Know your think tanks. Sam Roggeveen is from the Lowy Institute – conservative and business friendly. The Australia Institute is the lefty one. Which makes The Echidna Strategy a somewhat surprising offering. In it you get a conservative analysis of why AUKUS is a really bad idea and why we shouldn’t assume the US alliance is going to help defend Australia in even the medium future.

On the US, Roggeveen questions whether the US has any vital interests in North Asia. He remains optimistic about the future prosperity and power of the US but thinks we are seeing an inexorable loss of resolve to contest China’s primacy in Asia.

On China, Roggeveen is, for a self-professed conservative, refreshingly balanced. As long as we keep the cost of buying our rocks cheaper than the cost of taking them by force there is no reason to think kinetic conflict with China is even possible let alone likely. China is asserting itself and things may come to a head over Taiwan, but Roggeveen is one of those who doubts the US will die in a ditch for Taiwan and, even if it did, we shouldn’t get involved.

AUKUS may be a bad idea because, apart from the ridiculous cost, it gives us an offensive capability against the Chinese mainland that the Chinese could not ignore, should push come to shove. The good news is that Roggeveen thinks Australia is in fact easy to defend. We’ll need a lot of missiles – medium range ones – and we will need to stay good friends with the Pacific countries to try and make friends with Indonesia. As an ex-analyst from the Office of National Assessments he actually knows something about such matters and geography does corroborate his basic thesis – distance is our friend.

The echidna looks cute but is a rebarbative beast. Which is just as well because if he is right that the US is likely to withdraw from Asia over the next 20 years then we will have precious little choice.

Reviewed by Grant Hansen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Roggeveen is director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program. He was the founding editor of The Interpreter and is editor of the Lowy Institute Papers. Before joining the Lowy Institute, Sam was a senior analyst in Australia’s peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments. His most recent book is The Echidna Strategy.