Tag Archive for: strategic policy

Australia’s strategic policy: what’s plan B?

There’s a problem now with Australia’s strategic logic. It isn’t a criticism of previous strategic guidance documents that they failed to anticipate seminal events that affected the international environment: the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union; the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan; 9/11 and the subsequent long war on terror.

Few anywhere predicted these events. But there might be less an excuse for recent Australian white papers ignoring the fragility of the liberal international order.

In  2016 the RAND Corporation embarked on the Building a Sustainable International Order project.  Sponsored by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, it was initiated because the international order was already ‘perceived to be at risk’. The project’s first publication, Understanding the current international order, identified the risks as reactions against the appearance that the international order was designed to ‘perpetuate U.S. hegemony’, economic crises, and ‘slow growth and growing inequality’.

The 2017 report, Measuring the health of the liberal international order, which it defined as ‘a complex mix of formal global institutions, such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization; bilateral and regional security organizations; and liberal political norms’, added ‘populist movements around the world’ to the threats.

Although ‘the order remained relatively stable’, the authors judged that geopolitical and ideological factors remained a concern, and that ‘several major trends have begun that, if carried to a more extreme conclusion, would undermine the coherence of the order’. The project judged that key elements of the order were in ‘jeopardy’ and that the ‘the operation of the postwar liberal international order will have to undergo significant revision if it is to remain viable’.

This year the final project report, Testing the value of the postwar international order, concluded that US interests and security are best served by ‘equitable multilateralism’, albeit still under US leadership. ‘A highly unilateralist, nationalist approach,’ it announced, ‘would risk undermining cooperation on key security issues and doing serious damage to the global economy.’

Both the 2016 Defence White Paper and the more cogently argued 2017 Foreign Affairs White Paper were premised on the same assumptions. Australia’s vision was ‘for a neighbourhood in which adherence to rules delivers lasting peace, where the rights of all states are respected, and where open markets facilitate the free flow of trade, capital and ideas’.

To fulfil this vision, it was necessary to ‘broaden and deepen our alliance cooperation’ with the US. Moreover, the government expressed its determination to ‘advocate for an open international economy’ and ‘stand against protectionism and promote and defend the international rules that guard against unfair trade actions and help resolve disputes’.

The central strategic judgment was that the US had built and sustained the liberal international order ‘not only in its own interest, but also to create public goods and a global system in which other countries can prosper’. That, to a large extent, has been true. However, it’s no longer possible to maintain this position.

Now the liberal order is under serious pressure. President Donald Trump’s rolling rejection of the fundamental tenets of the postwar international order may prove as dramatic a revolution in US foreign policy as the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan were. Trump has rejected equitable multilateralism in trade, on climate and over security—with the EU and Pacific trade agreements, the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran deal. His foreign policy approach, anchored in militarism, nationalism and unilateralism, is fraying the alliance that underpinned the international order. His lack of commitment to liberal norms and his abandonment of democracy promotion is another deviation from past policies.

In addition, basic institutions of the post‑World War II international order are less effective. The UN has proved to be an inadequate vehicle for resolving the Israeli–Palestinian dispute—despite a series of UN Security Council resolutions—and in averting disasters like Srebrenica and Rwanda. It seems impotent in the face of the humanitarian disasters playing out in Yemen and Syria.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has proved toothless against China’s violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in the South China Sea. In the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China has established a rival to the World Bank.

Australia’s strategic eggs all seem to be in one basket. Yet the guarantor of the ‘peace and stability’ that is essential to the maintenance of ‘the rules-based global order’ on which Australia relies is no longer committed to the order. Inconsistencies are already beginning to emerge as a consequence.

Australia has joined with 10 other nations in a revived Trans-Pacific Partnership, in line with its multilateral free trade policy and a strengthening of the rules concerning international trade in the region. However, Australia’s refusal to join the EU and other nations in a World Trade Organization challenge to Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium seems an abandonment of strongly stated principle.

It’s an incongruous move that seems designed to weaken rather than strengthen the rules-based order deemed essential to Australia’s future security and prosperity. It would take considerable sophistry to paint it otherwise.

Australia has undoubtedly been one of the beneficiaries of the post-war, rules-based global order and the opportunities provided by multilateralism and free trade. To prioritise actions that support and foster the continuation of that situation in strategic and foreign policy is sound. Still, it has been wisely said that ‘hope is not a strategy’.

It seems as though Australian strategic policy has lacked the imagination to confront the possibility of the failure of the post-war international order, even as the real threats to it appeared plainly evident to others. Now, as elements of that order crumble, Australia has no coherent alternative to simply hoping against hope that the past will persist into the future.

In short, we have no plan B.

Defending Australia: going it alone

An Australian soldier from Mentoring Task Force – Three carries his pack near the town of Saghaytu after taking part in an Afghan National Army coordinated clearance of the Khod Valley, southern Afghanistan.

