Tag Archive for: Australia

Why we need a rethink of Australia’s citizenship revocation law

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The logic behind Australia’s terrorism-related loss-of-citizenship provisions is meant to be brilliantly simple: if a person travels overseas to be a foreign fighter, and is a dual citizen, then under certain circumstances their Australian citizenship can be rescinded.

Three key arguments have been provided to defend the measure. First, citizenship revocation punishes those who have travelled to Iraq and Syria. Second, such legislation deters Australians who might consider travelling there. Third, it helps protect Australians from the threat of terror, as it means that those who went abroad can’t return to Australia to commit terrorist acts.

While this exclusionary approach might resonate with some Australians, there are serious flaws in those arguments.

In the first instance, the measure applies a geographically limited conceptualisation of the terror threat. At best, citizenship-loss provisions mitigate the risk of terrorism in Australia. However, as the tragedies of the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2017 London Bridge attack and the 2019 Barcelona attack illustrated, terrorism threatens Australians and Australian interests (a key aspect in the legislation) beyond our shores. We must remember that Australians love to travel—in 2018, 10.5 million of us travelled overseas.

The citizenship revocation measure amounts to a de facto terrorist exiling program for foreign fighters who have dual citizenship or are entitled to another citizenship. At best, this ‘you’re banned’ approach displaces rather than mitigates the threat. Arguably, many of those who lose their citizenship will simply look for a new ‘safe haven’. If, as is so often pointed out, terrorism is a global threat, then citizenship-loss provisions, on their own, do little to mitigate the global risk of terror attacks. In fact, they compound it.

Banning people such as New Zealander Mark Taylor, who had lived in Australia for 25 years before heading to Syria, or teenage Islamic State ‘bride’ Zaynab Sharrouf, from returning to Australia is counterproductive. Those individuals are small players in the IS story. In contrast, their effective deradicalisation would have great strategic value in the struggle to undermine the IS narrative.

Bryant Neal Viñas, al-Qaeda’s first American foreign fighter, has campaigned against Islamic radicalism since being released from prison. He also reviewed countless pieces of information, leading US prosecutors to describe him as the ‘single most valuable cooperating witness’ about al-Qaeda activities.

The threat from someone who believes in the ideas of IS or al-Qaeda isn’t mitigated by their loss of citizenship. Exiling them simply means that our security services will need to devote different resources to keep track of them wherever they may be. Alternatively, if their return to Australia can be managed, a range of security, legislative and community-based measures can be applied to mitigate the risk that they might pose.

While it remains true that individual journeys to violent extremism are uniquely personal, the best methods for disengagement and deradicalisation are still being found. The evidence base and empirical data on deradicalisation continue to grow rapidly. Over the past two decades, Australian authorities have accumulated a great deal of experience in countering violent extremism and in deradicalisation. This has given rise to some promising tools, such as the Proactive Integrated Support Model, or PRISM, managed by Corrective Services NSW.

Without ongoing supervision and wrap-around support services, the application of citizenship loss could result in known terrorist offenders being able to mount further attacks or engage in other nefarious activities in other countries. In many cases, those who lose their Australian citizenship could and do end up in jurisdictions with insufficient legislation, resources or will to manage them. In contrast, the ongoing management of a terrorist offender in Australia, while resource intensive, is likely to have a far more lasting impact in mitigating global terrorism risks.

Whereas there’s hope that terrorists incarcerated in or returning to Australia may be deradicalised, there’s little prospect of deradicalising those who end up in foreign jurisdictions due to citizenship loss. At best, there’ll be an opportunity for closely managed community monitoring. Arguably, terrorism-related citizenship loss may mitigate short-term risk but increase global risk in the long term.

Most terrorism narratives seek to establish in the minds of their current and potential members a sense of persecution, discrimination and isolation. The terrorist group offers a person a community, a place to belong and some greater purpose.

The terrorism-related citizenship-loss provisions unintentionally support those narratives. If a person’s citizenship can be cancelled, then surely their citizenship is worth ‘less’ than that of someone born in Australia. These circumstances can be easily crafted into a narrative that will resonate with people who already feel that they aren’t a part of Australian society. So, while the legislative provisions may mitigate the risk from one terrorist, they might also contribute to the radicalisation of many more Australians.

Earlier this year, Attorney-General Christian Porter referred the operation, effectiveness and implications of the terrorism-related citizenship-loss provisions in the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 for review by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Dr James Renwick.

Last week, Renwick held a public hearing for his review. In our submission to the inquiry, Isaac Kfir and I argued that the logic behind these provisions is dangerously simplistic.

Revisiting the north in the defence of Australia

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The idea of the north of Australia being central to the new concept of the defence of Australia in the 1970s derived from the key strategic fact that the only country in the region with the conventional military capabilities to threaten Australia was Indonesia.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Indonesia had the world’s third-largest communist party and was armed by the Soviet Union with modern submarines and long-range bombers. Australia’s response was to acquire F-111 fighter-bombers and Oberon-class submarines.

However, by the 1980s, much of Indonesia’s military equipment was either out of date or suffering from a chronic lack of maintenance. Hence, the 1986 Dibb review and the 1987 defence white paper focused on the potential threat of low-level conflict, which could conceivably be escalated to the use by Indonesia of its deteriorating Soviet military equipment.

The 1972 defence review and the 1976 defence white paper had both emphasised the relevance of the defence of the north of Australia in such contingencies. But successive governments had done little about it, even though President Richard Nixon’s Guam doctrine in 1968 had made it clear that—short of nuclear war—America’s allies were expected to be able to defend themselves in credible conventional contingencies.

It is not generally known that the real reason why Defence Minister Kim Beazley asked me in 1985 to undertake the review of Australia’s defence capabilities was the entrenched differences of opinion between the senior military and civilian hierarchies in the defence organisation and their inability, after 12 months, to come to even a preliminary agreement on force structure priorities for the defence of Australia. The then secretary of defence, William Cole, advised Beazley that he should consider recruiting an independent expert.

