Why informed discussion on AUKUS is good for everyone

The Australian government needs to lead the narrative on AUKUS. If it doesn’t, others will.

More and better-informed discussion about AUKUS is a good thing. The Australian public deserves continued healthy debates about what AUKUS, and the significant increase in defence spending outlined in the National Defence Strategy, mean for them, their communities, the economy and the Indo-Pacific region.

AUKUS leaders have described the partnership as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to promote peace and security throughout the Indo-Pacific. The subtext of which is to deter China from unilaterally altering the status quo in its favour. For AUKUS to deliver on its big promise, and for the Australian people to accept AUKUS’ price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars, the government needs to clearly explain what AUKUS will deliver, and why it’s important. And they will need to do so continuously because the stakes are too high if they fail.

A case in point is the recent sharp disagreement between lauded Australian Labor Party elders and advocates of AUKUS. The latest episode emerged around the security agreement’s three-year mark last week.

The debate reflects careful strategic thinking and decades of public service on both sides. These significant divergences in opinion should not be dismissed. There is value in discussing the issue of capability gaps, Australia’s sovereignty, the fiscal weight of the agreement, and the difficult trade-offs it will require, including around acquisition of other capabilities or other public goods. Momentous policy decisions like such as AUKUS demand rich and even heated discussions because no individual or group can claim a monopoly over what’s best for Australia’s national interests. To claim otherwise would be a disservice and an act of hubris that would be damaging to the tradition of Australia’s democratic discourse.

The government can play a powerful role before intellectual divergences could harden into political factions. Should the government vacate its responsibilities to promote the agreement, an environment that risks disenfranchising the very people essential for AUKUS’ success can emerge. At worst, an information vacuum would be ripe for exploitation by Chinese and Russian influence operations. Australia has already suffered from such tactics in the past.

AUKUS has an estimated 30-year time horizon to achieve a fully operational sovereign nuclear powered submarine capability, with eight boats in service. This equates to at least 10 election cycles in Australia, eight in the US, and six in Britain, during which AUKUS will be on voters’ minds. No policy is immune to political change, and neither is AUKUS. Support for the partnership will need to withstand competing priorities including housing, climate, health, education, unemployment and immigration.

The good news is the government has a positive story to tell about how AUKUS will benefit Australia including notable progress to date.

The AUKUS Optimal Pathway was announced just 564 days ago, on 13 March 2023. Since then, Australian Defence Force and Australian defence contractors have started studying at US and British submarine training schools and are embedded in their shipyards. Other Australians are training on visiting US nuclear-powered attack submarines. This will continue to expand over coming years, providing the backbone of Australia’s sovereign AUKUS workforce.

The Australian government has also established over 4000 science and technology university placements at 16 institutions across the country to build out this capability. Each country has agreed to personnel exchanges to support this growth. This transfer of knowledge and expertise will provide advances in education, technology and business competitiveness for the Australian community.

Australian industry will benefit from the reforms brought to streamline defence trade, information and technology sharing. These steps will enable co-development, co-manufacturing and co-delivering of advanced capabilities. The resultant path from groundbreaking research to commercialisation will help ensure our most innovative researchers and companies won’t have to leave Australia to grow.

A prime example of what is possible is the government’s bold entry into the quantum technology industry. Separate to the AUKUS endeavour, but sure to benefit from reduced barriers to cooperation, the government announced earlier this year an almost $1 billion investment in PsiQuantum to build the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer in Brisbane. This investment, which demonstrates Australia’s commitment to drive innovation and boost economic growth, will create 400 highly skilled local jobs, establish partnerships with local industries and fund university placements, transforming the industry.

The US has quickly followed suit with its own US$500 million investment in PsiQuantum, building a quantum campus in Chicago. Likewise, Britain announced £100 million for five new quantum research hubs. AUKUS partners are investing in groundbreaking quantum technologies that will support national security and directly benefit people’s lives through better healthcare and clean energy.

The issues that demand discussion will not be settled anytime soon. The domestic debate over AUKUS and Australia’s increased investment in advanced defence capability will intensify and change, shaped by domestic and international issues. The government’s preferred approach of limited public discussion is not suitable for the scale of this venture.

AUKUS is an immense undertaking that will reshape Australia’s strategic calculus, lethal capabilities and defence industrial base for decades to come. There is an immutable responsibility on the current government to take the public into its confidence and openly discuss the costs and benefits of the endeavour.

Preventing human shields is vital to protecting aid workers in conflict

Foreign Minister Penny Wong was right to champion a new declaration for the protection of humanitarian personnel at the United Nations in New York this week. But the initiative will only be effective if it tackles the threat posed by Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups who use aid workers and other civilians as human shields.

Wong has convened a ministerial group that will develop the declaration in partnership with the UN and non-governmental organisations, and to which all countries will be invited to pledge support. The diversity of the group, which includes Jordan, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Colombia and Brazil, offers the potential for the declaration to be global in scope, and not targeted at a specific country. Such an approach would echo Canada’s declaration against arbitrary detention, which was universal despite being triggered by Beijing’s hostage diplomacy.

Pulling together working groups and getting things done are the hallmarks of Australian statecraft, as we’ve seen before on issues including countering proliferation and tackling economic coercion.

But the nature of the problem must be correctly identified at the outset—and Wong’s framing remarks on Gaza at the initiative’s launch raise concern that the declaration could become narrowly focused on Israel’s operations. The declaration cannot overlook the illegal tactics deployed by terrorists and some authoritarian countries of embedding forces among populations and using civilians as human shields. These tactics are a key reason why, as Wong has pointed out, 2023 was the deadliest year on record for aid workers and why Gaza is the most dangerous place on earth to be an aid worker.

