Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘A PNG view on recruitment for the ADF: yes, please’

Originally published on 12 August 2024.

Papua New Guineans should serve in the Australian Defence Force. As a Papua New Guinean, I believe this would instill Western values of democracy and freedom in our young people, who must be made to realise that these principles are under threat as China expands its influence in the region.

Australian military service would also provide employment for young people from PNG and other Pacific island countries, giving them real life skills.

As Australia considers the possibility of Pacific recruitment, it must understand that this would not just be a way to make up the ADF personnel shortfall. It would also help the countries from which service personnel were drawn, demonstrating good will towards the Pacific and going well beyond mere words in promoting their alignment with the West.

In general, the Pacific islands would prefer to align with Australia and the United States rather than China, but this view is predominantly held by older people, especially those who remember what they call the good times of the colonial era. In contrast, the younger people do not care greatly whether their countries are aligned to the West or not.

Service in the ADF would do more than bind many young people in PNG and other Pacific island countries to Australia. It would also teach them the moral values that come with military service, values that are lacking among far too many of them, especially in PNG. And they would take those values back home after completing their ADF service, to the gratification of their fellow citizens, not least their extended families.

Serving in the armed forces of a sturdily democratic country such as Australia would also reinforce democratic values that are fast eroding in the Pacific islands.

Terms of service for Pacific island people should require them to return home after, say, nine years in the ADF. If they later wanted to apply for Australian citizenship, they could be given preferential treatment, but only after at least five years serving in the armed forces of their home countries.

This should be an important feature of Pacific recruitment. Pacific defence and security forces are short on skills and suffer declining disciplinary and ethical standards. The infusion of ex-ADF people would address both problems. For the PNG Defence Force, the skills transfer would be particularly effective, because almost all its equipment has been donated by Australia.

If Pacific islanders did not shift from the ADF to their home countries’ forces, their skills would still benefit their countries in non-military employment.

In return for giving Pacific islands these benefits, Australia would gain from their labour availability. Pacific island countries, such as PNG, have economies that are not growing much but populations that have exploded, leaving many well educated young people unemployed.

The $600 million that Canberra plans to spend on establishing a team from PNG in the Australian Rugby League competition would be far better spent on ADF recruitment in the country. It would employ far more PNG people if it were. And rugby league does not teach life skills, whereas ADF service would provide that and other much deeper benefits.

Crucially, Pacific countries must be treated as equal partners in defence of democracy and freedom. It is not their politicians but their people who must realise that Western values that they enjoy, such as democracy and freedom of speech, are not guaranteed.

They must also be reassured that the Pacific islands are not merely a military buffer against a threat to Australia. Young Papua New Guineans, who have a better grasp of geopolitics than their parents, are increasingly of the view that PNG must not be treated as useful cannon fodder in a possible war. If they think that that is Australia’s attitude, any sense of loyalty or partnership will vanish.

They can see what China is doing to enlarge its influence and what the US is doing in response. In my experience, they are not clear about what Australia is doing, as distinct from what it is merely saying, to demonstrate commitment to the region.

In the spirit of equal partnership, the ADF should avoid creating a Pacific Regiment, one composed entirely of Pacific recruits, as that would give rise to criticisms of colonialism and second-class status. Instead, as recommended by former British Army officer Ross Thompson, it should follow the model that Britain uses for Fijian recruits: it should spread Pacific islanders across a range of units.

Australia needs to demonstrate its commitment to Pacific island countries. The best way it can do so is by giving Pacific islanders the benefits of service in the ADF.

Baltic subsea sabotage: China gets away with non-cooperation

On Christmas Day, one of two cables connecting Finland’s electricity grid to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was cut. Four data cables—three linking Finland and Estonia and one between Finland and Germany—were broken at the same time.

This and two earlier instances have heightened concerns about the vulnerability of Europe’s undersea infrastructure, prompting calls for enhanced security measures and international cooperation to safeguard critical communication and energy links.

It’s also a timely reminder to Indo-Pacific countries to think about how their region is similarly vulnerable to subsea sabotage.

Once could be an accident, and twice might be a coincidence. But three instances look like a trend that we shouldn’t ignore or tolerate, especially since we know malign actors like Beijing and Moscow also have the capability to disrupt our critical infrastructure through prepositioned malware.

Finnish authorities are investigating the outage. On 26 December, Finland used heavily armed elite units to board and forcibly detain a tanker, registered in the Cook Islands but in fact Russian, suspecting its crew had deliberately severed the cables. Finnish authorities say the tanker, which was carrying oil, is part of Russia’s effort to avoid international trade sanctions. The ship is also reported to have been equipped for listening to radio transmissions as an intelligence gatherer.

Finnish authorities could board the ship and arrest its crew without the consent of its owner or the country of registration only because it was in Finnish waters. But doing so still required Finland to have the political will to take bold action.

Several data cables and a pipeline connecting Finland and other Nordic countries to the European mainland have been severed in the past year in suspected deliberate anchor-dragging incidents. Jukka Savolainen, a Finnish navy officer and director of the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a body established by NATO and the European Union, has suggested publicly the high number of similar cable breaks shows that the perpetrators are testing whether cheap civilian ships can cause disruptions of critical infrastructure.

The latest Finnish incident follows the simultaneous severing of two undersea data cables in mid-November. The BCS East-West Interlink cable, connecting Gotland to Lithuania, was severed around 17 November, causing substantial disruptions to telecommunications services.

The next day, the C-Lion 1 submarine telecommunications cable, linking Helsinki to Rostock, Germany, was also cut. The damage was detected near the southern tip of Sweden’s Oland Island. The operator, Cinia Oy, said an external force had severed the cable.

Both cables were restored by 28 November. Investigations are ongoing, involving authorities from Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Germany. A China-flagged ship, Yi Peng 3, which was present near the disruption sites, has been a focus.

On 23 December Swedish authorities said China had denied a request for prosecutors to conduct an investigation on the ship. It left the area soon after. If, as seems very probable, the crew were saboteurs, investigators cannot now hold them accountable. Swedish authorities have criticised China for withholding full access to the vessel.

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China, as the home state of the vessel, is not obliged to give other countries access to it. And only China holds the sole authority to prosecute. The ship was detained in international waters, so Swedish police could only observe the situation; they could not investigate. An accident commission could separately interview the crew and examine the anchor but could not prosecute. Legally, Sweden has limited options beyond seeking economic compensation from the ship’s owner.

