The US military will include Australia in a global pre-positioning programme for weapons, ammunition and vehicles for the first time, according to reports.
There is a “growing US footprint in Australia”, said Defence Minister Richard Marles, which is “important in terms of building our own military capability” but critics have asked if Australia is “acting like America’s 51st state”.
Rotating force
Although Australia does not permit foreign military bases on its soil, it hosts US Marines for exercises for six months of the year in the northern city of Darwin, and a “rotating force” of US-commanded submarines will arrive in Western Australia next year, reported France 24.
If the US and China “come to blows over Taiwan”, the naval base in Western Australia “offers a berth” that would bring American nuclear-powered submarines “close to the fight” – and provide a “haven if things go wrong”, said The Wall Street Journal.
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In 2023, as part of a trial of pre-positioning US military equipment, the US Army left trucks at Bandiana, Victoria, after war games with Australia, which are held every two years. A separate US Marines storage facility in Australia is expected to reach full capacity by 2028, with a global defence contractor employing around 110 engineers and specialists.
The US Navy has allocated $30 million (£23 million) to build warehouses and offices in the state of Victoria in 2027. The “hugely significant American presence” in the Asia-Pacific is a counterbalance to China’s “very significant military build-up”, said Marles.
Trump whirlwind
Experts are divided over whether Australia should respond to Beijing this way. A report from the Lowy Institute warned that China has the capability to strike northern Australia with “ballistic missiles deployed to its South China Sea outposts”.
The think tank’s director of international security, Sam Roggeveen, told Agence France-Presse that this was a “relevant consideration” in locating a stockpile in Australia’s southeast because “once these facilities are operational, they would be obvious targets for China”.
There is “little political appetite” for a “massive increase in Australian defence expenditure”, said Australian National University professor of international security John Blaxland, so “facilitating greater US investment in Australian real estate is widely considered to be the most prudent approach to take”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “wholehearted embrace” of an “enhanced strategic relationship” with Japan “surely” confirms that Labor has “signed up totally to the United States and its regional policy in the teeth of the Trump whirlwind”, wrote international affairs expert James Curran in the Financial Review last month.
There is a growing “acceptance” that Aukus, the security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US, is “cannibalising the defence budget”, yet ministers “believe the problem only needs to be managed, not addressed”. There are “precedents” for close US allies withdrawing permission for US access to jointly operated military bases and airspace.
Spain “point-blank denied” Washington the use of two of its critical bases for Iran-related missions, while Saudi Arabia and Kuwait appeared to restrict Washington’s use of joint facilities that were critical to Trump’s mission in the Strait of Hormuz.
So Australia “could, if it so chose, do the same” – but is the country “even considering this might be an option in the future”?
