Tag Archive for: Australia

Between bullets and votes: Australia’s role in improving security in Africa

A United Nations peacekeeper from the Indian battalion of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) examines AK-47 magazines stored in a warehouse in Beni, where all weapons and ammunition are stored after they have been collected in the demobilization process in Matembo, North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.As Australia begins to take a greater role in African security issues, we must also begin to better scrutinise the role the international community has had in perpetuating the militarisation of political power in many African countries.

It’s foreseeable that we will continue to contribute to international decision-making on African security issues well beyond our two-year term on the Security Council. At this point, we need to stop and analyse how we can use our position to contribute productively to building a more stable and prosperous Africa. If we’re to make a contribution that will benefit both continents, we need to help address the underlying causes of insecurity and conflict on the continent rather than signing up to the status quo approach and especially to military-based solutions. How to really contribute to building a more stable, secure Africa, which is ripe for increased and less risky Australian business, investment, trade and the utilisation of our services sector, is an issue worth examining for Australians. Read more

US alliance: run Forrest, run!

US Marines and Australian Army soldiers look out over the live fire range on Townshend Island during Exercise Talisman Sabre 2011.

Defence alliances thrive on liberal doses of new ideas to turn the wheels of big military machines doing practical things. If the ideas dry up, alliances slow down and eventually cease moving forward. Those charged with managing our US alliance must constantly find new ways to refresh cooperation, and to keep defence activities relevant to the strategic need.

The good news is that there’s ample scope for expanding cooperation. Closer engagement with the US will be driven by emerging strategic challenges and worries in the Asia-Pacific. The broad context here is that ANZUS is regionalising—taking on a wider importance as a contributor to the stability of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. This carries with it greater opportunities as well as responsibilities for Australia. Here I set out five areas where alliance cooperation can be extended.

First, Australia can speed up the deployment of Marines and increase the pace of USAF–RAAF cooperation in our north. The current phased implementation aims to have the full Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) of 2,500 personnel on rotational deployment by 2016. This is unnecessarily slow and could be achieved much more quickly without doing an injustice to important economic, environmental and cultural impact studies. The slow phasing gives comfort to those who claim that there is less to the pivot than meets the eye, and it makes the Americans worry that the Australians aren’t serious about enhanced cooperation. Read more

Antarctic sovereignty: are we serious?

Guest editor Anthony Bergin

In February this year, former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke made a flying visit to Antarctica to officially open the Wilkins Runway Living Quarters.

Eighty years ago Australia received from Great Britain its largest ever gift: six million square kilometres of Antarctica. Three years later it became the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT). 42% of the Antarctic continent is Australia’s. If it were a country in its own right the AAT would be the world’s seventh largest. It is next door to us. We discovered, explored, mapped, studied and occupied significant parts of it. We still do.

The AAT has considerable value to Australia. Its scientific values are diverse and have long-lasting national benefit. Its environmental values embrace superlative natural features. Its resource values include fishing and tourism; minerals are undoubtedly present, even if not exploited; and other resource potential we can’t yet imagine will emerge. Its diplomatic values allow Australia influence in Antarctic governance with flow-on effects in other international forums. Its cultural values inspire Australians in the arts. Its proximity gives us ready access. Read more

The National Security Strategy didn’t go to Parliament – part II

An empty House of RepresentativesYesterday I described how a series of important security-related public policy documents had been effectively ‘tabled’ in public before the Parliament had seen them. In the case of the National Security Statement, it never made the table in Parliament at all. Now the dogs are barking and the Canberra system is whispering that the trick is about to be repeated with the public release of the new Defence White Paper in the next fortnight, before Parliament assembles on May 14 for the Budget sessions. The whispers have it that the Government wants to announce the White Paper ahead of the Budget, instead of late June as previously stated by the Defence Minister, ‘so it doesn’t clutter post-budget discussion of more electorally saleable issues’. The Navy would be well advised to have a ship on standby so it can do picture duty as with the previous White Paper.

The Presidential Pretensions that have long afflicted Australian Prime Ministers feed a desire to rise above the clutches of the Parliament. The way caucus cut down ‘President’ Rudd in 2010 and Labor’s constant vigilance on the floor of the House of Reps to sustain a minority government this term don’t seem to have had much effect on the hankering for the Oval Office. Canberra has cherry-picked some excellent elements from Washington, such as the formation of the National Security Committee of Cabinet and in the creation of the post of a National Security Adviser. The US President issues a National Security Strategy (PDF); what could be more natural than for the Australian President to do the same? Read more

Bioprospecting in the frozen continent

Guest editor Anthony Bergin

For generations of expeditioners the story of Antarctic research has been set against the orange backdrop of the Aurora Australis. The Gillard Government is taking initial steps towards a new Antarctic icebreaker to replace the ageing Research and Supply Vessel Aurora Australis.

If I were an Australian scientist excited by the prospect of novelty in Antarctic-derived organic material or processes, I might have a tough time getting there, collecting my samples and bringing them back into Australia for processing. But the restrictions wouldn’t be insurmountable. Antarctic biota and processes aren’t especially protected from the science of biological prospecting. Scientists are virtually given ‘free’ access to prospect for the purposes of scientific research, provided they play by the rules.

