Australia Stays the Course Against Chinese Aggression

Fortunately, the opposite is occurring. The Labor government isn’t only supporting the foreign-policy approach of its predecessors in the center-right Liberal Party; it is promising to fast-track Liberal-era plans to work with Washington to counter the Chinese threat. That a Labor government is doing so should reassure the Biden administration that Canberra knows that working more closely with the U.S. is the only way to prevent Beijing from achieving its expansionist ambitions.

This new consensus will surely be on display this Tuesday at the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultation, or Ausmin, an annual meeting between the countries’ secretaries of state and defense. The deliberations will seek to build on Aukus, the September 2021 pact among the U.S., U.K. and Australia, dedicated to enhancing allied military capacities in the Indo-Pacific.

On the Ausmin agenda will be arrangements for Australia to acquire the military assets it needs to deter—and, if necessary, confront—the People’s Liberation Army. These include nuclear-powered submarines as well as long-range and supersonic missiles, attack drones and offensive cyber capabilities. Both countries will also likely attempt to secure more-reliable supply chains for strategic materials such as rare-earth metals. If all goes to plan, the Biden administration will discover that working with Prime Minister

Anthony Albanese’s

government is at least as productive as it was with its Liberal predecessors.

Why have both sides of the Australian political divide arrived at this consensus? In large part because of China’s recent and unmistakable aggression. Beijing has revealed itself as a serious threat by undertaking intimidating military maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China seas. It has boasted about its desire to create a Sino-centric economic and institutional order through plans such as the Belt and Road Initiative and has given a glimpse of how it would treat countries that refuse to bend the knee.

Canberra has come to realize that if it isn’t active in constraining and deterring Beijing, then it too is part of the problem. China has unmatched material power among other Asian nations, and is exceeded only by the U.S. globally. But it also has geography on its side. America is far away and needs willing allies to maintain its presence as an effective regional balance against China. In recent years, Japan and Australia have emerged as the northern and southern anchors of U.S.-led power in the Western Pacific.

Any hesitation—or worse, neutrality or submissiveness—on Australia’s part would weaken other countries’ resolve against Beijing. Such sentiment would also reinforce a suspicion among other smaller states that the lack of willing allies will render the U.S. a fading power in Asia. If that occurs, Chinese regional pre-eminence is all but assured.

It is noteworthy that immediately after the Ausmin talks, Australia’s foreign and defense secretaries—Ms. Wong and

Richard Marles

—will be flying to Tokyo to meet with their Japanese counterparts. This is deliberate. Much of Beijing’s messaging to the region is that the American alliance is fracturing and that the Communist Party is willing to pay any cost to achieve its objective. Chinese success, it says, is inevitable and not worth resisting.

Yet this week’s talks demonstrate that the U.S. and its allies have genuine agency in determining the future of Asia. They’re also a reminder that as powerful as China is becoming, its weakness is that it remains a lonely rising power with few genuine friends and no reliable allies.

Mr. Lee is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He served as senior national security adviser to Australia’s Liberal Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, 2016-18.