Australia plans to host an expanding array of U.S. military forces to deter conflict as strategists worldwide fear the balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific is changing in favor of China.
“This will include greater air cooperation through rotational deployments of all types of U.S. military aircraft to Australia,” Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton told reporters at the State Department. “We will also establish combined logistics, sustainment, and capability for maintenance to support our enhanced activities — including logistics and sustainment capabilities for our submarines and surface combatants in Australia.”
President Joe Biden put a charge in the annual huddle of American and Australian defense and diplomatic chiefs on Wednesday when he announced a landmark deal to provide nuclear submarine technology to Australia in conjunction with the United Kingdom. But those submarines will take years to build and deploy, whereas Dutton’s subsequent revelation hints at a rapid-fire plan to offset China’s growing military power.
“We want to make sure that peace prevails in the Indo-Pacific, and [our conversations have] all been designed to continue that peace in our region,” Dutton said.
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The new agreement could enable Pentagon officials to deploy some of the assets needed to fight China’s modern military while making it harder for Beijing to target U.S. forces. China’s land-based intermediate-range cruise missiles have forced U.S. strategists to seek additional bases in the region to avoid China’s military driving the U.S. military out by blanketing a short list of key bases with ballistic missiles.
“One good thing about Australia is it has multiple bases in northern Australia that the United States and Australia together can use,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Zack Cooper said. “So that really multiplies the options for U.S. forces, rather than being very dependent on Andersen Air Force Base in Guam or Kadena Air Base in Japan.”
That threat has been explicit for years, as Chinese state media has used the moniker “Guam killer” to refer to Beijing’s missile stockpile. The development of that arsenal contributed to then-President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from a Cold War-era arms control treaty with Russia that prevented the U.S. from developing similar missiles.
Cooper called attention to Dutton’s statement that “all types” of U.S. warplanes would now be welcome in Australia.
The U.S. has periodically rotated aircraft through Australia, but only of certain types — not typically including, for example, bombers,” Cooper said. “So this strikes me as real progress for a robust U.S. posture in Australia’s neighborhood.”
That announcement, one day after the surprise revelation that Australia would acquire U.S. nuclear technology, raised questions within the Australian press corps about whether Canberra would allow the deployment of intermediate-range land-based ballistic missiles to match China’s power.
“We certainly didn’t go into this with a quid pro quo mindset, and we’ve not outlined any specific reciprocal requirements,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
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Dutton made a point to imply his interest in that course of action.
“I do have an aspiration to make sure that we can increase the numbers of troops through the rotations,” the Australian defense chief said. “The air capability will be enhanced, our maritime capability enhanced, and certainly the force posture [will be] enhanced. And if that includes basing and includes the storage of different ordinances, I think that is in Australia’s best interest, in our national interest, at this point in time.”
