Tag Archive for: Defence Policy

Transport Fuels from Australia’s Gas Resources

The transport sector in Australia depends heavily on imported oil-based fuels. With this comes the ever-present risk of oil supply shortages. But Australia is gas-rich and oil-poor, so it makes practical sense to assess how our own gas resources can be used to produce these fuels.

Natural gas can be used directly as a fuel, blended with diesel in modified diesel engines, and converted into a conventional liquid fuel – all at a modest cost. This book, written by Australia’s leading experts in the field, demonstrates how using natural gas as a transport fuel could increase our fuel self-sufficiency to 50–70 per cent by 2030. And with three-quarters of our freight being moved by road, it’s clear that these developments will have major benefits for Australian transport efficiency.

Order a copy from New South Books. 

Preserving the knowledge edge: Surveillance cooperation and the US–Australia alliance in Asia

The US–Australia alliance is the bedrock of Australia’s defence policy. Successive governments have looked to the alliance for access to military technology, intelligence and training, as well as a promise of support against direct threats to Australia.

However, Australia, the US and other regional allies today face a rapidly changing strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific. The American ‘rebalance’ to Asia represents recognition by the US that it needs to give greater priority to its management of the changing balance—an effort firmly endorsed by President Obama in his address at theUniversity of Queensland.

Acting alone, Australia couldn’t possibly achieve the level of awareness that the evolving strategic environment demands. In alliance, it has the resources to ‘fill the gaps’ that remain in the US’s coverage of the region. This is why the C4ISR relationship with the US in the Indo-Pacific provides such a critical benefit to both members in the alliance. US–Australian C4ISR cooperation will be essential to the success of the US rebalance, but also to Australia’s own immediate security in a strategic environment in which more and more countries operate high-technology platforms that once used to be the preserve of Australia and its allies.

Towards inclusion: language use in the Department of Defence

Knowing more about a particular culture explains why an organisation is like it is, and why people behave and talk the way they do.

One important factor that perpetuates behaviours and makes change difficult is the use of language within the Defence organisation. Simply put, to change the way people behave, sometimes you have to change the way they talk.

This special report summarises a research project sponsored by the Secretary of Defence Fellowship program titled ‘Battling with words: a study of language, diversity and social inclusion in the Australian Department of Defence’.

A delicate issue: Asia’s nuclear future

The world stands on the cusp of a new era in nuclear relations—one in which Asia is likely to become the dominant influence on global nuclear arrangements. The old, bilateral nuclear symmetry of the Cold War is giving way to new multiplayer, asymmetric nuclear relationships. And it is doing so at a time when power balances are shifting across Asia, when pressures for proliferation are returning to the regional agenda, and when non-state actors are an increasingly worrying part of the Asian nuclear equation.

The paper, authored by Rod Lyon, argues that Australia’s own policy options will be profoundly shaped by how Asia’s nuclear future unfolds. It looks at how Australia can assist with redesigning nuclear order in a cooperative Asia but notes a darker, more competitive Asian nuclear future would confront Australian policymakers with difficult choices, of hedging rather than ordering.

The report concludes that Australian strategic policy should retain the flexibility to accommodate a range of possible Asian nuclear futures, striking a balance between its ordering and hedging strategies during a possible turbulent era in regional security.

The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2009-2010

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This report, prepared by Mark Thomson, gives interested readers greater access to the complex workings of the Defence Budget and promotes informed debate on Defence budget issues.

The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence budget brief 2007-2008

This report gives interested readers greater access to the complex workings of the Defence Budget and promotes informed debate on Defence budget issues.

The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2006-2007

This document has been written to give readers greater access to the complex workings of the defence budget and to promote informed debate on defence budget issues.

The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2005-06

This report interested readers greater access to the complex workings of the Defence Budget and promotes informed debate on Defence budget issues.

Section_3_final_1.pdf – PDF (176.0 KB)

Section_4_final_1.pdf – PDF (205.6 KB)

Section_5_final_1.pdf – PDF (207.2 KB)

Section_6_final_1.pdf – PDF (208.7 KB)

Section_7_final_1.pdf – PDF (330.9 KB)

Section_8_final_1.pdf – PDF (295.6 KB)

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Section_2_final_1.pdf – PDF (610.8 KB)

War and Profit: Doing business on the battlefield

The past fifteen years have seen a rapid growth in private sector firms supporting military operations.  More recently, the ADF has employed the private sector to varying degrees in East Timor, Bougainville, Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The paper, prepared by Mark Thomson, puts forward four recommendations on how the ADF could work with the private sector.

View the Legal Opinion on the status of non-combatants and contractors under international humanitarian law and Australian law prepared by Professor Donald R Rothwell.

The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2003-2004

The annual Cost of Defence: Defence Budget Brief provides a special insight into the workings of Defence Economics.

Tag Archive for: Defence Policy

Reviewing the Department of Defence (part 1)

Australia’s Defence Department is a big beast that’s hard to ride, much less steer.

The complexities of kit, costs and strategy have made it the most inquiry-prone animal in Canberra—50 reviews in five decades (35 significant reviews and many more supplementary reviews).

As the most recent major report on the defence organisation—the first principles review—noted in 2015: ‘The sheer frequency of reviews over the past decade has meant that many were short-lived or simply overtaken by the next review. Often the recommended changes were not allowed to bed in before another review began.’

If any of the answers were simple or cheap, they’d have been implemented long ago. The beast shifts slowly as reviews come and go.

Arthur Tange’s revolution in 1973 started the long journey to transform the defence herd into a single beast and make the military tribes one. Tange’s creation has a diarchic brain, with military and civilian sides; the creature spends a lot of energy just connecting its thoughts. After five decades of evolution, the habits and habitat of today’s Russell Hill would still look rather familiar to Tange.

The first principles review found that Defence’s way of doing things was ‘complicated, slow and inefficient in an environment which requires simplicity, greater agility and timely delivery. Waste, inefficiency and rework are palpable. Defence is suffering from a proliferation of structures, processes and systems with unclear accountabilities.’

