Strategist Article Archives - Page 1149 of 1182

Iraq plus ten: two lessons for our future use of the alliance

15 March 2013

Graeme Dobell makes some contentious arguments about Australia’s decision-making processes when determining our involvement in the American-led Iraq war of ten years ago. They are contentious because many of Canberra’s mandarins remain in place, people still argue passionately over whether the removal of Saddam Hussein was worth the cost in blood and treasure and Iraq remains a confusingly bloody work-in-progress, even on a weekly basis. At this point though, two useful lessons for future policymaking might be discerned: the utility of US provided intelligence to Australian decision-making and the need for us to be less Australia-centric when thinking about the alliance.

A major benefit of the alliance is held to be the access gained to American intelligence. Undoubtedly the US has an unmatched information collection system of enormous sophistication, but that shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning the intelligence provided is infallible. Indeed in moments of crisis such as the lead up to war the US intelligence system can be inaccurate—as the Iraq WMD case amply demonstrates.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, US intelligence missed that the Soviet forces already deployed to the island had some 100 tactical nuclear weapons. The US Joint Chiefs were recommending a large-scale invasion of Cuba preceded by extensive airstrikes (PDF); if the intelligence had been acted on, the result might have been disastrous. At the time, US intelligence believed that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident happened but it’s now clear that it didn’t—the incident that was crucial in leading to full-scale US involvement in the Vietnam War never occurred. (For the detailed signals intelligence analysis, see here (PDF).) Later in the war, the intelligence community failed to warn of the 1968 Tet Offensive that delivered a serious blow to America’s continued commitment. And, of course, ten years ago, the Iraq war’s main rationale, that of ‘the clear and present danger’ from Saddam’s WMD, proved illusionary. Read more

Obama’s mindset

14 March 2013

What lies ahead for US policies affecting Australia? Paradoxically, the greatest doubt about America’s strength in the world comes from within the US itself. Obama’s second term foreign policy will probably resemble his 2008 campaign and the early part of his first term. In other words, Obama will mainly focus on domestic policy. His vision as a student, law scholar and politician in Chicago was about transforming America, not about the world. He believes the American people favour that priority. His first term frustrations in foreign policy will hardly change his view. In four years, Obama soothed international perceptions of the US in some international quarters and entered no major wars. Give him credit for that. But he transformed no world hotspots. A handicap is his worldview that sidesteps the notion of clashes of interest among nations, and encourages a multipolar world in which Washington talks with everybody about whatever, hoping that if big powers disarm, rogue states will be inspired to follow. This view is decidedly not shared by Beijing, the major world capital of most concern to many Australians and most Americans. Moreover, Sudan, Iran, North Korea and others have been slow to heed Obama’s call to rectitude. Yet he’s extremely unlikely to return to Bush’s big stick approach and pro-democracy sermons. Read more

Why the US ‘pivot’ to Asia is sustainable

14 March 2013

One of the key questions US allies and partners have been asking is whether America will actually be able to pull off the Asia–Pacific ‘pivot’. More than twelve months after the announcement there are doubts persist all around; whether the US as a global power can afford to shift more military assets from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific, whether growing pressure on the US defence budget might render the ‘pivot’ (or ‘rebalance’) unsustainable anyway, or even if the political will exists to persist in the face of rising Chinese power. However, a good case can be made that the ‘rebalance’ is not only in full swing but will also be sustainable in the long-run.

First, a shift of military assets away from other regions towards the Asia Pacific is already underway. US ongoing strategic interests in the Middle East and elsewhere don’t require a massive military footprint. As the Pentagon’s 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance made clear, major US land wars are a thing of the past. Deterring potential Iranian attempts to overthrow the regional status quo does not necessarily depend on the forward deployment of strategic assets such as aircraft carriers. In fact, provided US aerospace forces in the Gulf are reinforced, US deterrence vis-à-vis Iran could be more credible without high-value targets such as carriers. Moreover, counterterrorism operations in Africa and South America will be conducted by a mix of special forces and CIA operatives. And European NATO allies such as France and the United Kingdom have stepped up their leadership in military operations in Northern Africa and the Levant. Read more

The Iraq war decision ten years on

14 March 2013

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

14 March 2013

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

13 March 2013

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?

13 March 2013

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

13 March 2013

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

12 March 2013

Media 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.

Let’s not succumb to nuclear defeatism

12 March 2013

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