In Australia's submarine argument, the enemy was Indonesia

When Australian officials defend their plan to buy nuclear-powered submarines, they usually leave the enemy unnamed. One former official did not. The South China Morning Post reports that Michael Pezzullo, for years the deputy secretary for strategy in Australia's defence department, used a scenario of "an aggressive Indonesia" to argue why Australia needs the submarines it is buying under AUKUS, its defence pact with the United States and Britain. In that kind of war, fought without allied help, he said Australian forces would aim to "rapidly destroy as much of the enemy's fighting power as possible."

Pezzullo is retired, and the hearing was not a government one. He spoke on 2 September to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, an independent panel funded by crowdfunding. The words travelled anyway. News24 reported them on 5 September, and The Strategist, published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, ran them again two days later. That is how one witness's hypothetical reached the defence readership in both countries. Analysts quoted by the paper called it clumsy diplomacy that could weaken the security cooperation Jakarta and Canberra have spent the past year building.

The sting is in who said it rather than what was said. Planners are paid to imagine bad futures, and Australia's debate about submarines has been running for years. But the name in the blank space belonged to the neighbour Canberra signs agreements with, and it came from a man who once ran that planning. No Indonesian government reply appears in the report.

Why it matters

If you have followed the run of defence deals Indonesia signed with Australia, this is a rare look at the assumptions sitting underneath them, and it is worth watching whether Australian ministers reject the framing or let it stand. The practical risk is closer to home: talk like this is useful to anyone in Jakarta arguing for more ships and jets, and that money comes from the same budget as schools, clinics and food.