Since China has persistently breached the same convention in the South China Sea, its disregard for the interests of other countries in the Yi Peng 3 case comes as no surprise.

The key point is the rest of the world, which does care about such rules, can’t afford to let malign actors continue to get away with it.

Beijing’s refusal to cooperate fully with investigations erodes trust and transparency. These are particularly crucial in incidents involving shared resources, such as undersea cables, which serve as critical infrastructure for multiple nations. A refusal to comply with international investigative norms also encourages other states to act similarly.

China is also ignoring its responsibility to assist in uncovering the truth and ensuring accountability, undermining cooperative norms that underpin a global rules-based order. Under international law, states must prevent and address harm caused by their vessels in foreign or international waters.

Furthermore, disruption of undersea cables not only affects regional communications; it also has significant economic implications and poses risks to broader economic stability. So, China’s non-cooperation exacerbates tensions in Europe and raises concerns about its commitment to preserving the stability of global infrastructure.

Good international citizenship requires states to act in a manner that supports global security. They should be transparent and accountable. China’s refusal to cooperate fully and Russia’s continued effort to break sanctions are at odds with these principles. These incidents show how the Russia-China axis is increasingly working in sync to the peril of the rules-based liberal order. Political will, and unity of purpose, is needed to make clear this is intolerable.

Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘The beauty of an 80 percent solution: lessons from the RQ-7B program’

Originally published on 26 July 2024.

As so often, the Australian Defence Force wanted the exquisite solution. It wanted uncrewed battlefield reconnaissance aircraft of a design that wasn’t operational anywhere and would achieve performance that other countries didn’t have.

And the acquisition led nowhere—except to prompt a successful replacement effort that gave the ADF a powerful lesson in the merits of toning down requirements to get something that is good enough and can go into service fast enough.

The lesson has been formalised. Defence now defines the two key concepts in its Capability Lifecycle Manual. They boil down to this: identify a ‘minimum viable capability’ (MVC), which is a lowest acceptable military effect that meets the requirement, then get a ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP), something that will deliver that capability on time.

The 2023 Defence Strategic Review told the ADF to go for MVC and MVP.

MVP is widely known in business, but not in Defence. At a 2023 ASPI conference, several senior speakers couldn’t clearly describe it or give an example when asked.

Well, that uncrewed aircraft project offers a fine example.

It was Joint Project 129 Phase 2 (JP129-2), a long and unnecessarily complex process of providing aircraft for intelligence-gathering, reconnaissance and target identification for the Australian Army.

The story of acquiring an uncrewed aerial reconnaissance capability for the army ultimately involved three aircraft types and their associated ground systems: first the overly ambitious original design that Defence had to abandon; then the Boeing Institu MQ-27A ScanEagle that was leased as a gap-filler; and finally RQ-7B Shadow 200 from AAI Corporation of the United States.

The original design was still at the prototype stage in 2005 when Defence chose it and was authorised to proceed to acquisition. So that design had not in fact been finalised and could still have had plenty of problems.

And the ADF wanted the design certified to an airworthiness standard that no uncrewed aircraft anywhere had achieved. Furthermore, the aircraft were to operate at such long ranges that their radio communications would work at the extremes of physics. The communications would also have encryption cyber security not yet in use in any other Australian tactical systems. And all this was to be fully integrated into Australian Army vehicles supplying power, the other end of the radio link and command and control.

Over three years of contract negotiation the aircraft grew 50 percent in weight, the project needed release of contingency funds as costs rose, and there were signs of insurmountable technical difficulties.

Meanwhile, the ADF could not wait. It was on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and in 2006 leased ScanEagles as an interim solution; they remained in use until 2013.

In 2008 the capability management team for JP129-2 recommended a reset to the Chief of the Army. It proposed:

—Terminating the contract for the original design;

—Defining an MVC as an approximately 80 percent solution to the specification;

—Choosing a US design that the US Army was already using and was available through the US Foreign Military Sales process—specifically, the Shadow 200; and

—Doing it all fast.

Toning down the requirement meant dropping nice-to-haves, as distinct from must-haves: the aircraft wouldn’t have to operate from amphibious ships, and the army would do without the unique airworthiness requirements. Ironically, the RQ-7B was an updated version of a design that had been rejected in 2005 for the project because of supposed capability shortfalls.

Over the next two years the equipment was acquired, the US Army trained Australian soldiers to use it at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, it was rapidly proven in tests at Woomera, and the first of the two systems was sent straight from Woomera to Afghanistan. Each system comprised the ground station and five aircraft; eight more aircraft were bought as spares.

Shadow 200s sent to Afghanistan were in a bare-MVP configuration and adapted to operate from shelters instead of US Army HMMWV trucks. What the Australian Army got at first was in fact only a 70 percent solution. But it worked, and it worked well.

Over the next few years it was progressively improved. It was adapted for mounting on the army’s own battlefield trucks, Unimogs, given ADF combat-net radios, tested and certified to Australian weapons targeting and engagement requirements, and made compliant with Australian work-safety standards.

It was also given systems as bolt-ons, meaning they weren’t tightly (and expensively) integrated into it. One was for interpreting and sharing pictures from the aircraft; the others were a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder on the ground operating station, both needed to meet aviation safety requirements.

All this was done in Australia by local businesses. By 2016, when the system was declared to have reached final operating capability, the Shadow 200s had achieved the intended 80 percent MVC configuration—and had been acquired for only half of the budget that Defence had expected to spend before changing horses in 2008.

The lesson is that Defence can greatly improve acquisition efficiency if a capability manager first agrees with operators what the 100 percent solution looks like, then approves going ahead with an MVC of 70 to 90 percent.

As with the Shadow 200s, a program can first deliver an initial operational capability at the 70 percent level then progressively advance to 90 percent. Declaring a final operational capability isn’t necessary, because it’s recognised that 100 percent will never be achieved. This model is particularly suitable for areas in which technology is advancing faster than the pace of Defence acquisition.

It involves a preference for mature, off-the-shelf, in-production equipment and teaming with a supplier that has an industry presence in Australia.

The need for speed must loom over the whole process, and it’s essential to try to come in under budget. With current constraints in the capability acquisition program, every dollar saved on one project is needed for another.

Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘China may be putting the Great Firewall into orbit’

Originally published on 26 August 2024.

