These periodic reviews are revealing indicators of changing US strategic priorities. What they show is a continuing evolution away from the large, permanent garrisons and bases that underpinned US hard power in Asia during the Cold War era towards smaller, more dispersed and austere facilities in friendly countries that provide greater operational flexibility without the high political and financial costs associated with permanent bases. Hence the mantra "places, not bases", with US troops, ships and planes in and out as required. Southeast Asian facilities are attractive fallback options for the Pentagon, which worries that its forces in Japan, South Korea and Guam are highly vulnerable to the latest generation of Chinese missiles and aircraft. Having access to defence and port facilities in southeast Asia would also improve the US Navy's ability to control the critical sea lanes that run through the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait into the Indian Ocean.
The forthcoming global force posture review suggests a greater role for Australia which, alone among US allies, has deployed troops to every Asian conflict in which the US has been engaged since 1941. While shared values and strategic interests have long bound Australia and the US in an unusually intimate strategic embrace, Australia's distance from Asia's hot spots has limited the continent's defence utility in the eyes of Pentagon planners. But from Washington's perspective Australia's geography now looks to be more of an asset than a liability in the new era of reduced US defence budgets and concerns about China's growing power projection capabilities.
The island continent is well beyond the range of most Chinese missiles and would be a relatively secure area for dispersed US military assets as well as offering useful logistics, training and port facilities, not to mention airfields. Unsurprisingly, the US is keen to see Australia acquire the ambitious, conventional defence acquisitions foreshadowed in the 2009 Defence white paper, especially the more potent capabilities represented by the planned replacement Collins class submarines, air warfare destroyers and state of the art joint strike fighters. While a modest force by the standards of Asia's great powers, a bulked up Australian Defence Force would nevertheless be a valuable force multiplier for the US in any conflict with China in the western Pacific.
Being back in Asia would therefore seem to be a felicitous outcome for both the US and Australia, reinforcing the importance of an alliance that has endured for nearly seven decades as the bedrock of Australia's security.
This certainly appears to be the judgment of the Gillard government, which has welcomed unequivocally a renewed US strategic interest in southeast Asia and shows every indication of responding positively to US requests for greater access to Australian defence facilities in exchange for financial assistance geared towards infrastructure improvements and even closer defence co-operation.
