Category: Defence

  • MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia’s Domestic War Parties: The Colonisation of the Australian Strategic Mind

    National Defence and Security questions in Australia are, like so many areas of government policy, difficult to follow, let alone master, and debate about them tends to attract only a small attentive public. The answers to them, in the form of various forms of cost, however, are frequently in the currency of death and destruction.  (more…)

  • GREG BARTON. Australia isn’t taking the national security threat from far-right extremism seriously enough (the Conversation, 3 October 2019)

    Until the terror attack in Christchurch in March, the threat of far-right terrorism in Australia was one we knew was coming, but believed was well over the horizon.

    The sordid story of the Christchurch attacker – “ordinary Australian” turned hateful bigot turned mass-murdering terrorist – contains some uncomfortable truths for our country, not least of which is the fact that the threat of far-right extremism has arrived in the here and now. (more…)

  • KISHORE MAHBUBANI. What China Threat? How the United States and China can avoid war (Harper Magazine 22-01-19) A Repost.

    Quite remarkably ,of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council ,China is the only one among them that has not fired a single shot across its border in thirty years,since a brief naval battle between China and Vietnam in 1988. By contrast,even during the relatively peaceful Obama Administration, the American military dropped twenty six thousand bombs on seven countries in a single year. Evidently, the Chinese understand well the art of strategic restraint. (more…)

  • MIKE SCRAFTON. The strategic significance of Abqaiq and Khurais

    The debate over the military implications of relatively inexpensive drones and cruise missiles has been enlivened by the recent attacks on the Saudi Arabian oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais. This spectacular demonstration of the effectiveness of drones and cruise missiles has prompted claims that it has ‘changed global warfare’. Inevitably all modern defence force inventories will include such weapons, many already do, and military planners will need to focus on their use and defences against them. These weapons will find important roles but will not have a drastic impact on higher end conflict.

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  • CAVAN HOGUE. What is new about drones?

    The attack on Saudi oil wells has given rise to a debate about the effectiveness of drones in warfare. Some have argued that this heralds a whole new world in warfare while others see it as just another example of the age old leap frogging between new attack weapons and the development of new defence against them. A similar debate exists in the case of cyber warfare. (more…)

  • MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison joins the conga line.

    And so back to Mark Latham’s conga line of suck holes – Scott Morrison goes to Washington. The regular obeisance is hardly unexpected, but it is no less embarrassing for that.

    Morrison has made it clear that the main purpose of his visit is to shmooze. He will continually tell The Donald how grateful and obedient Australia has always been to its great and powerful friend. (more…)

  • GARETH EVANS. Emotion, reason and nuclear disarmament

    I first came to Hiroshima in 1964 as a twenty-year old student, and it was one of the most formative experiences of my life. Nothing had quite prepared me for the experience of standing at the epicentre of that first nuclear bomb strike, and being overwhelmed by the almost indescribable horror of what had occurred here just two decades earlier (more…)

  • BRENDON KELSON. Letter to Minister for Veterans and Defence Personnel

    The Hon Darren Chester MP, Minister for Veterans and Defence Personnel,
    Dear Minister
    $498M AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL EXPANSION
    Thank you for Robert Curtin’s reply of 25 July 2019 to my letter to the Prime Minister of 19 June 2019. That reply rather missed the main points of my letter so I restate them here in hope of a more fruitful exchange. This is clearly a matter for the responsible Minister and the Government as a whole, not just for the Memorial.   (more…)

  • Urgent appeal to save nuclear agreements (Japan Times 25-8-19)

    HIROSHIMA – The Hiroshima Round Table held its seventh annual meeting last Wednesday and Thursday. For the first time, in recognition of the uniquely dangerous international security environment since the dawn of the atomic age in this beautiful city, the Round Table issued an urgent appeal to maintain existing nuclear arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation pacts and to build on them in order to deepen strategic stability. The Hiroshima Urgent Appeal, signed by all participants with the exception of those whose institutions preclude individual officials signing any public appeals, was in addition to the regular chairman’s summary that covers all topics discussed at the meeting. (more…)

  • QUENTIN DEMPSTER. New nuclear arms race brings higher risk of global catastrophe

    The world is at its highest risk of a global catastrophe in decades, thanks to an unpredictable resumption in the nuclear arms race.

