Tag Archive for: China

Is the Quad becoming a Potemkin alliance?

When four of the Indo-Pacific’s leading democracies—Australia, India, Japan and the United States—revived the long-dormant Quad in 2017, their objective was clear: to create a strategic bulwark against Chinese expansionism and reinforce a stable regional balance of power. But the coalition is now adrift, and the security risks this poses should not be underestimated.

The Quad’s resurrection reflected a paradigm shift in US foreign policy. After decades of engagement with China, including aiding its economic rise, US policymakers—Democrats and Republicans alike—realised that America’s biggest trade partner had become its biggest strategic adversary, bent on replacing it as global hegemon. As US President Joe Biden indicated in his 2022 National Security Strategy, China is ‘the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.’

Biden, like his predecessor, Donald Trump, viewed the Quad as an essential instrument to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific, a concept formulated by the late Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. So, Biden elevated Quad discussions from the level of foreign ministers, who had been meeting annually since 2019, to heads of state or government, initiating a flurry of leaders’ summits in 2021–23. But it has been more than a year since the Quad leaders last met, and with the US focused on the upcoming presidential election, their next summit is unlikely to be held before 2025.

The reason for this drop-off is simple: America’s priorities have changed. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the hybrid war the West is waging in response, not to mention renewed conflict in the Middle East, have stymied US efforts to position the Indo-Pacific at the ‘heart’ of its grand strategy. It is striking that the latest US foreign-assistance package provides $60.8 billion for Ukraine but only $8.1 billion for security in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan, on which China has set its sights.

With limited resources to dedicate to the Indo-Pacific, Biden seems to hope that he can prevent a war over Taiwan through personal diplomacy with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Last month, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart, he stressed the importance of maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait.

Biden seems to believe that a more conciliatory approach towards China can also forestall the emergence of a comprehensive Sino-Russian alliance. The ‘no-limits partnership’ between China and Russia, reaffirmed during Russian President Vladmir Putin’s visit to Beijing this month, is problematic enough; China already has undercut Western sanctions by providing an economic lifeline to Russia in exchange for cheap energy and some of Russia’s most advanced military technologies, including air-defense and early-warning systems. A full military alliance, with China supporting the Kremlin’s war machine directly, would be the United States’ worst geopolitical nightmare.

The problem for Biden is that appeasing China and strengthening the Quad, which Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has decried as the ‘Indo-Pacific version of NATO’,are fundamentally incompatible. It might not be a coincidence that the Quad leaders have not met since Biden sent a series of cabinet officials to Beijing and met with Xi in California last November.

In fact, Biden has lately shifted his focus to less provocative initiatives like the ‘Squad’, an emerging unofficial regional grouping involving Australia, Japan, and the Philippines – countries that already have mutual defense treaties with the US. But what good is an anti-China alliance without India? It is, after all, the only power that has truly locked horns with the People’s Liberation Army this century: the tense military standoff along the disputed Himalayan border, triggered by China’s stealthy territorial encroachments, has just entered its fifth year. Moreover, as the leading maritime power in the Indian Ocean, India must play a central role in checking China’s westward naval march from its new citadel, the South China Sea.

The US has also been touting its AUKUS security partnership with Australia and Britain. But this grouping will not be able to play a meaningful role in Indo-Pacific security until Australia is equipped with nuclear-powered submarines, and that will not happen for another decade.

So far, Biden’s overtures to China have yielded few positive results. On the contrary, Xi has lately intensified coercive pressure on Taiwan, and Chinese provocations in the South China Sea have been increasing. Unless the US changes its approach, it may well fail to deter China from attacking Taiwan or cementing a strategic axis with Russia, just as it failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine.

To maintain security in the Indo-Pacific, there is no substitute for a strong Quad with a clear strategic mission. Rather than unravelling years of efforts to build a coherent and credible regional strategy, thereby enabling yet more Chinese expansionism, Biden and his fellow Quad leaders must get to work defining such a mission and then commit to pursuing it. Otherwise, the Quad risks becoming a kind of Potemkin grouping. The facade of an alliance will not fool China.

Critical minerals need insulation from China’s market manipulation

Investors can handle lots of different risks. They can price risks in construction, interest rates, weather and, with hedging, price movements in product markets.

But the one risk they can’t price is political risk, the chance of some government action ruining profits. You can’t hedge against it.

How should we respond when, as the chief executive of critical-minerals company Iluka said this month, when accusing China of rigging rare earths prices, ‘monopolistic production, combined with interference in pricing … is resulting in market failure’?

How should we respond when price risk is political risk?

Australia needs to respond with government action—for example, in financing projects, supporting the construction of shared facilities and setting price floors.

These challenges were addressed at ASPI’s recent Darwin Dialogue on Critical Minerals, attended by government representatives from the United States, Japan, South Korea, the European Union and Australia and by key Australian critical-minerals firms such as Iluka, Australian Rare Earths and Arafura.

Rare earths play a critical role in today’s world. Through their use in electric vehicles, wind turbines, robots and military applications, they sit at the crossroads of the two major preoccupations of our time: geopolitics and decarbonisation.

Australia is well placed to benefit from the demand for critical minerals, but it must figure out how to build sustainable supply chains with allies while competing with a country like China that can escalate price risk at will.

Thanks to its virtual monopoly in the global processing of rare-earth metals, China can shift value anywhere in its vertically integrated supply chain to squash incipient competition. For Australia and its allies, this is choking off access to private sector capital to build their own rare-earth mines, refineries and magnet-making plants.

So what is to be done? In Australia and elsewhere, one policy response has been to offer soft loans. Last year, the Australian government doubled its commitment to Export Finance Australia’s Critical Minerals Facility to $4 billion.

The soft loans are helpful but alone are not enough. To fully establish sustainable supply chains, we need to secure long-term offtake agreements at workable prices from allies.

To address this challenge, we should take lessons from US history.

During the Cold War, the town of Moab in Utah became, as a history recorded, the ‘epicentre of the first federally sponsored mineral rush in history’, to supply the government with urgently needed uranium. The US Atomic Energy Commission established minimum uranium prices, guaranteed them for 10 years, rapidly built roads into the Moab back country for prospectors, and constructed uranium mills to process ore.