The first satellites for China’s ambitious G60 mega-constellation are in orbit in preparation for offering global satellite internet services—and we should worry about how this will help Beijing export its model of digital authoritarianism around the world.

The G60’s inaugural launch on 5 August 2024 carried 18 satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO) on a Long March 6A rocket. Led by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology and backed by the Shanghai Municipal Government, the project aims to compete in the commercial satellite internet market with SpaceX’s Starlink, providing regional coverage by 2025 and global coverage by 2027.

The G60 is one of three mega-constellations that China is planning, alongside the Guowang project, run by state-owned China Satellite Services, and the Honghu-3 constellation, led by Shanghai Lanjian Hongqing Technology Company. These constellations provide the infrastructure to support China’s rapidly growing commercial space sector, including its satellite internet initiatives which are making rapid advances.

China launched the world’s first 6G test satellite into LEO in January. GalaxySpace recently made headlines by deploying satellite internet services in Thailand, the first time Chinese LEO satellite internet had been deployed overseas. In June, the Chinese company OneLinQ launched China’s first civilian domestic satellite internet service, indicating it would expand through countries that had signed up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Yet through these efforts, China is not only securing its position in the satellite internet market but laying the groundwork for expanding its digital governance model far beyond its borders.

Central to China’s ambition is the concept of cyber sovereignty—the notion that each nation has the right to govern its digital domain. In practice, China has used this principle to build a heavily censored surveillance system supporting the Chinese Communist Party’s power, widely condemned for violating human rights.

China’s satellite internet services would enable other governments to adopt similar practices, as the nature of satellite internet makes it susceptible to state control.

Satellite internet is more controllable due to its centralised infrastructure, where data is routed through a limited number of ground stations or gateways. This enables censorship and surveillance as service providers and authorities can more easily monitor, block and filter content.

In contrast, traditional internet infrastructure relies on a decentralised network of sub-sea cables and terrestrial networks managed by many stakeholders with thousands of data exchange points. This decentralised structure makes it difficult for any entity to exert complete control over the flow of information, as countries such as Russia — which initially welcomed the open internet, unlike China or North Korea—have learned.

Countries that use China’s satellite internet service providers could more easily control what information is accessible within their borders, much as the Great Firewall of China operates domestically. This could mean blocking politically sensitive topics, monitoring user activity, or shutting down the internet during unrest. While satellite internet has often been hailed as a means for dissidents and activists to bypass restrictive governments, the reality under China’s model, which would place it in the hands of nation-states, would be starkly different.

China is already exporting its digital authoritarianism through such initiatives as the Digital Silk Road, providing technologies and governance models that enable censorship, surveillance and social control to other countries. These efforts come amid a rise in the global spread of authoritarianism as governments seek to exert control over online spaces. Adopting Chinese satellite internet services would accelerate this trend, empowering other countries to implement similar controls and restrict human rights globally.

Offering satellite internet worldwide has other benefits for Beijing. Countries relying on China’s infrastructure for connectivity may risk being pressured to comply with Beijing’s demands, including censoring content critical of China, sharing sensitive data or suppressing domestic dissent in China’s interests. For example, a journalist in a country that relies on China’s satellite internet services might find his or her connection reduced or severed when reporting human rights abuses in China.

The centralised nature of satellite internet may also make countries more vulnerable to cyber espionage by the Chinese government or malicious actors. Chinese satellite providers may also be subject to China’s stringent data localisation policies, such as the Cybersecurity Law, which requires companies to store data within China and make it accessible to the Chinese government. As China’s satellite projects are intended to provide global coverage, the data of international users—spanning communication, location, and internet activity—would be subject to Chinese data laws. Chinese authorities could potentially access any data transmitted through Chinese satellite internet services.

The global deployment of China’s internet satellite services is still some way off and faces significant challenges. However, if China’s satellite internet services are adopted, the world may witness the rise of a new digital Iron Curtain extending from space, dividing the free flow of information and imposing state control on a global scale.

Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘The house always wins: how to boost ADF recruitment’

Originally published on 11 June 2024.

The Australian Defence Force needs bold, creative initiatives to attract and keep enough personnel to reach expansion targets.

Ask Australians in their 20s what matters to them right now, and housing will rank high. The response from Defence should be ‘Well, do we have a deal for you.’

Defence should be making strikingly good housing offers.

There has been a lot of talk about innovative ways to attract the best Australian talent to Defence but not much action. At the Air and Space Power Conference in Canberra in May, Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty admitted that ‘attracting people to the ADF is proving challenging‘, and he tasked his department to ‘think really creatively‘. The 2024 National Defence Strategy also underlined this challenge, reinforcing the priorities laid out in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review and announcing a workforce review to be tabled in 2025.

Part of the problem lies in the language used by uniformed and civilian leaders when discussing the issue: they don’t emphasise the enormity of the task.The ADF doesn’t just need to be competitive by the ordinary standards of the labour market; it must lead the competition at length. Jobseekers applying for a uniformed position are signing up to the possibility of losing their lives on the job, so they make decisions far more cautiously than those considering civilian employment.

Current salary and conditions from the ADF are clearly not persuasive enough in their weighty decision-making. The ADF needs something else to convince possible candidates for service.

The government has formerly made attractive housing offers to recruit the best talent to the ADF. In 1918 it established the War Service Homes Scheme, which helped servicemen who returned from World War I and later World War II and the Korean War. The government handed out Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits pensions to the baby boomers. And it launched the Home Purchase Assistance Scheme (HPAS), Home Purchase Sale and Expense Allowance (HPSEA) and the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme (DHOAS) for Generation X. These tangible benefits were decisively better than those offered by other potential employers.

The existing support schemes, however, are not enough to win over those currently considering a military career. The HPAS, HPSEA and DHOAS have not kept pace with the increases in cost of living or housing prices, and no longer provide a significant incentive to join the ADF.

Now, Defence needs to offer something more in its promise of housing support. It could provide super-cheap living-in accommodation, better and cheaper married quarters, increase rent allowance for those living off base, and increasing HPAS and DHOAS payments. These initiatives can be paid for with the salaries of the 5000 people whom the ADF has budgeted for but failed to recruit. The initiatives would also have second order effects of injecting more federal funds into construction and the property market.