Savour that recurring lament of reviews through the decades.

Reviews happen for many reasons. Oppositions pledge to overhaul Defence as one of their promises to remake Canberra; and if they win power, a review is a promise that can be kept.

Governments usually order reviews to tackle a bothersome headache or damp a crisis. After some time in office, though, they might reach for an all-purpose shake-up to express frustration, even anger, at the cost and complexity of the creature.

Defence white papers and strategic reviews are a special genre, a form of self-analysis using a geopolitical crystal ball and an equipment wish list. The beast tries to explain itself to government (and itself) while looking out from Russell at what’s happening in other parts of the jungle.

In line with the big beast metaphor, Peter Jennings channelled his inner naturalist to describe the lifecycle of a defence review as though it were a gnu or wildebeest roaming the grasslands. Under wonderful punny headlines ‘nothing Gnu here’ and ‘no Gnus is good news’, he records the tough truth that few reviews survive long enough to be fully implemented: ‘Just as for Gnus in Africa, life is brutal and short on the policy veldt. Many reviews get trampled underfoot by newer processes.’

Life is hard for reviews because Defence’s problems aren’t just complex and costly; they reach beyond vital towards existential. As an example, see Paul Dibb’s account of why he was asked to report on Australia’s defence capabilities in 1985 (one of the reviews that lived long enough to have a real impact).

Dibb was called in after 12 months of internal argument, when Defence couldn’t ‘come to even a preliminary agreement on force structure priorities for the defence of Australia’. Ponder that. Defence couldn’t answer the question that’s the heart of its existence: how do we defend Oz? The diarchic brain was in turmoil.

Dibb describes the entrenched differences between the senior military and civilian hierarchies:

The secretary and the chief of the defence force had got bogged down in exchanging 130 classified memos about the theology of defence policy on such concepts as defence warning time; low-level conflict; more substantial conflict; and whether Australia’s unique geography should basically determine its force structure, as distinct from expeditionary forces for operations at great distance from Australia. Most of the ensuing debate was not constructive: it was hostile with little agreement on even basic principles for force structure priorities.

As the outsider, Dibb says his main policy aim was to get a ‘workable compromise between these bitterly held positions’.

Workable compromise is the spur of choice for the beast.

To be continued …

From the bookshelf: ‘World peace (and how we can achieve it)’

Alex Bellamy is one of Australia’s leading authorities on security issues, especially the possible application of the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine. By academic standards he’s also the very model of an engaged, highly influential public intellectual who has worked tirelessly in the cause of peace and security. In short, there is a lot to admire about Professor Bellamy, which is what makes his new book the proverbial ‘must read’ for anyone with even a passing interest in the theory and—more importantly—the possible practice of world peace.

Writing a book about the prospects and even the very possibility of world peace might seem like a quixotic project at this moment in history. After all, we’re continually inundated with images of people being blown up in some war-torn part of the world or other. And yet the underlying empirical reality that drives much of the discussion in this rather inspiring and hopeful book is that ‘peace is more common than we think’. The pursuit of world peace is, in fact, ‘deeply pragmatic’, not least because war is ‘increasingly anachronistic’.

Bellamy develops this thesis by examining the causes of war—political divisions and differences in values; its historical profitability; its contagiousness—and by suggesting that peace has a long history and is, in fact, much more likely than it may seem. Far from being the inevitable driver of conflict as realists claim, states that are accountable to their citizens, even if they are non-democratic, can play a crucial role in developing a less violent world.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Bellamy highlights the potentially pacifying effects of international commerce, especially the sort that is embedded in cross-border production networks. The assumption that people—especially policymakers—are potentially rational and capable of making enlightened judgements about their long-term interests pervades the book. It’s a claim that is being put to a searching examination in the current ‘trade war’ between the United States and China.

The fact that the dispute with China is proving less ‘easy to win’ than President Donald Trump believed may actually be confirmation of liberal claims about the constraining influence of economic interdependence. Yet Bellamy recognises that ‘peace activists and theorists have underestimated the capacity of nationalism to reorder people’s priorities’, a possibility he might have explored more fully in the context of the rising tide of populism and authoritarianism that is currently afflicting much of the globe, perhaps.

One of the most significant contributions of this ambitious book is to provide a roadmap for practical steps towards actually achieving world peace. The path, Bellamy suggests, ‘probably does not lie through world government’. States will continue to play a crucial role, but so will ‘recognizing and nurturing the plurality of our identities’. No doubt such sentiments will induce much eye-rolling among the strategic elites of Canberra and elsewhere, but it hardly needs to be pointed out that intolerance and prejudice aren’t exactly a recipe for peaceful relations—which I assume we’d all like to see if possible.

Bellamy’s suggestions for encouraging world peace revolve around a more effective United Nations with a greater capacity to implement legal restraints on aggression, arms dealing, promoting security communities, protecting and/or holding individuals to account, and generally promoting the idea of peace. This will no doubt strike some prospective readers as unlikely wishful thinking, but it is not possible to do justice to the sophistication and persuasiveness of the arguments Bellamy deploys in a short review.

For all its brilliance, however, there is one glaring gap in the discussion and it is planet-sized: there’s almost no mention of climate change and its increasingly visible impact on the natural and strategic environment in which questions of war and peace will be decided. My own feeling is that we may have collectively missed the opportunity to really ‘change the world’ in the 1990s, when the end of the Cold War really did hold out entirely unforeseen opportunities. Now, however, the circumstances are very different and the ‘principle of hospitality’ that Bellamy sees as a key part of pluralising our identities looks increasingly unlikely—at the very time that climate change is likely to make it ever more prominent and contested.

Nevertheless, this is a very significant contribution to what is generally an impoverished, deeply depressing and all-too-predictable discussion of security issues. It really ought to be read by the policymaking community in this country and elsewhere, but I suspect it won’t be. They are, of course, too busy spending money we don’t have on weapons we don’t need for conflict we couldn’t win in any meaningful sense anyway. Changing the dominant discourse is never easy, but Bellamy has produced a brave and brilliant meditation on the most important issue facing the world. That’s worth at least an hour or two of anyone’s time, I would have thought.

