Transcript

Was China's live fire exercise off Australia's coast permissible under international law? What might have been the rationale behind this exercise?

Does this fit into a bigger pattern of Chinese maritime coercion, or was it a standalone incident?

What are the strategic implications for Australia of China's growing blue water naval capabilities? How should Australia respond?

In this episode Jennifer Parker and Douglas Guilfoyle join David Andrews to discuss China's recent naval operations off Australia, their legality, and the strategic lessons for Australia.

(This transcript is partly AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)

Jennifer Parker

As much as we tend to say China's done all of these things and nobody's stopped them, there are actually key points where they have stopped and where they have stopped is because of concern about a US reaction.

Douglas Guilfoyle

It's called the People's Liberation Army Navy for a reason, which would strike most of us as a bit of a contradiction in terms. So there has been an effort to territorialize the South China Sea.

Jennifer Parker

You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific produced by the ANU National Security College.

David Andrews

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm David Andrews, Senior Manager for Policy and Engagement at the ANU National Security College. Today's podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and we pay our respects to their elders past and present. Today I'm joined by Professor Douglas Guilfoyle and Jennifer Parker for a discussion on China's maritime coercion and the actions of a People's Liberation Army Navy flotilla that was recently operating off Australia's coast.
To briefly introduce our guests, Douglas Guilfoyle is a Professor of International Law at UNSW Canberra – where he's also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. His principal areas of research are maritime security, the international law of the sea, and international and transnational criminal law, with a particular specialization in areas including maritime law enforcement and the law of naval warfare.

Jennifer Parker is an Expert associate at NSC, an adjunct fellow in naval studies at UNSW Canberra, and the Nancy Bentley Associate Fellow in Indo-Pacific Maritime Affairs at the Council on Geostrategy. Prior to this, Jennifer had over 20 years of service with the Royal Australian Navy specializing as a principal warfare officer and completing advanced training in anti-submarine warfare. Jen and Douglas, thanks so much for being with us.

Douglas Guilfoyle

Pleasure to be here.

Jennifer Parker

Thanks for having us.

David Andrews

Well, as we commence, obviously these are events that have been much talked about, much publicized in the news over the last month or so. But to help set the scene and I guess for any listeners who may not, funnily enough, be aware of what's been going on in this regard. Jen, perhaps could you give us a quick sort of whistle stop overview of what happened and why this was such big news in Australia.

 

Jennifer Parker

Yeah, more than happy to. Now, if you haven't come across this, that means you haven't turned on a TV, the radio or the internet in the last month. But, so what we had was in February, I think around the 12th of February was the first kind of public report from the Australian Department of Defence. There was a Chinese naval task group. I know everyone keeps talking about a flotilla. In my mind, a flotilla is much bigger. But Chinese naval task group of three ships. So we had a Renhai cruiser, which is one of the most advanced warships in the world. A Jiangkai frigate and a tanker and they were first kind of not detected but promulgated by the Department of Defence as being in the Coral Sea. They then proceeded down the east coast of Australia dropping outside the exclusive economic zone to conduct a gunnery firing which I'm sure we will get into and then circumnavigated Australia and it managed to maintain the interest of the Australian media for a good three weeks which was interesting I think that's the greatest focus we've had on naval capability by AUKUS in Australian media for three weeks. And I think the question was why did it capture the attention? And really, because it is the first time we have seen a Chinese naval task group circumnavigate Australia. Now, it's not the first time we've seen a Chinese naval task group operate in the vicinity of Australia. We have, of course, had visits from Chinese naval ships to Australia over...a number of years. And of course, during the search for MH370 in 2014, we saw a much larger Chinese naval task group actually visit and operate in the southern Indian Ocean. So it's not unprecedented, but it certainly is uncommon and I think representative of the growing blue water naval capability. But what was uncommon, I think, was how it captured the imagination of the Australian media.

David Andrews

Douglas, was there anything that stood out you in particular other than what Jen has noted?

Douglas Guilfoyle

I'd endorse everything that Jen said. It did seem to capture more attention interestingly enough than say the, I believe it was 2023 episode where a so-called Chinese spy ship observed Talisman Sabre and then the episode in 2024, I think it was when a Chinese spy ship passed within 50 nautical miles of a Defence facility on the West Coast of Australia. So it's not without precedent but there was something I think about it being three vessels and then going on to conduct a live fire exercise that disrupted air traffic that particularly somehow seized the imagination. Also, I suppose from the perspective of our New Zealand cousins, this came really close on the heels of the memorandum of understanding between China and the Cook Islands over the blue economy. So that idea of the expanding Chinese zone of influence was very much front of mind. And we had the US commander of Indo-Pac in Canberra at time, didn't we Jen, as well? So there was certainly a kind of, there was an atmospheric, I doubt you can time the arrival of a naval task group precisely to when you have a visiting diplomat, but there was certainly an atmospherics around it.