Increasing the size of the ADF is a daunting problem when the unemployment rate is low and many industries are competing for the best talent. The ADF isn’t even in the same class as those industries. The perils of military service put it out on its own.

For the ADF to win over potential recruits, it needs creative ideas that would land a knockout blow on Millennials and Gen-Z. Give them what they want—strong support on housing—and it might just win them over.

John Curtin’s legacy

On this day 27 December in 1941, John Curtin famously declared that in the war with Imperial Japan, Australia would look to the United States, ‘free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom’. In our national mythology, this is seen as Australia acting independently, instead of following Britain’s lead. However, Curtin had little choice but to appeal desperately for US military assistance, as Australia could not defend itself, and could not rely upon Britain, which was fighting for its life against Nazi Germany.

Curtin’s plea to the US was also calculated. He knew that Australia would be a crucial base for future US operations against Imperial Japan. He wanted Australia to have a say in the conduct of these operations.  First, however, Australia would have to be defended. Curtin played on the fact that it was in the interests of the US to defend Australia as its vital southern base in the war.

In 1944, after the danger had passed, Curtin tried to resuscitate the idea of ‘imperial defence’, whereby Britain, Australia, and the other self-governing dominions would better co–ordinate their defence strategies. As such, Curtin’s ‘look to America’ was not the foundation stone of the Australia-US alliance, as the mythmakers would have us believe. Those foundations were not laid until 1951, with the signing of the ANZUS Treaty.

There is another myth: namely, that the US came to Australia’s aid out of feelings of kinship. This is not true. The US had a thoroughly unsentimental view of Australia’s strategic utility. MacArthur said as much on 1 June 1942, in confidential remarks that were recorded for posterity. He said that the US had a vital interest in securing Australia as a base, and not defending it on the basis of who inhabited the continent. As an aside, had ‘Australia’ instead been three separate European nations, say of British, French, and Dutch origin, and not a friendly and unified continental-sized British dominion, MacArthur’s calculations would have been very different, especially if French Australia had been aligned with Vichy France. Who inhabited the continent, which was the strategic consequence of the British settlement of Australia, did matter after all.

There are uncomfortable truths about this period of Australia’s history. In the 1930s, Australia should have better prepared itself. As Leader of the Opposition between 1935-41, Curtin had come closest to articulating what needed to be done. However, he lost the federal elections of 1937 and 1940, and could not therefore give effect to Labor’s policy of greater defence self-reliance. Had Australia been ruthlessly clear-eyed and more self-confident in the 1930s, the national panic of 1941-42 could have been avoided. Had Australia rearmed in time, it could have deployed a powerful force in its sea-air approaches, which could have disrupted Imperial Japan’s attempts to project force through present-day East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Indonesia (in the latter case, in co–operation with Free Dutch forces). Had Australia ‘looked to America’ sooner, combined US-Australian planning for the defence of Australia could have been undertaken before the war.

Just as Australia was found wanting strategically, it was also unprepared at home. In December 1941, Australia was not yet on a full war footing, despite having been at war for over two years. Curtin argued that as Australia was now inside ‘the firing lines’, its way of life had to be revolutionised, through an ‘all-in’ effort. Production of war material would have to be increased dramatically. Drastic austerity would have to be enforced. He would often say ‘it’s fight and work…or perish’.

Curtin was critical of the ‘lackadaisical Australian mind’. By this, he did not call into question the patriotism of Australians, or their sense of duty. He called these ‘ever present qualities’. What concerned him were the particulars of the task—the specifics that would be involved in mobilising ‘dormant talents’ and ‘untapped resources’, something that would require leadership and direction from the government, and service and sacrifice from the people.

The Curtin of 1941 was a hard patriot. He was stern, puritanical, and critical of half-hearted effort. In his youth, he had been a radical socialist, convinced that capitalism would inevitably collapse on the road to socialism, when there would be no nations, no militarism, and no war. In the 1920s, he began to better appreciate that the parliamentary path—and not socialist revolution—was the best hope for social improvement. While he was the editor of the Westralian Worker (1917-28), Curtin became a vocal Australian patriot, as he wrote about the ‘dignity of Australian nationhood’, and his pride in Australia’s history and its accomplishments.

He did not see any contradiction in Australia acting more independently, while still retaining its dominion status, and its ties with the ‘mother country’. Curtin would have been puzzled by the tendency today on the part of some to engage in self-denunciation of our settler-colonial origins and history. While he thought that Australia should ratify the 1931 Statute of Westminster so as to achieve legal independence from the UK parliament (this was done in October 1942, with retroactive effect as at 3 September 1939), it would not have crossed his mind to cut ties with Britain, the Empire, or the Crown.

Curtin had a largeness of mind and a strength of character that allowed him to grasp and act on the uncomfortable reality of circumstances that did not suit his preferred political agenda of social reform. From the mid-1930s, he recognised that the times would require him to champion a different cause, which was one that did not come naturally, either to him or his party—namely how best to defend Australia in a war in the Pacific, at a time when the prevailing orthodoxy was to rely on Britain, operating from its base in Singapore.

Curtin’s legacy puts the lie to today’s conventional wisdom that the Left should avoid engaging on matters of war because, so the argument goes, this plays to the strengths of the Right. Curtin would have seen this as an appalling abrogation of responsibility. He spoke of patriotism and of war, using the language of duty, service, and sacrifice. Were he alive today, the modern Left would criticise him for ‘beating the drums of war’. However, Curtin was of an older Left. Like Clement Attlee, he saw no contradiction between socialism and the patriotic love of country. George Orwell was also in this tradition, and in 1941 wrote the great essay that squared patriotism and socialism, ‘The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius’.

Those who would seek to appropriate Curtin’s legacy in a performative display to demonstrate their credibility on defence issues cannot limit their appreciation to admiring only what he did as wartime leader, once the existential danger to Australia and its political independence was apparent. To do so would be to ignore the inconvenient truth of his legacy. To honour Curtin, we have widen the lens and examine the totality of his thought and policies, and then ask ourselves what a modern-day Curtin would make of our precarious strategic environment (said to be the worst in 80 years), and what he would do about it.

