Extended Deterrence and the Australia-US Alliance: Beyond Abstract Reassurance?
Andrew O’Neil

Monday, July 13, 2015

This seminar is part of the ongoing Nuclear Crossroads Initiative. Following the lecture there will be a question and answer session. This is open to the Laboratory.

Australia possesses a limited capacity to shape its external environment. In strategic terms, it is a security taker rather than a security maker, and economically Australia remains at the mercy of trading markets in Northeast Asia. In security and economic terms, therefore, Australia is acutely vulnerable to twists and turns in the international system. Policy makers seek to mitigate these vulnerabilities through robust engagement in multilateral fora and the development of bilateral agreements to govern trade and investment, as well as strengthening Australia’s long-standing alliance with the world’s strongest military power. The Australia-US security alliance has come a long way since the conclusion of the ANZUS treaty in 1952, and today the normative dimension of the alliance is just as important as its transactional dimensions. Yet, for Australian policy makers, the strategic reassurance provided by the alliance still exerts strong appeal. The assumption that extended deterrence obtains as part of the alliance is central to this sense of reassurance, but its precise nature is rarely discussed, even among Australia’s close-knit strategic studies community. This presentation evaluates the nature of extended deterrence in the Australia-US alliance, speculates how it might evolve going forward, and lays out some hypotheses about what this means for the study of alliances more broadly.

Andrew O’Neil is Professor and Head of the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. He is the author of Asia, the US and Extended Nuclear Deterrence: Atomic Umbrella in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2013), co-editor (with Bruce Gilley) of Middle Powers and the Rise of China (Georgetown University Press, 2014), and co-author (with Michael Clarke and Stephan Fruhling) of Australia’s Nuclear Policy: Reconciling Strategic, Economic and Normative Interests (forthcoming with Ashgate UK, 2015). Andrew is presently a chief investigator on an Australian Research Council project examining the behaviour of US allies with respect to extended nuclear deterrence.

Extended Deterrence and the Australia-US Alliance: Beyond Abstract Reassurance?

The Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) sponsored this seminar entitled "Extended Deterrence and the Australia-US Alliance: Beyond Abstract Reassurance?" on July 13, 2015, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The seminar was presented by Andrew O’Neil, professor and head of the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

LLNL-VIDEO-676909