Strategist Article Archives - Page 1159 of 1182

The 2012 Madeleine Award: to strut, signal and stumble

20 January 2013

It’s time to announce the winner of the fourth Madeleine Award for the use of symbol, stunt, prop, gesture or jest in international affairs. This annual prize began life at The Lowy Interpreter in 2009, and is named after Madeleine Albright, in honour of her penchant for sending diplomatic messages via the brooches on her lapel.

The former US Secretary of State and Ambassador to the UN wore a golden brooch of a coiled snake to talk to the Iraqis, crabs and turtle brooches to symbolise the slow pace of Middle East talks, a huge wasp to needle Yasser Arafat, and a sun pin to support South Korea’s sunshine policy. Her favourite mistake was wearing a monkey brooch to a meeting with Vladimir Putin that caused the then Russian President to go ape.

The Madeleines are guided by the truth offered by the American grand strategist George Kennan: much that happens between nations is actually a form of theatre. On the international stage, states strut, signal and stumble, seeking to win through bluster and brio rather than bribery and bashing. All that effort needs to be both appreciated and graded.

On The Interpreter, the first three annual awards went to a seaworthy climate change stunt (an island nation holding a cabinet meeting beneath the waves), a brilliant bluff by a US diplomat that helped clinch a peace deal, and to the extraordinary Franco-German double act at the heart of the Euro crisis.

For the fourth annual Madeleines, The Strategist picks up this proud silly-season tradition and the quality of the contenders shows the enduring value of the award. Read more

Google in North Korea: Pyongyang kowtow or smart diplomacy?

18 January 2013

When Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson headed to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) last week, they certainly turned some heads. Many viewed their trip as undercutting Western efforts to secure even stronger sanctions following the North’s ballistic missile launch last month. They also have been chided for providing Kim Jong-un an opportunity to ‘convey a sense of legitimacy and international recognition and acceptance’ to his people. With a nuclear test apparently looming not far over the horizon, then why did Schmidt and Richardson journey to the Hermit Kingdom?

Well, it’s difficult to imagine that Schmidt was there to seize on the unrealised market potential of the North. Although some might speculate that DPRK may be ready to shift its Internet approach, there’s scant evidence to back that up that claim. North Korea is far more intent on developing cyber weapons than it is on building a digital economy and providing its people with a better standard of living. Even in the absence of a strong digital backbone, DPRK has emerged as one of the top cyber warfare states (and proliferators) in the world. The simple fact is that the DPRK doesn’t need Google to continue to advance its space, cyber, missile, nuclear, and conventional weapons programs. Until the regime prioritises its general economy alongside its military industrial complex, an open Internet policy is more of a liability than an asset.

While there have been glimmers of hope that Kim Jong-un might depart from his father’s isolationist tendencies, ‘experience tells us to be skeptical’, as Evans J.R. Revere so eloquently puts it. The problem is that the DPRK seems very comfortable serving as a case study for the more things change, the more they stay the same. Even though new power dynamics appear to be at play within the Kim Jong-un regime, the ways in which his government leverages international insecurity to achieve political objectives—through missile launches, arms proliferation, and nuclear tests—continue to fit the status quo pattern of behaviour set by his father, Kim Jong-Il. So far, we’ve witnessed only minor modifications. Read more

Indonesia: a small arms supplier for Australia?

18 January 2013

In a recent Centre of Gravity paper for the ANU (PDF), Tim Huxley rightly calls for closer Australian defence cooperation with Indonesia, and for Australia to enhance defence relations with Malaysia and Singapore. His observation that any relationship between Australia and Indonesia has to be a ‘two-way street’ also recognises the necessity of the relationship to being more mature than it currently is.

However Huxley’s comment that such a relationship might mean that Indonesia begins supplying Australia with ‘small arms and ammunition’ is (possibly deliberately) extremely provocative.