Jennifer Parker

Yeah, that’s certainly true. mean, one of the questions I actually got from a journalist was, did they time it to coincide with Admiral Paparo visiting Australia, in fact, visiting the National Security College? The answer to that is almost certainly not. But still, was interesting timing that kind of added to the air of lots of naval things happening in the vicinity of Australia.

David Andrews

Well, why don't we stay focused on that live fire incident that I think maybe had it not been for that, this would maybe not have gathered quite as much attention as it did. But we saw in the Tasman Sea one or perhaps a number of, I think, gunnery exercises, but some speculated might have been sort of more than that in the live fire sense. as you say, there was disruptions to civil air traffic passing across from New Zealand to Australia.

I'll, I'll defer to the experts, but Jen, could you maybe flesh out that for me? Have I missed anything? Are there any crucial details I've lost over?

Jennifer Parker

Look, I'm not sure I'm an expert. I’ve certainly done a lot of gunnery firings previously. And I guess this did capture the imagination of the Australian media and many thought it was threatening towards Australia. We should highlight that this Chinese Naval Task Group did leave Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone to conduct the gunnery firing. They can do it in Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone. I'm sure Doug will get into a second. So about 340 nautical miles from Eden. Now that is a long way from Australia. That's kind of the distance between, I think I was saying at the time, Canberra and Melbourne. So not close. It looks like on the first day they went into what would be some sort of formation. So in naval parlance, we call it formation one, which is basically ships moving to a column. And you'll do that often when you're conducting a gunnery firing and you'll lay a target. And there is some evidence to say they laid some sort of target that they were going to fire at. Now, whether they did or did not fire on the first day, it's not actually entirely clear.

It looks like perhaps they didn't, but what they did do is issue warnings, which is common. So when you're conducting a gunnery firing on the high seas, you'll issue warnings on VHF (Very high frequency) to ships in the vicinity and on what is a civil aviation emergency circuit that you would call guard in military terms to let aircraft know in the region that you're conducting this gunnery firing and request they stay at a certain distance and a certain altitude. So they did do that. There are questions about.

When they did that, was it before the serial, et cetera, et What they didn't do is inform New Zealand or Australia that they intended to conduct the gunnery firing. And that was one of the key points in the media that we took the view that we should have had 24 to 48 hours notice. And when I say we, that's Australia, that was one of the common comments. That said though, there is no obligation under international law for a task group 340 nautical miles from our coast to inform us that they intend to do the gunnery firing.

On the second day, looks like they did conduct some sort of medium range gunnery firing, certainly not a missile firing as was reported in our media. And those two events did cause, I think in Senate estimates, Air Services Australia said about 49 aircraft to divert from their route across the Tasman. So that's kind of what happened.

So that kind of what happened.

David Andrews

Could we maybe focus on that legality aspect Douglas, because I think that's something that it feels like perhaps overnight everyone became experts in sort of international law and maritime law and sort of what is right wrong right….

Douglas Guilfoyle

Not for the first time. But just on the nature of the exercises, the one thing I picked up as a non-technical specialist in the media coverage that I found very interesting was that apparently one of the targets they may have deployed for practice was called a killer tomato because it's a very large red ball, which I think also appears on several lists of the hundred worst movies ever made, the attack of the killer tomatoes.

Jennifer Parker

That is the correct naval term. So well done Douglas.

Douglas Guilfoyle

Right, there you go, some credibility restored. So in terms of the international law, I think there's a couple of interesting points here, but certainly the major Western naval powers have always taken the view that the freedom of the high seas encompasses the freedom to conduct military exercises at sea. And under the law of the sea convention, the freedoms of the high seas continue to apply in the exclusive economic zone of a coastal state, unless and to the extent that they conflict with the resource jurisdiction of the coastal state. So the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone is not a big territorial sea. It's not like it's part of Australia's sovereign territory, but we have exclusive rights to things like fisheries and oil and gas exploitation and to establish artificial islands. But so long as you're not interfering with those powers of the coastal state or the actual exercise of those rights, then high seas freedoms continue to exist. And certainly, for example, the United States has taken the view that that also includes intelligence and surveillance activities outside the territorial sea, potentially aimed at a coastal state. Now, historically, China has taken the view that you cannot conduct intelligence and surveillance exercises in the exclusive economic zone because that threatens, as they put it, the sovereignty and national security of the coastal state and other states meant to act with due regard towards the coastal state in the way they use the EEZ. Oddly enough, that legal concern has never bothered them when they have deployed spy ships to our EEZ, but it's something that's constantly put against us. And also when we have things like Australian Poseidon surveillance aircraft in the South China Sea, we've seen incidents in recent years with flares being dropped in their path. So China will say, are doing this to protect our national security interests in the Exclusive Economic Zone. But what I do find interesting then is in context that they've kind of sailed through our EZ but very deliberately left it before conducting the live fire exercise. So one of the things about international law in general and particularly the international law of the sea is that the first basic unstated rule is turnabout is fair play. Any rule you assert against the world, you have to be prepared for the world to assert against.

