LA fires: changing climate demands constant and focused preparation

The fires in Los Angeles are estimated to be the most expensive disaster in US history at US$250–275 billion, or 24 to 26 percent of Australia’s annual GDP. That loss has accrued in just over a week and is rising.

This was not a natural disaster. That would imply a lack of human responsibility. Rather, this is what happens when a human-warmed climate catches us off-guard—even in a city that knows fire.

Australia has done significant work since the 2019–20 Black Summer fires, and the floods that followed, to appreciate climate risks and prepare for them. However, much of that work, including the National Climate Risk Assessment and the National Adaptation Plan, is yet to be released. As the federal election nears, all parties should remind themselves to not treat climate as a political football—a priority only when disasters strike or when it’s convenient.

These events will continue to surprise if we fail to understand and address the locked-in disaster risks, and they will occur at greater frequency and cause greater loss if we continue warming the atmosphere.

While climate change isn’t the only factor in play in LA, it’s a big part of why officials were taken by surprise. Compound climate-amplified disasters build quietly but strike swiftly. In this case climate appears to have primed the intensity of the fires.

California is no stranger to whiplashing climate conditions. It experienced a three-year drought from 2020 to 2022, followed by two years of significant rainfall—recording LA’s seventh-wettest year in 2022–23. That rainfall drove vegetation growth, then a sustained drought and higher than average temperatures at the start of the current winter dried much of that new vegetation.

The Santa Ana winds that fanned the flames with hot, dry air are typical for the area in winter but were particularly strong with gusts at nearly 160km/h last week—at times grounding firefighting aircraft when they were needed most, pushing fires faster down hillsides where they’d normally slow, and spewing embers far beyond firelines. The winds may have been strengthened by warmer than average ocean temperatures and a meandering North American jet stream, which has been increasingly disrupted by climate change in recent years and may have also contributed to the atmospheric rivers dumping rain over LA in the years before the fires.

Yet those factors alone don’t explain why the fires started, why they’ve been hard to control, or why they’ve caused such damage.

Clear answers on the origins of the fires will come once investigations conclude. Speculating now doesn’t help. Misinformation abounds online, as it increasingly does after disasters, with harmful effects on responders, confusing the response and muddying the analysis needed for future preparation. For example, conspiracy theories hold that the US government used weather control to intensify Hurricane Helene—which struck the southeast United States in September last year—to cause widespread damage. That led to Federal Emergency Management Agency responders facing armed threats.

The Eaton fire, the second-largest in LA, may have been sparked by damaged electrical infrastructure from powerful Santa Ana winds, as has happened in the past. If that’s the case, it adds more pressure to California’s ongoing efforts to prepare its infrastructure for intensifying natural disasters.

Preparation has been underway for some time, but risks remain—in part because there are no cheap solutions. By California’s own estimates, burying all distribution and transmission lines in the state could cost US$763 billion—roughly 70 percent of Australia’s 2024 GDP—and would take years. Nonetheless, the economics of such climate adaptation has become clearer since just a single week of fire has reached a third of that cost.

Urban development has also played a role. Malibu and the surrounding area are traditional fire country—the chaparral vegetation evolved to undergo periods of fire. But there are now eight million people living in fire-prone areas in southern California. Fire-resilient building designs as well as fuel reduction and landscaping around houses might have slowed the growth of the fires in urban environments, protecting more homes. There is no easy way to get around the consequences of building and living in high risk areas; all we can do is try to avoid it in future.

Even though many affected communities are aware of climate and fire risk, they clearly didn’t believe they were vulnerable. Rebuilding with fire resilience in mind will be necessary, especially as fire insurance will become unaffordable for many.

While much focus has been on insufficient water supplies to fight the fires, most reservoirs were full—contradicting misinformation that California’s environmental planning restricted access to upstream sources.

A more plausible explanation for California’s underpreparedness is that urban water infrastructure simply isn’t designed for wildfire.

The Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, where many celebrities lost their homes, is at the end of the local water line, so receives less water pressure. As hydrants were tapped for water, the pressure dropped, draining emergency tanks in the neighbourhood.

An investigation will assess the reasons for, and effect of, the ongoing closure of the Santa Ynez reservoir in the Palisades area—hopefully including why it wasn’t rapidly brought back online late in 2024 as climate conditions worsened.

That brings us to the funding, staffing and preparation of LA’s fire authorities. Attention focused on the mayor’s budget reductions, but they were only a 2 percent cut from last year. While that may have had an effect, clearly the scale of the need was far beyond a few percentage points.

Inadequate staffing was a pressure early on, even with 9000 firefighters in LA County alone.

That isn’t a cheap solve, either. If LA needs greater capacity on hand at any time, its budget would have to grow significantly. That demand would have to compete with resources needed to prepare for and reduce the risk of future fires, including potential private firefighting capacities. Again, early investment in preparedness will reduce the complications in and need for future reactive responses. But building out future response capacity will take time.

The bottom line is that LA’s various failures in preparation means it was caught off-guard, but this disaster wouldn’t have been so extreme without climate disruption priming such an intense and unexpected set of fires.

The same dynamic has occurred in Australia, and it will continue if we don’t take climate risks seriously. These events are no longer surprising; they’re sad, they’re painful, but also entirely predictable.

