India invades Australia!

India was looking outward for territory to expand in, since she was badly overpopulated and short on resources.

There's a good reason why Australia has only 14 million people - most of it is desert. Even though Australia is a modern, progressive, technically advanced nation, it's not economically feasible to support a whole lot more population than it already has.

You could relocate a population the size of New Delhi or Bombay, either of which is about the population of Australia. To move more people there, you're going to need an iceberg convoy out of Antarctica (with its attendant problems of weather and military vulnerability) or a commercially-feasible desalination system.

If you've ever been to the Los Angeles area and driven east, you can see a very similar situation. LA was originally a seaside oasis on the edge of a desert. The city covers where the oasis used to be, and not far to the east it's still desert. Despite ridiculous property values and Romanesque aqueducts, it's still not economically feasible to continue urban development to the east.


India is big enough to build or buy enough hardware to swat Australia like a bug, but just because Australia is "land" doesn't mean they can populate it like India.
 
I find this to be a pretty fascinating topic.
Agreed, the thought of India invading Australia is absurd, but I find the notion of China invading Australia to be very credible.
In an increasingly resource starved world Australia is poor in terms of arid land to cultivate and develop but very, very rich in natural resources such as oil, gas and minerals.
For the worlds largest economy, with the worlds largest population and the worlds largest military Australia is too good of a target not to secure.
But the problem I see with any large-scale military operation to secure the Australian continent. Australia is almost as large in scale as continental US or Europe - the logistics alone would be beyond anyones reach to conduct multiple large-scale invasions and consistently resupply those invading forces over very long distances at sea and land.
There's no doubt the Australian military will take account for much of the invading forces - but in terms of sheer weight in numbers and firepower the Australian military are simply no match.
What I would envisage is a large-scale guerilla war fought throughout the continent with spodradic multiple strikes and containment of a 'Brisbane Line' type of defensive action (think John Marsdens 'Tomorrow' series). The Australian govt needs to buy time by this action to secure a peace deal so as the south-east of the continent remains in Australian possession and the rest is handed over to Chinese control.
Outise help? The Brits? Not much, the distance to get here in the first place is too great for any large scale contingent to even arrive in time. The US? No offense to our greatest allies but I have reservations that the US will involve itself too greatly without the threat of war with China.
New Zealand and most other Commonwealth of Nations will of course provide what help they can - New Zealand especially but alas their contribution is almost neglible compared to the scale of things.
My two cents.....

While thought exercises about western nations such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc.. taking on other nations such as China can be interesting, I don't see the US allowing a friendly, traditionally allied, western democracy to fall to an un provoked invasion. The consequences of the US allowing a nation such as Australia to fall to the Chinese would be staggering for the US.

(The consequences of the Chinese launching an invasion of a western nation would also be staggering for the Chinese.)

Even without overt US military involvement, so long as Australia can continue to acquire US weapons, and recruit additional specialists (ie. pilots) from overseas the Australians would be likely to be able to hold out for a long time. I also wouldn't rule out the possibility of the Australians being able to develop air delivered fission nukes in a fairly short period of time if they were actually invaded or seriously threatened and the US didn't provide substantive support.

In the long run I'd expect to see a lot of western nations building their own nukes in a world where they couldn't count on support from the US.


 
India is big enough to build or buy enough hardware to swat Australia like a bug, but just because Australia is "land" doesn't mean they can populate it like India.

That's a fallacy. Depending on who you ask India's economy is 25% (IMF & CIA) or 80% (World Bank) larger than Australia's by nominal GDP which means that India can only afford to build or buy 25% or 80% more hardware than Australia. Now that's just a rough figure, India's PPP is much greater than Australia's but you don't buy Eurofighters and MBTs in PPP money, you buy them in real money. But it's hardly enough to swat Australia like a bug.
 

Cook

Banned
There's a good reason why Australia has only 14 million people - most of it is desert. Even though Australia is a modern, progressive, technically advanced nation, it's not economically feasible to support a whole lot more population than it already has.

We export enough rice to support 100 million people, and our wheat exports dwarf the rice. Do you think we grow that in a desert?
 
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