Titles are always difficult, so give a good mark to ‘Australia’s Defence: Towards a New Era?‘

Mixing pickiness with praise, tick the ‘new era’ idea while guffawing at the question mark hanging off the title. Making the title a question is symptomatic of the timidity that gives academics a bad name. Don’t assert your argument, seek cover behind a query. Put a question mark in the title, then spend 344 pages ‘interrogating’ the question. Really? Oh, dear? Enough? This question-thingy does funny things to writing, eh?

Please disregard my querulous start. All praise for this first book in MUP’s series on strategy and warfare in Australia’s region.

Even as Iraq and the previous decade call again, the book makes the case that Oz faces new times, positioned between a rising China and a rebalancing America. The era will test Australia’s middle-power status and challenge its traditional vow to maintain a technological edge over regional militaries. Read more

NATO just concluded its most important summit in more than a decade in Wales. Originally, the Alliance had planned to talk mostly about the way ahead in Afghanistan. But Russia’s intervention in Ukraine fundamentally changed the strategic equation. All of a sudden, NATO found itself having to reassure its east European allies about the credibility of its collective defence commitment. As well, the US and the UK added the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on the agenda. Finally, there was the question of what to do with NATO’s partnerships, including with Australia.

With all that on the table, and following a period of uncertainty about its post-Afghanistan future and stagnating defence budgets, expectations about a ‘new birth of NATO’ were high. In Australia, commentators expected a ‘historic partnership’ with the Alliance. One even warned about the implications of a full membership in NATO. That’s a ‘strawman’ though: Article 10 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty limits new membership to European countries and no one in NATO is seriously considering inviting Canberra to join. That said, in recent years Australia–NATO relations have improved significantly in the context of joint operations in Afghanistan. So, to what degree did the Wales Summit meet expectations and what are the likely implications for Australia? Read more

This week in Sydney, the annual AUSMIN meeting of US and Australian Defence and Foreign Ministers will shine an appropriately bright light on the past century of close and constructive security collaboration between our two nations’ military forces. From US soldiers under the command of Australian General John Monash in WWI to ongoing rotational training deployments of US Marines in Darwin, we’ll be reminded of important shared sacrifices in the defence of democracy and freedom.

What may be lost in this annual event is recognition of the even closer—and arguably more important—economic relationship that has joined and benefitted America and Australia for at least twice as long. And that relationship shows no sign of losing its relevance or primacy. Read more

Although it’s peculiar that we find strategic differences between Canberra and Wellington peculiar, disagreements may become starker and more costly as hard power reemerges as a driving force in international affairs. What more, then, might Australia and New Zealand do to promote strategic convergence where we can and to avoid harming each other’s interests when we can’t?

It shouldn’t surprise when two countries draw dissimilar policy conclusions from an essentially shared reading of global trends. Nations quite reasonably adopt divergent solutions to problems they’ve broadly convergent views about. Our circumstances provide different options and constraints to a ‘near neighbor’ 2,000 km away with a population five times smaller, an economy 10 times smaller, and a strategic culture that sometimes seems more Nordic than part of the Anglosphere. The way Washington has, ‘in pivot mode’, welcomed Wellington partly back into the military fold without requiring it to ‘repent’ its nuclear-free policy blinds us to the Cold War-era ANZUS row. References to ‘family’ and ‘the spirit of Gallipoli’ reflect genuine closeness but can let relationship managers ‘wallow in their comfort zones’ rather than innovate. Read more

Regional search and rescue (SAR) issues have stolen a lot of international headlines lately. The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in March, and the subsequent multinational search effort, revealed substantial cracks in the region’s surveillance and SAR arrangements. But the issue of regional SAR was large and growing even before MH370. The rescue of passengers on board the ship Akademik Shokalskiy in the Southern Ocean earlier this year was watched by an estimated 32 million people world-wide. As Australia and other Antarctic nations enhance their polar programs, with more personnel and greater coverage of land and marine activities, the risk of SAR incidences will increase. This month, ASPI held a workshop to discuss issues surrounding the coordination of search and rescue operations in Australia’s area of responsibility. These are some of the key points from the discussions.

Australia has the largest search and rescue zone in the world, stretching through parts of the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans, and amounting to roughly 12% of the Earth’s surface. Looking south, Australia’s SAR region is vast. It extends east and west of Australia’s land mass and penetrates through the Australian Antarctic Territory to the South Pole. In the Antarctic region, our SAR area adjoins those of New Zealand and South Africa. Figure 1 below shows Australia’s Antarctic SAR region (source: Australian Maritime Safety Authority).

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