Australia should similarly invest in common user infrastructure. It’s made a start with facilities such as the Illuka rare-earths refinery being built at Eneabba, Western Australia, with support from the Critical Minerals Facility.

In the 2024 federal budget, the government offered a production tax credit of 10 percent of expenses for critical minerals processing. Providing support to reduce production costs is very welcome, but it doesn’t address the key risk in rare earths—that China’s dominance means it can manipulate the end-price to crush new competitors.

To counter this, the government needs to set price floors, which would be time limited. And it need not shoulder these risks alone. Instead the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence should encourage the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union to underwrite a 10-year floor-price scheme for a new, reliable supply of Australian rare earths.

Governments are already doing this in renewable energy. Britain and others are writing contracts for differences (CFDs): if the electricity price is below the strike price, generators receive a top-up payment. The European Union is now proposing a CFD mechanism for its energy markets, and Australia is making similar efforts through capacity mechanisms for dispatchable renewable energy.

Australian history has a precedent in foreign companies signing up to offtake agreements at workable prices. In the 1960s, Japanese steel mills underwrote the development of iron ore mines in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and the coking coal deposits of the Bowen Basin in Queensland through long-term offtake agreements at prices sufficient for the miners to secure bank financing and pay back the invested capital with a reasonable return. Once mine infrastructure such as ports and railways was built, it became the backbone of supply for the next 60 years.

From a political perspective, there’s an advantage to pursuing a floor price for critical minerals. The taxpayer pays only for results, whereas extending soft loans can result in large losses if mines don’t produce the goods.

Liberal democracies have been slow to shed the hands-off mindset of the free market orthodoxy in their response to new geostrategic realities. China is manipulating the market. We need interventionist policy responses.

Don’t overestimate China’s ambitions in the Arctic

Western analysts risk overestimating China’s emergence as an Arctic power, spurred by fears that they initially neglected the reappearance of the Arctic as a theatre for strategic competition. Contrary to such alarmist views, Beijing is in fact far more constrained in the region, mainly because of Russia’s ability to resist encroachment and China’s ability to accept limited resource and transit opportunities there.

In assessing China’s influence over Russia in the Arctic, there is a tendency to portray Russia as little more than a springboard for Chinese interests. In this flawed perception, President Vladimir Putin has invited Beijing into his Arctic larder as a way of buying goodwill for his invasion of Ukraine. But this underestimates Moscow, which assumes its alliance with China will hold without such bargaining. Russia also jealously guards its backyard and signals that regional advances made by China would injure their alignment elsewhere in locations with far greater strategic importance for Beijing.

To this end, Putin has stalled projects that fail to further his strategic agenda or give him a controlling stake. Russian law stipulates that, while private Russian energy firms can develop in the Arctic zone, they may not cede controlling stakes to foreign firms. Furthermore, Russia has not given China privileged use of the North Sea Route or its six major ports—Pevek, Tiksi, Dikson, Sabetta, Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Chinese ships have either been refused entry or have abided by Russian transit laws that force them to pay tolls, provide ample notice about journeys and accept Russian pilots.

This freezes China’s position below Russia’s in the polar power struggle. And that will be hard to change, given that Russia’s 24,000-kilometre coastline in the Arctic accounts for 53 percent of the total for all countries. Russia also has a lot of skin in the game, with its Arctic territories contributing about 20 percent of its gross domestic product, 10 percent of its total investment and 20 percent of its exports. The Arctic accounts for 80 percent of Russia’s natural gas production and 20 percent of its crude oil production.

The tension between China and Russia in the Arctic lies behind Beijing’s tepid reaction to projects that fulfill Russia’s strategic goals, such as the co-development of the Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline. Moscow, in turn, attempts to balance its relationship with China by diversifying its Arctic partners, encouraging India and the Gulf countries to participate and calling for a science station on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago in cooperation with India and China.

Many western analysts have failed to accurately calibrate the scale of the Arctic’s economic opportunities, another reason for their overestimation of China’s growing power in the region. They depict the Arctic as providing a shorter shipping route than Suez and a treasure chest of resources, including oil, natural gas, fisheries and critical minerals.

In reality, developing a reliable route to rival the Suez Canal remains implausible due to safety concerns, environmental uncertainties, lack of infrastructure and shortness of the navigation season. Currently, less than 10 percent of global shipping movement is in the Arctic and that looks unlikely to increase in the near term.

The idea that there will be a scramble for the Arctic’s natural resources in which China plays a major part is also overblown. Ostensibly, the opportunities in the region look promising: according to a US Geological Survey, the Arctic holds an estimated 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30 percent of its undiscovered conventional natural gas resources. But most is in exclusive economic zones. In fact, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, six littoral states control roughly 85 percent of the water space, which includes the resources in the seabed. Moreover, Beijing cannot challenge the sovereign rights of Arctic states over maritime jurisdictions without contradicting its own efforts to nationalise the East and South China Seas, where its stakes are much higher.

Finally, a thaw in the Arctic will pose new challenges for China and other nations. The instability of softening terrain will make it difficult to build the infrastructure necessary for extracting resources. The changing landscape may also undermine the role of existing military structures such as roads, runways, naval bases and communications systems. It may even destabilise military strategies, as thinning ice and increased satellite coverage make submarines more exposed.

In sum, China’s potential in the Arctic is limited by Russia’s concerns of rivalry in the sole region where it remains a first-rank power, especially as the power gap between the two countries widens in other fields. Beijing has decided to respect Russia’s sensitivities and prioritise the pursuit of a shared revisionist world order, resulting in an adjustment of its ambitions in the Arctic. Western analysts should take heed or risk wasting resources in the Far North that might be better deployed elsewhere.

 

The sad state of Australia’s security discourse

Australia has all but institutionalised self-censorship in intellectual strategic thought. An absence of secure academic positions, widening of the policy-scholarly divide, and a corrosive culture of in-fighting over a piece of the same (dwindling) funding pie continues to diminish our national security studies sector.

We have curated an intellectual space in which the same voices exist in harmonious agreement. Most strategic analysis or intellectual work tends to be churned out by design, not debate. Who needs robustness, let alone nuance?

