Australia’s government has not told the people about the seriousness of the threat the country faces.

That’s the verdict of a group of five experts brought together byThe Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age for a review of Australia’s national security,who blew away the fog of war to give Australians some critical points of honest insight. Their consensus? The overwhelming source of danger to Australia is from China. The nature of the threat extends to the prospect of a full-scale war – and Australia would have to be involved.

While the official Canberra guidance on timing is that Australia will have less than 10 years’ warning of war,the five experts think that this timeline is misleading. We need to be ready to fight in just three years,they found. Their review is titled accordingly:Red Alert.

The Albanese government’s officialdefence review is due for release soon. It will have consulted many experts – including some of the same specialists brought together for Red Alert,whose expertise spans military strategy,defence policy,cyber,geopolitics and technology.

But the official report is not independent of the government;it is being written by two men,former Labor defence minister Stephen Smith and former head of the Defence Force Angus Houston,in close consultation with the government. It’s been conducted in secret. Even when it’s published,it will have been sanitised,with much withheld from public view.

Red Alert,being published in this masthead over three days,doesn’t pretend to be definitive. But it is independent of the government and fully on the record.

‘Australia’s holiday from history is over’

Is Australia prepared for its near future? The emphatic answer from the experts is “no”. As they say in a joint statement:“The need to dramatically strengthen our military and national security capabilities is urgent,but Australia is unprepared.”

Critically,the group emphasises that this is a responsibility for the whole nation,not for the military alone:“Most important of all is a psychological shift. Urgency must replace complacency. The recent decades of tranquillity were not the norm in human affairs,but an aberration. Australia’s holiday from history is over.”

The title of the series,Red Alert,reflects their unanimous view that Australia’s biggest trading partner is also its dominant national security threat.

“I have to say,the critical threats stem from one source – China,” says Lavina Lee,a foreign policy expert from Macquarie University,speaking during the one-and-a-half-day group discussion held in the Nine boardroom in Sydney. “I think China presents the most comprehensivechallenge to the regional order that we have faced for the last 70 years after World War II.”

Peter Jennings,who served as Australia’s chief strategist as deputy secretary of the Defence Department before heading the Australian Strategic Policy Institute,says:“It really is all about China,China,China. There’s no question about that.”

Alan Finkel,Australia’s former chief scientist,says Australia should not overlook the dangers posed by other autocratic nations such asa nuclear-armed North Korea. But,he says,“at the 99 per cent level,I agree,it’s all about China”.

‘This is the tipping point’

At the outset of our discussion,when the panellists were asked to outline the threats Australia faced over the next 10 to 20 years,there came a bracing riposte.

“Your timeframe is wrong,” says Jennings. “This is not about 10 to 20 years,it’s really three years. The bulk of that 10 to 20 years will be a post-war environment where a new international order will prevail.”

Finkel says that “20 years shouldn’t even come into the discussion”.

“You might think if the Chinese were going to attack this region,you’d see the troop build-up,the missile build-up. But what if it was a bio-attack,a virus? You’d see nothing.

“We have to invest in our biosecurity,our cybersecurity,our military hardware as if it might happen tomorrow.”

Lesley Seebeck,chair of the National Institute of Strategic Resilience,says:“We’ve just seen[what happens] in Ukraine where authoritarian leaders want to establish their legacy. This is the tipping point that we’re looking at. And this is what really concerns me about the urgency over the next three to five years.”

Seebeck believes the nation’s leaders should trust the public enough to include them in what can be a confronting discussion. “I despair at the level of timidity we see,and not just in Defence,” she says. “In the Hawke-Keating era,they would actually go out and say,‘oh,the Australian people might be smart enough to talk about economics’. We should think they’re also smart enough to talk about defence and national security.”

The Morrison government felt no such inhibition. Peter Dutton,then defence minister,was widely criticised last year for saying Australia needed to prepare for war. At last May’s election,Liberal seats containing the largest proportions of Chinese-Australian voters recorded outsized swings against Morrison’s regime. Many Chinese Australians feltexposed by the government rhetoric. The expert panel agrees that Chinese Australians must be protected and valued in Australia.

But was Dutton right? Does the threat from China really mean the threat of old-fashioned war,kinetic combat,with missiles fired and many killed? Or will Beijing limit the fight to the “grey zone” warfare it has used so effectively – economic coercion,cyberattack,swaying governments with big infrastructure investments,territorial claims pressed by intimidating weaker states with fake “fishing fleets”?

‘Growing capability and sense of entitlement’

The expert panel says we should take China’s president seriously when he routinely pulls on combat fatigues and exhorts his troops to “prepare to fight and win wars”.

“Our assessment of the risk of war is based on President Xi Jinping’s aggressive stance and rapid military build-up,” they write in their joint communique. “China has growing capability and sense of entitlement. The balance of military power is moving in China’s favour.”

The war Xi is preparing for,they say,isone fought over Taiwan,a prosperous self-governing island of 24 million people that sits about 160 kilometres east of mainland China. Taiwan operates as a democracy and has never been controlled by the Chinese Communist Party,but Beijing considers it an indivisible part of its territory.

Xi has repeatedly said he sees the “complete reunification of the motherland” as a central goal for his regime and that China will never renounce the option of using force to seize control of Taiwan. CIA director William Burns said last year he knew “as a matter of intelligence” that Xi had ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to capture Taiwan by 2027. Admiral Michael Gilday,chief of US naval operations,has said an attack could come as early as this year.