The secretary and the chief of the defence force had got bogged down in exchanging 130 classified memos about the theology of defence policy on such concepts as defence warning time; low-level conflict; more substantial conflict; and whether Australia’s unique geography should basically determine its force structure, as distinct from expeditionary forces for operations at great distance from Australia. Most of the ensuing debate was not constructive: it was hostile with little agreement on even basic principles for force structure priorities.

My main policy aim was to arrive at a workable compromise between these bitterly held positions. But, at the same time, I argued strongly for the priority to be given to the defence of Australia and, in that context, to stress the relevance of Australia’s northern approaches. The focus of the review’s recommendations about the north was as follows:

  • The army should locate a regular infantry battalion in the Darwin area expandable to a three-battalion brigade group, as well as establish a joint force headquarters (Northern Command, or NORCOM).
  • The navy’s submarine base should be relocated from Sydney to Cockburn Sound near Fremantle. The review also proposed the acquisition of a light patrol frigate, which became the Anzac ships, and recommended that the navy take mining and mine countermeasures much more seriously.
  • The air force should complete the chain of strategically important military bare bases across the north by building an airfield on the Cape York Peninsula in addition to the bases at Tindal, Learmonth and Derby.

There were other recommendations relevant to the defence of northern Australia, with priorities to be given to army reserves, including Norforce; the protection of northern ports such as Dampier, Port Hedland, Darwin, Gove and Weipa against mining; the requirement for a significant presence of surface patrol assets in offshore focal areas such as Dampier, the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea, the Torres Strait, Christmas Island, and the Indian Ocean approaches.

The strongest resistance came from the army, which without the leadership of the chief of the general staff, Peter Gration, would never have agreed to transfer the 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Holsworthy in Sydney to Darwin. We were fortunate when Gration became chief of the defence force and gave strong support for the 1987 defence white paper. Later, when General John Baker became CDF, he made clear his views to me about the defence of Australia by stating, ‘It was inevitable that the idea of the independent defence of Australia should be taken seriously.’

I would note here that the army has recently detached a battalion from 1 Brigade in Darwin to be relocated 2,600 kilometres to the south at Edinburgh, apparently so it can benefit from the all-weather training area at Cultana.

The navy resisted the move to shift its submarine base from Sydney to Fremantle because it allegedly would be difficult to recruit enough numbers of submariners from eastern Australia to live in such a remote location. The air force strongly resisted the review’s recommendation that ground force tactical helicopters and their crews become operationally part of the army. In retrospect, that was a mistake given the army’s subsequent operational record.

So, we now come to today’s deteriorating strategic environment for Australia. As Richard Brabin-Smith and I argued in Australia’s management of strategic risk in the new era: ‘[F]or the first time since World War II, we face an increased prospect of threat from a major power.’ We noted that the expansion of China’s military capabilities will mean that the warning time for potential contingencies will become shorter.

China is already using coercion to challenge the presence of other countries—including Australia—in the waters of Southeast Asia. We cannot afford to have our strategic space constricted in this way. China’s military presence in the South China Sea has brought its capacity to project military power 1,200–1,400 kilometres closer to Australia’s northern approaches.

None of this is to argue that China is necessarily going to become a direct military threat. But the simple fact is that China will increasingly have the military capability to mount high-intensity operations against us. We must now develop our military capabilities to deny any such threat, including access to bases and facilities in our neighbourhood.

These radical changes to our strategic circumstances will require a fundamental review of our force structure and readiness and the expansion base of the Australian Defence Force. The problem is that there’s a yawning gap between the growing concerns of many defence experts in this country and the relaxed views of the general population and business community.

According to the vice chief of the defence force, David Johnston, during the Q&A following his keynote speech at ASPI’s ‘War in 2025’ conference on 13 June 2019, Defence is now undertaking a mobilisation review. It is to be hoped that such a review will include some or all the following: a review of readiness and the expansion base to include numbers of combat pilots and submariners; proposals for greatly expanded stocks of war-shot missiles and munitions; recognition of the need to guarantee the ADF’s fuel supplies in the north of Australia; attention to the hardening of northern bases against strikes and electronic-warfare attacks; and the sustainability planning required for round-the-clock military operations against a capable modern adversary.

There is an urgent need to review Australia’s long-range air and maritime strike capabilities and the delivery of adequate numbers of platforms in a time frame relevant to Australia’s deteriorating strategic circumstances.

Unlike in the Cold War, Australia’s strategic geography as the pivot between the Pacific and Indian oceans is now assuming much more strategic relevance. This means that we will have to revisit the disposition of our forces and their capabilities in the north and west of our continent. The most vulnerable geographic approaches to our continent are still in the north. But, unlike at the time of the Dibb review, we will now have to prepare for high-intensity contingencies against a major power with which we don’t share national security values.

Straight-line extrapolations from the comfortable past—including the 2016 defence white paper—will not be good enough because time is no longer on our side.

Taking Australia’s defence strategy forward

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It’s been a while since Australia undertook a fundamental review of its defence strategy. Yet such a review is urgently needed as the rapid deterioration of our strategic outlook overtakes many of the assumptions that underpinned the 2016 defence white paper. The military strategy in that document has roots that go back to previous white papers, and in fact all the way back to the era of the 1987 Defence of Australia white paper and the 1986 Dibb review. It’s time for something new.

In a new ASPI paper, released today, I advocate a new strategy of ‘forward defence in depth’. The aim is to counter the growing offensive capability implicit in the anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities now appearing in China’s People’s Liberation Army.

Although strategic geography still matters, emerging PLA capabilities such as high-speed, long-range strike make it much more difficult to defend the sea–air gap to our north.

Forward defence in depth treats the sea–air gap as the main rear area—not the front line—of the Australian Defence Force. Projecting power into the maritime Indo-Pacific region is much more vital, as is the ability to generate effects through space and cyberspace.

The goals of forward defence in depth are to prevent a major-power adversary from threatening Australian and allied forces and facilities across northern Australia unmolested; to deny them access to our air and maritime approaches by controlling maritime straits across Southeast Asia; and to ensure the ADF can respond rapidly to coercive threats to our energy and maritime trade on the high seas.

