An Australian maritime strategy: resourcing the Royal Australian Navy

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Australia is a maritime nation. The sheer scale of our sovereign maritime territory and responsibilities, our dependence on maritime trade for our prosperity and the increasing value of activity in the maritime environment must all be recognised in our maritime strategy. In a highly interconnected world, we face fundamental vulnerabilities from the realities of our geostrategic situation. In this report, the author argues that the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) lacks the resources to adequately protect Australia’s vast maritime interests. This concern isn’t unique to our time: maritime strategists have long lamented that, despite being uniquely an island, a continent and a nation, Australia struggles to understand the central importance of a maritime strategy to our defence and security. The underappreciation of Australia’s dependence on the maritime domain and that domain’s significance for the nation’s prosperity and security has consistently produced a RAN that’s overlooked and under-resourced.

In this report, the author examines whether the bipartisan thesis of a structural change in our strategic circumstances, as articulated in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR), also requires a structural change and an expansion of the RAN. The author argues that both are needed, through both an increased surface-combatant fleet that’s designed on the principle of a balanced fleet and a review of the RAN’s structure. Such a structural review should include consideration of bold changes, including reconsideration of a fleet auxiliary, a coastguard or forward basing of assets to support the workforce requirements of an expanded fleet.

This report looks mainly at the structure of the surface-combatant fleet, noting the recent finalisation of the surface-combatant fleet review. In the light of the Australian Government’s consideration of that review’s recommendations, the report makes eight recommendations for government consideration.

The author also argues that the status quo of 11–12 major surface combatants is insufficient for Australia. That was the case even when the force was structured around the concept of Australia having 10 years warning time of military conflict. That problem has become more acute today, given the new era of strategic competition and the capability and size of our potential adversaries, in particular China, as recognised in the DSR. The report recommends that a major surface-combatant fleet structure of 16–20 ships is needed.

Where next for the Australia–South Korea partnership?

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The strategic partnership between Australia and South Korea holds great potential in an increasingly challenging time. The two nations have many common strategic interests and both can rightly claim to be regional powers. However, the relationship remains a relative underperformer compared with other key regional relationships and has suffered from inconsistency. When Canberra’s contemporary relationship with Seoul receives attention from Australian analysts, it tends to be framed largely in the context of the threats posed by Pyongyang.

While some uncertainties remain over the long-term trajectory of South Korea’s foreign and security policy due to concerns that Seoul’s current vision is tied to the Yoon government as opposed to being embedded in longer-term statecraft, the structural basis for deeper engagement between Seoul and Canberra is sound. Investing in the relationship is in both nations’ interests. Building bureaucratic and commercial frameworks for cooperation now would help ensure that bilateral strategic alignment is less prone to future changes in government.

This paper assesses the Australia–South Korea partnership through the three-pillar structure outlined in the 2021 Australia-South Korea Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and offers recommendations for strengthening the relationship. These recommendations include furthering strategic cooperation by incrementally aligning key trilateral formats, developing bilateral cooperation in critical technologies including those relevant to AUKUS Pillar 2, and nurturing collaboration with respect to the Indo-Pacific clean energy transition.

Building whole-of-nation statecraft: how Australia can better leverage subnational diplomacy in the US alliance

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Australia and the US are both federations of states in which power is shared constitutionally between the national and subnational levels of government. However, traditionally, one domain that hasn’t been considered a shared power, but rather the constitutionally enshrined responsibility of the national governments, has been international affairs (in the US Constitution through Article I, Section 10 and other clauses and in the Australian Constitution through section 51 (xxix), known as the external affairs power). For this reason, foreign-policy and national-security decision-makers in Washington DC and Canberra have rightly seen themselves as the prime actors in the policymaking that develops and strengthens the US–Australia alliance and all global relationships, with limited power held by subnational governments.

However, in our globalised and digital world, constitutional power no longer means that subnational governments have only narrow roles and influence on the international stage. While national governments will continue having primary responsibility for setting foreign policy, subnational governments have offices overseas, sign agreements with foreign governments, and regularly send diplomatic delegations abroad. Recent events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, have highlighted subnational governments’ decisive role in shaping, supporting, adapting to and implementing national and international policy. The pandemic, including post-pandemic trade promotion, demonstrated that the relationships between layers of governments in both federations are essential to national security, resilience, economic prosperity and social cohesion.

Subnational governments have vital roles to play in helping to maximise national capability, increase trust in democratic institutions, mitigate security threats and build broader and deeper relationships abroad. At the subnational level in Washington and Canberra, people-to-people, cultural and economic links create the deep connective tissue that maintains relationships, including those vital to the US-Australia alliance, no matter the politics of the day. But that subnational interaction must be consistent with national defence and foreign policy.

Australia’s federal system should help facilitate international engagement and incentivise positive engagement while ensuring that the necessary legislative and policy levers exist to require the subnational layer to conduct essential due diligence that prioritises the national interest. In this report, the authors make a series of policy recommendations that will support the development of such a framework.

‘Doing good deeds quietly’: the rise of intelligence diplomacy as a potent tool of statecraft

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‘Intelligence diplomacy’ – using intelligence actors and relationships to conduct, or substantially facilitate, diplomatic relations – is a potent tool for statecraft; useful in specific circumstances to either enhance conventional diplomacy or create subtler lines of communication. Intelligence diplomacy, its increasing utility and potential hazards, is the subject of Doing good deeds quietly, the latest report from ASPI’s Statecraft & Intelligence Centre.

The report finds that governments turn to intelligence diplomacy when a variety of circumstances – and critically those governments’ assessments of related capabilities and effectiveness of their intelligence services – makes use of intelligence actors or relationships attractive and advantageous.

Furthermore, Doing good deeds quietly finds that governments should use intelligence diplomacy selectively and purposefully, in concert and collaboration with other arms of policy, and with robust, agreed policy objectives and parameters. They should also be wary of over-use, for the effective utility of intelligence diplomacy depends in part on prudent and selective application.

For politicians, policymakers and the interested public, understanding the important role intelligence diplomacy can play in international relations provides a fuller sense of what it is that intelligence agencies actually do in their name.

US land power in the Indo-Pacific: opportunities for the Australian army

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The US Army is undergoing its most consequential period of transformation since the end of the Cold War. The re-emergence of great power competition and a deteriorating strategic environment is forcing the US Army to rethink not just its approach to land warfare but also its future role alongside the US Marine Corps in key regions around the globe. In the Indo-Pacific, this doctrinal and structural transformation is informing a new approach to joint exercises and ‘no gaps’ defence collaboration to deter Chinese aggression. These developments hold important insights for key US allies and partners, including Australia and Japan.

Australia’s new unifying strategic approach to national defence and the high degree of convergence this has with US defence strategy offers a timely window of opportunity for the Australian Army to explore the combined use of land power in a heighten threat environment. This work should be mutually reinforcing and constitute part of Australia’s approach to managing risk and threats and balancing its contributions to deterrence.

This report aims to provide the Australian defence establishment and military leaders with well-considered options for engaging the US on matters of mutual interest. The report provides an overview of the US Army’s changing force posture and approach to land warfare, followed by a brief analysis of its evolving role as an essential enabler of joint force operations in a maritime environment. The report then explores the US Army’s ‘campaigning’ activities in the region and its efforts to increase allied and partner capacity for high-end military contingencies in all domains. Finally, the report highlights opportunities for the Australian Army to enhance interoperability with US land forces in a deepening US-Australia alliance.