Strategic Australia: Allies in Southeast Asia?
Australia is an integral part of the Indo-Pacific’s sociology and physiology, playing a role in major economic frameworks, such as the CPTPP and RCEP, and mini-lateral alliances such as the US’ San Francisco system, AUKUS, and the Quad. Similarly, though it has just 2% of the population of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it is consistently discussed as one of the US’s greatest Indo-Pacific defence partners, and one of the world's premier ‘China Hawks’. In light of its rising adversity with the PRC, this article chooses to outline one of the major dilemmas in Australian defence policy - the inability to secure its security aims in Southeast Asia (SEA) and the South Pacific - and analyses three potential regional footholds that could help to secure this goal: Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
The Australian Foreign Policy Dilemma
Despite Canberra’s active role in Indo-Pacific security affairs, policymakers, defence analysts and scholars are quick to highlight the island nation’s acute inferiority to the rest of the peer group with which it is often grouped, specifically the PRC, the USA, and Japan. One way in which this gap is being addressed is via higher defence investment. Notably, Australia has begun investing heavily in multiple cutting-edge defence systems such as the F-35 joint strike-fighter jet, anti-ballistic missile upgrades for its Aegis systems, and nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS agreement.
An alternative route through which Australia is pursuing its foreign and security policy, however, is through its SEA relationships. The importance of this lies in Canberra’s defence strategy of building a far-off maritime boundary from which it can pursue its interests. Australian defence policy is structured around the need to keep a “secure nearer region”, which includes maritime SEA and the South Pacific. Its 2016 defence white paper, for example, specifically addressed the threat that conflict in SEA would pose for Australian security. Alongside promoting the ‘rules-based order’ and protecting vital sea lanes, therefore, its current policy requires an active presence as far north as the South and East China Seas. Canberra’s ability to find and maintain the relevant defence relationships within SEA, however, is a long-standing issue. This reality will be investigated by assessing the opportunities and drawbacks of its relationships in SEA, and how they may serve its security aims.
Indonesia
Australia’s relationship with Indonesia has been long, though often thorny. Following in the US’ footsteps, Canberra preserved ties with dictator Suharto throughout the internal repression of his tenure from 1967-1999, and only tentatively condemned Indonesian actions in Timor-Leste after several decades of brutal violence in 1999. While less developed than other SEA nations, Indonesia’s population, at over 279 million, stands at nearly triple that of the Philippines, the next largest nation. Consequently, Indonesia’s influence inside SEA, ASEAN, and the wider region is considerable, and only touted to grow. Now a budding democracy with remarkable stability given its violent inception and ethnoreligious heterogeneity, the archipelago state extends from the Straits of Malacca and mainland SEA, all the way to the island of Timor, which lies less than 800km from the northern city of Darwin. As Australia seeks to secure and employ its agency across this stretch, building ties with Indonesia is therefore a strategic move. By guaranteeing a stable relationship with Indonesia, shipping lines remain well protected from disruption, while there also emerges a potential duopolistic relationship to emerge in governing the South Pacific. While traditionally left out of the lens of analysis, the South Pacific has been thrust back into focus by the PRC’s growing relationship with the Solomon Islands, making this relationship all the more attractive for Australia.
Despite Indonesia’s strategic positioning, building ties with Jakarta would present a minefield for Australian policymakers. Primarily, Indonesia is closely pursuing its own strategic autonomy between not only the Sino-American rivalry, but also within the security architecture of the Asia-Pacific. Australia, as mentioned, is deeply entrenched within the US’ alliances and structures much of its security consideration around the threat of the PRC. Alongside a number of unrelated scandals in their relationship since the early 2000s, this alignment has consistently damaged genuine development in their defence relationship. Most recently this emerged in reaction to the AUKUS deal, which Indonesia emphatically disapproved of for its role in creating a ‘regional arms race’.
Australia’s primary interest in Indonesia is its geography, both as a guardian of manifold shipping lanes, and for the access it could give Australia in maritime SEA. With the second of these firmly off the table under the current geo-political status-quo, the potential for Indonesia to be Australia’s critical partner going forward is extremely unlikely. Recent agreements signed in 2018 and 2020, though notable, have been focused on holding joint exercises in mainland Australia, as well as increased cyber-security cooperation. Though not an unfruitful relationship in helping to preserve stability from disruption across maritime SEA, Canberra will need to look to one of the smaller nation-states for its ‘foothold’.
Malaysia and the FPDA
In some ways, Malaysia appears as the most attractive option for Australia. In a similar vein to Indonesia, its geography: perched on the Straits of Malacca, a key part of both mainland and maritime SEA, and finally, stretched across the South China Sea. Besides its prime positioning for enabling Canberra to operate at the frontier of its outer perimeter in maritime SEA, Malaysia would be a key partner in keeping the region’s, and indeed the world’s, major arteries of trade free and flowing. Building upon this, there is already considerable architecture in place in the Malaysia-Australia relationship, in the form of the Five Power Defence Agreement (FPDA) with the UK, Singapore, and New Zealand.