If Australia is to successfully adopt forward defence in depth, we can’t do it alone. Enhanced defence diplomacy is essential. We have already started this process with the recent agreement to re-establish a US–Australia–PNG naval base at Lombrum on Manus Island, but our future defence diplomatic efforts need to go much further.

The defence diplomacy dimension needs to be handled sensitively and respect the key interests of partners and address their threat perceptions. For example, Pacific island states tend to focus on non-traditional security concerns like climate change, and our defence diplomacy must address those. But it must also provide an alternative to these states being forced to acquiesce to Beijing’s interests through debt-trap diplomacy.

Forward defence in depth is as much about the defence and security of the Indo-Pacific region as it is about updating Australia’s defence strategy. Our approach to defence must recognise the region as equal partner, rather than as a means to an end.

With this key aspect in mind, the paper advocates a much more ambitious partnership with Indonesia, including through reciprocal base access, intelligence sharing, joint capability development, and joint exercises and operations.

It also emphasises the need to formalise a trilateral defence alliance with the US and Japan. The Australian government should accelerate the growth of that relationship to incorporate greater defence cooperation through intelligence sharing and joint exercises and training, and then move towards joint operations including reciprocal base access.

As part of this process, the paper advocates a trilateral defence chain, running from Okinawa in the north, through Guam and Micronesia in the middle, to Lombrum in the south, as well as Royal Australian Air Force bases Tindal and Darwin, to create a manoeuvre space. Such a space could see deployment of naval surface combatants from all three states equipped with SM-3 and SM-6 missile-defence capabilities, supported by ‘Aegis Ashore’-type land-based ballistic-missile-defence interceptors and radars at Okinawa, Guam and Tindal. From within this manoeuvre space, US, Japanese and Australian submarine and long-range airpower could then project force rapidly inside the first island chain to deny China the ability to employ long-range-strike capabilities.

This is not to advocate a cult of the offensive, in which Australia adopts a strategically aggressive posture. It’s about developing our own A2/AD capabilities to allow rapid and precise strikes at long range, and with short notice, alongside our partners to strengthen common security. The aim should be to boost deterrence by increasing the potential cost to the adversary in a way that precludes a war from occurring or, in concert with allies, enables us to win such a war, should it occur.

The capability implications of forward defence diplomacy would see future force structure development go beyond that proposed in the 2016 integrated investment program. We’re talking about long-range power-projection capabilities, first and foremost.

The potential for the PLA to exploit advanced ballistic- and cruise-missile systems—and, in time, hypersonic weapons—to circumvent the sea–air gap is emerging as a key risk for Australia. Through forward defence in depth, the ADF will maximise its chances to kill the archer before he releases his arrow.

The recent announcement of the Australian government’s partnership with Boeing to develop the ‘loyal wingman’ unmanned combat aerial vehicle is a positive step towards filling a capability gap left by the retirement of the F-111 in 2010. But it needs to be complemented by acquisition of long-range, high-speed standoff weapons for forward-deployed RAAF strike and air combat capability, and integration of long-range land-attack and anti-ship cruise missile systems for the Royal Australian Navy’s naval surface combatant and submarine forces.

Ultimately, the RAAF needs to explore how it can acquire new capabilities that offer long range, high payload and high speed and which exploit manned–unmanned teaming. That sort of capability is likely to be at the cornerstone of US penetrating counter-air projects in the coming decade. Australian participation in those projects could lead to a complementary future capability for the RAAF’s F-35A fleet.

To strike fast, we need to see first. Broader investment in unmanned systems on and under the waves would offer a means to maintain a permanent forward presence to monitor an adversary’s naval activities close to its ports and wage a sea-denial campaign when necessary.

The alternative of a continued coast on autopilot with traditional defence strategy settings would sacrifice the operational and tactical initiative, and not respond effectively to emerging adversary capabilities. In the next war—which could occur as early as the 2020s—the ADF needs to push forward, and recognise the advantage of forward defence in depth.

ANZUS and alliance politics in Southeast Asia: revisiting the ‘southern flank’

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President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017 embracing a ‘transactional’ outlook towards alliance politics. US alliances would be managed less on traditional friendship and more on assessments of how the United States would gain alliance affiliation. For America’s longstanding Southeast Asian regional treaty allies as Thailand and the Philippines, the implications of the new US administration’s transactional posture for future relations with Washington were unclear. Both of these allies had already moved far towards hedging against the US by substantially upgrading their economic—and, in Thailand’s case, military—ties with China.

More than halfway through his elected term of office, however, Trump has drifted back towards implementing a strategy for the Indo-Pacific that’s more in tune with those of previous US administrations. He announced his support for a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ during a November 2017 trip to Asia and confirmed it the following month with his release of a new national security strategy. The fundamental precepts included the principles of freedom of navigation and overflight, the rule of law, freedom from coercion, respect for sovereignty, private enterprise and open markets, and freedom of independence of all nations.

As I explain in a new ASPI report, released today, the national security strategy’s obvious emphasis on maritime and commercial interests dovetailed naturally with a renewed US focus on the ‘southern flank’ component of its Indo-Pacific alliance network and on greater Southeast Asia. The southern-flank portion of the US regional alliance network—also known as the ‘San Francisco system’—includes formal bilateral defence treaties with Thailand and the Philippines and the ANZUS Treaty with Australia. It also involves substantial American strategic partnerships with such ASEAN states as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam that complement the more formal components of US alliance networking in the region.

ASEAN’s geographical location places it squarely in the centre of two key sea lanes of communication through which much of the world’s maritime commerce flows—the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea. If the US were denied access to—and the ability to control—such conduits during war or high crises, its influence within, and its ability to traverse and trade throughout, the entire Indo-Pacific region would be critically impeded. To preclude such outcomes, various Southeast Asian states must, combined with their ANZUS counterparts, work to sustain an enduring balance of power in the region.

Trump has worked visibly to modify the tensions with both the Philippines and Thailand that intensified under the Obama administration. He repeatedly praised Rodrigo Duterte when attending the 2017 ASEAN summit which the Philippines leader hosted, downplayed the human rights issue and emphasised continued US support for Philippine counterterrorism operations.