Here is an attempt to properly honour Curtin in this way. A modern-day Curtin would be vocal about the threat posed by China. He would argue for greater defence self-reliance, and for at least 3 per cent of GDP to be spent on defence. He would be concerned about the threat of long-range missile and air attack, offensive cyber strikes, raids in remote areas, attacks on undersea infrastructure and so on. He would insist on the development of effective military solutions to these and other, similar problems. While a champion of defence self-reliance, he would recognise that a new ‘look to America’ would be necessary. He would argue for ANZUS to be put on to an operational footing, with a standing headquarters (this time headed by an Australian), to command a combined Australia-US force. He would be a supporter of AUKUS, but would be focused on realising rapid benefits, arguing that any capability pay-offs in the 2030s and beyond would not matter much if we lose a war in the meantime. He would give priority to home defence, mobilisation planning, and boosting local defence production. He would support universal national service for the defence of Australia.

On Curtin’s gravestone is carved the following:

‘His country was his pride/His brother man his cause’.

This epitaph captures his patriotism and his socialism. Curtin recognised that being prepared to fight a war is the price that has to be paid for preserving freedom, democracy, and sovereignty, and protecting the nation, which is the best vehicle that exists for social improvement. We do not need the Curtin myths. The hard truths of his legacy serve us better.

Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘Submarine agency chief: Australia’s SSNs will be bigger, better, faster’

Originally published on 28 May 2024.

The nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines to be built under the AUKUS agreement are on track to be the world’s most advanced fighting machines, says Australian Submarine Agency Director-General Jonathan Mead.

‘They’ll have greater firepower, a more powerful reactor, more capability and they’ll be able to do more bespoke operations, including intelligence gathering, surveillance, strike warfare, special forces missions and dispatching uncrewed vessels, than our current in-service submarines,’ Vice Admiral Mead says in an interview.

With a displacement of more than 10,000 tonnes, the SSN-AUKUS class will be larger than current US Virginia-class attack submarine of just over 7000 tonnes. Australia’s six conventionally powered Collins-class submarines are each about 3300 tonnes.

The SSN-AUKUS submarines to be built for Australia and Britain, with help from the United States, will be a ‘bigger, better, faster and bolder’ evolution of Britain’s Astute-class submarines, Mead says. The design will have the advantage of more US technology and greater commonality with US boats.

Australian steel will be used to build Australia’s SSN-AUKUS submarines, subject to a comprehensive qualification process expected to be completed in the first half of 2025.

The steel is also being qualified to both the British and US standards. Having Australian industry involved will deepen and bring resilience to the three nations’ supply chains, with greater mass, confidence and scale, Mead says.

In April, major US warship builder Newport News Shipbuilding lodged an initial purchase order for processed Australian steel from Bisalloy Steel’s Port Kembla plant for testing and training.

The government has committed to having eight nuclear submarines, Mead says, ‘and we’re on track’.

‘We’re planning on three Virginias and five SSN-AUKUS. That takes the program through to 2054.’

The SSN-AUKUS submarines built by Australia and Britain will be identical, incorporating technology from all three nations, including cutting-edge US technologies.

Those for the Royal Australian Navy will all be built at Osborne in South Australia. ‘Osborne will be the fourth nuclear-powered submarine shipyard among the three countries and one of the world’s most advanced technology hubs,’ Mead says.

The SSNs will all have an advanced version of the AN/BYG-1 combat system, used in the Collins class and in US submarines, and the Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo, an advanced version of which has been developed by the United States and Australia.

Mead says each Virginia has a crew of about 133 and the likely size of the SSN-AUKUS crew is being calculated as design work progresses.

The massive scale of the program and the nuclear element has understandably attracted strong attention, including criticism and questions about how skilled workforces will be found to build and crew the boats. Commentary has included suggestions that AUKUS is ‘dead in the water’.

Mead has no doubt that the project can be completed as planned. ‘Every day we ask ourselves the same question: ”Are we on track?” The answer is “yes.”’

For the program to succeed, it must be a national endeavour involving the Commonwealth, states and territories, industry, academia and the Australian people, Mead says. ‘To develop that social licence, we must provide confidence that we are going to deliver this capability safely and securely and not harm the environment.’

To build a nuclear mindset there must be an unwavering commitment to upholding the highest standards of safety, security, stewardship and safeguards, with all decisions underpinned by strong technical evidence. ‘It’s essential that everything we do is underpinned by strong technical and engineering evidence,’ he says. The reactor will be delivered as a sealed and welded unit that won’t be opened for the life of the submarine.

Mead acknowledges that recruiting is the big challenge.

He says comprehensive training of crews has begun, with Australian officers and enlisted sailors already passing nuclear training courses. ‘Australian officers have also topped courses in both the US and UK, showing that our people are up for the task that lies ahead.’

It’s intended that about 100 Australian officers and sailors will be in US training programs this year and they’ll go on to serve on US submarines as part of their crews. Other Australians will train in Britain and serve in Royal Navy boats.

Mead’s agency now has 597 staff, including engineers, project managers, lawyers, international relations specialists and policy makers. That is likely to rise to about 1000.

Given that Australia is the first non-nuclear nation acquiring nuclear-powered warships, the agency is working flat out to ensure rigorous regulations and safeguards are in place, along with the international agreements to back them.

Mead says Australia’s Optimal Pathway for acquisition of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) was designed to ensure that Australia would meet the exhaustive requirements to own and operate such vessels as soon as possible.

According to the Optimal Pathway, the first stage will see the first of several US and British submarines operating from the base HMAS Stirling in Western Australia as Submarine Rotational Force–West (SRF-West) from 2027.

In 2032, Australia will receive the first of three Virginia-class submarines from the US. One of the Australian officers now in US submarines is likely to be its commanding officer after extensive service on a US boat. The first two of those boats will be Block 4 Virginias, each with about 10 years’ US service, and they’ll be delivered after two years of deep maintenance and with 23 years of operational life left in them, Mead says, adding that the third US boat will be a brand new Block 6 Virginia. The US Navy has not yet put the Block 6 design into production.

The plan is to have the first SSN-AUKUS completed in Australia by early 2040s. Australia has an option to ask for two more Virginias if the SSN-AUKUS effort is delayed.

Mead says that how long the Collins are kept operational will be a decision for the government of the day as the SSNs arrive. The current plan is to begin big overhauls, called life-of-type extensions, for the Collins class in 2026.

He acknowledges that having the Virginias, SSN-AUKUS and Collin classes all operational could bring supply chain and training issues, but he believes those challenges can be handled. Having combat systems and torpedoes that are common to all these submarines will help.

