By AFP and Focus | 2025-10-16

SYDNEY -- Australia must learn from past guerrilla insurgencies and adopt an "unconventional deterrence" policy in facing down threats from China, Russia and elsewhere, said one of the country's leading think tanks in a report released October 15.

Australia has a population of only 27 million, compared to China's 1 billion and Russia's 140 million.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released the report on October 15, since Australia has a long wait coming for submarines it ordered.

Under the tripartite AUKUS pact with the United States and the United Kingdom, Australia will acquire at least three Virginia-class submarines from the United States within 15 years, with plans to eventually build its own.

Until then Canberra faces a major gap in its defenses, warned the report by nonpartisan ASPI, which receives funding from Canberra's defense ministry as well as the US State Department.

"Australia's traditional reliance upon 'great and powerful friends' and extended nuclear deterrence now seems no longer assured," the authors wrote.

"Australia has options to fill today's deterrence gap: we just need to look beyond conventional paradigms," they said.

Too small for direct confrontations

ASPI, acknowledging Australia's (numerical) "inferiority" against giant adversaries like China, said that past guerrilla wars like the Chechen insurgency against Russia in the 1990s showed that smaller actors could inflict heavy damage on much larger foes.

"History demonstrates that innovative concepts and asymmetric capabilities can achieve deterrent effects ahead of and during conflict," the authors wrote.

"Australian concepts of deterrence don't address the nature of competition as currently practiced by China and other autocratic regimes such as Russia, North Korea and Iran," they warned.

ASPI pointed to Beijing's growing use of so-called "gray-zone" tactics -- cyber warfare, coercion and subversion that fall short of acts of war -- as evidence that Australia needed a more dynamic and reactive policy.

Be a porcupine or a poisonous shrimp

Canberra could learn from former Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew's description of his city state as a "poisonous shrimp," as well as the "porcupine" strategies of Switzerland and the Baltic states, said ASPI.

ASPI called for the recreation of a National Security Adviser with sweeping powers and oversight over Canberra's intelligence agencies, as well as reforms of espionage and defense laws to facilitate the new policy.

To address its competition gap, Australia must learn from historical strategic lessons and support regional defense efforts. Those steps require a shift in Australia's regional policy, as noted in the ASPI paper: "The strategic premise for unconventional deterrence is the need to develop security with Asia ... as opposed to security against Asia ... or in Asia."

Australia is engaging in a rapid military buildup in a push to strengthen its defenses against China, which happens to be its largest trading partner.

Canberra plans to gradually increase its defense spending to 2.4% of gross domestic product, well short of US demands for 3.5%.

The AUKUS submarine program alone could cost the country up to 368 billion AUD ($239 billion) over the next 30 years, according to Australian government forecasts.