Like a number of advanced developing countries, such as Brazil, Indonesia has its own evolving defence-industrial base, and currently produces a range of small arms and ammunition, as well as larger systems. Like other arms producing countries, Indonesia will have political and economic reasons for exporting its military products; they enhance a country’s prestige and bring economies of scale for its own acquisitions (at least in theory). And Indonesia is clearly looking to position itself as an arms exporter. Read more

Pivot 2.0

17 January 2013

As we enter US President Barack Obama’s second term, one of the key strategic questions for Australia is what happens to America’s ‘pivot’ towards the Asia–Pacific. Announced in late 2011, it signalled a renewed US commitment to the region by strengthening and diversifying US military presence in the region. Later rebranded ‘rebalancing’, it was largely a reaction to allies and partners worrying about a more assertive China and about the possibility of Washington becoming more isolationist in the face its looming economic crisis.

Over the course of 2012, the US moved from rhetoric to incremental implementation. Apart from the announcement of plans to rotate US Marines through Darwin, Washington initiated similar discussions about greater rotational access with the Philippines. The Obama administration agreed to increase the number of forward deployed US Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) by basing four in Singapore. It called for a US–Vietnamese strategic partnership and conducted joint naval training with its former enemy. It even strengthened defence cooperation with Cambodia, which was thought to be in the ‘China camp’. Moreover, the US strengthened its posture in Japan and South Korea. Finally, the Pentagon pushed a new ‘AirSea Battle’ doctrine designed to counter a growing ‘anti-access/area-denial challenge’ in the Western Pacific, for which read: Chinese military systems. Read more

Reader response: Reserves, force structure and need

17 January 2013

Like so many people with very little firsthand experience of creating and using defence capability at any sophisticated level, Nic Stuart has effortlessly come up with yet another answer to the financial problems of Defence—Reserve manpower.

It was only a matter of time.

Although he does not state it directly, the only fair conclusion from how Nic structured his article is that he believes that the use of reserve manpower was successful in the past, we had too much manpower in WWII, two-year national service was all that was needed in Vietnam, the only thing that we face in the future is an invasion of the continent (and there isn’t much chance of that), and in these financially tight times, greater use of Reserve manpower would enable the RAAF to buy the JSF and the RAN to buy the future submarine. There are, to risk massive understatement, some problems with this line of logic.

What produces quality Australian soldiers, sailors, and airmen and women is not whether they are full or part time, regular or reserve, it is the quality of the recruits combined with first class equipment, quality leadership and realistic training. If a Reserve serviceman or woman does a few weeks per year of training, and so likely never reaches any real level of individual or group deployable operational capability, then you get exactly what you are paying for—not much. I wonder if Nic thinks that being capable in combat is so simple that anyone can do it with just a few weeks’ training per year. Read more

ANZUS, Article 8 – has its time come?

16 January 2013

On 5 September 1952, Richard Casey, the Minister for External Affairs, provided the Australian House of Representatives with a report on the first meeting of the ANZUS Council in Honolulu about a month earlier. The report gives an indication of the alliance’s early good health, reflecting engagement by senior policymakers, warm relationships and broad discussions. It also shows something else—the detailed consideration given to the place of Article 8 of the Treaty in the alliance’s future. Today, even among alliance cognoscenti Article 8 features scarcely at all in policy debate or the academic literature. The Article authorises the ANZUS Council

…to maintain a consultative relationship with States, Regional Organisations, Associations of States or other authorities in the Pacific Area in a position to further the purposes of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of that Area.

The single longest paragraph (by far) of the 1952 report covers the decision to focus on ANZUS as a close-knit tripartite alliance, and to put to one side the concept that ANZUS might be a vehicle for broader regional consultations. The broader concept sketched in Article 8 was to be kept under ‘continuous review’, but was deemed to be ‘premature’. The central effort was to go towards nurturing the defence and strategic relationship between the three core members of the alliance. As Casey put it in the report, ‘We felt that the first task was to concentrate on making the treaty work with its original limited membership.’ Read more

A Capability of First Resort: Australia and amphibious warfare

16 January 2013

In my previous post I discussed the broad utility of an amphibious capability and noted how its popularity has waxed and waned over the past century or so. Narrowing our gaze down to Australia, we find that since Federation these operations have even more of a vexed history.