There is ample evidence of armed groups around the world using civilian infrastructure to store weapons and plan attacks, including using humanitarian premises as cover for operations, which is illegal under international law. Satellite analysis by ASPI’s Nathan Ruser supported the assessment that the deadly explosion at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza in October 2023 was caused by a misfiring terrorist rocket, not an Israeli airstrike.

Terrorists also pose as aid workers. The UN has acknowledged that some employees of its Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees might have been involved in the 7 October 2023 atrocities committed against Israel.

The playbook of Hamas and other terrorist organisations, which includes seizing humanitarian equipment, adds to the risk that aid workers could be targeted by mistake. After the killing by the Israeli military of Australian Zomi Frankcom and six colleagues from World Central Kitchen in Gaza in April, the report by former Chief of the Defence Force, Mark Binskin, noted that the presence of armed security guards in the convoy ‘gave the appearance of the presence of Hamas’ as it was consistent with the group’s approach of hijacking aid missions.

It would be devastatingly counterproductive if, by failing to address such tactics, this declaration gave terrorists a free pass on international law compliance. After all, the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah pose as legitimate political movements and care about their public image, which is the basis of their support. Therefore, we must call them out for war crimes, including the use of human shields, and increase pressure on them to change tactics.

Hamas’s 7 October attack should have illustrated to the world the dangers of tolerating the intolerable: a terrorist entity that controls territory and a population, with the declared intent to destroy its neighbour.

Sadly, a combination of groundless idealism and animosity to the US and Israel continues to prevent the international community taking collective action. Even the evident depravity of Islamic State’s caliphate did not stop Russia blocking a Security Council resolution to authorise the US-led coalition’s use of force against IS in Syria.

All parties to armed conflict, including non-state armed groups, have obligations under international law to facilitate and protect humanitarian activities. That’s why the proposed declaration needs to apply pressure on countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Iran to stop hosting and supporting terrorists, which is essential to protecting civilians and humanitarian work.

International law already obliges parties to an armed conflict to assess a range of legal criteria, including taking precautions and using force in a proportionate and discriminate manner, when targeting enemies hiding amongst human shields. But international law also leaves room for debate about how to distinguish between civilians that have been coerced into functioning as human shields against their will from people who have opted voluntarily to conceal terrorists, in which latter case they might lose some or all rights to protection.

This esoteric legal wrangle has very real implications for military commanders, working under combat conditions, who know that a mistake one way could leave them facing allegations of war crimes, while a mistake in the other direction might give the enemy respite to mount an attack.

The initiative is an opportunity to be ambitious by proposing solutions to these thorny, life-and-death issues. The declaration should condemn the use of human shields and pledge that signatories agree to take collective action against those who force civilians into that role. The declaration should also convene globally respected legal and security experts to chart the outline of a new framework that better clarifies and protects states’ right of self-defence when dealing with enemies using human shields.

In time, the declaration could dovetail with processes led by the UN Secretary-General under Security Council Resolution 2730, developing new, legally binding agreements and protocols specifically focused on tackling the problem of human shields. The Australian Defence Force could then lead the way in incorporating these new frameworks into operational doctrine and assisting other militaries to do the same.

That would be a lasting testament to Wong’s leadership and Australian statecraft. After all, who could object to a declaration against human shields?

From the bookshelf: ‘At War with Ourselves’

The American president’s national security advisor is second only to the secretary of state in the United States’ foreign policy establishment. The position provides the president with independent advice on foreign policy decisions. It has been held by such luminaries as Henry Kissinger, who was in the job for nearly six years, and Bent Scowcroft, who held the job twice, for more than five years. The incumbent, Jake Sullivan, is near the end of his fourth year.

In stark contrast, under Donald Trump the position fell victim to the president’s impetuous hiring and firing of senior staff. Trump’s first national security advisor, Mike Flynn, lasted 24 days. He was followed by H R McMaster, who served from February 2017 until April 2018, John Bolton, who served 17 months, and Robert O’Brien who served the remaining 16 months of the president’s term.

In At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, McMaster provides a no-holds-barred account of his own 13 months at the heart of global decision-making, and of the functioning, and dysfunctionality, of Trump’s White House. His account complements John Bolton’s memoir, which was published in 2020.

McMaster served in the US Army for 34 years, including long tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, established himself as an accomplished historian and retired as lieutenant general following his assignment at the White House. He is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Arizona State University.

Once on board the White House staff, McMaster quickly realised that his new environment was rife with rivalries and in-fighting. Policy differences and competing egos are part of any administration, but under Trump these reached new heights, mainly because the president enjoyed playing off cabinet members and advisors against each other. In this inflamed and uncertain environment, positions were constantly being revised and briefs rewritten. Consistency was often an afterthought. The inefficiency irked McMaster, who was accustomed to military discipline. ‘Everything was harder than it needed to be’.

In a chapter titled ‘Knives out’, McMaster details his turf battles with secretary of state Rex Tillerson and defense secretary James Mattis, who were intent on elbowing the security advisor aside. He also describes his struggles with Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, and the far-right chief strategist Steve Bannon and his acolytes, whom he likens to the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Following one particularly strong pro-Moscow outburst from Bannon at an Oval Office meeting, McMaster bluntly asked him whether he was an apologist for the Kremlin.

Trump fired Priebus and Bannon within seven months of taking up office. Tillerson lasted half a year longer but was sacked shortly after a leaked report that he had made disparaging remarks about Trump. He was also the first cabinet member ever to be sacked on Twitter. McMaster lasted only a week longer, with Trump’s favourable attitude to Russian president Vladimir Putin the main bone of contention.

Just a few days after Russian agents poisoned the retired Russian military operative Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain, Trump, against the counsel of his advisers, insisted on congratulating Putin on his recent election victory. At home, McMaster confided to his wife: ‘After over a year in the job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump’.

