Over the last three months in Washington I’ve asked Pentagon and State Department officials and think tank analysts to rate Australia’s contribution to regional security and articulate what more Canberra could do to support the US rebalance to Asia. The overwhelming message is that Australia should have a stronger political voice in regional matters.

Many in Washington think that the biggest contribution Australia could make is to encourage a rules-based order and adherence to international norms. Specifically, Australia could step up its efforts to encourage the establishment of Codes of Conduct (COC) in the maritime domain and, in particular, in the South China Sea. Australia could be more of an asset to the US by being one of potentially many voices in Asia encouraging China to act responsibly in maritime disputes and accept the continuation of the US hub-and-spoke system of alliances.

While several Washington analysts commended Australia’s rebuke of China’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), a number were critical of Canberra’s failure to speak out more strongly on the South China Sea dispute. One analyst said that Australia should go as far as declaring that ‘China’s nine-dash line has no standing in international law’. This’d be a major departure from Australia’s current position of neutrality, but there are opportunities for Australia to take a more active stance. Read more

Cyber law enforcement has been on a roll as of late. After a busy May indicting Chinese hackers and combating the Blackshades Remote Access Tool, an international team including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, and UK’s National Crime Agency launched Operation Tovar. The operation has bought infected Windows users a two week window to secure themselves against the GameoverZeus botnet and Cryptolocker malware (US-CERT has some advice on that front here). The US Department of Justice identified Russian national, Evgeniy Bogachev as one of the administrators of the botnet, a move that sees (un)Lucky1234 become the newest member of the FBI’s Cyber’s Most Wanted List. Read more

The Australian public turned against the war in Afghanistan a long time ago. In 2010, I argued (PDF) that the mission’s fading prospects for success provided the key explanation. But James Brown has recently argued (in his book ANZAC’s Long Shadow: the cost of our national obsession) that a uniquely Australian variable offers a more compelling explanation: Australia’s lower casualty tolerance derived from the traditions of ANZAC, and specifically from the legacy of the Gallipoli operation, which implanted a national myth of Australian lives being sacrificed for the benefit of others in conflicts not directly related to the Australian national interest.

But just how persuasive is that explanation? First, it doesn’t comport with Australia’s historical record of intervention overseas nor with how Australia is viewed internationally, especially in the United States. As we know, Australia is the only ally to have fought alongside the US in every major American conflict since WWI. By contrast, Canada, for example, didn’t participate in any shooting wars on the ground between Korea and Afghanistan, despite having a small air and naval contingent in Desert Storm. Read more

With the NETmundial multi-stakeholder governance meeting on the horizon, Australia needs to take stock of its position and choose which weightclass to contest in the international Internet governance arena. As we showed last week, the clash of the heavyweights will likely remain deadlocked, and it’ll be the creative middle powers, along with the business, technical, academic, civil society and nongovernmental communities, that’ll determine the nuances of Internet governance.

Australia’s in a prime position to take on a leadership role in defining the future of Internet governance. With its history of leadership on issues such as chemical weapons and nuclear testing and its chairing of the UN Group of Government Experts on cyber security, Australia has a solid foundation upon which to bring together a community of like-minded states. While the Snowden revelations have surely shaken perceptions, it’s important Australia—a member of the UN Security Council and chair of the G20—live up to the expectations held of it. Read more

The recently released US Quadrennial Defense Review 2014 (PDF) describes a difficult set of challenges for the United States military—challenges that have big implications for our alliance. The headlines have focussed on overall cuts to the size of American forces, but behind these reductions is a more complex set of problems for the US and its allies. The QDR says that America’s strategic outlook is becoming ‘more volatile, more unpredictable and, in some instances more threatening’. This is an environment where ‘the United States should not plan to rely on unquestioned technological leadership in all fields’, where ground forces will be cut to the point that American forces will ‘no longer be sized to conduct large-scale prolonged stability operations’, and where more weight will be put on allies’ ability to ‘undergird the ability of the United States to face future crises and contingencies.’

After a decade being focussed on a single type of conflict, the QDR says that the US military must be redesigned to handle the ‘full spectrum of conflict’, a task for which the force is ‘currently out of balance’. The report says that a slimmed-down military will be able to handle a more modest set of military challenges in the future ‘but with increased levels of risk for some missions’. These risks would grow significantly if even deeper levels of cuts are implemented in line with sequestration plans mandated by Congress. Read more