Fearing China, Australia rethinks its defence strategy

THE BERLIN Wall still stood the last time Australia took a hard, independent look at the state of its defence. It was then “one of the most secure countries in the world…distant from the main centres of global military confrontation”, a defence review concluded in 1986. A new review, commissioned by the centre-left government of Anthony Albanese, the prime minister, and released in declassified form on April 24th, starkly concludes that Australia’s “strategic circumstances are now radically different.” The risks of military escalation and major conflict in the Indo-Pacific region are rising. Concerns about China demand a radical makeover of .The review sees China’s military build-up as “the largest and most ambitious of any country since the end of the second world war”. It considers that it is “occurring without transparency or reassurance” about . The budding superpower’s assertion of sovereignty over the South China Sea threatens a rules-based order on which Australia, a country of 26m that is heavily reliant on global trade, depends. The ability of America, Australia’s ally, to guarantee regional security is being challenged.