Forging a national consensus on Australia’s external security

With the federal election out of the way, and some welcome stability in the leadership of the major political parties in prospect, Australia now faces the challenge of forging a national consensus on an external security policy that reflects our self-confidence and maturity as a nation.

There’s been an upsurge in debate in this country on our foreign and defence policy settings, the quality of which has been mixed. (It is ill-advised, for example, to mention Munich or the Nazis other than in a precise reference to history.) However, some of it has been very good.

The important thing is that Australians are now engaged in thinking about our external posture. For example, in recent weeks Australian National University Professor Hugh White and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer (on one occasion appearing together) have spoken on China–US issues to audiences whose size would have been unimaginable a year or so ago.

Irrespective of where Australians actually sit on the subject matter, we could be beginning to recognise that the strategic challenges we face as a nation today are as important as the questions we faced over immigration and the Cold War in the generation after World War II, or with the challenging external conditions that gave rise to the economic reforms of Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard in the 1980s and 1990s.

But the debate has been wanting in two important respects.

First, security is not just about guns. It’s also about butter. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was being facile when he said, ‘You can sell your soul for a pile of soybeans, or you can protect your people.’

It’s not an either-or choice. You need to sell butter (or soybeans) to buy guns.

Sensible external security policy often exacts an internal cost. For example, we are rightly putting a major emphasis on the South Pacific. However, as we have recently seen, South Pacific leaders are not just interested in money for climate change remediation. They want us to change our own policies, which the current government doesn’t want to do.

And some of the responses we make to Chinese actions might well involve retributive costs to us. But, in the end, it makes no sense to debate a binary choice about prosperity versus security. It has to be about how to enhance and manage both because one is interlocked with the other. This task involves the constant balance of risk and opportunity.

Second, in foreign policy, no relationship between one country and another can be seen in isolation from what is going on elsewhere. Our public debate is about the triangular relationship between Australia, the United States and China. We need to be much more conscious of the nuanced positions of other countries involved in the mix, and their relevance to us.

For example, the ASEAN nations are now taking a more resolute stance on China. However, according to a recent survey by a respected Singaporean think tank, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, China is now regarded in Southeast Asia as more influential both economically and politically than the United States. Japan easily emerges as the most trusted external power. What does that mean for us? Possibly working even more in conjunction with Japan.

And while Japan is understandably anxious to keep its relations with the US in good order, it’s also hedging. Its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, made an official visit to China last year and Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to go to Tokyo later this year.

India has serious border issues with China. Yet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi have annual summits. India’s defence links with the US are getting stronger. Yet New Delhi has real differences with Washington, including over the application of sanctions to Iran and Russia.

The approaches of these regional powers are not necessarily models for Australia, but they should tell us two things.

First, the shape of the region in which we live depends more on the policies of these powers and perhaps less on those of just the US and China than we currently recognise.

Second, these countries are showing more fluidity in their dealings with the US and China than we are, recognising that they need both, but also that both need them.

Should we then be so enthused about the laying on of hands by Pompeo and his like—surely a different Republican breed to people like former secretaries of state George Shultz, James Baker and Colin Powell—or indeed by President Donald Trump?

Do we need to become involved in an American naval enterprise in the Strait of Hormuz?  The situation there is of the US’s own making. NATO allies Germany, France and (until Boris Johnson became prime minister) Britain, all with a bigger stake in that strategic waterway than Australia, avoided involvement. Shouldn’t our political energy be focused on our more immediate region?

While our decision on the Strait of Hormuz has probably already been taken, hopefully Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be thinking about all these issues when he travels to a number of countries in the coming weeks.

Since the government’s re-election, Morrison hasn’t made a bad start. In his speech to the University of Melbourne’s Asialink in June, Morrison pragmatically showed China respect. And at the annual Australia–US ministerial meeting, AUSMIN, while not eschewing the customary hyperbole, he avoided the trap posed by the dangerous idea of stationing US intermediate-range missiles in Australia.

The next step could be to lead Australia in new, more confident directions. We don’t have grounds to hold our breath in anticipation of this. But, as an undiluted conservative, Morrison might just have the political space to say ‘no’ to the US and to China when Australia’s interests so dictate.

To deal with a big problem, let’s think small

Once again Peter Jennings has started an important debate: to white paper or not to white paper? I am persuaded by Andrew Davies’ cautious counter.

The heart of this discussion is what problem another defence white paper (DWP) is meant to solve. Is it diagnosis or prescription? Do we need to better understand the problem, or do we know the problem and instead need to find ways to respond?

While conscious that time is probably not on our side, I would suggest the issue is still diagnosis. China may be a threat, but, for Australia, what kind of threat is it exactly? The US may be recalcitrant, but to what end? What can, and can’t, we do alone? What are others in the region doing? What does new technology mean for this contest?

A white paper is not a diagnostic tool. Nor is it designed to be, despite the growing length of the regional security review essay at the start. Such documents work best when the problem set is clear and we need expert military judgement to decide how best to prescribe resources.

While many compare today to the late 1960s—when genuine uncertainty gripped policymakers, perhaps a better analogue is the period between 1972, when we committed to defending Australia, and 1987, when the defence of Australia policy was put in place. Today too we seem to know what broad direction we want to go in, but not enough about the kinds of challenges we face, or what we will need to do to get there.

In the 1970s and 1980s, this diagnostic debate turned bitter. Extremely bitter. One historian of the Department of Defence has described it as a ‘civil war’ both within the services and between those in and out of uniform. The diarchy, so hard won, was at risk of breaking down.

It would be a mistake to say the 1987 white paper solved this debate. Just as we should be dubious another DWP could solve the current debate. Rather, the way through the impasse was not a large and inclusive departmental review, but a small, exclusive, independent and well-resourced group which sought to think afresh.

While Paul Dibb often gets most of the credit, he is the first to point to the outstanding team he had supporting him, such as Richard Brabin-Smith, Bill Crews and Martin Brady. You don’t have to like the content of the 1987 white paper to respect the way it cut through the confusion of its time and linked strategy with resources in a way very rarely achieved in this nation’s history.

