Two senior analysts of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) recently published pieces that put its reputation for sound analysis and practical policy recommendations at risk.
Michael Shoebridge’s homage to the US has been addressed previously in Pearls and Irritations. He subsequently published a more concerning piece for such a well credentialed strategic policy analyst. In this second effort, Shoebridge’s analysis and policy prescriptions were decidedly odd.
Apparently, both the US and Australia have been so badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic that it is threatening the readiness and ability of our militaries ‘to operate’. Shoebridge asserts that American and Australian military capability is a ‘powerful factor in keeping the peace in these dangerous times, notably in North Asia’. Therefore, he concludes, the pandemic is a ‘direct threat to global security’.
Shoebridge’s policy recommendations to address this are impractical and baffling. The Prime Minister should invoke ANZUS. ‘ANZUS can be the vehicle that maximises our nations’ cooperation for our mutual benefit’, he says, which will ‘result in the entire Australian system working jointly with that of our American counterparts to defeat the pandemic in both of our countries’. Australia’s national cabinet should then seek ‘a virtual meeting with President Donald Trump and his National Security Council’.
There are three things to note from Shoebridge’s pieces, aside from the strained analysis and exaggerations. He tries to manufacture a sense of a crisis in Northeast Asia, misrepresents the nature of the ANZUS treaty, and offers a totally unrealistic assessment of the US Administration’s preoccupations at present. Someone with Shoebridge’s experience and ability should be conscious of these analytical shortcomings.
The theme of a crisis in Northeast Asia is continued in a piece by Peter Jennings. He warns that, ‘geopolitics is thriving and sprinting towards a potential crisis at the end of this year or early in 2021’. The Chinese regime’s ‘strategy during the crisis has been to extract maximum advantage for itself at the expense of every other country’, he writes. China is only trying ‘to position itself as the saviour of much of the world, [by] sending medical equipment and doctors’. Thus enabling the Chinese to claim ‘that authoritarianism is doing a better job of beating the virus than Western democracy’.
While China is undeniably intent on managing its image during the pandemic, that the ‘so called’ West has created the space for China, and Russia, to step in is overlooked. As is the spectacle of democratic nations hijacking, or refusing to share vital medical supplies with friends and allies, or to provide adequate assistance to the worst hit European states.
‘[President] Xi’s personal leadership and the CCP’s credibility’ are both threatened, in Jennings’ analysis, by Taiwan’s success in managing the pandemic. Jennings attributes Taiwan’s performance to it being a ‘liberal democracy’. However, Taiwan, along with Singapore, owes its more of its success to learning from previous pandemics than to its political system.
A collection of ordinary and unrelated events—military exercises off Taiwan, a collision between Chinese and Japanese vessels, an intrusion into Korean airspace, and the presence of a Chinese aircraft carrier in the South China Sea—are seen by Jennings as evidence of ramped up Chinese aggression and ‘a show of strength’. On this flimsy basis Jennings anticipates an opportunistic President Xi seizing ‘a strategic advantage while the US remains dangerously incapacitated’. He expects that China will ‘blockade the Taiwan Strait and economically squeeze Taipei’.
Like Shoebridge, Jennings exaggerates the impact on the US Navy of the virus, and proposes highly unrealistic responses to this supposed ‘crisis’. The Australian government should: contact the leaders of the US, Japan, Indonesia and the UK, plus ‘any other national leader who is willing to join a coordinated push-back against Chinese military opportunism’; place the ADF on the highest level of readiness; boost defence spending to around 3.2 percent of GDP; and prepare a new Defence White paper. As with Shoebridge, Jennings insists Australia must assert responsibility for the security of Northeast Asia.
If anything, Jennings’ record in developing strategic policy is more impressive than Shoebridge’s. Curiously, their analyses in these pieces seem choreographed. They offer unrealistic views of potential US responses to pre-emptive Australian actions, and dismiss any possibility of humanitarian motives on the part of China, always seeing only malign opportunism. They both attempt to whip up a sense of imminent crisis.
