America’s presence in the Top End is ramping up.
On Monday, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds was forced to reject suggestions Australia could position US missiles near Darwin, citing the fact that, despite rhetoric from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the dissolution of a prohibitive Cold War treaty, the US has made no such requests.
Along with a demand to join Trump’s growing quasi war with Iran, Pompeo left the question of missiles up in the air (!) but called on Australia to sideline economic ties with China in lieu of defence ties: “You can sell your soul for a pile of soybeans or you can protect your people,” he told a Centre for Independent Studies panel at the NSW State Library.
But while they might not be hosting missiles in Darwin, the US has launched a $300 million blitz across naval infrastructure in the Northern Territory and this year hit the maximum rollout of 2,500 US marines, a significant jump since the first rotation of 200 marines in 2012.
With a Labor MP simultaneously calling to scrap the Chinese lease over Port Darwin, Crikey dives into the NT’s complex history with defence.
When did the US arrive?
“The first major use of the Northern Territory training facilities by the United States goes back to the Hawke government, when the B52s based in Guam used to fly down for some training over land,” executive director of the Australia Defence Association Neil James says. “Because if you’re based on an island in the Pacific Ocean, you don’t get a lot of practice low level flying over land.”
Historically speaking, James notes that the territory has been largely attractive for training areas — traditionally unavailable for US bases scattered throughout the Pacific — with marines based in Japan also undertaking three month rotations throughout the late ’80s and much of the ’90s. He also points out that Singapore actually has the most troops in Australia at any one point, with the Australia-Singapore Military Training Initiative expected to hit a maximum of 14,000 troops training across Queensland for over 18 weeks a year for 25 years.
The NT, which regularly hosts other massive international exercises such as Exercise Pitch Black and Kakadu, benefits economically as Australia’s de facto military territory, with total defence expenditure in 2017-18 contributing to the tune of $2.1 billion, or 8.4%, of gross state product.
James, who celebrated his 45th anniversary serving with the ADF in January last year, also argues that Darwin has a cultural acceptance of defence exercises and infrastructure, both because of the historical US presence and the 1942 bombings.
“And it was bombed 59 times; there were weekly air raid drills in Darwin until 1965,” he says. “So in the culture of the city — admittedly a lot of people move in and out of Darwin — but in the institutional culture of the city, there’s a perception of vulnerability that you don’t get if you live in Hobart, for example.”
In 2011, Julia Gillard and Barack Obama announced the United States Force Posture Initiatives — US marines rotational force (consisting of six-month training exercises run during Darwin’s dry season) and Enhanced Air Cooperation activities (which consist largely of flying activities and first commenced in 2017)
There are, of course, exceptions, with the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network aiming their July 2018 “Give ‘Em the Boot” campaign against the USFPI and, in the words of former NSW Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, Australia’s compliance with the US war machine. Go back further, and Indigenous women led a 700 women-strong, two-week long peaceful protest at the US-Australian satellite surveillance base Pine Gap in 1983.
Darwin vs China
Still, the Northern Territory has become increasingly strategically valuable in the face of China’s growing presence throughout South East Asia, specifically into what James calls a geopolitical constraint known as the “first island chain”, roughly from Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines into Indonesia.
China’s ongoing dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, political pressure to take back Taiwan (and its geographically crucial eastern ports for deep-sea submarines), and the construction of artificial islands along sandbanks and reefs in the South China Sea have all ramped up over the past five years and, according to James, constitute examples of China attempting to “neutralise” this constraint.
This leaves Western allies with the second island chain, consisting of Guam, the Marshall Islands, other Pacific Islands and arguably Darwin as an “anchor”.
While Australia has shown a willingness to pull up stumps with China on security issues such as Huawei, we’re similarly pressed by economic ties. While politicians across both sides of politics may have anonymously agreed with Labor’s Nick Champion in calling to end the Chinese-company Landbridge’s 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin, signed by the NT government in 2015 under a $500 million deal, a Coalition MP warned that:
“His concerns are spot on, but right now Beijing holds some pretty powerful economic levers against Australia, so any move that could annoy the Chinese Government is pretty dangerous.”
It’s a tension that, by any measure, will only increase in coming months and years.
Sell your soul for soybeans???? Tell that to the mid west farmers whose principal market is …..CHINA. We should send Pompeo, who is a numbskull, packing and tell the Yanks to send someone competent.
Why the NT? Two perspectives. One is the the cold-blooded military/strategic thinking of those types who see enemies behind every bush, are always preparing for the last war, and have no concept of peaceful coexistence and cooperation for mutual benefit. The other is the sheer desirability of the NT during the Dry. Glorious sunny warm weather and plenty of space to move around in. Evening meals and cold beer near the sea in the various boat clubs. Even the Buildup and the Wet have their attractions. Bit tough when your years pile up, but exotic and appealing when you’re young. Minimum of clothes, which also goes for the overheated local and visiting sheilas looking for fun. A paradise for those grunts from from shithole rust-belt towns in the US who might otherwise be in Korea or Iraq. But not too many of them please.
If “protecting your people” means signing on to the warrior empire’s permanent wars the soybeans would be the attractive option. Australia, as a middle power in the Southeast Asian context but a tiny power alongside the two quarrelling giants, needs to learn to manoeuvre diplomatically between the USA, China, India and Japan. Our government leaders should get very close to the leadership of countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh for lessons in how to live next to the elephant without getting crushed. And they could take some lessons from Vietnam about how to give the giant some pain when the giant gets stroppy.
I may be old fashioned but I thought hands in the pockets, especially when greeting visitors, was a faux pas.
Especially in the military!
Playing with himself probably. Not having defended this country from anything since the war with Japan, that’s largely what the military has been doing since then. Going on rampages into lands far away with whom we had no quarrel, then thinking they’re heroes of some sort. Give ’em the boot indeed!
I wonder if Gillard would have signed up to the same agreement if it were Trump who was proposing it?
I can’t help but feel a bit bemused by Neil James’ comment about “B52’s from Guam practising low-level flying over land in Australia.” A classic “hammer looking for nails scenario”. I’ve seen the other side of this coin in Hanoi. That sad hulk of a downed B52 on display in a park. Kinda crest-fallen; twisted and burnt but the “mailed fist clutching olive branch and lightening bolt” logo still visible on the side. In the nearby Air Defence museum I asked how many B52’s had been shot down during the raids (initiated by the con job “Gulf of Tonkin incident). The curator told me 28. I can’t vouch for this but there sure were a lot of cooking pots and other utilitarian objects about made from this bounty of scrap metal.
Other aviation scraps were on display inside. Bits of warplanes and flyer’s helmets stacked up like discarded egg shells. And that iconic photo of a tiny Vietnamese girl soldier with an AK47 prodding a big boofy Yank, all of 6’2” and 300 lbs, out of the jungle. Iconic of what happens when you invade someone else’s homeland and they rise up in its defence.