Where there is difference, it tends to be personalised and emotional. Ad hominem jabs, attacks, and improper (often lasting) accusations of political allegiance are no longer manageable hazards of public intellectual life. Instead, they have become entrenched realities of our security discourse. Such forces use social media platforms, spill ink in national newspapers, and tend to dictate the membership of security centres and institutes – as well as the invitation lists for seminars and conferences.

To understand the depth of tribal thinking and dysfunction, just look at two specific issues in our international affairs sector: China and Russia. We know that China is a critical variable in Australia’s future security. Yet a cursory assessment of Australia’s commitment to understanding China and growing our capacity to do so well into the future, is bordering on negligent. A recent study of the Australian Academy of the Humanities found only 17 people have graduated with Honours in Chinese studies between 2017 and 2021—including just one in 2021.

It is doubtful that these dismal numbers are due to a lack of interest in the field, particularly given the broad range of career pathways such training offers—from private sector to government. More likely, this reflects the toxicity our national China debate portrays. If you aren’t critical (enough) of Beijing’s foreign policy, you are tarred ‘pro-China’. If you venture deeper to understand the drivers of Chinese strategy or consider the merits of it, you risk being branded an agent of the Chinese Communist Party.

Australia’s Russia sector is no better. Well known is the consistent public dismay directed at the state of the sector for its inability to invest in and grow the next generation of expertise since the original exodus in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed. But recent calls for more investment merely attempt to mask the deeper problem: apparently only one variant of Russian expertise in Australia is worthy. Attempts to dissect Russian foreign policy, consideration for Moscow’s Asia-Pacific territorial interests, its Antarctic Treaty role, or its potential to blunt our China or Iran challenges, are simply reflective of a ‘Pro-Russia’ agenda.

In today’s context of the enduring Ukraine-Russia war—or ‘conflict’ for those seeking to be labelled a Russian sympathiser—any commentary or research output that questions the utility of Russia sanctions or the Australian national interest in providing military equipment to Kyiv, attracts accusations ranging from being a useful idiot to a Russian spy. Why would any young scholar want to wade into such a minefield?

There will one day be a post-Putin Russia with which Canberra will have to co-exist in the international system. Foundational understanding of the state, the language, its history, and its web of bilateral—and growing—global ties, is critical for Australia to navigate for the future adequately, let alone competitively.

Dismissing research and analysis on opportunities for dialogue with Russia as demonstrating someone’s lack of morality and values is perplexing, given Russia has well-established military interests throughout our neighbourhood. But that didn’t stop a piece being published in an international journal in 2020 that canvassed the emergence of ‘Russia’s Australian well-wishers’, hyperlinking my publications in three of the four instances. Of course, being compared to Professor John Mearsheimer was not itself cause for offence, nor was being tarred a ‘realist’.

Over the past few years, our sector has lost significant voices. Brendan Sargeant, Allan Gyngell and James Goldrick are three figures who supported the next generation of security scholars. They each pushed us to be better analysts, to take the time to reflect on strategic trajectories, and urged us to keep at the centre of our mind curiosity as to what role Australia could—or should—play in the international arena.

All three also implored us to lead by example and cultivate robust debate on Australian security affairs. It was not the notion of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ that shaped discourse with these giants, it was a question of how best Australia could, or should, navigate strategic competition. Debate over the ‘why’ necessarily required deep reflection of all aspects, known unknowns, and consideration of duelling positions.

A former senior Australian Government public servant continues to follow my work closely, often sharing their opinions of my analysis with—unknowingly— mutual networks. For some time, I stopped covering Russian strategic developments, despite holding a PhD in Russian strategy, fearing ‘scholarly’ retribution, or blacklisting in the Australian intellectual community. What resulted was a vacuum, filled quickly by non-experts bent on feeding the 24-7 news media cycle with Russia analysis.

We can learn plenty from watching the anti-Mearsheimer camp expand in Australia’s security sector. Mearsheimer will no doubt weather the storm, and his privilege no doubt promotes his sense of safety in continuing to contribute to the international security discourse. For emerging analysts and early career researchers, things are not so easy. One must decide on either side of a binary construct in which expertise does not get to exist in the nuance, the middle-ground.

Facts no longer exist; emotion shapes Australia’s security discourse. What does this mean for the future of our intellectual culture? Australia is growing a next generation of scholars and experts who are going to self-censor to navigate increasing political pressures. The damage will be generational.

If you have concerns of the foreign influence or espionage variety, use the well-known systems in place to act on it. Robust debate and dialogue are a foundational aspect of our liberal democracy, something we should all work to protect and promote. As a sector, we need to raise the bar and instil a culture of durable contestation. Demand more of your colleagues on this front. And to you, the former senior public servant, please do reach out directly for a coffee. My shout.

Needed: a viable strategy for the Indo-Pacific

Let me be clear: the United States and its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region do not yet have a viable strategy to meet the challenges, dangers and uncertainties there. One is needed.

The aim of a new strategy must be to assure peace, stability and prosperity while not falling into the trap of allowing a possibly exaggerated perception of the Chinese military threat to displace sound strategic thinking. To be effective, strategy must go beyond military boundaries and be based on geopolitical and economic realities.

The plan for the United States and Britain to help Australia acquire eight nuclear attack submarines under AUKUS is not a strategy. The agreement was made to counter China’s growing military power and increasingly aggressive posture. Unless armed with nuclear weapons, eight submarines are not a strategy and may not be affordable.

In basic terms, strategic goals must be to convince, cajole or coerce the other side at the lowest possible cost and risk to do what we want or to stop taking actions harmful to us. That strategy must be achievable and affordable in terms of physical, human and financial resources. History guarantees failure unless the country implementing the strategy can precisely define its fundamental interests and has sufficient knowledge and understanding of the other side, not falling prey to ignorance.

The United States plays a leading role in the Indo-Pacific region. However, since World War II, US strategy has been stained by an absence of sound aims and sufficient knowledge and understanding of conditions in which force is to be used. In August 1964 the United States blundered into Vietnam. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, passed with only two dissenting Congressional votes, was a de facto declaration of war, triggered by erroneous reports of an attack by North Vietnamese PT boats against two US destroyers in international waters. No such attack occurred.