The FPDA, formed in 1971, is a consultative agreement between the five states to provide for the defence of Malaysia and Singapore. Alongside a commitment to meet and discuss security challenges both regularly and as they arise, the proto-alliance now includes combined-arms exercises, as well as providing access for member state troops at RMAF (Royal Malaysian Air Force) Butterworth Airbase in peninsular Malaysia. While the UK, and to some extent New Zealand, rotate detachments of troops and aircraft in and out of the base, Australia maintains a permanent military presence.
Though the major threats that led to its inception, in particular a fear of Indonesian invasion, have now subsided, both Malaysia and Australia have re-asserted the FPDA’s critical role. These two nations sit at the centre of both the input and the output of the FPDA, as while the UK is the largest actor by almost every metric, it lacks both the resources and a clear mission in SEA to play a central role. The FPDA bolsters Malaysia’s national security considerably by alerting any potential attacker that both Australia and the UK will almost certainly play some role in its response. By giving partner nations access to Malaysian territory for joint training exercises, Malaysia gains a measure of security while not having to heavily invest in its currently uncompetitive military. Finally, it is worth noting that the FPDA offers Malaysia and Singapore a convenient line of communication for when tensions flare up; a not uncommon occurrence. In this sense, Malaysia is not only geographically strategic, but it also harbours its own interest in Australia’s military presence.
Despite the clear alignment in certain security interests, the unutilised potential of the Malaysia-Australia relationship is a reflection of the numerous complexities. Firstly, Malaysia’s diplomatic existence is hazy, seeing it balance a traditional ‘special relationship’ with the PRC, against a recent trend towards neutrality and economic nationalism concerning its South China Sea oil fields. While Malaysia has grown more vocal in confronting PRC violations of its EEZ, an alliance with one of their main adversaries would be highly unpopular in the legislature due to the economic and diplomatic harm it would bring with their largest trading partner. Similarly, Indonesia has never approved of the FDPA, seeing it as an affront to their regional leadership, and several times suggested it be disbanded. In this sense, neither Australia nor Malaysia is looking to aggravate their shared neighbour by expanding the FPDA.
An underlying factor for both nation’s hesitation is also the way in which that expansion would look. A commonly raised question about the FPDA, and Australia’s permanent detachment there, is why is its access not expanded beyond peninsular Malaysia, and onto the island of Borneo. This would place Australian assets permanently bordering both Indonesian Borneo and the PRC’s nine-dash-line. Aside from giving Indonesia the cold shoulder, Australian policymakers would be wary of the security threats it opens itself up to by setting up camp around the nine-dash-line, a stretch already home to continual low-level conflict between the surrounding states. The consistent theme running through the Malaysian-Australian relationship, therefore, is how to advance a defence relationship without major regional ramifications. In many ways the partnership serves Malaysian interests, but Kuala Lumpur is simply not willing to embark on developments that would provoke the PRC. Similarly, even if Canberra could advance the relationship beyond 2021’s cyber-oriented security deal, it would push itself into a considerably more risk-laden and offensive position.
The Philippines
Across SEA there exists a melange of neutral aligned states, such as Indonesia, and to some extent Malaysia, as well as those with strong ties to the PRC such as Cambodia and much of mainland SEA. Finally, there exists a camp of nations with varying allegiances to the US, including Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. By far the most reliable and committed of these nations, and the only one in maritime SEA, is the Philippines, who complements its poor anti-PRC stance with a long history of advocating for US presence in the Indo-Pacific. The archipelago nation has also traditionally had positive relations with Australia going back to their liberation in World War Two. In this sense, there does exist a unique space in which the two nations could develop beyond a defence relationship that many would already describe as close. Alongside a small industrial edge to the partnership, Australia is also only the second country in which Manilla allows two-way officer exchange training.
Analysts noting the potential in this relationship’s development have drawn upon the access it would give Australia to the Luzon strait, the strip of sea between Taiwan and the northern Philippine islands. In the case of a PRC invasion on Taiwan, Canberra would find it extremely difficult to project any degree of power without a close ally in the region. This is therefore an attractive option for Australia who, in the case of an invasion, would seek to implement its will, militarily if necessary. The Philippines, sitting at the gate to Northeast Asia, are also strategically placed to further Canberra’s defence aims in protecting key shipping lines that the PRC is particularly well placed to disrupt in the event of a conflict. In evaluating the potential for this relationship’s success, it is worth bearing in mind that the US comes first in Philippine defence relations. Ultimately, while there is no broad conflict of interest in welcoming both the American and Australian relationships, Manila is likely to feel little incentive to invite yet another military power onto its soil, particularly one that is far less formidable than the US’.
Conclusions: All and None.
There is no clear option for Australia to expand significantly into SEA. However, this analysis highlights numerous issues within the wider field of Australian defence policy, allowing for a better understanding of how to navigate these problems with its SEA neighbours. Though in the current status quo none of these nations offers Canberra a route through the myriad of economic and conventional security risks, it is clear that in these increasingly volatile times, Australia has a range of partners with mutual interests and strong means to meet common ends.