What do we want the ADF to do?

With characteristic precision, Mark Thomson has put his finger on the primary question for Australian defence policy today: not how much should we spend on the ADF, but what do we want it to do? His argument for modest defence spending is properly premised on the view that Australia’s strategic objectives—by which I mean specifically the things we want to be able to achieve with armed force—should be modest. His argument has two elements, one concerning our strategic objectives as an ally of the United States, and the other about our objectives for independent military action. In both cases he argues we can set our strategic objectives pretty low. Is he right?

Let’s start with the alliance side of the story. What do we need to be able to do militarily as an ally of America, given that the huge disparity in power means that we will make no decisive operational difference to any conflict in which we fight at America’s side? There are three ways in which we might weigh this. First there is what one might call a moral imperative to pull our weight rather than free ride, and I must say I share Mark’s sense that free riding is fine as long as you can get away with it. Second there is the question about how low can you go and still ride for free? At what point does our ally stop protecting us because we won’t do our bit? That, of course, depends on why he is protecting us in the first place. On the very credible assumption that he is in the alliance more to serve his interests than ours, the threshold for this is pretty low.

Third, there is the question of whether we are doing enough to influence US policy in ways which are critical to our interest. Here I’m not so sure. We should at least ask ourselves how much we might want to influence US polices in Asia, and how much we’d need to do militarily to have a chance to exercise such influence. I’m torn two ways here. On one hand, Australia’s interests in shaping American policy are clearly very strong. On the other, Britain’s experience in the Middle East over the last few decades, where it has made big contributions and gained very little influence, suggests that the scale of effort needed to have any say in US policy is very great. Further work is needed here before I’d be sure that this is not a good reason to expand our strategic objectives as an ally. Read more

Get the message? Why communicating Australian policy changes to asylum seekers is no easy task

Yesterday it was revealed that a film crew will accompany Australian police, military and government officials as they head to Nauru and Manus Island to prepare for the arrival of an expected influx of asylum seekers. They’ll create a video series designed to dissuade further potential ‘irregular maritime arrivals’ from attempting to come to Australia. The title of the series—‘Australia by boat, no advantage’—is derived from one of the key messages arising from the report compiled by Angus Houston and his fellow panellists.

Communicating with asylum seekers is important to Australia’s deterrence regime. A key reason why policies fail to deter is because, as international and Australian studies show, most asylum seekers know very little about Western countries or their asylum policies. For example, research conducted in Afghanistan in 2010 (PDF) on behalf of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (ACBPS) found that few Afghan Hazaras know about Australia’s deterrence mechanisms, including the mandatory detention policy. That’s consistent with another study which found that some Afghan refugees didn’t know of the existence of a country called ‘Australia’ before arriving on its shores via smuggling boat.

Afghan asylum seekers in particular, who have made up the bulk of Australia’s boat arrivals for the past decade, have poor access to mass media; only around 30% of Afghan households have access to electricity. Those who live along the Afghan border in Pakistan also tend to have limited access to mass media other than radio. It remains incredibly difficult for the Australian Government to reach such audiences and convey complex policy information to them. So it’s unlikely that the latest information campaign, which will be delivered through new media channels, will reach a large segment of the Afghan target audience. Read more

Ken Henry’s Asian Century

On current planning, the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper will be released within a few weeks. Former Treasury Secretary Dr Ken Henry and his team are finalising the report and Cabinet will consider it soon.

In an ASPI Policy Analysis published today, and in an opinion piece in The Australian, I argue that the success of Australia in the Asian Century will depend on how well it deals with some threshold strategic issues. As the Prime Minister said on launching the review ‘There will be plenty of hard questions—not all of them will have easy answers’. Four hard questions should be asked: will the white paper focus on the right region in the right way; how will it address strategic risk; how will it treat defence and security; and what place will it accord to other parts of the world?