So if China wants to continue to maintain a position that live fire exercises are unacceptable in its EEZ, that becomes rather awkward if it starts doing it in other countries EEZs. So, the strict legal position, as generally interpreted by Western powers, would be there is no problem with military exercises in another state's EEZ. Obviously, it's best practice to inform them that you're going to do it, but there isn't a legal obstacle.

But there's an interplay here, I think, in China's strategy or strategic messaging about an awareness that if it starts doing these things in an EZ, then it's going to have a harder time protesting them being done in its EZ.

Jennifer Parker

I just want to pick up on a point that seems to be missed in the initial elements of the media coverage of the gunnery firing is that warships do gunnery firings all the time at sea. This is what warships do and they’ll do it to maintain currency, they'll do it for maintenance on the weapons systems. They might do it to send a message, but it is really, really common. And this term about best practice, came from media and I think it was kind of a wooly term of saying we would like for them to tell us. But certainly, you know, we wouldn't, I don't think we would and certainly most countries wouldn't be telling other countries that they're conducting a gunnery fire when they're that far off the coast. It's just not something that you consider. And also it's not something you would want to establish as common practise because when you start doing those sort of things, you restrict your own freedoms and they start to expect it.

David Andrews

I suppose, yeah, the more you start chipping away at that set of freedoms and principles and laws that we, you know, most people have agreed to, or at least follow, even if they haven't ratified it or signed it fully. If you start, I guess, compartmentalizing or territorializing the seas in that way and pushing that boundary further, it seems to me that would only undermine the safety and security of the seas for everyone if you start following that path, is that?

Douglas Guilfoyle

Well, China's in a bit of a cleft stick here, right? Because historically they've taken the view towards the maritime of essentially a continental power. It's called the People's Liberation Army Navy for a reason, which would strike most of us as a bit of a contradiction in terms, right? So there has been an effort to territorialize the South China Sea to treat this as, and you see this in sort of the Chinese rhetoric, as sort of blue Chinese soil or blue Chinese territory. And there's therefore an incentive from that point of view to try and assert rights that international law doesn't really recognise in the South China Sea. And China's always been deliberately ambiguous about the scope of its supposedly protected interests in the South China Sea and has offered varying legal justifications for them. But on the other hand, we now see that China is increasingly a great naval power. And one of the criticisms of the law of the sea historically has been that it is overly favourable to great naval powers because of its emphasis on things like mobility and the freedom of the high seas and those freedoms still applying in the exclusive economic zone. So in a sense, there is a question for China about how you navigate those two competing imperatives, how you try to have a special set of rules that apply in your own backyard, but equally attempt to fully utilise the freedoms of navigation that favour you as you transition from being kind of a coastal defence navy to a blue water expeditionary navy.

Jennifer Parker

Just to pick up on that territorialization of the high seas, exclusive economics. You know, one of the things that we as a country need to be careful of in our own narrative is when we do that. And certainly, some of the commentators were like, they're not allowed to do that in our exclusive economic zone. They're in Australian waters, et cetera, et cetera. And we were kind of applying that kind of territorial view to the maritime domain when we felt vulnerable and felt threatened. I think it was important that the Australian government, when they spoke on the issue, talked about the fact that they allowed to be there, and they are allowed to do that. I think that's really important. I think I had a piece out actually, that Sydney Morning Herald, to name drop that talked about this and said, you know, have ability to freely operate where we must, specifically in areas like the South China Sea and that sort of thing. And so we can't afford to be hypocritical on these points because we will constrain our own operations. So I think that territorialization of the military domain that we often attribute to China – in a much smaller way – we actually saw that in the Australian discourse around this, which I think is concerning.