President Lyndon Johnson wanted to stop the Communists on the Mekong instead of the Mississippi. The flawed concept of a monolithic, godless Communist threat underwrote fighting the war. And, consistently, the United States failed to understand the commitment and strategy of North Vietnam and the weaknesses of South Vietnam.

The 2001 Afghan intervention likewise failed over the absence of realistic aims and knowledge and understanding of that country and its people. The objectives of nation building and imposition of democracy were absurd in these cases. But that was no more absurd than attacking Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction it did not actually possess.

In Asia, how sufficient is US knowledge and understanding about China? Next, how well does the US understand regional perceptions? And, last, does the current US (and Western) strategy for the Indo-Pacific and China take into account answers to these questions?

Overall US military strategy is to compete, deter and, if war comes, prevail—over China, in this case. But none of these criteria has been defined in terms that can be turned into actions. Further, where and how should the US and allies compete? Is China deterrable as it builds its military and influence? And who can win a thermonuclear war?

For the United States, this strategy is unaffordable. The more the US spends, the more its military force shrinks. And the United States cannot recruit and retain enough people for its current force. Many of these trends also apply to US allies and partners.

Step one requires a comprehensive, objective analysis of China and its strengths and weaknesses. One can argue that, given its demographics, exploding debt, weakening economic growth, excessive savings rate, and other constraints, China could suffer from massive civil unrest. Some may think that could make China more dangerous. But history shows otherwise.

China’s ‘unprecedented military expansion’ needs to be more closely assessed. For example, its navy has nearly 100  Type 22 missile boats. They give it a numerical advantage but hardly a capability advantage.

Step two is redefining the aims of an Indo-Pacific strategy in relation to China. First must be to engage with China in the many areas defined by mutual interest. Second must be economic negotiations to relieve unnecessary tensions where possible. Third, it is unduly provocative to declare China as the leading or major threat but rely on only a military strategy in facing it, not a broader one.

The core of the necessary strategy is prevention, applying porcupine defence as its key military construct in close conjunction with regional allies and partners. Porcupine defence will make any initial attacks by an adversary too expensive in terms of losses to contemplate. Why Taiwan has not fully adopted this strategy is inexplicable. In the unlikely event of war, China’s access beyond the first island chain would be denied by blockade. And expeditionary forces would roll up China’s overseas Belt and Road facilities, imposing further unacceptable costs.

The submarine project is Pillar 1 of AUKUS. Pillar 2, for other technology exchanges, should be expanded to appropriate regional states. A smart, affordable and effective strategy for the Indo-Pacific based on complete knowledge and understanding of the geostrategic and economic conditions combined with porcupine defence is needed now. The question is whether these first principles will take hold or remain ignored.

China seeks to harvest user data from global apps to boost propaganda efforts

In the global discussion around data privacy and security, much attention has been rightfully placed on the Chinese-owned platform TikTok, with concerns that the user data it collects is accessible to Chinese authorities. But the issue of data collection on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and its integration into propaganda efforts, extends far beyond a single app.

A new ASPI report, launched today, sheds light on a much wider ecosystem of companies involved in areas like data exchange, media, gaming, artificial intelligence and immersive technology that are all being corralled into the CCP’s propaganda system.

The report, Truth and reality with Chinese characteristics: The building blocks of the propaganda system enabling CCP information campaigns, and its accompanying website, maps the CCP’s propaganda system, highlighting the linkages between the Central Propaganda Department, state-owned or controlled propaganda entities and data-collection activities, as well as technology investments in Chinese companies, many of which now operate globally. The CCP’s aim is to leverage various entities across media, gaming, AI and other emerging technologies to gain access to data that it deems strategically valuable for the propaganda system and its ongoing information campaigns.

The project reveals the expansive ambition of a modernising propaganda apparatus that extends far beyond traditional media channels or any single app. Through strategic partnerships and financial support, it intertwines with emerging technologies, leveraging data collection, AI, and immersive experiences to reinforce its grip on information flows. The problem runs much deeper than just TikTok. As the project shows, the pervasive influence of China’s propaganda system reaches into a much wider spectrum of industries and technologies.

The Chinese party-state has long seen digital communications technology as a double-edged sword, and it has used that threat perception to guide its national approach to technology’s research and development, use and management. The CCP is interested not just in preventing unwanted interference in China’s information environment from either internal or external sources, but also in being able to shape, manage and control the information environment inside and outside China.

It faces a constantly evolving information landscape and adapts its strategies accordingly. One such evolution is from a focus on traditional ‘party-controlled media’ to a more comprehensive approach centred on ‘party-controlled data’ (党管数据). Data is seen in an expansive way: not simply as a source for commercial exploitation, but as a strategic asset that can be used in its propaganda efforts. By exercising control over data—including data collected from subsidiaries operating outside China—the CCP can gain unprecedented insight into societal trends and preferences.

For years, leaders in liberal democracies assumed that digital communications technologies would pave the way for democracy while simultaneously weakening authoritarian regimes. Only when those same digital platforms started to be used to subvert democratic processes, such as through cyberattacks or foreign interference in elections and referendums, did leaders in liberal democracies begin to understand that democratic societies require protection against the malign use of those technologies.

Governments worldwide are currently fixated on mitigating risks associated with TikTok, leading to many countries banning the app from official devices. However, this narrow approach overlooks the broader implications of China’s growing investment in pivotal information technologies. By addressing platforms individually, policymakers fail to recognise the systemic challenge posed by China’s propaganda system and its foundational technology investments. This issue extends beyond China’s domestic information sphere, influencing the global information landscape as well.

China’s propaganda system is a vast structure in and of itself. Under its direct control, or with its direct support, are a web of additional entities whose portfolios contribute to the party’s ability to meet its strategic aims in the information environment. By understanding the ‘invisible architecture’ of China’s propaganda system and technologies, countries can better prepare to mitigate risks that PRC companies pose now or down the track. 

Governments must think more holistically about the issue of information campaigns and the technologies that enable them. If governments seek to combat information campaigns only after those campaigns are detected, or their effects felt, then they’re putting themselves in the position of only having the toolkit to respond once the damage is done. The starting points for meeting this challenge must include ensuring that liberal democracies are at the forefront of the deployment of information standards and the core foundational technologies for Web 2.0 and beyond.

