Strategist Article Archives - Page 1164 of 1186

AUKMIN: awkward Anglos

9 January 2013

Later this month Perth will host the fifth meeting of AUKMIN, the annual gathering of Foreign and Defence ministers from Australia and the United Kingdom. It will be a curious gathering, overshadowed by a doubt that both sides won’t raise but which still dogs this oldest of Australia’s bilateral relations: neither country takes the other seriously as a potentially closer defence partner. Australia doubts that the UK’s new-found interest in Asia really goes beyond trade and investment to include deep engagement on security. The UK wonders how much interest Australia has left for Europe after the Asian Century White Paper tied us so firmly to the region’s economic success story.

The litmus test for substance in a bilateral defence relationship is what the two defence forces actually do together. Reading the last AUKMIN communiqué from January 2012, I’m forced to the reluctant conclusion that the answer is ‘not very much’. The communiqué shows that ministers ‘discussed’ all manner of strategic issues, from the Arab Spring to Fiji—going so far as to commit themselves to ‘sharing strategic insights and aligning… thinking’. The reader searches in vain for just one practical measure of planned and funded defence engagement. Both the 2012 and 2011 communiqués deploy the phrase that the two countries are ‘committed to working together in concrete and practical ways’ on security cooperation—effectively demonstrating the iron rule of communiqué writing: the less substance there is in the relationship, the more spruiking is needed.

The fact is that defence cooperation between the UK and Australia is limited and at risk of shrinking further. Because of cost saving measures, secondments between the forces are reducing, as is training and exercising. Intelligence exchanges and strategic dialogues are low cost and show that each country has a lot to gain from deeper engagement but they can’t wholly replace the practical value that comes from close service to service engagement. Of course there is a deep cultural affinity between the two Defence organisations, but wallowing in heritage and history is no substitute for an active and modern strategic relationship. Read more

China’s had a good run – now for the real threat

8 January 2013

For defence and security thinkers the dominant theme for the past several years has been the rise of China and the potential for this development to create tension across the Asia–Pacific. The US pivot, President Barack Obama’s speech to the Australian Parliament, an increasing focus on the South China Sea and the release of Australia’s Asian Century White Paper all signal widespread concern that China’s growing influence will result in a redefining of the region’s strategic order.

The focus on China is understandable, but this singularity of attention has meant that another challenge has not received the consideration it warrants. The real danger lies in the intensification of the present shortage of resources, particularly food and water, and the likelihood that shortfalls will spur instability and conflict across the Asia–Pacific and the globe. Resource wars are coming, and yet comparatively little has been said about them by commentators or done to prepare for them by governments.

Of the many resources that humanity consumes, the most vital are food and water. In 2012 over one billion people suffered from chronic hunger, the majority of them living in the Asia–Pacific, while a further billion are ‘food insecure’. This is only the start of the hunger, and experts predict that the global food supply will diminish in coming years. In fact, the situation might already be irretrievable, because: Read more

Force Structure 101

7 January 2013

Behind every book, article and blog post about contemporary defence issues, there lurks the author’s view of what is the ADF’s ‘correct’ force structure. This is never more evident than when there’s a White Paper in the wings. White papers usually represent the outcomes of numerous clashes between competing force structure options. Accordingly, advocates of various alternatives are out in force, both in public and behind closed doors, to try to influence the final result in their favour, This is especially so today when money and resources are scarce.

At the Cabinet level, force structure represents how the Defence budget is allocated—the ‘balance of investment’ in budgeting terms. When funds are limited, the first decision is which gets priority: the current force or the future force? We’ve faced this dilemma before. In the 1990s governments decided to fund the future force at the expense of the current one. This philosophy underpinned both the Keating Government’s 1991 Force Structure Review and the Howard Government’s later 1997 Defence Reform Program. At the time it seemed reasonable enough—there was no war and none threatening so the budget was skewed towards the future, when there might be. Personnel and operating costs were cut to free up funding for new equipment.

