His answer is at once contradictory and radical; it is panicky, even extremist — a surprising response from a senior strategic thinker who was on the ministerial advisory panel for the federal government’s 2009 Defence White Paper, the key findings of which he seems to reject.
Babbage says the rise of China’s military power faces Australia with its greatest security challenge since the Second World War. He likens Chinese strategic thinking to that employed by the Japanese in planning their attack on Pearl Harbour. He dismisses the ambitious military modernisation program set out in the White Paper as ‘not very effective.’ Instead he proposes a ‘highly asymmetric’ counter to China, involving acquisitions and policies that he says would be seen in Beijing and elsewhere as ‘game-changers.’
Babbage says Australia should acquire 10 to 12 American nuclear attack submarines, base major US combat capabilities in Australia, arm ‘arsenal’ ships with cruise missiles, join the US in building and deploying a new class of advanced stealthy strike aircraft, expand cyber warfare capabilities, and possibly join the US in developing and employing an advanced missile system.
He says Australia’s counter-strategy might include ‘seriously damaging the capacities of China’s strategic leadership to govern’ and ‘threatening the cohesion of the Chinese state.’ He proposes developing linkages with dissident Chinese ‘to stir serious internal disruptions and even revolts.’ How Australia might achieve such objectives against a Leninist nuclear power with a quarter of the world’s population is not explained.
At the same time, Babbage argues that ‘the United States and its allies should not seek to confront China.’ Australia, he says, should pursue ‘deep engagement’ with China and ‘should encourage friendly engagement and many forms of co-operative partnership with China while simultaneously keeping a weather eye on Beijing’s assertive military and intelligence capabilities and operations.’
Babbage does not say how this deep engagement might be possible if Australia was simultaneously pursing its ‘game-changing’ strategy, including making clear to the Chinese leadership ‘that were the PLA to threaten serious damage to Australia’s vital interests, China’s core leadership would be taking a serious risk and, potentially, would pay a very heavy price.’ Nor does he canvass the potential implications for Australia’s critically important trade and economic relationships with China.
Babbage’s proposals are a recipe for confrontation with China. They turn reasonable concerns about China’s military expansion into responses that verge on hysteria. The proposals are ill-defined and uncosted, although he suggests the nuclear attack submarines alone and their essential supporting infrastructure could cost some $28 billion. Babbage has been quoted as saying that Australians should prepare for a 40 per cent increase in defence spending to combat the rise of China.
Although Babbage’s proposals would seem self-evidently counter-productive and contradictory in terms of Australian policy towards China, he claims ‘a group of senior Australian strategic leaders were polled for their views on the relative merits of the main capability options.’ But he does not identify these leaders and does not reveal what questions they were asked. So far there has been no official political or senior support for Babbage’s plans in Canberra of which we are aware.
Note that the 2009 Defence White Paper sets out a (roughly) costed and coherent defence policy that is already focused on defending Australia’s approaches from an attack by a major power. It involves a major military expansion program that includes 12 conventional submarines, three air warfare destroyers, cruise missiles, new frigates, up to 100 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, as well as other advanced armaments.
Babbage’s aim seems to be to strengthen radically the White Paper’s finding that Australia should have the independent military means to substantially harm a major power adversary. He wants Australia to be able to rip an arm off China. Such an approach would provoke rather than deter Beijing, or perhaps tempt it towards preemptive action. It would certainly be extremely risky. Beijing will view the Babbage proposals as an attempt to contain China.
A clearly preferable Australian policy is to neither appease nor provoke China, but to build up the military capacity to enable Australia to defend itself and to support efforts by the US to address any credible threats that might emerge from Beijing’s military expansion or other serious military contingencies in the longer term.
Babbage’s paper fails to answer key questions: What would be the through-life cost of 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines? What would be the cost of the infrastructure necessary to support them? Where would the crews come from? How many more US bases would he consider necessary? Where would they be located? Why propose new ‘arsenal ships’ to carry cruise missiles when the White Paper clearly says that they will be fitted to the air warfare destroyers, future frigates and submarines?
