Sudan’s Darfur: Peace or more war on the horizon?

Release of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Strategic Insight No. 27/2006

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released a new ASPI Strategic Insight that examines the latest developments in Darfur and the factors that will determine whether there will finally be peace for the people of Darfur.

Written by Dr Claude Rakisits, a consultant focusing on developments in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, the paper also examines the Australian Government’s policy options for contributing to a possible UN peacekeeping operation in Darfur.

This year marks Sudan’s fiftieth year of independence. Unfortunately, it has very little to celebrate. Sudan, the largest country in Africa is best known for its long history of maladministration, human rights abuses, coups d’état, and for the past three years a ruthless government-backed assault on the people of Darfur in western Sudan.

‘About two years ago, shocking pictures started coming out of Darfur. Well over 200,000 people have been killed since then, and about 2.5 million people are now living in refugee camps either in Darfur or in neighbouring Chad. There have been many UN and African Union (AU) reports confirming attacks, rapes and the destruction of villages by the Sudanese army and air force and by Sudanese government-backed ‘Arab’ militias, the Janjaweed, in a deliberate drive to push the locals out of the area.’

‘The US Government has called it genocide. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has described it as ‘one of the worst nightmares in recent history, Dr Rakisits states. 

‘Unfortunately, ‘Darfur fatigue’ has settled in, and interest in the issue and the sense of urgency has diminished. But Darfur can’t be ignored. Jan Pronk, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sudan, has admitted that the previous international strategy in Darfur failed. Let’s make sure the international community gets it right this time—and quickly, because the Darfurians are the ones paying in lives for the West’s lack of action.’

Australian uranium exports and security: Preventing proliferation

Release of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Strategic Insight No. 28/2006

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released a new Strategic Insight publication titled Australian uranium exports and security: Preventing proliferation by Andrew Davies, ASPI Program Director Operations and Capability.

The government has recently put the issue of Australia’s future nuclear industry firmly on the table, and has established a taskforce to review uranium mining processing and nuclear energy in Australia. This ASPI Strategic Insight examines the impact that any change to Australia’s place in the nuclear supply chain might have on the proliferation of nuclear weapons. 

It examines the issues that need to be managed if Australian-sourced nuclear materials are to be sold to a wider customer set without leading to a growth in the number of nuclear weapon armed states.

Australia has the world’s largest reserves of uranium ore, totalling almost a quarter of known deposits and 40 per cent of the uranium that is easily exploitable. 

‘There is little doubt that increased global interest in nuclear energy is a potential economic opportunity for Australia. However, the laws of physics impose a necessary overlap between the technologies required to generate nuclear energy or to produce nuclear weapons’, Dr Davies says. 

‘It is therefore incumbent upon us to adopt a defence-in-depth approach that can minimise the possibility of a would-be proliferant nation being able to use a civil power program to develop expertise and technologies required to ‘break out’ into a nuclear weapons program.’

The paper also offers several policy recommendations to help Australia continue to be a responsible nuclear supplier.

‘For exports to countries with no existing capability to enrich uranium or separate plutonium, the best security solution is for Australia to export uranium through NPT-signatories that already possess those capabilities. If Australia was to develop its own value-adding nuclear industry it would need careful diplomacy and the utmost openness and transparency.’

Securing the transnational movement of trade and people in the era of global terrorism

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released its latest Strategic Insight addressing important national and homeland security issues faced by the United States after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the potential for departmental cooperation in national security. 

Former Commissioner US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Robert Bonner spoke at a National Security Policy seminar in Canberra which was co-hosted by ASPI and Unisys on Wednesday, 24 May 2006. The Insight is a transcript of his presentation in which he described the evolution of the US strategy to safeguard homeland security.

‘We definitely had to increase security in the post 9/11 era, in the age of global terrorism, but we had to find a way to do that without choking off the flow of legitimate trade and travel, without shutting down our economy in the process.’ 