David Andrews

It's an interesting point because I think it speaks to something almost in our, in what sort of collective psyche in a way that we're so unused to, but you said before Douglas that there are these instances where the PLA-N has sort of shadowed or operated outside of some exercise zones and things, but that's slightly removed from the suburban context. And if it's sort of that the Tasman feels a bit more like the backyard in a way, and we're not necessarily used to seeing other fleets, be they Chinese or any other, operating in that way. And that to me, I think is one of the reasons why there was such a strong reaction is because not just that it was unexpected, but it's almost that it was removed from another context where you could say it's more explicable if there's a observing RIMPAC or Talisman Sabre or something like that. But to do that in sort of this very peaceable, sort of really shared waters between Australia and New Zealand and I guess, New Caledonia, to some extent, that that was what drove it in some ways. And maybe to play devil's advocate here, that there were lots of people commenting saying that that's what made this so controversial and so in need of a stronger response from government. Wasn't that the legalities were in question, but it was like, why are they here and why do they need to be here?

Now, I don't know how you feel about that as sort of a counterpoint, but I think it speaks to a kind of almost emotional or psychological reaction. And I don't mean that to downplay it, but it's a different kind of response, isn't it?

Douglas Guilfoyle

I think it speaks to some of our own unstated assumptions about Australian, the Australian strategic outlook and our own sense of our security. And Jen may have a different take on this, but I seem to recall there was an early 20th century policy document that talked about Australia sitting behind a sheltering screen of Pacific islands in terms of our strategic outlook and not wanting to see third powers enter that periphery. And while we no longer, well, in fact, fairly recently we've heard senior politicians describe some of our Pacific neighbours as being in our backyard and we've sort of learnt to our cost that that sort of patronising language doesn't go down very well with sovereign independent states, I still do think there is this sort of Australian view that there is a kind of soft sphere of influence and while we can understand why in the South China Sea there might be clashes between the Chinese Coast Guard and the Philippines Coast Guard or between different fishermen. We view all of that as somehow occurring over there..and this is our sort of peaceable sphere. And suddenly it seems rather startling when, as it were, the world comes to us. That's just not something we're used to thinking of. We sit behind our little screen and we venture out into the world.

So think it was a bit of a shock to both a slightly complacent outlook, but also a slightly kind of unstated sphere of influence view we have about what constitutes, to use the old terminology, our backyard. Jen?

Jennifer Parker

Yeah, look, I actually think we should be writing to the PNL-A Navy and thanking them for coming to visit because I think it forced some really important conversations for Australia. And I think that in the end, we felt quite vulnerable. Cause of the fact, you know, that Doug mentioned, we are not used to having these foreign task groups operating in the vicinity of Australia when they're not visiting Australia, for a port visit. And even when we talk about the fact that China has operated here before, that is relatively new, right? This whole idea of a spy ship coming down to observe Talisman Sabre – well, they've only really been doing that since 2017. Before that, the only time they really visited was the odd port visit. And of course, as I mentioned before, the large naval task group they sent down the southern Indian Ocean to look for MH317, and if we actually go back to that time in 2014, we actually reacted strongly to that too, and felt quite vulnerable about their presence as well. So I think that we shouldn't be kind of calibrating our response and saying it deserves a stronger response because actually there's no reason they can't operate there. And what you do, right? The whole point is to surveil them, or to be honest, you can do that via satellite. The reason you send ships and aircraft is to actually let them know that we know that they're there. And so a lot of the commentary about we should respond more strongly, there wasn't actually a reasonable kind of answer as to well, what do you think is more strongly, right? And you know, we did, if you actually go back to and I'm gonna forget the year, but when we had Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and we were hosting, I think it might have been APEC in Queensland or something. And it was around 2014 again. MH17 had recently shot down with the sad loss, including a loss of Australian lives – over Ukraine. And we had the prime minister talking about shirt fronting Vladimir Putin. So Vladimir Putin sent down a Russian task group to sit off our territorial waters during whatever international activity was occurring in Queensland to send us a message. So it's not like this has never happened. We did react quite strongly to that as well. I think this one was prolonged in terms of the reaction, partly because we woke up and realized that navies do gunnery firings. But also because the prolonged nature of it, because it was a 3-week circumnavigation. I think also too, though, there were some people that were wanting to get the most out of it, because actually what they wanted to have was a conversation about Australia's defence investment, Australia's defence capability, the changing role of China in the region, and China's increase in aggressiveness. And they thought this might be a vehicle to have that conversation. So I think there are a lot of things at play in terms of why it captured our imagination so much.

