Strategist Article Archives - Page 1117 of 1186

Attacking Syria: should emotion or reason prevail?

30 August 2013

Call me a bleeding heart, but I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that something simply must be done about the Syrian chemical weapons attacks. I’m not the only normally peaceful soul who hopes that in the next few days the United States will lead a very short and limited military strike against Syrian military facilities. I say those words ‘feel’ and ‘hope’ deliberately because these are largely emotional responses borne of the images and stories of what happened in Ghoula to hundreds of civilians. Indeed, a fair bit of a similar emotional dread was behind the banning years ago of chemical weapons in an international convention that Syria refuses to sign. And US Secretary of State John Kerry’s description of the gas attacks as a ‘moral obscenity’ seems spot on in this context. As a way of venting of that moral outrage, a small volley of cruise missiles sent off by the United States would make it clear that this sort of action, even in the midst of an already barbaric civil war, simply won’t be tolerated. Read more

NZ intelligence bill just makes it into law

29 August 2013

A major intelligence bill passed into law recently in New Zealand by the skin of its teeth. On the way, its path had been befuddled by domestic politics, entangled by the concerns over America’s National Security Agency’s gulping of huge amounts of personal information, and beset by enough administrative mistakes to make a passable TV series, though one closer to comedy than to ‘Homeland’.

The Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill, which clarifies the legal framework of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and is intended to increase oversight of New Zealand’s intelligence agencies passed by 61 votes to 59 with the National Party, United Future, and ACT New Zealand in favour of the bill, while the Labour Party, Green Party, Maori Party, Mana and NZ First opposed it. The Labour Party didn’t, in the end, give the traditional support expected from major parties on intelligence matters. Read more

Australia’s defence election issues

29 August 2013

Today ASPI and Hewlett Packard are hosting a debate on Defence issues at 12pm AEST between Dr Mike Kelly, who Mr Rudd has nominated to become Defence Minister if Labor win the election and who is currently Minister for Defence Materiel, and Senator David Johnston, Liberal spokesman for Defence. Consistent with our charter as a non-partisan organisation, ASPI has invited the major parties and the Greens to contribute to the Strategist today.

Defence under Labor – Dr Mike Kelly

There is no greater responsibility for government than the defence of Australia and Australia’s interests.

In May, the Federal Labor Government delivered the 2013 Defence White Paper. The White Paper outlines how we will maintain a strong Australian Defence Force to meet Australia’s national security challenges.

It includes major new capability commitments that are critical to Australia’s long-term defence and security and that will ensure we maintain world class defence capabilities that are integrated to support effective, joint ADF operations. A re-elected Labor Government will ensure that Defence has the resources and guidance it needs to deliver our priorities as outlined in the White Paper.

Should it gain Government, the Coalition has no plan for Defence, other than uncertainty. The Coalition plans to spend half a term writing a new White Paper. It has made no commitment to provide any additional funding to Defence, beyond what has been committed by Labor. Read more

The pivot and the red line: the Syrian Civil War and US credibility in the Asia–Pacific

28 August 2013

Called a ‘War Speech’ by the Washington Post’s Max Fisher, Secretary of State John Kerry dispelled all doubt at his Monday evening press conference over the Obama administration’s consideration of military action against Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad regime. Almost a year to the day since President Obama made his ‘red line’ comment regarding the use of chemical weapons in Syria, its most recent (and visible) use on the outskirts of the Syrian Capital of Damascus has forced the President and his administration into the awkward position of preparing for another Middle Eastern conflict at a time they’d promised to be thinking about the Asia-Pacific.

Despite the words of key administration officials and even its unveiling as the Administration’s foreign policy blueprint by President Obama before the Australian Parliament in 2011, doubt over the US ‘Rebalance to Asia’ formed unsurprisingly quickly. At the core of these doubts, even prior to current issues related to sequestration, stood the tall order of US disengagement from combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Due in part to the considerable investment of the Administration’s early energy into reducing the visible presence of the US in the Middle East, it seemed inevitable to some that the region would reemerge as the primary focus of the Administration as unaddressed issues would build critical mass and become too large to ignore. Read more

The RAN must have a plan to move out of Garden Island

28 August 2013

I disagree with Andrew Davies’ conclusion that there’s no need for a rethink of navy’s basing. The RAN must have a long-term plan to move out of Garden Island. Continuing to have a major naval base within a stone’s throw of the central business district of a large city is frankly ridiculous.

Other navies closed their naval bases in or near large cities years ago. Examples include Mare Island in San Francisco, the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York, and the Chatham and Sheerness Dockyards near London. The reasons why these bases closed are exactly the same as why other large industrial undertakings have been moved out of inner Sydney. It’s an anachronism that Fleet Base East and Garden Island Dockyard are still there. The Fleet Base should have moved years ago.

We need to be clear about what we are talking about. There are two separate facilities at Garden Island – Fleet Base East and Garden Island Dockyard. Read more

ASEAN community-building efforts need Australia’s strong support

27 August 2013

Rising strategic tensions in the Asia-Pacific could derail ASEAN’s security-building efforts, despite the concrete progress that ASEAN members have made in addressing mutual challenges. The consequences could be serious for Australia, which has benefitted from a long period of strategic stability and efforts to improve security standards in its near neighbourhood.

About 10 years ago, the UN secretariat realised that regional mechanisms could be effectively utilised to address security challenges, many of which are transnational. Scholars, including me (PDF), have argued that this approach should be a particular priority in Southeast Asia, where insurgency, terrorism, and high levels of corruption and transnational crime combine with porous borders, busy ports and major transhipment hubs to create a potent cocktail of threats and vulnerabilities. The strain this places on the region’s developing states is overwhelming, highlighting the importance of ASEAN’s goal of developing a regional security community. Read more

Challenges for Mr Rudd’s northern naval posture

27 August 2013

In a speech at the Lowy Institute, the Prime Minister today announced that a re-elected government will

… establish the Future Navy Taskforce that will provide advice to the Government on implementing these recommendations and other recommendations of the Australian Defence Force Posture Review and 2013 Defence White Paper that offer operational advantages, enhance capability sustainment requirements and relieve future pressure on the current location of Fleet Base East in Sydney.