In this blog I won’t go over that material again, except to note a concern that we must avoid the risk of delivering the perfect regional strategy for Australia at the same time as the region looks to a more globalised engagement. For Australia, a global rather than regional approach helps to diversify our economic and strategic links and matches the increasingly global strategies of the major Asian countries. Dr Henry and his writing team understand the need to balance our global and regional interests, but it will be a hard act to capture that in the White Paper, especially given its Asian remit. Read more

Less is not always better: in defence of Force 2030

Mark Thomson thinks that the recent irrational and irresponsible reduction in defence funding is retrievable. He thinks that we do not need a larger or stronger force than we have at the moment. He says that we can afford to spend more on defence, but he does not believe that we should because the ‘modernisation and expansion’ of the ADF was so great over the last few years that it is in really good shape to conduct regional, bigger regional or UN operations, and anyway, there is nothing that we could do to influence anything bigger.

Mark has my greatest respect as an analyst of the financial side of defence, and is a bloody good bloke. But I think that he is too trusting a soul, obviously gained from years in FDA (Force Development and Analysis).

Being a trusting soul, he must believe that if we ‘expanded’ the Army over the last few years, it must all work, it must have the right equipment and it must be at an appropriate standard or even wastefully too big. If we have a plan to get more ships, then they will all work and always be available, they will not need anything but the current totally inadequate level of sustainment, and they can do everything that we need in a maritime environment. A small number of F-18s will be good enough for PNG, and will never have to fight anything smarter or in any more demanding scenario. Read more

Grand Strategy? Developing resources…

Choosing which grand strategy to use depends on how others can be influenced—however, this is only half of the matter. There is also an internal dimension where the power is developed that the external dimension of the grand strategy needs; this involves developing the necessary people, money, and materiel. While often overlooked, such resources are fundamental to turning grand plans into grand outcomes. In this ‘strategic synthesis’ the external and internal dimensions are not just opposite sides of the same coin but also influence each other.

There are two key aspects. Firstly, grand strategies operate through time. The resources needed to support and implement a grand strategy need to be available when required, but not before, or indeed after. Given enough time, considerable resources can be developed and turned into the instruments of the national power needed. This needs to be taken into account in the grand strategy.

Secondly, in developing resources the state can choose between a managerial approach—becoming deeply involved itself in developing the necessary resources and actively directing society—or manipulating global market forces and using incentives and regulations to develop the resources the grand strategy needs. The first was used by Australia (and others) in World War II and in the Vietnam War, but the second is more common in today’s wars of choice. Read more

How much is too little? Learning to live with a smaller force

Ever since the government slashed defence spending back in May, they’ve copped a shellacking in the press. In case you haven’t caught up, here’s a selection of what’s being said:

And Greg Sheridan has railed against the government’s decision, not once, not twice, but three times, and has gone so far as to say that the cuts are ‘the most radical, irresponsible and dangerous action Labor has taken in government’.

These are serious professionals—undoubted experts in their fields—talking about a serious topic. Their views warrant close and careful attention. So the question must be asked: is the government making a colossal mistake that seriously threatens our security in the years ahead? Read more

Table of the week: Ship shape – naval force structures

The structure of a country’s naval fleet should reflect the thinking of governments (and navy) about their use of the sea. To a large extent it’s possible to ‘reverse engineer’ naval aspirations from the force structure. For example, true blue water capability requires long endurance, which in turn means larger vessels and/or the ability to replenish them at sea. As well, blue water forces often operate with the support of long-range maritime patrol aircraft. Conversely, navies intended to predominantly operate closer to home have a preponderance of smaller (and hence shorter-ranged) vessels for littoral operations, and there is less emphasis on replenishment vessels and long-range air support.

No surprises there. But we can quantify some of these observations, and when we do, some interesting results pop out. During his time at ASPI a while back, then intern Tonmoy Dutta-Roy (who’s now doing his bit to alleviate navy’s shortage of engineers) came up with a simple but interesting method of measuring the shape of a navy. His insight was to note that priorities are obvious when you look at the ratio of various parts of the fleet—the number of major combatants divided by the number of minor combatants, being one example. Or the number of maritime patrol aircraft divided by the number of major combatants etc. Of course, anything worthwhile in the defence world needs a three letter acronym, so these ratios are called Force Structure Indices (FSIs).