McMaster is at his best describing how he and other advisers tried to rein in the impulsive Trump at meetings with foreign leaders. While visiting NATO headquarters in Brussels, they had to dissuade the president from threatening to pull out of the alliance if members didn’t ‘pay their dues’. McMaster had to remind Trump repeatedly that there were no dues but that members had committed to spend the equivalent of at least 2 percent of GDP on their own defence capabilities. At dinner, Trump surprised other NATO members by failing to reaffirm US commitment to Article 5, the mutual defence clause of the treaty, scolded them for failing to ‘pay what they owe’ and then abruptly walked out.

McMaster and his colleagues also tried to dissuade Trump from pulling the US out of the Paris climate accords, suggesting in vain that a threat to withdraw would be equally effective. Trump enjoyed making inflammatory statements and announced to the media that he ‘was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris’. And at the UN General Assembly, he insisted on matching North Korea’s vitriol by describing its leader, Kim Jong-un, as a ‘rocket man on a suicide mission’.

McMaster gives Trump credit for numerous foreign policy achievements, including taking a tougher stance on China and repairing frayed relations in the Middle East. Trump’s unpredictability was useful when dealing with adversaries but played havoc with discussions with allies. And Trump’s anxieties and insecurities left him vulnerable ‘to foreign counterparts who knew how to conjure his emotions’. In the balance, ‘rather than anchoring US policy, Trump often unmoored it’.

With the presidential elections around the corner, McMaster’s lucid account provides a timely reminder of the need for coherence and stability in American foreign policy. Depending on the outcome of the elections, it may also provide decision-makers with a guidebook for dealing with a second Trump presidency.

The Afghan saga of bravery, allegations and betrayal

The collective failure to properly address allegations of unlawful killings arising from the Afghanistan war has delivered a great injustice upon our soldiers. Accusations of this kind have been levelled in every conflict we have fought since the Boer war in 1899–1902. How we should respond to those accusations is now in focus. The reckless handling of the Afghan allegations set a bad precedent that must be challenged until a new process is institutionalised.

As a nation, we need a better and more just protocol for dealing with war crimes allegations, now and into the future.

Major General Paul Brereton was tasked to inquire and his three-part final report to the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) was delivered on 6 November 2020. It found ‘credible evidence’ of 39 alleged unlawful killings involving 25 special forces soldiers between 2009 and 2013. Evidence to the inquiry revealed strikingly different versions of events on the battlefield from soldiers in action, varying opinions on ethics and tactics, and exposed personality clashes and individual enmities amongst the troops. These dynamics are found frequently among any group of soldiers facing the pressures and exigencies of war throughout history. Allegations of unlawful conduct must therefore be carefully tested through a due process, to arrive at the truth before hasty conclusions are drawn and punishments dealt out.

Brereton’s was an inquiry with coercive powers. It was not, as he acknowledged in his report, a court of law. It was not a due process. And it had no authority to make findings of guilt or to convict. When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law. The Brereton Inquiry certainly harmed many people.

This harm was insensitive in the ways spelt out by the Australian Special Air Service Association (ASASA) in our submission to Hon Duncan Kerr SC, who conducted the 20-year Review of the IGADF. This just-released review warns that the ADF’s Chief of the Defence Force (CDF), the Department of Defence and the supposedly independent office of the IGADF are perceived as too closely connected.

It has been four years since the report was delivered. Since then, only one soldier has been charged with an offence and there have been no convictions. It is possible that more soldiers may be charged; many would welcome this step to clear their names. While there may be convictions, it is also conceivable that when a defence of each allegation is heard by a jury, there is not a single conviction. There may also be no further charges. On what basis then would anyone presume guilt until the justice system has run its course?

It is a question which could be put to former CDF Angus Campbell and the then-Minister for Defence in 2020, Linda Reynolds, who, instead of referring the Brereton Report immediately to police prosecutors and without apparent resistance from the IGADF, chose to make it public with redacted versions handed out to a baying commentariat. Campbell’s public handling of the matter thereafter signalled a presumption of guilt on the part of all the soldiers accused. Campbell made an apology to the nation and to Afghans now in the hands of our former enemies, offering them money.

Brereton’s Report and his recommendations were putatively presented to Australians as a court finding of guilt.

While corporals, sergeants, junior officers and entire units were blamed and shamed, ministers, governments and the generals who advised them during the failed war in Afghanistan were exonerated.  Those at the top took no responsibility and Brereton provided cover for them by asserting that ‘command responsibility’ did not extend to generals or ministers. Australian soldiers, their families and their Regiments were humiliated as the media feasted on the details contained in transcripts of the Inquiry.

Current Defence Minister Richard Marles has gone further, removing honours and awards for distinguished service to junior or mid-ranking officers awarded while fighting with their men in action. One of these young commanders led his soldiers on an 81-day rolling battle involving 139 contacts with the enemy requiring 14 company-level attacks with casualties on all sides. Although accused of no personal wrongdoing, each of these brave officers’ actions on the battlefield are to be pushed to one side as they are stripped of their Distinguished Service Crosses and publicly condemned, because in Marles’ view each leader should have known about the unproven illegal actions which allegedly occurred in a remote village somewhere else in the deserts of Afghanistan on their watch.

If a court later determines that no unlawful acts under their command took place it will be too late; the removal of medals from each individual will have been imposed with no apparent plan to remedy the injustice. As far as the ASASA can establish, this is the first time in Australian history—and in the tradition of ANZAC—that a government has sought to punish and publicly humiliate Australian commanders by removing awards after the war is over.

In judging these leaders as well as the soldiers who fought by their side, Marles positions himself ahead of a due process. In April 2021, then-defence minister Peter Dutton rejected Campbell’s advice about removing awards, for the right reasons. Not this time. By providing bipartisan support, the current opposition defence spokesperson, Andrew Hastie, has aligned himself with the Labor government joining Marles in judgment and condemnation of these officers and their men. Both politicians, along with their leaders and political parties, strive to signal their virtue at the expense of justice.

