National security expert Ross Babbage warns ‘strong possibility’ of war with China in latest book

Mr Babbage’s new book The Next Major War: Can the US and its Allies Win Against China? was released in Australia on Wednesday night, revealing how China poses a threat of war in the near-future and how he believes a decline in international relations can be prevented.

One of the pressing issues Mr Babbage addressed while discussing the book with Sky News Australia’s Andrew Bolt on Thursday night, was China’s plans to “incorporate democratic Taiwan into China as a province”.

He believes that if China moved to incorporate Taiwan, the United States would act in defence of the democratic nation.

“The Taiwanese of course don’t want anything to do with this and on the other side of the Pacific we’ve had president Biden say four times since his election that if China is attacked with military force, the United States will commit military forces also to the defence of Taiwan”, he said.

“So here we have two sides with diametrically opposed positions and the other thing is China may be and Xi Jinping probably feels as though as he’s running out of time and that in order to incorporate Taiwan.

“He may have to move in the next few years but he can’t wait indefinitely because he has lots of other problems including domestic problems that are probably going to get worse in the next few years as well.

“This is a very serious issue, we could face a major crisis quickly.”

Mr Babbage said China’s economic situation is currently worsening with their decision to engage in less international consumption.

“A lot of the investment that has been done in new technologies and in terms of trading relationships too have been designed to insulate China from international pressures and potential coercion and to make the Chinese economy much more dependent upon domestic consumption rather than international factors - both investment and in fact trade”, he said.

“What we have seen is China stepping away and in fact this has had a big impact on Chinese economic growth (which is) only about a quarter what it was in 2007.

“It’s a very expensive program, they’re doing a lot of things and spending a lot of time and resources on building up the security, obviously building up their military. They’re doing a whole lot of other things which are not economically rational.”

The author believes China has the view that if they can get the United States into a prolonged position of conflict, it will leave them “politically exhausted”, forcing them to “come to the negotiating table on terms that should be pretty close to those the Chinese leadership wants”.

When questioned by host Andrew Bolt on how escalating conflict could be prevented, Mr Babbage said Australia’s relationships with its allies was key.

“What we’ve got to do is coordinate with our friends and neighbours and allies – a raft of activities, it’s not just a military issue here,” he said.

“We have to build resilience within our societies, we’ve got to provide greater protections against cyber attack, coercive activities against us, interference in our political affairs and in our media, especially social media."

He added that Australia should take caution while trading with China, ensuring they aren’t exposed.

“We’ve got to be very careful how exposed we are from everything pharmaceuticals and processed mineral products right through to machinery and just about everything that could be really  important in a crisis,” he said.

“At the moment in this country, we’ve cut our manufacturing sector dramatically and we really need to resuscitate that and we need to do it with the United States obviously as well and with our other partners and friends including countries like Japan, Korea, many of our South-east Asian friends, India, and of course our European allies and friends as well.”