Strategist Article Archives - Page 1151 of 1181

Kiwi and kangaroo (part III): the ANZUS resurrection

24 February 2013

This is part III of a series on Australia–New Zealand relations (part I here, part II here).

To be in Canberra in 1985–86 as the ANZUS alliance was shaken until it collapsed and died was to witness the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Of those five stages, anger was the strongest, and acceptance was a long time coming. The one thing missing from the Kubler-Ross stages of grief as displayed by Australian politicians and bureaucrats was the sense of amazement, stretching to the incredulous, that the slow-motion disaster couldn’t be averted.

There was plenty of incredulity in Wellington, too, but it was accompanied by the sense of popular exhilaration at the faceoff with the US. The nuclear-free principles of the Lange Labour government crashed into the ‘neither confirm nor deny’ doctrine of the US Navy, compounded by the determination of the Reagan administration that the Kiwis would not set a new low for alliance backsliding. This was drama played as Mouse That Roared farce.

The US renounced its treaty obligations to New Zealand, the excitement faded, everyone slowly adjusted, and all sides eventually got used to the idea that ANZUS was no more. Over the past few years, however, we have come to the realisation that there can be life after death. The resurrection of ANZUS in some form rises before us. Read more

Why submarines for Australia?

22 February 2013

I would like to reinforce Justin Jones’ recent points on submarines and in doing so take issue with some of the points made by Andrew Davies in his response. I think the unique features a submarine capability brings to our future strategic situation deserves greater prominence in the debate. And I hope this will convince Nic Stuart that there is no Rudd-initiated conspiracy; we really do need submarines—more of them!

Justin, Andrew and I seem to largely agree on the strategic setting and that it will constrain Australia’s strategic choices. We would all agree on the Chief of Navy’s recent emphasis on criticality of the maritime environment for Australia’s prosperity. I argue that our access to the region’s oceans will be impacted by the significant growth in regional navies, making it more difficult for our Navy to operate freely.

We need to look for capabilities that will give future Australian governments options to cope in this emerging situation—and submarines fit the bill. A capable submarine will be able to operate in these difficult strategic circumstances and provide a ‘strategic impact’ that would make a potential aggressor avoid a military confrontation with Australia.

The submarines most fundamental, key feature is its stealth. A well-handled, capable submarine is able to operate without causing fuss in areas where sea and air control is not assured and is able to gain access to areas denied to other platforms. Large submarines, such as Collins, are able to operate at long range for weeks carrying a flexible payload of sensors, weapons and specialist personnel. A capable submarine force creates great uncertainty for an adversary: countering them would be difficult, expensive and can’t be guaranteed. Read more

Reader response: Australia and Fiji – it’s complex and problematic

22 February 2013

At the beginning of the year I predicted that developments in Fiji had the potential to outbid almost all else in terms of political significance in the region this year. So far, this doesn’t seem particularly wide of the mark. The rhetoric expressed recently by Victor Lal on this blog (see here and here) is powerful and compelling.

What’s missing from the analysis, however, is that Australia needs to factor in how its handling of Fiji might affect other relationships in the region. Australia can expect to exercise considerable influence within the Pacific Islands Forum from which Fiji remains excluded. The same doesn’t hold true for the Melanesian Spearhead Group: Fiji is the chair (until the middle of this year) but Australia isn’t a member.

The MSG is yet to make a consolidated response to Fiji’s apparently full-scale retreat from a return to constitutional democracy. It might be that such a response won’t be forthcoming, with the Melanesian leaders preferring to exercise influence using more subtle methods than exercised by others, such as the blunt words of the Prime Minister of Samoa.

What is undeniable is that the political profile and influence of the MSG has been, and continues to be, in the ascendancy. Australia’s overt support of Peter O’Neill as PM of Papua New Guinea might allow some indirect influence but, as Australia is all too aware, managing relationships with Melanesian states is a difficult task and each action and reaction needs to be carefully judged.

Tess Newton Cain is head of Devpacific and a research associate of the Development Policy Centre, ANU.

Singapore: walking the walk?