The truth both politicians fail to understand is that only a jury of their fellow Australians in a properly constituted court has the right to pass judgment.

Watching this example of failed senior leadership are the young men and women of today’s ADF, fresh from reading the final report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veterans Suicide, which revealed veteran suicide was at tragic levels due to poor treatment by government—particularly by the military justice system. ADF recruiting and retention are at historic lows. Why on earth would soldiers reenlist? Then there are the everyday Australian families looking on and questioning why their children should ever consider a career in the ADF.  Why would they join? The institution of Defence could not have been more damaged by its own mishandling of these war crimes allegations.

Also listening are the parents who buried their sons killed in the Afghanistan war, as are the hundreds of families who are caring at home for those veterans still living with their physical, mental and moral wounds. Vietnam veterans who were treated miserably by their government on their return from that unpopular conflict see history repeating itself. The panicked exit from Kabul looked so much like the evacuation from Saigon. The Afghanistan campaign was another war in which Australian soldiers were sent by their governments to fight irregular wars beside corrupt and untrustworthy local allies.

In the view of many of the 26,000 veterans impacted by this farrago who served stoically in our name, successive governments have handled these war crime allegations unjustly and without due process. That has created a cloud of doubt which hangs over all who served in Afghanistan. Denied the presumption of innocence by their own leaders, veterans have been judged guilty not by the courts, but by politicians from both sides of politics and by their CDF, who sit in judgement based on allegations alone.

A better and more just protocol for dealing with war crime allegations is necessary.

Words are cheap and they will be plentiful as politicians from the backbenches who condoned this arrive to lay wreathes at Remembrance Day and ANZAC Day commemorations between now and the next federal election.

If there are convictions arising from these events, the individuals involved will pay the price of justice. If not, our remaining Afghanistan veterans will have been unjustly thrown under the bus, treated and punished as guilty by association with comrades who committed no unlawful acts. In a frantic effort to exonerate themselves while they scramble for the sanctity of the high moral ground in the shadow of a strategic failure, politicians on both sides and some very senior generals have delivered a great injustice to the soldiers who served in our name, and to their families.

Now our Afghanistan veterans truly are alone. In 1987, fifteen years after Australia’s war in Vietnam ended, we felt the need to conduct the Welcome Home parades across the nation for our mistreated veterans of that failed conflict. We appear to have learnt nothing. Don’t be surprised if in fifteen years’ time we must, once again, welcome them home.

This article has slightly edited since publication.

Trump flags US dollar dominance as national security priority

United States presidential candidate Donald Trump sees the continued dominance of the US dollar in international transactions as a matter of national security.

‘If we lost the dollar as the world currency, I think that would be the equivalent of losing a war,’ he told The Economic Club of New York earlier this month.

Trump has promised to impose 100 percent tariffs on imports from countries moving away from using the US dollar in their international transactions.  ‘You leave the dollar, you’re not doing business with the United States,’ he said.

How this would work is unclear. As Trump was talking, Saudi Arabian and Chinese officials were discussing the settlement of their bilateral trade in renminbi, as do others already, including Brazil and South Africa. The share of international trade settled in renminbi is still only 6 percent. It has risen from 2 percent since 2021, but this is mainly because western sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have excluded Russian banks from the global payments network, Swift, which is used to settle international bank transfers. This has forced Russia to look for alternatives to the US dollar to settle its payments.

According to analysis by Bloomberg Economics, about 40 percent of Russian exports and imports are now settled in renminbi. This includes some non-Chinese trade, with Russia using the renminbi because of its difficulty in sourcing other foreign currencies.

Washington derives both significant coercive power and economic advantage from the US dollar’s status as the preeminent global currency, however the currency’s use in trade finance—the financial instruments used to smooth trade transactions between importers and exporters—where it is responsible for about 54 percent of transactions, is a side-issue.

Trade finance is only 1 percent of the size of the foreign exchange market, which turns over US$7.5 trillion every day. But the US dollar is on one side of 88 percent of all foreign exchange transactions. It is this role as the essential component of international transactions that gives the US government the power to impose financial sanctions on international financial institutions, including other central banks.

A bank that loses access to the US dollar market has its international operations strangled.  Bloomberg’s analysis shows that Russian access to the renminbi is starting to dry up because Chinese banks are fearful of US sanctions.

There has been no change in the US dollar’s share of foreign exchange markets in the last 20 years, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

The US dollar achieved that indispensable role because the depth and liquidity of US capital markets make it safe and stable in a way that no other currency can match. Unlike China, the US has no controls on capital flows and any volume of US dollars can be transacted instantly without it affecting the price. This also allows the US to run huge budget and current account deficits without fear of financial market reaction. There is always demand for US dollars.

The one area where the US dollar is losing ground is as a reserve currency, where, according to the IMF, the currency’s share has declined from over 70 percent in 2000 to 58 percent now.

The decline in the US dollar share of international reserves reflects a global shift to non-traditional currencies, including the Australian and Canadian dollars, the South Korean won and the renminbi. The latest data shows the Australian dollar is slightly ahead of the renminbi, accounting for 2.2 percent of international reserves.

The seizure of the US dollar portion of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves in 2022, after its invasion of Ukraine, encouraged China to reduce the share of its reserves in US dollars, although the scope for it to diversify is limited by the lack of similarly sized alternatives.

While the US has demonstrated its ability to sequester other nations’ US dollar reserves, it is not a coercive threat with the same impact as the sanctioning of bank transactions in the currency. Foreign exchange reserves are held passively as insurance and have little influence on a nation’s international payments, other than in a crisis.

