Strategist Article Archives - Page 1105 of 1187

New Zealand and the United States: why old news is good news

30 October 2013

If you read some of the media coverage of this week’s meeting between US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and New Zealand Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman, you might have thought that the two countries have just agreed to deepen their defence relationship. This news is at least a year too late, and that deepening process is by now well under way. Even so, the Hagel–Coleman press conference reflected the level of comfort both sides have about where their military relationship has got to, and what these two leading politicians didn’t mention is as important as what they spoke about.

I use the word ‘relationship’ here very deliberately, because that’s the word both Hagel and Coleman employed in speaking to the Washington media. The two ‘A’ words, Alliance and ANZUS, didn’t make an appearance in the way Hagel and Coleman spoke about the relationship. Nor did ‘A for Australia’. That’s significant: all three countries have valuable bilateral defence relations with each other but there’s little appetite anywhere, it seems, for a real trilateral emphasis. Australia is involved in some big triangles, especially the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) with the US and Japan, but the renewed US–New Zealand relationship isn’t being sold that way. Read more

Reader response: is compromise on Fiji the same as selling out?

30 October 2013

Russell Hunter and Victor Lal’s reflection on the implications of the election on Australia’s relations with Fiji raises more questions than it answers.

The orthodox view since the military coup in December 2006 has been that the hard line would lead to compromise on the part of the Fijian Government. The concern now is that compromise will mean selling out; that compromise means ‘Australia is helping Bainimarama entrench himself as dictator for life’. This is a concern, but not an outcome that Australian policymakers have countenanced . It’s a claim that needs to be fleshed out. Read more

The domestic politics of the long war in Afghanistan

30 October 2013

On Monday, seven weeks after Australia’s federal election, the new Prime Minister and the new Opposition leader stood together in Afghanistan to declare the end to Australia’s longest war. The message from Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten was of a job nobly performed. There was no claim of victory after 12 years of military effort, and the mission-well-done language was marked by its hesitancy. Duty had been done, the troops were told, and at that point the rhetoric meter started to falter.

PM Abbott captured both the tone and the balance with his opening words at the ‘recognition ceremony’ at Tarin Kowt: ‘Australia’s longest war is ending, not with victory, not with defeat, but with, we hope, an Afghanistan that’s better for our presence here’. The contribution from Bill Shorten amounted to a heartfelt ‘me, too’, otherwise rendered as staunch bipartisan support. Read more

America’s own goal

29 October 2013

What it means to be part of the Anglosphere (or, more precisely, what it means to be outside the Anglosphere) has apparently become very clear in the last week, following the revelation of America spying on European countries. Mind you, that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. The Washington Post published large extracts of the classified US Intelligence budget almost two months ago, and one of the more interesting items was a table of language proficiency payments for analysts at the CIA, NSA and other agencies. Here’s the list:

Language	Civilian linguists
Spanish	2,725
Arabic (all dialects)	1,191
Chinese (all dialects)	903
Russian	736
French	827
German	521
Korean	490
Persian (Farsi) – Iranian	357
Portuguese	295
Other (71 in total)	1,639

Mapping the nine-dash line: recent incidents involving Indonesia in the South China Sea

29 October 2013

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In a recent post here on The Strategist, Benjamin Schreer spoke of China’s ‘Achilles heel’ in Southeast Asia: its unwillingness to compromise in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. This is an excellent point and undoubtedly true, as concerns over China’s claims are longstanding in the region, though it’s also important to emphasise the ongoing incidents at sea as a driving factor in the strategic perceptions of ASEAN. In other words, it’s not just China’s claims that cause concern in Southeast Asia—it’s China’s seeming willingness and intention to enforce these claims that’s currently driving anxiety in ASEAN capitals.

