Category: Defence

  • MIKE SCRAFTON. Hunting for the reason-The new frigates.

    In line with normal practise, the government has plenty to say about the economic and employment benefits to flow from the acquisition of the new Hunter class frigates and a little bit about what they can do. But offers nothing about the strategic justification for these expensive naval assets. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a strategic justification. However, the public should be entitled to hear the government’s full explanation of the priority of this capability.  (more…)

  • MIKE SCRAFTON. What MQ-4C Triton reveals of strategic policy

    Government decisions on major equipment acquisitions can signal the government’s estimate of the future international environment and national strategic priorities. The government’s justification of the MQ-4C Triton leaves important strategic policy questions unanswered.   (more…)

  • TONY KEVIN. Turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse? Maybe. Australia’s new package of national security laws

    The Australian parliament is about to pass a complex package of national security laws aimed at strengthening Australia’s protections against espionage, sabotage, (covert) foreign interference and (overt) harmful foreign influence on Australian political life.  The real target is China, but Russia makes a convenient public scapegoat drawing on current  US/UK precedents.  The draft laws which now appear to have bipartisan support are significantly improved from the first government drafts released for public comment in December 2017. Nevertheless they take Australia in an illiberal direction.  (more…)

  • SAM BATEMAN. Reflections on the United States Navy  

    The U.S. Navy had a horror year in 2017 with tragic accidents and a major corruption scandal. Rather than the cause mainly being a budgetary one with inadequate resources allowed the Navy, deeper cultural issues might also be involved.   (more…)

  • GARETH EVANS. How we should manage Donald Trump’s meltdown world (AFR 20/6/2018)

    The assumptions that have sustained and underpinned Australian security and economic policy for decades are in meltdown. The post-Second World War global order – an open, rules-based system underpinned by a robust network of security alliances, and by effective multilateral institutions in which rules could be agreed and norms reinforced – is the only one we have known in our modern history. Its maintenance has depended more than anything else on American belief in the liberal norms laid out in the San Francisco peace treaty and the Bretton Woods organisations. As the Trump administration conspicuously abandons those norms, that order is now unravelling with remarkable speed.   (more…)

  • KEN MOAK. US-led naval operation will not change China’s posture.

    At the 2018 Shangri-La Dialogue, the defense ministers of France and the UK announced that their governments will send warships to join those of the US in challenging China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea  (Naval Today, April 6). However, they did not specify how many ships the two European powers will commit to the US-led FNOPs  (freedom of navigation operations) or whether they will sail within the 19-kilometer exclusive economic zone (EEZ), suggesting that neither country wants to irk China. (more…)

  • RICHARD BUTLER. Singapore: Sound and Lights  

    Trump told us that, in Singapore, he would make it up as he went along. It appears that he kept his word on that. Afterwards he told the world that if it all tanks, he will “make up an excuse for it”. His central motive for the Summit was domestic distraction and, the usual addiction to self- aggrandizement. A potentially heavy price was paid in Singapore, by all affected by DPRK policies and, the US domestic distraction was not achieved.   (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. America’s frightened allies.

    Donald Trump has spent the last three years scaring the crap out of his allies, but suddenly it has become serious.  His predilection for ruthless dictators, traditionally anathema to America and its allies, has now got to the point where those same allies are disposable.   (more…)

  • MACK WILLIAMS. North Korea – managing Donald !

    Amid the avalanche of reporting and commentary of the Singapore Summit one needs to step back to assess just how the Trump’s much vaunted (by him) negotiating style so far has played out . This is not just an academic exercise. It is vital for countries like Australia whose future has become so entwined within the United States geopolitical view of the world . We must have a more informed understanding of the way Trump operates if only to minimise the risk of being blindsided like other close US allies such as the Republic of Korea and Japan have just suffered . We need to analyse not only how successful the Trump “deal” approach has been but also how he has been forced to modify it since beginning to negotiate in public with the North Koreans. At the same time we also need to note some diminution of the influence of the US defence/security establishment within the current administration.   (more…)

  • RAMESH THAKUR. The Kim–Trump Summit: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Australian Outlook. 15/6/2018)

    Despite praise for Tuesday’s “unprecedented” meeting, there were good reasons why previous US administrations had refused multiple requests from North Korean leaders to meet. The results of the Kim–Trump summit so far can be divided into the good, the bad and the ugly.

