Preserving the knowledge edge: Surveillance cooperation and the US–Australia alliance in Asia

The US–Australia alliance is the bedrock of Australia’s defence policy. Successive governments have looked to the alliance for access to military technology, intelligence and training, as well as a promise of support against direct threats to Australia.

However, Australia, the US and other regional allies today face a rapidly changing strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific. The American ‘rebalance’ to Asia represents recognition by the US that it needs to give greater priority to its management of the changing balance—an effort firmly endorsed by President Obama in his address at theUniversity of Queensland.

Acting alone, Australia couldn’t possibly achieve the level of awareness that the evolving strategic environment demands. In alliance, it has the resources to ‘fill the gaps’ that remain in the US’s coverage of the region. This is why the C4ISR relationship with the US in the Indo-Pacific provides such a critical benefit to both members in the alliance. US–Australian C4ISR cooperation will be essential to the success of the US rebalance, but also to Australia’s own immediate security in a strategic environment in which more and more countries operate high-technology platforms that once used to be the preserve of Australia and its allies.

Working as one: A road map to disaster resilience for Australia

Natural disasters cause widespread disruption, costing the Australian economy $6.3 billion per year, and those costs are projected to rise incrementally to $23 billion by 2050.

With more frequent natural disasters with greater consequences, Australian communities need the ability to prepare and plan for them, absorb and recover from them, and adapt more successfully to their effects.

Enhancing Australian resilience will allow us to better anticipate disasters and assist in planning to reduce losses, rather than just waiting for the next king hit and paying for it afterwards.

This report offers a roadmap for enhancing Australia’s disaster resilience, building on the 2011 National Strategy for Disaster Resilience. It includes a snapshot of relevant issues and current resilience efforts in Australia, outlining key challenges and opportunities.

The report sets out 11 recommendations to help guide Australia towards increasing national resilience, from individuals and local communities through to state and federal agencies.

Investing wisely: Spending political capital on Australia’s criminal intelligence capabilities

This report examines a recent proposal to merge the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) and the CrimTrac Agency. There are two distinct—but not irreconcilable—views about this proposal. Reconciling these views will require detailed research about how a merged organisation would benefit all stakeholders—especially the frontline police and criminal intelligence operators in all the jurisdictions.

But does the merger proposal actually address the right question? This report argues that a better way to view this problem is to ask how the Commonwealth can play a role as a steward for national criminal intelligence.

Importantly, this question presents an opportunity for the Australian Justice Minister to give the federal Cabinet a chance to consider the Commonwealth’s role in law enforcement more holistically.

Special Report Issue 49 – Heavy weather: Climate and the Australian Defence Force

The report, authored by Anthony Press, Anthony Bergin, and Eliza Garnsey, argues that the downstream implications of climate change are forcing Defence to become involved in mitigation and response tasks. Defence’s workload here will increase, so we need a new approach.

Heavy Weather makes a number of recommendations including:

  • Defence should work with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency to establish an inter-agency working group on climate change and security. It would focus on addressing climate event scenarios for Australia and the Asia–Pacific  to manage the risks those scenarios pose to national resilience and regional stability.
  • Defence should appoint an adviser to the Chief of the Defence Force on climate issues to develop a Responding to Climate Change Plan that details how Defence will manage the effects of climate change on its operations and infrastructure.
  • Defence should audit its environmental data to determine its relevance for climate scientists and systematically make that data publicly available. It should set up an energy audit team to see where energy efficiencies can be achieved in Defence.
  • Australia should work with like-minded countries in the ‘Five Eyes’ community to share best practice and thinking on how military organisations should best respond to extreme weather events.

The recommendations aren’t about Defence having a ‘green’ view of the world: they’re about the ADF being well placed to deal with the potential disruptive forces of climate change.  

You can watch authors Anthony Bergin and Tony Press discussing this report here and here.

Special Report Issue 43 – More than good deeds: Disaster risk management and Australian, Japanese and US Defence forces

This report, authored by Athol Yates and Anthony Bergin, suggests that Asia–Pacific states need to allocate greater resources to risk reduction activities and increase the speed and effectiveness of relief efforts.

Australia, Japan and the US are active in promoting disaster risk management as a key component of their Asia–Pacific relations and regional military engagement strategies.

This report argues that the three states’ militaries will continue to play an increasing role across the disaster risk management spectrum.

