Strategist Article Archives - Page 1157 of 1182

Challenges for South Korea’s new president

30 January 2013

Ms Park Geun-hye, a conservative leader, was elected as South Korea’s new president in a general election last month and is due to take office in a few days’ time. And, while Northeast Asia may seem outside Australia’s field of direct security focus, South Korea is nevertheless going to be an important partner for Australia, as flagged in the Asian Century White Paper and the newly released National Security Strategy. Park has been known in the past for a tough stance on North Korea, having demanded a formal apology from the North for former acts of aggression and once rejected the idea of holding talks with the North ‘just for the sake of having a meeting’. While she won by a narrow margin of just 3.5%, the win signalled that perhaps the majority of South Koreans would prefer a harder-line security and defence policy to manage the North Korean threat and address rising tensions with Japan. There’s no doubt that Park has her work cut out for her with those issues while guiding South Korea through a potentially turbulent period as China and the United States increasingly vie for influence in North Asia and beyond.

Some analysts believe that Park will try to walk a middle ground between the hostile and conciliatory approaches towards North Korea of former governments, and will attempt to blend elements of both. So far, Park has opened dialogue with the North and agreed to continue providing food and medical aid. But she’s also said that North Korea’s nuclear threats ‘will not be tolerated’. So, she’s tougher than Moon who lost the race for the Presidency, but she’s not so tough that she won’t continue dialogue and aid. We’re yet to see whether Park will be effective in reigning in Northern aggression—in response to recent tightening of existing sanctions by the UNSC, the North has threatened to conduct further missile tests as well as a third nuclear weapon test. How Park reacts to a third nuclear test will be a test of her character and her policy. Read more

Australia’s National Security Strategy: it’s more than Asia

29 January 2013

The release of Australia’s new National Security Strategy raises a number of issues, of which two seem preeminent. One is a growing gap between the opinions of the media and public and those of the small groups concerned with policy advice and policymaking. The other is an equally significant gap between policy guidance intended to seem stable and predictable over a few years and the realities of an increasing unpredictable and volatile international environment.

At first sight the paper seems carefully phased, largely appropriate and, as Michael l’Estrange has pointed out, even subtle. Its statement of principles seems obvious. Many of its views go, helpfully, far beyond the generalities of previous white papers. One example is the priority given to cyber security. That inevitably involves not just attention to countries in other quarters of the world but to a variety of non-state, criminal and mobile individuals and groups who might be located anywhere. They pose multiple threats; industrial espionage or the theft of patents, hacking into private email and other communications or penetration of government and intelligence agency computers. Some may even have no interest in Australian secrets per se but seek access to US or British intelligence or defence networks via Australian systems. The origins of such threats can’t be geographically defined.

Nevertheless, there’s much in this policy statement, especially in its generalisations, that is debatable. ‘Asia’, ‘the Asia-Pacific’, and especially the ’Asian Century’ are abstractions, not ways of describing reality. ‘Asia’ is not a unit economically, politically, demographically or in any other way. China and Japan are almost at daggers drawn, as are India and Pakistan. China is not within sight of matching the United States, militarily or economically, nor in innovation. Even if China’s GDP overtakes the US, that will be a mere statistical aggregate, bearing no necessary relation to global financial or military power, technological leadership or innovative capacity. Not for nothing has China in the last 30 years sent 2.5 million students abroad to developed countries. Read more

Submarines and maritime strategy – part 1

29 January 2013

Nic Stuart’s enquiry regarding the need for submarines, asks the reader to think back to the very beginning, the 2009 Defence White Paper. Yet, 2009 is hardly an appropriate start point if we are to adequately grasp the need for submarines, or understand broader Australian maritime strategy.

The real beginning was 1901. In the years following Federation, the fledgling Australian Government sought to understand its needs for the defence of the realm. On 7 April 1902 Major General Hutton, Commandant of the Military Forces of the Commonwealth, noted:

The defence of Australia cannot… be considered apart from the defence of Australian interests. Australia depends for its commercial success and its future development firstly upon its seaborne trade and secondly upon the existence, maintenance, and extension of fixed and certain markets for its produce outside Australian waters. It therefore follows that Australian interests cannot be assured by the defence alone of Australian soil.

