The Iraq war decision ten years on

President George W. Bush applauds former Prime Minister John Howard after presenting the Australian leader with the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom during ceremonies Tuesday, Jan.13, 2009, in the East Room of the White House.Graeme Dobell’s contributions are always entertaining and frequently insightful, which makes it forgivable if now and again his arguments are well wide of the mark. We had one such moment with his piece reflecting on the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003, where he slams the public service for its passivity and silence in failing to oppose the war and indeed doing ‘… a worse job of confronting the issues than did their predecessors during the lousy processes that sent Australia off to Vietnam’. That’s a remarkably harsh judgement, and one informed with the benefit of hindsight unavailable to the original decision makers or their advisers. It overstates what might reasonably be expected of public servants in advising Cabinet and undersells the deliberations that actually took place.

I’m sure it was the case that some senior public servants opposed going to war—as did a fair chunk of the population—but many in the national security community would also have backed the decision. There was no gulf of silence between the bureaucracy and Government, but more a shared acceptance of the dimension of the problem and the likely end point.

It might be correct to say that there was no specific cabinet paper arguing the pros and cons of involvement in the Iraq war, but there was a very substantial flow of reporting to government: intelligence judgements on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programs; diplomatic reporting about efforts to get Iraq to be more transparent on its weapons plans and on manoeuvres at the UN; military reporting on US and allied preparations and on the likely opposition. These were the issues around which there was intense public debate and public service policy work. In his autobiography, Lazarus Rising, John Howard acknowledges a failure on the part of the occupying powers not to think through the military requirements of the post-invasion phase. That was clearly a profound mistake, but hardly one on which Australia was alone. Read more

The Strategist editorial team welcomes its newest member

As you may have noticed from ‘ASPI suggests’, Harry White has joined ASPI as not only as an analyst but a member of the Strategist editorial team. He has written on issues including defence capability, US strategic policy, Iran’s nuclear program, and Asian security. Harry has masters degrees in international relations from ANU and the London School of Economics. Before joining ASPI, Harry was a research assistant at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and editor of the blog Pnyx.

The who, what, where, and why of the future submarine

May 29, 2008: Collins Class submarine HMAS WALLER in Sydney.In my recent post on the workshop that ASPI and the Submarine Institute of Australia held in February, I described the significant points we agreed on. This time around, we’re going to look at the points of contention. Or, more accurately, the single point of contention. Put simply, the key question, as we see it is this:

Does a long-range submarine capability confer sufficient benefit to be worth what appears likely to be an enormous outlay?

It’s not a simple question to answer. Unlike, for example, a financial analysis, the costs and benefits are not generally expressible as dollar values that can be entered into a spreadsheet. That’s not to say that the dollar values don’t matter—we’re talking tens of billions of dollars here, so it wouldn’t be inappropriate to express the costs in terms of, say, numbers of major metropolitan hospitals to make the opportunity costs manifest. And Henry Ergas explained on this blog how the tools of Net Present Value analysis can be used in these sorts of decisions.

But at some stage there’s going to be an element of subjectivity in the judgements that have to be made. We don’t know the likelihood of future conflicts in which submarines would be useful. Nor do we know the likely impact on Australia of those conflicts—even a cursory look at history shows just contingent the course and outcome of conflicts can be. But we have to try to frame some questions that allow us to get at least a qualitative feel for those issues. And that necessarily requires us to talk about the ‘who, what, where and why’ of future wars that Australia’s submarines might be required to fight, or can be used to prevent through deterrence. For the sort of national investment we’re looking at here, talking in generalities isn’t going to get to the core motivators for such a big project. Read more

Who’s afraid of China?

Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping take part in an official welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, China, Aug.18, 2011. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)Recent media coverage of the Senkaku/Diaoyu stand-off has painted the picture of a powder-keg so dangerous it could force Australia to make stark Cold War-style choices; either helping to stare down or else bending over backwards to a rising China.

To paraphrase one strand of that deeply pessimistic commentary, President Obama, and by extension Australia as a close ally, must resist China’s muscling-up to Japan. Any appeasement could signal Washington’s bluffing on its commitments to North Asia and realignment. That might, in turn, encourage Beijing to ‘nibble further at Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea’ (PDF).