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David Andrews

If we step back a little bit, and we've been talking a lot about the particulars of what occurred and the legalities are otherwise off that, but do you have a sense of why it happened in the first place? Like what, what the rationale was from trying to, of course this is speculative. We, we don't know what people working in the Chinese Navy or in sort of higher echelons of the party want, but what do you think might've been the rationale for it? Is it to test alliance ties, see what sort of response the Americans might make. it to just show that they can do it, to sort of throw us off balance? Do you have a sense of what might be the underlying rationale?

Douglas Guilfoyle

Jen's thoughts on this will be more detailed than mine, but I think in part there's proving both themselves and others increasingly that they can do it. I think that was part of the Chinese contribution to counter-piracy off Somalia and operating out of Djibouti, was just getting used to operating as a blue water navy. And I do think there may also have been an element of testing our reactions, but I don't think it fits any sort of pattern of say Chinese maritime coercion. This is not the kind of operation we see in the South China Sea occurring between say China and the Philippines and China and Vietnam. This is – as we've said throughout, pretty common type of exercise that most major naval powers would conduct. And as we were saying off air, China has somewhere between sort of, you know, 370 or 400 combatant vessels in terms of surface fleet and submarines, know. They have to exercise somewhere. Jen?

Jennifer Parker

Yeah, look, I think it- needs to be viewed in terms of the broader growth of China’s blue water capability, which has rapidly grown and pretty much in the last 10 years. I mean, they certainly had hundreds of ships greater than 10 years ago, but they were a different kind of ship. So 70 % of their current surface combat fleet or about then, about that much has actually been built in the last 10 years. So they've rapidly developed this capability. As they rapidly develop this blue water capability, they have become increasingly expeditionary and not just in the vicinity of Australia. So Doug mentioned the deployment to the Western Indian Ocean, the counterpiracy work the naval base effectively that's been established in Djbouti since 2017. Through 2014, we saw Chinese naval vessels operating off Alaska, which got a similar response from the United States. I think it's part of a, and in fact, in 2024, we should also say as well, we saw more Chinese naval vessels operating in the Pacific as well, including their hospital ship, but not just limited to their hospital ship. So I think it's part of…as the blue water capability grows, they are becoming increasingly expeditionary. So it needs to be read in that context. That said, I do think this deployment was sending a specific message to Australia and one rammed home through the circumnavigation. And I think that message was demonstrating that they have the capability to do this. And that's a message that is quite poignant for Australia because of how vulnerable we are in the maritime domain.

You know, particularly when you think about their operations in Coral Sea, going back to World War II, there were other operations in the Coral Sea that weren't very much about cutting off Australia's sea lines of communication. So I think it was sending that message in terms of their capability and vulnerability, but I do think it also was testing our responses. Certainly, potentially our responses at the operational level, how we would tell them what assets we would use, but also at the political level and at the societal level. How would we respond this this. And I think some of the timings, while I don't think it's really testing the Australia-US alliance, I think often we tend to view things a lot through the prism of what's happening in the US at the moment, the new US administration, what's happening between the US and Europe and Euro-Atlantic relations. I really think this was very much about Australia. The timing was most certainly timed to coincide with what they thought was going to be an election period for us. And this is not the first time China has done that. If we go back to our 2022 elections, there was the Solomon Islands China agreement that was very clearly timed to influence our elections. So I think there was a lot of those things wrapped up into it.

David Andrews

So there's a term that I used in my sort of opening framing remarks and that you've touched on already, Jen, but that of coercion. And I know that's a word that we used a lot in connection with these events. But Douglas, as you've said, there's other examples of Chinese maritime behaviour that, though we might say that the use of coercion is, let's say, contested in this context in the Australian instance, but I think it's much more commonly applied to some of their behaviour elsewhere, particularly in the South China Sea with regards to the Philippines and Vietnam and others as well. Does this fit into a bigger pattern of Chinese maritime coercion? Or do you think it's somewhat standalone compared to some of their other activities?

Douglas Guilfoyle

I think it goes back to the two track point I was making before. China sees itself as having one particular set of interests in the South China Sea and those it thinks are best protected by very robust assertion of its interpretation of its rights against other states in the region. And a lot of that is obviously calculated to occur below a threshold that would trigger a conventional military response or invocation of say the Philippines US mutual Defence Treaty. So while water cannons from a white painted China Coast Guard vessel smashing in the windscreen of a much smaller Philippines Coast Guard vessel, I would call that in the ordinary course of events something that looks a lot like ause of force in international relations, no one's going to interpret it in the old money as a declaration of war. So, there is a very calculated use of those coast guard and maritime militia vessels to remain below a threshold of conventional conflict. So, I think in a sense that's in one bucket and the increasingly expeditionary activities of a blue water navy are in a different category of thinking.

