By Hugh White*
Could Australia defend itself independently from direct military attack by a major Asian power like China? That’s the key question I set out to answer in How to defend Australia. My answer was a cautious ‘yes’.
That answer was based on two judgements. The first was that Australia’s key strategic objectives—the things we most needed our armed forces to be able to do in order to defend ourselves—could be achieved with what I called a military strategy of maritime denial. The second was that we could achieve maritime denial with forces which we might, at a stretch, be able to afford.