Strategist Article Archives - Page 1120 of 1186

The ‘aircraft carrier’ that isn’t: Japan’s new helicopter destroyer

18 August 2013

Recent commentary, including by Phil Radford here on The Strategist, has argued that Japan’s new Izumo (DDH22) ‘flat top destroyer’ is in fact the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s (MSDF) first, ‘mid-sized aircraft carrier’ since the Second World War. That’s because the 27,000 ton (full displacement) ship features a 248 metre flight deck which could be reconfigured to carry up to 12 F-35B, short take-off/vertical landing (STOVL) Joint Strike Fighters. In this view, the operational role of this ‘light aircraft carrier’ would be to provide air defence over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands or even strikes against the Chinese mainland. In other words, the ship is about ‘upping the ante’ against Chinese maritime belligerence. But, while the Izumo certainly reflects a qualitative improvement for the MSDF, I’d argue that the ship doesn’t signal the return of the ‘Imperial Fleet’.

There’s an important distinction between ‘proper’ aircraft carriers, such as the Nimitz-class of the US Navy, the French Charles de Gaulle or the Chinese Liaoning, and large escort ships which can support STOVL jets but whose main purpose is either amphibious assault, such as the US Wasp-class, or antisubmarine warfare (ASW), and Japan’s Hyuga-class (16DDH) helicopter destroyer. Aircraft carriers allow for a larger range of air operations than a few jump jets. But even more important is their ability to perform a range of doctrinal roles that large escort ships can’t. Historically, such roles included: serving as the ‘eyes of the fleet’; as a ‘cavalry at sea’ to conduct hit-and run raids; as a ‘capital ship’ capable of defeating any other ship type; as a nuclear-strike platform; as an ‘airfield at sea’; and as a geopolitical chess piece. Most of these roles have become obsolete, and aircraft carriers are primarily used today as ‘airfields at sea’ to support land operations, as a symbol of national prestige and, more recently, to support humanitarian and disaster relief (HADR) operations. Read more

ASPI suggests

16 August 2013

Mixed defence news for India this week: the county’s first indigenously built nuclear-powered submarine was activated days before an incident in which the kilo-class submarine INS Sindhurakshak exploded. Eighteen Indian sailors are feared dead. The Economist described it as a week of triumph and tragedy for India’s Navy.

Over at CogitASIA blog, Chris Doyle’s new post on ‘Five Eyes’ and the Australia–US joint stake in cybersecurity argues that ‘Five Eyes’ countries should consider facilitating information-sharing between civilian agencies like the US Department of Homeland Security and ASIO.

And speaking of Five Eyes community, this piece looks at the 5 Questions the Royal Canadian Navy should ask when contemplating a Pacific pivot of its own.

If a pivot is in the offing, it will be a modest affair by great-power standards. Ottawa has maritime interests of immense scope but few resources to throw at them. Savvy strategy is even more important for middleweight powers like Canada than for a great power like the United States. Read more

A treaty to ban a low-yield nuclear weapons can work

16 August 2013

Rod Lyon doesn’t like our proposal for a treaty to ban low-yield nuclear weapons. But his objections employ arguments at the strategic level (pardon the pun); not focusing on the provisions of the proposed treaty, but rather focusing on the effect that the abolition of low-yield weapons would have on international security.

We’ll address his points in reverse order, beginning with his central question at the end of his post about nuclear weapons: is the risk of their use worth running in terms of deterring and constraining conflict? For low-yield weapons the answer to this question is unequivocally and for all cases, ‘no’, and this is what makes this class of nuclear weapon unique. By contrast, higher yield weapons may be worthwhile in terms of deterring and constraining conflict in some circumstances.

