Australia and the Western Pacific: The Need to Ramp Up Engagement

Australia must become more active in the western Indian Ocean, not least because the country’s fuel supplies depend on tanker traffic through the region.

The Royal Australian Navy has operated in the western Indian Ocean consistently for more than a quarter of its history. Those operations have spanned a spectrum of tasks from counter-piracy, counter-narcotics and counterterrorism to support to both Gulf Wars in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.

The nature and persistence of such operations is often attributed to Australia–US alliance responsibilities or the need for operational experience. However, the overarching reason is that western Indian Ocean maritime security directly affects Australia’s national security.

While maritime operations in the region are understandably not Australia’s primary focus, ignoring the region and its impact on national security may have significant consequences as the Indian Ocean becomes more contested. Maritime operations and capacity building in the western Indian Ocean must be factored into Australia’s maritime strategy.

Since the articulation of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept in the 2013 Defence White Paper and the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper, Australia has limited its Indo-Pacific imagination to the eastern Indian Ocean. That focus has been reinforced repeatedly since then, including in the recent National Defence Strategy (NDS). The NDS defines Australia’s primary area of military interest as ‘the immediate region encompassing the Northeast Indian Ocean through maritime Southeast Asia into the Pacific’.

A primary focus on the northeastern Indian Ocean makes sense for many reasons. The obvious ones are the importance of the oil and gas reserves on Australia’s northwest shelf, Australia’s northern approaches and the ‘general proximity’ argument. The Malacca Strait between Singapore and Indonesia, and the Sunda and Lombok straits through the Indonesian archipelago, are central to Australia’s maritime trade dependencies. In a time of crisis or conflict, any direct threat to Australia beyond missile and long-range bomber attacks would likely transit through the northeastern Indian Ocean, although not exclusively.

The Australian Defence Force and the current and previous governments have actively sought to bolster the defence presence in the northeastern Indian Ocean. This has taken the form of naval diplomacy through the Indo-Pacific Endeavour regional engagement activity and the bolstering of facilities in Australia’s Indian Ocean territories. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands have become a focus: a significant investment is being made to upgradethe airstrip there on West Island to support Australian P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft, and there has been talk of potential deployments of the Australian Army’s new HIMARS missile launchers there for maritime strike capability. This emphasis has been underwritten by the new era of maritime patrol aircraft diplomacy, including visits to the Maldives and a suite of new defence attache appointments.

The focus on the eastern Indian Ocean is extended by the expansion of Australia’s naval base in Rockingham, Western Australia. The base HMAS Stirling will not only play host to Submarine Rotational Force–West from 2027 and Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines; it will also inevitably be host to Australia’s expanding surface combatant fleet, albeit in the 2030s.

In many respects, Australia’s increased emphasis on the eastern Indian Ocean is realising what Kim Beazley hoped for with his 1987 two-ocean Navy strategy.

However, Australia’s Indian Ocean defence engagement cannot be confined just to the eastern Indian Ocean or subscribe to an artificial line drawn south from India in its conception of the Indo-Pacific. There are several reasons for this, from population growth in Africa to Australia’s important trade relationships with the European Union, Australia’s third-largest trading partner. However, the most compelling and strategically significant is Australia’s fuel supply.

Australia imports 90 percent of its fuel. Any interruption to the fuel supply would have dramatic and immediate effects not only on the Australian economy, but also on Australia’s ability to defend itself. F-35 fighters would not be able to fly, and HIMARS launchers could not be moved around the country, to name but two of the effects.

In conversations about Australian fuel supply across the Indian Ocean, it is common for concerns to be dismissed by pointing out that Australia imports most of its fuel from its north. In June 2024, the top three exporters of fuel to Australia were South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. But there is a catch: those imports are of refined fuel, because all but two Australian oil refineries have closed.

South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia all import most of their crude oil from the Middle East, so any interruption to the crude-oil supply across the Indian Ocean will directly affect Australia’s fuel supplies and its national security. While many countries in the region are also vulnerable, Australia’s vulnerability is twofold. Australia’s fuel needs to cross the Indian Ocean twice, first as crude oil from the western Indian Ocean to the Malacca Strait to be refined in Asia, then through the Indonesian archipelago back into the Indian Ocean as refined fuel to be imported into Australia.

Australia’s fuel supply is but one obvious example of why Australia should care about maritime security in the western Indian Ocean. While there have been calls for Australia to bolster its fuel-supply resilience, policies developed to do so will not have an effect in the near to medium term.

The western Indian Ocean is increasingly a contested maritime domain, not only as a result of increased piracy and Houthi attacks on shipping, but also because China is gaining a foothold in the region. In 2017, China established a base in Djibouti and has since invested in ports across the western Indian Ocean. In the event of a crisis, it is not a stretch to think that Australia’s fuel supply would be directly affected.

While the claim has been made that Australia relies on its partnerships and alliances to ensure maritime security in the western Indian Ocean, that’s not entirely accurate. Australia has relied on partners and allies, in concert with its independent operations, to ensure maritime security in the western Indian Ocean, as evidenced by the near 30 years of continuous Australian naval deployments to this region.

Given the implications for it of western Indian Ocean maritime security matters, Australia must become more active in this region through semi-regular deployments of ships and aircraft and through investment in capacity building. This will ensure presence, build relationships in the region and grow the Royal Australian Navy’s fluency with operating in the region—a baseline of familiarity that would be essential to surging operations in the event of a crisis.

Australia is correct to prioritise the northeastern Indian Ocean in its military calculus, but that prioritisation should not mean that the western Indian Ocean is ignored. It’s time for Australia to incorporate a greater presence in the western Indian Ocean into its maritime strategy.

Jennifer Parker is an expert associate at the National Security College, Australian National University, an adjunct fellow at the University of New South Wales and Nancy Bentley Associate Fellow in Indo-Pacific Maritime Affairs at the Council on Geostrategy. She has more than 20 years of experience in the Australian Department of Defence working in a broad range of operational and capability areas.

This article was based on contributions by the author at a June 2024 United States Studies Centre workshop on Australian Indian Ocean strategy.

This article was published by ASPI on August 22, 2024.

The photo is of Parker speaking at the last Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar held in April 2024 and is credited to Robbin Laird.