Strategist Article Archives - Page 1124 of 1186

Anglosphere Ways of War and the Asian Century (part 1)

30 July 2013

Consider this definition of the ‘Ways of War of the Anglosphere’ as the workings of a military and maritime mindset, powering a methodology that has fundamentally shaped the globe:

The Anglosphere, the group of countries where English is the native language of a substantial majority of the population and where social values and culture are largely shaped by Anglo-Saxon values, remains an important fact of world politics. Canada, Australia and New Zealand fought alongside Britain in both world wars from start to finish; all the English-speaking nations fought in the Cold War as well. Australia is the only country in the world which sent military forces to fight side by side with the Americans in the Korean War, the Vietnam conflict and the two wars with Iraq. Read more

ASPI suggests

30 July 2013

The normalisation of tension on the Korean Peninsula is settling onto its foundations, with South Korea pledging US$7.3 million of humanitarian aid to North Korea over the weekend. The move came one day before South Korea offered a ‘final’ round of talks with the DPRK to re-open the Kaesong industrial complex on the north-south border. Meanwhile, Pyongyang celebrated the (July 27) 60th anniversary of the Korean Armistice agreement, predictably, with a military parade.

Across the water, the Japanese returned Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to office. At a speech in Singapore he confidently declared:

…the will to change has returned to Japan, and so has strength. The “revolving door” politics with its high turnover for which Japan is now known has disappeared and is now a thing of the past. Read more

Procurement problems: from go to woe

29 July 2013

When is off the shelf not off the shelf? When it takes an age for the shopper to decide that he wants a little from product A and a little from product B. A great example of this would be the Commonwealth’s efforts to equip the Army with a 40mm light weight automatic grenade launcher (LWAGL) under project Land 40 Phase 2, which kicked off in earnest in 2007. The aim was for an off-the-shelf product, but the process that followed was highly questionable.

It started with the program office conducting market research and examining various contracting models, to come down to two off-the-shelf contenders. It seems that the Commonwealth was essentially keen on the barrel from one product and the sight from another, but neither company was keen on this approach. Read more

Towards a Cyber White Paper

29 July 2013

The Cyber White Paper, originally promised for release in the first half of 2012, has been delayed several times. In October last year, responsibility for its production was quietly transferred from the Prime Minister’s Department to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. There, the focus of the white paper was said to be ‘broadened’ away from cybersecurity. Prime Minister Gillard told a conference in October 2012 that ‘we should be broadening that out so it is more a digital white paper and helps us capture some of the more profound and longer term issues that have been brought to the table’.

What was ultimately released on 12 June 2013 wasn’t a Digital Economy White Paper, but a more limited statement described as an ‘update to the national digital economy strategy’ which was released in 2011. A number of peak bodies were approached to provide submissions on what cyber security issues the 2013 document should address. The final product is however, very disappointing. A seven page chapter on ‘safety and security’ does little more than list a range of current initiatives, including countering cyber bullying and a number of outreach activities. Read more

Australia’s defence engagement: history repeating?

29 July 2013

ASPI’s just released Strategy Paper on Australia’s regional defence diplomacy provides a useful snapshot of what Australia’s defence engagement currently involves and where it might usefully head. It’s not as strong, however, on where we’ve come from. Instead, it simply makes the case that ‘we can no longer just keep on doing what we’ve been doing in the past’.

That might be true, but it also counts as an important oversight. Australia has been in the business of international defence engagement since at least the 1960s. But more importantly, there are some striking parallels between the present era and when Australian interest in defence engagement last really intensified during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Read more

Singapore’s qualified support for the US rebalance

28 July 2013

Over the last year and a half, it’s been evident that Washington’s defence and security relations with Singapore are a lynchpin of the Southeast Asian component of the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. But Singapore’s interest in encouraging the United States to remain closely involved in Asia-Pacific security predates the contemporary US rebalance to the region by several decades. Even in the late 1960s, it was clear to Singapore’s leaders that the city-state should do its best to prevent the regional dominance of any power.

Since then, encouraging and—increasingly—facilitating a continuing strong US regional security role have been key to Singapore’s foreign and defence policies. So it was unsurprising that it should help lend substance to the rebalance by providing what is, in all but name, a base for US Navy Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), the first of which (USS Freedom) arrived at Changi Naval Base this April. Current plans call for four such ships to be forward-deployed in Singapore by 2017. Read more

The Anglocybersphere

26 July 2013

Bang on time to complement ASPI’s extended debate about the anglosphere, a senior dialogue of Homeland Security Ministers from the five eyes countries (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) was held this week at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California. This was the first meeting of such a gathering, described by the US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano as an opportunity to discuss closer collaboration on the ‘cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, countering violent extremism, and data exchange initiatives’. She added:

While each topic holds its own challenges, they all require close collaboration in order to build our collective ability to identify and mitigate threats that transcend our physical borders. … I see the Five Country Ministerial as a singular forum in which cross-cutting issues will inform discussions on how our five countries can collectively achieve the optimal balance of mobility and security. Read more

Australia’s defence engagement in the context of Asian power shifts

26 July 2013

ASPI’s new report on Australia’s regional defence diplomacy focuses on assisting countries in our near region with military capacity building. I fully agree with my colleagues and the 2013 Defence White Paper (DWP) that defence engagement can be particularly helpful in improving the security of Pacific Island countries.

But I’m not as convinced of the value of defence diplomacy in the wider region, especially amidst the power shifts taking place in the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region, including in Southeast Asia. The main reason is that China’s strategic rise and its challenge to the existing regional security order, currently centred on America’s military presence, will add a degree of competition to defence relations that isn’t found in our near region. In short, it adds a much more competitive dimension to defence diplomacy, and Australia would be well advised to consider this when crafting its future defence engagement activities. Read more

The Korean War – 60 years on

26 July 2013

This weekend marks the 60th anniversary of the armistice between North and South Korea which ended the fighting of the Korean War but not technically the war; a formal peace treaty was never signed. Australia was heavily involved in the Korean War, committing 17,000 personnel, and we continue to have a very direct interest in peace on the peninsular because we’re a signatory of the 1953 ceasefire. Sixty years on, it’s worth looking at how both the North and South have fared, and what it means for Australia.

One of the biggest surprises is that there still is a North Korea. Since the early 1990s, DPRK watchers have been falsely predicting that the country would collapse, but instead the North endures, and has even undergone two dynastic successions. Today Kim Jong-un is reshuffling his military hierarchy, ‘retiring’ several Generals from his father’s era and appointing new ones. It remains a belligerent state that has pursued nuclear and missile programs. There have been a string of provocative acts from North Korea: most recently, a successful launch of its long-range Unha-3 missile in December 2012 and a third nuclear test in February this year. In response, the US has made attempts to encourage DPRK to denuclearise, but there’s little chance of success considering the North’s recalcitrance and cases such as Libya that further dissuade Pyongyang. Read more

Another BRIC in the wall

25 July 2013

Is Russia about to become another brick in the wall between Fiji and its Western friends? The official visit by Fiji’s Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, to Russia in late June has further developed a relationship that has been growing significantly closer over the last two years.

In the course of the visit, he and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed five agreements, covering topics from financial security cooperation and the abolition of visa requirements through MOUs on health and University cooperation to military-technical cooperation. For a brief hyperbolic moment, Fiji media reports prior to the visit even suggested that Russia was about to open an embassy in Suva to substantially deepened the political relationship. Read more