Seeking to demonstrate its role as a regional power, Australia is once again stirring the waters of the Asia-Pacific.
Double Standards Are Their Everything
Australia has long been among those Western states that consistently exacerbate an already tense situation in the SCS. In particular, it actively goads the Philippines toward escalation in disputed areas and constantly seeks to “leave its mark” and make its presence felt in every possible way—with ships, aircraft, exercises, reconnaissance, and so forth. This, however, does not prevent the Australian side from waxing lyrical about international maritime law, peace, stability, and the security of sea lanes. What is more, no one in Southeast Asia—a region where Australia does not belong, being an Oceanian rather than an Asian power—ever asked it to weigh in. Its rhetoric is flatly contradicted by its actions: what Canberra has been methodically doing for years is nothing other than the very militarization of the South China Sea for which the United States and its allies routinely blame everyone but themselves.
… And “Competitions” of a Peculiar Sort
For the Australian armed forces, these drills became their largest overseas deployment since the 1999 peacekeeping operation in East Timor. This clearly signaled that in interfering in a region where its presence is patently unwelcome, Australia is determined to take bold steps.
Over two weeks, Australian service members trained with their Philippine counterparts in a whole range of modern warfare practices, from joint naval maneuvers to amphibious operations and the seizure of an airfield. The message directed at Chinese installations on natural and artificial islands in the SCS was unmistakable.
From the outside, one of the most striking elements was the competitive format of parts of the drills, at the end of which Australian officers awarded Philippine soldiers certificates of varying rank. The impression was hard to avoid: Australia seemed eager to try its hand at the role of a mighty imperial metropolis (let us not forget, it remains a British dominion) that deigns to instruct its Southeast Asian neighbors on how to fight properly in modern conditions. For a people like the Filipinos, who only in the last century shook off foreign colonial rule, such posturing must have stirred specific associations.
There was also an outright comical moment at “Alon-2025.” Lacking originality, the Australian army could think of nothing better than to mimic the American military’s tradition of organizing friendly basketball games during exercises—and staged one with the Filipinos. The sense of déjà vu was impossible to miss.
Financial Interest
The exercises placed special emphasis on showcasing Australian military hardware. Fighter jets and armored vehicles, each marked with the obligatory little kangaroo insignia (the same kind, incidentally, that Australia supplies to Ukrainian forces and that have so often gone up in flames under Russian fire on the former Ukrainian battlefield), were proudly displayed for Philippine troops. Some were even invited inside to flip switches and try controls.
It is safe to assume that Australia has more than a political stake in sustaining tensions in the SCS. Military-technical cooperation with the Philippines—and potentially with other Southeast Asian littoral states, once propaganda and marketing do their work—opens a vast, lucrative field of opportunities to profit from others’ troubles. This is the classic logic of the United States and its allies: incite and pit parties against one another, then sell weapons into the conflict zone. For this reason, the Philippine side was shown everything possible, from destroyers to thermal-imaging binoculars, both domestically produced in Australia and imported, notably from Australia’s principal ally, the United States. The export-oriented message of this militarized fashion show was obvious and unambiguous.
Promises Are Not the Same as Help
The drills are over, but the issue of Australia’s status and the legitimacy of its intensified presence in Southeast Asia and the SCS remains sharper than ever. Yes, it stages ever more frequent displays of force in the region, promotes its defense industry, and flaunts the results of its long-running modernization of the armed forces. But in the end, like the United States, Australia has no real interest in putting its own ships, aircraft, or personnel in harm’s way should its provocations push the SCS into open conflict. Instead, it will aim to threaten China and, if necessary, confront it only through proxies—in this case, the Philippines.
Moreover, Australia strives to boost its standing not just within its own corner of the Asia-Pacific but across the region at large, presenting itself as a regional power. Real military engagement, however, is likely only in the most extreme scenario—if, hypothetically, “Washington headquarters” were to back it into a corner and demand it fulfill its alliance obligations. In all other circumstances, Australia will continue to prod Southeast Asian states against China (with the Philippines, its military, and diplomats seizing on practically every incident in the SCS to sharpen the rhetoric), persuade itself and them of its strength, and, above all, issue emphatic promises of military support. Yet promising is not the same as helping when such assistance might actually (hypothetically) be needed. In reality, it is not hard to imagine that in the event of escalation against China, America’s and Australia’s quasi-allies will be left to curse their Western provocateurs—and rely solely on themselves.
Ksenia Muratshina, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asia, Australia, and Oceania of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
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