Policymakers must develop robust defences and countermeasures to safeguard against future information campaigns orchestrated by Beijing. By understanding the intricate workings of China’s propaganda machinery, governments and industries can formulate policies to ensure the integrity and security of the global information environment. The report makes a series of recommendations around improving due diligence and transparency in the digital supply chain, data standardisation, and regulating technologies used for surveillance and related immersive technologies.

Lawmakers in the United States should rightfully be pleased that they’ve been able to take decisive action against TikTok in a moment of bipartisanship despite Washington’s polarised politics. But they, and other governments, should not rest on their laurels. The challenge posed by China’s propaganda system extends far beyond a single app and requires a comprehensive approach that addresses the broader technological landscape.

More than one strategic challenge at a time. We’d better get used to it

Don’t be surprised if another complicated term soon enters Australian discussions about security and defence. It’s ‘strategic simultaneity’—simultaneous strategic competition arising across multiple regions and domains. 

Strategic simultaneity has been an important part of US and NATO security thinking for some time. This includes as a way to usefully understand the types of interlinked challenges the US and its partners face, and as a guide for how collective deterrence might be postured.  

Australian security debates typically don’t shy away from difficult topics. For instance, Australian agencies and commentators have examined deterrence at length, from the 2020 Defence Strategic Update (DSU) to the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR). But while the DSR mentions deterrence 34 times, stressing the need to integrate capabilities across domains of warfare, the problem of multiple threats occurring simultaneously, sometimes in a coordinated manner, doesn’t appear at all. 

 Yet simultaneous strategic challenges are becoming a defining feature of contemporary security competition: Houthi raiding in the Red Sea, China testing allied resolve in the Philippines EEZ, renewed DPRK assertiveness, Russian and Chinese probing of Japan’s air and naval domains, Israel’s war against Hamas, and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Each potentially calls on Australian resources: diplomatic, military, financial, or all three. 

It’s important not to overstate the significance of strategic simultaneity. After all, it’s unusual for an existing order to face just one focal challenge. However, the Ukraine war has already shown how connected simultaneity poses problems. Russia has drawn on a secure list of out-of-area partners like Iran, the DPRK, China and other nations to replenish its war stocks and revitalise its combat effectiveness.  

In a future conflict with the US, could China use those states as its arsenal? And how would we disrupt it? Even without getting involved in conflicts, others could simultaneously posture as second-tier adversaries—either opportunistically or in concert—with multiple extra-regional crises draining US and allied resources. 

Australia is slowly realising that security challenges are now more joined-up. Defence Minister Richard Marles has referred to the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific as a shared strategic space. Coordination between a loose coalition of authoritarian nations – China, Russia, Iran and the DPRK – has increased. Australia has encouraged European attention to the Indo-Pacific, like enhanced French commitments to the region, promoting a stronger regional UK naval presence via AUKUS, and championing the Indo-Pacific Four (Australia, Japan, the ROK and New Zealand) as NATO partners.  

One response to strategic simultaneity is simply to leave it to the US to sort out. That wouldn’t be unusual. In Australia we often regard security challenges as monodirectional and monocausal. Typically, our policies are linear responses to exogenous threats, with clearly defined (usually geographic) centres of gravity.  

But that thinking won’t work for Australia in future. Here’s why: 

—We’ve scoped our security and defence environment to the limit of our capabilities. The vast Indo-Pacific maritime space means our strategic framing automatically encompasses simultaneity challenges, whether we like it or not.  

—Even if simultaneity mainly affects the United States, it will have powerful knock-on effects for Australia: US balancing in the Indo-Pacific; its deterrence capabilities; and its capacity to shape the normative and institutional mechanics of regional order. 

—Simultaneity isn’t a short-term challenge. Simultaneous security challenges will be posed against either a Trump 2.0 or Biden 2.0 White House as America’s adversaries test Washington’s risk appetite. But simultaneity will also arise from local and transnational disorder: in the Middle East; in Europe; the Pacific; and an array of potential Asian flashpoints. 

—Isolation and the stopping power of water cannot insulate us, because many contemporary threat vectors—like cyber and information warfare—simply don’t respect physical distance. Moreover, as our defence and foreign policy documents have repeatedly stressed, Australia’s geostrategic orbit is now the epicentre of global competition. 

How should Australia address simultaneity challenges? The first step is to admit it’s a problem. But it’s more than that: thinking about our security settings in terms of simultaneity offers real opportunities for Australian governments prepared to act with foresight about our choices. 

Let’s deal with the problems first. One useful way to understand them is to see simultaneity as a deterrence challenge with three major components.  

First, simultaneity presents a deterrence capability problem. In other words, can the US and its allies deter aggression in multiple places at once? In the event of a conflict which depletes the US and its partners, can they conventionally deter follow-on threats, or will more extreme solutions like weapons of mass destruction be the fallback? 

Second, simultaneity generates deterrence communication problems. What happens if US deterrence messaging directed at China is mistakenly picked up by the DPRK as a prelude to a first strike? How, then, can the US and its partners best ensure deterrence signals are picked up as intended, and by the intended recipient? 

Third, simultaneity raises question about deterrence credibility and escalation management. During crises, US and Western responses have typically telegraphed a preference for de-escalation. In the recent case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this was interpreted as a green light for aggression.  

We would be foolish to think others didn’t learn from this. Hence, in addressing future simultaneous security crises, Australia and other US partners must re-establish credibility, identifying escalation pathways that are just as clear as the off-ramps. 

Understanding simultaneity offers a key to successfully deterring those seeking to upend strategic stability. For one thing, hostile nations will be just as reliant on networks of like-minded states as those upholding the rules-based order. For another, it reinforces that the West works best when it can respond concertedly to security crises, and exploit points of vulnerability and friction amongst hostile powers. 

Yet this won’t happen by osmosis. Much work must be done to unlock the potential of a strategy drawing on simultaneity’s opportunities, while also responding to its challenges. Coordination between allies and partners is crucial. So too is building confidence in deterrence, and ensuring messaging clarity. And ultimately we’ll need to accept that we cannot engender strategic effects with half-measures. To deter and disrupt the multifaceted crises that strategic simultaneity will pose, we—like our opponents—must also be collectively prepared to accept the accompanying risks.