There is, as Babbage says, a good case for boosting Australian efforts to counter cyber warfare, of which China is a major global exponent. But again the White Paper specifically commits Australia to do so, saying that the government will invest in a major enhancement of Defence’s cyber warfare capability.
Babbage has rightly identified China’s military expansion and recently aggressive behaviour as transforming events in the Western Pacific, but he seems to assume it is only about countering US naval assets in the region. That may be true, but it is not the whole story.
China also has an interest in protecting its sea lines of communication; as a rising power it is asserting itself as rising powers have always done. Its primary objective is to build a modern naval force capable of dominating what it calls ‘the first island chain’ stretching from Japan to Taiwan and the South China Sea.
As the Pentagon has noted, China’s primary aim is to be capable of fighting and winning short-duration, high-intensity conflicts along its periphery against hi-tech adversaries. But the Pentagon also states that China’s ability to sustain military power at a distance remains limited.
There is no doubt that Beijing is also developing longer range capabilities that will have implications beyond China’s immediate territorial interests. As these are developed there will undoubtedly be greater potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation between China and the US and its allies, including Australia. But China will not be able to sustain large military forces in combat operations far from China until well into the 2020s. And China’s military is utterly untested in modern combat.
Moreover, the bluster about the rapid emergence of the Chinese military is undermined by Chinese national defence industries that produce inferior equipment. China’s armed forces are, and will long remain, no match for those of the US in our view. America has vast resources to support military innovation and make unpredictable breakthroughs — as the former Soviet Union discovered to its cost.
Babbage barely considers the possibility that China might find military expansion less urgent as it increasingly integrates into the world economy. It is also possible that China, beset by domestic problems, will not sustain its present growth trajectory.
A cooler Australian response to China’s military expansion is to strengthen the alliance with the US by ensuring that our maritime re-equipment program goes ahead as planned, on time and on budget. Australian conventional submarines and surface ships armed with cruise missiles can provide powerful capabilities to defend Australia as well as adding — if required — significantly to US capabilities in the Pacific. And that is what they should concentrate on doing.
Paul Dibb AM is Emeritus Professor and Chairman of the Advisory Board at the School of International, Political and Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. He is former Australian Deputy Secretary of Defence and a senior intelligence officer who opened defence intelligence relations with China in 1978. Geoffrey Barker is a Visiting Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University who had a previous career as a very senior Australian journalist.
It seems to me that Australia should instead (of provoking an accelerated arms race in the region) enter into defense agreements with other countries along China’s rim with similar apprehensions, while enhancing friendly activities like trade and cultural exchanges.
Babbage asks what Austaralia should do to offset and deter the rapidly growing Chinise people’s liberating army in the western pacific. If this statement is true and okay for Australia and America, then why is it not okay for China to employ strageties to offset and deter the rapidly growing Australian and American presence in the western pacific. The central premise of the Babbage theory is that Australia and America are superior to China, and therefore have every right to contain China, while China has no right to respond in kind. This theory reminds me of the early proponents of the fallacy that the Roman and British empires will last until the end of times. Like the messianic-village idiot George W Bush, Romans and the British of an earlier age, Babbage is grounded in the theory that the American empire will last until the end of times. This will appear to be true if you live in the fantastic world of neocons rather than the reality based world of modern women and men. I am a true blue eyed American, and I have a message for Mr Babbage. You may not realise it, but America is finished as a major power. In the final anlysis, Ross Babbage is not a man who deserves the respect of people in the know, but a man who should never should be taken seriously by people who value the implication of history upon human history. In the true sense of the word, he is a man of the past, a man who thinks the 21th century is less important than the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries for white dominance of the world. Mr. Babbage, as an American, and for your own wellbeing, I advise you to learn Chinise. Learning Chinese is indeed the future and if you to seek escape it, you are indeed doomed.
Re: Babbage asks what Australia should do to offset and deter the rapidly growing Chinese people’s liberating army in the western pacific.
I agree with both above Hughes commentary and the recent ground breaking speech of Hugh White at the Lowy Institute.