EU, NATO forge closer ties with East Asia as Russia, China threaten

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 brought the European Union and Poland closer to like-minded states in Asia, including Japan. We realised that despite different histories and cultures we share the same values regarding international politics, namely the adherence to the international law-based order established in 1945.

We do not accept the concept of spheres of influence where the stronger dictate policies to smaller countries, we do not accept that might is right, that internationally agreed borders can be changed by force, or that members of the United Nations can be made to disappear. The Ramstein group created to help Ukraine militarily in April 2022 consists of over 50 states. It includes all NATO members, as well as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and some African and Latin American countries.

Over almost three years of the war in Ukraine, a linkage was made between Eastern Europe and East Asia. From a political perspective, a Russian victory would be interpreted as proof that aggression pays and can succeed because the liberal democracies of the world are weak, divided, lack strategic understanding and prefer to concentrate on commerce and profit, rather than sticking to the law-based order that made the world so successful after World War II. As a consequence, the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait may soon face similar pressures. Abandoning Ukraine today will set an ominous precedent for some countries in East Asia.

In the European Union, and in Poland in particular, we realise that in the current situation security is the most important part of state policy. Germany’s Ostpolitik engagement and Wandel durch Handel (change through trade) policies failed in the past. Policies that encouraged Russia ended with its invasion of Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This is why the Polish EU rotating presidency in the first half of 2025 will concentrate on security: military, energy, food, pharma and cyber. This is why Poland will spend a record 4.7 percent of GDP on defence (in real terms, the fifth-largest spender in NATO) and already has the third-biggest army among member states.

In this context, the EU notes the political and economic support provided to Russia by China. In 2019, the organisation accepted the paradigm that China is a partner, economic competitor and systemic rival. Due to the war and the results of the American presidential election, this assessment has changed. China supports in principle Russia’s position on the United States, NATO and Western Europe. Specific Russian goals were described just before the invasion of Ukraine in the two treaty proposals from Russia to the EU and the US and published on the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website on 17 December 2021.

The message was that NATO activities in former Soviet territories should be constrained and NATO should not be permitted to expand. The proposal was unacceptable to NATO members. The Russian invasion of Ukraine rendered them obsolete. NATO has a military presence on its eastern flank and previously neutral Finland and Sweden became full members.

The increasingly assertive security policies of China in the Indo-Pacific, which includes the supply of sensitive dual-use items to Russia (though denied by the authorities) may put in doubt China’s partner status in relation to the EU. As the EU’s new top diplomat Kaja Kallas stated in a hearing in Brussels, ‘My priority in contacts with China will be protection of the geopolitical and economic security of the EU.’ The new approach to China may concentrate more on the rival part and on pursuing de-risking strategies, especially in areas critical for EU member security. These areas include energy transformation, the pharmaceuticals sector, agriculture and new technologies. The new sanction regime may include Chinese companies suspected of selling components of potential military use to Russia.

We can expect that the US will demand that the EU follow the restrictions of trade and accept US regulations and technological standards in relation to China. Incoming president Donald Trump’s policy may concentrate on decoupling and there may be an expectation that the EU should follow suit, given that the bloc remains a large and basically open market for Chinese products and is dependent on China in some key industrial areas.

Should the US introduce high tariffs on Chinese products, the European countries may face increased imports. This in turn may result in a more assertive EU approach, as exemplified in the antidumping duties for Chinese electric cars. China, which regards the EU as a weak body dependent on the US, may in turn try to increase bilateral contacts with some EU member states that rely primarily on their supply chains and China-based production. As a result, EU member states may have different views on the de-risking strategy.

China regards Russia as its ally and partner in its rivalry with the US. The post-1945 international order is challenged, although in different forms, by both these countries. Both accept the idea of the spheres of influence and the logic that a few big and powerful states should exercise control over the other smaller and weaker entities. China regards positively the proposals for European strategic autonomy, as that may weaken transatlantic relations. It also aspires to be a partner or a guarantor of the new European security architecture proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin—a suggestion that is obviously unacceptable to the EU and NATO members.

The geopolitical changes after February 2022 produced some unexpected results. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most European countries started to take defence and security seriously. In 2024, the goal of spending 2 percent of GDP annually on defence by NATO members was reached by 20 out of 32 states (three years earlier there were six). Europe decided to produce arms and munitions to recreate the once thriving industry dismantled in the 1990s.

Most importantly, the Europeans and the like-minded East Asians came to cooperate closely with each other on security. We have now strong links with the IP4 (Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea), but also with India and the Philippines.

Together, we can become resilient while facing international challenges.

Tiptoeing around China: Australia’s framework for technology vendor review

Australia has a new framework for dealing with high-risk technology vendors, though the government isn’t brave enough to call them that.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says the framework ‘will ensure the government strikes the right balance in managing security risks while ensuring Australia continues to take advantage of economic opportunities’.

An alternative reading would be that it’s an opaque, toothless framework that gives the government wiggle room to minimise risk to the China relationship by increasing risk to our digital sovereignty.

The framework was announced on 20 December but not published. It’s a set of guidelines for assessing national security risks posed by foreign technology products and services sold in Australia. The timing was so unlikely to attract attention that it looked deliberate. Information on the Department of Home Affairs website, striking an unsatisfying balance between brevity and circumlocution, reinforces the impression that the government would be pleased if few people noticed the policy.