‘We had to find ways, strategies to achieve the ‘twin goals’ of greater security, but also facilitate the flow of legitimate cross-border trade and travel. This led to initiatives such as the Container Security Initiative (CSI), Advance Passenger and Cargo Information (APCI), Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) and the 24-Hour Rule, to the National Targeting Center (NTC) and its Automated Targeting System (ATS), and to the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C TPAT). Not one of these initiatives existed before 9/11 he says. 

‘Our strategy includes a strong offense with our allies and coalition partners carried out overseas and must also include an effort to diffuse the hatred and misunderstanding in the Muslim world that fuels al-Qaeda. That’s a huge task, I know, but we must address it.’ 

‘I firmly believe that America and our allies, working together, will defeat the forces of global terrorism. I do not doubt it, even for a moment.’

Reforming the United Nations: Kofi Annan’s legacy gets a reality check

Release of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Strategic Insight No. 25/2006

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released a new ASPI Strategic Insight that examines the context within which recent efforts at UN reform should be understood while assessing the key institutional and normative achievements over the last few years.

As the dust settles from the 2005 UN reform jamboree and Kofi Annan enters the twilight months of his second term as Secretary-General, the United Nations has created two new institutions—a Peacebuilding Commission and a Human Rights Council—but has anything really changed? 

Author and Executive Director of the Institute for International Law and Justice at NYU School of Law Simon Chesterman considers those achievements to be underwhelming. But when contrasted with the divisions over Iraq that split the UN in 2003, the better evaluation might not be whether the glass is half-empty or half-full, but how it is that we continue to have a glass at all.

‘The discussion of reform has always begged the question of whether that reform must take place primarily in the structures, procedures, and personnel that make up the United Nations, or in the willingness of member states to use them. Past efforts at creating and changing the international institutions of peace and security have tended to be led by political will, which is most plentiful in a time of crisis,’ Dr Chesterman writes. 

‘In the wake of the Iraq war, anxiety concerning the role and relevance of the United Nations was widespread. But leadership on the reform agenda came, unusually, from the Secretary-General. It was Kofi Annan who appointed the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, which attempted to grapple with legitimate US security concerns while broadening discussion of international threats beyond its counter-terrorism and non-proliferation agenda.’

As his term closes Secretary-General Annan’s efforts to drive reform and the response of member states provide a lens through which to view the promise, the prospects, and the limitations of the United Nations as an institution and as an idea.

Cutting their cloth: New Zealand’s defence strategy

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released its latest report, which traces the processes by which New Zealand determines its defence needs and maintains its policy directions while also managing its relationships with defence partners.

The report is authored by Jim Rolfe, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies in New Zealand.  It examines three components of New Zealand’s defence posture: the country’s capabilities, its commitments, and its defence and security relationships with its two closest partners—Australia and the US.

Dr Rolfe argues that since 2000 the New Zealand government has attempted to build a New Zealand Defence Force that meets the country’s principal strategic needs.  The result, he says, has been a more practical military force, structured and equipped to achieve specific, and quite narrow outcomes, rather than to be able to fight a conventional enemy under almost any circumstances.  Still, the NZDF can take its place alongside allies when necessary, or operate more or less independently to support New Zealand’s interests in the immediate neighbourhood.

But New Zealand’s defence relationships are still fragile.  The relationship with Australia waxes and wanes, haunted by strongly held and long-term doubts within Australia about New Zealand’s commitment to and capacity for the two nations’ common defence.  The report examines the extent to which New Zealand’s capabilities add value to Australia’s, and considers what more the two nations could do together.  The New Zealand-US relationship is even more delicate, though the War on Terror has provided new opportunities for the two countries to work together. 

Malaysia’s two-step hedging strategy: Bilateral and regional activism

Release of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Strategic Insight No. 24/2006

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released a new ASPI Strategic Insight publication which examines Malaysia’s strategic objectives and positioning in relation to the great powers in its region, and its attempts to finesse bilateral and multilateral relations with those powers. 

Authored by Dr John Lee, Managing Director and co-founder of research and conferences company L21 the Insight argues that as Malaysia’s regional strategy swings between criticism of and cooperation with the US and praise and suspicion of China, these variations have made Malaysia’s strategic aims hard to read.