First principles and observations suggest the following are reasonable assumptions:
• The US is now intellectually, morally and economically insolvent and its empire collapsing because of unsustainable debt, hubris and imperial overstretch. Because the centre is rotting the unraveling empire is causing re-alignments within the hegemonic system from financial to the rebellion we now witness in the Middle East.
• Our new world will be multi-polar constellation of regional great powers in which China will be the hegemon in our region and the US simply another major player – providing a delusional US does not provoke a major war in their attempts to preserve Empire.
• Australia thru its cultural legacy will ensure our nation will be different from our neighbors for next century or so but over longer time frames merge with the dominant themes in our region. Travelling along the rim of the Mediterranean Sea will reveal how the different countries share similar cultural traits from music to foods etc.
• Our nation must protect its sovereignty and face a new reality. There is no more Western Navy to protect our interest and enable us to influence the region as the “Deputy Sherriff”.
• China’s cultural imperative thru its history has always been to acquire wealth and Power and thru its civilization prism will seek its own solutions using a non-western paradigm. We need to understand how they perceive issues and therefore their likely pathway towards solutions.
• The abilities of nations to protect their sovereignty and influence fellow nations rest on their economic wealth as well as the value of investments in those countries.
• Military strength best serves our interests when deployed thru its potential as part of statecraft leveraged by economic prowess perceived as valuable by other nations.
• China has the will and capacity to pay a very high price to protect its national interests. The long march demonstrated their ability to continuously fight and survive as a coherent organization after suffering 90per cent casualties and the Korean War as well as their brief invasion into Vietnam demonstrates.
I therefore suggest that our long term strategy is to assist China’s rise towards being a constructive hegemon with like minded regional neighbors in a Concert of Powers” wisely described by Hugh White.
Unfortunately, our “factors of production” and mining dependent and modest manufacturing base as well as consumer product import dependent economic model is too reliant on China and our insular corporate culture avoids investments in Asia. That is why, for example, Singapore Stock Exchange will be the senior partner in the future SGX-ASX joint venture.
We need reconfigure our economy and leverage our economic strengths beyond simply a quarry economy and be a major economic force in our region.
For example, China and Singapore have succeeded against greater challenges therefore why can’t we?
Our military needs to be powerful and affordable in terms of our tax and skill set base including nuclear weapons.
We should consider our war making capacity as a deterrent in which collaboration as a useful trading and economic power becomes a preferable option to China in which we can be a junior partner.
The economic weight and population as well as China’s historical quest for sovereign “Wealth and Power” is a material fact compared to our smaller economy and population both in the present and into the future.
Plus our population will need to consider the ability of our arid continent island to sustain our living standards.
Our military adventures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are mistakes and fighting on the wrong side of history.
Nations have long memories and are not confused by our domestic proclamations of being part of the “coalition of the willing” as member of the “International Community” bring democracy to “recalcitrant nations”.
We need to be more mature and sophisticated in our thinking because we are now in a new world alien to our previous comfort zone.
Mr. Burong makes a very misleading comment: “The US is now intellectually, morally and economically insolvent”.
It is true that US economy is in trouble. But it is not true that USA is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Can a Chinese question his government’s policies in public and remain safe? An American can abuse his militarist president and easily get away. In fact, he can vote the militarist out of power. What will happen if a few Uyghurs or Tibetans bombed Shanghai? Can a person of Uyghur ancestry try to become the president of China after such a bombing? A few Arab-Muslims bombed NY but an overwhelming majority of them have not been touched. Obama could contest and win the presidential election.
Let not the economic success of CPC make us forget some of the essential virtues of the United States. It is true that USA has supported dictatorships abroad but at least it has learnt how to behave with its own people.
So, while it is true that Mr. Babbage is underestimating the strength of China and his critics are underestimating the strength of the United States. It is true that Mr. Babbage believes that USA is invincible. It is also true that his critics believe that the Long March has just concluded and there is no risk of the CPC losing grip over power. Incidentally, CPC’s confidence is reflected in its decision to black out ‘Egypt’ from the web.
