Ice panda: navigating China’s hybrid Antarctic agenda
Antarctica is often overlooked in strategic discussions, but its role in geopolitical competition deserves attention.
This report assesses the continents importance to Australian security, China’s hybrid Antarctic activity, and the need for Australia to develop a balancing strategy capable of bolstering the Antarctic Treaty and ‘pushing back’ against growing Chinese power in Antarctica.
Antarctica offers significant strategic advantages for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Although Beijing’s actions in Antarctica may not overtly violate the Antarctic Treaty (AT), they effectively undermine its principles and, by extension, Australia’s strategic interests. Currently, the PRC is adeptly navigating the AT System to challenge the status quo without explicitly breaching the treaty.
China’s domestic policies, which merge civil and military sectors, appear to contravene the spirit of the AT’s military prohibitions, even if they have not yet resulted in direct military activity on the continent. This evolving dynamic underscores the pressing need for Australia to safeguard the existing Antarctic status quo.
With robust Australian foreign and security prioritization, the AT can counter Beijing’s growing ambitions, which may directly impact Australian interests. We must protect and uphold the principles of the AT.
With diverse domestic and international priorities, Australia must not neglect Antarctica, as Beijing continues to exploit the strategic gap left by our limited focus. Australia, with its rich history and commitment to Antarctica, must assert its role as an Antarctic claimant and clarify that China’s presence is contingent on Australian and other claimants’ cooperation. It’s time for Australia to lead in Antarctica and protect our strategic interests.
The ‘official’ histories of Australian and British intelligence: Lessons learned and next steps
Unclassified, official histories of ‘secret’ intelligence organisations, for public readership, seem a contradiction in terms. These ‘official’ works are commissioned by the agencies in question and directly informed by those agencies’ own records, thus distinguishing them from other, outsider historical accounts. But while such official intelligence histories are relatively new, sometimes controversial, and often challenging for historians and agencies alike, the experiences of the Australian and British intelligence communities suggest they’re a promising development for scholarship, maintaining public trust and informed public discourse, and more effective functioning of national security agencies. Furthermore, these histories remain an ongoing project for Australia’s National Intelligence Community (NIC).
The geopolitics of water: How the Brahmaputra River could shape India–China security competition
This report assesses the geopolitical impact of a possible dam at the Great Bend of the Brahmaputra. In particular, it exams the dam as a potential source of coercive leverage China may gain over India. A dam there would create four likely strategic effects: it would very likely consolidate Beijing’s political control over its distant borderlands; it would create the potential for massive flooding as a tool of violence; it may affect human settlement and economic patterns on the Indian side of the border, downstream; and it would give Beijing water and data that it could withhold from India as bargaining leverage in unrelated negotiations.
To mitigate those challenges and risks, the report provides three policy recommendations for the Indian Government and its partners in Australia and the US. First, it recommends the establishment of an open-source, publicly available data repository, based on satellite sensing, to disseminate information about the physical impacts of the Great Bend Dam. Second, it recommends that like-minded governments use international legal arguments to pressure Beijing to abide by global norms and conventions. Third, it recommends that the Quad—the informal group comprising Australia, India, Japan and the US—use its humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) guidelines to begin to share information and build capacity for dam-related contingencies.
A national strategic warning intelligence capability for Australia
Australia’s strategic warning time has collapsed—in response to profound geopolitical shifts. As the ADF is adapting to the hard implications of this change, so must the national intelligence community (NIC).
Australian Government decision-makers need time and insight to identify and prioritise threats (and opportunities) and devise effective responses. Strategic warning intelligence enables and empowers them to do so. But it must be done in a way that keeps up with the rapid pace of geopolitical and technological change, and a widening array of non-traditional strategic threats, and in a fashion best suited to Australia’s circumstances.
To meet this need the NIC should develop a discrete, institutional strategic warning intelligence function—an Australian Centre for Strategic Warning (ACSW). This would recognise the distinct skills, analytical focus and interface with decision-making entailed—and the vital national interests at stake. In implementing an ACSW, much can be learned from our own and other intelligence communities’ ongoing efforts to adapt to threats other than invasion—notably terrorism and pandemics. This will be especially pertinent in its application to grey-zone threats such as economic coercion.
Done right, an ACSW would be an important addition to the suite of Australia’s statecraft tools.
North of 26 degrees south and the security of Australia: Views from The Strategist, Volume 9
The Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre’s latest report, North of 26 degrees south and the security of Australia: views from The Strategist, Volume 9, contains articles published in ASPI’s The Strategist over the last six months.
Expanding on previous volumes, this edition introduces thematic chapters focused on a range of subjects relevant to northern Australia. These include;
1. Defence in the North,
2. Developing Northern Australia,
3. Northern Australia and the Indo-Pacific
4. Critical Minerals, Energy, and Commodities,
5. Space, Food Security and Climate Trends
As in previous editions, Volume 9 contains a range of expert opinions across these varied topics.
Volume 9 also features a foreword by the Hon. Eva Lawler, Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. Chief Minister Lawler calls readers attention to the relevance of northern Australia in light of the National Defence Strategy and updated Integrated Investment Program as well as Australia’s economic ambitions, stating “the strategies in this volume can inform our efforts to unlock northern Australia’s full potential and build a stronger, more resilient nation.”
