Is Australia leveraging our strategic geography in the way we should be? Time to super charge efforts to invest in Northern Australia! ⬇️
Robert D Kaplan’s classic ‘Revenge of Geography’ foretold of increased conflicts and division as geography and long standing geopolitical tensions eroded unipolar moment globalism and soft power effectiveness. Geography matters and key terrain, chokepoints and lines of communication shape strategy:
‘As political upheavals accumulate and the world becomes seemingly more unmanageable, with incessant questions as to how the United States and its allies should respond, geography offers a way to make some sense of it all’
For Australia, our geography becomes strategic whenever great power competition occurs in the Indo Pacific. Our continent offers strategic depth but also proximity to the archipelago and both oceans. It wasn’t a coincidence that both the Allies and Imperial Japan quickly focused on Northern Australia as the War in the Pacific raged in our region.
So, it is timely that Australian Strategic Policy Institute drops a quality contribution to the contest of ideas on how Australia should be harnessing our geography. The ‘Northern Australia: securing a developing economy to secure a developed nation’ report assesses how Australia is currently developing our North and explains why it is vital we seize the initiative and master our geography:
“Northern Australia is central to the nation’s future. Economically, it serves as the gateway to Indo‑Pacific trade, is home to world‑class resources and represents a frontier of opportunity. Strategically, it’s the keystone of Australia’s national defence posture. Yet, despite its immense importance, the region continues to face persistent structural challenges, including limited private‑sector investment; low local economic capture from major projects; workforce and service deficits; and deteriorating public safety indicators.”
If a location was strategically relevant in the War in the Pacific it could be so again in the next major war in this region. Darwin is a classic example of a prime location with potential to generate strategic competitive advantage for force projection and sustainment. On Darwin’s historical significance if you haven’t listened to The Cove podcast on the Bombing of Darwin we commend it to you. But back to the current context – and we’ll leave the final word to ASPI describing the Northern Australia report:
“This report reframes northern Australia not as a peripheral problem but as a developing economy within a developed nation. It calls for a renewed, coordinated investment agenda, treating spending in the north as a nation-building imperative. Inaction will incur higher costs in the future, but it will also expose Australia to intolerable risks.”
Food for thought!
📷 via Australian Army and links to Kaplan’s ‘Revenge of Geography’, ASPI’s ‘Northern Australia’ report and The Cove podcast are in the comments.