Jennifer Parker

Look, I would agree and I think if we flipped it and we said every time an Australian Navy task group or ship deploys within a hundred nautical miles of China are we exercising maritime coercion, we would say no.

There is of course a practical and an academic history of things like naval diplomacy and presence operations. And we won't bore everybody by going into that right now. But I think this is just to be expected as part of normal course of events. So I think when we use the term coercion, we're implying that there is something wrong with it, there's negative connotation to that.

I think that that doesn't sit well with the task group operations. It sits well with me of the other operations that China does, including the economic coercion that Australia experienced from 2020 onwards. But I think that is the wrong term. I think that we need to, there is a tendency to say everything that China does is about some grander strategy that is about impeding on Australia. And I think that we need to be more nuanced in that. Not everything is the same thing. Everything is grouped into the same activities. And as Doug mentioned, this is a very different type of activity. Yes, of course it is about sending a message to Australia, but it is not about coercion. It is not similar to the joint sword exercises, for example, that China conducts in the vicinity of Taiwan. It's very different in nature. It's not similar, as Doug mentioned, to the interactions between the Chinese Coast Guard and the Philippines. It’s not similar to the interactions between our own military and China. And notably, we forgot this when we introduced the Naval Task Group. But the same day in February, and think it was around the 13th that the Department of Defence released that this task group was operating in the Coral Sea was actually the same day the Department of Defence released that a Chinese fighter aircraft had deployed flares within 30-meters of an Australian P8 operating in international waters. And there was a tendency at the time of both of those releases to say, this is the same thing. It's not the same thing. They're very, very different things. And I think it's important for us to have that nuanced approach because if we don't, we tend to overreact to everything, which is how I think some of responses were to this task group. And if we overreact to everything, where do we actually generate the capacity to deal with a real crisis of which this was not.

David Andrews

I think that's a really important point and it's one I want to return to, but just if we can stick just for a little while with this, let's say grander aspect of the activity. And we've talked a bit about the Philippines. think that's because it's an obvious case of constant ongoing harassment by Chinese coast guard vessels, maritime militias and such. also taking your warning, heeding your warning, Jen, that we shouldn't view everything purely through a US lens or an Alliance lens, but I feel like we have to at least put on the table in some respect the actions that Trump administration has taken in the first few months of this year to sort of step back from its commitments or role or expectations where it has placed itself over many decades within international law and international security. And I guess connecting that to maritime law and maritime security.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the U S acts according to the principles or the regulations of UNCLOS, but is not, is it a signatory or ratified you'll, you'll, you'll correct me a second. I'm sure. But, if we're thinking about say back to it was about 2012, maybe to the Obama administration, there were comments made that the US had sort of lost an opportunity then to act in support of the Philippines in the South China Sea that might've headed off to some extent what we've seen over the last decade or so.

Now I do wonder whether in the wider sweep of Chinese maritime strategy, whether they would see this as an opportunity to, again, prod some of those touch points that, as you say Douglas, that the US isn't likely to declare war and enact the mutual defence treaty over the actions that China's taking against the Philippines, might they actually, as they're stepping back from some of these roles in international law and security, might that actually widen that aperture for China to take actions in the maritime domain in the years ahead?

Douglas Guilfoyle

There's a lot to unpack there. guess a potential lesson from the situation in West Philippine Sea is that if it comes up against China's interests, if you take your eye off the ball, China will move to fill the space that's available. And certainly, there is that sense of a missed moment in the middle of the 2010s when there was a degree of chaos in the US Philippines relationship. There was a lot of nationalism about ending basing and in that moment, China commenced a lot of its land reclamation and island building on reefs in the West Philippine Sea. And the Philippines still has never had a kind of cast iron commitment from the US that it takes the mutual defence treaty as covering things like incursions into the EZ. But it would think it would be invoked if there were the death of Philippine service personnel in any of these encounters. And the risk with setting a red line like that is you kind of incentivise the other party to go up to it, right? So we've seen in some ways increasingly violent clashes below the level of armed conflict in the West Philippine Sea. I guess the other question is, well, we see everything through the lens of the US relationship. How does China see us in relation to the US relationship? And the messaging there has been mixed over time, but there certainly seem to be moments when it appears as if China doesn't think we're an independent actor, that we just do whatever the US wants. So, one interpretation might be to see that this is a sort of first gentle probing into how does the Trump administration see its sphere of influence?