    Veteran defence and security analyst Brian Toohey has warned that talk of war between the West, and China and Russia, along with brinkmanship with North Korea and Iran, has escalated the conditions that can lead to catastrophic accidents and mistakes. (more…)

  • KELLIE TRANTER. Defence exports – what are we subsidising?

    Last month Australian defence company, Electro Optic Systems (EOS), again denied its weapons system was being used in the Yemen war when photographs surfaced of four consignments of its Remote Weapons System for export in June and July to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. But what slipped through in relation to EOS is its February 2019 media release confirming its collaboration with Israeli company, Elbit Systems to develop a turret that ‘adds a next generation, medium calibre turret to the EOS family of weapon systems and has been designed to meet a rapidly emerging global market worth more than AUD$4 billion.’ (more…)

  • Australia’s strategic folly: lessons from Barbara Tuchman

    We arein a situation where decisions that seem simple can commit Australia to fundamental errors of strategic judgement. The decision to send a ship and a plane and headquarters staff to a new venture with the United States in the Middle East is foolish. It is described in isolation by the government but is additional to ongoing ADF operations in the Middle East, which have lacked legality since 2003.  The late US historian Barbara Tuchman wrote two books of great relevance: about the lack of non-military options in 1914, and the tendency of governments to make decisions contrary to their core strategic interests. The first of those, The Guns of August, saved us from nuclear war in 1962, the second, The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam, is less well known because… well, because statesmen are not foolish and don’t make mistakes. (more…)

  • ERNST WILLHEIM. The saga of Bernard Collaery and Witness K continues.

    If you watched the program [ABC 4-Corners] you will already know this is a talk about some shameful events in Australia’s recent history. And I very much fear the shameful saga is about to continue. It is about Australian commercial espionage.  [SPEAKING NOTES,  ADDRESS TO AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS. CANBERRA. 27 August 2019] (more…)

  • Hong Kong and the ghost of Tiananmen

    Michael Shoebridge  of  the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has artfully given the appearance of logic to a melding of fact, supposition and obsession in order to reach the conclusion that it is ‘time for the international community to step up to prevent a foreseeable massacre that will further cleave China—and other authoritarian regimes—from the rest of the world’. The protests in Hong Kong are his launch platform but his target is always President Xi and the CCP.

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  • ILAN PAPPE. Israel’s latest attempt to erase Palestine (The Electronic Intifada 25-7-19)

    The attempt to suppress official documentation of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 is not new. (more…)

  • BILL CLEMENTS. Grain silos and war memorials

    In 2008, archaeologists from the University of Chicago discovered ancient grain storage silos in Southern Egypt. Made from mud brick, they were there when Jacob’s sons, in a time of famine, came seeking grain. We are fortunate that these silos constructed from simpler, cheaper materials than the great tombs, have survived. For ancient Egypt reserved its best resources for the burial of the dead, not for domestic needs and the celebration of life. Perhaps, more than is generally recognised, Australia, too, might be pursuing this perverse priority. (more…)

  • Battles, campaigns, and wars

    The United States Studies Centre’s latest publication, Averting Crisis: American strategy, military spending and collective defence in the Indo-Pacific, contrary to its title, offers up a path to crisis. While the report draws attention to the fading of the previously unchallengeable military dominance of the US, the recommendations for Australia are flawed.

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  • All the way with Trump’s USA … this time into the Strait of Hormuz (New Daily, 21 August 2019)

    Here we go again – joining an American military adventure created by Donald Trump, an adventure that has no end in sight.Nobody with a sense of history and Liberal Party politics can be surprised that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is donating Royal Australian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force personnel and assets to a flashpoint created by President Trump and his cabal of warmongers. (more…)

  • The conversation about China

    Senator Wong’s call for a mature conversation aboutf the issue of China is more than welcome. A serious discussions of the implications for Australia flowing from the rise of China was sadly missing from the recent election. However, there is an unexpected naivety in her suggestion that MPs and Senators receive ‘foreign affairs and national intelligence briefings about China’ to remedy the government’s failure to discuss Australia’s relationship with the emerging superpower.