The Commonwealth first seriously considered acquiring submarines in 1907. Alongside the mix of destroyers and cruisers that made up the first fleet unit, Australia eventually elected to purchase three submarines, and in 1914 the first two, AE1 and AE2, arrived at Sydney. So began Australia’s nearly 100-year association with submarines, running through the J, O and Oberon classes, until Collins in the 1990s and the current debate. Read more

The Australian National Security Strategy: still under construction?

28 January 2013

The new National Security Strategy has much to commend it in terms of ambition and intent, although its real strength is probably as a comprehensive public information overview document. This is an important matter in a democracy, where the great Departments of State expend society’s resources in trying to achieve agreed national goals.

There’ll be many who will comment on the Strategy’s judgments on the strategic environment and threats, but the conceptual framework it’s built upon will probably escape much scrutiny. While a less exciting aspect, it’s worth examining how the framework sharply constrains the Strategy and unfortunately diminishes its overall value.

Firstly, the Strategy isn’t a grand strategy unlike, for instance, the American National Security Strategy (PDF). A grand strategy is concerned with the development and allocation of resources—manpower, money, materiel, legitimacy and soft power. The Australian National Security Strategy glances backwards to last year’s budget allocations but otherwise is uninhibited by resource considerations. Also, rather than guiding the full range of the instruments of national power, the Australian Strategy focuses strongly on hard power instruments, including border security and law enforcement as well as the ADF. There’s little mention of the economic, diplomatic or informational instruments. Read more

ASPI suggests: Australia Day edition

25 January 2013

Happy Australia Day! Coming to you from Jakarta once again, here’s a jam-packed edition of ASPI suggests, our collection of links, reports and news from the security, defence and strategy world for your long weekend reading pleasure.

Internship applications are now open

We’ll kick off with good news: applications for the Round 2 2013 (1 April 2013 – 1 December 2013) ASPI Research Internship Program open today!

The ASPI Research Internship Program is a great opportunity for recent graduates to acquire practical experience in how strategic policy advice is developed and delivered to government. Interns work in a paid research assistant capacity, under the guidance of one of our senior staff. You’ll get the opportunity to make a real contribution to developing strategic policy advice, and in the process, gain some valuable ‘on the job’ training.

Australian citizens who have recently graduated from undergraduate or postgraduate studies in a field relevant to ASPI’s research programs are eligible to apply. Applications close 15 February, see here for more details. Read more

National Security: the decade after the decade before

25 January 2013

In strategy it’s the big judgements about security that matter— they set the context for all the policy decisions that follow. In Strong and Secure: A Strategy for Australia’s National Security, launched by the Prime Minister this week, there’s no bigger judgement than that Australia has a ‘positive’ and ‘benign’ security outlook. It’s worth tracking the use of these words in the Strategy. In her foreword Prime Minister Gillard says:

Some 12 years [after 9/11], our strategic outlook is largely positive. We live in one of the safest and most cohesive nations in the world. We have a strong economy. A major war is unlikely.

In chapter four, which reviews Australia’s strategic outlook, we read:

An assessment of the strategic environment suggests that the outlook for Australia’s national security over the next decade is largely positive. Major conflict is unlikely and we have a proactive, effective and adaptive national security capability to respond to challenges as they unfold.

The use of the word ‘benign’ is in a section titled ‘National Security Risks’:

The current international environment is unlikely to see war between major powers. However, it is characterised by shifting power balances, strategic and economic competition, and territorial disputes. This competition brings a degree of uncertainty and complexity to the relatively benign global landscape.

Graph(s) of the week: expensive ships or a big fleet – you may only pick one

24 January 2013

For the first graph of 2013 we’re going back to a topic that has been exercising the minds of force planners around the world for decades: how can we keep up with the rising unit cost of military platforms? The short answer is ‘we can’t’, except by expending an ever greater proportion of national wealth on military equipment, and the graphs below tell the story.

In the first figure, the blue data points are the number of major combatants in the USN from 1960 to the current date. The red line—labelled the ‘fleet affordability index’—is the number of vessels that would be expected if the USN had fixed buying power across the period. It shows how the USN’s fleet would be expected to decline if the sole driver was the increasing cost of vessels. It’s calculated by taking the RAND Corporation’s estimate of the increasing real cost of naval vessels—a 2.1% real increase per annum—and compounding it. As the curve shows, the USN bucked the trend for a while as the Vietnam War was at its peak in the late 1960s, and again in the Reagan build-up years of the 1980s. But economics has a habit of coming back to bite, and as defence spending returns to the long term trend, so too the fleet size inexorably heads back towards the ‘line of fixed buying power’ represented by the fleet affordability index.