The framework establishes a ‘proactive process to consider foreign ownership, control or influence risks associated with technology vendors’. That will enable the government to ‘provide guidance on technology vendor risks to inform public and private sector procurement decisions about the security of technology products and services’. Risks will be assessed and mitigations considered where these risks are unacceptable.

The government’s factsheet provides a few more details. The security reviews will be led by Home Affairs in consultation with relevant agencies, presumably including technical experts in our security agencies. Assessments will be prioritised based on preliminary risk analysis of such factors as where the product or service is deployed, its prevalence and access to sensitive systems or data.

We don’t know what technologies the reviews will focus on or who will make the final decisions on which risks need mitigating. Review findings will apparently inform future government policies or support technical guidance to help organisations mitigate identified risks. The framework itself will not be released publicly to ‘ensure the integrity of the framework’s processes and protect information relating to national security’.

What’s clear is the focus on mitigating risk. Bans or restrictions on vendor access are off the table, even though, as we discovered with 5G, it is sometimes impossible to mitigate technology products and services that are one update away from being remotely manipulated by the vendor who supplies and maintains them.

But who would seek to manipulate or disrupt the critical technologies on which Australians rely?

Well, the government says the framework was not established to ‘target vendors from specific nations.’ The majority of foreign vendors ‘do not present a threat to Australia’s interests. However, in some cases, the application, market prevalence or nature of certain technologies, coupled with foreign influence, could present unacceptable risks to the Australian economy. This is particularly true if the vendor is owned, controlled or influenced by foreign governments with interests which conflict with Australia’s.’

The document steers clear of the more zingy phrase ‘high-risk vendors’, which was associated with Australia’s 2018 ban on Chinese 5G suppliers Huawei and ZTE.

It’s a tricky balance. Reluctance to point the finger at our largest trading partner is understandable, even though everyone knows we wouldn’t need a framework without our growing reliance on Chinese vendors who are indeed owned, controlled or influenced by the Chinese government. But, unsettled by China’s reaction to its predecessor singling out Chinese 5G vendors, this government seems more concerned with anticipating Chinese concerns than explaining to the public what technologies it should be worried about.

For example, will the government target electric cars and solar inverter technologies, where China’s dominant position has raised concerns? Perhaps not, since we are reminded that foreign technology companies ‘are essential’ for Australia’s net zero transition.

Businesses weighing the merits of buying cost-competitive Chinese tech will be reassured that the framework won’t introduce new legislated authorities or regulation. The focus seems to be on consultation with business so the government can ‘understand the risks introduced by a product or service, and the availability of mitigations’.

But mitigations reduce efficiency and add cost, and selecting pricier gear from alternative trusted vendors adds even more. Businesses may feel that avoiding these extra costs is worth the risk.

How might this play out? One way is we never hear about the framework again, aside from occasional technical security guidance. Low public awareness of the risks will mean inquiries can be batted back with assurances that the government has been making progress but can’t talk about it for national security reasons.

Then, one morning in the middle of an Indo-Pacific crisis, we might wake up to find the power and water don’t work.

As Mike Tyson might have said, everyone has a secret technology vendor review framework until they get punched in the mouth.

What mercenaries can teach us about climate-fuelled disaster responses

The devastating fires in Southern California, many of which are still burning out of control, have exposed a controversial and increasingly attractive disaster response alternative that engages the private sector.

California’s private firefighting industry, which most haven’t even heard of, is growing rapidly in the face of deteriorating climate conditions. Proponents contend that private industries ‘can fill gaps when public fire departments aren’t able to meet the demands of their local communities’. However, without careful planning and public sector engagement, expanding the industry may actually exacerbate those gaps.

We can learn from another type of privatised force: mercenaries, or private military companies.

The United Nations Mercenary Convention defines a mercenary as an individual who, among other factors, is recruited to fight and is motivated to take part by the desire for private gain. As private firefighters can be similarly defined, we can use the experiences of mercenaries in warfare to predict challenges and inform policy.

Mercenaries are paid far better than their counterparts in national armed forces. Similarly, private firefighters in California are allegedly being paid up to US$2000 an hour for their services. Comparatively, the average public firefighting wage is US$30 an hour.

The profit-fuelled growth of such private industries at the expense of losing personnel and expertise from public services presents community risks. Private contractors will act in the interest of their stakeholders and not necessarily in the interests of affected communities. For example, private firefighters may be contractually obliged to remain on standby to respond to requests from clients, rather than helping others at risk.

Public sector personnel shortages can also force governments to outsource operations to contractors, initiating cycles of dependency. This is already occurring within defence organisations: In a paper published by the Land Warfare Studies Centre, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Wing wrote that ‘many functions are now so reliant on contractors for their performance that modern military forces would find it very difficult to deploy for prolonged periods without them.’

Wing also wrote that military contractors ‘may not wish to completely resolve conflict, as to do so would remove the requirement for further contracts.’ This is concerning in the context of disaster response: firefighter arson is already a well-known phenomenon. Greater monetary incentive, in addition to desires for excitement and recognition, could further motivate contractors to commit arson and delay the extinguishing of fires.

