This is part three in a series. For the full series, go here.
The US Defence Department could have no greater friend than Australia’s own Richard Marles, who has become the political gift that keeps on giving.
Midway through last year, barely two months after taking office, the defence minister publicly endorsed what has become the holy grail of US defence operations: moving from a relationship of “interoperability” with its close allies to a state of “interchangeability”.
Marles made the commitment at a speech he gave under the approving gaze of diplomats and military types at prominent Washington think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
“We are making big investments in defence capital infrastructure to support, maintain and sustain the growing number of Australian and American forces. We will operationalise a regular presence and an increased exercise tempo,” Marles said, before adding the killer lines everyone wanted to hear: “We will move beyond interoperability to interchangeability. And we will ensure we have all the enablers in place to operate seamlessly together, at speed.”
To the untrained ear, interoperability and interchangeability might seem to be a distinction without a difference. But if you know the code it means something else entirely.
Moving from interoperability to interchangeability with close allies, including Australia and the UK, has been a pet project of United States Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday for several years. Put simply, “interchangeability” fully blurs the lines between different military forces by using common equipment, which in turn may mean a common industrial base.
Admiral Gilday reinforced his push earlier this year, telling a gathering of military, business and academic figures at the US Surface Navy Association conference that “we are trying to entice our high-end partners to go beyond interoperability into interchangeability”.
“It’s a push to put us in a position where, if we do have to fight tonight, we’re not stumbling.”
Gilday listed several examples where international navies were approaching interchangeability. These included the US taking operational control of international aircraft carriers in the US European Command in late 2022. US allies were also part of a US defence-wide data sharing project, Project Overmatch, and were purchasing “relevant equipment”.
Marles’ overt endorsement of the US Navy’s aims received scant coverage at the time outside specialist defence media.
Writing in The Australian Financial Review, Sydney University’s James Curran said Marles’ rhetoric on “interchangeability” with US forces went to the heart of a debate that ought to be had in Australia about policy flexibility and autonomy in the age of AUKUS. He said that it recalled a prediction made in 2016 by former ambassador to the US Kim Beazley that “in the next five years the Americans are going to talk about integration”.
What does it mean for Australian sovereignty?
Allan Gyngell, a former director-general of the Australian Office of National Assessments, founding executive director of the Lowy Institute, and one-time foreign policy adviser to the Keating government, said Marles’ use of the terms interoperability and interchangeability “certainly complicates the debate about sovereignty”.
“Both ‘interoperability’ and ‘interchangeability’ imply that the equipment can be used automatically in the defence operations of either country without backward reference,” Gyngell told Crikey.
Hugh White, emeritus professor at ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and a former senior official in the Department of Defence, said he was “very struck” by the formulation used by Marles in his speech to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
“It conveys a fundamental shift in the basis of Australia’s decisions about how we invest in defence,” he wrote in an email to Crikey. “When we abandoned ‘forward defence’ in the 1970s — after Vietnam — we moved to a policy of building our armed forces specifically to defend Australia independently, rather than designing them to fight alongside our allies.”
This was not an abandonment of the idea that Australia would fight alongside our allies, he said, rather that we counted on the forces “we designed for our own defence” to contribute to US-led coalitions if and when required within limits.
“Marles’ words in his CSIS speech — especially his talk of ‘moving beyond interoperability’ and of making ‘big investments’ to ‘support, maintain and sustain’ US as well as Australian forces — is the strongest statement we have seen that the old post-Vietnam defence of Australia focus … has been abandoned in favour of a policy to design, build and invest in our forces specifically to support American forces in US-led coalition operations,” White said.
“This is, quite literally and unambiguously, a return to forward defence.”
White acknowledged that Marles didn’t initiate the shift, which had been underway “since the mid-2000s” but had accelerated sharply recently, especially after the Morrison government’s defence strategic update in 2020.
Another important message in Marles’ speech, White said, was his talk of “capital infrastructure” to allow Australia and the US to operate together, as it suggests Australia would spend money “not just to exercise but to ‘operate’ — conduct combat operations — from Australian soil”, something which had not happened “since WW2”.
“It contrasts with Marles’ insistence elsewhere that the Labor policy of no foreign military bases on our soil remains inviolate,” White said, adding that this shift began with former prime minister Julia Gillard agreeing to US Marine rotations through Darwin in 2011.
Are these policy shifts a good idea? White said that depends on whether you think closer alignment with US strategy and objectives in Asia — and especially in relation to China — is “the best way for Australia to navigate the dangerous decades ahead”. Regardless, such a big shift in defence policy has been undertaken without “frank debate and acknowledgement”, he said.
Crikey sought comment from Marles’ office on the question of interchangeability but received no reply.
Are you concerned about Australia being drawn further into the military orbit of the US? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Why, oh why, are so many politicians in Australia in thrall to America to the extent of using the peoples’ money to support a dying nation? America will use Australia as a position of defence from Middle and far east attack, and while we are desperately trying to fend them off America will gee us on while they sltither into their bomb shelters and send us thoughts and prayers. Think back to how long it took them to get involved in two world wars, the second only because they were bombed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour. Don’t think for a minute because we’re buying their shoddy secondhand goods and promising support that they will rush to help when we need it. They are taking Australia for a backward country and we’ve proved them right with twp PMs falling for the schmaltz.
We just need to ask the Ukrainians how the armaments the U.S are shipping to them are performing. Better still, ask the Russians.
How about asking the Ukrainians how long they can sustain the casualties they are suffering? Also why their “leaders” chose not to avoid this avoidable war? Ask them too whether war is nation-building- that being the subliminal message of Anzac Day.
We will operationalise a regular presence and an increased exercise tempo,
This sounds like another permanent US base on our soil.
Sovereignty? What a joke.
Our military swears allegiance, not to the Australian people but to a foreign king. They’re the King’s warships, they’re the King’s fighter jets, they’re the King’s army. It even says so on the sides of our ships and on the signposts of their bases.
Sovereignty? We’re living on land stolen by our foreign monarchy… and haven’t even acknowledged it or sought treaty with the original inhabitants, even after 230 years.
It’s an insult to hear “sovereignty” from the mouths of our political leaders as if it is something we actually hold.
We’re still a colonial backwater, a satrapy.
Bit by bit we are outsourcing our defence to the USA. Where this leads is obvious. Disaster.
Disasters clearly plural! As can be clearly observed in the conditions that resulted and still affect the countries that they attacked in those military adventures.
In The Vie Nam Farrago it was across S E Asia where Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam all suffered extensive bombing, mine laying and defoliation, the results of which are still evident in deaths, injury , limb loss and teratogenic birth defects.
Afghanistan after many years of conflict from when the USA decided to turn Afghanistan into a Viet Nam for the USSR through to The Afghan Imbroglio has left a country in ruins.
A country now controlled by the Taliban , just one off shoot of those “Brave Freedom Fighters of Ronald Reagan.” a rigid Theocracy with no regard for the education and rights of women, let alone their complete opposition to any kind of human rights.
The there was The Iraq Fiasco, an immoral and illegal attack based on a pack of lies, dissimulation and fear mongering.
Iraq was a Shi’i country that had nothing to do with the events of 11 September, for most of the attackers in the events of 11 September were 15 Wahhabi Salafi from the Sunni KSA, a major funder of Sunni Islamist Terrorism.
It led to the deaths and displacement of thousands of the people of Iraq as well as the almost total damage to the country, its economy. and infrastructure, such including the murderous incident at Fallujah, not to forget Abu Ghraib.
It was to then bring about The Da’esh Disaster that still affected parts of Iraq, Syria and the surrounding countries, and still exercises some influence.
Gosh! An article on which we’re allowed to comment. That’s a rare thing in today’s edition. Not much to add, except to say that given the acceleration of technology, we could well be fighting an unpredictable and vastly different type of war by the time these submarines and permanent military bases are established. (Come on, Crikey, it’s over! Open up to some solid, cathartic News Corpse bashing from us Commentors).
Why O why are we unable to comment on the preceding articles?
Is it because fee expenses settlement are yet to be decided?
Yes it would Eva been good to have a say on all those articles. A summary of the comments would make a great birthday present for Rupes and Lachie. Of course they don’t care as long as the money keeps rolling in . .. .
yep – should they ever be called upon, these subs will be about as effective as the Maginot Line was in preventing the Nazi blitzkrieg
Even if we could read the responses to those fortunate correspondents who have taken the time to have contribute to the discussion.
Oh, how easily and seamlessly the colonizers have become the colonized. Given Aboriginal peoples have not ceded sovereignty, this is a lie built on a lie. Do two lies now make a truth in a post-truth world?