Save articles for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
Australia is connected to three ongoing wars, each shaping the world in different ways. All three affect Australia’s security, but only one is a direct threat to our sovereignty and liberty. Some observations on each.
First, the war whose duration is to be measured in months, the war between Israel and Hamas. And though it is dreadful, there is some unambiguously good news. A month and a half on, it’s become clear that Hamas’ great enabler and sponsor, Iran, is choosing not to escalate the war. Through its many proxies, Tehran points multiple cannon at Israel’s heart, from many directions.
Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:
Yet, so far, it has chosen to fire only one – the terrorist guerilla army of Hamas. Some of Iran’s other proxies are active in attacking Israel, but it’s largely token. Despite frequent threats of escalation against Israel, they are holding fire on their full capabilities.
It’s awful enough that many thousands of civilians, Israeli and Palestinian, have been killed in this conflict. But many more, perhaps hundreds of thousands, would be killed if the ayatollahs issued the attack order to Iran’s other proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Syria, units in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen.
And, of course, the danger would be even more extreme if Iran itself attacked Israel directly.
Why is Iran holding back? The ayatollahs frequently vow to drive all Jews into the sea. Why not strike while Israel is under pressure? US deterrence must be a factor. Joe Biden deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups and a submarine to deter Iranian aggression. But it’s also true that Tehran judges the Hamas attack on Israel a success. Hamas’ terrorism goaded Israel into an overreaction. The continuing mass deaths of Palestinian children is distressing the world.
Summitry: PM Anthony Albanese meets with President Xi Jinping in Beijing before again crossing paths at the APEC meeting in San Francisco.Credit: AAP
Before October 7, Israel was enjoying historically important success in normalising relations with its neighbours and was on the cusp of clinching a pact with Saudi Arabia. Now Israel is a pariah in its own neighbourhood and the ayatollahs are rejoicing.
It was Iran’s leader, not Israel’s, who visited Riyadh last week to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other regional leaders.
Second, the war whose duration is to be measured in years, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After a year and two-thirds, the dominant impression is that Ukraine has failed to maintain the successful fightback of year one, that its big counteroffensive has failed.
But, while world attention has been focused on Gaza, Kyiv’s forces made a serious strategic breakthrough against Russia in the past week.
It was a year ago that Ukraine recovered the only regional capital that Russia had managed to seize, its eastern city of Kherson. Volodymyr Zelensky’s troops forced Vladimir Putin’s to flee across the Dnipro River.
But that was as far as the Ukrainians got; the river is some 10 kilometres wide, and the Russians were dug in on the far bank, preventing Ukraine from fighting its way through to Crimea beyond. A stalemate ensued.
Then, last week came news that the Ukrainians had forced their way onto the eastern bank of the Dnipro. The Ukrainians have now driven the Russians back, by between three and eight kilometres, from the river.
Kyiv has now recovered most of the territory taken by Russia last year, and Putin has failed in every one of his stated war aims.
Third, the war whose duration is to be measured in decades, the Chinese Communist Party’s war to dominate the Indo-Pacific and, ultimately, the world. This unconventional war has been under way for over a decade already.
It’s a war of force, but the force of friction and not gunfire, so far. Xi Jinping’s assets, ranging from the world’s biggest fishing fleet up to the world’s largest navy, simply assert ownership of maritime territories, occupy them and dare others to stop them.
It’s brilliantly effective. The US effectively declared its helplessness in 2015. Xi promised publicly that China would not militarise the outcrops in maritime territories also claimed by its neighbours, then went ahead and built them into islands replete with 20 military outposts.
“There was no clear path to blocking Chinese expansion in the Spratleys and Paracels short of the use of force,” Barack Obama’s senior Asia adviser at the time, Danny Russel, told me. “And China was prepared to overtly lie about its plans for the South China Sea.”
No nation, or group of nations, has managed to counter Beijing’s unchecked expansionism since. It’s grey zone warfare, like a game of chicken where each dares the other to back off. China has never backed off and no other nation has found the nerve to call its bluff.
Xi has since adapted the same tactics to bigger targets. Relentless and ever-expanding patrolling by the Chinese Communist Party’s navy and air force, hundreds of sorties a year, is designed to wear down the defences of Japan and Taiwan.
Reckless encounters with other countries’ militaries are designed to intimidate them into backing off. The US last month catalogued 180 dangerous encounters between its air force and China’s over the previous two years.
Australia is relatively new to these tactics, most recently last week when a Chinese ship aimed powerful sonar at navy divers, inflicting minor injuries. It was the third disclosed dangerous encounter for Australia’s forces in two years.
How is this consistent with renewed political summitry and the easing of Beijing’s trade bans? The smiles and the sales are the anaesthetic that Xi administers so that the target country will not react forcefully to the pain it is absorbing on the seas and in the skies as the People’s Liberation Army asserts hegemony.
It’s a technique as old as the Chinese adage to have “daggers within your smile”, or Sun Tzu’s tenet that the greatest victory is to win without fighting. Lodging indignant protests will make absolutely no difference.
Asymmetric war, whether terrorism in the Middle East or grey zone intimidation in the Pacific, is powerfully effective against nation states and demands fresh responses. Traditional state-on-state war less so. Just ask Putin.
Peter Hartcher is international editor.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.
Most Viewed in Politics
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article