Sources: USN fleet size from http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm. Cost index curve from RAND Corporation estimates of unit price increase.

A strategy as a statement

24 January 2013

Having nearly a five year gap between ‘annual’ national security statements does offer one benefit—the chance to compare and contrast successive documents to assess directions and decisions. PM Gillard quietly disposed of the ‘annual’ burden in two ways. First, she trumped the National Security Statement Kevin Rudd issued in 2008 (PDF), with a grander sounding National Security Strategy. Second, she announced that the strategy will be renewed on a five-year cycle.

There is an element of Spinal Tap message management in going from a mere statement to the grand plains of strategy. But the shift makes sense at several levels beyond the political. The new five-year schedule for national security updates comes into line with the five-year cycle of Defence White Papers. Certainly, this strategy document settles some of the conceptual parameters for the White Paper that Defence is expected to issue by mid-year. And in a parallel with the Defence Capability Plan, there’s to be a National Security Capability Plan.

The National Security Strategy is the bridge that links the optimistic liberal internationalism of the Asia Century White Paper (we are all going to trade our way to happiness) to the state-based realism of the Defence White Paper (as Gillard expressed it, ‘the most basic expression of our sovereignty’). Read more

India and the Indo-Pacific: three approaches

24 January 2013

The rapid expansion of trade, investment and production linkages in the area spanning the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, coupled with the shift of economic power from the trans-Atlantic to Asia, has given rise to a push to have the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region recognised as a single geo-strategic arc. But while the concept has gained currency, there has been insufficient attention paid to the geopolitical and geoeconomic drivers behind its emergence in particular national contexts.

In India, for instance, there are three distinct ways of approaching the Indo-Pacific concept. The first accepts the notion of the Indo-Pacific and sees it as a way to bring about a change in the direction of Indian foreign policy. Analysts like Bramha Chellaney, who want India to abandon its traditional non-aligned stance or who see China as a strategic threat, promote a vision of the Indo-Pacific in which India, together with the democracies of the region—the United States, Australia and Japan—take the lead in shaping the economic and security architecture of the region.

The second approach, however, rejects the Indo-Pacific idea on the basis that it’s potentially detrimental to India’s foreign policy goals. Commentators like D. Gnanagurunathan express scepticism about Indo-Pacific regionalism. They argue that adopting the ‘Indo-Pacific’ terminology is unnecessary and could mean that India would be aligned too closely with American interests. In their view, the maintenance of India’s autonomy to decide which countries to engage with is integral to its foreign policy interests. They argue that India’s strategic objectives are best met through engagement with countries in the region through forums such as the East Asia Summit and ASEAN, rather than new military partnerships. Read more

Failure in Afghanistan? Not so fast …

23 January 2013

The Afghanistan mission has largely dropped off the political radar screen, but the public verdict seems clear: we’ll fail in our overall objective of leaving behind a stable country after 2014. Worse, Australian soldiers may have died in vain. However, I think there’s a case to be made that we still have a good chance to succeed, provided we get the next phase in the transition period right.

Our key objective isn’t to turn Afghanistan into a ‘Switzerland of west Asia’. Instead, it’s to prevent the country from ever again becoming a safe haven for international terrorism and a source of instability in South Asia. That means keeping the Taliban at arm’s length once the bulk of Western forces leave, to prevent them from regaining control over large parts of the country.

To do that, we first have to acknowledge some ‘Afghan realities’. The first is that our efforts at Western-style governance in Kabul have failed. The Karzai government has not only failed to develop into a viable political institution but has even actively opposed greater accountability and empowerment of other branches of government. As well, a heavily centralised government in Kabul will have minimal influence in the provinces in the coming years. Instead, the political structure of Afghanistan will be more than that of a loose Federation, so there’ll be local Afghan solutions for both governance and security, especially across the Pashtun area, the Taliban’s traditional stronghold. The Taliban will be a central political force in the southern parts and there will be a re-emergence of traditional forms of law and order that the west wouldn’t necessarily endorse. Read more