‘However, despite the various faces of its diplomacy, Malaysia’s strategic aim has been consistent: to hedge against domination.’ Dr Lee says.

‘Since emerging from the Cold War strategic straitjacket, Malaysia has grasped the opportunity to rethink its place in the international system and its policies towards great powers, and—crucially—to align foreign security strategy with internal and domestic priorities.’ 

‘By successfully forging its image as a renegade leader against Western ‘cultural imperialism’, Malaysia has found admirers in developing and Islamic countries. This led to Malaysia’s hedging strategy with the US suffering from diplomatic lows from late 1998 to 2001 despite the continuation of robust US-Malaysian security links during this period.’ 

The anticipated rise of China has caused consternation among ASEAN countries for decades. China’s size and proximity, the greatness and longevity of Chinese civilisation, the strength of Chinese nationalism, and the diaspora of disproportionately affluent ethnic Chinese minorities (such as in Malaysia) were all grounds for wariness. More recently, China’s continued development and military modernisation show irrefutably that her presence and influence will grow.

In May 2005, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi proclaimed relations with China to be at their ‘best ever’. While remaining strategically ambivalent towards China on security matters, and encouraging a continued security partnership of sorts with the US, Malaysia has used a dual tactic of bilateral economic engagement and reviving regional activism as part of its hedging strategy as it carefully watches China’s rise.

Riding the Wave: The rise of China and options for Australian policy

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has released its latest Strategy report, which addresses the strategic dimensions of the reemergence of China providing a complement to the earlier David Hale assessment of China’s economic prospects.

The report is authored by Professor Ross Terrill, Harvard-based China specialist and titled ‘Riding the Wave: The rise of China and options for Australian policy’. 

‘The People’s Republic of China’s rapid economic growth rates are accompanied by military advances, a heightened quest for markets and resources, diplomatic assertiveness, and increased national pride. China’s role is now of global importance.’ Professor Terrill reports.

‘As 2006 begins, nobody denies the increased importance of China in Asia and beyond. Final 2005 figures appeared to place China as the world’s fourth largest economy for the first time, ahead of the UK, France and Italy. But the rise of a country to the front rank of world powers is always a complex process.’

‘Chinese foreign policy seeks to maximise stability at home, sustain China’s impressive economic growth, and maintain peace in China’s complicated geographic situation. More problematically, it also seeks to blunt US influence in East Asia. 

The paper argues that China’s fulfilment of its foreign policy goals will depend basically on the evolution of its political system and the reaction of other powers to its ambitions.

Australia’s situation in the region has changed mostly for the better over the past decade, and some sharp choices of the 1990s seem to have been transcended by globalisation, economic developments and the challenge from terrorism. 

This paper urges clear thinking by Australians about whether the US will remain strong and engaged in the region, the proper place of deterrence, the ways Beijing’s mercantilism differs from free-market approaches to the international community, and whether an authoritarian China can also be an enduringly strong China.

Precarious State: Afghanistan and the international and Australian response

Release of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Strategic Insight No. 23/2006

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released a new ASPI Strategic Insight publication which examines the current situation in Afghanistan, including international security and reconstruction efforts. It analyses NATO’s expansion into the south of Afghanistan and in particular the 200-strong Australian Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) deployment to the province of Oruzgan, which is due in late July. 

Authored by Strategy and International Program Director Dr Elsina Wainwright, the Insight argues that notwithstanding these new initiatives, insufficient international attention is still being paid to Afghanistan, and it remains an acutely fragile state. Afghanistan has had far fewer international troops and aid per capita than operations in East Timor, Kosovo, Bosnia and Iraq. Several security trends are also worrying, especially the increase in insurgent activity. There were around 1600 Afghan deaths and 91US military deaths from insurgency-related activity in 2005—a 20% increase in a year, making 2005 the most dangerous in Afghanistan since 2001. The insurgency has recently changed tactics, with suicide attacks up almost fourfold in 2005 from 2004 and the use of improvised explosive devices more than doubling in the past year.

