ASPI suggests

Here’s our weekly round-up of articles, reports and events in the strategy, defence and security world.

The latest issue of Foreign Affairs sports a Linda Robinson piece on the future of special operations. Back in July, Robinson delivered a testimony to the House Committee on Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on the same issue. In the testimony, she discusses a number of developments in special operations including the integration between SOF and conventional forces on the battlefield.

Moving onto Northeast Asian security issues, Ryo Sahashi has a nice piece over at East Asia Forum asking ‘Is Japan making the most of the US pivot?’.

There’s a new East-West Center paper (PDF) by Julie Chernov Hwang that looks at terrorism trends in Indonesia including the decline of salafi-jihadism and pathways to radicalisation.

On the hardware side of strategy, Andrew Erickson and Gabe Collins explore, in the Wall Street Journal, the implications of a second Chinese ‘stealth’ fighter being tested.

For military history buffs, the New York Times continues to work through the Civil War in real time (offset by a century and a half) in its wonderful Disunion series. Here’s the latest instalment.

For those interested in reading about the tactical and more human side of warfare, journalist Chris Masters has released a new book, Uncommon Soldier, which explores the modern Australian soldier. And speaking of Chris Masters, he’ll be up in Darwin on Tuesday 13 November talking about Uncommon Soldier at the Northern Territory Library, Parliament House at 5.15pm.

If you haven’t already, Canberra readers can register for a talk by Sam Roggeveen, editor of the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter, on ‘10 lessons from 5 years of political blogging’ at 5.30pm, Thursday 8 November at ANU’s Hedley Bull Centre.

Also at the Hedley Bull Centre, strategic studies scholar and Strategist contributor Professor Robert Ayson will launch his new book on the international relations heavyweight Hedley Bull, Hedley Bull and the Accommodation of Power from 5.30pm, Friday 9 November. Refreshments will be provided after the event, along with a chance to purchase his book.

Australia’s Antarctic ambitions

Neko Harbour

Our Antarctic claim is about the size of Australia, minus Queensland. So it’s pleasing to see that the new Asian Century White Paper gave a decent acknowledgement to the cold continent (p. 248):

The development of the close relations we have with our Asian regional partners involved in Antarctica will be increasingly important in protecting the Antarctic region as well as in frontier marine, biological and climate research in the Asian century. Australia’s scientific research and basing capacities in Hobart and in Antarctica have fostered closer cooperation with China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia and other partners on Antarctic research and logistics. This cooperation can be elevated through the Australia’s Antarctic science strategic plan, working within the Antarctic Treaty system.

Asia doesn’t operate as a bloc in Antarctic affairs. But there’s an eight year old Asian Forum for Polar Sciences. It coordinates research among India, Japan, China, Korea, and Malaysia. At some point we might consider requesting observer status at AFoPS.

Malaysia joined the Antarctic Treaty system last year. It had previously actively promoted the idea at the UN that the common heritage of mankind regime should apply, like the international seabed, to Antarctica. But unlike the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction, Antarctica’s subject to sovereign claims.

China already has two stations inside Australia’s Antarctic Territory and we’ve recently concluded an MoU with China on Antarctic cooperation: China’s now an important player in climate change science in Antarctica. Read more

Talking to the neighbours: Australia and track II defence diplomacy

A recent Strategist post suggested that Canberra should take a closer look at ‘80-20’ solutions in the forthcoming Defence White Paper. In essence, it argues that Canberra should consider simple and cheap technologies which provide similar military capabilities in lieu of the more expensive and technologically complex options. This is sage advice, to which I would add that talk is cheap—literally. One of the most effective (and most affordable) ways that Australia can protect its strategic interests is to increase its investment in defence diplomacy.