The exclusion of Russian banks from Swift has contributed to a jump in the US dollar share of transactions in the network from 42 percent at the beginning of 2022 to 59 percent now.  The big loser has been the euro: its share has plunged from 37 percent to just 13 percent.  That reflects the collapse of Europe’s oil and gas trade with Russia and the requirement to pay US dollars for the alternative supplies coming from the United States.

It suggests the US dollar’s dominant role is in no danger—and it doesn’t need threats from Trump to keep this status.

UN looks to rectify the past in its Pact for the Future

International cooperation tends to be hardest when it is needed most. On 22 and 23 September, world leaders convened in New York for the United Nations Summit of the Future, which member states called for in 2020 on the UN’s 75th anniversary. The meeting’s agenda was as ambitious as its name suggests, aiming to forge consensus on peace and security, development, new technologies and the protection of future generations.

Member states agree on one point: the multilateral system that was established in 1945 needs significant upgrades to confront today’s global crises. They are keenly aware of the UN’s inability to stop or even slow the wars in Sudan, Central Africa, Gaza, Ukraine, and a dozen other conflict zones. They acknowledge their failure to prepare the world for the next pandemic, even after witnessing the devastation of Covid-19. They recognise the need for rapid, serious action to address a sovereign-debt crisis, an intensifying climate crisis and the emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and gene editing.

Unfortunately, agreement on the need to fix the system does not extend to how. More than a year of grinding negotiations over the Pact for the Future—the summit’s outcome document—concluded dramatically on Sunday morning as Russia protested adoption of the final document, only to be overruled. Later that day, Argentina denounced the pact as a ‘totalitarian agenda’. In reality, the document largely repeats previously agreed, abstract language. But amid the lofty words, there are signs of trends that could reshape global politics and help build the foundations for an international system that is capable of meeting current and future challenges.

After experiencing two world wars and facing the risk of nuclear escalation, the UN’s architects designed a multilateral system that would enable a handful of great powers to steer the world toward peace and advance their own interests. But this kind of global governance is not fit for today’s world, and especially not for the roughly four billion people under the age of 30. Even in the face of continuing conflict on multiple continents, war is no longer the only item on the global agenda. Pandemics, climate change, poverty, mass migration and technological catastrophes all require effective and inclusive international action.

Moreover, a much wider range of countries have enough power to influence world affairs. The rise of China has captured the most attention, but it is far from the only country shaping the global agenda: Barbados has pushed for reform of the international financial system, and the United Arab Emirates has sought to reconfigure regional relations. Brazil will host the G20 this year and a make-or-break UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) next year.

Surprisingly, the Pact for the Future recognises this increasing multipolarity with concrete, albeit incremental, progress on one of the UN’s thorniest problems: reforming the Security Council. After decades of false starts, member states are moving the process forward by agreeing to greater representation on the council for ‘developing countries and small- and medium-sized states’. The pact also commits member states to discuss limits on the ‘scope and use’ of the veto wielded by the Security Council’s five permanent members, resolves to treat the representation of African countries as a ‘special case’, and endorses an active role for the General Assembly when the Security Council fails to act.

Another trend reflected in the negotiations is the important role that companies, NGOs, cities and other actors are playing in addressing global challenges, forming networks that complement national governments. From climate change to AI and misinformation, non-state entities are increasingly shaping the outcomes that matter most to people. The Pact for the Future pledges to ‘strengthen partnerships’ across the ‘whole of society,’ including local and regional governments, the private sector, academic and scientific communities, religious groups and indigenous peoples. The Global Digital Compact, agreed as an appendix to the pact, identifies the private sector, researchers and civil society as ‘essential’ for achieving its goals and commits to multi-stakeholder cooperation.

Lastly, the summit embraced a shift toward longer-term governance. Climate change, pension schemes, infrastructure investment and other ‘long problems’ have causes and consequences that unfold over many generations. In the Declaration on Future Generations, a second appendix to the pact, countries affirm their commitment to ‘safeguard the needs and interests of future generations,’ echoing the first line of the 1945 UN Charter, in which their predecessors pledged to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.’

These grand statements are grounded in specific actions taken by national governments intent on extending the horizon of decision-making. In 2015, Wales was the first government to establish a Commissioner for Future Generations. This month, the European Commission appointed a Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness. South Korea has also recently moved in this direction, with its Constitutional Court ordering the government to set more ambitious climate targets to protect future generations. To the extent that the declaration catalyses more change, it could eventually be seen as a transformative force, much like the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

In his 2021 Our Common Agenda report, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres foresaw a ‘future of perpetual crises, or a breakthrough to a better, more sustainable, peaceful future for our people and planet.’ The Pact for the Future is not the breakthrough that many had hoped for, but it begins to outline the contours of a new system that could rectify the shortcomings of the old one.

The rise of small, fighter-like drones in US Air Force thinking

You only had to walk into the exhibit hall at last week’s Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) convention in Maryland to realise that US air power is having a moment.

A prime spot to the left of the entrance was occupied by the company Anduril. Now in its second year as an exhibitor, the startup’s exhibit was as large as any of the major defence companies. Anduril’s 32-year-old co-founder, Palmer Luckey, made his first billions from a gaming accessory, enjoys Twitter catfights and regards Hawaiian shirts as business attire.

That might seem far removed from Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s commissioning of the bluest of blue-ribbon panels to rebuild the service’s modernisation plans. Members include three 21st century US Air Force chiefs of staff (John Jumper, Norton Schwartz and Steve Goldfein) but also General Joe Ralston, Paul Kaminski and Natalie Crawford—some of the people who steered the USAF’s adoption of stealth more than 40 years ago.