Australians are on the design and design review teams for SSN-AUKUS. ‘We are embedding more technical and engineering people into the British program.’

Large numbers of Australian workers will soon be embedded in the British submarine construction site run by BAE Systems at Barrow, UK. ‘Many will come from the Australian Submarine Corporation, where they’ve been working on Collins. They’ll deepen their expertise, very specifically on how to build a nuclear-powered submarine,’ Mead says.

BAE will bring the intellectual property to the partnership with ASC to develop Osborne into a shipyard for nuclear-powered submarines.

It’s often suggested in Australia that, because the US has fewer submarines than it believes it needs, it will refuse to hand any over to Australia if its own situation worsens.

Senior American officials have expressed strong alternative views on why the project’s success is very important to the US and why it is in their own interests to make it work.

The US publication Defense News quoted the commander of US submarine forces, Vice-Admiral Rob Gaucher, telling a conference in April that co-operation with Australia would help the US submarine fleet in important ways. These included increasing the number of allied boats working together on operations. Having Australian personnel gaining experience on US boats would help ease a recruiting shortfall in the US Navy that flowed from the Covid-19 epidemic, and having access to the Australian base at HMAS Stirling in WA would extend the US Navy’s reach and maintenance options.

Gaucher said that, because the Australian SSNs would operate in co-ordination with American boats, ‘we get more submarines far forward. We get a port that gives us access’ to the Indo-Pacific region.

He said that by the end of this year the US Navy would graduate about 50 Australians as nuclear-trained operators and another 50 submarine combat operators. They would train on US submarines for the rest of this decade, increasing the number of people qualified to stand watch on American boats.

‘We get the opportunity to leverage an ally who can help us with manning and operating. We get surge capacity because now I have another area [where] I can do maintenance,’ Gaucher said.

Dan Packer, a former navy captain who is now the US director of naval submarine forces for AUKUS, told Defense News that Australia had eight officers in the inaugural training cohort that began in 2023. Three of those eight will be moved into an accelerated training pipeline, and one will eventually be the first Australian Virginia-class commanding officer.

Packer said the US was helping Australia build its submarine force from about 800 personnel to 3000. This year the US would bring 17 Australian officers, 37 nuclear enlisted and 50 non-nuclear enlisted into its training program. ‘And we’re going to up that number every year.’

These personnel would be fully integrated into US attack submarine crews until Australia could stand up its own training pipeline.

At some point, he said, the US Navy would have 440 Australians on 25 attack submarines, with each fully integrated crew including two or three Australian officers, seven nuclear enlisted and nine non-nuclear enlisted sailors. ‘They will do everything that we do’.

Mead says Australian navy personnel have been aboard the US submarine tender USS Emory S. Land for several months learning to maintain and sustain nuclear-powered submarines, and a US Virginia-class boat will visit HMAS Stirling for maintenance this year. Parts will come from an evolving Australian supply chain.

That visit will not include reactor work, ‘but ultimately, we will undertake work on systems that support the sealed power unit, within the compartment that houses it on the submarine,’ Mead says.

He says providing the industrial base to build and sustain the submarines, and crewing them, will involve about 20,000 jobs. A lot of work is being done with universities, technical schools and industry to prepare this formidable workforce.

Mead has long been a student of international relations and says the decision to equip Australia with SSNs was based on recognition that the Indo-Pacific is becoming a more dangerous place and ‘nuclear submarines provide a very effective deterrent’.

He rejects the argument that technology will soon make the oceans too transparent for crewed submarines to operate safely. ‘Our allies and partners and other countries in the region do not see it that way, and neither do we. We’ve done our analysis, and we see that crewed, nuclear-powered submarines will be the leading war-fighting capability for the next 50 to 100 years.’

He’s at pains to stress that the submarines will always be under full Australian sovereign control.

‘They will always be under the Australian government’s direction, operated by the RAN, and under the command of an Australian naval officer.’

Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘Celebrating 10 years of ASPI’s Women in Defence and Security Network’

Originally published on 4 November 2024.

When Hayley Channer and Nicole Seils attended a defence-related event in Canberra in 2014, they realised they were two of only a handful of women in the room. Stranger still, they had not known each other before that evening.

That meeting between an ASPI analyst and the then head of government relations at Lockheed Martin Australia sparked the idea for ASPI’s Women in Defence and Security Network. Later supported by another ASPI analyst, Natalie Sambhi, their aim was to create a forum for women across defence, national security, government, industry and civil society to connect, build their networks, and mentor and support each other on the difficult path towards changing the status quo.

A decade on, ASPI last month hosted a gala dinner for 150 guests to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the WDSN. Much of the discussion and sage advice shared during the evening reflected on key points from Elizabeth Cosson’s inaugural speech when WDSN was launched: the value of good leadership; authenticity; the willingness to listen; the importance of giving yourself the time and space to think and reflect; and the courage to take a chance.

The women leaders who spoke at the dinner—Catherine Burn from ASIS, Michelle Chan from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Hayley Channer from the United States Studies Centre, Stephanie Copus Campbell Australia’s Ambassador for Gender Equality, and Jessica Hunter from the Australian Signals Directorate—shared hard-earned insights with the audience. Each has paved a way for women in their fields.

WDSN has been fulfilling the mission that the three founders set for it—spotlighting women’s impact in national security, creating opportunities for women and men to gather and talk about their journeys and achievements, and the challenges of navigating this traditionally male-dominated field.

The network has hosted networking and speed mentoring events, panel discussions, roundtables, podcasts and professional development workshops. These have traversed themes of gender, peace and security, women in the Australian Defence Force and defence industry, counterterrorism and intelligence, human rights and international law. They have engaged women and girls from students and early-to-mid-career professionals to senior leaders, as well as male champions and allies.

Both the 2016 Defence White Paper and DFAT’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Strategy recognised that gender equality and increasing female participation in defence and leadership roles were vital to Australia’s defence capability, national security, foreign policy, diplomacy and development programs. Studies have proven that the private sector also benefits enormously from women’s participation.

Since its creation, the WDSN has grown to more than 3500 subscribers—and it is still growing. The gala was a chance to reflect on the progress, while acknowledging the work to be done to ensure that inequalities and challenges arising from the intersection of gender with other aspects of people’s identities continue to be addressed so that all women and people of diverse backgrounds can advance their careers.