In March 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the Philippines and outlined a significant shift in Washington’s traditional interpretation of the US–Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty by explicitly warning that ‘[a]ny armed attack on Philippine forces, aircraft or public vessels in the South China Sea will trigger mutual defence obligations’.

Trump hosted Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha at the White House in October 2017. The visit partially modified Thai–American tensions over human rights and facilitated increased US–Thai security cooperation. Bilateral Thai–US military exercises were also accelerated.

In the broader Indo-Pacific, the US has, for well over a decade, cultivated upgraded defence ties with India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Indonesia’s strong legacy of non-alignment, and its self-appointed role as ASEAN’s guardian against external great-power competition, still render Indonesia’s partnership with both Australia and the US, however, as qualified. Closer US–Malaysian defence ties are being developed as a counterweight to the ‘China factor’. For example, the Cope Taufan 18 bilateral tactical airlift exercise held in July 2018 focused on air superiority, airborne command and control, interdiction, air refuelling, and tactical airlift and airdrop.

Despite its relatively small size and population (approximately 5.7 million), Singapore is viewed by many in Washington and Canberra as a de facto ally with its own highly modernised military underpinned by a comparatively high defence spending rate and motivated by common threat perceptions, including fears of an unstable South China Sea. Australia and Singapore signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement in 2015.

The US–Vietnam Bilateral Defence Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding in 2011 initiated collaboration in maritime security. US assistance in developing the Vietnam Coast Guard’s participation in the Rim of the Pacific maritime exercise, and the lifting of a long-term American ban on arms sales to Vietnam in 2016, have been reciprocated by at least tacit Vietnamese support for US naval activities in the South China Sea. This positive momentum is tempered, however, by Vietnam’s still constrained posture that precludes alienating the more geographically proximate and economically crucial China relationship.

US regional allies and partners remain uncertain about American staying power in their neighbourhood. The slow development of the Australia–India–Japan–United States Quadrilateral Defence Initiative, the relatively modest US funding to promote Southeast Asia’s regional security (US$300 million) and China’s determined efforts to cultivate enhanced regional influence have reinforced ASEAN’s propensity to apply hedging strategies designed to preclude either American or Chinese dominance over their region. But America’s continued presence is supported throughout Southeast Asia.

In these circumstances, applying the ANZUS alliance to breathe new life into the San Francisco system’s southern flank and its peripheries may well be worth pursuing. Three such measures immediately come to mind and are offered as policy recommendations here. One is upgrading joint policy planning between the ANZUS allies and Manila on how to respond forcefully and credibly to Chinese challenges of Philippines-claimed territories in the South China Sea. A second is for the US and Australia to extend their already well-established diplomatic posture of ceding the political destiny of Vietnam to the Vietnamese people to both the Philippines and Thailand. Finally, any Australian government, of whatever persuasion, must remain steadfast in encouraging US policy consistency in its alliance politics in the Indo-Pacific.

The durability of the San Francisco system remains one of the democratic community’s most valued security frameworks. ANZUS policymakers could do far worse than to assist in ensuring that it stays that way.

The cost of defence: beyond 2% of GDP

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The first question that people ask me about the defence budget is, ‘Will it reach 2% by 2020–21 as the government promised?’ The short answer is yes. According to the budget papers, the consolidated defence budget (that is, the budget for the Department of Defence and the Australian Signals Directorate) will reach 2% of GDP next financial year. That will require an increase of around $3 billion on 2019–20’s $38.7 billion, but that’s not particularly extraordinary or unachievable. And there’s no reason to doubt that the government will meet this 2016 white paper commitment—in the four budgets since the white paper, the government has delivered the promised funding.

The longer answer, as explained in ASPI’s annual budget brief, The cost of defence, released today, is that defence planning has already passed it. The government did not say that the defence budget would be mechanically set at 2% ad infinitum. In fact, according to the budget papers, defence funding continues to grow beyond 2% over the forward estimates, reaching roughly 2.2% by 2022–23. And after that, it stays there for the rest of the white paper’s funding model, which goes out to 2025–26 (page 180).

That means that the government’s planned funding line for defence and a hypothetical 2% of GDP funding line diverge after 2020–21. While a difference of 0.2% of GDP might not sound like much, in dollar terms that gap quickly reaches $5 billion per year based on ASPI’s modelling of GDP using the budget papers’ growth predictions. The difference totals $22.4 billion over the second half of the white paper decade. That difference will be even bigger if the economy doesn’t grow at the 2.75% rate (and 3% from 2021–22) forecast in the budget papers. Since GDP growth has hovered stubbornly around 2.6% on average since the global financial crisis, and recent indications suggest a slowing economy, 3% is ambitious.

Defence’s investment planning extends well into the future so we can be pretty sure that the department is planning on spending all of the money that the government said it would give it. That’s essentially what a fully costed white paper means. In summary, the plan already assumes the budget is going beyond 2%. Therefore, if this or a future government decides that something closer to 2% is what it’s willing to pay for defence, it will inevitably have an impact on capability.

The next question is, ‘Where is that funding going?’ The short answer is, the capital budget. Traditionally, it’s the smallest of the three main components of the budget (alongside personnel and operating costs). But over the forward estimates, capital investment is forecast to grow to nearly 40% of the total defence budget.

If we take into account the fact that GDP is growing, the defence budget is growing as a percentage of GDP, and capital is growing as a percentage of the defence budget, that compounds into a massive increase. By the end of the forward estimates, the capital budget alone reaches $19 billion. That’s a 155% increase in real terms since the Coalition came to power in 2013–14. By the end of the white paper decade it’s $23 billion.

So does that mean the big shopping list in the white paper that includes the naval shipbuilding and armoured vehicle megaprojects is affordable? We suggested in last year’s The cost of Defence that naval shipbuilding alone will cost $3.5–4 billion per year. You’d think that a capital budget of $19–23 billion would cover it.

