ASPI today released a new Strategic Insight publication ‘After the 2006 crisis: Australian interests in Timor-Leste.’  There have been many developments since the collapse of state authority in Timor-Leste.  The country has a new president and a new coalition government.  It is time to review how these developments might affect Australia’s long-term interests in Timor-Leste. The paper examines a range of Australian security interests in Timor-Leste, the factors contributing to the state collapse in 2006, and lessons for Australia in the handling of that crisis.  Key conclusions address overall measures that Timor-Leste will need to implement to prevent a re-occurrence of the crisis of 2006. ‘Advancing Australia’s interests in Timor-Leste is best achieved by cooperation with the government of that country.  The alternative of isolation and neglect, would undermine the financial and material commitment Australia has made to Timor-Leste’s security and development since 1999, and risk a return to crisis,’ says author Bob Lowry. He continues ‘It is to be hoped that the new arrangements can overcome the challenges of unsustainable population growth, extreme poverty, and the paucity of human resources and physical infrastructure to provide a more secure and relatively prosperous life for its people.  It would certainly be to Australia’s advantage if it succeeded.’  

Bob Lowry was an advisor on the development of national security structures and processes in Timor-Leste from mid-2002 until mid-2003.  He also evaluated the National Democratic Institute’s security sector reform projects in early 2005 and visited Timor-Leste in 2007 in the course of preparing the paper.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute today released a new Special Report, Middle East security after Iraq by Dr Leanne Piggott.  The report considers the future of Middle East security in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.   

Dr Piggott argues that the countries of the Middle East are relative ‘new-comers’ to the international state system, and still in a process of state-formation.  Many states have made relatively little progress towards the development of good governance, a vibrant civil society, a market economy and an established middle class.  Overall, these factors have been a potent combination in breeding disaffection and a propensity for violence, which, in turn, has led many regimes to ‘over-develop’ their own coercive capacities to counter dissent. 

Events in Iraq have acted as a catalyst for many of the security challenges across the region. The conflict is generating a variety of spill-over effects for Iraq’s neighbours, including increasingly sophisticated transnational terrorism, substantial refugee flows, and aggravated sectarian tensions.  The Middle East has reached a particularly ‘unstable’ moment. 

Iran looks likely to feature prominently amongst the region’s key players, and its nuclear program makes it an issue of special concern. But the US, its regional partners, Russia, China and Turkey will also play important roles in future regional security.  

Dr Piggott believes Australia’s interests in the Middle East will be focused on the region’s two major exports: oil and jihadi-salafism terrorism.  Those interests pull us in different directions, the first towards stability in the Middle East, the second towards modernisation and political and economic reform.  Since change will only come slowly to the Middle East, Australia should  ‘…remain focused on preventing the spread of jihadi-salafism in our own region through close cooperation with neighbouring governments and their law enforcement agencies.’

‘Australia also has an interest in supporting US and international efforts to control the proliferation of WMD in the Middle East’ she said. ‘Australia has an obligation as a coalition partner to do all that is possible to ensure that Iraqi society does not collapse and degenerate into all out civil war’. 

Dr Leanne Piggott is the Deputy Director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

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ASPI today released a new Special Report publication titled ‘Whither the Bush doctrine?’ by Dr Rod Lyon.

With Congressional criticism of the war in Iraq mounting, and the Bush presidency now deep into its fourth quarter, speculation is increasing about the future trajectory of US strategic policy. Bush has been responsible for a major reformation in that policy post-September 11, articulating a doctrine that joined moral purpose to the direct use of military force.  The doctrine has been controversial and polarizing, both within the US and beyond.  Iraq has been seen as a key performance test of the doctrine’s effectiveness.  So what are the prospects for a major reorientation of US strategic policy, either post-2008 or more immediately?

