Australia's security outlook is riskier than most people think, even if they already worry, realistically, about the chance of a war over Taiwan.
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There could be a nightmare on the other side of that possible war. It's the nightmare that would follow US defeat.
Publication of this column began in May with an unavoidably unpleasant description of how fighting could erupt if China tried to seize Taiwan against opposition from the US and its allies.
That was bad enough. But in a nightmare scenario, China would follow up conquest of Taiwan by extending its influence and front line to islands just north of Australia. In a nightmare within the nightmare, we would not even have the Americans to help us.
I realise readers are wary of anything that sounds like military alarmism, but this really isn't that. I also understand people have trouble accepting we're under any kind of threat, because the idea is so unfamiliar. Disagreeable war talk this year has come as a surprise.
It's been a surprise because the Australian public and media have hardly noticed a critical change in military calculations over the past decade. The change is of great historical and global importance: it's the rising risk that China could defeat the US in the western Pacific.
Again, the idea that the US might not win a war is unfamiliar and hard to believe. But let me explain the situation.
We must worry that what happens in the simulations could happen in reality, maybe in the 2020s.
To defend Taiwan, the US must project power across the Pacific. This can be done, but only with difficulty - because a country's firepower degrades with distance.
China, on the other hand, does not need to project power very far to assault Taiwan - nor to hit US or allied forces trying to rescue the island. So the Taiwan-war scenario is inherently weighted against the US, though not so much that China could have won 10 or 15 years ago.
Since then, however, China has accelerated deployment of a powerful array of military systems for smashing nearby US air bases and for finding and attacking the US ships that would rush across the Pacific to Taiwan's aid. Aircraft carriers would be priority targets.
The Chinese systems that have been multiplying are mainly sensors in space and on the ground, ballistic and cruise missiles (including revolutionary ballistic missiles that can hit ships), and bombers and submarines that can fire cruise missiles. The submarines also present a grave threat of torpedo attack.
As this reconnaissance-strike complex was assembling last decade, the situation looked pretty alarming to Western specialists in military affairs. Some began to think the US could lose.
Then, last year, well-connected former congressional staffer Christian Brose wrote that, when the Pentagon had simulated war with China over the previous decade, the US side had in fact almost always lost. Last month, the vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Hyten, reported on a war game conducted in October: the US had lost badly.
We must worry that what happens in the simulations could happen in reality, maybe in the 2020s.
Then the subsequent step towards Australia's nightmare would be diplomatic.
If the US failed in a war to defend Taiwan - or threw in the towel without even trying - how could countries to the south of China hope to defy the will of triumphant Beijing? We should assume that each would decide it must turn toward the emperor and kowtow.
Not all would do so at the same time, and it's hard to predict how much time China would need to turn them into satellites. Five years? Ten? Surely we couldn't bank on 20.
From Australia's point of view, the crucial question is whether and for how long East Timor, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands would hold out.
Notice that, in any corrupt target country, China could bribe politicians as well as apply military pressure.
Conceivably, China might not seek any such influence to its south. Having taken Taiwan, it might be satisfied with its now greatly improved strategic position and refrain from using dominant power to turn neighbours into satellites.
Assuming it did impose obedience on its neighbours, China would probably want to establish military bases on their territory, especially on the periphery of its zone of influence, from which it could project its power further.
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And that's when Australia would be on China's front line.
Imagine Chinese air and missile bases on East Timor and Papua New Guinea's south coast, for example.
This is not a prediction, but nor is it fanciful speculation. It is a worryingly plausible possibility.
And it could get worse.
If the US were defeated, would it want to bother with this side of the world at all, asking to be beaten by China again? It could easily do a deal with Beijing to draw a demarcation line down the middle of the Pacific.
More likely, the US would give up south-east Asia but not Australia. Yet it would be less likely to stand by us if it recalled that we had not stood by it in the disastrous war over Taiwan.
That would be a key consideration in Canberra if one day we had to decide whether to commit to that campaign.
For now, we can at least say that, if China took Taiwan, Australia would have to become much more militarised.
Our situation might not be hopeless, however. In particular, we'd rely on that firepower-distance relationship, which would favour us.
But the situation would indeed be a nightmare.
- Bradley Perrett was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.
- This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.