Taiwan’s leaders have vowed to fiercely resist any invasion from Beijing,with the territory’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu saying that “Taiwan would fight to the end” in any conflict. “The defence of Taiwan is in our own hands,and we are absolutely committed to that,” Wu said last year.

Mick Ryan,retired Australian Army major general and the only member of the panel to have worn uniform,applies the classic test of threat by assessing Beijing’s capability and intent.

“They are very clear about their intentions for their region,in particular with Taiwan,” he says. “They’ve engaged in the greatest peacetime military build-up in recorded history. And they’ve also done things in places like Xinjiang,Hong Kong,and with the diplomatic and economic coercion that can only lead you to a conclusion that this campaign of aggression and coercion will only continue towards its logical conclusion,which is the reincorporation of Taiwan.”

Xi gave the world a preview of what a war could look like last August when he launched an unprecedented series of live-fire rocket and missile launches across the Taiwan Strait. The aim:to demonstrate China’s military might and express his fury at a high-profile visit to the island by then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Long-range rockets and ballistic missiles fired from the Chinese mainland fell dangerously close to Taiwan’s capital and key cities.

China has alsobecome the world leader in advanced defence technologies such as hypersonic weapons and drones,putting it in a strong position to fight a war. “Don’t underestimate the technological capacity of China,” warns Finkel.

‘A weak China is much more dangerous’

But would Xi really want to strike Taiwan within three years? China is only just emerging from its era of COVID-19 isolation and its economy is struggling to rebound. Its population is declining for the first time in 60 years,raising the possibility its days of double-digit economic growth may be over for good.

Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine has reminded Xi that wars rarely go to plan and invasions can meet surprisingly fierce resistance.

“We are now dealing with aweak China,” Jennings says,“and my view is that a weak China is much more dangerous from a national security perspective than a strong China. A weak China thinks,‘I might have one shot at this’.”

Jennings points out Western nations are now “largely ammunition free” because of the extensive military aid they have given to Ukraine. “This is what drives the idea of a Chinese approach of ‘let’s do it now’,” he says. “Because it’ll be worse in five years’ time.”

Seebeck agrees Australia should “definitely be more worried” about a weakening China. “There’s a closing window of opportunity,” she says. “They will be taking lessons from Ukraine. They’ll be watching what’s happening there and saying,‘We can improve on that’.”

In defence of defending Taiwan

Under the longstanding policy known as “strategic ambiguity”,the US has cultivated a deliberate sense of mystery about whether it would intervene in a war with China over Taiwan. Today,however,there is little mystery. US President Joe Biden has said on four occasions that the US would come to Taiwan’s aid if there is a Chinese invasion. Asked by60 Minutes if he meant that,unlike in Ukraine,US forces would participate in the war,Biden replied:“Yes.”

So America will almost certainly defend Taiwan. What does that mean for Australia? Fighting alongside the Americans – as we have done in every major conflict since WWII – would not have unanimous support. Former prime minister Paul Keating,for example,has said Taiwan is “not a vital Australian interest” and described its status as a “civil matter” for China.

Mick Ryan says there is no doubt about which way Australia would go. “I have always found the idea of our China choice a strange one,” he says. “We have made our choice. If the United States goes to war with Taiwan,we are going to support them one way or the other.”

Lavina Lee agrees:“Neither the Australian military nor the public are presently truly prepared for the outbreak of war and Australia’s inevitable participation. This means there is an absence of urgency about what needs to be done now.”

The expectation in the US capital is that Australia would participate. In a report released earlier this year,the Centre for Strategic and International Studies,a leading Washington think tank,ran a series of wargaming exercises.

In a war over Taiwan,the centre hypothesised that India,Singapore and Thailand would sit out the conflict because of fear of antagonising China. Australia,by contrast,would play an important part by giving the US “access,basing and overflight” rights,as well as participating in battles in the South China Sea.

In the communique,Red Alert experts agree:“Any attack on Taiwan is neither a marginal matter,nor a local one. If successful,it would strike at the heart of global norms that have underpinned international security and prosperity.”

Peter Jennings says:“We always had a choice not to be involved in wars in the Middle East,but we don’t have an exit strategy from the Indo-Pacific because this is where we live.”

Mick Ryan says:“We have a deep interest in the preservation of their[Taiwan’s] democracy but also preservation of a broader order. Large authoritarians can’t be predators on smaller democratic nations.”

Values matter,but so do vital resources. The US has admitted it is heavily dependent on a single company – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited – for producing the semiconductor chips it needs for most modern appliances and smart weaponry.

Lavina Lee says the economic coercion Beijing has inflicted over recent years has given Australians a taste of what life would be like under a China-dominated regional order – and it’s not a taste they enjoyed. China,which accounts for about 40 per cent ofAustralian exports,has imposed a raft of trade measures since 2020,blocking billions of dollars of trade after placing curbs on Australian imports such as beef,barley,coal,wine and timber.

“This gives us an indication of what an order that’s not based on the current liberal rules might look like – that it’s an order based on power,not on rules that apply equally to the big and the small countries,” Lee says.

“So we must do everything we can to deter that from happening because once war breaks out,the pillars of our prosperity are all under threat. The world will just never be the same.”

Tomorrow:Why a war fought over Taiwan could arrive on Australia’s shores

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news,views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley.Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.