Tag Archive for: ANZUS

Good deeds and good strategy: humanitarian and disaster relief operations

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President Barack Obama waves to people in the gallery after addressing the Australian Parliament in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Nov.17, 2011.This is a shortened version of a longer paper presented to the Alliance 21 meeting in Washington. Abridgment by Kristy Bryden.

The arrival of US Marines in Australia has started a national, regional and international debate that will run for some time. The debate centres on the obvious advantages of an enhanced regional humanitarian and disaster response (HADR) capability and the disadvantage of an increased US military presence in Australia, seen by China part of a wider effort to circumscribe their emergence as a regional, and potentially global, power.

How the increased US presence is understood within the region will do a lot to shape the nature of the alliance between Australia and the United States into the 21st century. It’s hard however, to counter the perception that the increased US military presence in Australia is a response to the growing power of China. The reality of the deployments and the potential for more extensive deployments, especially air and naval forces with strategic reach, places Australia firmly in the American camp. Read more

Mobility, endurance, and payload: lots of each for our submarines

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HMAS Manoora's SK50 Sea King helicopter flies over Collins Class submarine, HMAS Collins.Andrew Davies’ recent post on The Who, What, Where, and Why of the Future Submarine reverts to the beginning of the argument about submarines. Anyone who read my earlier response, ‘Why submarines for Australia?’ would guess that I disagree with some of the points he is making!

I’ve previously endeavoured to show the limitations of a defensive strategy for Australia’s submarine operations. Restricting Australia’s submarine capability to operating in or below the Indonesian archipelago by acquiring a smaller submarine might be cheaper, but it wouldn’t be money well spent. The SIA’s submission to the 2013 Defence White Paper argues the case well.

Given the unfolding strategic landscape, we should indeed accept Andrew’s challenge and convince ourselves that our submarine force must be able to operate north of the archipelago, throughout the South China Sea, and be able to observe, report and if necessary strike. Read more

What’s in a word?

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Statements of mutual appreciation are never far from centre stage at an Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) meeting. In 2002, both sides agreed that the meeting came at a time “when the bilateral security alliance [between the United States and Australia] had never been stronger”, and this sentiment has been repeated in various ways at each of the meetings in the years since. The statements made at the sixtieth-anniversary of the ANZUS alliance commemorated at last year’s AUSMIN were particularly emotive, with both Australia and the U.S. pointing to their shared military sacrifices, democratic values, influence and interests in the Asia Pacific region, and common strategic objectives.

With the 2012 AUSMIN conference fast approaching, we decided to take a look at the language that has dominated at least the public face of AUSMIN over the past decade. From its beginnings in 1985, the annual meeting has provided an insight into the joint concerns of both Australia and the United States. As we can see from the word cloud above—constructed from the public communiques issued at the end of each meeting—the language has been dominated by ‘soft’ terms such as ‘cooperation’, ‘security’ and ‘commitment’, at the bilateral, global and regional level. Conversely, despite the rhetorical importance placed upon shared sacrifices, the two major theatres where Australian and American forces have been engaged—Iraq and Afghanistan—are relatively inconspicuous. Read more