Let us not show disdain for the United States’ humane achievements which are truly impressive. It is the most stable democracy in human history. (Add to this the fact that it is not San Marino, it is a multi-ethnic continent.) Whatever little democracy and humanism we have in the international system it is due to the morally and intellectually bankrupt United States and its allies who are known as stooges in Beijing. Imagine if the internet had originated in CPC ruled China. One thing is sure. We would not have been exchaning ideas freely across the internet.
While being critical of USA’s imperialism let us not forget that millions of common US citizens have made significant contribution to make our world a better place and they will continue to make such contribution freely in future as well. And, they also have the means to put their country back on track.
In any case, if USA is really such a bad and crumbling society why do so many Chinese and Arabs go the United States for studies and employment?
Re: …It is true that US economy is in trouble. But it is not true that USA is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Can a Chinese question his government’s policies in public and remain safe?…
Mr Vikas has presented some valid criticism of my too succinct statement requiring explanation and context on my part.
DEMOCRACY
It is true that China is not a democracy and many of its less privileged citizens have less access to the nation’s wealth and less access to arbitrary privilege.
Hence there is increasing public demonstrations demanding social justice censored by the authorities.
Furthermore, China censors the internet and recently clamped down on the still born “Jasmine” revolution following the popular uprising roiling the Middle East.
However, it is also fair to say that China has come along way the last hundred years and Beijing has lifted from desperate poverty many hundreds of millions of its citizens.
No other nation in world history has achieved anything of the same scale before.
Furthermore, democracy has to evolve from within the society and requires generations of cultural and institutional development to flower.
For example, former colonial powers left newly independent countries with bicameral parliamentary institutions and codified laws which over time were exercised by its politicians based on the dominant cultural values in the said countries. Think the Indonesian parliament under the former President Suharto operated according to Javanese cultural norms or its Port Moresby peers.
India is the world’s largest democratic nation yet it has not achieved the pace of China’s economic achievements.
My point is that each nation’s particular circumstances require its own version of how democracy or its alternative will evolve together with how to lift the living standards of its people.
Therefore China will create its own political structure just as Singapore has today.
Australia is a western nation that has also evolved its own solutions to meet our imperatives. We are a small populated nation in an arid island continent and need to find a way of creating a co-operative framework with a dynamic and lager giant that is China.
Our geographic location determines our destiny in a new era requiring a self re-examination of what we are and what we fear.
We have much to be proud of and some to be shameful of – a reality shared by all nations.
MANY CHINESE AND OTHER THIRD WORLD IMMIGRANTS WANT TO LIVE IN THE US
It is true the US was built on the backs of generations of migrants fleeing persecution and wanting a better life.
The same can be said of Southern Chinese migrants coming to Australia before Federation and after despite the White Australia attitudes prevailing at time and being forced, for example, to extract gold from tailings rejected by other miners. Yet still they came despite persecution by authorities and mobs.
We now witness “boat people” coming to our shores because of persecution at home and hope for a better economic future.
The point is migration is primarily to gain a better live with some exceptions such a British loyalists migrating to Canada after US patriots prevailed over British soldiers during their war of independence.
IT IS THE US EMPIRE THAT IS BAD
The US founding fathers created a magnificent legal construct we know and aspire to called “The Constitution” which was the template used by Indonesia when the became independent. Their wealthy society has provided the world with many good wonderful ideas and products during its 217 years or so of independence.
The US false flag “Gulf of Tonkin” to justified their entry into to Vietnam Civil War Killed at least a million Vietnamese and the use of “Agent Orange” continues to create cancers and deformed babies to this day. Yet the US justice system denies trials on compensation by “Agent Orange” plaintiffs.
Another recent example, the US forced sanctions on Iraq and subsequent invasion under false flags has killed millions of Iraqis and will fail any way. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously said: “the death of more than 500,000 children was a price well worth it”.
Now we witness how US client and despotic states are fighting for survival in the face of a secular classless poplar uprising in which the same ruling elite infrastructure remains in place.
The demonstrators demand immediate change but Washington recommend more time before elections and approve the military in Egypt appointing people from within same ruling elite.