There are reasons to be cautious. First, operating costs are also rising sharply. For example, by the end of the transition from the F-111/Classic Hornet fleet to the F-35/Super Hornet/Growler fleet in 2022–23, the annual air combat sustainment cost will have gone from $260 million to around $1.1 billion based on ASPI’s projections.

And it’s not just platforms themselves. As Defence becomes increasingly ‘network-centric’, the cost of the ICT backbone that holds it together is also going up steeply, from around $450 million in 2008–09 to $1.6 billion in 2022–23. It’s not surprising, then, that since the white paper, Defence has underachieved against the predicted capital spend but overspent on sustainment by a similar amount (roughly $4 billion).

Another cause for concern is that some costs, such as for personnel, are not rising much, but perhaps they should be. Personnel spending is traditionally the biggest of the three, but it will fall below 30% of the total. The white paper allocated the ADF an additional 4,400 personnel, an increase of around 8% (page 146). It’s hard to see how Defence can acquire all that capital equipment and develop new capabilities with only that small increase. And it’s already having trouble meeting the relatively modest white paper targets—it’s only managed to grow the ADF by around 600 since the white paper, about 1,100 short.

There’s no ‘ideal’ balance between personnel, operating and capital spending that fits all organisations. But it’s unlikely there are many defence forces that can sustain capital spending at 40% of their budgets. NATO is aiming to get its members above 20%, and only a very few members are over 30%. Interestingly, Defence’s capital budget has stuck fairly stubbornly at around 30% for five years now.

So it may be that as the defence budget grows past 2%, a ‘natural equilibrium’ between personnel, operating and capital may assert itself and Defence won’t reach 40% in capital spending. That’s probably good if it wants to be able to crew and operate its equipment. But it could also mean that it won’t be able to get everything on that shopping list.

It’s time to make good on defence commitments to northern Australia

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that more Royal Australian Navy vessels will be built at the Henderson shipyard south of Perth, and the plan appears to have bipartisan support. The 2016 defence white paper and the associated integrated investment program have already committed to decades of continuous submarine and frigate building in South Australia.

Of course, there’s never been any doubt about the implementation of defence policies in southern Australia. In contrast, changes in defence investment patterns in Australia’s north seem to have flown under the political radar.

Both the government and the opposition have declared their support for defence and national security initiatives in northern Australia. However, they might be surprised to learn that the current level of commitment to the north isn’t what Labor set out in its 2009 and 2013 defence white papers or what the Coalition said in its 2016 white paper.

The 2015 white paper on developing northern Australia pledged to strengthen the Department of Defence’s presence in the region. And the 2016 defence white paper stated: ‘Investment in our national defence infrastructure—including the Army, Navy and Air Force bases in northern Australia, including in Townsville and Darwin, as well as the Air Force bases Tindal, Curtin, Scherger and Learmonth—will be a focus.’ It also predicted that Defence’s presence and investment in northern Australia would gradually increase.

However, there’s a growing body of evidence indicating that the gap is widening between strategic policy and Defence’s actual activities and presence in the north.

To begin with, Defence annual reports reveal that the number of personnel in the Northern Territory is already at an 11-year low.

In 2016, Defence sent a brigadier to Darwin to brief the local government and industry on its plans. The headline was that it was going to significantly increase expenditure on facilities and infrastructure to the tune of $7.7 billion over 10 years. In the almost three years since that visit, it’s estimated that Defence’s spend on facilities and infrastructure development and maintenance in the Northern Territory has fallen to under $1 billion.

In March 2018, Defence sent a colonel, to brief the same people, this time with a revised figure: $3.1 billion to be spent over six years. While Defence might be planning to spend another $3.6 billion right after the six-year commitment ends, that seems unlikely.

Defence intimated to those at this briefing that the US government would be investing in infrastructure development in support of the Marine Rotational Force—Darwin (MRF-D) initiative, which aspires to establish a marine air–ground taskforce of up to 2,500 personnel in Australia’s north.

While the MRF-D has been present since 2012, only one Northern Territory business has succeeded in obtaining a contract to supply the Americans. Local construction firms in the Northern Territory have reported challenges meeting the US government’s Miller Act bond requirements. The US requires Australian businesses to provide performance and payment bonds each equal to 100% of the original contract price—a level of bonding significantly higher than that used in the Australian market.

Then, in February this year, the US government’s plan to spend US$76 million on bulk fuel storage in Darwin was ‘earmarked’ as a cost saving to fund President Donald Trump’s border wall.

‘Earmarks’ don’t always become budget realities in the US, but it’s a reminder to Australia that we need to actively support the US Marines’ presence in the north, maximising the benefits that they get from engaging with the Australian Defence Force. A Marine Corps that values the training experience will protect the deployment and resist pressures to make savings to fund other political objectives.

Defence’s dwindling northern presence and opaque investment strategy come at a time of great strategic uncertainty.

The defence of Australia isn’t just about troop numbers and infrastructure development in the north. But it gets very hard to project force to defend Australia’s northern approaches on short notice if neither the personnel nor the infrastructure is there.

If that isn’t enough justification, the development of industry capacity in Australia’s strategically important north is critical for defence and national security.

The strategic defence and security outlook for the Indo-Pacific has deteriorated substantially since the MRF-D initiative was developed. And this change makes the presence of the Marine Corps in Darwin all the more important as an expression of America’s strategic commitment to the security of the region.

Australia has an integral role to play here by ensuring we fund our part of the cost of developing shared facilities in the north.

Both sides of politics should commit to strengthening an amphibious capability in the ADF that’s able to work with the marines and other partners in the region.

Now is the time for a renewed bipartisan commitment to the importance of a strong security presence in the north, including the US Marines presence.

Hybrid warfare: Australia’s (not so) new normal

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There is no agreed definition of hybrid warfare. We’re essentially talking about warfare across more than one dimension—including across our political, economic and civil spheres—which is sometimes integrated with traditional warfare, and ultimately blurs distinctions between periods of peace and war. Hybrid warfare sounds very postmodern, but it’s nothing new. The art of moving between conventional and non-conventional modes of warfare while manipulating an opponent’s specific vulnerabilities is well documented throughout history. Hybrid warfare was not born out of Russian activity on the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Framing the hybrid warfare challenge as something looming, or a future development in security thinking here in Australia, clouds the reality that this threat has always existed. Components of hybrid warfare such as strategies of disinformation and propaganda are age-old tools of warfare. Delivery in terms of speed and impact with regards to the unapparelled reach of social media today, means that these tools of hybrid warfare feel new.