We know its desired sphere of influence includes Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. But is it really on President Trump's radar that you've got substantial military and intelligence assets in Australia that are vital to the US's ability to operate in this part of the world? So, there may be something going on there. And I think that combination of the potential unpredictability of Trump and how very little use we are to seeing sort of incursions into what we subconsciously think of as our own sphere of influence. I think that fear of a potentially unfriendly power coming very close and our great protector maybe leaning away also perhaps adds some colour and context to the reaction we've seen in recent weeks.

Jennifer Parker

Well, this is great because I'm going to disagree with you, Doug.

Douglas Guilfoyle

Oh finally.

Jennifer Parker

This is fantastic And makes it interesting. And I was actually missing – I'm going to do a cross-promotion – Doug's colleague, Richard Dunley, who I do a podcast called Maritime Matters with, where we disagree a fair bit. I'm going to, I guess a couple of, a couple of point.

I think in Australia at the moment, we read too much into the new US administration and people are going to jump up in arms and say, well, what about the comments about Russia? What about the abandonment of Ukraine, if see it that way and what about what they've done to the European relationship. And all of those are important. It's right. mean, we might be seeing a fundamental change in US foreign policy. We might be, but I've got to say, I actually still think it is too early to tell. think when you look at the Ukraine situation, we delve into that too much here. And I know that you had a recent podcast on this. It is very different than the relationship between the US and Australia.

When you look at the Europe situation, it is very different between the relationship between the US and Australia and the US …you know, I put up a point that was dropped from an op-ed of mine recently of Condoleezza Rice in 2000 talking about the fact that the Europe needed to spend more on defence and be responsible for their own conventional defence. Now, I'm not saying that the way in which it's been done in the last two months of the Trump administration hasn't been jarring to which, and the language – interest. But think we can read too much to that right now in terms of what that means about broader US foreign policy and certainly what that means about the Indo-Pacific. And when we think about the Indo-Pacific, we have actually seen a number of positive comments about whether that be the Australia, US alliance from President Trump, but also from many of his key principals including the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense.

And we do know that the US has a lot of equities in the Indo-Pacific. So think we can read too much into it. think really kind of 12 months from now is the time to really understand whether US foreign policy has fundamentally changed in a broader view. When we think about what's happened, know, the term incursions, I think that implies China has done something wrong in this deployment. And I really think that we're because we set ourselves up to support China's narrative and propaganda when we deploy in the vicinity of their coast, which we do frequently, much more frequently than they deploy. So I think we need to be careful with that. When it comes to the South China Sea, look, I think it is an interesting case in terms of how the US has responded to that. I do think the previous US Secretary of Defense did make statements that, for example, Second Thomas Scholl …that the mutual defense treaty would apply to incidents around second Thomas Scholl. But interestingly, the Shangri-La Dialogue last year, when President Marcos talked about his red lines in response to a question from a journalist, he was very clear that the death of a civilian or a service man or woman from the Philippines would be When the US, the then Secretary of Defense, and we do have a very different administration, asked a comment on that, he said, I don't deal in hypotheticals.

And I think we need to really careful in terms of …somebody asked me this question recently talking about US, sorry, Australian defence force personnel, that is the threshold, the death of one defence force personnel. And this is a conversation for society to have, but realistically, I think it is unlikely. And I think it's unlikely in the South China Sea as well. So what the threshold is in terms of getting a determined US response, it's not clear. I don't think it's the death of one person – as much as unfortunate that would be.

What is clear though in the US responses – you mentioned 2012 – so in 2012 China took control of Scarborough Shoal – which the US had tried to negotiate an agreement between China and the Philippines. China had agreed to it. The Philippines turned their backs and China took control.

Interestingly though, as much as we say that the US failed in their policy in the South China Sea during that period – which i would agree to some extent – China has never militarised the Scarborough Shoal. And it is in the terms red lines is terrible that that is potentially a red line. So as much as we tend to say China's done all of these things, nobody's stopped them. There are actually key points where they have stopped. Where they have stopped is because of concern about a US reaction. I think Scarborough Shoal is one. Even when you look at the incidents in the vicinity of second Thomas Shoal, which really escalated at beginning of 2024. And again, you know, the footage is jarring, right? This ramming, this water cannoning, the loss of a finger from a Philippine sailor in June last year.

China has done that almost in a considered way. And I hate saying that when we're describing what looks like bullying behaviour or is bullying behaviour, they haven't escalated further where they could. So there clearly are some concerns and some lines for them. I think that we sometimes underestimate. I mean, they haven't towed the dilapidated amphibious ship that is on second Thomas Shaw. They haven't fired upon it. There are things that they could have done that they have chosen not to do. And I think that that is because being clear in the where some of their lines.