Is the pope a Roman Catholic?
The epicenter of the financial crisis is Wall Street and Washington failed to do its job and the Empire is insolvent and overstretched and their middle class eroding etc.
Ancient Rome started as a Republic that grow by confiscating the wealth from conquered territories then decayed into Empire thru debt and hubris.
It seems the US is on the same trajectory but faster as is everything in our digital age.
Unfortunately, we became accustomed to ascendancy and started to believe in our own myths.
China’s long recorded history is one of similar cycles of dynasty proving everything has a shelf life.
I agree a lot with Jerry Bulong’s observations. The trajectory of his arguments are those of a man with a sound mind and judgment. I disagree with Vikas. He makes an intellectually spurious argument when he says the following: “In any case,if the USA is really such a bad and crumbling society why do so many Chinise and Arabs go to the USA for studies and employment”. He forgets that during the heyday of the Roman empire, many people from other cultures also went there for employment and other opportunities. But the empire fell apart anyway. Here are a few more facts about American decline. America used to be the largest exporter in the world, but today it is not. Today, the largest exporter in the world is China, followed by Germany in second place. The USA has fallen from first to third place behind Germany. It says something that a country [Germany] with 82 million people exports more goods than the USA with 310 million people. And a good portion of what the USA exports is weapons to countries like India that haven’t yet figured out how to feed, let alone educate their massive poppulations that are still living in dire poverty.
Mr. Burong (Feb 23): Thanks for your response. I agree more or less with most of your points and, more importantly, with the way you responded.
Mr. Hughes (Feb 22): “Mr. Babbage, as an American, and for your own wellbeing, I advise you to learn Chinise. Learning Chinese is indeed the future and if you to seek escape it, you are indeed doomed.”
The relationship between the economic success of a people and the acceptability of their language is not linear. History abounds in examples of languages like Portuguese (in Asia), Persian (in South, Central, and West Asia), etc whose impact far exceeded/outlived the political and/or economic clout of their primary speakers. One can add French to this list.
Mr. Hughes (Feb 24): I will respond in four steps.
1. First let me clarify that I did not say that the US economy is in good shape (see my previous comment “It is true that US economy is in trouble.”). I am perfectly aware of the German performance. I also agree that the CPC’s success in poverty alleviation is simply unprecedented in history. But still “It says something that a country” like Germany has consistently failed to translate economic output into political clout. So, it is mistaken to believe that the economic clout of rising powers will necessarily translate into political clout that will in turn displace the existing power (and doom Mr. Babbage). Instead of repeating my argument I would refer the reader to my article available on the Global Asia Forum (http://www.globalasia.org/Global_Asia_Forum/The_Global_Political_Ambitions_of_India_and_China.html?PHPSESSID=0d50c64a4904a35a3b3936629d93ecfb).
2. “intellectually spurious argument”: I think my remark about migration has been taken out of context. I was responding to a specific point raised by Mr Burong, namely, the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of USA. I did not say that migration from other countries to USA implies its eternal invincibility. I hope the misunderstanding is cleared. But let me add to my earlier argument. The bulk of the (Arab and Chinese) migration to the USA has happened in the post-Martin Luther period and many of those who went there (incl Malay Chinese) sought to build a new life in a free environment (and that is different from much of the in-migration into Imperial Rome), which continues to be morally and intellectually richer than most other countries in the world.
3. “The trajectory of his [Burong’s] arguments are those of a man with a sound mind and judgment.” Does Mr. Hughes want to say that those who disagree with his position are (a) with an unsound mind or (b) with a mind that is not-sound? (Also, recall “Ross Babbage is not a man who deserves the respect of people…” in Mr. Hughes’ Feb 22 comment.) Can two sane persons not disagree? Is there just one correct position? I think we ought to distinguish between the argument and the person who is making the argument and restrict ourselves to the argument.
4. “And a good portion of what the USA exports is weapons to countries like India that haven’t yet figured out how to feed, let alone educate their massive poppulations that are still living in dire poverty.” I will respond to this in two steps.