Government employment of private contractors can also subvert accountability and undermine trust—an important aspect of effective disaster management. Compared with public operations, private contractors’ activities ‘can be attractive [to governments] as their undertakings are not as visible or readily scrutinised by the citizenry who empowers them’. For example, in the warfare mercenary context, it is alleged that the Australian government was able to maintain domestic political palatability of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars by increasing the number of contractors and thereby reducing ADF commitments and fatalities.

Although many governments may accept such a scapegoat, a lack of transparency and accountability can undermine public trust in government, jeopardising disaster management as a result. From heeding early warnings and emergency information to accepting help and guidance from institutions, trust is essential for community resilience and recovery.

Nevertheless, the benefits (for example, agility, precision, and surge capacity) of private contractors in disaster situations can be significant, if the risks have been addressed. The Australian government should begin planning and preparing for an increase in demand for large-scale private disaster industries. This should be done in consultation with states and territories, as well as local communities. The government should develop an enabling regulatory framework and identify which areas of disaster management are best placed to be supported by contractors.

Private contractors are potentially well-suited to supporting disaster planning, training, and mitigation. However, given the associated risks, Australia should consider whether these entities should be involved in disaster response.

Diverse approaches can help build resilience if they are coordinated and complementary. The government must ensure that such approaches do not come at the expense of community cohesion, and do not undermine national preparedness and efficient disaster response.

Joe Biden’s disappearing legacy

All US presidents leave mixed legacies. The best make mistakes, and the worst get some things right. But Joe Biden’s legacy is more mixed than most, if only because he got some big things mostly right and some big things mostly wrong.

Start with the positives. The US economy performed extremely well under Biden, far outpacing its peers. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, GDP increased significantly, from approximately $21 trillion in 2020 to more than $29 trillion in 2024. The economy added more than 16 million jobs, and unemployment fell substantially. And major legislation—the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act—secured significant funding for infrastructure improvements, domestic microchip production and clean energy.

But the surge in federal spending also caused inflation, with consumer prices up some 20 percent over four years. It also contributed to a ballooning deficit, with government debt increasing by some $7 trillion, to $36 trillion by the end of 2024.

Biden’s biggest foreign-policy accomplishment was undoubtedly Ukraine. While the administration ultimately could not prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, it made unprecedented, creative use of intelligence to warn Ukraine and the world. It also settled wisely on an indirect strategy, in which the United States and its NATO partners provided Ukraine the means to defend itself while avoiding direct military involvement, which could have triggered a larger—or even nuclear—war.

The policy largely succeeded. Nearly three years after the war began, Putin has failed to achieve his aims, despite the disparity in military strength and population. Indeed, Ukraine has fought the Russian military to a near standstill and maintained its independence.

The policy was not perfect. It too often erred on the side of caution in providing Ukraine advanced weapons systems or allowing them to be used in a manner most likely to affect Russian action. Similarly, framing the war as one between the forces of democracy and authoritarianism got in the way of building a broad international coalition to oppose Russian aggression and support sanctions.

The Biden team also failed to articulate achievable war aims. Fearful of being accused of selling out a partner and compromising in the face of aggression, the administration deferred to Ukraine, which until late 2024 insisted on recovering all its lost territory dating back to 2014, a position that, while understandable, was not realistic militarily. Allowing objectives to be defined in terms that could not be met played into the hands of opponents of aid to Ukraine.

More broadly, Biden took important steps to revive alliances that had been damaged and weakened during President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration. Biden essentially replaced ‘America first’ with ‘allies first’. He understood the strategic advantages of enlisting partners on behalf of common regional and global challenges. NATO added Finland and Sweden on Biden’s watch and continued to modernise, while Biden announced a significant trilateral partnership with the United Kingdom and Australia—AUKUS—and brokered a historic rapprochement between Japan and South Korea.

Elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific, however, strategic drift prevailed. Regarding China, Biden retained Trump’s import tariffs and imposed a host of technology-related export controls. Renewed dialogue did not halt China’s ongoing military build-up or its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. Similarly, there was scant new diplomacy vis-a-vis North Korea, which remained hostile to US interests, continued to produce nuclear weapons and missiles, and sent troops to Russia to fight on the Kremlin’s behalf.

The most glaring hole in the administration’s regional strategy was economic. Biden announced the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which did not amount to anything, and the US did not join any regional trade pacts, allowing China to cement its position as the region’s economic centre of gravity. As a rule, free trade gave way to protectionist policies that emphasised costly domestic production and ‘buy American’ provisions.

In Afghanistan, Biden implemented the accord negotiated and signed by Trump in February 2020 that paved the way for a Taliban takeover. Even though a strong case could be made that the pact undermined a status quo that was affordable and kept the Taliban at bay, there was no effort to revise it. After years of US funding and training, the Afghan army collapsed in a matter of days, and 13 US troops died during the chaotic evacuation.

Meanwhile, efforts to put the Middle East on the back burner imploded on 7 October, 2023. Biden was properly supportive of Israel in the days after Hamas’s attack, but near-unconditional backing made the US appear weak as subsequent Israeli military action in Gaza caused tens of thousands of civilian deaths and created a humanitarian crisis. The administration spent the bulk of its time trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that neither side wanted.

While the region is arguably in far better shape than it was four years ago, this has less to do with US policy than with Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah, its decimation of Hamas, its decision to strike Iranian air-defence and weapons facilities, and the ouster of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, which ought to be attributed to Iranian weakness, Russian distraction and Turkish opportunism.