David Andrews

Well, there's of course an enormous amount we could continue to go into in that regard, but I thought to bring this conversation to a close, I'd come back to the local and the domestic angle. And we've talked a little bit about, I guess, some of the Australian responses thus far, perhaps the next step and then for our final question is, what does Australia need to do next? So is this, should we be expecting that this kind of a transit these exercises, are we expecting them to become more commonplace, maybe in the style of transiting Soviet ships, transiting past the UK back in the Cold War? Are we expecting that kind of a sort of regular drumbeat of activity? Do we need to expand certain aspects of the Navy that are better able to be dedicated to these sort of...shadowing and support tasks that free up our major surface platforms for activities further afield. Something I've argued for is we need to probably emphasise a sense of societal resilience in terms of, I guess, having these conversations and uplifting the knowledge in Australia to help people understand that maybe these things aren't quite as dramatic or as catastrophic as they are made out to be so that when actually worse and more challenging things happen, we haven't kind of gone off too soon in responding to some of them. So those are just a few sort of things I'm throwing out there. But in terms of lessons that we should take away from this, from Australians, the policy community, do you have a sense, and I'll start with you, Jen, and then we'll conclude with Douglas, but do you have a sense of where, you know, any top sort of recommendations for what we should be doing in response to these activities?

Jennifer Parker

I think on the side of resilience, I think that's so so. I think really important. mean, the fact that we felt so threatened and so vulnerable by two ships and a tanker circumnavigating Australia, just where our psyche is, whilst there are wars in Europe and wars in the Middle East, and you know, China’s increased aggression in the region, we think of these things as so detached from Australia. We think of conflict as something that we...you know, beyond kind of since the second world war, conflict is something that we choose to engage in at a location of our choice and the forces that we intend to send. We need to flip that. We need to think about it in terms of our life is protected, but it's vulnerable specifically in the maritime domain. And, know, can't do a podcast without getting into the fact that most of our international trade comes maritime domain, depending on the quarter, you know, 99%.

So I think we need to understand how vulnerable we are. The second element to that I'd say is what do we do to mitigate against that vulnerability. Where I think that it's unfortunate in a way that after three weeks which was a long period, the media kind of moved on. You know, we’re recording this in budget week. And we're saying we're incredibly vulnerable. We're going to increasingly see Chinese task groups operating down. That's not necessarily a threat, but in the event of crisis or conflict would be.

What are we doing to mitigate that vulnerability? And this is where I think we really aren't having those hard conversations in terms of, know, you talk about freeing up elements of our Navy. You know, we have a lot of really hard working women and men in the Australian Navy, but they don't have a lot of ships. In fact, historically low numbers of ships, you know, and we keep banging on about this, but we're not really doing anything to immediately...address these issues.

Still in terms of defence spending, we talk about we’re at historic highs, we are at 2 % of GDP throughout the Cold War, we averaged 2.7 % of GDP. In fact, in 1950s, is probably a similar comparison to our strategic situation, we were at 3.37 % of GDP. So I think that we need to look at what are our capabilities to respond in event of a crisis or conflict and dramatically adjust that. We're just not seeing, seeing a lot of talk about it..but in terms of actual movement, we're not really seeing a lot of change. And I think that's the thing that we really should take away from this. Why do we feel so vulnerable? Because of our limited ability to respond. How do we address that through investment?

Douglas Guilfoyle

Well, I'd agree with everything that Jen just said and I'd put another of Jen's ideas on the table actually, which is that how we talk and communicate about this perhaps needs to change as well. And I can't recall, we've suggested Jen maybe it was just in off air conversation, but do we need a defence spokesperson so this doesn't always fall to the Prime Minister to outline? Can we kind of turn the temperature down a bit on these communications so it doesn't escalate straight to the top the political conversation every single time. But we do also need a more mature conversation nationally about our vulnerabilities in the event of conflict. And it's not just our maritime surface trade, right? In an interconnected world, we are highly reliant on submarine data cables. We only have about a dozen landing points in the country. And I believe in the South China Morning Post this morning, China unveiled a new world class capability for cutting submarine cables. So we have a series of vulnerabilities that we haven't really thought through or had a grown up conversation about.

David Andrews

Well, that has been a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion. And obviously we've seeded the ground for many more in the future as these things evolve. perhaps another one dedicated on submarine cables wouldn't be a bad place to start. But Jennifer Parker and Douglas Guilfoyle, thank you so much for being on the National Security Podcast.

Douglas Guilfoyle

Thank you for having us.

Jennifer Parker

Thanks so much.

National Security Podcast

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