But Anduril, Luckey and Kendall’s council of elders could not be more closely interconnected. Their linkage was represented on the AFA show floor by two full-size aeroplane models and one real aircraft. The models represented designs that Anduril and General Atomics were selected to build in April for the air force’s program for collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs)—small, fighter-like uncrewed aeroplanes that would fly with and support piloted fighters. (Such aircraft were formerly called ‘loyal wingmen’.) The real aircraft on the show floor was General Atomics’ XQ-67A prototype, also uncrewed.

CCAs are the disruptive agent in USAF force planning, which has invested heavily in a structure that risks being overmatched in the Western Pacific. The expansion of Chinese counter-air forces—fighters, missiles, airborne radars and air-warfare ships—presents more threats than the projected US force can handle, regardless of quality or training.

Hence the watchwords for the CCA effort are ‘speed’ and ‘affordable mass’—the ability to generate credible threats for Chinese forces at a fraction of the cost of crewed aircraft and to start fielding in numbers by the late 2020s.

CCAs are part of the USAF’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program and are much of the reason why the manned element of NGAD is being rescoped under the guidance of Kendall’s expert panel. What was probably a large, exquisite and enormously expensive fighter concept has been scrapped. One reason: crewed fighter designed to operate with CCAs is not the same as one that fights without them and might be smaller and cheaper.

This presents a host of challenges and choices that must be addressed in short order. The Anduril and General Atomics aircraft—conventional high-subsonic aircraft, about the size of small jet trainers—are test platforms, as are the Boeing Ghost Bat in Australia and the Northrop Grumman Model 437 Vanguard in the US. They are designed to allow live evaluations of CCA concepts of operations (conops) to determine how the crewless aircraft will be controlled and operated alongside current and future combat aircraft and support assets.

A good deal of wargaming and simulation is being done. USAF Materiel Command chief General Duke Richardson, speaking at the convention, pointed to the value of the Joint Simulation Environment, a complex virtual battlespace developed to support the F-35, as a tool for virtual prototyping.

What emerges from wargaming (including a 2023 AFA Mitchell Institute game for which I was a lead author) is that adding capable uncrewed aircraft en masse to the force changes everything. For example, if CCAs are sufficiently cheap and if enough are available, the risk calculus changes dramatically. Major General Joe Kunkel, director of wargaming at USAF headquarters, summed up how a CCA could be treated: ‘We send it off and say, “good luck, little buddy”.’

For Increment 1 of the CCA program, the USAF selected General Atomics as an experienced uncrewed-aircraft contractor—after 20 years of production, it is hardly an upstart—and Anduril, the new kid.

Anduril has been putting in a lot of conops work over privately owned land, with a fleet of manned surrogate aircraft. The vice president of Anduril’s air dominance and strike division, Jason Levin, pointed to work that went well beyond the aircraft’s outer mould line. The company’s philosophy is that ‘people should not have to interact with the aircraft in order to turn it around’, meaning pre- and post-flight checks on the ground should be automated.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems president Dave Alexander, meanwhile, argued the need to ‘get rid of scheduled maintenance, and design it so you don’t touch it in the field’—pointing to one aircraft from the company that had logged 7000 flying hours in a year.

For the USAF, the purpose of early Increments in the CCA effort is to evaluate conops and tactics. Increment 1 will be aimed at air-to-air combat, Kunkel said, describing the CCA in that role as ‘a missile truck’ with ‘the greatest impact and speed to field.’ In the AFA’s wargame, mission planners sent CCAs armed with Amraam air-to-air missiles ahead of crewed aircraft, accepting increased risk but permitting closer, faster and more lethal missile engagements.

Increment 2 CCAs will be designed to support electronic attack and demonstrate a ‘resilient sensing grid’, according to Kunkel, together with an expanded weapon suite.

The second batch will evaluate ‘different styles of sustainment, and different modes of take-off and landing’. An emerging requirement is to operate CCAs in small, disaggregated units in the first island chain (from Japan to Indonesia) using shorter or improvised runways substantially shorter than the 8000-foot (2400-metre) military standard. This reduces the range requirement for the CCA, shortens response time and potentially increases sortie rates, but will require mobility, camouflage, concealment, deception and air defence to survive Chinese attacks.

Work on subsystems and even weapons is proceeding in parallel with the airframes. Raytheon showed mock-ups of small, light, air-cooled multifunction radio-frequency arrays, together with a small air-to-air missile. Named Peregrine, the missile is designed to occupy half as much space as an AIM-120 and is the outcome of 10 years of work in collaboration with the USAF. Anduril showed its Iris infra-red search and track (IRST) system, based on a long-wave staring array. Highly applicable to an air-to-air CCA, Iris is being pitched now for adversary training aircraft, given that almost all new Chinese fighters have IRSTs.

Engines are attracting attention. Efficient turbofans in the suitable category of 3,000 to 5,000 pounds (13 to 22 kilonewtons) of thrust exist, but they cost in the low millions each, a price the CCA model cannot support. GE Aerospace has teamed with new arrival Kratos to develop a family of engines combining GE’s technology with the smaller company’s experience in short-life, low-cost engines. Although the initial GEK800 product has less than 1000 pounds of thrust, the team has its sights on CCA.

The advent of CCAs and planned changes to NGAD came as a shock to the industry, against a background of contentious politics and rising world tension. Upstart companies add more uncertainty to the mix. But Kendall and senior Pentagon leaders seem to have made up their minds that the hour of the unmanned combat aircraft is upon us. Let’s hope they haven’t got it wrong.

With growing tension in the strait, Taiwan needs to be in the UN

It is long past time for Taiwan again to be included in the United Nations. Reasons include the need to address growing military tensions in the Taiwan Strait and to acknowledge Taiwan’s thriving democracy and economic importance.

