An Australia-Europe security agenda

Both Europe and Australia are waking up, not only to the challenges of a more antagonistic world order, but to the imperative of working together to address the common problems we face. This has been a long time coming.

The collapse of the USSR in 1991 yielded a “peace dividend” that manifested in a 20-year decline in Europe's defence spending and industrial base. Even the shock of Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea in 2014 did not dispel the torpor that had settled over a continent comforted by the promise of American military support enshrined in NATO's Article 5, which pledges collective defence in case of armed attack against any member.

Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 finally blew out the security cobwebs. As Russia specialist Keir Giles observed in his 2024 book Who will defend Europe?: “After hitting the snooze button for over a decade, some parts of Europe have definitely woken up.”

Europe is transforming, affording both lessons and strategic opportunities for Australia, if we are agile and open minded enough to grasp them.

Catalysing this has been the disruptive impact of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and Europeans’ realisation that the dazzle of the El Dorado in the far east had blinded them to the challenges and risks in China’s determined quest for global strategic sway.

Europe is transforming, affording both lessons and strategic opportunities for Australia, if we are agile and open minded enough to grasp them.

Spain’s refusal to sign on notwithstanding, NATO has committed to spending five per cent of GDP on defence. That involves some creative accounting by including ancillary areas such as cyber and defence infrastructure. But this broader ecosystem also matters in the systemic struggle between authoritarianism and accountable democracy, which doesn't distinguish between hemispheres.

The Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security theatres are more interlinked than ever. China and North Korea are materially and politically abetting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine. India continues to buy Russian oil and sustain military ties with Moscow, reflecting historically close relations with the USSR and as a hedge against China.

Russia is ogling opportunities in Southeast Asia. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, having visited Russia as defence minister and as president-elect, has paid his third visit to Putin in less than a year, prioritising the St Petersburg International Economic Forum over the G7 Summit in Canada. This has enlivened prospects for bilateral cooperation in diverse areas, including a spaceport and civilian nuclear reactors for Indonesia, and the establishment of a multi-billion-dollar joint investment fund.

In January, Indonesia became a full member of the BRICS grouping, which Moscow and Beijing promote as a counter to US-dominated structures. Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are aspirant BRICS members.

It is a fair bet that, even were the war in Ukraine to end soon, Russia's militarised economy would not revert to making washing machines but instead seek export markets in our region.

Despite the turbulence emanating from Washington, Australia’s strategic interests remain centred on and served by our alliance with the United States. It is not feasible to unpick decades of shared experience, deep interoperability, and common platforms, weapons systems, and technologies. Yet even as we again argue to Washington that we make a serious and proportional defence contribution, we must leverage additional partnerships in pursuit of burden-sharing, economies of scale, and increasing our industrial redundancy and resilience in anticipation of heightened tension or conflict.

Europe has much to offer, not only thanks to its new investments in defence spending and national security, but because of its determination to be a genuine strategic actor globally. Moreover, Europe already is heavily engaged in our region, including as the third-largest aid provider (after ourselves and Japan), and the largest dispenser of development assistance globally.

Several European firms are Australian defence primes, notably Thales, Rheinmetall, Kongsberg, and SAAB. The EU became a strategic partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2020 and launched its EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific in 2021. The EU signed security and defence partnerships with Japan and South Korea in 2024 – the first with partners outside Europe. Australia now is negotiating its own with Brussels.

Europe has much to offer, not only thanks to its new investments in defence spending and national security, but because of its determination to be a genuine strategic actor globally.

A new tier of innovative and resilient European nations, notably Poland and the Nordic and Baltic countries (the “NB8”), has crystallised. Deeply integrated into the Ukraine defence innovation ecosystem and, like Australia, having strong connections to the US defence base, they are outward-looking, activist, and clear-eyed on China and Russia.

We have much to gain from greater collaboration with them in military technologies such as drones and other autonomous systems. We can benefit from their hard-won experience in fostering social cohesion and resilience in the face of “hybrid” warfare, which operates below the threshold of military conflict to subvert and suborn democracies.

At the recent NATO Summit, Australia signed an agreement with the NATO Support and Procurement Organisation to facilitate collaborative procurement efforts with NATO partners. This builds upon the institutional relationship Australia has forged with NATO in joint operations in Afghanistan and as a member of the “Indo-Pacific Four”, alongside Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand.

The Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience, launched at US initiative in 2024, is a further plank for more collaboration between Europe and Australia. It aims to create a trusted ecosystem amongst industry, capital providers, and defence customers to foster information exchange, technical cooperation, supply chain resilience, and co-production and co-sustainment. Its 14 members span the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions and include key European countries and Australian partners such as Japan and South Korea.

This is a solid foundation of experience and trust upon which we can and must build stronger collaboration with Europe. Concluding a security and defence partnership focused on production, not platitudes, is squarely in Australia’s interests.