The Biden administration’s biggest single failure was at the US southern border. Illegal immigration surged by some eight million between 2021 and 2024. The administration initially sought to differentiate its immigration policies from those of Trump, but then was slow to react when it became clear its approach wasn’t working. Biden and the Democrats paid dearly, as polls indicate it contributed significantly to Trump’s re-election.

Biden’s decision to run for re-election, despite low favourability ratings and growing signs that he was no longer up to the job, also paved the way to Trump’s victory. Had he followed through on his earlier promises to be a transitional figure and opted to be a one-term president, Democrats could have staged a competitive nomination process, giving candidates time to develop agendas and introduce themselves to voters. There is no way to know if Vice President Kamala Harris would have prevailed, but if she had, she would have been a far stronger candidate for having earned the nomination and publicly defining herself in the process.

Presidential legacies depend in large part on what successor administrations retain. It is not just Biden’s misfortune to be succeeded by Trump, who is committed to undoing much of his domestic and foreign policy. It is also in no small part Biden’s doing. His biggest legacy could be the lack of one.

The US, South Korea and Japan should work together on regional challenges

 

With Donald Trump’s return to the presidency now a reality, the Indo-Pacific faces an era of heightened uncertainty driven by North Korea’s growing military capabilities and China’s expanding regional influence. In this environment, trilateral security cooperation between the United States, South Korea and Japan is paramount.

However, Trump’s typical approach to alliances—characterised by unpredictability and transactional diplomacy—poses a challenge to this partnership. A recalibration of policies and priorities will be necessary to ensure that trilateral cooperation is effective and sustainable.

The Indo-Pacific security environment has evolved since Trump’s first term. North Korea has accelerated its nuclear and missile programs, with increasingly sophisticated weapons systems capable of threatening regional and global stability. China’s assertiveness has intensified, manifesting as aggressive actions in the South and East China Seas, economic coercion and expanded military presence.

North Korea presents the most immediate and existential challenge. Trump’s initial approach to Pyongyang, centred on high-profile summits with Kim Jong-un, produced no lasting denuclearisation outcomes. In Trump’s second term, shifts between direct engagement and heightened pressure could create an unpredictable policy environment.

Trilateral security cooperation could be a stabilising mechanism, enabling the three countries to align their deterrence strategies. Integrated missile defence systems, intelligence-sharing networks and joint military exercises are essential tools to counter North Korea’s provocations. Policymakers must also focus on closing operational gaps, such as improving interoperability between the US’s THAAD missile defence system and South Korea and Japan’s Aegis-based defences, to enhance collective security.

China’s regional ambitions require similarly urgent attention. Trump’s return is likely to intensify US-China competition, with a focus on economic decoupling, technological dominance and countering Beijing’s maritime expansion. Cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the US could reinforce freedom of navigation operations in contested waters, secure critical supply chains and strengthen cybersecurity defence. However, Trump’s past insistence on burden-sharing—such as his calls for increased financial repayment for US troop presence—could complicate this dynamic, particularly if allies perceive these demands as undermining mutual trust or commitment to shared objectives.

Historical tensions between South Korea and Japan could also obstruct effective trilateral collaboration. Despite recent steps toward reconciliation, unresolved issues related to historical grievances and territorial disputes continue to strain bilateral relations. The new Trump administration must act as a mediator to prevent these tensions from undermining collective efforts. This will require consistent diplomatic leadership, which was often lacking in Trump’s first term. By institutionalising mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation, such as trilateral defence ministerial meetings and joint crisis planning, the US can help ensure that Seoul and Tokyo remain focused on shared strategic priorities.

Policy implications for a second Trump presidency extend beyond traditional security measures. The evolving nature of threats, including economic security, cyber warfare and technological competition, demands a more comprehensive approach to trilateral cooperation.

Policymakers should prioritise joint investments in critical technologies, such as semiconductor manufacturing and artificial intelligence, to reduce dependency on China and bolster resilience. Expanding cooperation in space-based surveillance and defence systems would further enhance the alliance’s ability to respond to emerging threats. Additionally, public diplomacy is needed to foster greater mutual understanding and support for trilateral cooperation among the populations of all three nations, countering domestic scepticism fuelled by nationalism.

To ensure the long-term viability of trilateral security cooperation, the Trump administration must adopt a more strategic and less transactional approach to alliances. This includes reaffirming commitments to collective defence and providing clear and consistent communication.

Ultimately, Trump’s return to office presents both challenges and opportunities for trilateral security cooperation. While his leadership style and unpredictability may strain alliances, the strategic necessity of collaboration between the US, South Korea and Japan remains undeniable. By addressing operational gaps and expanding the scope of cooperation to include emerging security domains, the trilateral alliance can serve as a cornerstone of Indo-Pacific stability.

In a region defined by rapid change and intensifying competition, the success of this partnership will be a determinant of future peace and security.

Virginia, we have a problem

Australia’s plan to acquire Virginia-class submarines from the United State is looking increasingly improbable. The US building program is slipping too badly.

This heightens the need for Australia to begin looking at other options, including acquiring Suffren-class nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) from France.

The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically disrupted work at the two shipyards that build Virginias, General Dynamics Electric Boat at Groton, Connecticut, and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ yard at Newport News, Virginia. It badly hindered output at many companies in the supply chain, too. With too few workers, the industry has built up a backlog, and yards are filling with incomplete submarines.