That economic importance includes Taiwan’s enormous role in global supply chains. It produces more than 90 percent of the world’s high-end semiconductors and a significant portion of the advanced chips that drive the artificial intelligence revolution. Moreover, half of the world’s seaborne trade passes through the Taiwan Strait. Peace and stability around Taiwan has promoted global prosperity.

Meanwhile, China continues to intensify its aggression against Taiwan. Its attempts to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and expand its authoritarian ideology throughout the Indo-Pacific region are a profound threat to peace and security all around the world.

In recent years, global leaders have used both bilateral and multilateral events, including the meetings of the Group of Seven industrial nations, EU, NATO and the Association of South East Asian Nations, to highlight the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. The UN, however, is not tackling the issue. To do so meaningfully, the organisation would need to incorporate Taiwan, which it has not done since 1971.

Various countries have come up with new approaches to engaging with Taiwan, for example by creating observer or partner positions in organisations such as the Pacific Islands Forum. By working with Taiwan, they have shown that the idea that there must be a choice between China and Taiwan, as is insisted on in the UN system, is false.

The first and most urgent task that the UN must address is to stop succumbing to China’s pressure and oppose distortion of the 1971 UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, by which the People’s Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (the government based in Taipei, Taiwan) in the UN.

China wilfully misrepresents Resolution 2758 by conflating it with its own ‘one-China principle’, which insists that Taiwan is part of China (unlike the ‘one-China policies’ adopted by many countries, which merely recognise the People’s Republic of China without saying that it includes Taiwan). In doing so, China has relentlessly suppressed Taiwan’s legitimate right to meaningfully participate in the UN and its specialised agencies.

This misrepresentation has far-reaching consequences beyond denying Taiwanese citizens and journalists access to UN premises and preventing them from visiting, attending meetings and engaging in newsgathering. In fact, Beijing’s tactic of distorting the meaning of Resolution 2758 to spread the fallacy that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China is one of the key elements in a wider campaign to establish the legal basis for justifying a future armed invasion of Taiwan.

In fact, Resolution 2758 merely addresses the issue of China’s representation in the UN. It does not mention Taiwan. It neither states that Taiwan is part of China nor ascribes to China any right to represent Taiwan in the UN system. In other words, the resolution has nothing to do with Taiwan.

This case illustrates China’s growing assertiveness on the international stage. If left unchallenged, Beijing’s false claims will not only alter the status quo across the Taiwan Strait; they will also jeopardise peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and threaten the rules-based international order.

Throughout 2024, several senior US officials have criticised China’s distortion of Resolution 2758 to justify its spurious claims over Taiwan. Furthermore, on 30 July the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international organisation comprising more than 250 lawmakers from 38 countries and the EU, demonstrated concrete support for Taiwan by passing a model resolution on UN General Assembly Resolution 2758. The model resolution said that to maintain international peace and security as outlined in the UN Charter, the UN must return to and encourage a correct interpretation of Resolution 2758 and explore means of resisting China’s aggressive ambitions.

China’s expansionism will not stop at Taiwan. Recent regulations introduced by the China Coast Guard are part of a broader grey-zone campaign designed to reinforce their specious territorial claims and expand its influence. By introducing rules that justify the boarding and detaining of vessels and allowing individuals to enter disputed maritime areas, Beijing aims to assert control over international waters and challenge global norms. Everyone must not only reaffirm their concerns about Beijing’s coercive behaviour but also work together to prevent its unlawful actions.

History has shown that democratic resolve must be demonstrated proactively. The current 79th UN General Assembly and its Summit of the Future present a timely opportunity to address key security concerns.

Over many decades, Taiwan has proven to be a responsible and reliable partner to those it has worked with. More recently, we have also made significant contributions to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Looking ahead, Taiwan will continue to play its part. Working with like-minded countries to maintain healthy and resilient global supply chains, particularly in the semiconductor industry, Taiwan is determined to help power the world forward for many more decades to come.

For a more secure and better world, the UN should include Taiwan.

Critical Minerals Security Partnership may not be enough for Australia

Fourteen countries this week took what they intended to be a big step in countering China’s dominance of critical minerals supply. But it’s unclear whether the initiative will restore competitiveness of Australian production and investment in the face of massive subsidies offered by China and, in response, the United States.

The Minerals Security Partnership, a coalition of 14 countries, including the G7, Australia, India, South Korea, and European Union members, announced plans for a finance network to boost investment in critical metals. The initiative will tap into domestic export credit agencies and development finance institutions to attract private sector capital to produce, extract, process and recycle critical minerals, especially in riskier markets. The partnership seeks to lower investment risks and drive global supply chain resilience by providing guarantees and concessional financing.

Australia’s economic prosperity and national security are intrinsically linked to the exploitation of its abundant resources, notably critical minerals. These minerals are the new oil. They’re the building blocks for everything from emerging technology to energy transition. Although Australia has vast reserves, its critical mineral mining and processing are still threatened by the intense subsidy war between the US and China.

For decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used state subsidies to establish and then entrench its dominance of global critical mineral supply and value market chains.

China’s subsidies for critical minerals, while opaque, are nevertheless clearly substantial. Industry experts estimate that Chinese subsidies could cover anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent of the total project costs for critical mineral mining and processing, depending on the specific mineral and region. For example, the domestic rare earth element sector gets direct grants and low-interest loans. Other examples of support are deeply discounted electricity rates, access to cheap land and cheap finance, as well as providing tax benefits and stockpiling.

With reduced operating costs, these companies can operate in market conditions that are too difficult for others. The Chinese producers can thereby control global processing capacity.

In response to growing geopolitical tensions with China and a push for energy security, the US government implemented substantial financial incentives of its own. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the US committed more than $369 billion to clean energy and climate-related initiatives, including massive subsidies for the domestic production and processing of critical minerals.