While incidents between China and claimants such as Vietnam and the Philippines in the northern part of the South China Sea have received their fair share of publicity (and rightfully so), there have also been a number of less publicised incidents in the south involving Malaysia and Indonesia. As the Director of Intelligence and Information Operations at US Pacific Command, Captain James Fannell observed earlier this year: ‘If you map out their (China’s) harassments, you will see that they form a curved front that has over time expanded out against the coast of China’s neighbours, becoming the infamous nine-dashed line.’ Read more

Reader response: Chinese military bases in Malaysia

29 October 2013

I think Geoff Wade has overstated China’s interest in Sabah and Malaysia’s willingness to work militarily with a big power such as China.

Except for its traditional allies (US, UK, Australia, NZ & Singapore), I’d find it unimaginable for any other power such as China to have close defence ties with Malaysia for four main reasons.

The first is historical: Malaysia is firmly in the US orbit, and moving even closer now under the Najib administration. Malaysia votes with the United States at least 85% of the time at the UN, and in recent years has moved away from its ‘hybrid neutrality’, towards a more pronounced support of the US (eg. voting to sanction Iran). Read more

The pivot: a complication for Europe, not a game-changer

28 October 2013

It makes sense to think of Europe’s response to the United States pivot towards Asia as an episode in Europe’s continuing preoccupation with retaining US commitment, rather than as a moment of epiphany. That preoccupation has a long history, starting decades before the 2010 ‘pivot speech’ and the later ‘rebalancing clarification’.

It remains to be seen how European anger with the US over spying allegations made by Edward Snowden will affect EU–US relations. It’s a reasonable bet that the eventual conclusion will be that whatever the Americans do, everyone still needs them. Read more

Reader response: cold calculations

28 October 2013

While it’s good to see ASPI writing about Antarctica and pointing out some obvious areas where further investment would pay dividends, I think it undersells some existing scientific efforts. It’s true that Australia’s Antarctic program is supported by aging infrastructure and has mostly remained focused on the coastal strip and the marine environment. But there have been efforts further inland as well. Through the development of series of autonomous laboratories, there’s been an Australian presence over the plateau of the Australian Antarctic Territory for the past two decades.

These are capable of controlling advanced experimentation at unmanned sites through the harsh Antarctic winter, while communicating via the Iridium satellite system with a home base back in Sydney—so allowing a complex experimental program to be conducted. Three generations of these laboratories have now been designed and built by Australia. First there was the Automated Astrophysical Site Testing Observatory (AASTO) at the South Pole in the mid 90’s. Then came the Automated Astrophysical Site Testing INternational Observatory (AASTINO) at Dome C in the early 00’s. Most recently it has been the PLATeau Observatory (PLATO) , now operating at Dome A, Dome F and Ridge A—all summits of the Antarctic plateau, and the coldest and driest locations on our planet. Aside from Dome F, all of these sites lie within the Australian Antarctic Territory. Read more

Defence and climate change

28 October 2013

The headline message from the recently released IPCC 5th Assessment Report (Climate change 2013: The Physical Science Basis) is pretty straightforward:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are now at levels not achieved in at least the last 800,000 years, as recorded in ice cores. The oceans, which have absorbed about one third of the human produced carbon dioxide since the industrial revolution, are now becoming more acidic.

The tensions in Tony’s trade targets

27 October 2013

No executive in charge of a major construction project should announce the scheduled date for the Queen to open the building until after it’s up and finished. This bit of British building lore drew its force from the experience of those optimistic executives who’d announced the date of the royal ceremony while the building was still being erected. The moment the royal deadline was announced, every supplier, sub-contractor and supervisor had been handed a wonderful extortion weapon. For workers and unions the trend was to bloody-mindedness and blackmail. Who knew a modest monarch could cost a builder so much money?

The Queen Opening Gambit is a version of the bureaucratic law that you can announce a target or set a timeline, but never do both; the date always arrives on time, projects often don’t. That suggests that Tony Abbott has been bold in announcing that, within 12 months, Australia wants to conclude bilateral free trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea. In setting both target and timeline, Abbot has been ‘courageous’—in the ‘Yes, Minister’ sense.