In a decade of danger, it’s time to prepare civil defence

Humanity again finds itself in an age of war. European political and military leaders speak increasingly of being in a ‘pre-war’ period. Worrying signs abound of an impending major war in the Middle East. From the northern territories of Japan, across to the Korean peninsula, through the western Pacific, and around to the disputed border of China and India in the Himalayas, there simmer flashpoints which could erupt into wars in Asia.  

Our worst nightmare would be for different wars in Europe, the Middle East and Asia to break out and merge into a third global war for supremacy in Eurasia, the geostrategic heartland of the world. Such a war would perhaps be humanity’s last. 

What might this mean for the defence of Australia? Our defence planners are rightly focused on a wide variety of contingencies. With very little notice, the Australian Defence Force could be called upon to undertake rapid deployments in the nearby arc of small states. While necessary and important, such ventures would be only marginally relevant to today’s great issues of war and peace. The same could be said of vital operations in support of distressed communities in the wake of natural disasters. 

Given long-lead times, Defence also has to focus on complex capability and programming issues, especially as related to the planned force of 2035 and beyond. However, just as defence planners of the late 1930s would have found, perhaps when contemplating the optimal force of 1955, more pressing matters can arise suddenly.  

Certainly, our strategic imagination has to be cast forward a decade or more. In doing so, we should contemplate very different possible futures—including where perhaps the United States had isolated itself (as a matter of choice or through military defeat); where China was hegemonically dominant in the Indo-Pacific; and perhaps where a very different Indonesia was able and inclined to directly threaten Australia. In these presently improbable futures, a very different defence force would have to be imagined, based on a large navy and air force, heightened military preparedness, and a defence budget amounting to 5 to 6 percent of GDP, if not more. Without the protection afforded by extended deterrence, we would struggle to deter attacks by nuclear-armed adversaries. 

These different futures are worthy of contemplation. The times, however, demand that we devote the greatest amount of useful effort to more immediate challenges. We face, before 2030, the credible prospect of having to defend Australia during a major war in the Indo-Pacific. Australian defence planning has since the Second World War rarely focused on the idea of mounting such a defence. Planning until the mid-1970s typically contemplated instead ‘forward defence’ —sending Australian military forces forward into Southeast Asia. During the 1970s, the idea of the ‘defence of Australia’ emerged. The concept, as announced in the 1987 Defence White Paper, contemplated low-level attacks, to be handled in a largely self-reliant fashion. This was good policy for the times. 

Today, we need to contemplate Australia, and the airspace, seas and islands that surround us, as potentially constituting a theatre in a larger Indo-Pacific war. How or why such a war might come about would require a lengthier analysis. For the sake of discussion, and planning, it would be prudent to rate the chance of war breaking out in the Indo-Pacific in the 2020s at 10 percent, at a minimum. Such a war could well be drawn out over months as the combatants carefully sought to avoid strategic nuclear escalation, an assumption which needs to be critically examined at another time.  

Unless Australia were to actively decline to take part in such a war, including by way of denying to the United States access to the use of facilities in Australia, then it would be reasonable to assume that an adversary would contemplate actions to degrade our ability to support the US war effort, and to undermine the national will to fight. It is probable that we would face, at a minimum, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and essential services. Cognitive warfare would be employed, using technology-enabled propaganda and disinformation, which would be aimed at degrading Australia’s national will. We could not rule out the possibility of more direct action also being taken. 

From the perspective of the United States, Australia would be viewed as the vital southern bastion in any such war, in relation to a number of publicly declared intelligence, surveillance, communications and space activities; in support of potential US operations in the South China Sea, the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean; as a haven for the dispersal of at-risk US forces; and as a logistics, maintenance and sustainment support base. There would probably be an expectation that Australia would lead in its home theatre, without unduly calling on US assistance, especially were stretched US forces to be engaged simultaneously in combat operations in Europe and the Middle East, as well as in the Indo-Pacific. Were it come to pass, we should indeed insist on Australian primacy in our theatre (in contrast to our subordination in 1942–45), with any available allied forces being integrated into Australian-led theatre-level forces. 

Defence of the Australian theatre would be a higher priority than sending our forces forward, except for perhaps some on a limited scale, and would represent our principal contribution to the war effort. This would also be central to the adversary’s calculations about whether, when and where to strike us, and how heavily. This would have implications for the ADF’s force structure and how we might employ it operationally—with the priority being to develop an integrated and focused force which was optimised for a campaign on and around our territory and in the broader airspace, seas and islands of a theatre-wide area of operations. 

Civil preparedness would also be required. Civil defence and national mobilisation would be intrinsic to any war effort. If the possibility of war in the Indo-Pacific is to be taken seriously, relevant preparations should be made urgently, but also proportionately and soberly. In war, the most important question is whether the nation at large has the structures, capabilities and, above all, the mindset and national will that are required to fight and keep fighting; and to absorb, recover, endure, and prevail. These cannot be put in place or engendered on the eve of the storm. 

With the exception of brief periods during the Cold War, civil defence and national mobilisation have not been priorities for Australia since the Second World War, because wars, such as were being fought, were remote from Australia and not directly threatening to our population or territory. Today, war could come to our home, and potentially for an extended period. 

As a practical suggestion to focus effort, we should modernise the practice from the 1930s and the 1950s of the preparation of a war book. 

War books were guides on what would need to be done, and by whom, in the event of war. Preparing a modern war book would help to focus the national mind, break down the abstraction of ‘war’ into its particulars, enhance preparedness and contribute to resilience. 

A war book would be prepared by the Commonwealth, with contributions from the states and territories. As our society is today more dependent on private companies to operate critical infrastructure and deliver essential services, business would have to be deeply involved from the outset. Unlike earlier iterations, which were controlled by the Department of Defence, a modern war book would be best prepared jointly by Defence and the Department of Home Affairs, the latter as a consequence of the crucial role that would be played by critical infrastructure providers, cybersecurity firms and emergency management bodies in any war effort. Other departments and agencies would be brought into the process, which Home Affairs could coordinate, as it did during the pandemic. 