The 36 articles discuss practical policy solutions for decision makers facilitating development, prosperity and security of northern Australia. These policy solutions tackle both the challenges and opportunities present in the north, and reflect the potential of the north to increasingly contribute to Australia’s national security and economic prosperity.
Stop the World: Unpacking Australia’s new defence strategy
This week on Stop the World, Senior ASPI Analyst Euan Graham is joined by retired Major General Andrew Bottrell AO, who was previously Head of Land Systems at Defence, alongside ASPI’s Director of Defence Strategy & National Security Bec Shrimpton to discuss the newly released National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program.
What is a National Defence Strategy and an Integrated Investment Program and why do we need them? Euan, Andrew and Bec explain the rationale behind the NDS and IIP and share their immediate responses to the two documents – what impressed them and where they see the risks and challenges as the Government looks to implement them.
Mentioned in this episode:
ASPI report: Regional security and Pacific partnerships: Recuriting Pacific Islanders into the Australian Defence Force
National Defence Strategy
Integrated Investment Program
Guests:
Euan Graham
Major General (Ret’d) Andrew Bottrell AO
Bec Shrimpton
Australia’s 2024 Independent Intelligence Review: Opportunities and challenges: Views from The Strategist
Australia has a recent history of intelligence community reform via independent intelligence reviews (IIRs) commissioned by government on a regular basis since 2004. The latest IIR is being undertaken by Dr Heather Smith and Mr Richard Maude.
In the lead-up to the announcement of the 2024 IIR, and afterwards, ASPI’s The Strategist has served as a valuable forum for canvassing publicly the most significant issues and challenges to be addressed by the reviewers.
This report draws together a selection of articles featured in The Strategist over the past year, with direct relevance to the review and its terms of reference. The articles cover topics from the broad to the specific but include:
- the review itself, including its scope and purpose
- the key capability challenge facing Australian intelligence—its future workforce
- the ‘how’ of intelligence now and into the future; more particularly, new tools such as intelligence diplomacy and offensive cyber operations
- the purposes for intelligence – from addressing global, existential risks to informing effective net assessment of Australia’s strategic circumstances.
In the lead-up to the expected public release of the IIR’s findings later this year, this compilation provides valuable background to the review and to the fundamental challenges and opportunities facing Australian intelligence in the decade ahead.
Reclaiming leadership: Australia and the global critical minerals race
Climate policy, geopolitics and market forces are coalescing to deliver Australia a global leadership opportunity in critical minerals. To grasp that opportunity, Australia needs both to utilise its domestic mineral endowment and its mining knowledge and technology and to leverage the global footprint of Australian companies to help build a global supply chain network.
How Australia responds will not only determine economic benefits to the nation but will also affect the world’s ability to achieve minerals security and the sustainability required for the global energy transition and inclusive economic growth.
The global energy transition and other high-technology applications have increased demand for critical minerals, particularly in countries that have strong complex manufacturing industries. At the same time, the concentration of production of many critical minerals, the dominance of China in supply chains and its actions to restrict supply and influence markets, are disrupting both minerals production and availability.
In response, developed nations have formulated critical minerals strategies and entered into bilateral and multilateral agreements, involving supplier nations and customer nations, to build alternative supply chains that are more diverse, secure and sustainable. Australia has committed in multiple agreements to work with like-minded nations to achieve this.
This report is intended to provide the government with a road map to ‘step up’ to (re)activate Australia’s global mineral leadership.
Why we need a national security adviser
On 16 December the Canberra Times published a short version of Danielle Cave’s article that argues Australia needs a national security adviser. The long version of the article was then published on the ASPI Strategist on 18 December and is available here:
The review of Australia’s intelligence community that’s now underway—as long as it is delivered with ambition so it remains relevant years from now—is one tool that will help prepare the government to confront the speed of global change. In the current environment, maintaining a strategic and technological edge over our adversaries, remaining a sought-after and valuable partner that can keep pace with bigger and better-resourced intelligence communities, and attracting and retaining top workforce talent (for which industry is also fiercely competing) will continue to become harder.
Both the domestic and international stakes are higher for this intelligence review than the terms of reference let on, so the review’s output should be watched closely. But it likely won’t look at a gap in Australia’s security architecture that has been filled in almost all counterpart nations—a dedicated and autonomous national security adviser (NSA). An Australian NSA would report to the prime minister and speak publicly with a trusted voice both internationally and domestically on Australia’s most pressing interests and priorities.
Without such a position, Australia is missing out on a seat at the table at key global meetings, which provide the best opportunities to exercise the kind of influence we want, need and deserve. What’s more, the lack of an NSA means the government lacks an authoritative representative who can help set the tone and focus of our strategic communications across all international security issues.
Most countries—including our most important partners—have an NSA. These roles are as senior as it gets, often equivalent to a department head or sometimes even a minister. NSAs have the ears of their leaders, often travel with them and are always available for briefings and policy advice. Critically, most NSAs also maintain their own remits of policy work and their own busy travel schedules separate from their presidents or prime ministers.
On 20 December former Director-General of ASIS Paul Symon responded with an article on the ASPI Strategist titled ‘Yes, Australia does need a national security adviser.’ Head of the ANU National Security College also joined the debate in the Australian Financial Review on 27 December.
Image: United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to Kyiv, Ukraine on 20 November 2023. Flickr