Australia would not commit troops in advance to any conflict, Australian Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy said yesterday in response to a report that said the US was pressing allies to clarify what role they would play if the US and China went to war over Taiwan.
Australia prioritizes its sovereignty and “we don’t discuss hypotheticals,” Conroy said. “The decision to commit Australian troops to a conflict will be made by the government of the day.”
The Financial Times on Saturday reported that US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby has been pressing Australian and Japanese officials on what they would do in a Taiwan conflict, although the US does not offer a blank check guarantee to defend Taiwan.
Photo: AFP
Colby posted on X that the US Department of Defense is implementing US President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda of restoring deterrence, which includes “urging allies to step up their defense spending and other efforts related to our collective defense.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, speaking in Shanghai at the start of a six-day visit to China that is likely to focus on security and trade, said Canberra did not want any change to the “status quo” on Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Talisman Sabre, Australia’s largest war-fighting exercise with the US, began yesterday in Sydney Harbor and is to involve 40,000 troops from 19 countries, including Japan, South Korea, India, the UK, France and Canada.
The war games would span thousands of kilometers from Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island to the Coral Sea on Australia’s east coast, in a rehearsal of joint war fighting, Australian Chief of Joint Operations Vice Admiral Justin Jones said.
The air, sea, land and space exercises over two weeks will “test our ability to move our forces into the north of Australia and operate from Australia,” Jones said.
“I will leave it to China to interpret what 19 friends, allies and partners wanting to operate together in the region means to them. But for me... it is nations that are in search of a common aspiration for peace, stability, a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he said.
US Army Lieutenant General Joel Vowell said Talisman Sabre would improve the readiness of militaries to respond together and was “a deterrent mechanism because our ultimate goal is no war.”
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