Tag Archive for: Australia

Submarines and maritime strategy – part 1

HMAS Collins and HMNZS Te Mana (background) anchored in Jervis Bay during the Fleet Concentration Period. Fleet Concentration Period held in the vicinity of Jervis Bay allows ships company to hone their skills, conducting various exercises to enhance a war fighting capability.

Nic Stuart’s enquiry regarding the need for submarines, asks the reader to think back to the very beginning, the 2009 Defence White Paper. Yet, 2009 is hardly an appropriate start point if we are to adequately grasp the need for submarines, or understand broader Australian maritime strategy.

The real beginning was 1901. In the years following Federation, the fledgling Australian Government sought to understand its needs for the defence of the realm. On 7 April 1902 Major General Hutton, Commandant of the Military Forces of the Commonwealth, noted:

The defence of Australia cannot… be considered apart from the defence of Australian interests. Australia depends for its commercial success and its future development firstly upon its seaborne trade and secondly upon the existence, maintenance, and extension of fixed and certain markets for its produce outside Australian waters. It therefore follows that Australian interests cannot be assured by the defence alone of Australian soil.

The Commonwealth first seriously considered acquiring submarines in 1907. Alongside the mix of destroyers and cruisers that made up the first fleet unit, Australia eventually elected to purchase three submarines, and in 1914 the first two, AE1 and AE2, arrived at Sydney. So began Australia’s nearly 100-year association with submarines, running through the J, O and Oberon classes, until Collins in the 1990s and the current debate. Read more

Indonesia: a small arms supplier for Australia?

The Pindad SPR (abbreviation from Indonesian : Senapan Penembak Runduk, Sniper Rifle) is a sniper rifle produced by PT. Pindad, Indonesia.

In a recent Centre of Gravity paper for the ANU (PDF), Tim Huxley rightly calls for closer Australian defence cooperation with Indonesia, and for Australia to enhance defence relations with Malaysia and Singapore. His observation that any relationship between Australia and Indonesia has to be a ‘two-way street’ also recognises the necessity of the relationship to being more mature than it currently is.

However Huxley’s comment that such a relationship might mean that Indonesia begins supplying Australia with ‘small arms and ammunition’ is (possibly deliberately) extremely provocative.

Like a number of advanced developing countries, such as Brazil, Indonesia has its own evolving defence-industrial base, and currently produces a range of small arms and ammunition, as well as larger systems. Like other arms producing countries, Indonesia will have political and economic reasons for exporting its military products; they enhance a country’s prestige and bring economies of scale for its own acquisitions (at least in theory). And Indonesia is clearly looking to position itself as an arms exporter. Read more

AUKMIN: awkward Anglos

AUKMIN press conference: Foreign Secretary William Hague with Secretary of State for Defence Philip Hammond and Kevin Rudd, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia with Stephen Smith, Minister for Defence of Australia answer questions from the media at a press conference in London, 24 January 2012.

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

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

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

Using social media strategically: #Indonesia

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

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

Top 20 cities by number of posted tweets, Source: Semiocast

Source: Semiocast 2012

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

Do alliances work?

The signing of the ANZUS Treaty.

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

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

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

Read more

ADF–Tatmadaw relations: is Myanmar ready?

A young monk, Myanmar

The Myanmar junta have come a long way in a very short space of time. Aung San Suu Kyi has been released and has met with world leaders including US President Barack Obama, the media is incrementally liberalising with more international exposure, and people in central Myanmar regions are reporting more freedoms of expression and collective rights. Myanmar is stumbling down the path to democracy, but is heading in a favourable direction.

Nevertheless, there have been some recent incidents that raise questions about how quickly Myanmar is transitioning. A violent crackdown by police on workers and Salingyi villagers protesting outside the China/Myanmar-run Letpadaung Taung copper mine left scores of villagers and monks with burns and other injuries. Since then, President Thein Sein has appointed Aung San Suu Kyi to head a taskforce investigating the conduct of Myanmar forces during the incident and the Myanmar police force have apologised for their actions. This whirlwind of bureaucratic housekeeping has taken place before any public international or regional condemnation, media statements or official responses. ASEAN has also remained silent, preferring to report rather than comment on the incident.

It’s not yet clear what this says about developments in Myanmar’s military (known officially as Tatmadaw) and its approach to policing. Read more

Green means go for the Asian Century

Shanghai lights up

The Australia in the Asian Century White Paper was released only six weeks ago but since then, in the accelerated world of current politics, there’s been a flurry of launches: an Energy White Paper, a Royal Commission examining cases of suspected child sexual abuse, and an independent taskforce to follow the DLA Piper review of Defence abuses. The Prime Minister even found time to launch, of all things, a Defence pin. And while launches come and go, the implementation of policy falls to the Public Service. I don’t know how the grand but cashless Asian Century White Paper will be implemented, but I can offer some thoughts on how progress will be reported to government.