Within six years, the US must decide whether to proceed with sale of the first of at least three and possibly five Virginias to Australia, a boat that will be transferred from the US Navy’s fleet.

Nine months before the transfer goes ahead, the president of the day must certify that it will not diminish USN undersea capability. This certification is unlikely if the industry has not by then cleared its backlog and achieved a production rate of 2.3 a year—the long-term building rate of two a year for the USN plus about one every three years to cover Australia’s requirement.

The chance of meeting that condition is vanishingly small.

The situation in the shipyards is stark. The industry laid down only one SSN in 2021. It delivered none from April 2020 to May 2022. The USN has requested funding for only one Virginia in fiscal year 2025, breaking the two-a-year drumbeat, ‘due to limits on Navy’s budget topline and the growing Virginia class production backlog’.

As of January 2025, five of 10 Block IV Virginias ordered are in the yards, as are five of 12 Block Vs for which acquisition has been announced. (Work has not begun on the other seven Block Vs.)

The building time from laying down until delivery has increased from between 3 and 3.5 years before the pandemic to more than 5 years. The tempo is still slowing: the next Virginia, USS Iowa, is due to be delivered on 5 April 2025, 5.8 years after it was laid down.

On the original, pre-pandemic schedule, all the Block IVs could probably have been delivered to the USN by now. This is a gap that cannot be recovered in a few years, despite all the expensive manpower training and retention programs in hand.

Exacerbating the problem for the yards, the Block V submarines are 30 percent larger, and more complex to build, making a return to shorter build times unlikely.  Speaking to their shareholders in October, the chief executives of Huntington Ingalls and General Dynamics blamed their slowing delivery tempo on supply chain and workforce issues.  HII says it is renegotiating contracts for 17 Block IV and Block V Virginias.

Furthermore, Electric Boat has diverted its most experienced workers to avoid further slippage in building the first two ballistic missile submarines of the Columbia class, the USN’s highest priority shipbuilding program, in which the Newport News yard also participates.

It gets worse. Many USN SSNs that have joined the US fleet over the past few decades are unavailable for service, awaiting maintenance. The pandemic similarly disrupted shipyards that maintain the SSNs of the Los Angeles and Virginia classes. In September 2022, 18 of the 50 SSNs in commission were awaiting maintenance. The Congressional Budget Office reports lack of spending on spare parts is also forcing cannibalisation and impacting the availability of Virginia class SSNs.

Australia’s SSN plan must worsen the US’s challenge in recovering from this situation, adding to the congestion in shipyards and further over loading supply chains already struggling to deliver SSNs to the USN.

A US decision not to sell SSNs to Australia is inevitable, and on current planning we will have no stopgap to cover withdrawal of our six diesel submarines of the Collins class, the oldest of which has already served for 28 years.

In the end, Australia’s unwise reliance on the US will have weakened the combined capability of the alliance. And Australia’s independent capacity for deterrence will be weakened, too.

As I wrote in December, it is time to look for another solution. One is ordering SSNs of the French Suffren class.  The design is in production, with three of six planned boats delivered.  It is optimised for anti-submarine warfare, with good anti-surface, land-strike, special-forces and mining capability. It is a smaller design, less capable than the Virginia, but should be cheaper and is a better fit for Australia’s requirements.

Importantly, it requires only half the crew of a Virginia, and we should be able to afford and crew the minimum viable force of 12 SSNs.

Let’s build on the good progress in training, industry and facility preparations for supporting US and British SSNs in Australia, all of which should continue, and find a way to add to the alliance’s overall submarine capability, not reduce it.

Trump’s Greenland grab

In 2019, when Donald Trump first proclaimed that the United States should buy Greenland, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rightly dismissed the idea as absurd. Greenland is not for sale, she noted. While Denmark manages the territory’s foreign and security policies, Greenland sees to its own domestic affairs.

But now that Trump is returning to the White House, he believes that it is an absolute necessity for the US to get ownership and control of the huge Arctic territory. And even more shockingly, he says that he will not rule out the use of military force to achieve this objective—though threatening ‘huge tariffs’ remains his preferred option.

Flabbergasting as such pronouncements may seem, they are no laughing matter. Greenland is an important and sensitive diplomatic issue. Its status should be treated with care and compassion, lest a much larger crisis ensue. That would not serve anyone’s interests.

History matters here. Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953, when it became an actual province of Denmark. The vast island (the world’s largest, in fact) then adopted home rule in 1979. Since 2009, Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark have maintained a wide-ranging autonomy arrangement in which a few policy domains—primarily security and defence—remain under the control of the government in Copenhagen.

Most of Greenland’s political parties aspire to independence for the island, and under the 2009 arrangement, they have the right to organise a referendum for that purpose. But most Greenlanders recognise that it is too early to take such a step. They first must build up the necessary capacities to function as an independent nation-state.

Given Trump’s latest interventions, it is safe to assume that the independence question will dominate Greenland’s next elections, which will be held no later than 6 April. But it is highly doubtful that there will be much support for trading the light hand of Danish rule for the grasping hands of Trump and his MAGA coalition. For better or worse, Greenlanders are committed to the Nordic welfare model and will not want to abandon it in favour of the US’s model.