Hybrid warfare garners a false sense of newness thanks to advances in technology which allow for the same strategies to be executed on a new front—the cyber environment. Hybrid warfare is further veiled as new given the rapid speeds at which objectives can be accomplished as a further result of this technological change.

What is new, however, is that Australia is taking hybrid warfare seriously. We are finally examining our own vulnerabilities and points of weaknesses in our critical infrastructure, including cyber systems and civil relations. It’s a tentative start, and there’s still a lot of non–hybrid warfare thinking to be found in our doctrine and force structure. When the time comes for the next defence white paper, we should build upon recent momentum and bring the ethos of hybrid warfare to the forefront of defence planning. Hybrid warfare calls for an update to Australia’s defence and security planning. It’s how we need to frame the security challenge from the outside world to credibly plan the defence of our interests.

As well as starting to think about hybrid warfare as an externality, there’s also an increasingly robust discussion around our own hybrid strategy (but not so much that it will seriously threaten existing major elements of the Australian Defence Force). In fact, we should double down and approach hybrid warfare as our ‘new normal’. As important as developing our own countermeasures and bolstering our security infrastructure to deter or defeat such threats is, the priority also appears to be a psychological one in terms of how we think about hybrid warfare. Australia needs to shift its defence narrative to one which accepts that hybrid warfare is not a passing fad, but a persistent threat with more supporting capabilities than ever. Further advances in technology will no doubt continue to give hybrid warfare new capacities to distract security planners.

Although Australian defence planners are waking up to this new normal, our current planning appears to focus solely on the narrow cyber component of hybrid warfare. The 2016 defence white paper made no mention of hybrid warfare as a security challenge in itself. Instead, cyber and electronic warfare were singled out as the focal point for strengthening ADF capabilities. The 2017 foreign policy white paper also showed that Canberra is yet to grasp the immediate reality of hybrid warfare. It did a better job of fleshing out the technological aspects of hybrid warfare and the threat posed by foreign interference in our cyber realm.

Hybrid warfare will be at the forefront of international security for the foreseeable future and will characterise both conflict and cooperation between states with different or aligned interests. Tellingly, our global institutions, including NATO and the US network of alliances in the Asia–Pacific, aren’t proving agile enough to adapt to the new security climate headlined by hybrid warfare. We should stop distracting ourselves with debates on whether hybrid warfare is anything new or focusing solely on the strategies of known hybrid warfare aggressors, such as Russia and North Korea.

Australian policymakers face an overarching strategic challenge given the sheer complexity of developing a national defence capacity that’s able to deter the multipronged, multifaceted, synchronised security threats facing our nation. Rapid advances in technology and the speeds at which information can be sent around the world mean that the ability to spread disinformation, interfere with elections and hijack the domestic political narrative will continue to flourish even in the absence of more ‘traditional’ sabre rattling or physical aggression. We are at risk, but at least we are starting to talk about hybrid warfare.

The next step is to work out what we’re going to do about it.

Forward … from the (hardened) north of Australia

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Australia faces a rapidly changing—and worsening—defence and security outlook that is increasingly at odds with the policy assumptions that underpinned the formulation of the 2016 defence white paper. That reality demands a rethink of our defence policy and a new defence white paper early in the term of the next government. The next white paper needs to deal more directly and robustly with a rising China that’s intent on challenging US strategic primacy across the Indo-Pacific and exploiting opportunities arising from any US strategic miscalculations, such as reducing visible support for key allies.

Thankfully, US policy statements suggest that Washington isn’t simply acceding to Beijing’s desire for a new regional hegemonic role. There’s now an intensifying strategic competition between Washington and Beijing—some call it a ‘new cold war’—that will last decades, and could easily flare into direct military confrontation. The potential for China to instigate a conflict, perhaps over Taiwan or in the South China Sea, is quite real.

Far from being a distant backwater, as was the case in the Cold War, Australia, because of its geostrategic location and vital strategic relationship with Washington, has become a frontline state in this new era of major-power competition. Within this strategic reality, northern Australia is emerging as a region of key defence significance. The hosting of US forces in the north, including a US Marine Corps deployment in Darwin for training, and the enhanced air cooperation initiative have elevated the Northern Territory’s defence importance. Key facilities such as Pine Gap and Northwest Cape remain essential components of our alliance, and must be kept secure.

I’ve already argued that our traditional approach of relying on the strategic moat of the sea–air gap for defence is outdated and needs to be reviewed, and that we should switch to a strategy of ‘forward defence in depth’ (see here, here and here). Rather than hide behind a sea–air gap which, like the French Maginot Line defences of 1940, is rapidly being overtaken by advances in military technology, we must build an Australian Defence Force that can quickly respond to threats with minimal warning and exploit greater speed and longer reach.

Australia should invest in long-range power-projection capabilities that can rapidly deploy from the north deep into the Indo-Pacific to blunt an adversary’s campaign before it can threaten our northern air and maritime approaches. Most importantly, we must acquire new capabilities quickly and not emulate the future submarine program, which won’t deliver the first operational Attack-class submarine until 2035.

In adopting a new strategy of ‘forward defence in depth’, we should seek capabilities that will enable the ADF to project power responsively and at long range, but we must not ignore the rear area of northern Australia. An essential first step to secure the rear is to harden pieces of military infrastructure to make them tougher targets for threats ranging from special forces attacks to missile strikes.

In particular, we need to ensure that we can defend against emerging ballistic and cruise missile threats to Australia’s northern bases. The starting point for this is the Royal Australian Air Force’s integrated air and missile defence project, AIR 6500, which will link together sensors, platforms and shooters to create a ‘system of systems’ for detection, decision and response to air and missile threats. Phase 1 of the project will provide the battle management system and phase 2 will shape the medium-range air defence component (though details on this are vague to say the least). AIR 6500 is due for delivery in the second half of the next decade. LAND 19 phase 7B, meanwhile, will provide a short-range air defence solution for deployed forces.