Smaller operating budgets meant less flying hours, less steaming days and less track miles. Reduced personnel costs meant a smaller Defence workforce. There was also considerable outsourcing of the ‘tail’, cutting of logistic stocks and transfer of functions to the part-time Reserve. Not surprisingly, when an actual operation like Timor-Leste turned up, where the current force rather than a future abstraction actually had to show up, the Army had worries over both manning the deployment over the longer term as its personnel rotation base had been cut, and in the sustained support of the deployed forces. With Navy the impact was subtler; as the Rizzo Review found, outsourcing to gain efficiencies cut Navy’s and DMO’s professional skills, contributed to the poor preparedness of Navy ships a decade later. Read more

Policy talks the way money walks

6 January 2013

A Pentagon rubric promises, ‘Show me your budget and I’ll describe your strategy.’ It mirrors the dictum Arthur Tange made famous in Canberra, ‘Until you’re talking dollars, you’re not talking strategy’. US Vice President Joe Biden has a version used by his Dad: ‘Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.’ (A point made on The Strategist by Henry Ergas in an earlier post.) Or we can reduce it to basics, as taught by that famous philosopher Jerry Maguire: ‘Show me the money!’

Jerry, Tange, Biden and the Pentagon all agree on a hard truth: sometimes promises and policy are no more than gossamer of aspiration, ambition and posturing; to find the reality, see where the money is walking. The ‘dollar test’ is useful in measuring the distance between declared policy and real policy. Applying it to Canberra, what do the budgets say about the real strategy being followed in foreign affairs, national security and defence?

First, consider the long-term and debilitating budget decline of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. DFAT has been doing more with less for so long that bureaucratic starvation has become the default diet in the Casey Building. The Parliament’s Joint Foreign Affairs Committee has just identified what it calls ‘chronic underfunding of DFAT over the last three decades.’

DFAT’s chronic state was even more obvious over the 9/11 decade because of the big increase in the dollars being fed into the aid budget as well as the hyper-expansion of the national security agencies. DFAT is in the strange position of overseeing an AusAID which is now several multiples richer than the parent department. Read more

Happy holidays from The Strategist

21 December 2012

Since we started up in July, we’ve had a wonderful time working with our contributors and receiving feedback from our readers. We’re pleased that you have found The Strategist a worthwhile experience in an increasingly crowded marketplace of ideas. Our aim continues to be to provide high-quality analysis in a format that suits busy readers.

Our last post for 2012 will be on Friday 21 December, and we’ll be taking a break from blogging until Monday 7 January. We’re looking forward to bringing you more considered analysis on the big defence, strategy and security issues facing Australia in 2013.

But while we won’t be publishing during this time, we don’t want to lose touch with our contributors or readers. Until our return, we’ll be happy to receive submissions of around 800 words for our Strategist Summer Series which kicks off 7 January. We’ll be checking our emails during that time and will still be around on social media so follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook for updates, links to articles and other news.

From the Strategist editorial team, we thank you for reading and contributing to our blog and wish you a wonderful holiday season!

Image courtesy of Flickr user Bob Doran.

Using social media strategically: #Indonesia

20 December 2012

Recently I wrote about the ways in which social media can be employed in an aggressive virtual campaign during warfare, using the example of Israel and Hamas. Australia is in very different geostrategic circumstances, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons here for the ADF. The IDF–Hamas case shows how social media can be employed in spreading a strategically-crafted message to a world-wide audience. Australia in general, and Defence in particular, have a good opportunity to tailor some strategic messaging about our relationship with Indonesia.

With a population of 240 million, Indonesians are some of the world’s most prevalent users of social media. Looking at Twitter alone, Indonesia is the fifth largest Twitter user country in the world, with Jakarta and Bandung (another major Javanese city) ranking first and sixth respectively in recent surveys (click to enlarge). A message in Indonesia’s Twitterverse is likely to be heard.

Source: Semiocast 2012

And Indonesians haven’t shied away from opportunities on Australian social media, including those of the ADF. During this year’s Exercise Pitch Black, Indonesian social media users took to the official Exercise Pitch Black Facebook page to share their enthusiasm and support for the Indonesian Air Force’s pilots and Sukhois (see images below). Indeed, it was a momentous occasion to celebrate—it was the first time that Indonesian combat aircraft had participated in an Australian air exercise. Read more

Internationals fighting on Syrian soil: beware what might return home

19 December 2012

It’s difficult to play down the significance of the current situation in Syria from a counterterrorism perspective. Many felt that the death of Bin Laden, Al-Awlaki and numerous other key members of the al-Qaeda leadership had stemmed the tide of the movement and the global jihad. However, as terrorism issues appear to be slipping down the hierarchy of perceived risks in much of the Western world, the trends that are emerging from the Syrian conflict remind us that al-Qaeda are in this campaign for the long term and still require our attentions at home as well as abroad.

