Strategist Article Archives - Page 1135 of 1186

Asian gazing (part IV): the logic and consensus of the US pivot

5 June 2013

Washington’s political deadlock and partisan bloodletting has reached the point that a former US diplomat compares the Congressional confirmation hearings for ambassador appointees to a hostage siege in Beirut. The observation is from Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs for Bush’s administration, speaking at the Asia Pacific Roundtable in Kuala Lumpur.

The hostage siege comment was an aside in speech on the US pivot that carried the headline ‘Continuity and Change in US engagement with Asia’. The lack of much bipartisanship on almost any subject in Washington underlines the significance of the fact that there is a solid US consensus on the rebalance. The consensus is for the facts and force of the policy shift, even if there’s some argument about what the policy should be named.

Hill’s speech title goes to one of the key arguments in Asian strategic star gazing at the moment: Is the pivot just more of the same with a bit of re-badging, or does it mark a significant shift in the weight and focus of US grand strategy? As an official from the previous administration, it’s no surprise that Hill saw much continuity in the rebalance. Read more

Australia celebrates Africa’s rise

5 June 2013

Africa Day (25th May) was celebrated across Australia, with numerous events held to mark the occasion over the last two weeks. It’s an opportunity to honour Africa’s diverse cultures and achievements and is a commemoration of the signing on the 25 May 1963 of the founding charter of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)—now the African Union. The charter was signed by 30 African leaders, of the then 32 independent states of Africa. The key objectives of the OAU were to unite newly independent Africa states and to free all other African states from colonial rule and white minority governments.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the charter, providing a chance to assess the momentous changes that have occurred on the continent in the last five decades. The African Studies Association of Australasia and Pacific sponsored Africa Day events at both Flinders University and Griffith University. The Australian National University hosted an Africa Update conference which examined Africa–Australia relations. And the Centre for Dialogue, at La Trobe University hosted ex-PM and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd who presented the inaugural Australia–Africa dialogue address, ‘Africa–Australia relations: Challenges and Prospects’.

Rudd had a lot of positive things to say about the rise of Africa. He highlighted the rapid economic growth taking place in many African states and the progress made in improving governance, stability and security on the continent. Rudd stated that “part of this dialogue is to convey this basic economic message to Australia’s businesses: that Africa is open for business.” Read more

Australian shipbuilding—Pretty Woman III?

4 June 2013

The 1990 classic film Pretty Woman with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts was full of great lines, but the best belonged to veteran actor Ralph Bellamy near the end of the film. Bellamy plays the role of James Morse, an aging naval shipbuilder under threat from ruthless corporate raider Edward Lewis (played by Richard Gere). After falling for the charm of Vivian Ward (played memorably by Julia Roberts) he relents and, rather than strip the assets from Morse’s firm, he goes into business with him. Morse strides out of the meeting with Lewis to announce:

Mr Lewis and I are going to build ships together, great big ships.

The point about Pretty Woman is that it’s Gere’s character who receives redemption not Julia Roberts’, and this is the moment in the film when we know that he has. It’s a feel-good moment. Director Garry Marshall’s choice of naval shipbuilding was no accident. Gere’s character could not have been made good by going halves in a napalm plant or land mine factory. Of all the areas of defence production, naval shipbuilding is probably the most wholesome and surely the most iconic.

As an unavoidably labour-intensive activity, shipbuilding also captures the imagination of politicians eager to ‘create’ jobs. It also turns regular defence bureaucrats into central planners worthy of the Soviet Union. In a little over a decade, there’ve been two attempts by Defence to put out a long-term plan for naval shipbuilding in Australia. Read more

Philippines takes China’s dashes to UN

4 June 2013

“What belongs to us belongs to us,” Benigno S. Aquino III, President of the Philippines, said in a speech marking the 115th anniversary of the country’s navy. In January of this year the Philippines, rather boldly, and all alone, took China to an international tribunal over its nine-dash line on a map marking vast areas of the South China Sea over which China claims sovereignty. The broken line blithely includes islands that lie within 270 kilometres of the Philippines coast and which the Philippines claims is theirs under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

All five judges to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) have now been appointed. The case doesn’t need China’s agreement to proceed. China was offered the right to appoint an arbitrator but waived it.

The Chinese nine-dash map includes areas that have been claimed by the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and Vietnam. Taiwan’s claims echo those of China. No other country has joined the Philippines and Japan, which has a different territorial dispute with China, has also stayed to one side.

Joint warfighting as a solution to strategic uncertainty for the ADF

4 June 2013

Whenever I talk about leadership to various audiences, I use two concepts as illustrations.