4a. The US share of Indian arms market is still small. Rather it finds most enthusiastic buyers among East Asians who are impressed by China’s peaceful rise. The list includes Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan who have already figured out how to feed and educate their people and, I guess, in a much better way. Does China not import/steal weapons/weapons related technology from the United States? Has China figured out how to feed Uighurs and Tibetans and how to teach them to believe in the primacy of economic goals?
4b. Why has India not figured out how to feed, etc? (Mr. Burung had a similar concern but put across in a nicer way.) There is a gentleman named Narendra Modi, who is as successful on the economic front as the CPC. His province has Chinese growth rates, industrial projects take much lesser time to get started under his regime, roads and ports are much better than other parts of India, FDI is impressive, etc. He is not corrupt. Anyone who is willing to support him is part of the rapidly growing economy. But any dissent is punished with jail, fake encounters, etc. His attitude towards minorities is akin to that of CPC. Why do Indians not support him? He will transform the country. I have been to his province and have seen his efficiency. But yesterday I was at a meeting/lecture where people from different religions, provinces, classes, and language groups had gathered to discuss the goings on in the Modi-land. Not one was ready to condone Modi’s rule; not even those participants who earn barely 2 dollars a day. Why? Because we love our hard earned freedoms, minority rights, etc. It is not that we ignore massive poverty and illiteracy. Only that we do not think that a small bunch of people can choose for us. We do small things here and there to make our localities better and even to do these small things we wait till we have the consent of all concerned, obtained through persuasion. The government is corrupt and has not delivered but we try to change it in peaceful ways. I am sure Liu Xiaobo and other survivors of Tiananmen-I will have sympathy for us. Incidentally, we also do not approve of Imperial United States’ missionary commitment to democracy backed by drones, its nuclear diplomacy, etc.
Vikas
Mr Vikas has raised a very interesting point that economic clout does not necessarily translate into political clout to displace the existing power – The US Empire.
I believe he has a point in that the ability to successfully exercise collaborative hegemonic power or the power to apply great political influence depends on acceptance of legitimacy by the lesser players impacted.
I suggest that Germany and Japanese economic power was dependent on the good will of the US to prosper and potential domestic market size matters.
Both nations required export revenue to grow and their domestic market potential was simply less tantalizing to the US with its huge and wealthy US population size.
The US military bases located within their territories meant both Germany and Japan were able to focus on industrialization and export development because national military investment can be kept to a bare minimum – until recently.
However, the client state status did extract a price for both nations.
For example, Japan was forced to cancel ambitions to build their own Jet Fighter and buy US F-15 and F-16s instead.
Another more significant example was the US ability thru the Paris accord to effectively neuter the ability of Japan to compete with the US by forcing the Yen to become weaker versus the US dollar.
Perhaps, the basis of collaborative great power requires acceptance of hegemonic legitimacy by the community of lesser nations believing its actions and influence benefits them more than compromising their interests. The great power may have a combination of attractive attributes benefiting the lesser states such as reciprocal economic, financial, trading, cultural, knowledge systems; creditor power; intellectual property resources and sufficient military power to protect common interests etc.
The US hegemony was originally based on virtual monopoly of global media and entertainment multinationals; the banking system; military technology and worldwide bases; world’s largest domestic market; excellent tertiary education institutions; control of IMF/World Bank and UN Security Council; USD global currency reserve status; virtual monopoly of management and corporate structure technology (up to 1980s); best practice innovation and new concept originator; creditor nation until the Vietnam war strated.
The Us has not won a major war since the Korean War despite a huge and expensive military and, among other things lost media legitimacy to Aljazeera and some UK and European media as well as many internet sites.
It has become intellectually insolvent by using coercive military solutions finessed by empty words such as the mantras of democracy, human rights, fighting War On Terror with a handful of Al Qaeda or “Islamofascists” which is an insult tying a religion to a political concept and freedom etc.
Now we find the US intends to keep military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan post some nebulous withdrawal dates.
The US helps Africa by trying to build an AFRICOM base somewhere on that continent of which the nations there are rightfully suspicious.