Although Greenland is not part of the European Union, its people are, by dint of being citizens of Denmark. More than half of the island’s public budget is covered by the Danish government, and 90 percent of its exports (mainly shrimp) go to the EU, where they have privileged access.

While Russia and China also have territorial and economic ambitions in the Arctic, military threats to Greenland are minimal. The closest Russian outpost is 2,000 frozen kilometres away, and China’s two Arctic-capable research vessels seem to be active primarily in the waters around Antarctica.

Moreover, under a 1951 agreement (and subsequent ones), the US already has the right to base military facilities on Greenland. The Thule Air Base in the far north of the island was a huge facility in the early days of the Cold War, and despite public denials, it even housed nuclear weapons. Renamed the Pituffik Space Base, it now serves early-warning and space-surveillance functions. But as long as the US military consults Danish and Greenland authorities, it can do more or less what it wants on the island.

Denmark, for its part, operates patrol ships around Greenland, and it will soon acquire surveillance drones; but the primary purpose for its small military presence has been search and rescue.

Of course, the legacy of colonialism is never easy to deal with. Some 88 percent of Greenlanders are Inuit, and the Greenland-Denmark relationship today is not free of complicated issues from the past. But the US, hardly covered in glory by its treatment of its own indigenous population, is in no position to preach to others about similar issues.

True, Greenland has large reserves of the rare earth minerals that are used in many high-tech products. But the investment climate for extracting these resources is far from ideal, given the new political uncertainty around the island, the lack of manpower, and the fragile natural environment. Indeed, Greenland and the rest of the Arctic is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and this translates into economic, social, and political fragility. That is all the more reason to manage Greenland’s slow journey toward more autonomy—and perhaps eventually independence—carefully, not with bombast and bullying.

Trump’s indecent proposal, delivered at the barrel of a gun, is not only absurd but dangerous. Greenland’s evolving light-touch relationship with Denmark is clearly the best option for the island.

The Quad should help Indonesia achieve underwater domain awareness

Indonesia’s underwater domain awareness (UDA) is a critical gap that the Quad security partners—Australia, India, Japan and the United States—can and should fill. UDA includes detecting and monitoring underwater activities, including tracking submarines and protecting underwater resources against espionage.

It’s also a means for researching marine environments, which is vital for economic and environmental advances. Collective support from the Quad nations can be instrumental in bridging Indonesian technological and operational gaps to secure its underwater domain.

The underwater realm has become a contested area in the Indo-Pacific, placing significant pressure on the Indonesian military and law enforcement to build the country’s UDA.

First, the South China Sea dispute and the rivalry between the US and China raise concerns for regional littorals. In 2020, Indonesian fishermen discovered a Chinese uncrewed submarine near South Sulawesi. Indonesian authorities also suspect that Chinese oceanographic vessels using the Sunda and Lombok straits are gathering data that could aid China’s submarine operations.

Second, the geopolitical rivalry is also leading to the proliferation of submarines in the region. All Southeast Asian nations, except landlocked Laos, have acquired submarine fleets or intend to do so. The AUKUS trilateral partnership of Australia, the UK and the US seeks to strengthen Australia’s submarine capabilities by developing nuclear submarines to be operated by Australia. The submarines could be positioned near Indonesian waters, raising safety concerns, as Indonesia also operates submarines. The sinking of the Indonesian submarines KRI Nanggala during a torpedo drill in April 2021 was a reminder of the danger of underwater operations.

Third, Indonesian waters are vast, and monitoring the seabed is vital, including to protect subsea pipelines and cables.

These issues have prompted Indonesia to prioritise the development of UDA.

However, the ambition is inconsistent with Indonesia’s limited capacity in undersea warfare. The Indonesian navy currently operates four diesel-electric attack submarines of the Cakra and Nagapasa classes. Additionally, it has bought 11 Airbus AS 565MBe Panther helicopters for antisubmarine warfare. These have short range and endurance compared with maritime-patrol aeroplanes.

In March 2024, Indonesia finalised an agreement with the French company Naval Group and Indonesia’s own PT PAL to build two Scorpene class submarines with lithium-ion batteries at PT PAL’s shipyard. Indonesian defence experts note that the Scorpenes will be able to deploy uncrewed submarines.

According to Indonesia’s navy chief, Admiral Muhammad Ali, the country needs at least 12 full-size submarines to monitor its maritime territory adequately. Additionally, some Indonesian scholars note that the navy has proposed establishing underwater detection networks similar to the US Sound Surveillance System, better known as SOSUS, at the nation’s strategic chokepoints. This would be a major step forward for UDA, but details of are murky.

Indonesia’s UDA capabilities will not only serve a military purpose; they will support the country’s economic and environmental security. They can provide Indonesia with a significant advantage in exploring seabed resources, enabling Jakarta to uncover and use valuable marine resources effectively. UDA can also improve tsunami early warning systems through deep-water acoustic sensors, similar to systems used in India.

However, Indonesia is encountering constraints in developing UDA. They include inadequate infrastructure, shortage of money, limited personnel training and insufficient access to advanced sonar systems, underwater drones and satellite surveillance. Integrating data from multiple sources for real-time analysis remains a major hurdle. Addressing those gaps requires international collaboration, particularly with technologically advanced and strategically aligned partners such as the Quad nations.

