Canberra, 7 June 1971
Secret
Strategic Review—Submission No. 1071
Attached, as requested, is a note of the main points you made during the discussions this afternoon.
2. You may like to expand on the regional aspects of points 3 and 4 in the light of the Secretary’s minute.
3. I ought also to remind you of the point you raised about asking the Chiefs of Staff to submit their own strategic appreciation to Cabinet.
4. The difficulty with such a course is that, as well as Foreign Affairs, the Treasury might wish to provide a separate paper, and the Department of Defence. It was, indeed, to avoid this kind of multiplication of papers and attitudes that the Defence Committee was established.
5. A possible mid-course would be to ask that, if the Chiefs of Staff wish to submit a paper of their own, it should be attached to the Defence Committee report. The latter does, of course, represent some kind of rounded conclusion from the whole group—Defence, Service, Chiefs, Treasury, Foreign Affairs and your own department.
6. If the Jervis Bay2 project does not go ahead, the Defence Committee may need to be asked whether there are other ways in which our knowledge of nuclear weapons technology could usefully be advanced.
Points for Cabinet Discussion
1. The general conclusion of the Defence Committee Report is that it is difficult to identify China, Russia or any other country as the main source of difficulty over the next decade.
2. This causes the Defence Committee to see a reduced threat, but politically:–
- we cannot afford to be seen to be reducing the defence effort;
- the emphasis may need to be placed on a change in the defence components.
3. Australia can and should continue to support other countries in the region by a forward defence policy involving:–
- the presence of elements of the armed forces;
- defence aid;
- training, both in Australia and in the relevant country.
These measures will attract support to us.
4. There is no question of our moving to a ‘Fortress Australia’ concept: our policy must be one of defence beyond the Continent, partly because of the cost of Continental defence.
5. In the last analysis, we must rely for our forward defence policy on support from the United States, even though it is difficult to know just what they want from us.
6. Japan will become increasingly important in the Pacific and it is vital that close and co-operative relationships are explored and established with it, including on defence matters.
1 See Document 107.
2 In 1969 Jervis Bay in New South Wales was chosen as the site of the first of a number of planned atomic reactors and preliminary work was begun; however, the plan was later shelved as a result of both financial constraints and US pressure to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. See Wayne Reynolds, Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb (Melbourne, 2000), pp. 141–42 and 193–96.
[NAA: A5882, C01191]