The first I thought was my concept of risk management, until I Googled it and discovered that others had thought of it too. It solidified in my mind at the conclusion of the theatre strategic shaping operations for the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004. The organisation I headed had achieved so much over about three months and, when on the verge of handing the fight over to the Marines, there was a natural tendency to relax. What I’d learned the hard way over a long operational career was to stay ‘paranoid’—there could always be people looking to hurt us. But the paranoia has to be constructive and so ‘Constructive Paranoia’ as a personal concept was (re-)invented—a concept which generations of soldiers know from bitter experience to be true and have expressed in many different ways.

The second concept is borrowed with permission from the St James Ethics Centre where, as a director, I hang around with philosophers. Simon Longstaff gives an excellent presentation on ‘Constructive Subversion’ as a way of outflanking unthinking custom and practice, the greatest threat to effective leadership that I know. Read more

Asian gazing (part III): pivot to pirouette and prioritised posture

3 June 2013

The United States is doing a pirouette on its pivot. Or, to use preferred Pentagon prose on the pivot, the US is offering more detail about how it is shifting the pieces of military kit involved in the rebalance to Asia. The rule of 60% going to Asia is to be applied beyond the Navy to the Air Force and to US capabilities in the cyber and space domains.

Last year at Shangri-La, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta announced that 60% of the US Navy would be deployed to the Pacific by 2020:

By 2020 the Navy will reposture its forces from today’s roughly 50/50 split between the Pacific and the Atlantic to about a 60/40 split between those oceans. That will include six aircraft carriers in this region, a majority of our cruisers, destroyers, Littoral Combat Ships, and submarines.

Japan’s emerging amphibious capability

3 June 2013

What a change in threat perception can do: for years, Japan’s strategic establishment discussed the need to readjust the nation’s military posture to meet a changing external security environment, with nothing much coming from it. Enter China, and Japan has found a new resolve. Beijing is steadily building up its missile arsenal capable of hitting targets in Japan, including US bases. The dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from Tokyo’s view demonstrates a Chinese ‘probing’ strategy aimed at testing Japanese and American resolve in territorial conflicts. Recent claims by Chinese quasi-officials that even Japan’s Ryukyu Islands historically belonged to the Middle Kingdom have only exacerbated Tokyo’s concerns.

While Japan still heavily relies on US protection, it has started to shift its military posture towards what it calls a ‘Dynamic Defense Force’. One goal is to reorient the Ground Self-Defense Forces (GSDF) armoured forces, still largely based in the country’s north and geared towards resisting a ground invasion, towards operations in the southwest to help defend the islands against Chinese maritime assertiveness. While Japan has debated the development of an amphibious capability for over a decade, there are now signs of progress. Decision-makers in Tokyo have realised that the current GSDF contingent based on Yonaguni Island would be insufficient against a determined Chinese operation. Read more

Another drone kill in Pakistan

3 June 2013

The Pakistani Taliban (the TTP as it is known in Pakistan) has just taken a substantial hit with the death of of Wali-ur-Rehman, the number two of the TTP as a result of an un-manned US drone strike this week. This was confirmed by the TTP today.

Wali-ur-Rehman was a very nasty terrorist who, according to the Americans, had been responsible for an attack on a US base in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 which killed nine CIA employees. He had a $5 million US government bounty on his head.

While Rehman was considered less of a hard-liner than TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud, he directed most of his attention and efforts at fighting the Coalition forces in Afghanistan. He was also linked to the Haqqani Network, which is probably the most lethal anti-Afghan government Taliban force. Read more

Asian gazing (part II): the US jabs China

2 June 2013

One of the many complications of the US approach to China is the balance that has to be struck between caress and kick; between the language of engagement and estrangement. The Shangri-La speech by the new US Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel was notable for its specific kicks at China. This was a robust way to help set the scene for a summit between a re-elected US President and a new Chinese President.

Over the dozen years of the Shangri-La dialogue, the first-up speech by the US has become a tradition. Having heard most of those speeches, I’d venture a quick guess that the actual wordage devoted to China was a bit down this year, but the content was even more pointed. Hagel was not taking refuge in the usual US request for greater Chinese transparency. The phrase now used is a call for ‘clarity and predictability.’ Read more

ASPI suggests

31 May 2013

In case you missed it, yesterday was the launch of Mark Thomson’s magnus opus for the year, The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2013–2014. And the cost of Defence? It’s AUD$69,081,980.82 a day.

What about the cost of a UN peacekeeper? The answer is US$1,028 a month. David Bosco’s new Foreign Policy piece looks at the military and political value of the blue helmets which Colum Lynch describes as the “UN’s own caste system”: richer states foot the bill for UN peacekeeping while poorer ones provide the troops.

Who is Obama’s Kissinger? In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Michael Hirsch evaluates Hillary Clinton’s legacy and the soft-power touch to US foreign policy.

Xinhua news reports that Indonesia is developing its own ‘cyber army’ to combat attacks against government websites in recent years. The Indonesian Defence Ministry’s Director General of Security Potentials said that the ministry would develop a ‘National Cyber Security’ system. Read more