There is strong scholarly evidence from the United States that large-scale examinations such as quadrennial defence reviews hinder innovation and creativity. Likewise, it’s difficult to imagine that truly fresh ideas and language can emerge when most of the final product is likely to become public.

Rather, we should look to examples such as the Dibb review team in the 1980s, or perhaps the iconoclastic work of Andy Marshall in the Pentagon and his Office of Net Assessment. Small groups tasked with innovation and given the space to work can achieve significant results.

Rather than embarking on a public and broad DWP, if the government wants new ideas, I would suggest finding ways to task the best and most innovative strategists in the country to come up with new ways to think about the problem. Not the whole problem, but parts that need special attention and assessment.

One such group might be the expert panel pulled together for the 2016 DWP. Peter Jennings, Andrew Davies, Stephan Fruehling, James Goldrick, Mike Kalms and Rory Medcalf make up a pretty all-star band to reunite for another tour. But in the interests of time and originality, we shouldn’t limit it to just one mob. It would cost a pittance out of Defence’s rapidly rising budget to staff three to five such groups, all working on the problem in different ways. Some could be all officials, some all scholars, though hopefully most would be mixed.

We could even encourage public contributions. Among the inevitable dross is likely to be both fresh ideas and a clear sense of how different parts of the country are thinking in different ways about our security (something the expert panel pointed to in its report). Think of it as akin to an intellectual form of national service in a time of peril.

If this idea is to work, at least one well-resourced group has to be tasked with being a red team. That team must find ways to plausibly secure the country in the face of all major pillars of current policy being overturned. A classified version of this kind of scenario-planning work was a key contribution to the insights of the 1986 Dibb review. These infamous ‘defence of Australia’ studies were so controversial that the then–secretary of the Defence Department, Arthur Tange, reportedly ordered them destroyed. But their work was important for informing what Kim Beazley and Bob Hawke eventually presented to the nation.

At the risk of getting too meta, if we really want to think afresh, let’s first think about how we think. I’ve pitched for less bipartisanship among our politicians. But if that’s a no-go, perhaps greater diversity of approach among our officials and analysts—rather than all coming together for yet another big review—might be just the ticket.

It’s time to renew Australia’s north as a source of strategic advantage

Australian policymakers’ attitude to the role of northern Australia in the nation’s defence mimics a cicada’s life cycle. For a brief period, it’s out in the world, flying around and making a huge amount of noise, just long enough to mate and create the beginnings of the next generation. That noise and flurry is followed by years of quiet gestation and subterranean tunnelling by the new generation, before the cicada’s brief time in the sun returns.

The last time real attention was paid to what our regional environment means for defence in the north of Australia was in Paul Dibb’s 1986 Review of defence capabilities and the 1987 defence white paper. Following that work, the Australian government invested billions of dollars in bases and bare base infrastructure in the north, with a real focus on the Northern Territory.

RAAF Base Tindal became and remains a core base for air force fighter jet operations, and the army took real steps to create a functional and serious presence in the north. An arc of bare bases was constructed—like RAAF Base Scherger on Cape York and RAAF Base Learmonth in Western Australia.

The other big initiative in our north has been the joint Australia–US force-posture work that started in 2011 and has brought rotating US Marine deployments to Darwin that exercise with our military and various regional militaries. That welcome set of initiatives is more about US engagement in Australia and our region than about how we will meet our own defence needs.

A problem for this policy area is that commentators have a habit of getting very simplistic very fast. If you advocate a greater defence presence in northern Australia, you’re just resurrecting the Dibb review and have an overdeveloped sense of paranoia about small numbers of men in black raiding Darwin infrastructure and Territorians’ cattle stations.

If you see the value of drawing in the more advanced infrastructure and larger population centres in southern Australia and on the east coast, you’re just one of those defeatist, pre-Federation types who wants to withdraw south of the Brisbane line during conflict and wants to see all money and activity flow to your own favoured state.

And the US presence has brought a new layer of discussion to the debate. Unfortunately, this is often about the risks and advantages of having US forces on Australian territory and the pragmatic issues involved—like who funds what, and the regimes for managing the behaviour of visiting and local militaries.

None of this introspection engages much with the real strategic drivers that make a serious Australian defence presence in our north a compelling and increasingly urgent matter of strategic policy and capability planning.

Unsurprisingly, as a geographer and a strategic analyst, Dibb got some big things right that still matter. Australia’s defence must take advantage of our geography, and any credible Australian military must be able to project and sustain substantive levels of force from Australia’s northern land mass and offshore territories.

Similarly, defence planning should indeed take advantage of the deeper infrastructure, industrial support and demographic bases in our southern and eastern population centres to produce and sustain the complex systems that make up modern defence capabilities. The deep technical ecosystem required to operate and sustain the range of advanced platforms and systems the ADF has and is acquiring can’t just be a parochial effort out of any given state or territory. It requires a national approach to industry policy and to skills and workforce.

But defence in the north has, like the cicada, moved back into the light. And that’s because of Australia’s changing strategic environment.

That environment is characterised by two big trends.

First, regional nations continue to get richer and more capable, including in their ability to project military power within and beyond their own territories—meaning that near-region partners like Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are becoming more important in Australia’s security and diplomacy. Australia needs to do more to engage with these partners, and the north of Australia is a gateway for that to happen.

Second, great-power competition and potential conflict have returned to the forefront of world affairs. China and the US are now actively engaged in deep strategic competition and arm-wrestling over political, economic and strategic relationships and technological dominance across our Indo-Pacific region. There are credible prospects of a major military conflict between these great powers over the next couple of decades, which, if it happens, will most likely spill beyond a bilateral conflict into a wider regional war.

The north’s significance in this context is that it’s the closest point from which Australia can project and sustain military force. And the expanse of territory means that it allows dispersal of forces and power projection from multiple places.

The size of the north makes it more important as a counter to the increasingly lethal and long-range systems that can target single points of failure in an adversary’s defence effort (think Guam or Hainan Island as missile-aiming points).

