I read Anthony Bergin’s article in The Australian last month with great interest. In it, he called for Defence to take greater action on climate change, but that view deserves further consideration.

He made the point that the US military was well ahead of their Australian counterpart when it comes to tackling climate change, highlighting the recent Presidential Memorandum and the Department of Defense Climate Directive as supporting evidence. In my upcoming book I examine US DoD’s efforts and show that its emissions have dropped almost 20% since 2008. That’s not small change either—in a bad year the total US DoD emissions are roughly one-sixth of those of the entire Australian economy.

Despite the abundance of high-level US military climate strategies (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), they haven’t been without problems. A 2014 US GAO report highlighted responses to climate change were often difficult to translate into meaningful action by front-line commanders. Many base officials stated that climate data was insufficiently downscaled to be of any use. Other officials were uncertain of how to implement climate requirements since key information was missing. They found a lack of definitions, unclear building codes and design standards, and uncertainty around which climate projections to use. Climate change responses struggled to be properly integrated at the lower-levels. US military efforts can be rightly applauded, but challenges remain.

The final observation about US DoD efforts to “mainstream” climate change is that they’re about to come to a grinding halt. Despite mixed signals, President-elect Trump is appointing climate obstructionists who will seek to wind back Obama’s climate strategy. One leg of the Obama strategy involved framing climate change as a legitimate national security threat and taking executive action in the face of a hostile Congress. Obama garnered support from the wider US national security establishment with think tanks, intelligence agencies, retired US flag officers and the DoD itself all urging greater action. Politically, that lent Obama’s climate agenda a degree of credibility with voters who now understand the issue as being about more than polar bears or economic drag. Despite this, Obama’s climate security initiatives will likely be wound back, issues confused, US military leaders stifled and climate change written out of existence in the next round of US national security documents.

Climate security discourse in Australia took a similar turn under the Abbott government. With the exception of some lone voices and a couple of think tank reports, it’s largely been ignored by the security establishment. Fundamentally this can be attributed to the slowly evolving nature of the threat; it simply doesn’t fit with annual budgets, two-year appointments or five year “strategic” plans. Despite this, the issue has gained some traction and the recent speech by the Chief of Army Angus Campbell and the inclusion of climate change in the 2016 Defence White Paper are evidence of this.

But more can be done.

We need more than senior military leaders functioning as strategic advocates, as Anthony recommends. Instead, the ADF needs a strategic plan to deal with climate change: enterprise-wide, long-term with interim goals, updated every five years and nested within wider ADF sustainability, environmental and energy programs. Rather than be a flagship, the ADF Climate Strategy could commence life like the US Climate Adaptation Strategy (originally nested within their sustainability plan). That quieter approach would help with the communication strategy necessary in the hyper-sensitive political climate. In addition, appointing a climate officer could invite ridicule from a right-wing media thirsty for soft targets and, at worst, might cruel that particular officer’s career.

The ADF Climate Strategy must address both mitigation and adaptation. The ADF is the single largest government emitter at about 1.5 Mt/year—roughly the same as Telstra or just less than half that of Virgin Airlines (Australia), but larger than Fiji or Tonga, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu and Samoa combined. For the ADF to reduce emissions would mean jobs, upgrading aging infrastructure, innovation, cost effectiveness, a smaller logistical footprint and enhanced energy security. Simple, clear and bold targets are key. For example: “By 2030 the ADF will reduce estate emissions by 50%”. “By 2030 the ADF will reduce operational emissions by 50%”. Create the vision, then develop the programs to meet this. In this manner, the pursuit of a Navy biofuels program here or a wave energy installation there, are given much greater strategic context.

Adaptation is partly underway. In 2011 the ADF reviewed the risk of sea-level rise on its bases. That was followed up with a 2013 report recommending options for adaptation. From the public perspective, however, it’s questionable if the known risks have translated into greater action. So the first thing the Department should do is publicly release their reports. While ADF tends to think of itself as acting in isolation, it must think and act differently when dealing with climate change. Conducting engineering works such as raising runways or constructing sea walls might be good for the ADF, but it may generate unforeseen risks that simply shift the problem elsewhere.