Lyon’s view that our proposal is designed to serve a political agenda relating to the promotion of ‘sole-purpose’ declarations for nuclear weapons is directly contrary to what we argue in our longer discussion paper. The only political agenda that we’re pushing is for the adoption of the treaty proposed as a mechanism to help manage ongoing nuclear risk. We know that some strategists may not take declaratory policy seriously, and consequently it’s not a substitute for our approach. Read more

Strategic narratives, our defence white papers and their audiences

15 August 2013

The idea of strategic narratives is stirring again (and here). The idea was reinvigorated a few years back by Mr Y, a US Army Colonel and a USN Captain, who proposed a new American national security strategy but wrote it and titled it as a strategic narrative. The Mr Y authorship alluded to Mr X— George Kennan in disguise—who wrote the famous article that led to the American containment national security grand strategy of the Cold War. Like George, the two Mr Ys used a strategic narrative construct to grab the attention and interest of the American public.

An ex-British Army officer Emile Simpson has further examined the concept in a recent highly regarded book that examines the nature of modern war, using Afghanistan and Konfrontasi examples. Emile has added an interesting twist in stressing influencing others outside of the group, organisation or country encompassed by the strategic narrative. Strategic narratives should now focus not just on the insiders but also on the wider world of friends, partners, neutrals, undecided groups, adversaries and maybe even those who just don’t care yet. In our complex, globalised, interdependent world, many more audiences should be included in our strategic calculations. Read more

A lengthy list: Australia’s future foreign policy challenges

15 August 2013

But for the attention certain to be given to the issue of asylum seekers, it is unlikely that foreign policy will play much of a role in the forthcoming election campaign. That’s regrettable, as there are several international issues and relationships that could well be handled differently depending on who wins the approaching poll. The full extent of the differences is difficult to articulate as neither Labor nor the Coalition has yet released its policy platform, but already there’s been enough in various statements by the leaders, ministers and shadow ministers to indicate that there’s certain to be a measure of product differentiation.

While policy change is likely, there’s often strong continuity in the conduct of Australian foreign policy. Incoming governments inherit a policy legacy and are also successors to an Australian foreign policy tradition—a national style of acting in international relations. The legacy and the style can change over time, but initially they can act as constraints on policy innovation and reform. The style is by definition more enduring, so we can expect the incoming government to act in some wholly familiar ways. For example, it will remain committed to Australia’s strong tradition of alignment in international affairs; sustain a wide network of relationships across the globe and in multilateral organisations; emphasise the importance of engagement with the countries of the Asia–Pacific; and seek to address global and regional problems practically as a contribution to problem solving. It will also demonstrate, in JDB Miller’s rich morsel of a phrase, a certain ‘dogged low‑gear idealism’—in more recent parlance, good international citizenship in the conduct of our foreign relations. Read more

A seat at the table for homeland security?

15 August 2013

As outlined by Tobias Feakin and Jessica Woodall’s post last week, ASPI recently launched its new international cyber policy centre in Sydney. An expert panel discussed many facets of Australian cyber policy.

What wasn’t really discussed by the panel was the political responsibility for cybersecurity in the Australian government.

In a recent ASPI paper Peter Jennings and Toby Feakin recommend establishing a Prime Minister’s Cyber Council, comprising leading private and public sector figures, as well as cyber specialists to discuss cybersecurity and a cyber policy unit, reporting to the Secretary of the Attorney General’s Department.

I’d like to suggest that while bureaucratic innovations such as those proposed by my colleagues are important, it’s even more critical we get the political ‘ownership’ of cybersecurity (and homeland security more generally) ‘gripped up’. Read more

The ongoing unreality of Australian defence planning

14 August 2013

A little while back, we identified a set of challenges that whichever incoming government and Defence Minister would have to grapple with. In the new ASPI paper Agenda for change: strategic choices for the next government, we go into more detail on those, including the questions that we think the Minister should ask of the department.

We identified eight areas of concern, but there’s one that stands out as especially important: matching ends and means. No amount of good governance, project oversight or clever military strategy will help if there’s a mismatch between the objectives and the money allocated. There’s a case to be made that Defence’s medium- to long-term plans have always had an aspirational air to them—we can recall a ‘bow wave’ of unapproved projects being on the books 20 years ago—but the situation now seems to be significantly worse than usual.