An alternative, equally gloomy, view urges us to encourage Washington to offer China up some more shared living space, rather than go along with a pivot that can really only be about ‘containing any challenge to US primacy’. The pivot, this argument goes, could actually encourage China to break-out and grab its own sphere of influence—sucking Australia into an unwanted war.

Both interpretations reflect a deep vein of anxiety, tapped by recent over-flights, radar lock-ons, and blustering in the East China Sea, and driven by historical analogies about great power birth pangs in the 20th century normally treated with more qualifiers and scepticism. Such concerns are as much about China’s continuing weaknesses as its growing strength—and focus on where the Communist Party and/or PLA might direct nationalistic and economic energies if things turn sour. Read more

Information warfare on the Korean peninsula

DPRK propaganda poster

Over the last decade, security dilemmas on the Korean peninsula have become progressively more ‘hybrid’ and multi-faceted. Traditional conventional threats, scenarios and contingencies linked to high intensity conventional wars, have been converging with a range of asymmetric and non-linear security challenges, including nuclear threats, ballistic missiles, and increasingly information and cyber warfare. According to General James Thurman, commander of US forces in South Korea, North Korea has acquired ‘significant’ IW-related military capabilities. This is an attempt to explore the idea of asymmetric negation, probing any vulnerabilities of the US–ROK alliance. Now, that means more than just nuclear weapons. In addition to its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, these also include hacking, encryption, and virus insertion capabilities.

In this context, information and cyber warfare is becoming a part of the ongoing conflict on the Korean Peninsula, and its threats and risks are continuously challenging traditional defence strategies and operational concepts of the US–ROK alliance.

I argue that we really are in a new regime of information warfare in Korea, where both North and South Korea are engaged at three levels of information conflict simultaneously: (1) a war for information to obtain information and intelligence about each other’s means, capabilities, and strategies; (2) a war against information aimed at protecting their information systems, while disrupting or destroying the other side’s information infrastructure; and (3) a war through information reflected in the misinformation and deception operations to shape their broader internal and external strategic narratives. Read more

Equipment acquisition: surprise from the skies

A Royal Australian Air Force F-111Media reporting indicates that we’ll soon see an announcement about the acquisition of twelve extra F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter aircraft at a cost of US$3.6 billion. This will be a classic example of a ministerially driven defence equipment acquisition—the occasional (and often very short-notice) buys that aren’t anticipated in Defence plans. Of course all Defence acquisitions are ultimately sanctioned by government, but most emerge from lengthy force structure development processes. I’ll write on the Super Hornet decision specifically in a second post. For now I’ll provide a potted history of some notable ‘surprise’ equipment announcements over the last quarter century.

Kim Beazley famously decided on the acquisition of 14 Light Armoured Vehicles (LAV-25) following a visit to the United States in 1989. It led to a forensic and (from this distance entertaining) Senate Estimates Committee exchange in which Defence reluctantly acknowledged the vehicles had no air cooling system, overheated in the north and could not operate effectively off roads. ‘One would envisage … its being used primarily for surveillance of road nodal points, airfields, and beach sites—all of those, of course, having road access’ deadpanned the then Major General Mike Jeffery. Over time, and with extensive modification, the Australian Light Armored Vehicle (ASLAV) became the mainstay of the Army’s armored reconnaissance capability.

A much larger surprise acquisition was announced in answer to a question without notice in the Senate on 15 October 1992. Minister for Defence Robert Ray reported on a visit to Washington:

I did raise … the possibility of Australia acquiring additional F-111 aircraft from approximately 250 being taken out of service by the United States. The reaction from the United States was positive. Since my return there have been further discussions within Government and a team will be sent to the United States to negotiate the purchase of up to 18 F-111 aircraft.

Read more

Let’s not succumb to nuclear defeatism

At U.N. Security Council, Warren Austin, U.S. delegate, holds Russian-made submachine gun dated 1950, captured by American troops in July 1950. He charges that Russia is delivering arms to North Koreans.North Korea’s most recent nuclear test has provoked some extraordinary reactions from media commentators in the past few weeks, some of which suggest a somewhat one-dimensional view of the nature of nuclear decision-making and the role of UN sanctions and a flawed understanding of the goals of US non-proliferation policy. Setting the record straight is an important task, because it has implications for the nuclear non-proliferation regime and for international security more generally.