A theme that stood out was the tendency for women not to pursue opportunities because they felt they were not ready, reflecting a lack of confidence that statistics show is less common in men. Panellists spoke about the need to raise awareness of unconscious biases in hiring managers, employers and colleagues. With retention of women and people of diverse backgrounds an ongoing challenge, it is vital to cultivate work environments that are attractive and inclusive to ensure everyone’s continued and meaningful participation.

The panellists discussed the ways that girls were socialised from a young age to be more risk-averse than boys. Unlearning these lessons can be a challenging experience that also highlights the importance of taking the time to explore your passions.

They advocated a ‘curious not furious’ mindset—one panellist citing the hit show Ted Lasso—to understand the viewpoint and behaviour of others, and to understand our own passions, ambitions and frustrations. That said, rage and frustration at obstacles can be a ‘fuel that never runs out’, provided it is channelled into positive action. ‘Watering your garden with humour’ was one way to offset frustrations and serve as a pressure valve.

We find inspiration in all sorts of places, including TV shows and movies about law enforcement and intelligence. As the audience heard, the only difference between a dream and a goal is having a plan.

The panellists and audience members shared their faith in the importance of tending to yourself. While empathy for others is indispensable, you still need to ‘put the oxygen mask on yourself first’.

The dinner was a celebration of a decade’s effort to create a space to share, connect and support one another. The difference this time, compared to 10 years ago, was that nobody was alone. From three came 150.

Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘Exclusive: Inside Beijing’s app collecting information from Belt and Road companies’

Originally published on 27 September 2024.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs operates a secure digital platform that connects it directly with Chinese companies operating abroad, requiring participating companies to submit regular reports about their activities and local security conditions to the government, internal documents reveal.

The documents obtained and verified by ASPI’s China Investigations and Analysis team show how the platform, called Safe Silk Road (平安丝路), collects information from companies participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy initiative. The BRI has facilitated Chinese infrastructure projects and other investment in more than 100 countries, particularly developing regions. The Safe Silk Road platform was initially launched in 2017 and is now used by at least dozens of Chinese companies across several continents.

By tapping into the extensive network of Chinese companies engaged in projects around the world, the platform demonstrates how Beijing is finding new ways of improving its global information and intelligence collection to better assess risks, and ultimately protect its interests and its citizens, even in the most remote corners of the world. The Safe Silk Road platform is one more building block in the growing global infrastructure that seeks to place the Chinese government at the center of the Chinese experience abroad, and that replicates some of the structures of information collection and surveillance that have now become ubiquitous within China.

The MFA’s External Security Affairs Department (涉外安全事务司), which operates the Safe Silk Road, has said the platform is a direct response to the difficulty of obtaining information relevant to Chinese companies abroad. The information the app collects feeds into the department’s assessments. The platform is also part of a trend across Chinese government ministries of creating apps to facilitate some of the work they were already doing.

ASPI is the first organisation to report on the Safe Silk Road platform. It is mentioned on some regional Chinese government websites but has not been covered by Chinese state media. The platform operates through a website and an associated mobile app that can only be accessed with registered accounts.

The platform is not available for download in app stores. The documents state that the platform is only intended for companies’ internal use, and that users are strictly prohibited from circulating information about it online. Companies can apply for an account through the MFA’s External Security Affairs Department or their local consulate and, once approved, designate an official contact person within the company, called a ‘company liaison officer’ (公司联络员), who is authorized to submit reports and use the app’s full functionality. The MFA provides companies with a QR code to download the app and requires companies to use the platform’s bespoke VPN with the app and desktop version.

 

 

Companies are asked to submit quarterly reports through the app. Those reports include basic information such as the name, national ID number and contact information of the owner, the region in which the company operates, its sector or industry, the amount of investment in US dollars, the number of Chinese and local employees, and whether it has registered with a local Chinese embassy or consulate, according to internal company documents viewed by ASPI analysts.

The app has a feature called ‘one-click report’ for ‘sudden incidents’ (突发事件) that allows users to report local security-related incidents directly to the MFA, according to the documents and other materials. The reporting feature includes the following categories: war/unrest, terrorist attack, conflict between Chinese and foreign workers, protest, kidnapping, gun shooting, production safety accident, contagion/epidemic, flood, earthquake, fire, tsunami, and other. The user can then provide more information including date, location and other details about the incident.

The reporting form also asks the company to provide information about its ‘overseas rights protection object’ (海外权益保护对象) and ‘police resources database object’ (警务资源库对象). An ‘overseas rights protection object’ may refer to patents, trademarks, and copyrights held by the company; the Chinese government has made protecting the intellectual property of Chinese companies a key focus in recent years. ‘Police resources database object’ is a vague term that may refer to security contractors, Chinese overseas police activity, or physical assets or company personnel that need protecting.

Users can subscribe to real-time security updates for their region and register to attend online safety training classes. There is even a video-conference feature within the app that allows embassy officials to call the app user directly. It is common for foreign ministries to create digital services that provide information and security alerts for their citizens abroad—such as Australia’s ‘Smartraveller’, the US Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), and China’s own ‘China Consul’ (中国领事).

The Safe Silk Road platform, however, is different. It is not public-facing, it is tailored specifically for BRI companies and, most importantly, it asks for detailed information from those companies about their own activities and local conditions, rather than just offering helpful information. For some companies, participation may even be compulsory.

ASPI’s analysis of the Safe Silk Road platform underscores Beijing’s determination to safeguard its global infrastructure and investment power play under the BRI. As China’s investment in developing regions has grown, so has Beijing’s emphasis on protecting its citizens, companies, and assets abroad.

As of December 2023, about 150 countries had joined the BRI. According to the official Belt and Road Portal, China has 346,000 workers dispatched overseas. BRI-affiliated companies often run projects in regions with underdeveloped infrastructure, high poverty, poor governance, lack of quality medical care, domestic political instability, violent crime, and terrorist attacks. Private security contracting companies are increasingly offering their services to Chinese companies abroad. The number of Chinese private security contractors has expanded dramatically in recent years as BRI companies have faced growing security challenges.