Climate change remains a strategic threat of unprecedented proportions. The ADF should learn from the US experience, taking those ideas that have worked and avoiding those that missed the mark.

There’s a Chinese perspective that holds there are two kinds of time. Looking back is far more valuable than looking ahead, for it’s by looking back that lessons are understood and appropriate conclusions drawn. So it is with ASPI.

The creation of ASPI in 2001 by the Howard government, with the support of Kim Beazley’s Labor Opposition, represents a rare Canberra decision.

Not only has ASPI met expectations, it has consistently exceeded them. Centring the policy debate in defence and national security, crafting intelligent and effective policy options, and reaching out to Australians interested in strategic policy, ASPI has achieved a record of influential contributions while not losing its understood need for objectivity and balance.

ASPI may occasionally have annoyed defence ministers, on both sides of the aisle. But that reflects an essential core of the Institute’s brief: to contest advice to government and to promote active debate on the issues.

Even the most aggrieved defence minister over the years would stop well short of accusing ASPI of partisan positions. It’s been singularly free of such behaviour and its reputation and relations with Parliament confirm this continuing reality, which has characterised its first 15 years.

Much of the credit for ASPI’s success should be shared deservedly among its leaders: Chairs Bob O’Neill and Mark Johnson and Executive Directors Hugh White, Peter Abigail and Peter Jennings. Peter Jennings, in particular, has built upon solid foundations to guide ASPI into new dimensions: from authoritative policy conferences; to closer relations with business and industry; to becoming the accepted policy engine on issues ranging from budgeting through cyber security to submarines; while being a dominant voice on national security in the public arena.

Prime Minister John Howard was determined to make ASPI bipartisan, just as the Community Consultation process for the 2001 Defence White Paper (and subsequently the 2009 document) had been. To that end, he asked Kim Beazley to nominate a representative, who turned out to be me.

During the ensuing 15 years, I represented Kim Beazley, Simon Crean, Beazley (again), Mark Latham, then Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and, finally, Bill Shorten. The standing joke at ASPI became that I’d survived more purges in the ALP leadership than a member of Stalin’s Politburo in Moscow in 1937.

The ASPI Chairmanship was a great honour, confirmed by Kevin Rudd on then defence minister, Joel Fitzgibbon’s recommendation, and subsequently reaffirmed by Stephen Smith. Both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott were content to see me serve.

The point about the above is that I was privileged to be present at the creation of ASPI and have watched its astounding growth and extraordinary success.

It wasn’t always a rose garden. There were elements in the Defence Department bureaucracy who wanted ASPI shut down and for a while this appeared probable. Peter Abigail was outstanding in adversity and eventually we emerged intact.

This isn’t to claim that ASPI hasn’t made mistakes. The Institute has been guilty of speculative commentary in earlier days, for example. But those days are long gone and the current crop of ASPI researchers and analysts are among the most able found anywhere. This statement is validated by ASPI repeatedly being numbered among the best ‘think tanks’ in the world.

Part of the reason is that ASPI has attracted intellectual capital of a high order, people who are accomplished in their fields. ASPI Councils, often comprised of very gifted individuals, have supported innovative programs and exchanges, backed original research endeavours and encouraged a spirit of enquiry. Excellence is routinely the goal.

What’s next for ASPI?

Given its aspirations and levels of support beyond Defence, consideration should now be given to changing the ASPI model. Severing the formal tie with Defence, while retaining research and resource links, should be on the structural agenda. The RAND model beckons, with an independent board, reputational excellence for scholarship, strong private sector links and challenging briefs from both government and non-government sectors.

For ASPI to grow in its second 15 years and to cast its policy influence well beyond Australian shores, a new ASPI configuration is needed.

The media philosophy offered in this series is the belief that in the Media Age the more you give the more you make.

The continuous flow of honest news—good and bad—from the Australian Defence Force in the field doesn’t cut Canberra out of the action.

Truth-with-speed creates a solid basis of fact continuously flowing through all available digital channels. All the platforms become stages for government and Defence to do their part of the media job from Canberra.

As always, the role of the Prime Minister, Defence Minister and ADF Chiefs is to set out the grand strategy—what is these days called ‘the narrative’.

