Indonesia has always been our greatest security threat and this is why I have objected to our military involvement in the ME because Indonesian Muslims would regard this as did Osama bin Laden: an invasion of the Muslim Holy Lands by infidels.
Our chief concern should be an economically strong Indonesia backed militarily by China to protect China's economic interests in this region. Our obvious anti-China /pro-Trump recently will, no doubt cause a Chinese reset of its global supply chain where Australia will find itself isolated with the USA and a Chinese non-preferred supplier.
Since the GFC China has kept us out of recession by affording us an over $40 billion/year trade surpluses. If China, like Trump had instituted trade strategies to balance Aussie/China trade , we'd be in recession years ago. No doubt China would see our Navy's backing US Navy to break China's claim to the South China Seaways as ironic because those shipping lanes designed by China to protect its supply of coal, iron ore and base metals (of which Australia is the major supplier) in the event that the USA might attempt trade embargoes on China as it has done on Russia & Iran.
If we want to overtly support the USA in its quest to stymie China's economic growth, then we better get cracking in diversifying trade away from being China dependant; otherwise we have to adopt a more customer friendly attitude towards China.
I have been advocating for years that our Government should be leading Australia's industrial development so that we can diversify trade and control our economic destiny in an ever increasing polarised world. We cant afford to pick sides any longer, IMO, we simply have to develop our own industrial/economic competitive advantages and develop our armed forces to protect ourselves rather than riding shotgun for Uncle Sam overseas.
We need to: -develop iron & steel manufacture -develop Aluminium and base metals smelting and manufacture -develop food processing to enable trade diversification ( including fisheries) -develop infrastructure to support "made in Australia"
Multinationals wont do this for us . We simply have to DYO.
Our Government has no qualms about sending half a Trillion over the next year in countering the negative impact of CV-19.
Just think if the Government had invested this enormous amount of cash in setting up massive Steel manufacturing plants in both WA & Qld with a connecting railway between Emerald & the Pilbara. It seems that all our Government can do is to react to crisis (management by crisis) rather than beeen like Singapore, South Korea or Japan by acting with well devised economic plans.
So in summary, our chief threat is our own laziness: "farming out" our economic, industrial and security needs to others.
The mantra is: "We'll import it or outsource it mate"