In developing our integrated air and missile defence capability, greater consideration needs to be given to how long-range sea- and land-based ballistic missile defence might also play a role. It’s certainly not a panacea for the defence of the north of Australia.

Andrew Davies and Rod Lyon are sceptical of the effectiveness of either land- or sea-based ballistic missile defence options for Australia. Their scepticism is certainly justified in terms of what would be called ‘national missile defence’. Defence of critical facilities such as RAAF Tindal and Pine Gap would be a more achievable goal. They note the potential of the sea-based combination of the Aegis Baseline 9 and Standard Missile 3 against shorter-range ballistic missiles, concluding that such a capability could be incorporated into the navy’s Hobart-class destroyers. They also note that a ballistic missile defence system for Australia should be tailored to defend vital facilities rather than the whole continent.

The missile defence equation is only going to get more difficult for the defender as hypersonic weapons emerge in coming years. Any investigation of, and investment in, long-range defences needs to recognise the risk that disruptive offensive innovations may lock out our ability to maintain an effective defence.

Hardening against non-kinetic threats—including defending sites against special forces attacks, electronic attacks, cyberwarfare and the indirect effects of counterspace capabilities—also needs to be considered. The growing importance of space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum as warfighting domains should shape basing requirements in the north and may demand that specialised capabilities be concentrated near critical facilities.

With these threats in mind, we also have to consider dispersed forces as a part of a comprehensive solution. RAAF Tindal, for example, is a high-value target because it is so central to the RAAF’s defence of our northern air approaches. We have ‘bare bases’ at RAAF Curtin, RAAF Scherger and RAAF Learmonth, as well as RAAF Darwin, but given Chinese advances in long-range strike capabilities, particularly with hypersonic weapons, these too are vulnerable. They are likely to be prized targets, especially if they’re hosting US forces in a crisis. We have too many critical units concentrated on too few air bases that can be too easily struck from long range.

It’s time to undertake a northern basing analysis which looks at innovative ways to operate from non-traditional airfields and considers dispersal to non-traditional operating locations in a crisis. A lesson could be learned from Sweden’s use of roads to disperse vital airpower away from vulnerable bases. The US Marine Corps is using rough fields to create forward arming and refuelling points for its F-35B as part of its island-hopping expeditionary advanced base concept. The Australian Army already supports its Tiger helicopters this way, so we need to examine whether civil northern infrastructure can be better adapted to support the ADF in wartime. That analysis could include consideration of greater civil–military integration as part of a northern Australia ‘total force’ that expands the use of reserve units.

It’s well past time to end the comfortable coast of defence policy on autopilot. To paraphrase analyst Ross Babbage, it’s a coast too long.

Indonesia and Australia: destined but disparate democracies

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‘Relations with Indonesia have provided the crucible of modern Australian foreign policy.’ —Bruce Grant, 1972

The great Australian scribe, Bruce Grant, penned that thought about Indonesia–Australia tests and trials in the year of a seminal election for Australia.

Elections are again with us—this time for both Indonesia and Australia. These two most different neighbours now share democracy as well as geography. As ever, the contrasts are far greater than the similarities.

The title of Grant’s 1972 study of Oz foreign policy, The crisis of loyalty, echoes today amid an international bonfire of certainties. And the three-part Indonesia–Australia frame that Grant described still fits.

Precise foreign policy tests: ‘Indonesia has brought home to Australians the concreteness of foreign policy problems … Australia was presented with issues in which it had a specific and acknowledged interest. So there has been a non-proxy, direct and pragmatic flavour about Australian thinking and acting, in official and professional circles, on Indonesia.’

Strategic geography: Indonesia ‘acted as a “locum” for the abstract threats which Australians sensed in their bones. Indonesia gave substance to what has long been called in Australia “the threat from the north”. It brought into focus the vague and undifferentiated fears about “Asians” which Australians have traditionally held. As voyeurs, rather than participants, Australians have nurtured weird ideas about the peoples of Asia … So Indonesia was not only a test of our professionals and decision-makers; it presented an emotional challenge to come to terms with a turbulent and perhaps threatening part of the world.’

The ‘idea’ of Indonesia: The size and potential of Indonesia have intellectual and psychological influence. ‘On the one hand, Australia has learned to respect Indonesian nationalism. It wants Indonesia to be a successful nation, stable and prosperous. Australia has no designs on Indonesian territory and it has no wish to see Indonesia dismembered. On the other hand, Australia does not want Indonesia to become dominant in South-East Asia.’

Remember Grant’s Indonesia–Australia appreciation was penned nearly 50 years ago, near the start of Suharto’s long rule and before Indonesia invaded East Timor. Deep thinking and good writing can have a long shelf life. Australia now is participant, not voyeur, but the rest of Grant’s description is as fresh as today’s election headlines.

As an example of the next foreign policy test, Australia and Indonesia last month signed a free trade agreement. That deal awaits ratification on the other side of the twin elections.

On the larger and longer term destinies of strategic geography and Indonesia’s potential, consider that this giant neighbour is on track ‘to pass Australia in economic size in the 2020s and eventually in military capabilities by the 2040s’.

The economic/military projection is from Kevin Rudd. In his memoirs, Rudd joins Paul Keating to become the second former prime minister to argue that Australia should join ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Rudd follows Keating in stating that the fundamental importance of Indonesia to Australia is at the heart of the argument for Oz membership of ASEAN. (My ASPI paper on why Australia should seek that membership is here.)

Rudd raised the idea of Australia entering ASEAN during his second, short stint as prime minister in 2013, when visiting Indonesia for the annual leaders’ dialogue. He records the response from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa.

I will always remember SBY and Marty, looking up from their meal, staring at me, smiling broadly, and saying, ‘Pak Kevin, we might be ready for you. I’m not sure that the rest of the ASEANs are ready for you, at least at this stage.’ We all laughed. But there was a method in my madness.