More than announce and explain, the job for those at the top is to argue, guide and convince. The day-to-day action must be related to Australia’s aims, the military purposes and the diplomatic endeavours.

What’s offered to the Australian voters is given simultaneously to Digital Citizens everywhere. This age demands it as a basic response but also rewards it as proper behaviour.

The communications power that billions of Digital Citizens will wield is just one example of the fluidity and creative destruction surging through the Age.

Responding to my previous discussion of the Digital Citizens and operational transparency, an old Canberra defencenik made this observation:

‘If the Digital Citizen is a resident of where we are conducting operations, they will be considered part of the problem – and dealt with accordingly – rather than part of the solution. We are not going to engage with them because they could be ISIS/Taliban/etc.  If they are a professional journalist, then they are going to be fed a carefully structured view, so as to ensure that the ISIS/Taliban don’t get an operational advantage. So the only digital citizen that matters is our domestic digital citizen.’

See this as a reasonable statement of how Defence and the ADF think: them, us and there’s the dividing line.

Trouble is the Digital Citizens aren’t just part of the operating environment—they’re also players in the media environment. That reality is why I dubbed them Digital Citizens, reaching beyond existing usages such as ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital residents’.

Defence’s them-and-us line is well suited to the physical geography of the ADF operating among foreign ‘natives’ and ‘residents.’ Not so useful, though, in confronting the surging fluidities of the Media Age—and Digital Citizens who have both rights and instant communication capacity.

Lots of ideas about authority, influence and control—and definitely, command—are going to be digitally altered.

This series has offered the prime directives of truth-with-speed. Those directives demand the demarcation of media roles between the Minister, Defence officials and military chiefs in Canberra, and ADF officers—at every level—on operations.

The strategic corporal is to be joined by the Lieutenant who can speak and the Captain who can confirm and the Major who can explain, and so on up the line.

Here are some thoughts—and rules—that flow from the prime directives:

• Every element of the media must be served. Using every digital channel means treating journalists and Digital Citizens the same.
• All military commanders must have a media and information dimension in their operational plans. It worked for Napoleon and it still will.
• Train officers, NCOs and everyone in the field to operate in the Media Age. Get them to understand journalists aren’t monsters. Then train them to understand that today every Digital Citizen can report on their actions. The strategic corporal will constantly meet the strategic Digital Citizen. The corporal will have the gun but the Digital Citizen will have media clout.
• Instead of the ‘fog of war’, the Media Age offers digital clarity. More people will be able to see much more of what happens in conflict. The ability to conceal and censor recedes.
• Digital Citizens can outnumber the military and deploy more communications power. The new asymmetry reverses the old relationship where the military vastly outnumbered the journalists. The military will have less exclusive power over information and less ability to control information coming from the battlefield.
• Information can be delayed—rarely can it be withheld indefinitely. The short-term gains of delay, obfuscation or denial should be weighed against the longer-term cost to credibility and reputation when the facts leak or are revealed from elsewhere.
• Australia should allow the maximum number of journalists possible to cover ADF operations. Australians should know what the ADF is doing in the field and they should get much of that information from Australian reporters, not just official spokespeople.

The truth-with-speed motto treats the good and the bad equally. The defeats are detailed as fully as the wins. The snafus rank with the successes.

For any bureaucracy, that’s tough. For politicians, completely counterintuitive. The control instincts throb powerfully, yet recent history reveals it as a dangerous instinct.

Hiding stuff becomes a gamble instead of a judgement call. The next data dump could blow up all those secrets in a single moment.

Truth-with-speed is about what can be made to work in the Media Age. Applied consistently, truth-with-speed becomes a considerable soft-power weapon to convince your own people and inform others.

The reputation benefits will build because what Australia says can be believed.

For Defence, truth-with-speed matters greatly for the most important group of all: the men and women who wear the uniform and go into the field. They’re face-to-face with the reality. To hear their leaders telling the truth about that reality is an affirmation of what the Australian Defence Force is and what Australia means.

The terrain of the Media Age is a networked series of places—both land and a land of the mind. The borders are ever more porous.

A vital part of the terrain is still occupied by The Press and News Media. Journalism matters and will continue to be important. Courtesy of the United States, think of this as First Amendment Land—the place of a free press not subject to government control.