‘NATO’s extension into the south and later the east of Afghanistan is appropriate. Real threats to Afghanistan’s stability lie in these regions: they are the heartland of the insurgency. As a result, the deployments will be dangerous for all participating states, including Australia. Predictions have been made that the Taliban and Al Qaeda will seek to test deploying troops.’

‘Australia’s PRT deployment to the restive southern province of Oruzgan, birthplace of former Taliban leader Mullah Omah, will carry considerable risks.’

‘The Australian PRT deployment will also involve a number of operational challenges. Australian forces will receive protection from the Dutch troops, and their security therefore depends on very robust Dutch rules of engagement.’

In the Balance: China’s unprecedented growth and implications for the Asia-Pacific

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has today released its report, In the Balance: China’s unprecedented growth and implications for the Asia-Pacific.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released its latest Strategy report, delivering an assessment of China’s economic prospects and the impact on the Asia—Pacific region. 

The report is authored by David D Hale, a Chicago-based economist and founding chairman of Hale Advisors and China Online and was launched at Parliament House, Canberra.

Few issues are more important to Australia’s long-term strategic position in the Asia-Pacific than the health of China’s economy and the nature of Beijing’s foreign and defence policies. 

Hale provides startling data to show how rapidly China is coming to dominate not only the Asia-Pacific economies, but also to be a fundamental driving factor in Europe and North America. Hale says: ‘China could soon be the world’s leading exporter, she has a great strategic interest in promoting an open multilateral trading system rather than a world characterised by regional trade agreements.’

His paper also assesses some of the serious impediments in the way of continuing high growth. Most critically of all he argues that: ‘The great challenge now confronting China is to complete the transition to a transparent market economy with a democratic form of government.’ 

What are the likely foreign and strategic policy implications? Hale says ‘The rise of China will be the first major test of whether [the global system of states] has the capacity to cope with a new great power.’

China is increasingly active on a global diplomatic stage, pursuing resources in places as far afield as Zimbabwe, the Sudan and Venezuela. China has a growing strategic interest in Central Asia and the Middle East and this is creating a new dimension in Beijing’s relationship with the United States and other major powers.

Hale points out: ‘The experience of 1914 is a warning that one cannot depend upon economic factors to resolve political conflicts, but the situation in East Asia today contains fewer political risks than Europe during the early 20th century.’ 

‘It is critical to understand that the reemergence of China will have profound implications for geopolitical relationships, not just trading interests.’

Cutting Edge: The Collins experience

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has today released its report, Cutting Edge: The Collins experience.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released a new Strategic Insight publication examining the Collins Class submarine project – the most ambitious and controversial defence project ever undertaken in Australia. 

Authored by Patrick Walters, National Security Editor, The Australian, and titled ‘Cutting Edge: The Collins experience’, this Insight provides a broad overview of the Collins Class project. It examines the industry, capability and strategic impact of this complex defence project and finds that the Commonwealth’s $5 billion investment has not only provided Australia with a key strategic asset but also greatly boosted the skill base of our naval construction industry.

‘The Collins submarines are very quiet and have performed exceptionally well on long deployment and in regular exercises with the United States Navy. One of Australia’s most vital front-line defence assets they are now widely regarded as the finest conventional submarines in the world.’ Walters writes.

‘The strategic importance of this local industry capacity is underlined by the fact that no future off-the-shelf submarine is likely to come close to Australia’s unique requirements.’

The paper finds that not all the original industry goals for the Collins class were achieved. The Australian build did not produce the export program envisaged by government and industry in the 1990s. Strategic, political and commercial considerations have meant that this unique marriage of European, US and Australian technologies has not produced an export version of the Collins. 

The government will have to make a decision early next decade whether to go ahead with an Australian build of a new generation submarine, which would require another bold commitment from government and close collaboration between the Defence Organisation and local industry.

A crucial test for ASC and Australian industry will be the Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project which is scheduled to deliver its first warship in 2013. Successfully meeting this challenge and lifting Australia’s industry skills base should give future governments the confidence to progress the construction of Australia’s next generation submarine.

‘The all-round experience gained from the Collins class augurs well for the future.’ Patrick concludes.