So, to make the north a growing strategic advantage in our defence planning, we need to respond to these bigger strategic trends. We also need to take advantage of the growth in population, industrial capability and infrastructure that has occurred in the north since the foundational thinking of the Dibb review.

That means thinking about how the north can empower and deepen our broader regional relationships. The Northern Territory government’s close relationship with Indonesia should be part of this, as it can help pave the way for growing defence and other industry connections out of the north with Indonesia.

It also means doing what the US Marines in Darwin do: using the regional proximity to increase bilateral and regional exercising and engagement with partner militaries.

Proximity matters. Even for fast surveillance aircraft like the RAAF’s new P-8 Poseidons, the transit time from Edinburgh in South Australia to Darwin is over three hours, and that means we get some six hours’ more range and endurance up into our region if we operate out of Darwin instead of RAAF Base Edinburgh.

The real thinking, innovation and resourcing, though, need to be driven by the implications for Australia of the growing great-power competition and geopolitical conflict that we’re seeing. Major conflict is a worst-case scenario, but that’s why governments invest in high-end militaries.

Being able to sustain and operate Australia’s military in the event of a wide regional conflict involving the major powers entails a big shift in priorities and investment that must include our northern presence and infrastructure.

Despite the base reinvestment program in the 2016 defence white paper, our military would still struggle to sustain lengthy operations from the current northern infrastructure.

A simple but key example is fuel supply for air operations out of Darwin and Tindal. Fuel tanker convoys on the highway cannot be an adequate solution. Similarly, our bare bases need to be configured to be able to operate and support an increasingly wide range of capabilities, not just the big platforms like P-8 aircraft or even the joint strike fighter. They also need to be hardened and have dispersed operating areas so that they can continue to function in the much more lethal threat environment of modern long-range war.

Both strategic trends mean it’s time to have a new discussion about the nature and level of our defence presence in the north. The paradigm has changed since 1987, so what’s the new framework for thinking about a future-ready ADF presence? Industry needs to be an active participant in this discussion and the resulting actions.

It’s time for the cicada that is our northern defence thinking to take wing again. Let’s stretch the time it has in the sun long enough to understand and make the necessary changes.

Shifting the ‘gender agenda’ debate

On 31 July, the minister for women, Kelly O’Dwyer, presented the third progress report to parliament on the Australian national action plan on women, peace and security 2012–2018 (NAP). As you’d expect, the government report paints a positive picture of various efforts that have been undertaken in the two-year reporting period (1 January 2016 to 31 December 2017): women’s participation in the ADF has increased modestly, the value of gender expertise has been recognised in some key policy documents such as the 2016 defence white paper, and most Australians deploying on operations are now receiving training on women, peace and security (WPS).

Yet this progress report—like the first and second reports before it—is hindered by a focus on cataloguing tasks and activities rather than assessing their impact. In the press release announcing the third report, we’re informed that ‘100 per cent of Australian Defence Force personnel deployed overseas are now trained in the Women, Peace and Security agenda, compared to a baseline of 53 per cent in 2012’. However, the report provides limited information on the types of training, the duration or format of delivery, feedback from those taking part in the training or analysis of how it was applied on deployment. More importantly, we don’t know whether it is resulting in change within the ADF when it comes to strengthening Australia’s implementation of WPS.

This criticism isn’t new. An independent interim review in 2015 found that, among other things, Australia’s first NAP lacked effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, which ‘limit[ed] the ability and utility of the government’s progress reports to qualitatively assess progress and impact’. In the case of the statistics on training, the review recommended that quantitative data be supplemented with ‘post-deployment perceptions about the impact and applicability of WPS training for day-to-day operations’. And that’s only one example in the report.

Australia hasn’t been alone in facing many of these challenges. NAPs have been a critical tool for countries to progress their commitments on WPS, and have become a readily identifiable benchmark for success. A seminal global study by the United Nations in 2015 on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security notes that many early NAPs focused on processes over outcomes. It identified ‘monitoring and evaluation’ as one of several essential elements for effective NAPs, yet it’s something that’s frequently overlooked. It will be one of several key considerations for government and civil society as work continues in the coming months to formulate Australia’s next NAP, expected in mid-2019.

We need to be wary of focusing on formal progress reports and NAPs as the only means to measure whether Australia is making progress on WPS. There remains no shortage of criticism, particularly over Defence’s efforts to actively increase the number of women and overall diversity within the defence force (demonstrated most recently with outrage over the navy’s commitment to the ‘100 days of change’ campaign and advice on gender-inclusive language in the ADF). Much of this recent criticism has focused on populist arguments about the military becoming too ‘PC’ and the ADF having lost its way. Yet this commentary has provided little substantive analysis on how Defence’s commitment to diversity and inclusion detract from ensuring the ADF is prepared to address the strategic environment it will face in the future, beyond harking back to days gone by.

Advancing WPS (including by ensuring that Defence is an inclusive organisation and remains an attractive recruitment option for women and under-represented groups) isn’t at odds with preparing the ADF to operate effectively in the challenging strategic environment that Australia is likely to face in the future. If anything, it will enhance the ability to respond to that environment.

Take the example of Defence’s engagement in our immediate region, the Indo-Pacific. The region is the most disaster-prone in the world, accounting for more than half of the 19 million people displaced by extreme weather events last year. Australia’s ongoing engagement and support in the Pacific is as critical as ever given the growing foreign influence in the region. Part of that engagement will involve an ongoing readiness to respond when a disaster strikes. The ADF needs to be prepared and capable of responding to the needs of the entire population, and that can’t be done successfully without women.

Part of the challenge across government, including Defence, is communicating how change is being effected through policies that increase women’s participation in the ADF and ensure personnel are integrating a gender perspective into their work. Stronger monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in the next NAP would emphasise impact over activities, and ensure that Australia is better placed to effectively demonstrate tangible progress.

