Strategist Article Archives - Page 1123 of 1186

How to manage long project timelines? (part 2)

2 August 2013

I discussed previously that force structure planning should take into account that new equipment projects have very long timelines—Andrew Davies’ post this morning explains clearly the downsides of getting the planning wrong. It might help to think of the future force structure as progressively emerging. Seen in that light, the aim of the Defence Capability Plan (DCP) is to continually refresh the force structure, rather than simply charting the sporadic path of multiple unconnected projects or as a blueprint for a ‘final’ future force. Under this concept, the key issues are the time when new capabilities enter and leave the force structure. Factoring realistic times into the DCP can provide some useful ways to manage the downsides of long project timelines.

For this, Defence is surprisingly well placed in being able to choose acquisition strategies across the continuum from developmental to off-the-shelf (OTS), from government-to-government to commercial contracts, and from many different countries, including Australia. Moreover, the OTS acquisitions can be new build, second-hand, leased or rented. There are considerable differences in the time to operational delivery across this spread of acquisition strategies, and with thought these time differences can be usefully exploited. Read more

Gender and empowerment: women political leaders in Africa

2 August 2013

The Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard raised important issues about the treatment of women political leaders in Australian society. Gillard’s impassioned ‘misogyny speech‘ was a defining moment of her leadership. In her resignation speech Gillard said:

There’s been a lot of analysis about the so-called gender wars . . . [The] reaction to being the first female Prime Minister does not explain everything about my Prime Ministership, nor does it explain nothing about my Prime Ministership… And it is for the nation to think in a sophisticated way about those shades of grey. What I am absolutely confident of is it will be easier for the next woman and the woman after that and the woman after that—and I’m proud of that.

Given the difficulties a woman faced in a developed country, it’s interesting to consider the position of women political leaders in African states, amid the experiences of conflict and severe development challenges. Read more

Paying to wait (waiting longer for more, part 2)

1 August 2013

In my previous post on project timelines, I made the point that defence projects these days are taking longer to deliver than in the past. The reasons are many and varied–and we shouldn’t rule out poor governance—but a significant driver is the sheer complexity of modern systems. By demanding ever higher levels of performance and (especially) integration, it’s taking longer and longer to deliver them.

But there’s an associated question that’s the subject of this post—why aren’t we accurately predicting how long it will take? I’m just finalising a report card for the 2000 Defence White Paper and a striking observation is just how poor the estimates of project delivery timeframes were. I’ll spell out the grizzly details in a forthcoming paper, but the average planned duration of major projects was around 7 years. In 2013, we’re still waiting on a number of them to be delivered, and the best guess at the moment is that the actual average duration will be closer to 13 years—a schedule overrun of more than 90%. Read more

China’s naval strategy—from sea denial to sea control?

1 August 2013

Attention has often focused on China’s undersea fleet of conventional and nuclear-powered submarines, as an integral component of an anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) complex that also includes shore-based aircraft, land-attack and anti-ship missiles, integrated air defences, an extensive sea mining capability, and enabling assets. More recently, observers point to China’s recently commissioned Liaoning aircraft carrier—currently undergoing sea trials and landing exercises—as a move in a different direction towards a blue-water fleet.

It is therefore refreshing to see Sam Roggeveen’s recent posts in The Interpreter that brings some needed attention to China’s fleet of advanced frigates and destroyers, now being produced in greater numbers even as its submarine inventory has apparently plateaued. He offers the provocative argument that Beijing is turning away from A2/AD (and in a purely maritime context, sea denial) for the more ambitious objective of sea control—or perhaps that it simply sees its existing anti-access capabilities as ‘good enough’. Read more

Does a bear fish in the south?

1 August 2013

Richard Herr’s recent post on Russia’s links with Fiji was fascinating. But it’s also worth noting that Russia has been active in our southern backyard. As long time Antarctic observer Andrew Darby recently pointed out:

The Russian bear’s footprint is falling increasingly heavily on the Antarctic environment. It’s leaving a mess behind, and standing in the way of a better future. In doing so, it’s highlighting limitations of the governing Antarctic Treaty System.

Russia has just blocked the creation the creation of a set of marine reserves in the Ross Sea and eastern Antarctica at a special meeting in Germany of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). Less than two years ago Russia had supported a framework for marine conservation areas. Read more

Launching the ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre

31 July 2013

Launching the ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre

The ability to leverage cyberspace is one of the twenty first century’s most important sources of power. State and non-state actors can use this power to achieve financial, military, political, ideological or social objectives in cyberspace or the physical world, to positive or negative ends.

