As Europe and Australia embark on negotiating a new Security and Defence Partnership, many will be sceptical that Europe can play a significant role in enhancing Australia’s security, or Australia in Europe’s.
This century, Europeans and Australians have collaborated against security challenges such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and stabilising Afghanistan and Iraq. But this collaboration was US-led, and many will question whether such collaboration is possible in the absence of US leadership.
Most scepticism that I’ve heard arises from doubts about Australia’s and Europe’s capacity to engage in meaningful security cooperation outside of their own regions. But leaping to capacity judgements is premature, before we consider the imperatives for cooperation.
To understand Australia’s and Europe’s motivations for reaching out to each other to build collective capacity, we need to look at the rapidly changing geopolitical imperatives they both face.
In security affairs, imperatives and capacity are closely correlated. States facing serious security challenges are motivated to develop capacity that they didn’t have at times of less danger. Compare Australia’s military capacity in the early 1930s with its military capacity in the early 1940s.
To understand Australia’s and Europe’s motivations for reaching out to each other to build collective capacity, we need to look at the rapidly changing geopolitical imperatives they both face. These are playing out across four interrelated vectors.
Most obviously they face mounting material rivalry, in terms of fierce competition to accrue military and economic advantage. In broad terms, this can be thought of using economists’ terminology of stocks and flows. The United States and its allies in the Pacific and Europe hold superior stocks of military and economic power against China and its collaborators, but their flows of additional capability and productivity are sluggish, slowed by low economic and productivity growth, debt, aging populations and high social spending. China’s flows of additional capability and productivity are healthier, buoyed by higher economic growth, lower debt and social welfare, although it too faces an aging society.
The second vector of competition is institutional. Europe faces a concerted Russian campaign to degrade its regional institutions and sow discord among their members. Australia looks to a set of regional institutions that are decades old and well into atrophy, while China has more recently engaged in concerted multilateral entrepreneurship, launching the Belt and Road Initiative, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and promoting the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and others.
The third vector is infrastructural competition, or increasing rivalry to dominate technology development, communications networks, supply chains of critical materials and transportation networks. These infrastructures themselves lock countries into particular patterns of dependence, which in turn become important forms of power for those who dominate them.
Finally, there is increasing normative rivalry – over which group of countries champions the values that ensure a stable and just international order. The United States and its Pacific and European allies have vigorously advocated for upholding “the rules-based order” and calling out those they accuse of degrading it – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. These latter countries in turn accuse their accusers of “hegemonism” and advocate for a pluralist, multipolar world order. The objects of competition for all four vectors of rivalry are the developing countries of Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Latin America.
Previous to Donald Trump’s second coming, Australia and Europe supported US objectives and efforts in all four vectors of geopolitical competition. Trump’s arrival has doubled down US efforts on the material and infrastructural vectors of competition, but seen the United States abandon the field on the institutional and normative vectors, leaving Australia and Europe facing considerable uncertainty while confronting newly inspired opponents.
Perhaps the biggest challenge shared by Australia and Europe is normative – finding a way to maintain support for a stable international order that best upholds state sovereignty.
Australia’s and Europe’s security imperatives have escalated in the face of an America-First ally and emboldened opponents – China in Australia’s case, Russia in Europe’s. In material terms, they face both economic and military challenges. Europeans fear an “industrial winter” brought on by China’s manufacturing power and motivation to dump goods previously bound for the United States, while Australia is looking to build sovereign manufacturing capability in the newly uncertain global economic landscape. Recent announcements of increased defence spending in Australia and Europe reflect a growing realisation that sovereign military capabilities need to be built and maintained for the foreseeable future.
Here is a clear imperative for European-Indo-Pacific collaboration. The simultaneous increase in defence spending by multiple US allies has increased demand for military capabilities sharply, while supply remains limited. The big industrial economies of Europe, if combined with those of Japan and South Korea, will readily surge to meet this demand if properly primed and coordinated. Australia has an important role to play in such a coalition as a supplier of critical minerals, and perhaps as an investor in industrial uplift among trusted collaborators.
Another vector of challenge is infrastructural. Europe and Australia have different but mutually instructive experiences of opponents seeking to dominate and exploit critical infrastructure. There is much to learn from each other in building societal and infrastructural resilience against malign manipulation and coercion.
Perhaps the biggest challenge shared by Australia and Europe is normative – finding a way to maintain support for a stable international order that best upholds state sovereignty – or in Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s formulation, “where no state dominates and none is dominated”. In this challenge, Australia and Europe have much to discuss and align on.