But we shouldn’t be complacent and rely solely on the NAP to drive these important reforms. Comprehensive discussion about these challenges shouldn’t be confined to the energised WPS community. Dialogue needs to be taking place with those across government that are working on security issues but that, through choice or design, remain blind to WPS dimensions of their work. It also requires greater engagement in the public sphere beyond sensationalised commentary, bureaucratic progress reports, defensive press releases and speeches that tend to occur on International Women’s Day or at women-in-leadership events. We need to shift the debate to ensure that WPS is front and centre in our discussions on national security, rather than an afterthought.

A farewell to (writing about) arms

By my count this is my 285th contribution to The Strategist, and it’s my last in my time at ASPI. (But don’t breathe too big a sigh of relief—I intend to blight its virtual pages from beyond from time to time.) Like my long-term colleague Mark Thomson, the editors have leant on me to make some parting remarks.

A lot has happened in the defence world since I started here in 2006. ASPI has certainly been an interesting vantage point from which to watch the progress of seven defence ministers, three defence white papers (though we still haven’t finished delivering the force structure from the 2000 version), two and a bit national shipbuilding plans, two wars and the approval of over $100 billion in major projects.

One of the challenges to a job like this is to not slip into a persistently negative mindset regarding defence policy and procurement practices. After all, ASPI’s job is to question the prevailing wisdom, and to be Jiminy Cricket to Defence’s Pinocchio. The trick is to be constructive while being critical, and to put forward an alternative way ahead when discussing even the poorest outcomes of previous decision-making.

For example, even the Super Seasprite fiasco—the defence acquisition equivalent of a knee-high full toss on leg stump for commentators like me—provided an opportunity to explain the virtues of larger helicopters that could bring a dipping sonar capability back to the fleet.

And it’s always worth remembering that, despite all the missteps, cost overruns and schedule slippages along the way, the ADF of today is very much more capable than that of 2006, when I first joined ASPI. There are many things that could (and should) have been done faster, cheaper or better—and some that shouldn’t have been done at all—but the average outcome has been an improvement to the nation’s defence capabilities. Of course, it would be alarming indeed if that weren’t the case, given the size of the defence budget and the number of skilled people involved in the enterprise.

And that’s where I’ll have to confess to having some concerns about the state of our national defence policy. I think we’re still paying too much, both in dollar terms and in broader opportunity costs, for our defence capability. And we’re being too patient about getting it. I haven’t won many friends in defence industry with my views on local procurement versus off-the-shelf purchases, but that’s something I’m unrepentant about.

What we have today is an uneasy amalgam of defence capability development and defence industry sector support, hiding behind a veneer of ‘sovereign capability’ or ‘jobs and growth’. I spend 6,000 words explaining that in a recent essay in Australian Foreign Affairs (available in all good newsagents and bookshops) so I won’t belabour the point here. If our strategic circumstances looked more benign it would only be a misuse of resources, but it runs the risk of also being a dreadful strategic oversight.

During my tenure the F-35 joint strike fighter and the future submarine have been the gifts that keep giving. The former was the biggest program on the books when I took on the job, and the latter is the biggest as I go. As I discussed in my previous post, the F-35 program hasn’t yet delivered what we want—and won’t for some time yet. Even the initial capability is ten years late into the bargain.

And we also had to spend $6 billion on an ‘interim’ Super Hornet capability (later topped up with another $3 billion on Growlers) that’s now looking more like a 20-plus–year force structure element. I’ve often been at loggerheads with Defence people—and sometimes Lockheed Martin people—who thought I was taking too pessimistic a view of the F-35’s progress and the program management. I think the data is in now, and most of ASPI’s prognostications on the subject have aged fairly gracefully.

The submarines are another matter again. The F-35 is slowly—too slowly—maturing, but we’re at the other end of the submarine life cycle, not yet even having a design to move towards production. The fact that the first of them will be delivered around 2030, and the last closer to 2050, is perhaps the most egregious example of procurement plans being out of whack with strategic circumstance.

We run the risk of committing $36 billion in today’s money (please allow me a moment of self-indulgence to say I told you so) for a capability that will be delivered after the dust has settled on the strategic competition that will shape the Asia–Pacific region for the next century.

But that’s for the future to reveal, and I’m happy to hand over the reins of ASPI’s Defence and Strategy Program to Michael Shoebridge, and commentary on these matters to Michael and to Marcus Hellyer—two very capable people. I’ve written and said enough over the years that nobody is going to die wondering what I think.

Let me finish with a thank you to everyone who has taken the time to argue with me during my time in this job—the contest of ideas is ultimately what it’s about.

The best of times …

For the past 16 years, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working at ASPI. But the time has come to say goodbye. To mark my retirement, the editors of The Strategist have invited me to comment on the state of Australia’s defences. Here goes.

In one sense, it’s the best of times. The ADF is larger, better equipped and more combat-experienced than at any point since the Vietnam conflict. Defence is better managed (in many but not all respects) than it was in the past. And decisive action has finally been taken to protect ADF members from sexual harassment and bullying.

Despite such progress, problems remain. For example, the handling of toxic contamination from RAAF fire-fighting foam has been imperfect at best, and questions continue to be raised about how efficiently Defence spends its prodigious budget. On past experience, these and other problems will only be rectified if the government itself acts. For whatever reason—learned helplessness or otherwise—Defence remains a passive participant in the ongoing cycle of debacle–review–reform.

Following the 2016 Defence White Paper, we have an ambitious (and hopefully funded) program to modernise and further expand the ADF. Regrettably, however, we can’t tell how things are going. After reaching a high point of disclosure under the Howard government in 2000, there’s been a steady growth in obfuscation and secrecy surrounding the investment program. It’s been almost two years since we were promised a ‘periodically updated’ online version of the Integrated Investment Program. Yet we’re still waiting.

Setting aside incompetence, the most likely explanation is that emerging problems are being hidden. With $195 billion of taxpayers’ money on the table—not to mention the long-term fighting strength of the ADF—the public has a right to know if projects have been delayed or have increased in cost.

