Strategist Article Archives - Page 1134 of 1186

US extended nuclear assurance: hiding in plain sight

11 June 2013

There’s been a resurgence of interest in recent years among Australian academics in the issue of US extended nuclear assurance to its Asian allies in general and to Australia in particular. I’ve written on this issue, but so too have Andrew O’Neill (PDF), Stephan Fruehling, Ron Huisken (PDF), and Richard Tanter, to name just some of the contributors.

One particular point has often generated a degree of confusion and uncertainty—the question of whether Washington has ever actually extended a nuclear guarantee to Australia. This isn’t a trivial question. In a submission (PDF) to the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade in March 2004, Ron Huisken observed that he knew of no specific US commitment to extend nuclear assurance to Australia. Australians, said Huisken, had often ‘claimed’ a US nuclear guarantee, and Washington had never contradicted those claims, but it wasn’t clear the US had ever actually provided a guarantee. Read more

Australia’s disarmament double-speak

11 June 2013

Australia, like most nations, is happy to voice support at the UN for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. Even the P5 nuclear powers endorse this “ultimate” goal: in 2000 they famously made an “unequivocal undertaking” to eliminate their nuclear arsenals completely, although little progress has been made since then, and all are now investing heavily in the modernization of their nuclear stockpiles with the clear intention of retaining them for many decades to come. Australia’s disarmament declarations, like those of the P5 states, should be taken with a grain of salt.

There are fundamental contradictions in our government’s policies on nuclear weapons, as Tanya Ogilvie-White pointed out in her recent blog post. Australia rightly condemns countries such as North Korea for pursuing the bomb, and expresses dismay at the 17-year impasse in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament. But at the same time it claims reliance on US nuclear weapons for security, and supports nuclear targeting and missile defence through Pine Gap in Central Australia. When it comes to the worst weapons of mass destruction, our foreign and defence policies appear at odds with each other. Read more

China’s disputes with Europe offer clues

10 June 2013

The conflicts—some might be better described as spats—between China and a number of European countries might provide as many clues about China’s aspirations and behaviour as anything said in California between Barack Obama and Xi Jinping.

The sharpest issue of the moment is a trade dispute over the European Union’s intention to slap heavy duties on solar panels from China on the ground that they’re suspected of being heavily subsidised and sold below their true cost, being dumped on the European market. The EU has given China a couple of months’ reprieve to disprove the dumping allegation but if it fails to satisfy the EU within that time, then the duties will rise to an average of 47.6% from the present rate of nearly 12%. Read more

We’ll be back tomorrow

9 June 2013

It’s the Queen’s birthday public holiday here in Canberra so we’ll be back tomorrow with our usual considered analysis, stats and graphs for your reading pleasure. The Strategist team

Image courtesy of Flickr user Commonwealth Secretariat.

ASPI suggests

7 June 2013

Barack Obama and Xi Jinping will meet in California this Friday and Saturday. The extended and comparatively informal meeting has the potential to shape the relationship of the two leaders, and of their countries. It has been called a ‘chance to recast the century’s most important bilateral relationship’, and the ‘last, best chance’ to lay the foundations for peace in Asia in the coming decades. Cyber security (see this week’s new report from ASPI on China’s cyber capabilities) and North Korea (a view on that subject here from Ross Terrill) are also likely to be on the agenda.

Despite the concerns of Asia and the ‘rebalance’, the Obama administration has old problems too (from CSIS):

The United States cannot afford to blunder its way into staying in Afghanistan, or to blunder its way out by making the wrong decisions about whether and how to stay.

Also on the Middle East, this week France and Britain released statements confirming their view that chemical weapons have been used in Syria. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said that ‘there is no doubt that it was the regime and its accomplices’ had used sarin gas. Obama’s response continues to be cautious. Read more

Securing infrastructure

7 June 2013

Failure to adequately invest in critical infrastructure that provides essential functions and services for our society practically guarantees we’ll see failures of critical systems when they’re put under stress by extreme weather events.

The Australian government’s Climate Commission recently released a report arguing that we’re likely to see a greater spate of deadly and destructive weather events. Not being well prepared for dealing with extreme weather events is very expensive. The tab for the damage to public infrastructure across Queensland in the 2011 floods alone was between $5 and $6 billion (PDF, p15). Read more

Asian gazing (6): The gosh and gee of the g2

6 June 2013

The big O and the big X are to meet at a big summit in what is a vital small ‘g’ moment—the creation of the g2. I’ll call the US–China talks the group of 2 rather than Group of 2 to suggest its partial and hesitant birth—lower case as well as low key in its expression.

Washington and Beijing deny any intent to create a condominium that will jointly rule. That denial has many purposes, not least to deny offence to all the other powers that would sit beneath the g2. A partial, even conflicted, condominium beats the cacophony that we’ve had around here recently. All the recent noise proves why this summit needs to seek the sort of understandings essential for g2. Read more

Asian gazing (part V): Australia & Indonesia on boats and jokes

6 June 2013

Tony Abbott’s ‘stop the boats’ promise is going to test Australia’s relationship with Indonesia in several important ways. Not least in this looming test will be the issue of which side has the ability to impose its priorities and define the norms in play.

Electoral timetables also matter. The polls say Abbott is cruising towards a big win in Australia’s September election. These days, though, elections also change things in Indonesia. And next year’s presidential poll in Indonesia is an all change moment as SBY departs the scene.

The uncertain politics of Indonesia mean this is not a great time for Australia to be seeking wink-and-nod deals on issues that Indonesia’s politicians, press and people will see as sailing close to Indonesia’s sovereignty and status. Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, used the Asia Pacific Roundtable in Kuala Lumpur to again push back at any Australian shift to push back boats carrying asylum seekers from Indonesia to Australia. Read more

Squaring up for round one – cyber intrusion knock out

6 June 2013

In his recent post, Graeme Dobell described Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s comments on Chinese cyber intrusions at the Shangri La dialogue as ‘pulling back the Chinese veil and jabbing’. This is certainly a great analogy, and it could be said that Hagel took the boxing gloves from other colleagues in the US Administration, including John Kerry, Thomas Donilon (National Security Advisor, to be replaced in July by Susan Rice) and Obama himself. With the amount of jabbing that the US is doing, there must be a few bruises appearing on their target.

The aim of this high tempo ‘calling out’ of China is really to draw them into a dialogue about the issue and try to draw up some rules of the road and set some limitations on the use of cyber, which feels somewhat out of control at the moment. The levels and severity of cyber intrusions are hard to gauge precisely, but what’s evident from increasing amounts of evidence in the public domain is that it’s only now that we’re beginning to understand quite how much malicious activity there is in cyberspace. Read more

Amphibiosity – how much is enough?

5 June 2013

I’m not surprised that Jim Molan took issue with my recent post on amphibious operations. It’s clear by now that Jim is far less comfortable with the current resourcing of the ADF than I am. Or, as I’d prefer to cast it, Jim thinks spending more on Defence would retire more strategic risk than I think it would.

But the first thing to do is to agree what we disagree about. Jim interpreted my post as saying that the LHDs should be relegated to serving out their lives involved in ‘only regional operations for Australian military capabilities, most likely involving predominantly humanitarian assistance’. Well, no. The capability that these ships will bring goes far beyond the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and will provide government with more options and will deliver a greater end effect than their much less capable predecessors. Below is a figure I use in Staff College lectures to frame the discussion on amphibious operations. This (admittedly simplified) model characterises operations in terms of their logistic complexity and the degree of opposition they face.