There is no question that China’s stated ambition is to regain control in the long term over what it regards as Chinese territory in Taiwan. The strategic competition between China and the US will undoubtedly persist beyond the pandemic. However, Shoebridge and Jennings provide simplistic and blinkered analyses of the situation in North Asia. They overlook the complexity of the geopolitical and geostrategic factors involved, the domestic economic, social and political imperatives of all states post-COVID-19, and offer up just one possible future scenario as probable.
ASPI’s anti-China position has been recognised, and to be ill-disposed towards what is an illiberal and autocratic regime is not unusual among strategic commentators. To take the stance that Australia’s security is best safeguarded by a close and deferential alliance with the US also is not uncommon. Similarly, it is not irrational to be concerned about the strategic competition in Northeast Asia. But why two prominent members of ASPI would go to such lengths to generate a dubious sense of imminent crisis is an unknown.
Speculation might point to the strategic review currently underway in Defence. ASPI might hope to influence the review, to push it to recommend increases in defence spending and even greater interoperability with the US, by heightening the sense of imminent risk in Northeast Asia. These are long standing agenda items for Jennings and matters of interest to ASPI’s sponsors.
Whatever their motivation, Jennings and Shoebridge run the risk of damaging the credibility and reputation of ASPI.
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
Comments
12 responses to “MIKE SCRAFTON. The dogs of war cry wolf: The post-pandemic China threat”
“Whatever their motivation, Jennings and Shoebridge run the risk of damaging the credibility and reputation of ASPI.”
A bit late to worry about that!
The more things are changing the more they stay the same.
Through history epidemics have led to Medieval blood ploys, pointing to minority groups or other nations, currently toward the Chinese, which serves pro-conflict and pro-war interests, this time toward nuclear war.
Recenly the ABC has become dominated by such blame games
…. yes, distressing to find the ABC increasingly becoming a state rather than a national broadcaster. Same long evident in BBC.
You note that “curiously, their analyses in these pieces seem choreographed” – and indeed we should be curious about exactly what dance ASPI is following, even if we know who the dance teacher is. (hideous thought that it is) That aside, I find the comparison between Australia’s very minor and easily controlled epidemic of the Coronavirus with the devastating spread and death toll in America quite sycophantic, and quite suspect.
And who says that the virus originated in China anyway? Not China, nor even Japan or Taiwan apparently.
Is it not possible for both points of view to have merit. Shoebridge and Jennings may err if they suggest theirs is the likeliest scenario, as Scrafton suggests, but it is certainly a possible one. For me, a worse error would be to underplay how much China – though a major trading partner with benefit to both sides – is nevertheless a hostile state playing a malign role in Australia and other parts of the world. We should be alert to that, and we should certainly not trust a word from the CCP. (This is not to suggest we should be in any way hostile to Chinese people in general, just the CCP.)
Given that we can certainly not trust Trump’s America either, and that a certain distancing from the US would be wise, we should be pursuing strategic partnerships with other Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia) as a counterweight to China. Other correspondents to Pearls and Irritations are, of course, ahead of me in suggesting that.
“we should be pursuing strategic partnerships with other Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia) as a counterweight to China. ”
I agree.
But who (and how many) are these other commentators who’ve been sensible enough to have been “suggesting that”?
Michael McKinley in an earlier post described the foetid conceptual environment in which such notions exist: ”
The enemification of China and Russia in US, and thus, alliance statements and documents on international security can now reasonably be described as an idée fixe: a persistent preoccupation which has become a delusional idea that dominates all proceedings and is demonstrably and firmly resistant to any attempt to modify it no matter the dangers – quite possibly fatal – which arise from persisting in it.”
The result, captured succinctly last May by Paul Keating: “the nutters are in charge”.
Just a surprise that they have so publically exposed themselves. Not a pretty sight.
“Whatever their motivation, Jennings and Shoebridge run the risk of damaging the credibility and reputation of ASPI”
Mike, I think the damage was done earlier this week when the “sponsors” of ASPI were well identified on these pages. What Dwight Eisenhower called the US military / industrial complex and about which he warned his country…and the world…. in 1961. ““In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist”
Of course since that date as we all know, such organisations being perhaps the single reason for our continued wars, while as clients, the likes of Saudi Arabia and others with their inexhaustible supply of money, contribute to the profits of all such ASPI “sponsors.”