Like most technologies, cyberspace is agnostic to politics and ideology, but is a powerful transfer mechanism for both. The twenty first century is going to be defined by the cyber domain. There will be a great responsibility to ensure that those that wish to exploit cyberspace for negative purposes are denied as much operating space as possible. This must be achieved without reducing the openness and freedom that the cyber domain has enabled.

However, due to the sheer number of different stakeholders in the cyber domain, policy solutions are going to require co-operative approaches which accommodate—where desirable—the various interests of those groups. But co-operation is difficult to achieve at present because of the significant divergence in behaviours at individual, national and international levels. In relation to state behaviour, there’s enormous variance in the ways states approach cyber space even within their own jurisdiction and this affects the way in which their citizens and private companies are able to interact with it. There’s also great diversity in how countries use cyber as a tool of external policy, with applications as wide ranging as business, espionage, warfighting or for development aid. It’s early days too, so there’s a lot of uncertainty about the long-term implications of these different activities. Read more

Cyber wrap

31 July 2013

This week has seen the release of two government papers on the issue of cybercrime. On Monday The Attorney General’s Department launched the National Plan to Combat Cybercrime, the key policy announcement of which was the creation of the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network, or ACORN. The paper also lays out sensible foundations for further discussion and collaboration on cybercrime issues with both government and the private sector.

Yesterday the Australian Crime Commission’s released the Organised Crime in Australia 2013 report. The cyber and technologically-enabled crime section of the paper goes into detail on the economic cost of cybercrime, estimated to be around US$1.7 billion per year to Australia. The paper also has contains some intriguing analysis on how organised crime groups conduct their activities online. Read more

Anglosphere Ways of War and the Asian Century (part 2)

31 July 2013

I explained yesterday how the Chinese have thoroughly digested the Anglosphere’s Rules of the Road, and have steered themselves to prosperity in the process. The Anglosphere Ways of War are equally well understood. Indeed, China is embracing one of the central laws of the Elders of Greenwich: the top dog has to put to sea. The British adopted the naval strategy pioneered by the Dutch and then sailed out to build a global empire. The US took over the sea strategy and still presides as the maritime mega-power. If the Obama pivot is to mean anything long term in Asia, it will be based on the US delivering as the off-shore naval balancer in the region, in the same way as the Britain did for Europe.

Mead argues that the emergence of a multipolar international system in Asia is an extraordinary opportunity for the US and its maritime system:

The interests of the key Asian powers appear to be aligned with those of the US and of the liberal capitalist order; American interests are never more secure than when multiple pillars support the system… The offshore balancing power that is interested in an open global trading system poses less threat and offers more opportunity to more partners than traditional land powers can usually match. Read more

Visiting the troops

31 July 2013

Visiting the troops deployed overseas has been a tradition for Australian politicians at least as far back as June 1916, when Billy Hughes travelled to the Western Front and met soldiers shortly before the appalling battles of Fromelle and Pozires. It is remarkable that so much of Australia’s political culture has been shaped by the interaction of politicians with the military. In Canberra, Parliament House and the War Memorial face each other across the lake, both institutions dug-in to the hills around them, reminding us of the cost of political decisions to go to war.

Strategy may start with ideas about alliances, Anglospheres and Asian Centuries, but such planning is made reality by soldiers carrying guns in remote locations. So it’s utterly appropriate, in fact deeply necessary, that politicians should visit the troops overseas, look our deployed military and civilian personnel in the eye, and seek to understand what it really takes to promote Australian strategic interests abroad. Read more

The US–Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership: what’s in a name?

30 July 2013

In July 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton journeyed to Hanoi and proposed that bilateral relations be raised to a strategic partnership. Negotiations became bogged down by late 2011 when the two sides disagreed how human rights should be treated. It therefore came as a surprise last week when US President Barack Obama and his Vietnamese counterpart announced they’d decided to form a U.S.–Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership to provide an overarching framework for advancing the relationship’.

Vietnam has long sought to diversify and multilateralise its foreign relations but, in the process of expanding its foreign relations, has had to treat some countries as more equal than others. Vietnam has applied the term ‘strategic partner’ to single out these twelve special states. The first eight were the Russian Federation, Japan, India, People’s Republic of China, Republic of Korea, Spain, United Kingdom, and Germany. Italy, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia were added this year. Vietnam’s partnerships with Russia and China were later further raised to ‘comprehensive strategic partner’ and ‘strategic cooperative partner’, respectively. Read more