Compare the US help strategy with the “Win Win” infrastructure and funding strategy for resources successfully persued by China todate and possibly followed by India.
Mr. Burong raises a few important points. I will begin with the last point. First a few scattered observations. Both in Lesotho and Myanmar, there is lot of resentment against the Chinese because they have been successful (not necessarily through unfair means) and have displaced the local industry and traders in the process. In Myanmar the resentment has also to do with the Chinese support for the regime. Chinese support was critical in Sri Lanka’s brutal suppression of LTTE. Not that LTTE were angels. Only that without China behind it Lanka would not have waged the war ignoring global uproar against the enormous humanitarian costs. I am not sure if the Lankan Tamils, North Koreans, and Myanmarese see China as anything different from the US in the Middle East. I have argued in an earlier contribution to this forum that China seems to be condemned to repeat US like mistakes even before acquiring US like muscles. See
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/11/20/china-condemned-to-repeat-the-mistakes-of-the-united-states/
To this I should add that Pakistan, China’s closest ally has seen few if any win-win engagements.
Alliance: It is true that Japan and Germany were lesser members of an alliance, which in a way automatically limited their geo-political clout. But they could have walked out of the alliance and pursued their own agenda. France, for instance, came out of NATO. One could argue that France was not a defeated power. But then we have the example of the inter-war Germany under Hitler. Germany not only “forgot” its previous defeat but also rapidly emerged as a power to reckon with. If Hitler had been humane (at least as much any other colonial power was at that time) and non-expansionist on the continent then the world order would have been different. In South Asia, the alliance between Aurangzeb and Shivaji is an example, the latter being the vastly weaker and defeated member who accepted numerous imperial garrisons. Shivaji not only cast aside the yoke but also triggered a series of wars that sapped the foundation of Mughal empire and paved the way for the dominance of his people.
Size: All European world powers were small sized by any demo-geographic criteria.
So, size and military alliance membership alone cannot explain the post-45 Japanese and German middle power status. (They could have played the Russian card.) May be the people just lost the desire to dominate. But this could change in future as world war memories fade.
Intellectual bankruptcy: I agree that the US state has been intellectually bankrupt since 1991. No doubt about that. But we should differentiate between state and people in this regard, particularly, because democracy allows the later to force the state to change. For instance, Obama in his second term can be a bold reformer.
The US still has a comfortable lead in science and technology. Fall in its share of world total with regard to the last because Korea and now China (and possibly India) have joined the race does not mean absolute decline. Likewise we can look at other fields and find that there is a formidable gap. One bears mentioning here, social sciences (except may be mainstream economics, even here non-market economics tells a different story).
[But I am not sure if US news media was ever seen to be legitimate outside the West. BBC had a greater following at least in large parts of Asia and Africa. Now Al-Jazeera, Xinhua, etc have challenged the US market dominance that allowed it (along with a few other Western countries) to be the sole linkage between Tuvalu and Belize.]
Also, no other rising power will be able to match the worldwide network of US military bases that exist by default. This is one thing that is certain. Gone are the days when one could impose bases, which USA is still trying. And rising powers will need two decades if not more to match USA in terms of power projection technology (aircraft carriers, etc). The greatest strength of the US is that it is the default option. China needlessly flexed its muscle and the first thing East Asia did was to re-invite the US, otherwise rapidly losing ground in the region due to War on Terror and GFC. And I am not sure if in the foreseeable future any Asian power can dream of intervening in a similar manner in intra-Western conflicts, which allows USA (and the West) to secure its home territory at a low cost and fight in Asia. Finally, the present disunity within the West is not irreversible. Recall how Hitler forced unity and action. A unified West would be too powerful.
And if we don’t take the necessary steps to defend ourselves we are the ” EASY ” target.
If we rely on others to defend us we are putting or heads on a chopping block and all the fancy rhetoric will mean NOTHING .
Why is it ok for the US , Russia , China and many others to have proper dfence capabilities but not Australia , we are fools.
Mr Babbage is 100per cent correct.