Brendan Nicholson, defence editor | The Australian | June 02, 2012 12:00AM
A SECRET chapter in the Rudd government's 2009 defence white paper detailed a plan to fight a war with China, in which the navy's submarines would help blockade its trade routes, and raised the prospect of China firing missiles at targets in Australia in retaliation.
A new book, The Kingdom and the Quarry: China, Australia, Fear and Greed, reveals how Force 2030 set out in the white paper - to include 12 big conventional submarines with missiles, revolutionary Joint Strike Fighters, air warfare destroyers and giant landing ships - was being prepared for a possible war with Australia's main trading partner.
In the lead-up to the release of the paper in May 2009, The Australian reported extensively on the debate among Australia's security and intelligence agencies over whether China was likely to pose a threat as it increased investment in its armed forces.
The public version of the paper stopped short of declaring that war with China was what the authors feared. To avoid offending the Chinese, and to create a degree of deniability, discussion of possible future conflict relied on euphemisms such as a "major power adversary".
As well, the new book's author, The Australian's economics editor David Uren, reveals that Treasury came under intense pressure to prepare detailed costings for a mass of new equipment but most of that information also disappeared from the public version of the white paper.
The book describes the fierce debate between key figures in the ADF, who argued that Australia needed to be prepared for a conflict with China, and intelligence agencies that said China was not expansionist and was unlikely to pose such a threat.
The public version of the white paper outlined the strategic environment and the military equipment to be acquired. "But it did not include a top-secret chapter examining in detail the anticipated threats and the structure of the defence force Australia needed to deal with them," it says.
The missing chapter focused on Australia's ability to fight an air-sea battle alongside the US against China. The plan was for blockades distant from China but designed to control its sea routes and stop the flow of natural resources on which its industrial engine depended.
"A major power adversary would be expected to respond to these blockades by mining and attacking ports," the paper said.
"Part of the Defence thinking is that in the event of a conflict with the US, China would attempt to destroy Pine Gap, the US-Australia signals facility near Alice Springs, which is crucial for guiding US military operations in Asia ... the paper envisages a very different world in which Australian naval operations alongside the US in, say, the South China Sea, could lead to direct Chinese attack on Australia ...
"The capability of China to reach out 5000km and touch Australia was a new element of the strategic environment."
It meant that Australia needed a much more capable military able to operate at distance and defend locally.
None of this was in the public version, Uren notes, but there was enough in the public version, when it was put together with the well-briefed media commentary about the Chinese threat, for the message to get through to Beijing.
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