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  • A nuclear world in disarray. (The Strategist 7.8.2019)

  • PHILIP GIRALDI. Israel Has “The Most Moral Army in the World”? (American Herald Tribune)

    The creepy French “intellectual” Bernard-Henri Levy gets it wrong (more…)

  • American missiles in Darwin?

    While in Australia last week for the annual Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, twice hinted at the possibility of Australia becoming host to American missiles pointed at China. Although Prime Minister Scott Morrison attempted to “rule a line” under the idea, it is unlikely to be the end of the story. (more…)

  • The US Killed INF, Russia Buried It, China Will Not Disinter It (Australian Outlook 8-8-19)

    The end of the first disarmament agreement of the nuclear age will almost certainly be accompanied by American pressure on allies to host US intermediate range missiles. (more…)

  • JESSICA MATHEWS. America’s Indefensible Defense Budget – Extracts-(The New York Review of Books)

    With what former defense secretary Robert Gates termed a “gargantuan, labyrinthine bureaucracy” in the Pentagon, manufacturers and subcontractors for each weapons system carefully distributed across congressional districts and backed by aggressive lobbyists, members of Congress determined to protect constituents’ jobs, and military leaders loyal to the weapons systems they trained on and commanded, it is no surprise that the defense establishment has become extravagant, wasteful, and less agile, innovative, and forward-looking than it should be. (more…)

  • Avoiding the Crossfire from the USA – China Confrontation

    Australia is on a ‘hiding to nothing’ from the escalating USA confrontation with China. If we choose USA, China can peacefully inflict devastating economic damage by choosing other countries to supply its resources. If we choose China, USA can withdraw its security guarantees, (albeit never tested in a situation where Australia, but not the USA, is threatened,) exposing Australia to the risk of hostile military action. How will Australia successfully navigate the turbulent waters of this strategic dilemma?  (more…)

  • RAYMOND ZHONG. Vietnam is gathering the spoils of a trade war (The New York Times International)

     

    No country on earth has benefited from President Trump’s trade fight with China more than Vietnam. (more…)

  • Tugging our forelock again and again to our dangerous ally. An update

    The US has coming calling again. Not an Admiral  this time but  the Pentecostalist Secretary of State Mike Pompeo . He is whistling us up as a faithful dog to join with the US in tackling the problems which Donald Trump created with Iran and presumably to soften us up to host  missiles to protect the US marines and port facilities in Darwin. And Pine Gap. (more…)

  • MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia’s AUSMIN invitations: clean the driveway, wash the dishes. Again

    In the course of the current AUSMIN talks Australia has once again been invited, by the United States, to assume a role for which it is well, indeed over-qualified for – namely to provide janitorial services in the aftermath of a series of strategic debacles by the US itself. Serial prodigality and recklessness are to be rewarded with serial subservience and indulgence.  It’s a tradition.   (more…)

  • MACK WILLIAMS. Alliance Management- Morrison’s First Challenge : Iran

    The past week of the Australian-US Ministerial Consultations (Ausmin) talks has presented the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and his inexperienced ministerial  team with the first serious test of how to manage the US alliance relationship. Despite the very difficult contemporary problem of coping with the most dysfunctional US administration in recent history we should not fail to recognise that the fundamental issues for our alliance remain as they have been for years. The “Swamp” is still very much alive.  (more…)

  • RICHARD TANTER. An Australian pathway through Pine Gap to the nuclear ban treaty

    The Pine Gap Relay Ground Station could be closed, with appropriate notice of intent, without genuine disadvantage to US national security.  This would provide a technically and strategically feasible pathway past the most important obstacle posed by Pine Gap to Australia becoming compliant with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons(TPNW). (more…)