A media release from Dr Craig Emerson, now Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Asian Century Policy, says an ‘implementation plan and team have been established.’ This will be based at PM&C, ‘staffed by officials from agencies across the Commonwealth.’ Departments will certainly have been told to wear the cost of sending staff to head office. A ‘Strategic Advisory Board’ of Ken Henry and heavy hitters from the White Paper will advise a new implementation committee of Cabinet chaired by the PM with no less than eight ministers.

Spare a thought for the earnest officials focused on this task. How will they do their job? Read more

Reader response: of course we have a choice

Cam Hawker asserted here recently that if conflict broke out between the United States and China, Australia would automatically be at war since we host US Joint Facilities on Australian soil. Cam is right to raise the issues of abandonment and entrapment in Australia’s alliance relationship, and it is important for decision-makers in both Canberra and Washington to hold clear understandings of Australia’s strategic choices in a possible future crisis. To this end I applaud Cam for forcefully arguing such a provocative line.

Yet, leaving aside the unassailable fact that declarations of war on behalf of Australia may not be made by other countries, Cam’s arguments remain false for several reasons.

First, America does not have the capacity to conduct offensive operations against an adversary from the Joint Facilities. There are no Okinawa-style super bases here and hence few local Chinese targets. The mere fact that Joint Facilities exist in Australia is immaterial—as of late 2011, 92 countries permanently host more than 10 US service personnel, with 13 countries having more than 1,000 (and prior to the Marine rotations through Darwin, Australia was not among these).

Second, the Joint Facilities are not targets for China. After the Joint Facilities were first established, the Office of National Assessments judged that it would increase the probability of a nuclear attack on Australia in the event of a general nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. At the same time, however, it was believed the Joint Facilities would strengthen America’s nuclear deterrent, thereby reducing the risk of nuclear conflict overall. Unlike the Soviet Union, however, China does not have thousands of excess ICBMs targeting every conceivable American facility across the globe. Instead, China preserves a minimum-deterrence second strike capability, for retaliation against US mainland cities. Read more

The hazards of opportunism: rebalancing policy pivots in an Asian Century

AUSMIN 2011

Last week, with the Asian Century White Paper, it was all about Australia’s relationship to Asia. This week it will be all about our security relationship with the US as the 2012 AUSMIN meets in Perth. In being about prosperity and security respectively, the two sets of relationships seem very different at first glance. But in terms of Australia’s policy approach, they are similar in reflecting a certain Australian penchant for opportunism.

The Asian Century White Paper is quite explicit in seeking to take advantage of the opportunities that Asian economic growth offers. Like an inverse JFK, ‘we ask not what we can do for Asia but rather what Asia can do for us’. The security dimension is similar. A recent analysis of our involvement in the Vietnam and Iraq wars asserts that Australia was a ‘hound dog’ that purposefully seized the opportunities these wars presented so as to deepen our relationship with the US. Others see similar dynamics in our Afghanistan involvement.

Putting to one side whether those observations are right or not, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with such opportunism. Most nations seek to leverage off others and gain greater power by exploiting useful events and the actions of others. Opportunism may at times be astute policy, but in so doing there are some factors to consider. Read more

An Indonesia strategy for Australia

Image entitled

Indonesia seems to know where it’s going. At least that’s the impression that Indonesia’s Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan’s gave in his recent talk at the ANU discussing his country’s trajectory towards 2030. His speech envisions Indonesia as a future economic heavyweight and as a democracy that has consolidated its weaknesses, invested in areas like education and harnessed the full potential of its population—a large proportion of which is under 30. According to Wirjawan, if the ‘directionality’ of Indonesia’s democracy is right—and he believes it is—then for Indonesia, the sky’s the limit.

What’s striking about Wirjawan’s vision is its simple yet pragmatic formula. It begins with constructing an ambitious path for the nation. It’s followed by a systematic identification of the roadblocks and challenges, as well as their possible solutions, to set the right course. With a clear trajectory, armed with innovation and determination, the future seems eminently attainable. This is the view of a vital young country (which it effectively is).

When it comes to Australia’s strategic relations with Indonesia, Pak Wirjawan’s ideas should give us some clues about how we might set ourselves some goals for a much greater degree of engagement. We haven’t done anything like it yet; as a nation, we’re yet to articulate in a clear policy as to where Indonesia fits into our national objectives and, importantly, where we fit into theirs.

Read more