21 February 2013

This week I attended the inaugural Fullerton Forum in Singapore, hosted by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, who described it as the ‘Sherpa’s meeting’ for the Shangri-La Dialogue at the end of May. The organisers requested the content of the meeting be confidential, but it was kicked off with a public keynote presentation from Dr Ng Eng Hen, Singapore’s Minister for Defence. His speech, on Potential Threats to Regional Stability in Asia, is worth reading because it highlights the breadth of challenges facing the region and the serious limits to capacity which hampers coherent regional responses.

Dr Ng’s speech starts on familiar territory by discussing the factors underpinning stability in Asia, including the importance of America’s forward military presence and China’s economic liberalisation acting as a growth engine for the wider region. He points to the impact of ‘shifting dependencies’ and here his data is both telling and stark:

Between ASEAN and China, two-way trade increased nearly ten-fold from about US$30 billion in 2000 to about US$300 billion in 2011. In contrast, the increase in two-way trade between ASEAN and the US for the same time frame was just 50%…

Another tsunami is coming. In about 10 years’ time, China alone expects to have nearly 200 million college and university graduates. Then, four out of every 10 university graduates in 2020 will come from just two countries globally; China and India…

New Zealand does some things better than Australia

21 February 2013

This is part II of a series on Australia–New Zealand relations (part I here).

To stray into areas that are simultaneously sacred yet deeply unsafe, look at New Zealand’s strength in important areas such as rugby, race horses and the ability to make oceans of sauvignon blanc that millions of Australians guzzle as acidic nectar.

On race horses, Australia will never concede. On rugby, Oz has reached a state of resigned grace about being stomped by the All Blacks. On wine, the marvellous mixture from Marlborough—the top selling white in Oz—is driving Australian wine producers demented, moaning about the NZ blanc’s resemblance to cat’s pee, body odour and a noxious weed.

The whine about the wine prompts the thought that it’s good to see traditional standards of invective in trans-Tasman dialogue are being maintained. But let us turn from bruising topics like booze and ball games to the calmer, gentler realms of defence and diplomacy.

The previous column sketched some of the rules that influence the bilateral dance between Canberra and Wellington. This column seeks to subvert Oz traditions about kicking Kiwis by seeing what New Zealand can do in defence and diplomacy that Australia might find difficult, if not impossible. To focus the question that way is to come immediately to the South Pacific. Read more

Fiji: the perils of appeasement (part II)

21 February 2013

I explained yesterday how the fear of driving Fiji into China’s arms has been wrongly used by what I call the ‘appeasement lobby’ as a reason to lessen the isolation of Fiji’s regime. It isn’t the only error they’ve made. They also fear that further isolation by Australia would destroy Fiji’s economy. Here they are on firmer ground. But the sad truth is that there’s little left to destroy. After six years of military rule Fiji’s GDP is lower in real terms than it was in 2006. All credit is due to the Minister for Finance: J.V. Bainimarama. In the same period, sugar production—on which at least 200,000 people depend for their livelihoods—has halved. Credit to the Minister for Sugar: J.V. Bainimarama. In the same period, wages have fallen, pensions have been slashed by up to 60%, and poverty now affects at least 40% of the population and possibly many more. The tax burden has been steadily shifted from the wealthy to the poor. The Minister responsible: J.V. Bainimarama.

It’s hard to see how Australia’s isolation could make this worse. In fact, most Fiji islanders would welcome the short term pain involved in removing Bainimarama if it meant a return to the rule of law and a return to growth. Read more

What the North Korean nuclear test also means

20 February 2013

North Korea’s latest nuclear test has been discussed from several angles: the level of technological progress of the regime; if China should and will end its support for its neighbour; and whether tougher sanctions by the international community would have any significant impact on Pyongyang’s nuclear behaviour. Yet, equally significant is the fact that North Korea’s nuclear test is also part of a broader picture: the emergence of nuclear multipolarity in the Asia-Pacific region.