The vision, as Rudd writes, is to multilateralise Australia’s relationship with Indonesia while the neighbours are of similar economic size and no fundamental problems exist.

If by mid-century, the tables were radically reversed in the power relativities between the two countries, and if in the meantime the relationship between Canberra and Jakarta remained entirely bilateralised, the future health of the relationship would depend entirely on the prevailing political dynamics of each country at the time. By contrast, if both countries by then had become members of ASEAN, where bilateral relationships between member states have always been tempered by the collaborative practices, habits and culture of a wider regional institution, it would enhance the long-term stability of the Canberra–Jakarta relationship. There is a continuing complacency in Australia about how the dynamics of the Indonesia relationship will change as Indonesia becomes more powerful in its own right. The time to act in seeking to institutionalise this critical relationship within the wider framework of ASEAN is now.

Australia entering ASEAN would change and enlarge the conception of Southeast Asia. Equally, it’d change and enlarge Australia.

Having Australia and Indonesia as the great twin democracies in ASEAN would give new dimensions to this destined but disparate relationship—still the crucible of modern Oz foreign policy.

Northern Australia’s space coast

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Mention the term ‘space coast’ and the image of launch pads and gantries at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida come to mind. It’s a true spaceport that not only launches rockets but also stimulates the growth of the local economy and supports the clusters of aerospace companies that are located nearby.

Australia is now moving swiftly towards establishing its own space program, under the leadership of the Australian Space Agency. The agency’s recently released space strategy increases the potential for regular launches of Australian satellites on Australian launch vehicles from Australian launch sites. It’s important to base that launch capability in Australia’s north. To understand why, let’s start with some rocket science 101.

Geographic location matters a lot in the rocket-launching world. A rocket launched from near the equator can ride on the rotation of the earth as it spins west to east and pick up kinetic energy, generating a free boost in velocity that helps to achieve orbit. Proximity to the equator is the main reason the European Space Agency launches from Kourou in French Guiana rather than from Europe.

The free boost from a spinning earth is an undeniable advantage (for those into equations, see here). It can make space access cheaper because less fuel is needed for a mission. That lowers the cost per kilogram of putting a payload into orbit and allows for larger payloads. The reduction in size and weight of small satellite and ‘cubesat’ designs is further reducing the cost of space access. The amount of savings depends on the payload and the type of orbit desired.

The Top End of Australia is a mere 12 degrees south of the equator. That makes the Northern Territory an ideal location for accessing the ‘equatorial low-earth orbit’ region of space from which rapid revisits over densely populated areas of interest can be conducted for tasks such as maritime surveillance. Northern launch sites could also support the establishment of mega-constellations of communications satellites in low-earth orbit.

This isn’t pie-in-the-sky thinking. Agreements are in place to establish a launch site run by Equatorial Launch Australia near Nhulunbuy in the NT, and the Queensland government recently released a report that recommended developing launch vehicles and investigating the possibility of establishing a launch site in the state. A proposed launch site in South Australia could easily support launches into sun-synchronous and polar orbits, which are ideal for earth observation.

There are valid defence and national security rationales for developing a sovereign space launch capability. For years, Australia has played an important role in supporting US space activities from the ground, notably through the joint facility at Pine Gap and, more recently, through the space situational awareness radar and optical telescope near Exmouth in Western Australia. Developing a sovereign space launch capability will enable Australia to do much more than simply provide the real estate and skilled personnel for ground facilities.

A sovereign space launch capability would be a logical complement to a local satellite manufacturing industry and would boost self-reliant space support for the Australian Defence Force. Current defence space projects could be undertaken with a sovereign launch in mind. These include phase 2 of defence project DEF-799, which aims to establish a sovereign space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability by the late 2020s, and joint project 9102, which will provide the next generation of satellite communications for the ADF by 2029.

A sovereign space launch capability, operating from launch sites in the NT, northern Queensland and South Australia, would support joint ADF expeditionary forces or missions under the ‘defence of Australia’ doctrine. It would be an entirely new type of ADF capability.

It would enable Australia to burden-share in orbit with the United States to reinforce space deterrence and strengthen resilience. As space becomes increasingly contested, congested and competitive, the loss of access to it as a result of an adversary’s use of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons would render our forces deaf, dumb and blind. The ADF would then be susceptible to tactical, operational and strategic surprise and at increased risk of sustaining casualties and, ultimately, defeat. To paraphrase Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, if we lose control of space, we lose the war and we lose it quickly.

Australia already contributes to burden-sharing with the US through ground-based space situational awareness, but we can do much more. Two approaches—augmentation and reconstitution—should be considered in shaping Australia’s future military space capability.

Augmentation would involve protecting the limited number of large, complex and expensive US satellites currently on orbit by rapidly deploying small satellites and cubesats in the build-up to a conflict to make it more difficult for an adversary to decisively attack them. Australia could contribute to the augmentation mission either by launching US-made satellites or by building and launching satellites to support US forces.

Reconstitution would entail rapidly launching small satellites and cubesats to fill any gaps left in large satellite constellations from an adversary’s use of ASATs at the outset of a military conflict. Denying the adversary the ability to deliver a decisive blow—a ‘Pearl Harbor in space’—would reduce the incentive for it to employ counterspace weapons in the first place and further strengthen space deterrence.

An Australian space launch capability could also increase our collaboration and burden-sharing with regional allies in ASEAN and with major partners such as Japan, the UK and France.

The establishment of an Australian ‘space coast’ would also stimulate the growth of the local space industry and the local economy. It would make little sense to base this industry in the south; the logistical cost of moving equipment to launch sites in the NT, for example, would wipe out any savings gained by launching close to the equator. Instead, Australia’s growing space sector should be encouraged to co-locate near the launch sites, where it could sustain a space economy centred around a northern space coast.

Establishing an Australian space coast, where Australian-built satellites are launched into orbit on Australian rockets from Australian launch sites, has the potential to facilitate the rapid growth of a high-technology sector in northern Australia.