As Europe and Australia embark on negotiating a new Security and Defence Partnership, many will be sceptical that Europe can play a significant role in enhancing Australia’s security, or Australia in Europe’s.

This century, Europeans and Australians have collaborated against security challenges such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and stabilising Afghanistan and Iraq. But this collaboration was US-led, and many will question whether such collaboration is possible in the absence of US leadership.

Most scepticism that I’ve heard arises from doubts about Australia’s and Europe’s capacity to engage in meaningful security cooperation outside of their own regions. But leaping to capacity judgements is premature, before we consider the imperatives for cooperation.

To understand Australia’s and Europe’s motivations for reaching out to each other to build collective capacity, we need to look at the rapidly changing geopolitical imperatives they both face.

In security affairs, imperatives and capacity are closely correlated. States facing serious security challenges are motivated to develop capacity that they didn’t have at times of less danger. Compare Australia’s military capacity in the early 1930s with its military capacity in the early 1940s.

To understand Australia’s and Europe’s motivations for reaching out to each other to build collective capacity, we need to look at the rapidly changing geopolitical imperatives they both face. These are playing out across four interrelated vectors.

Most obviously they face mounting material rivalry, in terms of fierce competition to accrue military and economic advantage. In broad terms, this can be thought of using economists’ terminology of stocks and flows. The United States and its allies in the Pacific and Europe hold superior stocks of military and economic power against China and its collaborators, but their flows of additional capability and productivity are sluggish, slowed by low economic and productivity growth, debt, aging populations and high social spending. China’s flows of additional capability and productivity are healthier, buoyed by higher economic growth, lower debt and social welfare, although it too faces an aging society.

The second vector of competition is institutional. Europe faces a concerted Russian campaign to degrade its regional institutions and sow discord among their members. Australia looks to a set of regional institutions that are decades old and well into atrophy, while China has more recently engaged in concerted multilateral entrepreneurship, launching the Belt and Road Initiative, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and promoting the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and others.

The third vector is infrastructural competition, or increasing rivalry to dominate technology development, communications networks, supply chains of critical materials and transportation networks. These infrastructures themselves lock countries into particular patterns of dependence, which in turn become important forms of power for those who dominate them.

Finally, there is increasing normative rivalry – over which group of countries champions the values that ensure a stable and just international order. The United States and its Pacific and European allies have vigorously advocated for upholding “the rules-based order” and calling out those they accuse of degrading it – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. These latter countries in turn accuse their accusers of “hegemonism” and advocate for a pluralist, multipolar world order. The objects of competition for all four vectors of rivalry are the developing countries of Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Latin America.

Previous to Donald Trump’s second coming, Australia and Europe supported US objectives and efforts in all four vectors of geopolitical competition. Trump’s arrival has doubled down US efforts on the material and infrastructural vectors of competition, but seen the United States abandon the field on the institutional and normative vectors, leaving Australia and Europe facing considerable uncertainty while confronting newly inspired opponents.

Perhaps the biggest challenge shared by Australia and Europe is normative – finding a way to maintain support for a stable international order that best upholds state sovereignty.

Australia’s and Europe’s security imperatives have escalated in the face of an America-First ally and emboldened opponents – China in Australia’s case, Russia in Europe’s. In material terms, they face both economic and military challenges. Europeans fear an “industrial winter” brought on by China’s manufacturing power and motivation to dump goods previously bound for the United States, while Australia is looking to build sovereign manufacturing capability in the newly uncertain global economic landscape. Recent announcements of increased defence spending in Australia and Europe reflect a growing realisation that sovereign military capabilities need to be built and maintained for the foreseeable future.

Here is a clear imperative for European-Indo-Pacific collaboration. The simultaneous increase in defence spending by multiple US allies has increased demand for military capabilities sharply, while supply remains limited. The big industrial economies of Europe, if combined with those of Japan and South Korea, will readily surge to meet this demand if properly primed and coordinated. Australia has an important role to play in such a coalition as a supplier of critical minerals, and perhaps as an investor in industrial uplift among trusted collaborators.

Another vector of challenge is infrastructural. Europe and Australia have different but mutually instructive experiences of opponents seeking to dominate and exploit critical infrastructure. There is much to learn from each other in building societal and infrastructural resilience against malign manipulation and coercion.

Perhaps the biggest challenge shared by Australia and Europe is normative – finding a way to maintain support for a stable international order that best upholds state sovereignty – or in Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s formulation, “where no state dominates and none is dominated”. In this challenge, Australia and Europe have much to discuss and align on.

Some Australian commentators seemed surprised when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently announced he would accept European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s invitation to formalise an Australia–EU Strategic and Defence Partnership (SDP). Perhaps the policy watchers had ignored the fact that a deeper Australia–Europe engagement agenda had quietly been gathering momentum for some time.