The primary justification for dispatching defence forces to help another country experiencing a disaster is usually humanitarian.

But for Australia, Japan and the US, there are several other drivers: reinforcing alliances and partnerships, advancing foreign policy agendas and providing knowledge of operational military capabilities.
To better match the three nations’ defence forces’ disaster assistance capabilities with government expectations, the report recommends:

Watch a video of Anthony Bergin discussing this paper on ASPI’s YouTube channel.

Strategic Insights 54 – Keeping the home fires burning: Australia’s energy security

In this paper, Andrew Davies and Edward Mortimer look at Australia’s energy security. Energy is the lifeblood of modern economies. The correlation between energy consumption and prosperity is strong—and that’s unlikely to change. Those simple observations have some profound implications.

Australia, like all modern economies, needs an assured supply of energy to function effectively. As a net exporter of energy, Australia is well placed in most respects. But we are still reliant on external sources of oil. The first part of this report examines Australia’s vulnerability to interruptions in the oil supply over the next few years.

Over the next couple of decades, externalities will reshape the world market for energy. In particular, the sources of oil will be increasingly concentrated in the hands of OPEC producers. At the same time, greatly increased consumption of energy by the developing economies of India and China will increasingly concentrate consumption in non-OECD countries. So the mechanisms for managing world energy markets—such as the International Energy Agency—will increasingly reflect a historic view of energy production and consumption. The second part of the paper looks at mechanisms by which Australia and other developed economies can adjust to the new realities.

The last part of the paper looks at the potential for renewable energy to meet a substantial proportion of Australian and global energy requirements. The conclusion is that current technologies are unlikely to meet demand.

Information sharing in Australia’s national security community by Kelly O’Hara and Anthony Bergin

This Policy Analysis, authored by Kelly O’Hara and Anthony Bergin, examines the information sharing vision of the new National Security CIO in light of reforms made towards a more joined-up national security community. It argues that information sharing should be a high priority for improving decision making in Australia’s national security community.

This Policy Analysis recommends: 

  • Making information discoverable and accessible to authorised users by means of off-the-shelf technology;
  • Mapping the information exchanges between agencies to reveal the extent of connectivity and capability gaps;
  • The National Security CIO conduct a regular audit to determine the extent to which community members have reached key milestones in making information discoverable and retrievable;
  • The new National Security College incorporate training modules on how to advance a responsibility to provide culture for senior national security officials;
  • The National Security CIO work in consultation with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to develop a transparent national privacy framework of principles to guide information sharing in the national security community;
  • Greater use of Web 2.0 in the national security space to facilitate information sharing;
  • Establishing a centralised security vetting agency to issue clearances, rather than each agency ‘doing its own thing’.

Understanding the al-Shabaab networks

The Australian Government on 21 August 2009 officially listed the al-Shabaab group as a terrorist organisation.

This paper examines the danger posed by the Somali-based group, and concludes that we are likely to see an increase in Westernised Muslims appearing on the battlefield in Somalia. Eventually we will see some of these men come home. It would not be surprising if there was an increase in localised targeting by these people of Western interests.

The human tide: An Australian perspective on demographics and security

This report, authored by Mark Thomson, looks at demographics and security from an Australian perspective.The economic and demographic transition of countries from poverty to prosperity has been a driving force of history over the past two centuries, and is set to remain so for the remainder of the century. In the decades ahead, development and demographics will drive two profound changes in Australia’s strategic environment.

First, emerging countries like China and India will increasingly become major economic powers. The result will be a steady shift of economic power from the West to the East and from the rich to the poor.

Second, although economic growth will deliver improved standards of living to most of the world’s inhabitants, some vulnerable countries will be left behind as their populations grow. Critically for Australia, East Timor and parts of Melanesia are among those countries with poor prospects in this regard.

While Australia has limited scope to influence the seismic geopolitical shifts wrought by the rise of new powers, we can help mitigate the risks associated with demographics in developing countries.

The 4th Australia and Japan 1.5 Track Security Dialogue, 10-11 December 2007, Canberra. Proceedings.

The 1.5 Track Security Dialogue is an initiative of ASPI and the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA). It aims to assist the two governments to address and explore, through frank and sustained exchanges, their respective policy approaches and options on global, regional and local security issues.

Participants at this Dialogue, hosted by ASPI with the assistance of the Australian Department of Defence and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, engaged in discussions with a view to strengthening bilateral security and defence relations in support of their common interests.