. It may also strengthen Australia’s capacity to defend its borders and to broker peace in local disputes. The costs, too, can be defrayed by selling outmoded weapons to other nations. It might complement Australia’s soft power.
The costs of substantial increase of the military budget in the name of self-reliance, however, are also great, particularly if the pressure to meet them comes from the myth of assured security. Riding horses did not guarantee safety against a superior cavalry. The increased expenditure, too, will inevitably be made at the expense of other priorities. The economic benefits will flow disproportionately to the large and mainly overseas investors and companies involved in the project, increasing the already socially destructive gap between the very rich and less well-off Australians. Necessary increase of Government expenditure on health, the welfare particularly of the aged and the vulnerable children, on education and the human shaped and natural environment, will also suffer as a result of the increase in public debt. This will encourage a social climate of resentment that will easily be turned by politicians against minority groups. Governments, already ineffectual, will be made more so by rising debt , with the result that populist alternatives will seem more attractive. The emphasis on military security, too, will militate against investment in aid programs to impoverished nations and so encourage the resentment that breeds insecurity.
'To accept that no level of military self-reliance can guarantee security does not automatically rule out the need for increased military expenditure. But it does ask that such expenditure be justified.'
Some may argue that this gloomy prognosis will be realised even if military expenditure is not increased. The argument is plausible, given the succession of ineffectual governments that have failed to address the growing inequality in Australian society, the need to curb climate change, and the insecurity of less wealthy Australians. But the quest for security, however, will only increase the ineffectuality and resentment, and ensure that Australia will be seen by our neighbours as self-interested and as part of the problems facing them in their struggle to survive, not as part of their solution.
To accept that no level of military self-reliance can guarantee security does not automatically rule out the need for increased military expenditure. But it does ask that such expenditure be justified. It calls into question the appropriateness and value of apparently toothless whales like AUKUS and of apparent Trojan horses like foreign military bases on Australian soil. It may be justifiable, however, to strengthen the capacity of the Armed Forces for the direct defence of Australian territory, for peace making and peace keeping in the region, and to support a regional policy of hospitality to refugees. These are questions about opening relationships. The narrow focus on self-reliance closes relationships and makes conflict more likely.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
Main image: (Wikimedia commons)