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ABSTRACT
Australia’s Cocos Islands and Christmas Island are remote islands with potentially great significance for Australia’s strategic role in the eastern Indian Ocean region and the wider Indo-Pacific. This paper explores the growing militarization of islands throughout the Indian Ocean in the context of growing strategic competition in the region. It then considers the strategic value of Australia’s Indian Ocean territories and makes recommendations about the further development of defense infrastructure to potentially support Australian air operations in Southeast Asia and the eastern Indian Ocean. Upgraded facilities on both Cocos and Christmas would provide Australia with valuable leverage in its relationships with regional defense partners and the United States.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
David Brewster is with the National Security College, Canberra, where he is a leading academic expert on Indian strategy affairs and strategy and security in the Indian Ocean region. He is a regular participant in various 1.5 track strategic dialogues and advises government bodies on policy matters. Major books include India as an Asia Pacific power, about India’s strategic role in the Asia Pacific and India’s Ocean: the story of India’s bid for regional leadership, which examines India’s strategic ambitions in the Indian Ocean. His recent work includes Australia, India and the United States: The challenge of forging new alignments in the Indo-Pacific, which examines the potential for a trilateral security and defence relationship between those countries.
Professor Rory Medcalf is Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, where he has extended the College from its academic and training roles into policy engagement and futures analysis. He has wide experience across diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks, journalism and academia. He was founding director of the international security program for the Lowy Institute, Sydney. His career in the Australian diplomatic service included a posting to New Delhi, a secondment to Japan’s foreign ministry, and policy development on Asian regional institutions. He has contributed to three international panels on nuclear arms control and was an adviser to the Australian Government’s 2016 defence white paper. He has made a significant contribution to Australia-India relations, including as convener of ‘1.5 track’ dialogues. His research interests include developing an Indo-Pacific concept of the Asian strategic environment as well as major power relations, maritime security and nuclear issues.
Notes
1. Australia's Indian Ocean territories also include the uninhabited Ashmore and Cartier Islands, low-lying reefs and islands around 150 km south of the Indonesian island of Rote. They are not currently considered as having military value.
2. For a few years after the World War II, a few Australian planners even dreamed of acquiring a protective wall of island colonies to the north, east and west of the Australian continent as part of a strategy of defense in depth. This theory was quickly overtaken by the reality of the end of the colonial era (Goldsworthy, Citation2002).
3. These arguments may reflect the Defence of Australia doctrine that was adopted at that time and are unlikely to be attractive to contemporary strategic planners.