Amid such foreign industry intervention, Australia’s production costs are, on average, higher than those in the US in refining critical minerals and much higher than those of Chinese companies. In May 2024, the Australian government announced a temporary Critical Minerals Production Tax Incentive to provide eligible recipients with a refundable tax offset of 10 percent from 2027 to 2040 for the costs of processing 31 currently listed critical minerals. This partially offsets the disparity created by the US Production Tax Credit, which offers a 10 percent production subsidy. Regardless, broader US tax incentives could still effectively reduce US production costs by 30 percent or more.

Australia has positioned itself as a reliable and ethical supplier of critical minerals, particularly to US and European markets looking to diversify away from China. However, the high capital expenditure required for mines and the cost-intensive process of refining and processing minerals means that Australian companies will still struggle to compete with their US and Chinese counterparts.

For example, building a lithium processing plant in Australia could cost nearly $1 billion. This is hard to justify without a clear and favourable return on investment. In contrast, a company setting up a similar operation in the US or China might see its costs slashed by hundreds of millions thanks to government subsidies. It’s unclear whether financing via the new coalition and the Australian tax incentive will be enough to address this challenge.

Ironically, US and Chinese subsidies have both made it harder for other nations to diversify their critical mineral sources.

Without a detailed understanding of the true scale of foreign subsidies, Australia risks underinvesting in its critical minerals sector, failing to attract the necessary capital and investment to scale projects vital to its economic future.

Developing resilient, competitive, ethical alternative critical mineral supply chains is about more than just resource access. Instead, the issue is access to financial and technological means to competitively mine, refine and process these minerals at the lowest cost.

If Australia wants to play a meaningful role in the critical minerals supply chains of the future, it must start by understanding the subsidy landscape in which it operates. If the US wants to truly break the CCP’s entrenched control over critical minerals and its ability to weaponise them, then it must support global, not national, supply chains.

Unlocking AI’s potential for all through global collaboration

Like the steam engine and electricity, artificial intelligence is a transformative, foundational technology. If developed to its full potential, AI can create opportunities for people around the world, enable businesses, power economic growth, advance science and help humanity make significant strides toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

But realising AI’s potential requires addressing the risks, complexities and inequities that currently limit access to its benefits. First, we must rethink our approaches to global cooperation and governance. Nowadays, too many countries are left out of key policy discussions. Notably, as we show in a new report, a sample of major non-UN international AI governance efforts found that only seven countries had participated in every one, while 118 countries—primarily in the Global South—had not been included. The international community can and must do better.

Over the past year, we have co-chaired the UN secretary-general’s High-level Advisory Body on AI, a group of 39 individuals from government, civil society, the private sector and academia representing a wide range of regions, genders, age groups and disciplines. Together, we developed a set of principles and recommendations for international AI governance, aiming to ensure that the technology serves the public interest by grounding it in human rights and international law. To engage diverse perspectives and voices, we involved more than 2000 participants from every region, consulted more than 1000 experts, reviewed 250 written submissions and held more than 100 virtual discussions.

As we explain in our report, we believe this moment presents a unique opportunity for the international community to lay the foundation to harness the potential from AI, to address key governance shortcomings and capacity gaps in its development, deployment, and use, and to enable a more equitable AI ecosystem. To this end, our report offers seven concrete recommendations for fostering global cooperation, closing governance gaps, and creating new mechanisms to enable all countries to benefit from advances in the technology.

AI’s technical and social trajectory remains the subject of fierce debate, even among experts. This makes sense, given that AI is still in its early stages with its capabilities, applications, and uses evolving rapidly. But uncertainty should not lead to inaction. Instead, it underscores the need for adaptable guardrails that can evolve with the technology and our understanding of it.

Governance efforts must therefore be rooted in both technical expertise and global perspectives. With this in mind, our first recommendation is to establish a truly international scientific panel on AI, bringing together experts from diverse disciplines and backgrounds.

This panel would work with global organisations and initiatives to collect, analyse and promote research, and would publish an annual report on AI-related capabilities, opportunities, risks and uncertainties. By highlighting areas of agreement and identifying topics that require further study, the report could enhance transparency and inform policy debates and decision-making. The panel could also conduct focused investigations into specific issues, such as how AI could be used to discover new materials or treat neglected diseases.

In addition to knowledge-sharing, many countries need better access to essential AI resources like computational power, inclusive and representative training datasets, skilled talent and a global data framework. To this end, we recommend establishing a global AI fund to support data sharing, build digital infrastructure, nurture local AI ecosystems and foster entrepreneurship.

We also propose creating an AI capacity development network to expand global access to talent and expertise and make progress toward the SDGs. To ensure standardisation, regulatory alignment and coordinated approaches to ethics and safety, we recommend establishing an AI standards exchange and an inclusive policy forum for discussions about AI governance. These initiatives would build on the work of UN agencies and other international efforts, promoting interoperability and cross-border collaboration.

Effective coordination will be vital. To achieve this, we propose establishing a small, agile AI office reporting directly to the UN secretary-general. This office would act as a central hub, connecting and integrating various institutional initiatives. By linking efforts led by regional organisations and other stakeholders, it could reduce the costs of cooperation and streamline collective action.

Putting these institutional structures in place can pave the way for a more inclusive approach to AI governance. This is crucial to preventing the emergence of an AI divide, as well as expanding global access to education and health care while unlocking the full potential of emerging technologies.

While it is critical to guard against AI’s potential harms and misuses, it is just as important to seize the opportunities the technology creates to achieve the SDGs, drive scientific breakthroughs, and fuel economic growth. Realising these benefits will require building trust, improving communication, and expanding capacity across many sectors—areas where the UN is uniquely positioned to facilitate cooperation. We hope our report triggers an urgent global conversation about how AI can help create a more sustainable and inclusive future for all.