Ben Schreer’s recent post on China’s maritime dilemmas reminded us that we should always think about what capabilities are intended to achieve, and not make a fetish of the capabilities themselves. Beijing’s progress in A2/AD is one thing, but achieving political ends with a blue-water navy is another.
But there are two things I’d draw attention to. Firstly, we don’t care about China’s capacity to achieve its objectives; we care about its capacity to prevent us (read friends and allies of the US) from achieving our own. Secondly, China’s pursuit of a blue water capability isn’t necessarily a big concern for us in itself (at least for now). What does matter is what it tells us about the way China views its future operational options, and its role in the region. Read more
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Julia Gillard defined herself early on in her leadership with the remark that foreign policy wasn’t her passion. A self-deprecating sense of humour isn’t always a political asset in a leader and this was the line of a new leader conscious of how much there was still to learn. Australians are more used to leaders with the sure sense of self which is captured in the observation by Clive James: ‘A dominant personality doesn’t have to believe in its own will. All it needs is the inability to recognise the existence of anybody else’s’. Australians have just embarked on an election contest where there will be no doubt about the will of the key contestants.
As the previous column argued, Gillard wasn’t alone, as a new Prime Minister, in being conscious of how much she had to discover about the conduct of foreign policy. Indeed, my argument is that as a first termer Gillard stood ahead of Rudd on foreign policy in a few key areas and edged out the first term efforts of Hawke and Howard. Read more
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Amid the circus that was the final week of the 43rd Parliament, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) quietly tabled its report on the Inquiry into Potential Reforms of Australia’s National Security Legislation. This is an important report—the proposed changes include some especially topical issues such as data retention and telecommunications interceptions by intelligence agencies. As the furore in the United States over the ‘Prism’ program shows—and as discussed here (and here, here and here) on The Strategist—these are issues that go to the heart of the tension between secrecy and transparency in intelligence work.
The report is comprehensive and the PJCIS made some sound recommendations. But it could have been better if the government had provided the Committee with enough information to make informed recommendations.
Announcing the referral of the Inquiry to the PJCIS, then Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said: ‘Unlike the Howard Government, the Gillard Government wants to give the public a say in the development of any new laws’. More than a year later, when the report was tabled, the exact same words apparently came from the new Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus.
Poor copy and paste choices in those media releases aside, it’s not clear how serious the government was about public consultation. When the referral was announced on 4 May 2012, the government said that it would ask the Committee to report back by 31 July 2012. It was a tall order for the PJCIS to conduct a truly consultative public Inquiry on 18 specific reform proposals containing 44 separate items across three different reform areas in fewer than 12 weeks. Read more
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Crispin Rovere and Kalman A Robertson suggest eliminating low-yield non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) in ‘Non-strategic nuclear weapons: The next step in multilateral arms control’. I’m sceptical of their proposed solution—a Minimum Yield Threshold Treaty. Firstly, their definition of a ‘low-yield’ weapon as having a yield of 5 kilotons (kt) or lower is open to challenge given the nature of modern nuclear weapons which have selectable yields. This definition creates a serious problem because states with low-yield NSNWs can design such weapons to have yields higher than 5 kt, and be excluded from any minimum-yield threshold treaty. This would make any such treaty relatively easy to circumvent from a technical standpoint.
A more fundamental problem is how to make such a treaty actually happen. How do you convince North Korea, Israel, India and Pakistan, and potentially Iran in the near future, to sign an agreement to ban low-yield NSNWs? New nuclear weapons states choose to acquire these weapons in line with what they judge to be their strategic interests. For example, Pakistan’s acquisition of NSNWs can be seen to be a response to a combination of Indian conventional military advantage, and lack of Pakistani geographical depth along the lines of any Indian military advance, together with lack of warning time under Indian ‘Cold Start’ military doctrine. Removal of Pakistan’s NSNWs would see Islamabad faced with either a quick defeat at the conventional warfighting level, or rapid escalation to strategic nuclear strikes on Indian cities in the event of a major conflict on the subcontinent. Pakistan’s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal generates a security dilemma for Delhi in return, which responds through its own nuclear modernisation. Read more
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A packed audience of key public and private sector stakeholders, all with a direct responsibility for elements of cybersecurity policy development and delivery, gathered at the launch. Catherine McGrath, Asia Editor at the ABC facilitated the lively dialogue which ensued from a panel of experts, including amongst others, Director-General of ASIO David Irvine, Malcolm Turnbull MP and the Commonwealth Bank’s security chief, Gary Blair.