The rumour doing the rounds last year was that the Prime Minister had contemplated a unilateral deployment of a battalion of Australian soldiers to Ukraine to secure the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, so investigators could do their work. There were similar reports about consideration being given to sending an army brigade to Iraq to tackle ISIS.

Truth and rumours aside, as well as their practical realities, the concept of unilateral deployments by Australian naval, ground or air forces is a challenging one. Put simply, Australian strategic thought and practice has only rarely countenanced action outside an alliance of some description. Post-WWII planning for the defence of the area which can loosely be described as the Australian Station, and which led to the Radford-Collins Agreement, had some of the characteristics of unilateral planning. However, it was national planning in one theatre as part of a global alliance.

Some of the plans for evacuation of Australians from other countries in the event of civil disorder have unilateral elements to them, but they are very limited in their scope. The operations to stabilise East Timor and the Solomon Islands are probably the closest Australia has ever come to unilateral action; the political strategic initiative, planning and execution were in large part led by Australia, but are more accurately characterised as an Australian lead in a coalition context. Australia has previously included self-reliance as one aspect of its defence policy, but that was conceived mainly in terms of procurement and supply.

In what circumstances would Australia take unilateral military action? What action or threat against our national interest would be so direct, the consequences of which would be sufficiently grave and immediate, that the Australian Government would order military action as part of its response? Such an order would be the most challenging the Australian Defence Force would ever have to carry out. After several decades of talking about joint operations and carrying out operations as components of allied forces, would the ADF be able to act coherently and unilaterally? And do our strategic practitioners—military, diplomatic and political—have sufficient understanding of each other to be able to formulate and enact unilateral strategic policy?

Australia remains a lucky country: we have skilled diplomats who work to ensure our interests are looked after without the explicit threat or use of force; and most, but not all, of our interests are either coincident with those of other nations or are a long way from any nation with the capability to attack them. While the likelihood of Australia needing to act unilaterally isn’t great, we are in a period of flux in the international order and the past experience of being relatively far from most military action and having the comfort of strong and powerful alliances shouldn’t be taken for granted. Although these aren’t questions that have been frequently or extensively discussed, they are the most important decisions an Australian Government could ever make. In that sense, there’s merit in considering them while there’s leisure to do so.

There are obvious situations where Australia would take unilateral action, such as if another nation attempted to invade, and while it can never be completely discounted it remains a less likely scenario. But what about others? The possibilities below are not fully formed—indeed they beg many questions—and are intended to prompt thought and discussion on the original question: in what circumstances would Australia take unilateral military action?

  • What if, during a period of great tension between the US and another nation, and where Australia was not otherwise involved, a bulk carrier was sunk close to an Australian port? How would Australia respond to such a proxy attack?
  • What if a nation chose to close, or even to openly contemplate closing, an archipelagic sea lane or international strait? Or to impose an environmental levy on the passage of vessels over a certain tonnage? What would be the impact on insurance rates for vessels travelling to and from Australia and would that be acceptable to Australia?
  • What if a nation cut one or more of the submarine communications cables which connect Australia to the world? Would we act to defend them in future?
  • What if another nation sought to damage an offshore oil and gas platform or threaten to lay sea mines in its vicinity?
  • What if a country sought to detain a Qantas or Virgin aircraft in a future disagreement with Australia?

Many what ifs, but I think we need to move beyond the entertainment of rumour and try to define our core national interests and, in particular, those which are unique to Australia, because those are guides to the issues over which we might be forced or chose to take unilateral military action. Nor should such contemplation be seen as a rejection of alliances and multilateral cooperation; if anything, an ADF capable of unilateral action in defence would make Australia a more valuable alliance partner with more to contribute and less to take.

Will Indonesia’s new president reshape its future strategic policy?

Ballot papers are checked by electoral staff during Indonesia's latest presidential elections.

As Indonesia prepares for the presidential election in July, one of the big questions concerns defence and security: in particular, to what extent will Indonesia’s new president reshape Indonesia’s future strategic policy? Here, I’m not going to debate what ‘strategy’ or ‘strategic policy’ [PDF] is. Rather, I want to provide an answer to the question outlined above. Drawing from Kenneth Waltz’s theoretical analysis, I’ll explore those factors shaping Indonesian strategic thinking at the international, regional, national, sub-national (domestic), and individual (personal) levels.

At the international level, the big question is obviously where Indonesia stands in relation to the more intense geopolitical competition unfolding between China and the US—with China potentially drawing increased support from Russia and US allies supporting its rebalancing to Asia. While Washington has consistently said that its rebalancing strategy is anything but containment, China is increasingly sceptical about such claims. Caught in between, Indonesia seems to know better what it stands against than what it stands for. Read more