Dr Lyon argues that the prospects for major reorientation are considerably lower than many might imagine.  For one thing, Bush’s presidency is far from the anomaly some claim it to be.  His doctrine sits comfortably within the broad ‘schools’ of US foreign policy, and Bush has continued, rather than transformed, the principal traits of US strategic behaviour.

‘We should expect the next president to be a maximalist, entirely ready to act unilaterally and preemptively during crises, and better at thinking about grand strategic objectives in sweeping value terms rather than in narrow tactical terms…That president could look even more like George W. Bush on the basis of the structure of threats in the current security environment: namely, weak-actor terrorist threats are still likely to pose the most immediate threat to the United States, post-2008,’says Dr Lyon.  

With realists already displacing neo-conservatives at the helm, US strategists in coming years will be attempting to increase their effectiveness against 21st-century threats.  A retreat to the static, reactive doctrines of the Cold War is unlikely. In most respects, the next US president will look much like the one we have now, Dr Lyon concludes.

ASPI has released a new publication: Australia’s strategic fundamentals authored by Dr Rod Lyon.

Over the last year the subject of Australian strategy has been the basis of considerable discussion.  That debate has been driven by a greater sense of uncertainty over what is—or ought to be—the ‘ordering principle’ of Australian strategic thinking.  In an era of quickening globalisation and heightened strategic complexity, geography is proving a less useful determinant of strategic priorities.  Rather, Australia has in recent years been strengthening its role as an ‘order-builder’, at both the global and regional levels. 

At the global level, our traditional fear — a revisionist great power — is not currently a central concern.  The principal challenge to global order now comes from small, radical adversaries attracted to asymmetrical warfare, and this is unlikely to change soon.  At this level, the dominant form of conflict will be one which pits states against non-state adversaries, and we will need to have available capacities for fighting exactly the sort of conflict that Western militaries haven’t been much good at fighting. 
 
At the regional level the principal challenge will more familiar, as a US-centred security order evolves to accommodate larger security roles for Japan, China and India.  At this level, our strategy must be to pull that evolving order towards stability, good governance and economic openness.  If we are to play a role in drawing the regional great powers into cooperative order-building, we need an ADF capable of partnering those countries in peacekeeping and stabilisation missions, disaster relief, and protection of sea-lanes, for example.  But we must also have some capacity to respond to malign shifts in the Asian security order if necessary.

Meanwhile, the reinvigoration of a metropolitan leadership role for Australia in the South Pacific demonstrates our commitment to order-building more locally.  We will certainly require our ADF and AFP to have the capacities to conduct protracted and substantial intervention missions around the South Pacific.  But we will need to use a whole-of-government approach to encourage sustainable economic development and liberal, democratic forms of good governance within the neighbourhood.

Securing Australia’s fundamental strategic interests in the 21st century will remain a complex and demanding task.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released its latest report, which looks at India’s emergence from the strategic shadows to take its place as a great Asian power.  The report examines the effects this will have on the strategic architecture of Asia and the challenges facing Australia in developing the relationship between the two countries.

The report is authored by Sandy Gordon, a specialist in South Asian security studies, intelligence, terrorism and transnational crime.  Dr Gordon is Associate Professor at the Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, University of Wollongong. 

Given India’s rise as a significant Indian Ocean and Asian power, Australia has pressing reasons for developing a more secure platform for a lasting relationship.

Dr Gordon sees Canberra’s challenge as twofold.  It needs to find productive ways to progress the relationship that differentiate Australia from the US.  And it needs to avoid perceptions that Australia is ‘choosing’ between India and China.  Both requirements suggest a greater focus on matters of bilateral concern that are not, in the main, military in nature.  In meeting the challenge, Australia will have to deal with a raft of policy considerations such as India’s potential membership of APEC and the possible sale of Australian uranium to India. 

He concludes ‘India is currently basking in its emergent large power status and the relationship with Australia is not its top priority.  But the relationship has a promising future, and it is likely that the two countries will move towards some form of closer partnership in the coming decade.’