Let’s start by setting out a couple of points that are hard to deny. First, the test—Pyongyang’s third and most successful—has reinforced the fact that international efforts to prevent North Korea developing and retaining a nuclear weapons capability have so far failed. This is widely recognised and is deeply troubling. Second, the test showed that many analysts and policymakers have underestimated the regime’s determination to maintain a nuclear deterrent (PDF). The contention that successive North Korean leaders have been pursuing nuclear weapons purely as a bargaining chip, to be relinquished when the price is right, looks weaker today than ever before. This is equally disturbing, as it reduces the leverage of international negotiators who still hope that North Korea can be peacefully disarmed.

For sure, it’s a bleak picture but in their commentary, some influential voices seem to be succumbing to nuclear defeatism. Hugh White, for example, recently asserted in The Age that ‘nothing short of a full scale invasion’ can persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. This might be overstated for the sake of eye-catching journalism, but contrary to his argument, nuclear decision-making isn’t a linear process and doesn’t follow a pre-determined path. Nuclear policy is affected by domestic and international events and by ideas. Read more

Reader response: maritime incidents at sea

Sam Bateman recently reminded us that both in the South China Sea and East China Sea incidents involving patrol vessels, warships, military aircraft, fishing and research vessels of the littoral countries are now occurring more frequently. Such incidents, if they got out of hand, could lead to actual conflict.

Sam is right that we can’t just sit pat: what’s needed is to put in place some operational maritime confidence building measures for the East China Sea and the South China Sea. Most importantly, as Sam points out, we need a common interpretation of navigational rights and freedoms in offshore zones and measures to prevent and mitigate the risks of an unfortunate incident between maritime forces.

I agree with Sam that INCSEA came about in different circumstances: there was an increasing number of confrontations as the Americans and Soviets ‘tested’ each other at sea and in the air. The provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on military activities in the EEZ’s of other countries are ambiguous. But the US argues that there are no provisions in UNCLOS prohibiting such activities. The US position is that those activities are within the meaning and the exercise of the freedoms of the sea, particularly the freedoms of navigation and over flight. Read more

The Iraq war 10th anniversary: the Canberra silence

Long silence?

Australia’s politicians stood up and took both bows and bruises for their stance on the Iraq war. John Howard promised he wouldn’t recant on the Iraq war, just as he wouldn’t recant on Vietnam. He’s been true to that pledge.

Labor’s leader at the time of the Iraq war, Simon Crean, got kicked brutally for saying that Australia shouldn’t follow the US into the conflict. Now Crean’s speeches look as prescient as those of Arthur Calwell’s in opposing Vietnam—and politically, of course, taking those stances helped to damn both Crean and Calwell. Being right too early in politics can be as damaging as being wrong.

To go back down the time tunnel, here are the Iraq war speeches made by Prime Minister Howard and Opposition Leader Crean when Parliament assembled in February, 2003. Howard had the numbers on the day but Crean gets history’s vote.

Kevin Rudd had the fortune to be able to pin the Iraq war on Howard when the scale of the disaster had become apparent. Rudd could argue that Iraq was the wrong war: Australia would withdraw and concentrate on Afghanistan. Rudd’s case was that Australia could exit Iraq but hold firm to the US alliance. Read more

ASPI suggests

Arch of Reunification is on the entrance of Pyongyang.Today’s a public holiday in Canberra so we’re taking a short break from regular blogging, but here’s our weekly round-up of news, reports and events in the defence, NatSec and strategy world.

First up, Dewi Fortuna Anwar’s NBR essay provides an Indonesian perspective on the US rebalance toward Asia. Take note of her concerns about the military dimension of the rebalance and Papua, and how Indonesia is hedging between the US and China.

How will sequestration affect the US Marine Corps? Marines Chief General James Amos says it’ll ‘cut into bone’. Troops deploying to Afghanistan will have the required resources, but with Marines deployed to Darwin, we’ll have to see what budget cuts mean for the rebalance efforts here.

Sticking with US defence budget cuts, the US Navy plans to ground four air wings and cancel eight ship deployments to help save the service USD$10 billion. Read more