A war book would deal with the entire span of civil defence and national mobilisation which would be required to move to a war footing, consisting of a range of coordinated plans. Some would deal with critical infrastructure protection and national cyber defence. Others with the mobilisation of labour and industry (covering supply chains, industrial materials, chemicals, minerals and so on). Sectoral plans would address the allocation, rationing, and/or stockpiling of fuel, energy, water, food, transport, shipping, aviation, communications, health services and pharmaceuticals, building and construction resources, and so on. There would be plans for the protection of the civilian population (covering evacuation, fortification and/or shelter construction); for augmenting police, fire, rescue and ambulance capacities; and dealing with social cohesion, domestic security and public safety. 

Lessons could be adapted from international experience (especially Ukraine and Israel), as well as domestic experiences, such as natural disasters and the COVID pandemic, noting however that war is different insofar as in war a conscious adversary calibrates and adjusts their actions as the situation unfolds. War is not simply another hazard in the all-hazards universe of emergency management. It has its own character and logic. We need to think about war as a national crisis unlike any other. 

A war book would deal with legal authorities, which past experience would suggest would have to be urgently expanded in a war. The defence power in the Constitution has been successfully used in the past to ground otherwise impermissible authorities (for example to do with rationing and prices). The relevant constitutional cases were decided in the 1940s. Fresh thinking would be required to test those earlier concepts and to inform the drafting of contingency legislation, which could be prepared in readiness.  

A complex area which would need careful thought would be cognitive warfare. A war book could usefully set out roles and responsibilities for dealing with disinformation and propaganda, and especially the vexed questions of censorship (to protect the war effort) and government information processes to thwart an adversary’s efforts to deceive and demoralise the population. Technologies and procedures would need to be developed, as required, to disseminate alerts, notifications and public information regarding developments in the war, in trusted and secure ways. 

The whole point of this exercise would not be the production of a competently produced technocratic document, as useful as that might be. A war book would of itself simply consist of building blocks (the plans) that could be quickly activated should the need ever arise, tailored to circumstances as they emerged.  

More importantly, the very act of undertaking such planning would of itself enhance preparedness and resilience, as relevant experts were brought together to develop solutions through a structured process—for instance, to deal with the likelihood that Australia’s international shipping and aviation links would be impaired severely, or cut completely, in such a war. Developing civil defence and mobilisation plans would force us to think expansively and intensively, concretely and innovatively, and above all collectively.  

If done well, it could be used to sensibly bring the nation along, with purpose, focus and structure, and without undue alarm. Secrets would still have to be preserved, and sensitive details would need to be protected. Through such an effort, those with ears to hear would come to understand what needs to be done in the face of what might come. 

In an era of labels, reductive discourse, and short attention spans, these remarks will be dismissed as ‘predictably hawkish utterances’. Surely, we can be more nuanced and layered. Preparing our society and economy for the contingency of major war would be complementary to, and supportive of, a strategy of working to defuse tensions and ensure peace. Engaging in diplomacy, seeking to stabilise international relationships, and reducing the margin for miscalculation are not idealistic follies. They are the realist’s approach, if only to buy time, while preparing simultaneously for the possibility that such efforts might yet fail. If this is indeed a pre-war period, we should redouble all efforts to ensure peace while at the same time preparing resolutely, without reducing every suggestion to the binary opposition of ‘hawk’ or ‘dove’.

How Australia can become the partner of choice in Pacific cyber resilience

In a bid to help Pacific island states become more resilient to cyber attacks such as the one Vanuatu suffered in 2022, Australia outlined a vision to become the partner of choice for cyber security in the region in the Australian Cyber Security Strategy released last November, as part of a renewed focus on enhancing cybersecurity cooperation and capacity-building.

This marks a notable step forward in Australia’s relationship with its neighbours, but it lacks a focus on local investment, which the region wants most.

The crippling ransomware attack on the Vanuatu government’s Broadband Network underscored small island nations’ vulnerability to cyber threats and highlighted the urgent need to improve cybersecurity regionally. The impact of the attack was devastating, with ministries and administrative functions paralysed. Hospitals turned to pen and paper to register patients, the prime minister’s office resorted to typewriters, and essential services, including schools and police, halted.  

The island states need to upgrade their systems to shield themselves from attacks such as these, but it’s a tricky task.

At the inaugural Pacific Cyber Capacity Building and Coordination Conference in 2023, Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna said that while the digital revolution offered many opportunities, island states face challenges requiring a specialised approach. Limited budgets, legacy technology and societal vulnerabilities including prevalent online disinformation, make digital transitions complex.

With China pursuing deals in the Pacific, Australia has responded by announcing a suite of aid and defence packages to become the partner of choice and increase its influence. The step-up in cyber support, articulated in the sixth shield of the Australian Cyber Security Strategy, includes Cyber RAPID teams, technical vulnerability reviews, end-of-life hardware assessments and hardened digital standards and trade rules. The government has committed $26.2 million towards Cyber RAPID teams along with $16.7 million for hardware modernisation and ‘secure-by-design’ development.

But being partner of choice requires not only alignment with shared goals and values, but also a willingness to listen, understand and address unique needs and challenges over the long-term. Shield Six does not adequately cover this, lacking a focus on true local investment that Pacific countries have consistently said they want most.  

First, Australia should help the region build sustainable resilience and capacity. The World Economic Forum’s latest global cybersecurity report identifies affordability as a critical determinant of cyber-resilience, but in the Pacific, small budgets and limited technical capacity leave many nations ill-equipped to defend themselves against cyberattacks. 

Take Fiji. Its legacy Chinese-made technology and lack of cyber hygiene made it vulnerable to a surge in Chinese state-sponsored cyberattacks following rapid political changes in 2022.

Now the Fijian government wants more local skills to build cyber resilience, knowing this would also contribute to economic growth. Australia has been addressing its own cyber security skills gap in recent years, recognising the importance of a thriving cyber workforce to national prosperity. Australia can adapt this experience to support Pacific states through targeted training programs, scholarships, secondments and internships. 

In doing this however, Australia must help ensure that the expanded pool of cybersecurity professionals remain in their own countries to safeguard local communities, and not perpetuate the existing gap in regional defences. There is a common gripe that local professionals are lured away by opportunities abroad and not incentivised to stay. Australia can help prevent brain drain by supporting the creation of robust local cyber communities and jobs that offer meaningful work and competitive salaries. 