Whatever problems exist now are likely to be eclipsed by those of the future. Under the so-called ‘smart buyer’ approach, acquisition decisions are being made with far less information and analysis than in the past. In a classic case of the bureaucratic pendulum swinging back, the risk-adverse Kinnaird reforms of 2004 have been jettisoned in favour of quick decisions. That might be justified in current circumstances (for reasons I outline below), but the risk is that today’s hasty decisions will translate into substantial delays and budget pressures downstream.

Even if the investment program runs like clockwork, the government’s 2016 plan will only slowly reshape the ADF. In part, that reflects the time needed for major defence acquisitions. But, at least in equal measure, the pace is constrained by an emphasis on mobilising local industry rather than buying proven off-the-shelf weapons systems from overseas.

By embracing a ‘buy Australian’ policy, the government has unleashed a heightened sense of regional entitlement and exposed itself to special pleading by defence firms. As a result, multi-billion dollar defence projects are being contorted to serve the needs of parochial politics rather than to deliver value for money. Who needs a business case if the only goal is dodging unfavourable coverage in the Adelaide Advertiser or the West Australian?

In normal times, the creation of a boutique defence industrial complex in Australia would simply be wasteful. But these aren’t normal times. The strategic environment is deteriorating much more rapidly than current plans are strengthening the ADF. While the government focuses on the economically dubious goal of ‘creating jobs’ in defence industry, the gap between what the ADF can do and what it might be called upon to do grows by the day.

Australian strategic policy has long rested on two assumptions about the future, one explicit and one implicit. The explicit assumption has been that the United States would continue its benign hegemony of our region. The implicit assumption has been that the West’s economic engagement would lead China to liberal governance and peaceful integration into the international community. Neither assumption is safe today. The United States is in disarray if not retreat, and China’s rulers are becoming increasingly repressive at home and worryingly aggressive abroad.

We risk being caught flat-footed. Our strategic environment is changing more quickly than we anticipated, and moving in a direction inimical to our interests.

A strong defence force is an essential part of hedging against the risks inherent in our deteriorating strategic situation. Yet our planned force structure remains little changed (apart from delays) to that set out almost a decade ago in the 2009 Defence White Paper. At that time, the future looked far less threatening.

Nonetheless, absent a major strategic shock, there’s little likelihood of Australia changing course. The government has invested too much political capital in its ‘jobs and growth’ defence industry plan to turn back, and a generation of senior ADF officers can now look forward to lucrative sinecures in an expanding defence industry sector.

For better or worse, a sizable share of the defence investment budget is locked into the costly, slow motion delivery of locally built equipment. Consider this: it will be mid-century before the aptly named ‘future submarine’ program delivers its 12th and final boat.

There are steps that could be taken to more quickly strengthen the ADF and bolster the nation against strategic disruption. First and foremost would be to squeeze every last drop of combat capability from our existing assets. However, the decision to sell some of our still-capable 1980s-vintage F-18 fighters to Canada shows that neither the government nor Defence has any interest in doing so.

The tragic events of 9/11 are often blamed on a failure of imagination. No such excuse will hold if our defence plans prove inadequate. For years, it has been all but impossible to pick up a newspaper without finding mention of the strategic risks attending China’s rise. We’ve been warned repeatedly, yet our response is shaping up to be too little, too late and too self-serving.

Goodbye and good luck.

The Australia–New Zealand defence partnership: a net assessment

Australia and New Zealand have a proud history of shared military endeavour. Over more than a century, from the shores of Gallipoli to the sands of Iraq, Australian and New Zealand troops have fought side by side. But spine-tingling evocations of past glories neither recognise nor explain the reality of the Australia–New Zealand alliance today. With the strategic balance teetering in the Asia–Pacific, a more cold-hearted assessment is needed.

Although both countries share the goal of peace and security in a rules-based world, they pursue that goal with very different intensities. Australia systematically accepts higher costs and risks than New Zealand does. New Zealanders each contribute NZ$426 to their defence; Australians spend A$1,438.

New Zealand doesn’t match Australia’s effort because it knows that Australia will shoulder the burden, at least in the local region. In exactly the same way, Australia relies on the US to shoulder the burden in the broader region. Lest there be any doubt of the pattern of reliance down the alliance chain, in recent times the US has spent around twice the share of its GDP on defence as has Australia, and Australia has spent more than twice the share as has New Zealand.

The disparate level of effort extends to each country’s response to China’s rise and to each country’s support for the US role in the region. New Zealand takes fewer risks of incurring Beijing’s ire than Australia, and Australia openly endorses the US role in the Indo-Pacific while New Zealand avoids the subject. It’s clear what’s happening: Australia is betting on a continued US role in the region—and its 2016 Defence White Paper says so—but New Zealand is keeping its options open.

In the coming years, both countries will have to tread a fine line between Donald Trump’s unpredictability and Xi Jinping’s threats of economic punishment. The antipodean pair could either draw closer together or be pulled apart. It’s impossible to say where each will be in five or 10 years but, as the least committed of the pair, New Zealand is at greatest risk of becoming a Western ally with Chinese characteristics.

Consistent with Australia having a larger economy and greater willingness to spend on defence, it has a larger and more sophisticated defence force than New Zealand. In terms of the assistance that each can render to the other, New Zealand gains the most. Based on the ratio of personnel numbers, New Zealand gains a sixfold increase in available military capacity, while Australia gains only a one-sixth boost. Both countries plan to spend more on defence over the coming decade, but that won’t alter the burden-sharing picture.

Despite the asymmetry of gains, Australia has a strong incentive to nurture its alliance with New Zealand. Apart from the geopolitical optics of keeping New Zealand onside, Australia would have to increase its defence spending by more than $1 billion a year to generate the additional military capabilities that New Zealand can contribute for operations. From Australia’s perspective, the business case for the alliance isn’t diminished one iota by the asymmetry of gains or the disparity in burden-sharing. All that matters is that the alliance delivers a net gain to Canberra.

Ongoing engagement between the ADF and NZDF is essential to maintain the alliance and maximise its benefits. Following a joint review in 2011, an expanded framework for cross-Tasman defence cooperation was established. But an expanded framework isn’t the same thing as expanded cooperation, and the growing technological gap between the ADF and NZDF will only make things more difficult.