The Taskforce will provide advice on the timing, proportions and implementation of moving some or all of Fleet Base East to Queensland and Perth and developing, upgrading or expanding Darwin and Broome.

At first glance, the argument that Australia’s navy would be better placed to respond to events in the waters to our north—where all of the strategic action is taking place—is reasonable. All other things being equal, forces close to an area of operations will be able to respond more quickly than those further away. Similarly, forward basing can make it easier to sustain operations, and units can familiarise themselves with prospective operating areas through exercising and training in like environments. These considerations underpinned the relocation of ADF units to the north of Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. Read more

Phase zero planning for Australia

27 August 2013

Anthony Bergin, Hayley Channer and Sam Bateman’s recent Strategy Report ‘Terms of engagement…’ touches on a problem that’s defied strategic planners worldwide. Nations tend to know how to intervene militarily when it’s unavoidable. Doctrine lays out the phases of a classical campaign from the assembly and preparation of forces through decisive operations, the stabilisation of the situation and its transition to whatever ‘post-conflict’ reality emerges. Recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan haven’t worked too smoothly in the latter phases, but at least there is an established framework for planning and, once the government commits itself to the intervention, all its agencies generally get with the program.

Much harder is planning and coordinating all the things that should be done before the intervention becomes necessary. The military term of art for this is ‘Phase Zero’, consisting of those things done (1) to make an intervention unnecessary in the first place and (2) failing that, to ensure that everything is poised for a successful campaign (Phases One to X) to return the situation to Phase Zero as quickly as possible.

Optimal Phase Zero planning has largely eluded Western countries because it involves efforts from across government. Military forces have strong planning cultures and elaborate processes for what they do, but these only affect a few of the things that must happen in Phase Zero. Some of the most effective measures for preventing serious crises, such as diplomacy, international aid and foreign institutional reform are not within the military orbit: the agencies responsible for them have their own ideas and are often jealous of their autonomy or fearful for their resource levels. Phase Zero seems to demand a degree of coordination of which bureaucratic cabinet governments are not normally capable, at least in the nominal ‘peacetime’ that characterises this Phase. All countries discipline their policy processes and bureaucracies when sufficiently threatened, as Australia did in the Second World War, but otherwise we prefer looser management. Read more

The battle for cybermetrics

27 August 2013

This July the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) released the Organised Crime in Australia – 2013 Report, an unclassified version of the Organised Crime Threat Assessment. Pointing at globalisation and technology as key enablers for the nefarious work of organised crime, the report gave cybercrime its rightful due. However, despite the trending appreciation Canberra has afforded to cybersecurity and cybercrimes, the larger public and business community hasn’t been similarly mobilised.

Labelling cybercrime a ‘significant’ threat to Australia, the report looks to the 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report pegging the global cost for cybercrime at US$110 billion annually and US$1.7 billion per year for Australia alone. With the Pomenon Institute estimating an US$2.16 million average cost per major cyber intrusion, it’s shocking that the public and business community isn’t up in arms.

With the Department of Defence suggesting that relatively simple measures like application white listing, patch applications, patching operating systems, and minimising the number of users with domain or local administrator privileges alone could mitigate up to 85% of cyber intrusions, one could easily question why such large reported costs haven’t spurred universal adoption of even the most basic security measures.

No doubt there are a number of factors at play, but the metrics themselves might explain some of the apparent disconnect. The US$1.7 billion cited by the ACC report, a number that’s slightly less daunting when considered as 0.11% of the estimated US$1.54 trillion Australian economy, is nearly as intangible as many of the cybercrimes themselves. Simply put, the cost evaluation of cybercrimes on an individual and business level, as well as on a national and global economic level, is an inexact and underdeveloped art. Read more

Canada’s submarines: opportunities for cooperation with Australia

26 August 2013

The Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) submarine fleet, consisting of four Victoria-class vessels, has been plagued by numerous problems since their acquisition from Great Britain between 2000 and 2004—including a dent found on HMCS Victoria in 2002, a fire on HMCS Chicoutimi in 2004, damage caused to HMCS Corner Brook in a 2011 accident, and a defect with HMCS Windsor’s diesel engines discovered last year, not to mention a supply-chain that had to be built from scratch. Such problems have sharply curtailed fleet operations, with an Initial Operating Capability only achieved in 2006.

Yet many of these challenges arose from the admittedly under-estimated cost of re-activation and refits rather than fundamental design flaws with the former Upholder-class, as some critics maintain. Importantly, Canada’s undersea fleet will likely achieve an ‘operational steady state’ in two years time. Delays with achieving a full operational capability for submarines is also nothing new—as the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) can attest, given the high costs of refitting its Collins-class submarines’ combat systems and continuing propulsion problems, at a procurement cost that dwarfs what Canada has so far spent on its own fleet.

Canada might even want to think about transferring its remaining Halifax-based submarines to the Pacific, now that it can expect to enjoy a steadily increasing operational submarine capability. With more vessels on hand, Canada would be in a better position to strengthen naval ties with its Australian counterparts. For one, the RCN’s Victoria submarines and the RAN’s Collins submarines have many similar characteristics, including displacement, range, and speed. Both have also been refitted to include more sophisticated combat systems and armaments, such the Mark 48 Mod 7 torpedo—with much of this work designed to ensure continued high-levels of interoperability with US and allied navies. Read more