Australia is already involved in a constellation of security-focused dialogues such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit. However, if Australia is serious about promoting its interests and engaging the region it should intensify its involvement in track II, or informal, dialogues. Track II dialogues are ‘unofficial’ meetings which bring together academics, think tank scholars, non-governmental organisations, policy experts and officials in their unofficial capacities. These gatherings provide a political space for them to exchange policy ideas, identify emerging security concerns, and communicate with other countries regarding their strategic interests. The ‘informal’ nature of these meetings means they are relatively free of diplomatic constraints; thus, participants can trade information, test new ideas, and most importantly, confront sensitive security matters before they require an official or military response. Much to the detriment of Australian security diplomacy these processes are currently underutilised and underappreciated. Read more

Reader response: Indian Ocean region vital to Australian security

Strategist reader Linsday Dorman, an associate at Future Directions International, has submitted this comment:

I enjoyed the report by Peter Jennings of 1 November. However, I note that he stresses ‘that our primary focus should come back to the Asia- Pacific’. Does he have an eastern states blind spot, the Indian Ocean and South Asia, where we have two susceptible nuclear-armed nation states as well as an unstable MENA? We are part of the whole world, not some narrow-minded Pacific scenario.

To which Peter Jennings has responded:

Thanks to Lindsay Dorman for his comment. I hope I don’t have an ‘eastern states blind spot’, but when I think about areas where the ADF is most likely to deploy in the next few years, I tend to think that our so-called ‘Inner arc’ to our North and North East may well produce occasions requiring stabilisation tasks, or HADR responses. In the Indian Ocean we will most likely see a continuation of the border protection role. I would also expect an increase in activities designed to show an ADF ‘presence’ in the oil and gas fields of the North West Shelf. We may also see further exercising and training cooperation with Indian Ocean and South Asian countries and further west to the UAE. Australia will probably remain committed to a range of maritime operations in the Gulf region. (I won’t speculate here about the Iran situation and possible international responses.)

The Asian Century: underbelly

Security and prosperity in the Asian Century have a dark underbelly: the region has witnessed a rapid and complex proliferation of organised criminal networks. They have had considerable impact on economic and social development, the quality of institutions and the security of all in the region, Australia included.

The government’s newly launched Asian Century White Paper understandably focuses on major power capabilities and interests. That’s where the ‘flashpoints’ are but organised and transnational crime—mentioned only in passing in the White Paper as a potential area for practical cooperation with international partners—is more corrosive than explosive. For Australia, the problems of crime in the region defy easy separation into direct, indirect, human and traditional security threats. Nevertheless, the physical, political and economic spaces in which criminal networks fester are gaps into which the region’s future may stumble.

Australia might consider three vectors by which organised crime undermines Asian stability and prosperity: through politics, resource allocation and community insecurity.

Politically, there are two main problems entangled with crime. Read more

Rebalancing or jockeying for position?

Douglas Feith, Gary Roughead and Patrick Cronin. Photo credit: Luke Wilson (ASPI)Sometimes an aside illuminates the important underlying drivers of issues. At Wednesday’s ASPI–Hewlett-Packard Defence and Security Lunch, retired US Admiral Gary Roughead mused briefly about rebalancing of US forces to the Pacific. Pressed later to elaborate, he suggested the change in focus would have significant ramifications for resource allocations: in other words, who gets the money. What makes this fraught is the increasingly constrained military budget. The conditions are ripe for a turf war between the services.

Over the past decade the focus has been on land conflict. Sure, there’s been a significant role for precision missiles and air assets have also played a part—particularly in intelligence collection. But everything has been, essentially, devoted to winning the fight on the ground: it’s been an Army-led war. This will change with the withdrawal of ground troops from Afghanistan.

The title of the US’s new fighting doctrine—Air Sea Battle—offers a clear indication of where the resources will be going. The inability of the Army to achieve unequivocal victory was already apparent when Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta signed-off on this new operational concept in 2011. It was recognition that, even leveraging off America’s overwhelming technical superiority, land forces still hadn’t been able to secure the victory Washington desired. Read more

Sold the dummy on the Defence budget?

Have we been sold a dummy pass on the impact of the defence budget cuts?

Statements by the Defence Minister that that future plans are merely delayed may seem reasonable when money is tight and claims that ‘we are not going to allow our fiscal restraint to adversely impact on our overseas operations’ indicate that in the short term, capability is not affected.

The Minister’s claim however is a bit like saying that we will support our Olympic Team in London with everything they need, while behind the scenes cutting funding to the Australian Institute of Sport and sports development programs around the country. To then claim that our performance at the next Olympic Games will be at least as good if not better than the current standard is to defy credibility.

