Oz to eclipse Britain as prime ally of US: analysts

Defence analysts say as Australia becomes a key United States ally, it should boost its amphibious capability to deal with local threats and leave big-ticket defence buying to America. Photo / Royal Australian Navy

Australia's relationship with the United States could become one of Washington's most important, rivalling Nato and the special ties to Britain, new American strategic papers predict.

But both papers, lodged with China on the rise, also question present Australian strategic directions and the hugely expensive cutting-edge hardware being bought for its navy and air force.

Colonel John Angevine, a distinguished US military thinker now serving in Afghanistan, warns that Australia is hobbling its ability to deal with the lower-level regional crises it's most likely to face and says Canberra should rethink its shopping list.

Angevine and Transatlantic Academy research fellow Iskander Rehman also believe Australia should base more US forces on its soil, including strike forces such as submarines and F22 Raptor stealth fighters.

The US already has a significant presence in Australia and is planning to expand the joint naval communications base in Western Australia, to join cyber warfare programmes, and is also understood to be discussing pre-positioning American combat and other material in Australia and increased joint training.

The US alliance remains central to Australian policy, although its 2009 defence white paper focuses on a military able to deter and defeat attacks without relying on foreign combat and support forces - to lead or join foreign military coalitions.

But the white paper also continued reliance on American intelligence and technology, its nuclear deterrence, and an expectation of US support if Australia were threatened by a major power with superior military capabilities.

Giving muscle to policy, Australia is buying, or planning to buy, new airborne early-warning and control aircraft, up to 100 F-35A Lightning II strike fighters, a fleet of new maritime patrol aircraft, two huge amphibious assault ships, 12 new submarines, three air warfare destroyers and replacements for its Anzac frigates.

This, and Australia's staunch bipartisan backing for the US alliance, is now placing the nation at the centre of Washington's 21st century strategy.

In his paper for the Transatlantic Academy, Rehman said Australia had become increasingly attractive to the US as fears grew over the vulnerability of America's forward bases to Chinese missile attack.

"The combination of Australia's prime geo-strategic location, its staunch commitment to the US alliance, and its growing enmeshment in the Asia-Pacific region have led some to venture that the US-Australia relationship may well turn out to be this century's "special relationship", to the point at which it may in fact displace the US-Britain relationship in terms of scope and importance," Rehman said.

He said Australia would become America's strongest Asia-Pacific ally, with an "immensely positive" influence on regional developments and stability in Asia that would in time lead to a form of division of labour.

"The US-UK special relationship will still be highly invested in issues pertaining to the more traditional Atlantic and Mediterranean regions, while the area 'east of Suez' will be the focus of the strengthened US-Australia alliance," Rehman said.

Angevine also believes Australia will become America's "number one" alliance with the rise of China and India, possibly more important to Washington than Nato or Britain.

"The Australians are a great military ally and democratic partner to the United States, across all domains of national power," he said in a paper for the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

"This loyalty and shared sense of strategy has earned them serious standing and influence within the Pentagon."

But there are doubts about Australian strategy and defence planning.

While Australia is building a high-end defence force able to protect itself and support the US, Rehman and Angevine say the nation can never stand alone against a major power.

And in a war with China, for example, Australia could provide only peripheral help despite the sophisticated weaponry that is already testing its budget.

Angevine, a senior Defence Intelligence Agency analyst, said core assumptions of the defence white paper were wrong, with a strategy that did not correspond to the realities of Australia's security situation.

"The plan for the modernisation of the Defence Force is focused on expensive maritime and air capabilities for conflicts the ADF couldn't fight alone," he said.

"Consequently, the ADF is exposed with an atrophying ground force and expeditionary capability for the low-level regional operations in which it is most likely to engage."

Instead, Angevine said the US should overturn its 1969 Guam doctrine - requiring allies to assume 'primary responsibility' for their own defence if attacked - and guarantee Australia's security, allowing Canberra to ease its policy of self-reliance.

Australia could then spend far less on massively costly projects such as a new submarine fleet and focus on less sophisticated capabilities with more relevance to the region, such as more troops and a larger amphibious force.

Specifically, he said, Australia should host more US bases, lease US submarines, extend its Air Force with unmanned combat and reconnaissance aircraft, and add up to 4000 troops trained in amphibious warfare to its army, Angevine said.

Best Buddies in Arms

1918: Diggers and Doughboys fight together for the first time against the German ground offensive at the battle of Le Hamel, France, under the command of Australian General John Monash.

1941: Labor Prime Minister John Curtin swings away from Britain with his declaration: "Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom."

1941 to now: Australia joins the US in all its major conflict, including Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, the first Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

2009: US President George W. Bush awards former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the leader he called "a man of steel", with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his nation's staunch military support.

The future: "The US-Australia relationship may well turn out to be this century's 'special relationship', to the point at which it may in fact displace the US-UK relationship in terms of scope and importance." - Transatlantic Academy research fellow Iskander Rehman.