We know this can be done. In 2013, not a single South Pacific nation had its own computer emergency response team. Today, Vanuatu has a skilled and committed CERT: half-a-dozen cyber warriors who have stayed in Vanuatu to alert the government to threats, respond to incidents and educate the community on cyber security. Australia could help expand Pacific-grown teams like the Vanuatu CERT through increased funding, technical assistance and knowledge-sharing initiatives. 

Specifically, a cyber-skills version of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme would allow Pacific-islanders to work in Australia and eventually transfer knowledge back to their home country. There is potential in the region: the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector in Fiji is set to become a $300 million industry employing more than 5000 people by 2025.

Australia can also help the region bridge the gap between awareness and action. There is a shortage of sensors and experts monitoring the cyber threat landscape because few companies are willing to invest in cyber threat intelligence in the South Pacific and governments are unable to afford the latest services. For example, cybercrime increased during the pandemic as more Pacific Islanders ventured online, but we don’t know by how much. The entire region needs to be uplifted to meet the latest security standards and have access to OSINT monitoring of social media, online forums and dark web marketplaces in order to understand who is behind the attacks.  

The Australian government should help negotiate with trusted cybersecurity technology companies that can provide endpoint security, threat intelligence and cyberattack training to stop breaches before they happen. Under this model, everybody wins: Australia gets enhanced regional security, influence and a more effective use of aid dollars; cyber companies gain access to a fertile source of intelligence, corporate good-will and potential long-term partnerships; and Pacific countries receive the persistent cybersecurity infrastructure and expertise they need to pre-emptively safeguard their digital environments. 

Finally, Australia should continue to help local communities in the region understand cyber threats, building on its PaCSON and Cyber Safety Pacifika initiatives that promote online security attuned to cultural norms through hyper-local education programs.

The key to Pacific resilience lies in investing in local capacity, fostering collaboration and promoting home-grown education initiatives tailored to the Pacific way of life. By making these investments, Australia can help empower its neighbours, prepare them for the next crisis and show that it is truly the partner of choice.

China extends anticorruption drive to Belt and Road

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly taking a stand against corruption in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Bribing foreign officials in securing projects has always been an unspoken BRI mechanism, but what’s become intolerable to the party is growing embezzlement of Chinese funds by Chinese officials. 

It’s an extension of a domestic campaign to catch official self-enrichment that began more than a decade ago. Still, holding down that side of corruption in the BRI is helpful in promoting the idea that the international infrastructure initiative is transparent and efficient. 

A review of Chinese documents reveals that the change began around 2021. Notably, officials of the party’s anticorruption agency, the Central Commission for Discipline and Inspection (CCDI), have been posted abroad with state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to monitor officials. 

China projects the BRI as a global public good. However, it also facilitates China’s economic influence through economic integration and resource extraction. And by creating dependence on China abroad, it lifts the country’s geopolitical influence. 

China floated the idea of a ‘clean’ BRI in the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2017. Since then, it has stepped up the narrative of its anticorruption measures being a fight against global corruption. That narrative downplays corrupt practices by Chinese companies in BRI projects. 

Official discourse has framed corruption in the BRI as a human problem that’s pervasive in all societies, thereby presenting Chinese concerns about corruption as reflecting the efficiency of the Chinese political system. Officials also present anticorruption concerns in terms of guarding against possible wrongdoing amid massive investments, rather than pointing to existing corrupt practices. 

However, it isn’t corruption in itself that has prompted Chinese authorities to step up monitoring and investigations. 

China has criminal law provisions for prosecuting officials for bribing foreign officials. However, there’s a qualification to those provisions: only cases involving ‘improper commercial benefit’ can be tried, and that’s difficult to define in legal cases. As a result, despite numerous allegations and reports of bribes by Chinese companies to foreign officials, only a few such cases have been prosecuted. In 2023, a local court in Guangzhou sentenced two former officials of the state-owned China Railway Tunnel Group Co Ltd for bribing Singaporean officials and embezzling. 

A few trials indicate that the CCDI’s efforts to tame corruption in BRI projects are aimed at those who embezzle Chinese money and resources, rather than those who bribe foreign officials. 

China launched an anticorruption drive to hunt down bribe-taking officials at home in 2013. Xi Jinping’s call for a ‘clean’ BRI in 2017 was an extension of that: a response to corruption cases involving domestic officials and SOEs with links to BRI projects. 

The government officials often acknowledge that the large sums of money spent on BRI projects naturally breed corruption. Several officials from companies and financial institutions engaged in BRI projects have been investigated, and the number of those investigations has dramatically increased since 2021. 

Compared with earlier years of Xi Jinping’s rule, the number of corruption cases involving officials from SOEs and financial institutions has risen sharply. For example, the CCDI started investigating nearly 300 officials from such institutions in the 18 months after the 20th CCP National Party Congress in 2022, compared with around 400 during the first five years of the anticorruption campaign. 

Several of those officials are senior executives of SOEs and financial institutions that have also invested in BRI projects. However, due to a lack of transparency in anticorruption trials, assessing corruption’s true extent and nature in the BRI is challenging. The high number of investigations of officials from SOEs operating domestically, which also have large stakes in the BRI, is an indication that policymakers are worried. 

For example, in the past two years, the CCDI has investigated around two dozen senior officials of the Export and Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank, which are among the top lenders for BRI projects. Similarly, several officials from the COSCO group and its associated companies have been investigated since 2014. COSCO is the largest state-owned conglomerate involved in shipping and logistics. 

In the past few years, China has signed a series of extradition treaties with BRI countries, to help investigate and bring corrupt Chinese officials to book. The CCDI has placed its officers within companies in BRI projects and organised regular joint inspections of projects with local authorities. The agency has been running corporate compliance courses for enterprises in the BRI since 2018 and introductory courses on the anticorruption system for officials from BRI countries. 

The negligible number of people in BRI projects who have been tried for bribing foreign officials indicates that Chinese authorities are more worried about Chinese resources and money being embezzled rather than corruption generally. The anticorruption effort in the BRI is really just a case of taking the domestic campaign abroad. 

 

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