Australia’s new defense strategy already behind the times

There have been a lot of defense announcements recently about buying new equipment, building up Australia’s manufacturing capabilities, creating local jobs, new legislation to support AUKUS and even a new defense chief.

In many respects, these simply reflect that the Department of Defense is busy, regularly spending a lot of money on a lot of things, and that ministers like announcing good news. However, the latest news related to Australia’s National Defense Strategy this week is of a different kind.

The title of the new National Defense Strategy draws attention to defense now being a matter for all Australians, not just the professionals of the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

It also takes the long view, well into the next decade. The strategy replaces the sporadic defense white papers and will be revised every two years to keep up with changes in the Indo-Pacific. It was accompanied this week by an Integrated Investment Program, which lays out where A$330 billion (US$212.9 billion) will be spent over ten years.

Together, these two announcements chart the future course for a high-spending and sizeable Department of Defense at a time of major wars in Europe and the Middle East, a massive Chinese arms build-up and growing uncertainty about how tensions over Taiwan and in the South China Sea might play out.

These global risks underline the focus on the “strategy of denial” in the new national blueprint, which aims to deter and prevent hostile forces from attacking Australia.

More mundanely, both of these documents, together totaling almost 200 pages, are the government’s way of controlling the sprawling Department of Defense. More pointedly, they set out the Albanese government’s vision on defense policy in time for the