The title of this piece is a very deliberate piece of plagiarism. ‘A Capability of First Resort’ is the name of two important pieces of writing on this topic. The first a Land Warfare Studies Centre Working Paper by Russell Parkin that traces the history of amphibious operations in Australia from 1901–2001. The second is a 2004 ASPI Strategic Insights paper by Aldo Borgu which discusses Australia’s Future Amphibious Requirements and assesses the decision to purchase the Canberra Class Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ships. These are both important pieces of analysis that I highly recommend.

For both of these articles the notion of amphibious forces as a ‘capability of first resort’ for the ADF references a quote from General Peter Cosgrove during his time as Chief of Army and later as Chief of the ADF. Cosgrove’s observation was, as Borgu states, ‘unsurprising given the archipelagic nature of Australia’s region’. Yet what might have seem obvious to Peter Cosgrove, especially after his experience commanding INTERFET, has often not registered with other senior military officers and defence officials over the last 100 years or so. While this might seem strange given Australia’s status as an island nation with its northern approaches dominated by an extensive littoral region, it’s entirely consistent with the swings and roundabouts of Australia’s defence strategy and priorities over this period. Read more

Schisms and backtracking in embracing Myanmar

15 January 2013

The world should be thinking twice about lauding Myanmar’s nascent reforms. Recent air strikes directed at Kachin rebels in Shan state by the Myanmar government exacerbate one of the longest-standing civil wars in the country’s post-colonial history. This sharp escalation of force, condemned by the US, the UN and China, gives further credence to suspected schism between the government in Naypyidaw and operational command of the Myanmar Armed Forces (also known as Tatmadaw). There’s also increasing concern that commercial commodity interests will trump prospects for an end to conflict in the region.

With one hand, the junta have made sweeping reforms, invigorating freedom of speech and hopes for democratic rule. There are even liberal sex education publications now hitting Rangoon bookstores. However, the other hand continues to swipe violently at dissidents and rebels, leaving breaches of international law and fickle diplomacy in its wake. This could be explained by the junta’s historically erratic behaviour and its tendency to renege on deals struck with armed wings of its ethnic minorities. It might also illustrate deeper incongruence between the central leadership under President Thein Sein and tactical command amongst the military. Read more

‘Vive la France’ – the surprise French lead into Mali

15 January 2013

The conflict in Mali that has been making headlines this week has been brewing for many months now. As I pointed out back in October last year, all signs were that an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) force would be deployed into Mali to repel Islamist fighters in the north of the country early in 2013. Much of the international community appeared highly reluctant to become actively embroiled in the fight, being happy to back a UN mission to the country but reluctant to commit troops, aircraft and vehicles to the approaching engagement.

So what has taken many by surprise has been the sudden rapidity of France’s whole-hearted engagement in the conflict, throwing their weight into Mali in a way that wasn’t expected. Why did this happen and what are the consequences for Mali?

In fact, the script has been prepared for some time for the intervention in Mali. The UN passed a resolution in October requesting West African states under the ECOWAS banner to speed up the process of providing a plan for military intervention. It seemed that there was ready-made force of 3500 ECOWAS troops available for deployment, backed by logistical support from the US and France. However, as the planning became more intense, it was felt that the Malian forces, whom ECOWAS would be supporting, would require increased training and strengthening and the ECOWAS force wouldn’t be ready for deployment until September 2013. Read more

Force Structure 102: getting the balance right?

14 January 2013

The next White Paper’s conclusions on the overall force balance will be closely studied. While whether current or future wars receive priority and the numbers of wars to be fought concurrently might be big strategic decisions, it’s the force structure decisions that will identify the big financial winners from the White Paper.

There is a wonderful myth in Australian defence planning that the correct force structure is some ideal ‘balanced’ force. It’s myth mainly because everybody has their own unique idea of the ‘right’ balance. Rather than being permanent, the balance sensibly changes overtime as people consider the emerging circumstances and decide what to focus on. Each White Paper in ways large or small rebalances the ADF. The last White Paper’s decision to build 12 submarines was one such rebalancing.

In simple terms, military forces can do many things, but there are really only three broad types of wars they can be organised for: civil wars (including counterinsurgency), conventional interstate wars and nuclear wars. The weighting of the force between the various types of war is one of the balancing criteria. Read more