Several events over the past few years, including the pandemic and a string of attacks in Pakistan in 2021 targeting Chinese nationals supporting BRI projects, have underscored to Beijing the need for better security measures. At the third Belt and Road symposium in 2021, Xi Jinping said China needed ‘an all-weather early warning and comprehensive assessment service platform for overseas project risks’. The External Security Affairs Department said the same year that ‘the difficulty of obtaining security information is one of the major problems faced by companies who “go out”’, referring to Chinese companies that invest overseas. To address this concern, the department ‘launched the Safe Silk Road website and the related mobile app to gather information about security risks in Belt and Road countries to directly serve company personnel engaged in projects overseas’. The department said that in 2021 the app was used to disseminate 13,000 pieces of information, including more than 2,800 early warnings.

More broadly, the platform is illustrative as a digital tool to help Beijing protect its interests abroad. The External Security Affairs Department was established in 2004 in response to a perceived increase in kidnappings and terrorist attacks targeting Chinese nationals abroad, but its role in China’s security policy has expanded since then.

The department’s leading role in ‘protecting China’s interests abroad’ (中国海外利益保护) meets an objective increasingly found in official Chinese Communist Party documents and Chinese law. This objective appears in China’s National Security Strategy 2021–2025, the new Foreign Relations Law 2023, and new regulations on consular protection and assistance passed in 2023. The party’s ability and readiness to protect China’s interests abroad is considered one of the historic achievements of the party, according to a resolution it passed in 2021.

But the exact scope of China’s interests abroad is still a matter of debate in the public commentary among Chinese national security and foreign policy academics and analysts. Are China’s interests just the physical security of Chinese nationals and commercial or strategic assets in foreign countries? Or do they also include ‘intangible interests’ (无形利益), such as protecting China’s national image and reputation, and anything else that should be within China’s national interest as a major global power? How the Chinese government currently defines China’s interests abroad is probably somewhere in the middle, and may broaden.

China has a widely recognised deficiency: gaps in its overseas intelligence collection capabilities. Safe Silk Road is part of the toolbox that the External Security Affairs Department uses to extend the range and effectiveness of Beijing’s information-gathering and to better understand the situation on the ground everywhere that China has interests.

Editors’ picks for 2024: ‘The curiously cozy relationship between Taiwan and Japan’

Originally published on 18 June 2024.

Because Taiwan lacks formal diplomatic ties with most countries, it works hard at developing cultural and social links with them.

But not with Japan. Far more than is widely understood in other countries, Taiwan and Japan have an unusually close cultural and social relationship that doesn’t need government promotion. Their relationship might even be called cozy.

This must be an influence in international policy. Japan has its own national-security reasons for backing Taiwan’s preservation from Chinese conquest, but the mutual fondness between the two countries can only reinforce Tokyo’s resolve.

Most surprisingly, the close Taiwan-Japan relationship is based largely on nostalgia for colonialism. Many Taiwanese even feel reverence for their former Japanese colonial masters, who modernised the island during an occupation that lasted from 1895 to 1945.

More than anything, that colonial nostalgia is the doing of the Kuomintang, the nationalist party that lost China’s civil war to the Communists and came to the island in 1949. Japanese rule had been tough, but the Kuomintang’s was brutal.

Comfort, or even fascination, with a history of Japanese colonialism is a strong cultural factor that sets Taiwan apart from China and South Korea, where occupation by Japan is remembered with revulsion. Last year, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Japan found in a survey that 77 percent of Japanese said they felt close to Taiwan and 73 percent believed that Taiwan and Japan had good relations. A year earlier, Tokyo’s representative office in Taiwan had conducted a similar survey, finding that Taiwanese had much the same feelings towards Japan.

Japan suddenly became aware of the depth of Taiwan’s affection for it after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, when an outpouring of Taiwanese donations exceeding 20 billion yen (US$230 million at the time) outdid contributions from every other country. It was a watershed moment for Japan.

Since then, Japan has repaid this friendship. For example, after China suspended imports of Taiwanese pineapples in 2021 in an apparent attempt to squeeze the island’s economy, Japan stepped in to buy loads of the fruit.

When a powerful earthquake hit the Taiwanese city Hualien in April this year, Japanese local governments and private citizens ran fund-raising campaigns. Hualien subsequently suffered from a drop in tourism, so diplomats in Japan’s de facto embassy in Taiwan encouraged Japanese expatriates on the island to visit the city.

Taiwanese visitors were the biggest spenders in Japan last year, even edging out Chinese ones. Taiwan is an unusually popular travel destination for Japanese. In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic distorted Japanese travel patterns, 11 percent of overseas trips by Japanese were to Taiwan, compared with 9 percent to Thailand, which is far more famous elsewhere for holidays.

Although Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese, they are culturally very different to the people of China. Much of that difference comes from Japanese colonial influence that permeates Taiwanese society. In Taiwan, the local Chinese dialect includes Japanese words, tatami mats are found in many homes, and big dollops of wasabi are routinely served with seafood. As for more modern influences, many young Taiwanese are keen to learn Japanese so they can read original editions of manga. They copy Japanese fashion, too.

The closeness between Taiwan and Japan isn’t just cultural and social. Mutual trade is booming. Japan is Taiwan’s third-largest trading partner and Taiwan is Japan’s fourth-largest. Japan has also voiced support for Taiwan’s participation in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed multilateral free trade pact

Amid concerns that concentration of advanced integrated-circuit manufacturing in Taiwan creates a global vulnerability, Taiwan’s star chipmaker, TSMC, has been lured to set up shop in Japan, the United States and Germany. In February it said it would add a second chip factory in Japan and increase investments there to more than US$20 billion. The word in Taipei is that TSMC’s Japanese ventures are operating more smoothly than those it has in the United States, thanks to cultural similarity.

In 2021, Taiwan worried that its stock of Covid-19 vaccines was running low, because, the government said, China had interfered with the island’s supplies. Japan responded with a donation larger than any other country’s.

Political connections are getting closer, too, even though they are more sensitive than culture and trade, because of China’s hostility. Also, old-guard members of the Kuomintang, remembering Japanese atrocities in China during and before World War II, are not fond of Japan. But the party has not held the presidency since 2016.

Parliamentary diplomacy serves as a Taiwanese channel for discussing security issues with another country. It’s vibrant with Japan. In 2021, Taiwan, Japan and the United States launched a trilateral strategic forum involving lawmakers from all three nations. That year, Taiwan and Japan also launched what they call 2+2 talks, in which two ruling party lawmakers from each side with expertise in defence and foreign affairs would meet twice a year.

The message from all this is simple: to each other, Japan and Taiwan are much more than near neighbours.