It is important in this debate to understand the consequences of large overseas operations being funded through ‘Operational Supplementation’, which is provided by Government over and above the normal appropriation for Defence. As a result of supplementation, Australian forces in Afghanistan do in fact have world’s best practice and equipment, significant parts of which have been purchased as an ‘urgent operational requirement’. That means, however, that forces remaining in Australia do not necessarily have access to such high-end equipment. It also means that after the draw down in Afghanistan, those capabilities will not necessarily be transferred back to Australia as the supplementation ends and there is no budget established to support them here. Read more

Graph of the week: ANZUS – will the love affair continue?

Having had the privilege this week of participating in the United States Study Centre’s Alliance 21 workshop, I’ve had a good chance to think about the fundamentals of the alliance, and why Australians consistently value it highly. At one level that’s not too hard to understand. As Mark Thomson has pointed out, we get a lot more back than we put in—as is usually the case with junior alliance partners. Australians are as fond of a good deal as anyone else.

But one of the best questions to be raised throughout the week was how relevant the alliance is to today’s youth. It’s a good question because they don’t see the benefits as directly as their forebears did. Their grandparents (and increasingly their great grandparents) see the alliance through the eyes of people who saw the upheavals of WWII first hand, and understand in a visceral way the benefits of allied power when national security is threatened. Their parents don’t have that experience, but grew up in a world still heavily influenced by the outcomes of WWII (I still remember the schoolyard ditties about Hitler and company) and the vicissitudes of the Cold War. Despite the problematic Vietnam War and the very public push back against the alliance, the benefits of the alliance were real enough in the face of an enduring security concern to keep support levels high. In fact, the level of support for the alliance remained above 80% even as Australian forces were about to leave Vietnam.

This chart (click to enlarge) shows the level of support for the alliance, culled from a variety of sources. Because the questions asked differ, they aren’t completely compatible data sets, but the picture is remarkably consistent. From the 1970s onwards (and there’s no reason to think it was different earlier), a large majority of Australians have attached a high value to the alliance. Read more

The day after a nuclear terrorist attack

Image entitled 'Oops, wrong button' by Flickr user Just a Prairie Boy.

If today was the day after a major nuclear terrorist attack in your country, what would your government wish it had done to prevent it? This was the opening question at a roundtable discussion on nuclear security, held from 17–19 October at the Airlie Center in Warrenton, Virginia, as part of the Stanley Foundation’s 53rd Strategy for Peace Conference. The meeting was attended by experts and officials from around the world, including strong representation from Australia. Its goal was to help promote sustainable global nuclear security by challenging those with knowledge and responsibility to come up with concrete proposals on how to prevent nuclear terrorism through improved nuclear governance.

The opening question sparked some interesting comments, as well as some worrying ones. ‘It would depend on the type of nuclear terrorist attack,’ one government official responded. According to his reasoning, if it was an improvised nuclear device, involving plutonium or highly enriched uranium, his government would know the material originated outside the country’s borders. And his government’s attention would be focused on where the material came from and what lapses in the origin country’s security led to terrorists gaining access to it.

It wasn’t a reassuring answer. Read more

Afghanistan: the end game and after

A Special Forces soldier observes a valley in Uruzgan as a Blackhawk circles above.The Prime Minister’s statement to the Parliament yesterday on Australia’s Afghanistan strategy continues to demonstrate planning for a relatively quick ADF exit from Uruzgan province. Any international pretence about nation building in Afghanistan has long been abandoned in favour of a pragmatic acceptance that the situation there is about as good as it is going to get.

Australia can claim some part of the credit for four positive outcomes in Afghanistan. First, and as PM Gillard said, ‘today, international terrorism finds no safe haven in Afghanistan’; well yes, for as long as the drones and special forces continue their operations. Second, as long as the US remains engaged, the Taliban won’t be able to take power in Kabul again unless it’s through some politically negotiated and internationally acceptable power-sharing agreement. A third positive is that Afghanistan, and Uruzgan province with it, has its best chance probably since the 1970s to handle its internal security challenges. These aren’t perfect outcomes but Strategist readers will understand that pursuing perfection is the enemy of peace. That’s why Gillard and Obama are wise to resist any call to keep going for just one or two more fighting seasons in order to show that counterinsurgency, or counter terrorism (‘regular’ or ‘lite’) strategies can work. They can’t. Read more