They can support Indonesia in developing UDA by providing technological and operational assistance.

The Quad has the capacity to provide Indonesia with advanced surveillance technology, which includes underwater drones, sonar systems and satellite imaging tools. The Quad’s Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific can equip Indonesian personnel with the essential skills to operate and maintain those technologies. Joint maritime exercises would enhance Indonesia’s tactical and operational strengths. Moreover, the Quad can help Indonesia establish infrastructure for efficient data integration and real-time analysis, leveraging India’s expertise from its Information Fusion Centre for regional maritime security.

Second, the Quad can help to secure Indonesia’s maritime infrastructure. Japan has decades of experience in operating underwater sensor systems for monitoring waters around its islands and especially ports. It could help upgrade Indonesia’s port security and improve its monitoring of underwater traffic and infrastructure. The Quad’s Australia-based Cable Connectivity and Resilience Centre can build Indonesia’s capacity in that area.

Indonesia’s quest for enhanced UDA is both a national priority and a regional necessity. In 2023, Indonesia’s then-president Joko Widodo wished to view the Quad and AUKUS as ‘partners, not competitors’. According to a survey conducted by Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency in December 2023, 51 percent of Indonesian government officials agreed that the Quad ‘strengthens regional security and stability’. Among academics, more than 60 percent agreed. The Quad’s concrete security assistance to Indonesia, such as in UDA capabilities, might increase this proportion further.

From the bookshelf: ‘War’

Russia’s war on Ukraine, the war in the Middle East and the yawning chasm between liberal Americans and MAGA supporters defined much of the presidency of Joe Biden and are likely to define the political landscape for the initial years of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

In his latest book, War, Bob Woodward provides a vivid inside account of the three intertwined conflicts, casting fresh light on recent global events and providing the reader with tools to compare the outgoing and incoming administrations.

Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein, both working at The Washington Post, rose to instant fame in 1972 for their coverage of the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of US president Richard Nixon. Their book about Watergate, All The President’s Men, has been hailed as ‘the greatest reporting story of all time’.

Woodward has gone on to author or co-author a further 22 books about US politics, including several about Trump’s first presidency, and still has a desk at The Washington Post. More than half a century of reporting on the US political establishment has given him access to inside sources that other journalists can only dream of.

Woodward’s research is meticulous and his sources impeccable. As a result, War brims with direct quotes from US and world leaders and their aides that provide fresh perspective on recent political dealmaking.

Woodward takes us behind the headlines to the minute-by-minute decision-making that has shaped key political outcomes. The reality that he describes is often very different from that depicted by the media.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in April 2024 ordered a missile strike on Iran that killed the ranking commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and Iran responded with a massive missile strike on Israel, Netanyahu was ready to retaliate in kind and the elements were in place for all-out war. Woodward provides a blow-by-blow account of the exchange between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden that convinced the former to back down.

Ultimately, Netanyahu agreed to a ‘small precision retaliatory response’ while sending Iran a back-channel message that Israel was ‘going to respond but we consider our response to be the end’. Iran did not respond further and, thanks to Biden’s intervention, a major crisis was averted. The reader can only speculate how Trump would have handled the situation.

Woodward also contemplates what drives presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. He reminds us that Trump views everything through a personalised prism. At a 2018 press conference in Helsinki following a summit with Putin, Trump accepted the Russian leader’s denial of meddling in the US presidential elections at face value, despite having seen extensive evidence to the contrary, and had great difficulty subsequently withdrawing his remarks. ‘[Putin] said very good things about me’, Trump explained to his aides, ‘why should I repudiate him?’

In stark contrast, Putin is driven by a deep frustration with the collapse of the Soviet Union and a desire to restore Russia to greatness. In October 2021, Biden’s intelligence directors presented him and his closest advisers with conclusive intel that Putin intended to invade Ukraine. Woodward details the incredulous responses within the US administration and among its closest European allies trying to understand why the usually low-key Putin would make such a high-risk move.

When confronted about the planned invasion by secretary of state Antony Blinken, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov denied the intel point blank, blustering ‘Are you serious with this stuff?’ Interestingly, Blinken concludes that Lavrov, who is not part of Putin’s innermost circle, probably had not been kept fully in the loop.

Woodward details many other high-level exchanges. In late 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was unwilling to authorise other European countries to supply Ukraine with German-made top-of-the-line Leopard battle tanks without the United States matching the move by providing M1 Abrams tanks, which Biden was reluctant to do. Blinken and other senior staffers spent long hours convincing Biden to announce the decision without immediately providing the tanks, thus allowing Germany to go ahead.

In October 2022, Russia publicly accused Ukraine of preparing to use a dirty radioactive bomb, and indicated that it would consider this an act of nuclear terrorism to which it would respond. Woodward provides a fascinating account of the tense phone call from US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that convinced his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu to back down from the implied nuclear threat.

For Blinken, convincing Netanyahu and his war cabinet to allow the first shipment of humanitarian aid into Gaza was no less challenging.

On balance, Woodward considers the Biden presidency a success. At the centre of this success lie teamwork and continuity. Biden’s tight-knit team from the State and Defense Departments, National Security Council, Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA worked together throughout his term to pursue a sound and coherent foreign policy. Woodward provides a set of benchmarks against which to assess the incoming US administration.