Strategist Article Archives - Page 1154 of 1181

Canberra: here one day, still here the next

10 February 2013

The internal operations and habits of Canberra’s national security and intelligence departments have altered dramatically over the past four decades. The machinery went from manual to electric typewriters, and now from Microsoft into the Cloud. Smoking fell while women rose. The internal remaking of departments is mild when compared with the way the world beyond Canberra has shifted (breaking news: colonialism expired, as did communism.). But when it comes to the actual departments—names and roles—the rigidity is remarkable.

As my previous column remarked, Canberra’s institutional structure is little changed over 30 to 40 years. What Arthur Tange did to Defence in the 1970s and Justice Hope did to the intelligence community in his two Royal Commission reports in 1974–77 and 1984 remain the default settings.

The existing beasts have certainly evolved, but none have departed the jungle and new creatures are rare. Like the National Security Adviser before it, the Cyber Security Centre announced by the Prime Minister in her National Security Strategy should one day grow to have a distinct role in the jungle. For the next few years, however, the Centre will be an act of creation, with an identity to be formed by the struggle (tug-of-war, even) involved in getting the best out of the vastly different cultures and world views of the Defence Signals Directorate and the Attorney-General’s Department.

It’s theoretically possible for nerds, lawyers and cops to communicate, even co-exist, but co-habitation? Julia Gillard’s injunction about silo-busting will get an extended workout. History says the lawyers and the cops shouldn’t be too sanguine about lording it over the nerds. The Air Force thought it should own the new cyber domain, but in that previous bureaucratic dogfight it was outflown by DSD. Read more

How far can we raise the cyber stakes?

8 February 2013

It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the world of cyber security, and it’s been a period that defines the discussion in new ways. Not only did the New York Times directly accuse the Chinese military of hacking activity, the US government released a legal review of its cyber policies which included the ability to order a pre-emptive strike. The two aren’t directly related, but it’s hard to ignore the coincidence of both revelations in the same week, with the stakes in the cyber world being raised yet again.

Over the past decade it’s been hard to escape reports of Chinese hacking of government and private sector computer systems. What makes the New York Times’ hacking worth further examination is the directness and detail of the accusations and what the NYT stands to lose as a business.

To recap, the NYT had been subject to sustained hacking for four months, beginning after the paper published a story in October last year regarding Wen Jiabao’s relatives accumulating several billion dollars through various business dealings during his time in power. The release of this story led to the Chinese government blocking access to the newly launched (June 2012) NYT Chinese language site, and censoring searches for the paper online. In addition, telecommunications company AT & T informed the NYT that it had noticed behaviour ‘consistent with other attacks believed to have been perpetrated by the Chinese military’. It’s not known how the hackers initially accessed the systems, but a ‘spear-phishing’ attack, (an email with an inconspicuous attachment which contains malware) is suspected. The various details of the hacking process are fascinating to read. Read more

Countering violent extremism: an online approach

8 February 2013

Andrew Smith’s recent post correctly notes the importance of programs designed to counter violent extremism (CVE) in Australia. He points out that there have been concerns that Australian CVE projects may be missing their target by focusing on community empowerment rather than counter extremism. I’ve argued in the past that this was a major concern in the UK and we should learn from this mistake here.

But we also need to be careful not to confuse efforts to counter violent radicalisation from programs promoting social cohesion. Cohesion work should be led by departments like community services and counter radicalisation efforts led by the police. In particular, it’s important to target those individuals who promote extremist views or who are involved in extremist networks. We also need robust measures to gauge the effectiveness of different CVE projects.

I’d like to also expand on a point Andrew raises in his post about the role of the internet in garnering support for violent extremism. As Andrew notes, some individuals will have been radicalised, at least in part, on the internet via channels like AQAP’s Inspire magazine. Countering online radicalisation should therefore be a key priority in the Australian government’s CVE efforts.

In the context of South East Asia, a joint paper from ASPI with RSIS in Singapore has mapped out several approaches to tackle the problem. For example, governments can spread community information about online radicalisation, encourage counter narratives to challenge extremism, take down certain websites and use the material online for strategic intelligence. Despite a call to ban or filter such material (see Chapter 6) this isn’t practical, and would undermine intelligence efforts to pursue home grown extremists. Read more

Getting Japan right

7 February 2013

At first glance, it appears that the recent election results in Japan and the early policy pronouncements of the Abe government indicate that Japan has shifted significantly to the right and that this will increase strategic tensions in Northeast Asia. The evidence seems clear and plentiful:

The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan’s return to office after only one term in opposition via a thumping electoral victory (LDP 294 seats out of 480 up from 119 in 2009)
The electoral humbling of the nominally left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ 57 seats, down from 308 in 2009)
The rise from nowhere of the Japan Restoration Party co-led by arch-nationalist Shintaro Ishihara (JRP 54 seats in its inaugural election)
The return of the nationalist Shinzo Abe as prime minister
The prevalence of nationalist revisionists in his cabinet
Abe’s commitment to reverse Japan’s decade-long decline in defence spending
Abe’s call to amend the Japanese ‘peace’ constitution
The escalation of the Japan-China territorial dispute over the Japanese administered Senkaku islands from simmering to bubbling

The South Korean and Chinese media have certainly read the evidence this way, while authoritative voices in Australia have jumped in early to chastise the new Abe government along these lines. Reading the evidence this way is useful for China and Korea as it puts the onus of blame on the new Japanese government for any further increase in regional tensions and revives the spectre of Japanese ‘militarism’ in the minds of their own people. Read more

Barry Wain: an Australian who didn’t wait for the ‘Asian Century’

7 February 2013

If Australia is to have a true place in the Asian Century, as the government White Paper promised, then we will need many more Australians like the journalist and editor, Barry Wain.

Barry, who has died in Singapore at the age 68, made his life in East Asia and went to the very top of his craft. He was the editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal and his biography of Mahathir Mohammad is the best and most balanced yet produced on that mercurial Malaysian leader.

An editor who suffered so much journalist pain during the ‘Asian values’ arguments mounted by Mahathir (and Lee Kuan Yew) went on to produce a dispassionate and nuanced assessment of Mahathir’s career. This was no irony for anyone who knew Barry Wain as the most professional of journalists. The care and caution he brought to his role as editor could never quite disguise the joy and juice he got from chasing a story and breaking a yarn.

When Wain left the Canberra Press Gallery in 1971, he broke with a well-established tradition of Australian hackdom. He did not sail to England and Fleet Street. Instead, he headed to East Asia to start a life-long commitment, working in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and just about anywhere else in the region where a plane could land. He went not as a war correspondent but as a reporter who wanted to live and work in a region that was reaching for the economic muscle to match the still fresh aims of national independence. Read more

Getting Australia’s ‘strategic interests’ right

7 February 2013

The new National Security Strategy (NSS) is meant to set the context for the next Defence White Paper, scheduled for release later this year. But it falls short on one key point. While NSS provides a good coverage of Australia broad security interests, it could’ve better elaborated Australia’s strategic worldview. The 2000 and 2009 Defence White Papers included a chapter called ‘Australia’s Strategic Interests’, however the image of strategic interests sketched out in these was limited, reactive, and heavily defence-oriented. When the Defence Minister spoke at both ASPI and Lowy functions in August last year, he outlined Australia’s strategic interests in the same way—and no one raised so much as an eyebrow.

However, there’s a problem in seeing Australia’s strategic interests merely as ‘those national security interests… in relation to which Australia might contemplate the use of force,’ as the 2009 White Paper put it. For one thing, this approach puts the cart before the horse—making us think first about where we might be willing (and able) to use force and then defining our strategic interests accordingly.

The potential use of force is of course where the Defence Department focuses its attention and, as a result, it tends to frame the debate in those terms. In the 2009 Defence White Paper, our Defence Department lists our ‘most basic strategic interest’ as defending the continent of Australia from armed attack. ‘Most basic’ is apparently meant to mean ‘most important’ strategic interest, given another phrase where a secure neighbourhood is described as ‘our next most important strategic interest’. The security, stability and cohesion of our immediate neighbourhood, including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, New Zealand and the South Pacific island states falls under this section. Read more

Defence industry cooperation in Asia: bad and good news

6 February 2013

Two big developments last week highlighted both the difficulties and the opportunities for Australian defence industry to make headway (as Australia sees it) in the so-called Asian century. The first development relates to a lost opportunity with a South Korean firm, the other to a potentially huge opportunity with Japan. To give these stories a bit of context, it’s worth highlighting how the Asian Century White Paper described prospects for cooperation with our current second and sixth biggest trading partners:

The more advanced economies in the region—particularly Japan and South Korea—will remain important drivers of economic activity, especially as suppliers of critical, high‑value elements of the region’s production networks and as consumers of final goods.