Treaties are static documents, but alliances are living relationships. A conscious effort is needed to stop the relationship from becoming stale and, more critically, to bolster it against buffeting from a region in strategic transition.

It’s sobering to see how far expectations have fallen for the cross-Tasman alliance. The 1986 Dibb report argued for ‘the maximum possible interoperability of equipment between the armed forces of the two countries’. Within 12 months, a memorandum of understanding was signed for the Anzac ship project. Thirty years later, defence relations remain cordial and multifaceted, but there’s nothing like the Anzac project on the horizon to generate a sense of shared purpose.

At the same time, the interoperability of the two defence forces has eroded because of diminishing equipment commonality and divergent levels of sophistication. The situation won’t be rectified any time soon: in 1986, Australia spent eight times more on defence than New Zealand; today it spends 17 times as much.

The key is to find areas of common interest and commence joint activity that’s affordable to both parties. With that in mind, here are two suggestions for how Australia and New Zealand can work together to build a stronger alliance.

First, the two countries should expand combined military exercises in the region. Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper set out an ambitious program of international defence engagement and combined exercises across the Indo-Pacific. Wherever possible, Australia should involve New Zealand in the expanded program. Priority should be given to two areas: combined exercises involving the US, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercises in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

Second, Australia and New Zealand should consider combining their maritime surveillance efforts. Both countries have a vital interest in having an accurate picture of the local maritime environment. By pooling physical assets and fusing data, both would  gain. Faced with a similar problem, Canada and the US formed the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Australia and New Zealand could follow this example, but with a focus on surveillance rather than air defence. The resulting Anzac Maritime Surveillance Command would be a ‘static’ capability that’s largely immune to the vagaries of politically contentious deployments.

The critical question is what New Zealand will be able to bring to the table. A good start would be to follow Australia and replace its P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft with the P-8 Poseidon. Better still, it could buy one or more Triton long-range surveillance drones to augment the system that Australia is acquiring.

We need a navy to protect our supply routes

Following Richard Menhinick’s post about Australia needing a more potent and lethal navy, it’s worth thinking about why we have a navy and what role it would play in a regional conflict. From my reading, Richard’s premise is that we should invest in a larger, high-end navy that can contest sea control against the best in the world. I’d suggest that rather than consider going head-to-head with a major naval power, we reconsider how to get a bigger effect from our existing fleet.

Australia is trade-exposed. If trade routes were interrupted by a Southeast Asian conflict, our economy and security would suffer. So the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force need to develop the skills, experience and capabilities for commerce protection. Convoying is boring but vital to keeping supply lines open for us and our allies.

In a conflict, ensuring fuel supplies would be crucial for ADF operations, and for our economy, but our supply lines would be dangerously exposed. Aviation fuel (Avtur/Jet A/JP8) is essential for the RAAF and RAN. With the closure of our oil refineries, we depend on imported, refined petroleum to meet our domestic needs, and continued imports would be vital for extended ADF operations.

We currently import nearly 50% of our refined petroleum from Japan and South Korea. Japan, in turn, imports around 85% of its crude oil from the Middle East. South Korea imports approximately 30% of its crude from Saudi Arabia. So we need oil to be transported from the Middle East, via Southeast Asia, to North Asia, refined and shipped back to Australia. If those routes were to become unsafe due to hostile anti-access and area denial (A2AD) operations, the ADF’s operational ability would be threatened. So, too, would be the military operations of Japan and South Korea.

For any Asian-based conflict, Australia inhabits a Goldilocks zone: close enough to be very useful and far enough away to be a safe base of operations. To the north are a series of straits through which much of Australia’s commerce flows. In a conflict, the Malacca Strait would probably prove too narrow and dangerous for international shipping to traverse. Two more key routes are the Sunda and Lombok Straits. Alternatively, ships can go through the Banda Sea or east of Papua New Guinea.

Australia’s northern bases—Learmonth, Curtin, Tindal/Darwin and Scherger—and Cocos Island and Christmas Island, combined with US Navy bases at Diego Garcia and Guam, would be strategically crucial and well positioned to protect shipping moving to and from Australia. If the Malacca Strait closed and the South and East China Seas became contested waters, the nearest, safest shipping routes would be those cutting across to the north of Australia. By protecting those routes, we could ensure that our supply lines are kept open and that regional allies, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, can stay in the fight.

The next piece of the puzzle is the RAN’s order of battle, but not much needs to change there. We already have, or soon will have, the elements required for a small taskforce. The two landing helicopter docks with their aviation capability could be easily turned into excellent anti-submarine-warfare platforms. Our Anzac frigates are world-class escorts and the future frigates appear to be continuing in that vein. The three air-warfare destroyers would be excellent at doing what they were designed for.

In this context, the army could operate more like the US Marine Corps.

The maritime-patrol capabilities of the RAAF’s AP-3C Orions (operational range of 4,400 kilometres), P-8 Poseidons (2,200 kilometres) and MQ-4C Tritons (15,000 kilometres) would be vital to cover massive areas. As a reference, the distance from the Cocos Islands to Diego Garcia is 2,700 kilometres.

The trickiest part is organising the convoys. Australia no longer has a merchant marine and relies on other nations’ shipping. Getting companies on board is a cost–benefit exercise. Having vessels idle in port costs money. To avoid losing ships, companies would send them via northern Australia, but that would mean higher fuel bills. The biggest cost increase would be insurance. The high odds of losing a large, slow merchant ship in a war zone will be factored into premiums. If the ADF can mitigate the risks by working with insurers and organising and escorting convoys, the reduction in premiums would be a valid commercial incentive.

The RAN has, or will soon have, the vessels and equipment to protect convoys. All that’s required is organisational focus. In an Asian conflict, any Australian contribution to an alliance navy would be trivial based on numbers. But Australia is perfectly positioned to ensure that shipping routes, in particular fuel supplies, are kept open and that trade-exposed allies are kept in the fight.