After the centre was officially launched by ASPI CEO Peter Jennings, Gary Blair and myself (TF), the panel discussed the topic ‘What is Australia’s current response to cybersecurity and how should it evolve to promote a vibrant and dynamic digital economy into the future?’ Read more
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Most Australians feel secure in our food supply; few of us are on the knife’s edge of survival or driven to extreme behaviour. The greatest apparent risk to most Australians’ food security is the inability to use self-service checkouts at the supermarket. But the same can’t be said of our region.
Food security is a complex and interrelated set of environmental, social and political issues. It’s bound up diverse policy challenges such as climate change, population demographics and economics—prosperity has changed the diets of hundreds of millions of people, and not always in ways that help the management of food security.
The Strategist’s ‘Food Fight: A Food Security Blog’ series will explore how Australia’s food security can be best managed. As well, because of the interplay of regional national stability and food security, there are broader security issues to be addressed. Read more
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The strategy behind China’s emerging naval capability is subject to considerable debate. Most of the commentary concentrates on the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) capability development. Some commentators argue that the PLAN has shifted its focus towards developing a ‘blue water navy’ to contest America’s maritime predominance in the Western Pacific. But, as David McDonough’s recent post on The Strategist points out, the PLAN also continues to invest in defensive ‘anti-access/area-denial’ (A2/AD) for operations in its ‘ First Island Chain’. The common theme of these assessments is that China’s growing naval power should have us worrying.
However, while the PLAN’s growing maritime capabilities potentially pose a challenge to the United States and countries in the Indo-Pacific region, it’s also important to consider the weaknesses in China’s maritime strategy. Indeed, I’d argue that provided the US and its allies and partners invest in smart counter-strategies, China will find it very difficult to overcome its maritime dilemmas and to coerce regional countries in accepting Beijing’s territorial claims. Read more
History will be kind to Julia Gillard. Take this is as a relative rather than a qualitative judgement. History will have to be kinder because it would be impossible to be as harsh as current readings of her political character and policy achievements.
The Labor Party has done worse than Shakespeare’s version of the farewell speech to Caesar; it has offered Gillard neither praise nor burial. From rooster to feather duster is often the way in the Canberra barnyard, but Labor is asking for mass amnesia across the whole farm. Kevin Rudd’s tactic is a version of that used by a veteran London newspaper columnist who began a piece the day after victory in World War II: ‘As I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted……….’ Read more
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From the late 1940s until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the two superpowers engaged in a standoff whereby each threatened the very existence of the other with tens of thousands of strategic nuclear warheads. This perilous situation created powerful incentives on both sides to exercise control over their nuclear arsenals, and to cooperate on agreed areas of mutual interest in order to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.
If we compare the Cold War situation to what exists today, we can see that nuclear dynamics are now far more complex. No longer is it two nations of comparable size squaring off over the same geography. Today’s nuclear relationships consist of both the traditional P5 nuclear-weapon states (US, Russia, UK, France, China) as well as newer and emerging nuclear powers (Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) that are locked in bitter and unbalanced strategic rivalries with neighbours. Read more
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Shocked and confused. That’s how the international community is reacting to news that a major Australian radiological security initiative has just been canned. The corridors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were abuzz with this news during a recent conference on nuclear security, held at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna from 1–5 July. The conference was attended by many hundreds of officials and analysts from all over the world, who gathered to discuss nuclear and radiological challenges, including the risk that individuals or groups could acquire and use these materials in terrorist and other malicious attacks. The goal of the conference was to encourage states to cooperate to prevent such attacks, and the Australian initiative was regarded as an important trailblazer and a highly respected contribution to this global effort. Read more
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Ben Schreer’s recent post on China’s maritime dilemmas reminded us that we should always think about what capabilities are intended to achieve, and not make a fetish of the capabilities themselves. Beijing’s progress in A2/AD is one thing, but achieving political ends with a blue-water navy is another.