At the moment, we have the combined effect of a raft of major projects delivering, or about to deliver, new platforms to the ADF which will be very demanding of future sustainment resources. These include the LHD amphibious ships, air warfare destroyers, Super Hornets and Growlers. The last couple of years have also seen initial operating capability of new air-to-air refuellers and Wedgetail aircraft, as well as sophisticated new helicopters for Army and Navy. Many of these capabilities—some of which date back to the 2000 defence white paper—were approved at a time when support for defence was high in the wake of the Timor-Leste deployment and the 9/11 attacks, and budget pressures were minimal (yes, Virginia, there really was a time when Treasury consistently underestimated government revenue). They’re being delivered into a very different environment. Read more

A minimum-yield threshold treaty?

14 August 2013

The Strategist has featured a number of items recently related to the Strategic Insights paper that Crispin Rovere and Kalman Robertson have written about the proposed next step in nuclear arms control. Broadly, the original authors call for a minimum-yield threshold treaty on the grounds that low-yield nuclear weapons are uniquely dangerous—more likely to be used than their larger siblings, less amenable to positive control by national leaderships, and an invitation to nuclear arms races and escalation ladders. Their latest contribution to this debate—their response to Malcolm Davis’ objections—repeats this argument about unique dangers, while asserting that it is mere military logic, not misplaced humanitarianism, that lies behind their proposal.

Let me begin by saying that I don’t accept the assumption underlying the Rovere and Robertson approach—that the most usable nuclear weapons are necessarily the most dangerous ones. The logic of that approach is that nuclear weapons states should be allowed to build only those nuclear weapons which are less usable. Their particular gripe against low-yield nuclear weapons is that those weapons stand at the firebreak between conventional and nuclear war. But there’s a good argument for having some nuclear weapons that allow nuclear deterrence to fail in discrete small packets rather than in one sudden complete collapse. Insisting that it fail in larger packets wouldn’t be a step forward. Read more

Asia–Pacific challenges and the logic of AUS–CAN cooperation

13 August 2013

Today, ASPI released James Manicom’s ‘Sources of Tension in the Asia–Pacific: Strategic Competition, Divided Regionalism and Non-Traditional Security Challenges’. It’s the first in a series of three papers commissioned for a project that ASPI has been jointly running with Canada’s Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). The project explores the rationale for and possible mechanisms of closer Australia–Canada defence and security cooperation in the Asia–Pacific.

Manicom’s message is clear: he puts China’s rise front and centre in his analysis, arguing that Beijing poses the most serious strategic challenge to regional stability. This is partly due to China’s active defence posture and military modernisation, but also to uncertainties over the capacity and will of the US to retain regional primacy. Other key problems that he highlights include overlapping maritime boundary claims and the expansion of naval capabilities, unresolved sovereignty disputes on the Korean Peninsula and across the Taiwan Strait, and a number of non-traditional security threats that also have the potential to destabilise the region. According to Manicom, these challenges are exacerbated by what he sees as the fundamental inability of the existing regional security architecture to build trust between states. Read more

Not food…or war but famine and war

13 August 2013

It’s hard to disagree with the threat assessment that Julian Cribb makes in his recent Strategist post ‘Food … or war?’. We’re witnessing an emerging food crisis that’ll become the dominant human narrative for the rest of the century. However, his perplexing use of history and the wishful thinking in his proposed solution undercut the strength of his argument.

Cribb is right that those fortunate enough to live today in Australasia, North America and northern Europe don’t know as much war as other regions of the world. To again borrow Jimmy Carter’s observation, the people of these regions (at least most of them) have enough to eat. But Cribb’s conclusion is based on a false comparison and a simplistic understanding of the causes of war. That hunger equals war doesn’t necessarily mean that plenty equals peace. War is a human activity that encompasses the full range of human emotion and needs. Its causes were best captured over 2500 years ago by Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian War; Fear, Honour and Interest. Hunger is just one factor of the complex calculation that states and peoples undergo when they decide upon war as a means to obtain what they want. Read more