Yet First Amendment land is only one part of the terrain. Other areas are growing fast and taking over a lot of territory—to use the jargon, they are occupying more bandwidth.

Across the lands of the Media Age roam the Digital Citizens. In their billions. Newly connected. Greatly empowered. As the previous column noted, the strategic corporal will now move amid a sea of Digital Citizens.

Serving the Digital Citizens and using them at the same time are the great new digital corporations. Apple and Facebook and Google et al are media companies. These modern media companies assume First Amendment rights but they don’t think like The Press; journalism may be one product they communicate but journalism isn’t what they do.

The differences in the foundational attitudes of The Press and the new media giants point to how the terrain is altering.

The Press are creations of the nation and expressions of their home country—the Fourth Estate functioned so a country could have a conversation with itself.

The digital corporations disregard national boundaries. The media corporations think international and aspire to be universal. This is both a social and business model. Governments are chosen for their tax regimes, not any sense of national loyalty.

The aim is to provide communication and connection. Like The Press, the new media aren’t too keen on government secrecy.

The corporations worry deeply about the security of their systems and promise secrecy to their customers. The digital giants want all their customers’ secrets (data) with the promise those secrets will be kept safe—even from government. (Not secret from advertisers, by the way—but that’s about cash not principle.)

Apple’s fight against the FBI’s demand to hack into the Apple phone of a terrorist was a struggle over the security interests of customers versus the security needs of the state.

Thanks to the glories of digital convergence, another great chunk of the Media Age is Cyber. For Defence purposes, Cyber is a new realm where Australia will now play offence as well as defence.

Cyber, though, isn’t a separate realm in the Media Age but part of the era’s foundation. And Cyber is deeply contested territory, as the President of Alphabet’s Jigsaw (previously Google Ideas), Jared Cohen notes:

‘The Islamic State, or ISIS, is the first terrorist group to hold both physical and digital territory: in addition to swaths of land it controls in Iraq and Syria, it dominates pockets of the Internet with relative impunity. But it will hardly be the last…In fact, the next prominent terrorist organisation will be more likely to have extensive digital operations than control physical ground.’

Little wonder the US has created cyberunit mission teams modelled on Special Operations forces. The function of the cyberunits? A succinct but vivid description from the US deputy Secretary of Defence, Robert Work: ‘We are dropping cyberbombs. We have never done that before.’

Another way to think of the Media Age is as the Age of Transparency. That’s the title of Sean Larkin’s Foreign Affairs article making the case that open-source information from commercial surveillance satellites, drones, smartphones, and computers will bring an unprecedented level of transparency to global affairs:

‘Commercial satellites will capture daily images of the entire globe, offering inexpensive and automated reports on everything from crop yields to military activity. Journalists, NGOs, and bloggers will increasingly use crowdsourced data to uncover wartime atrocities and expose government hypocrisy. Private security companies will discover the sources of cyberattacks and data theft. Biometric systems will expose the identities of clandestine operatives, and government agencies will struggle to contain leakers and whistleblowers. Although some secrets will likely remain hidden, ubiquitous surveillance will subject the vast majority of states’ actions to observation.’

The phrase ‘ubiquitous observation’ is a statement of coming fact, to be delivered by hundreds of inexpensive miniature satellites.

The idea of ‘ubiquitous observation’ raining on us all leads me to a metaphor: Transparency is going to become a bit like the weather: governments can plan for it and protect against it, but they can neither control it nor make it go away.

Even decisions about levels of transparency will be much less matters of government choice. That’s tough news for Alpha personalities who give orders and expect to be obeyed.

Like the weather, the transparency of the Media Age can’t be denied—a discomforting change that will disrupt deeply entrenched habits of mind and action.

To be any use, Defence communication settings have to be able to deal with The Press and Digital Citizens and the Cyber realm. And still serve Defence and its political masters. What simple formula could do all this?

The next column will give the answer: truth-with-speed. It sounds simple, but for the Defence Department and the Australian Defence Force it would be revolutionary.

The standard political and military approach to journalists is to use and abuse. The hacks return it with gusto.

When things go wrong and the going gets tough, the political/military approach shifts gear to shut ‘em out and shut ‘em up.

