Amplifying deterrence through alliances and partnerships

Australia is strongest when it works in concert with allies and partners. The challenges we face are too great to head off alone. Our security is best achieved collectively, through strong defence relationships that pool resources, amplify our capability, and network our deterrence.

Defence relationships have long been a linchpin of Australian strategy. Our enduring alliance with the United States, founded on shared values and mutual interest, has been vital in ensuring Australia's access to intelligence, technology, and extended deterrence guarantees. Australia's security is further anchored in our long-standing defence partnerships in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, particularly with Indonesia, PNG, Malaysia, and Singapore. More recently, our deepening ties with Japan, India, and the UK—via the Quad and AUKUS groupings—have given voice to the growing importance of interest-based, minilateral cooperation to Australia's security.

Looking forward, Australia must enhance cooperation among this constellation of partnerships. We must also expand the network of partners we work with. There are few if any scenarios in which Australia would face a military threat alone. Far more plausible, though still in itself unlikely, is that Australia would become embroiled in a wider, regional conflict that imperilled our neighbours as much as us.

Staving off such a threat is therefore a shared effort. In particular, we must work to collectively deter the PRC's stated willingness to resolve territorial disputes by force. Of all the potential catalysts of a large-scale war in the region, this stands out as the most likely.

Vitally, though, collective deterrence must not veer into containment. The task is not to isolate any great power, but condition their role to be restrained and responsible. The vision is that all states, regardless of size, submit to a regional order which denies the use of force as a legitimate or effective tool.

With that in mind, the strategy sets out a number of ways we will work with allies and partners to embed our national defence more effectively in a collective deterrence architecture. The approach consists in strengthening five key pillars of regional defence cooperation:

Enhance interoperability with defence forces across the region. Doing so will help bolster our capacity to work together in support of shared defence objectives. Australia already enjoys a strong foundation of interoperability with the US and its allies, which we will continue to hone through exercises like RIMPAC and Talisman Sabre. Building on this base, we will seek to increase the tempo and scale of joint exercises with our Southeast Asian partners, particularly Indonesia.

Promote shared basing and mutual access. Both are key to collective deterrence. They allow Australia and our allies and partners to distribute and combine forces regionally, making us more agile in meeting shared threats. Interspersing forces also turns an attack on one into an attack on many, prohibitively increasing the costs of aggression. In that vein, Australia will seek to scale and integrate the ADF's regional presence by pursuing reciprocal access agreements across Southeast Asia, like the one recently signed with Japan. We will also support increased US port visits and continued rotational deployments of US Marines to Darwin.

Scale up technology sharing with key allies. Technology sharing is key to ensuring that the high-end capabilities needed to deter aggression are distributed and integrated across the region. While Australia envisages a broad network of technology partners, including Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and France, the AUKUS initiative stands out as a critical opportunity to leverage the US and UK's industrial prowess in emerging defence technologies. The agenda we envisage with our AUKUS partners goes well beyond nuclear propulsion, as important as that will be to Australia's future submarines. We see AUKUS cooperation as vital to maintaining Australia's capability edge in the context of quantum, AI, and hypersonic developments.

Work with allies and partners to shore up regional defence supply chains. Our collective defence capability relies on assured access to various critical products, including jet fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and advanced semi-conductors. Following the model of our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with South Korea, Australia will seek to more actively embed supply chain resilience initiatives in our defence cooperation activities.

Support collective deterrence through capacity-building initiatives. We have a long history of supporting our neighbours' defence capability through personnel exchanges and training and education programs. Australia will continue to deliver high-quality capacity-building programs, driven by our partners' security priorities, under an expanded Defence Cooperation Program. These efforts will help enhance our neighbours' ability to work effectively as part of a broader deterrence architecture.