After the Cold War, there were high hopes that the role of nuclear weapons in international politics would diminish. And for a short time, things seemed to be moving in that direction as both the United States and Russia started to reduce the number of their strategic nuclear warheads during the 1990s. But more than 20 years later, Washington and Moscow still retain enough nuclear stockpiles to wipe each other off the map multiple times. France and the United Kingdom show no signs of getting rid of their minimum nuclear deterrent despite their enormous financial costs. And Israel certainly has no intention of dismantling its ‘unofficial’ nuclear arsenal in the face of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Read more

Fiji: the perils of appeasement

20 February 2013

Australian policy on Fiji is shifting to appeasement in ways that will gladden the military regime and sadden Fijians. What might be called the Bainimarama appeasement lobby—broadly speaking a group of academics and journalists who have never lived under the Fiji dictatorship—make valid points about Australia’s interests but they are necessarily made from the viewpoint of a comfortable and calm Sydney, Melbourne, Honolulu or Auckland suburb without recourse to public opinion and conditions in Fiji.

Their position is well summed up by The Australian’s Greg Sheridan, in a recent column on the Australian Foreign Minister’s increasingly warm approach to the regime:

Carr was right on the substance and in the larger strategic picture. It would do the Fijian people no good at all to isolate Fiji, to send it into the arms of China, to destroy its economy, to further polarise and radicalise its society. The government there has done a lot of undemocratic things and these deserve to be criticised, but on the international scale of human rights abuses it is at the absolute gentlest end of the spectrum.

This is the view that rights and freedoms can be partially abused—that Bainimarama has done some bad things but these are at ‘absolutely the gentlest end of the spectrum’. He hasn’t killed many people. He has tortured only a few compared to other dictators. Further, the appeasers ask, what is the point of further dividing Fiji and driving it even closer to Beijing? Read more

Force Structure 103b: all the way with LBJ…

19 February 2013

Earlier posts (here, here and here) have looked at force structure from an Australian perspective, but in reality the American alliance dominates all our defence discussions. So our thinking about future force structure alternatives and how they relate to the alliance should start with a basic question: what we want from the alliance?

In defence terms, and from an Australian perspective, the alliance’s function is to gain American support in those instances where America doesn’t consider it in its national interest to be involved. To give some examples, American assistance to Australia during World War II both pre-dated the alliance and was in America’s own interest. But American support for Australia (and the Netherlands) when differences arose with Indonesia over the future of Dutch West Papua wasn’t seen the same way. Similarly, Australia’s 1999 intervention in East Timor didn’t engage America’s national interests and so US support was less comprehensive than some hoped.

So how can the ADF’s force structure be shaped to help gain American support in such circumstances? The most often proffered way is to be a part of America’s wars in the hope of reciprocation; a ‘you owe me one’ strategy. This approach suggests a force structure that can readily be added to a much larger US joint force. Such an additive force structure is easily developed—simply buy a range of off-the-shelf US hardware although, with the operational theatre of future American wars uncertain, the ADF would need to trained for a variety of possibilities. There are several downsides with this approach, including limiting Australia’s ability to undertake independent operations, acquiring capabilities that might be less relevant to our nearer region and doubts whether Australia’s contribution to a much larger American force can be sufficiently significant to ‘buy’ us the required kudos. Read more

JSF: Four Corners fails the balance test

19 February 2013

As a long time follower (and often critic) of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, I sat down to watch last night’s Four Corners episode with great interest. Now I want my 7.1 cents back. (As I suspect do James Brown and Sam Roggeveen over at The Interpreter.)

It’s not that the F-35 doesn’t warrant some criticism—the list of problems is long and has been documented in both my own writings for ASPI and numerous US government reports, among others. Even the most ardent of F-35 supporters can’t argue with the uncomfortable fact that the RAAF is still six years away from getting an aircraft they were supposed to already be flying. I argued two years ago that we need to be thinking hard about Plan B and I haven’t changed my mind about that. Timelines and engineering margins are uncomfortably tight and the cost growth is uncontestable.

The recent leaking of the latest Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) report into the open press only added to the public knowledge of the problems. These include the relaxing of some performance criteria and the revelation that the aircraft in its current configuration can’t fly in lightning. These observations aren’t good news. At this stage of development (and production), there’s apparent ‘zero sum’ engineering going on. The lightning hazard seems to be the result of weight reduction measures required to make some other changes—means that the program could be in real trouble if any significant issues turn up in the extensive testing still to come. Read more