See use/abuse or shut-up/shut-out as the two arms of Oz government and Defence media policy. Express these two arms of dealing with The Press or news media with formal labels: Engage versus Exclude.

Governments have to Engage because they have voters to reach and stories that need telling. The frustration of having to Engage is expressed in that wonderful Tom Stoppard line: ‘I’m with you on freedom of the press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand.’

While governments must Engage, the Australian military—seeking to please itself and its political masters—has consistent Exclude instincts.

The Exclude habit-of-mind is an unsung yet enduring bit of the ANZAC tradition.

A century of Oz military history reveals a tendency to see Oz journalists as only slightly less dangerous than the enemy. An attack from the rear, deploying large headlines, is dreaded.

The WWI official correspondent, C.E.W. Bean—the man who inscribed the ANZAC legend in the histories then enshrined it in the War Memorial—remarked that his two bugbears at Gallipoli were ‘Turkish flies and Australian officers’.

The flies still irritate and officers still buzz.

Unpack elements of the Exclude habit as displayed by the Australian Defence Force, using shut-up and shut-out lenses.

In war and conflict zones, Defence has an almost unique ability to control the access of hacks—a formidable shut-out power. Stay with us and do as we say and we’ll protect you. Go solo and risk death.

The complex conundrum is infused with tragedy. The growing roll of dead freelancers in myriad conflicts is a strong argument for getting into bed and becoming an ‘embedded’ correspondent with the military.

In WWI and WWII the shut-up tool was powerful censorship laws. In democracies, such overt control is today out of fashion.

The military can no longer censor what hacks write or broadcast or tweet. Instead, there’s ‘media policy’. Control the information flow. Hire lots of Media Minders. Direct the story. Stay on message. Talk about what you want to talk about.

Negative or unwanted yarns are subject to ‘damage control’ and ‘rapid response’ and ‘clarification’; even a carefully-phrased denial.

Mount the counter-attack of talking points. If something bad happens on your patch, try to shift the news cycle with diversion or feint. Give ‘em different, fresh meat—don’t look here, look over there at this new, shiny thing.

At the centre of the mindset is secrecy, often an all-purpose shroud. Defence shares the secrecy habit with everybody else in official Canberra. The threat of terrorism has generated a lot of new shut-up legislation aimed at hacks.

In the words of the hacks’ union—the Media Alliance—the strengthened ASIO Act means ‘Australian journalists face jail terms for legitimate public interest journalism.’ The fundamental effect of the law ‘is to intimidate whistleblowers and journalists.’

In Canberra, the shut-up/shut out habit is political practice and bureaucratic custom as well as ANZAC tradition.

With any policy approach, both formal and informal forces are at play. Apply this stated and unstated model to the way Defence does media policy:

Stated Reasons for Shut-up/Shut-out

•         Protect lives—both ADF personnel and journalists
•         Operational imperatives
•         Secrecy
•         Get accurate information to the Australian people

Unstated Reasons for Shut-up/Shut-out

•         Political advantage for the government and Defence Minister
•         Tight day-to-day control by the Minister’s office—especially the release of any information
•         Burnish the image and protect against embarrassment
•         Bury cock-ups
•         Tell the Australian people what you want ‘em to hear

Those Stated and Unstated purposes got an extensive workout during Australia’s longest war, Afghanistan. Canberra’s control on information out of Afghanistan was ‘draconian’.

Q: Who says it was excessively harsh and severe?

A: Major General John Cantwell, who served as commander in the Middle East Area of Operations. Here is the draconian reflection in his memoirs:

‘I approve scores of media updates, make or release dozens of newsy videos, provide commentary on our challenges and progress, and look for every opportunity to tell the Australian people what our troops are doing, and how well they’re doing it. Most of these sink without a trace in the Defence and parliamentary precincts of Canberra. I get more mileage from the story of sending home a long-lost and rediscovered explosive-detection dog, Sarbi, than from all my other media engagements combined. In general, the work of our service men and women seems to be invisible in the Australian media. It’s partly the fault of the press, but largely due to the draconian control of information by the Department of Defence Public Affairs Office and the Defence Minister’s office.’

My argument is that the draconian habit of mind owes a lot to those Unstated Reasons. To be continued….