The Arab Spring in early 2011 caught most governments off-guard, as it did al-Qaeda, who were still recovering from the death of their leader and very much in disarray. But before the emergence of a popular movement against the Assad regime, which can be traced back to March 2011, al-Qaeda’s new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had called upon pious Muslims to support an insurgency against the Syrian leadership. Al-Zawahiri’s message was released in an eight-minute video in February 2011 and was pitched predominantly at Sunni Muslims living in neighbouring Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. Since then the message has spread further afield and the lure of joining the jihad in Syria against a Shia dictator is drawing in young men from across the globe. Read more

Do alliances work?

19 December 2012

With ANZUS a core pillar of our own strategic policy, it should come as no surprise that Australians frequently turn (and return) to the subject of just how reliable that alliance is. Most of the debate tends to be remarkably impressionistic. For some, history is the best guide—and Britain’s inability to come to Australia’s aid after the fall of Singapore in 1942 a salutary warning about the dangers of a smaller power becoming too reliant on a great power to protect it. For others, reliability is simply assumed—sometimes on the basis that if the US refused to honour its ANZUS commitments all of its other alliances would come under increased pressure.

But we should look at some data to take the impressionism out of the debate. We should be interested not just in the big question—is ANZUS reliable or isn’t it—but in the specifics: how reliable is it? There are several ways of judging the utility of alliances—including whether they deliver strategic gains during peacetime through training, technology, intelligence exchange and the like. Still, the real test of an alliance’s reliability is whether alliance partners end up honouring their commitments to each other on the battlefield.

It’s instructive, then, to turn to the academic literature for a set of insights on just how reliable alliances actually are.

Australia’s air combat capability – the next step?

18 December 2012

Last week the Defence Ministers announced that the government would approach the United States to get cost and availability information for a second tranche of 24 Super Hornets. It doesn’t commit Australia to such a move but it shows that, at the very least, there is some lingering doubt in government circles regarding the feasibility of maintaining the RAAF’s air combat capability until the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is able to enter service.

The announcement followed the development of an ‘Air Combat Capability Transition Plan’ recently delivered to the government. In fact, the government has had a lot of advice this year. The National Audit Office delivered a pair of reports in September on the maintainability of the existing fleet and of Australia’s participation in the F-35 program. As I noted in a previous post, the Audit Office reiterated some known challenges in keeping a credible capability intact through what is now shaping up to be a critical transition at the end of the decade.

We don’t know what the government was told by Defence on delivery of the Transition Plan, but evidently it didn’t completely allay their concerns—otherwise there’d be no need to continue collecting data on the alternatives. And Australia isn’t alone in being worried—the Canadian government has ‘reset’ its acquisition process, which until recently had been a sole-source buy of F-35s. Like Australia, Canada is heading off to the world market to get price and availability data.

Cyber statecraft: learning from ocean diplomacy

18 December 2012

The Minister for Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, was recently in Dubai to lead the Australian delegation at the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). The conference considered amendments to the International Telecommunications Regulations, which assist in the operation of telecommunications networks across national borders. Some of the amendments are seeking to extend the regulations to cover internet governance. This is now the job of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN).

As my colleague Toby Feakin wrote last week, Australia wants to make sure that any amendments to the ITRs don’t fundamentally change the way the internet operates.

Australia, along with US UK, Canada, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Kenya, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Qatar and Sweden walked away from the ITU negotiations last week, over fears that the new text of the new ITRs could be interpreted as giving the ITU control over elements of the internet.

The final treaty text (PDF) contains a resolution that explicitly ‘instructs the [ITU] Secretary-General to take the necessary steps for the ITU to play an active and constructive role in…the internet.’ Yet after the conference Senator Conroy said that ‘Australia does not support any changes that would undermine the current multi-stakeholder model for internet governance or fundamentally change the way the internet operates.’