Australia, the United States, Japan and the Philippines should establish a formal NATO-style defence alliance to counter China’s growing military power in Asia, according to a former top adviser to Joe Biden.
Ely Ratner, who served as Biden’s assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs, also urged the Albanese government to significantly increase military spending to ensure that AUKUS does not cannibalise the defence budget and drain resources for other important investments.
He said he was concerned by Donald Trump’s lack of focus on competition with China and that he feared the US president could make damaging concessions to Beijing when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping this year.
“The threat is mounting from China. China’s ambitions have not moderated. It is building a military to be able to dominate the Indo-Pacific, and it has ambitions for which only combat-credible deterrence will prevent conflict in the Indo-Pacific,” Ratner said in an interview.
Ratner, who is visiting Australia for series of lectures organised by the Lowy Institute, said the so-called “squad” nations of the US, Australia, Japan and the Philippines share a common perspective on the need to work closer together to respond to China’s rapid military build-up.
He said that while the US and Australia had recently strengthened ties with Japan and the Philippines, these arrangements were “too ad hoc and too informal”.
“To actually get the level of integration that you would need to sustain long-term deterrence, you’re going to need more formal arrangements,” he said, expanding on an argument he first made in the Foreign Affairs journal.
“At every decision point – whether it’s building infrastructure or a communications network or purchasing a certain capability – my recommendation is that the decision should be made through the lens of ensuring it can be used collectively among a close-knit group of partners, rather than having a Frankenstein model of alliances, where we have just all these different types of systems and capabilities that don’t work well together.”
He said the pact should contain a mutual defence clause similar to NATO’s article five, which states that an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all, requiring a joint response.
The nations would also conduct joint military exercises, undertake integrated war planning and prioritise the use of common military equipment.
Ratner said that unlike NATO – which contains 32 nations spread across Europe and North America – his proposed alliance grouping would include a handful of like-minded countries in the Pacific. Other nations like New Zealand and South Korea could potentially join at a later date.
He said Australia would ultimately retain sovereign decision-making about whether to enter any conflict.
While Trump appeared blase about Australian defence spending during an October White House meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Ratner said the federal government would continue to come under pressure from the US to spend more.
The US National Defence Strategy, released in January, says the Trump administration expects its allies to spend at least 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on core military spending.
Australia currently spends around 2.03 per cent of GDP on defence.
“I don’t think President Trump’s body language on that issue should be read as a reduction of the desire to see Australia be spending more on defence,” Ratner said.
“I think there’s still an open question in Washington about whether Australia has sufficient funding to both fully fund AUKUS, which is an important priority, while fulfilling other important commitments related to missile defence, infrastructure upgrades, and other capability investments … It’s going to be important for Australia to find the resources to do all of that and not be drawing resources away from other priority areas to fund AUKUS.”
The Strategic Analysis Australia think tank last year warned that spending on the AUKUS submarine program is growing so dramatically that it is approaching the size of a standalone branch of the Defence Force, draining funding for other important military equipment.
Ratner criticised the Trump administration’s “scattershot” approach to China, saying it lacked coherence and toughness.
Trump angered China hawks last December by announcing he would allow artificial intelligence chip giant Nvidia to sell advanced chips to China and backed down on his most significant tariff threats against Beijing.
“There quite a dramatic softening of the US approach to China from one focused on competition to one that is now tilting toward accommodation,” Ratner said.
With Trump and Xi expected to meet in Beijing in early April, and possibly three more times this year, Ratner said: “I think there is concern that the Trump administration may make concessions on technology or security issues for really nothing meaningful in return.”
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Matthew Knott is the foreign affairs and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X, Facebook or email.