Imagine the disappointment the report’s authors would have felt last week to learn that a major South Korean firm, the Poongsan Corporation, had pulled out of an arrangement with Raytheon Australia and Chemring Australia to tender for our domestic munitions manufacturing. The managing Director of Poongsan was quoted in the Australian Financial Review (paywalled) expressing concerned about the ‘acquisition system in Australia’ and that ‘the sovereign risk … the Australian program represents to Korean companies has become too large to ignore’. Read more

China’s dangerous brinkmanship in maritime Northeast Asia

6 February 2013

China’s behaviour over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute with Japan is deeply worrisome. It not only displays a level of brinkmanship which could easily lead to war, it also seems to be part of a broader maritime ‘probing’ strategy designed to constantly test the resolve of Japan and its US ally. The result could be even greater instability in Northeast Asia.

At least twice in the past two weeks, Chinese forces directed a fire-control radar at a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) vessel and helicopter. The key question is whether such dangerous crisis management reflects a deliberate strategy on the part of Beijing or if it was due to a lack of coordination among the key actors. According to media reports, the later seems closer to the truth. It seems that only now is China’s management of the dispute under direct command and coordination of a top-level task force led by General Secretary Xi Jinping.

All good then? Not necessarily. While a direct military confrontation over the islands can hopefully be avoided this time, future prospects for Northeast Asian stability look rather grim. For one, the establishment of the task force shows that maritime disputes with Japan have now assumed the same status as the Chinese aim of reunification with Taiwan. That means that compromise over this issue will likely be extremely difficult and a constant source of friction between Japan and China. It will also further complicate China’s strategic relationship with the United States. Read more

John Kerry and Pakistan: the road ahead

6 February 2013

The United States now has a new Secretary of State, and of John Kerry’s major challenges will be to manage the relationship with Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that is increasingly showing signs of fragility. The good news is that the appointment of Kerry should, on the whole, be well received in Pakistan.

Pakistan has always considered John Kerry to be more sympathetic to its security concerns than Hillary Clinton. And while US–Pakistan relations have improved in the last six months, bilateral relations between the two countries were for mostly poor under Clinton’s watch. Relations were particularly bad for about 8 months in 2011–2012 when, following the killing of 25 Pakistani soldiers by NATO aircraft, Pakistan refused to allow NATO convoys to travel through the country to transport non-lethal material to the Coalition forces in Afghanistan. Only when Clinton finally delivered an apology of sorts did the convoys begin to roll again.

In contrast, it seems that John Kerry has been a force for good in the relationship, being instrumental in breaking two deadlocks over the past few years which has helped put the relationship back on track. The first followed the arrest of CIA operative Raymond Davies by Pakistani authorities for the suspected murder of two Pakistanis in Lahore in January 2011. When claims of diplomatic immunity for Davis failed, Kerry was sent in to negotiate a customary solution in which blood money was paid to the victims’ family and to request they absolve the accused under Islamic law. After Kerry’s visit, Davis was released. In May 2011 Kerry’s help was again sought, this time to help end a deep freeze following the covert operation on Pakistani territory that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden by US Navy SEALs. According to reports, Pakistan was only informed of the raid once it was over. Read more

Andrew Davies and Jim Molan talk strategy: round 2

5 February 2013

Here’s part II of the Andrew Davies–Jim Molan strategy debate, with part I here:

Andrew Davies: Jim, to what extent do you see the force in being as an expansion base as insurance against a future that’s worse than now?

Jim Molan: Well, it’s more than just an expansion base. You can’t put all capability off into the future—you have to have some now. In the past we [Defence advisers to government] assumed preparation times that were outside the possibility of impacting on the current force. In other words, we bet that we wouldn’t need the capability we eventually aspired to in the short term. Time has proven it to be the case, but it’s a risk and it mightn’t be true in future. If you’re going to cut the force, you can measure the risk, for example by wargaming. The problem is that no one outside of Defence has any understanding of that risk, so there’s no downside to government in cutting money to defence. We believed the government in 2009 when they said we need more and we’ll believe them in 2013 when they say we don’t need as much.

Andrew: OK, let’s talk budgets. It seems to me there are three ways you can go if the government sticks to the line of reduced money on defence. The ADF can get smaller, or it can be of lower quality, or it can defer capability until later. While I agree with you about warning times and risk, it’s hard to see a power projection risk against Australia in the next decade that’s worth worrying too much about. No one out there is going to have power projection capabilities that even a moderately competent ADF couldn’t deal with. So let me put a concrete proposal as an example. Let’s say we decide that we don’t need a submarine capability in the near term of the sort that drove the Collins specifications and which seems to be driving the future submarine. Instead, let’s buy the Navy some smaller European boats that aren’t in themselves the strategic submarine capability we think we might need down the track, but which can be used as a stepping off point into a future generation of more capable line of submarines. What’s wrong with that line of reasoning? Read more