By contrast, we prefer to spend our billions on old-technology submarines, troublesome F-35 fighter aircraft and the like.
How apt is the word sponsor here. One shouldn’t question the detail of what they are sponsoring, however.
Your analysis of the comments made by both Shoebridge and Jennings should raise alarm bells with the Australian people on this ANZAC day eve. But it won’t.
All too busy waiting on the decisions of the NRL and ARL for news as to starting dates for the “maintain your distance / wash your hands before tackling me” 2020 season.
One of the pleasing aspects of P and I are the contributions of people like yourself, James O’Neill, Cameron Leckie and so many others, through their knowledge giving readers a level of confidence in the future, clearly identifying by your efforts that out there in our towns and cities are people who can see the world as it really is, based on either their experience and / or intelligence, or both, who see our place in it now as humiliating, likened to a cringing US lapdog, but able to offer alternatives and rational informed comment, to show that there is a road ahead, worth taking.
No bowing down to the US dollar or the likes of ASPI
Independent Australia with shared human values, respected and with respect for all.
Without such thinkers, I would fear for this country, immature and unrespected as it is.
We have been bombarded with lots of anti-China propaganda from series of Sky News broadcasts and other Australian media and now fuelled by “experts” from ASPI and others, it is really refreshing to witness such an objective analysis of current “China threat”? We should discuss more of global healthcare in this pandemic and not giving excuses for another warfare expenditure.
Liberal democracy as I understand it, is to reach a fair conclusion through proper debates from all sides. These one-sided propaganda by SKYNEWS etc has diminished our liberal democracy. It is a poison for a harmonious multicultural Australian society.
John Menadue, I give full mark to your independent journalistic spirit.
“Whatever their motivation, Jennings and Shoebridge run the risk of damaging the credibility and reputation of ASPI.”
Too late.
Good article Mike. ASPI’s “over the top” obsession with China threats is well documented – in their own writings! The only minor point I might take issue with you is your final sentence – ASPI’s credibility and reputation regarding China has been long damaged!
Sir,
Brilliant! I look forward to your next contribution to P&I.
The three witches in Macbeth says, “When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.” It does not take a genius to imagine that a war between the US (and its allies) and China won’t be a “hurlyburly”. If nuclear weapons are deployed, nobody wins. The contaminated air and atmosphere will kill the rest of us slowly and painfully. It is adults with the minds of children who would spend time working on strategies to win the unwinnable next major war. Let’s be idiots and imagine that China can be defeated in the same manner as Irag and Afghanistan ( I wanted to mention Vietnam but they were not as accommodating), will we be returning to the prosperity that we have enjoyed for the last three decades or even before that? Who will be Australia’s next biggest trading partner, the US? And while we are planning the great strategies for “containing” China, is it a good idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater by pilloring our biggest customer at a time when all countries are feeling sensitive and vulnerable over their poor handling of the pandemic?
Don’t our leaders understand that the strident call for an investigation from a country with a population of not more than the city of Shanghai sounds patronising and ridiculous? By accepting an international investigation of the way she handled the virus outbreak amounts to an admission by China that it was incompetent and dishonest. Are our leaders expecting a transparent communist government? The world already has all the information that it wants, and more, to fight the pandemic. Yet many countries that have enough resources to fight the pandemic continue to this day to dither over what to do – the US in particular with a president that contradicts his own medical advisors and his own orders. It is like saying more patients die because you have not alerted us early enough, and yet when patients and the relevant information are finally brought to the emergency clinic, the doctor-in-charge dithers for weeks about what to do, thus killing his own patient in the process. It does not make sense.
As for the Chinese bureucratic bungle, wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black when the Captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt was sacked and labelled “naive and stupid” by Thomas Modly, the US Secretary of the Navy. Captain Crozier called for help because out of a crew of about five thousand, a hundred and fifty five caught the virus. Both Modly and CCP Chief Ma Guoqiang shot the messenger. Ma was sacked while Thomas Modly was patted on the back by Trump.
I feel worried and ashamed when our politicians play dangerous games at a time like this. I suspect that Confucius would call them “small people in big shoes”.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti