Why the war games in Australia by the US and its allies are such a big deal

Why the war games in Australia by the US and its allies are such a big deal

The United States and Australia have begun their biggest ever war games, involving 30,000 troops and 11 countries.

India and three other countries are attending as observers.

Fiji, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Britain, Canada and Germany are the countries taking part in the exercise, which ends on August 4.

The war games are to deal with China, which has increasingly become assertive in the Indo-Pacific region.

But the US-Australia joint military exercises are likely to raise tension in the volatile region, especially in the Taiwan Strait, where China recently held a coercive two-day military drill.

Though India is not participating directly, it is attending the military exercises, which began last Friday, as an observer, along with Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand.

The Indo-Pacific is an extremely important region through which over 80 percent of global trade and commerce passes.

Any prolonged instability in the Indo-Pacific could adversely affect the world economy and supply of essentials, which are already strained by the Ukraine war.

“The most important message that China can take from the exercise and anything that our allies and partners do together, is that we are extremely tied by the core values that exist among our many nations,” US Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said.

Largest such exercise

The exercise, called Talisman Sabre, and held every two years, began in 2005. This year will be the largest ever such exercise.

It also coincides with the visit of US Defense Secretary Llyod Austin to Papua New Guinea and Australia this week. He will join US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken for the US-Australia Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) and observe the military exercise.

To underscore the close military relationship, the USS Canberra — a US warship built by Australia, was also commissioned in Sydney during the joint exercise.

The ship, built by Australian manufacturer Austal, will become the first US warship to be commissioned in a foreign port.

View from China

But China, which held a series of military exercises around Taiwan some weeks back, tried to play down the hype created by the US-Australia joint exercise.

Chen Hong, executive director at the Asia Pacific Studies Centre of East China Normal University, told Chinese newspaper the Global Times that the military exercise was more of a “paper tiger.”

Other Chinese experts said the US was trying to coerce countries in the name of defending their security and democratic values by hyping up threats from China.

They added that by playing word games, the US is only aiming to maintain its own global hegemony and participating countries also have their own petty calculations.

The drills, taking place in various locations across Australia, will include mock land and air combat and amphibious landings.

The Chinese military drills around Taiwan coincided with the NATO summit, where leaders expressed concerns over China’s “ambitions and coercive policies” that challenged other countries’ interests, security and values.

Missed opportunity to de-escalate

Of serious concern is the fact that China and the US do not have any contact between their military leaders.

The US has been requesting a meeting between Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu and US Defense Secretary Austin.

This June both leaders could have met at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, an annual security dialogue where the US and China’s defence chiefs traditionally meet.

Experts felt this year’s gathering was an especially important opportunity for them to meet given the frequency and intensity of China’s provocative behaviour in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

But China turned down the US request, pointing out that Li was under American sanctions over China’s procurement of Russian weapons systems in 2018.

Beijing has made it clear that unless those sanctions are lifted the Chinese defence chief will not meet any US officials.

China has also suspended a series of talks with the US military commander since then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan in August 2022.

But experts see the lack of communication on China’s part as a form of leverage over the US.

“It knows that Washington is concerned about the lack of contact, and it likes that the US military feels uneasy,” says Yun Sun, director of the China Programme at Washington’s Stimpson Centre.

He adds, “By depriving US officials of security and certainty, Beijing hopes that it can pressure them to decrease the United States’s military footprint in the waters and airspace near China.”Not looking for a war

But despite its propensity for aggression in its neighbourhood, China does not want to start a war.

However, it is not worried that its brinkmanship could start one.

According to Beijing’s assessment, the US is preoccupied with the Ukraine war and is unwilling to open another front in the western Pacific.

Instead, China feels a military crisis will allow it to establish ground rules that the US will follow while operating on its periphery.

However, experts fear that such calculations could go horribly wrong and create a war that nobody is looking for.

Therefore, there is an urgent need for the two global rivals to meet and lower the rising tension in the Indo-Pacific and stabilise the situation.