The rules are few and relatively simple. The government runs an Australian Antarctic Science Program that I can apply to for support. I don’t need to be a government scientist; I can work in a university, for example, which may or may not have an affiliation with an end user such as a pharmaceutical company. If I were clever enough to win a grant, I’d have access to a berth on a ship or a seat on a plane going south. I’d have a bunk at a station and be able to roam the environs in search of my soil/water/organism sample. Then I’d bring my sample material back to my laboratory in Australia, in compliance with the quarantine rules, and start the gruelling process of looking for something novel that might have a commercial application. Read more

Cutting our cloth – part II

HMAS Jervis Bay - a non-warfighting platform that did sterling service during the INTERFET operation in 1999.

In my previous post, I found myself agreeing with Jim Molan that the ADF was in danger of entering a period of serious decline in its ability to maintain capability. The combination of tight budgets and the need to replace assets across the board at the ‘pointy end’ in the next ten to twenty years is a recipe for bad outcomes.

The Defence White Paper that will be released in the next few weeks probably won’t help. If, as expected, it maintains the fiction that all of the ‘core capabilities’ can be retained without a funding boost at least as generous as the levels promised in its predecessor, it will only make a future train wreck more likely.

We know that to be the case, because we’ve done the experiment before. As Mark Thomson has documented over the years in his budget briefs, the 1990s were tough times for the ADF. Funding was constrained as successive governments worked their way back from the recession we had to have, causing the ADF’s readiness and capability levels to fall away. Submarine capabilities declined alarmingly and the Anzac frigates were ‘fitted for but not with’ the systems needed to make them combat ready. Our air combat platforms weren’t able to participate in even moderately challenging environments due to inadequate electronic warfare fits and long-delayed weapons upgrades. At the same time, the Army spent a demoralising decade preparing to hunt for small groups of insurgents who had decided—for reasons nobody could ever adequately explain—to penetrate the vast expanse of Australia’s north to do who knows what. Read more

Wars of necessity: naive militarism

Jim Molan’s polemical article in Quadrant (March 2013) (and his précis on The Strategist last week) presents a target-rich environment. Putting aside what I’ll describe as Jim’s robust style of argument, he addresses the two key perennial policy questions for Defence: how much to invest and what to do with the investment.

His main proposition seems to be that good strategy leads Australia being capable of engaging in ‘high-end warfighting’ in so-called Wars of Necessity. ‘That is why we build the ADF’, he says. So what’s his justification for this level of capability?

At one level, Jim seems believe we should invest just so that the ADF ‘can conduct a level of sophisticated joint warfighting operations appropriate to a nation such as Australia’—whatever ‘appropriate’ means in this context! To be fair, however, the appeal to national pride and institutional vanity is not the only or the primary argument offered in the article. Read more

Going to war: Australia’s traditions and conventions (part II)

President Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard perform a military pass and review at the Washington Navy Yard Sept. 10, 2001.The Australian public service has two modes for offering its famed frank and fearless advice to ministers. One method is ‘stand ready’. The much rarer, high risk approach is ‘cop this’.

In stand ready mode, senior mandarins wait to be asked to offer advice on dangerous or controversial topics. Thus, it is a matter of standing, being ready, but not necessarily doing anything. For public servants, the stand ready position leans heavily towards the servant side of the job title.

When a public servant goes ‘cop this, Minister, ready or not’, he or she is emphasising the public dimension of the role rather than the servant side. The risk in offering an unpalatable and unwelcome message is that the messenger ends in quite a mess. Even so, the Australian public service at its highest levels has a proud tradition of being able to get ministers to cop it at key moments. Read more

Using Australia’s Security Council Seat to focus on the broken heart of Africa

In 2012, 2 million people became displaced across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to violence and fighting between different armed groups in the East of the country; this was the highest figure the country had seen since 2009.Australia is now well into its third month on the United Nations Security Council. Nothing is more fundamental to the wellbeing of societies than security, and the Security Council carries the greatest responsibility for human wellbeing of all international bodies. It is the Security Council that holds the legitimate authority to act when populations are threatened with genocide, mass killings and widespread violations of human rights. Australia’s two-year term on the Security Council is an opportunity for it to make a real contribution to significant security issues affecting populations all over the world. Australia now holds a position of huge moral responsibility, so what does Australia hope to achieve during its time on the Security Council?

The Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, argues that ‘middle powers’ have been able to achieve great advances for human wellbeing when they have focused on specific issues. In the limited time that it has on the Security Council, Australia should choose specific security issues on which to focus and champion. But, how does Australia choose from among the many global security woes? Read more

On the eve of Iraq

9/11The recent exchange between Graeme Dobell and Peter Jennings over Australia’s commitment to Iraq highlighted the critical roles to be played by Parliament and the Public Service when war is being considered. I have but a small postscript to add. I believe that the onus to provide frank and fearless advice extends to everyone who earns a crust as an analyst or commentator in the public defence and foreign policy space. And just as it’s always easier to hunt with the hounds and run with the foxes inside the system, the same is often true in the public domain.

So for what it’s worth, here’s what I was thinking on the eve of the Iraq war but didn’t have the guts to publish at the time. The only changes I’ve made are to correct spelling errors and typos. If nothing else, it might provide a counterbalance to the great many column inches that have been written in recent weeks with the benefit of hindsight.

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