One early signal was the reinstatement of Europe as a full Division in Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Another was the appointment of Angus Campbell, former Chief of Australia’s Defence Force, as Canberra’s Ambassador to the European Union. And the newly re-elected Albanese government has made a priority of restarting – and successfully concluding – negotiations over the Australia–EU Free Trade Agreement.

Australia and Europe are facing the same types of threats: attempts by authoritarian and capricious nations to undermine established rules, fragment partnerships, and subvert the national resilience of smaller states.

Simultaneously, many European states have delivered (or are formulating) national strategies on the Indo-Pacific, and the European Union has already concluded SPDs with Japan and South Korea. While open-ended and light on detail, the point of such agreements is to put in place frameworks for cooperation and then build on them, rather than negotiate complex and granular accords overburdened with obligations and benchmarks.

Motives and rationales

Australian critics of deeper Europe engagement predictably scoff here. Where is the utility, they ask, of concluding agreements with a supranational institution far away from Australia? Why engage with a Europe distracted by Russian adventurism, and worried about NATO’s viability? And how much can Europe help anyway, given its less-than-stellar track record on securing its own backyard?

Such views are myopic. There are abundant reasons to enhance Europe–Australia ties. First, it makes structural sense because global and regional uncertainty is a key factor driving mutual desires for deeper cooperation. As France’s President Emmanuel Macron observed in his keynote address at the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, powerful actors now seek not only spheres of influence, but “spheres of coercion”.

In other words, Australia and Europe are facing the same types of threats: attempts by authoritarian and capricious nations to undermine established rules, fragment partnerships, and subvert the national resilience of smaller states. They do so in multifaceted ways, including economic coercion, cyberattacks, campaigns to weaken societies from within, and using military power to compel and coerce others.

But the systemic argument for a closer relationship goes further. As both Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles have pointed out, Australia and Europe occupy an increasingly shared strategic space. By dragging North Korea into its illegal and unprovoked war against Ukraine, Russia has made the conflict a multi-regional one. Moscow has also significantly accelerated its efforts to induce and suborn Indo-Pacific elites after realising that Asia, not Europe, will drive its future economic prosperity. At the very least, making Australia more Europe-literate (and Russia-literate) under those circumstances makes eminent sense.

Meanwhile, China has become increasingly interested in Europe, which has correctly responded with caution to Beijing’s attempts to promote itself as the world’s sole remaining integrative power. Indeed, increasing Sino–Russian alignment means that Europe has a China problem – and Australia has a Russia problem – and not just the other way around.

An agenda for cooperation

Naturally, we should be realistic about the limits of Australia–EU alignment. Clearly, it will not alter power dynamics in either region. We are unlikely to see large numbers of Australian troops on Russia’s borders, just as Indo-Pacific skies will remain unpatrolled by Czech warplanes.

But there are tangible and mutually beneficial outcomes from deepening cooperation. Working together, Europe and Australia can achieve much, for instance, in addressing and proactively mitigating hostile information operations (known in the European Union as Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, or FIMI).

Secure nations are resilient ones, and national resilience is a whole-of-society (and not just a whole-of-government) endeavour.

Here, Europe would benefit from Australia’s extensive experience in responding to Chinese economic and political coercion. And the European External Action Service (EEAS) has significant expertise in dealing with Russian disinformation campaigns. So too do individual EU member states. Sweden, Finland and Estonia – not to mention Poland – have extensive experience addressing hybrid threats ranging from cyberattacks to lawfare and sabotage.

Protecting critical infrastructure, especially undersea, is another arena for cooperation: Australian and maritime European telecommunications nodes are acute vulnerabilities. In space, Australia could help facilitate mid-latitude satellite networks for communications as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. And, of course, an Australia–EU SDP would unlock European defence procurement, ameliorating anxieties around access to defence material.

More than just security and defence

But the cooperation agenda goes beyond narrow conceptions of security and defence. Secure nations are resilient ones, and national resilience is a whole-of-society (and not just a whole-of-government) endeavour.

The recent address to Australia’s National Press Club by Gabriele Visentin, the EU’s Ambassador to Australia, is instructive here. He noted that both Canberra and Brussels had shared approaches and interests in prosperity, security and accountable democracy.

Indeed, trade and investment – including through FTAs – offers obvious strategic benefits. Diversified partnerships help address geoeconomic challenges and supply chain vulnerabilities, and they provide a basis for advancing critical and emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence and clean energy. Similarly, both the European Union and Australia are strong advocates for an order built on rules and international law, with the capacity to shape regional narratives around good governance, transparency and strategic stability.

Hence, wondering whether to enhance Europe–Australia relationships should require only minimal thought. The threats we face, our political and normative alignment, and our preference for free and liberal trade are all shared. And while it will not magically smooth the complex and fraught security order we must navigate, it would be a missed opportunity if we did not try to chart that course together.