Let’s see how this works by looking at various nations’ blue water aspirations. Here the USN is supreme—there’s no other navy capable with its power projection capabilities (or that’s even close). So we’ll use the USN as a benchmark against which we measure the capabilities of other navies. The results are in the table below. Read more

Australian Defence Planners: welcome to New Zealand’s world

NZ Defence Force

New Zealanders have always discounted claims that Canberra’s defence purse-strings are being tightened—until now. The days when the proportion of Australian GDP devoted to defence was twice the New Zealand level of roughly 1% appear to be over. Gone too is that long era in which a succession of governments (Liberal-National and Labor alike) never once saw a capability proposal they didn’t like. The Defence Capability Plan, replete with its 180 items, is about to have a Jenny Craig moment—or at least that is what should happen as a result of the funding changes being administered by the Gillard government. If elected, an incoming Abbott government would be unlikely to quickly reverse the very significant reductions that Stephen Smith has demanded in an era of depleting federal coffers. The piñata party which characterised Australian defence decision-making for nearly a generation has ended.

There are some ironic twists in all of this. One is that Australia’s strategic weight might be slimming down just as its alliance relationship with Washington is intensifying. But the United States is also reining in its defence expenditure (with more changes to come if sequestration kicks in). One can therefore think, pivot notwithstanding, that future American administrations will expect even more burden sharing from close allies. Yet meeting this expectation will be harder for Australia in an extended period of defence economising.

A second paradox is that just as its defence resources are being slimmed down, Canberra is paying increased attention to its western and northern periphery and to the Indian Ocean, with the latter meaning an effective expansion of its area of strategic concern. A growing gap between ends and means is becoming a distinct reality. That disconnect won’t be so obvious in an era of reducing operational tempo as the troops come home from Afghanistan, the Solomons and Timor Leste. But it will find a way to show up one day when a real test comes. Read more

Amidst rising turbulence in eastern waters, India sharpens maritime posture

Rising tensions in the South China Sea over the past few weeks have served to highlight the rancorous nature of strategic competition in Asia. Following its stand-off with Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal and a spat with Vietnam over ownership of the Spratly and Paracel islands, Beijing recently announced the setting up of a new military district to assert greater administrative control over the two islands. In a bid to intimidate its adversaries, Beijing sought to populate the contested regions in the South China Sea with its surveillance vessels and fishing boats. Unfazed by the Chinese presence, the Philippines reiterated its resolve to press its claims, announcing the procurement of new attack helicopters and surface ships. Meanwhile, Vietnam declared that it is seeking closer naval collaboration with the United States, with which it held its first naval exercises earlier this year.

The unease over China’s show of strength is not confined to Southeast Asia. Maritime experts in India now worry about Chinese forays into the Indian Ocean. As Chinese anti-piracy maritime contingents deployed off Somalia grow in size, there is concern in India that China may soon establish itself as an Indian Ocean power. India’s fear of being swamped by China in its own backyard is only compounded by the assertive stance adopted by China’s vocal and outspoken strategic community.

China’s maritime policies in the Indian Ocean Region are considerably influenced by its perception of the Indian Navy—the only resident force with the capacity to resist a Chinese naval ‘thrust’ in the Indian Ocean. India’s naval force structure is undergoing a rapid evolution, and the Navy is acquiring a range of ‘top end’ platforms, including power projection assets such as aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines (see notes below). Read more

(Another) graph of the week: War is becoming more dangerous

I recently had the pleasure of talking about military capability to the Australian Command and Staff College. One of the topics I wanted to cover was the impact of technology on warfare. The first thing that came to mind was Winston Churchill’s musings on the Bronze Age from his History of the English-Speaking Peoples:

While what is now our island was still joined to the continent another great improvement was made in human methods of destruction. Copper and tin were discovered and worried out of the earth; the one too soft the other too brittle for the main purpose, but, blended by human genius, they opened the age of bronze. Other things being equal, the men with bronze could beat the mean with flints. The discovery was hailed, and the Bronze Age began.

Putting Churchill’s dodgy timelines to one side in favour of literary merit (Britain was disconnected from the continent by the English Channel long before the Bronze Age), this prose neatly captures the sometimes revolutionary impact on warfare of developments in technology. Reinforcing the point, two pages later Churchill summarises another technological revolution in military affairs—and another sweep of history—with a chillingly efficient sentence: ‘Men armed with iron entered Britain from the Continent and killed the men of bronze’. Read more