    The words ‘historic’ and ‘unprecedented’ to describe the meeting between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un are literally true. But there were good reasons why previous US administrations had refused multiple requests from North Korean leaders to meet with the president. Against the historical and strategic backdrop, the results of the Kim–Trump summit so far can be divided into the good, the bad and the ugly.   (more…)

  • ROSEMARY O’GRADY. Meanings of War.

    As war memoirs go, the horrors of the conflict concluded by the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648, have long stood in a class of their own. They are also the subject of the autobiographical, first novel of the German language. (more…)

  • SIMON ROUGHNEEN. How Beijing is winning control of the South China Sea (Nikkei Asian Review 13/6/2018)

    Erratic US policy and fraying alliances give China a free hand.  

    (more…)

  • PEPE ESCOBAR. The key word in the Trump-Kim show

    By reaffirming the Panmunjom Declaration, the US President has committed to bringing its military back from South Korea and thus a complete denuclearization of the South as well as the North. (more…)

  • GARETH HUTCHENS. Australia should not join US in South China Sea operations, says retired defence chief (The Guardian 21/2/2017)

    Activities in the South China Sea continue to be in the news.  Published below, are comments made in February last year by Sir Angus Houston, who was formerly Australia’s defence chief.  John Menadue.   (more…)

  • TRAVERS MCLEOD. Fog of law in war not the Australian way

    “We will never forget that 100 years ago a young and brave nation on the other side of the world made history by writing our history. Lest we forget.”

    So ended French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe’s tribute to the Anzacs in April this year at the opening of the Sir John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux. (more…)

  • DENNIS ARGALL. Trump-Kim, Korea, China and the future.

    The underpinnings of Australian strategic utterances are slipping away.

    There will be, it is the way the world is, a flood of “yeah, but…” comment on the Trump-Kim Singapore summit. Not least because the number of experts on Korean affairs has risen multifold in the past several months much as did the number of experts on China in the then Department of Foreign Affairs go through the roof after Whitlam and Kissinger visited China in 1971. The DPRK now and the PRC then deserve comparison, both as to their political, social and economic affairs and their prospects — but that is another subject.   (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE The media are finding Chinese under most rocks.

    The campaign run by some of our security agencies  and people close to them about the alleged  Chinese threat is getting great support from some  journalists.  The latest is Andrew Greene, the  security and defence  reporter at the ABC who breathtakingly reported last week that ‘A Chinese vessel, believed to be a spy ship, docked next to HMAS Adelaide in Fiji.’ Good god! (more…)

  • JACK WATERFORD. Trust Labor on national security? Sure can’t. (Canberra Times, 9 June 2018)

    The looming five by-elections are giving the government an opportunity to polish and rehearse one of the centrepieces of its re-election strategy for the next election – the argument that the alternative government – Labor – is fundamentally unsound on national security policy, as on borders and boat people – and cannot be trusted with the responsibilities of government.  

    (more…)

  • ABHISHEK MOHANTY. Renaming the US Pacific Command: Why Indo-Pacific?

    In a pivotal move projecting a new set of national interests, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, barely a day before the Shangri La Dialogue began, announced that the US Pacific Command will now be called the US Indo-Pacific Command.  The name change, seen by observers as a tactical move against Chinese military and economic hegemony in the region, is just symbolic for now, as it won’t immediately result in any major alterations to the command’s maritime boundaries or assets in the huge area spanning from East Africa to America’s Pacific coast. (more…)

  • MIKE YEO. France is deploying forces to the Indo-Pacific for more than just a drill.

    MELBOURNE, Australia ― France will be deploying a detachment of combat aircraft to the Indo-Pacific region for a major air exercise in Australia and for additional interactions with Asian air forces, as France seeks to increase its presence in the region.

    (more…)

  • MIKE WALLER. Welcome to the Panopticon: time for an Australian bill of rights?

    Panopticon: a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed (Jeremy Bentham). 

    Mr Turnbull has told Neil Mitchell security and police will be given extra power to conduct random checks at airports.  Neil: “That’s a big step”.  PM: “It is”.   Neil: “Why do we need it?”   PM: “Dangerous times, Neil” (Malcolm Turnbull, 3AW)

    The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding (US Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis).  (more…)

  • MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia’s China policy: who rules, who governs and the SAS connection

    Australia’s China policy in recent days has moved from being a subject of heated and understandable debate and controversy based on argument and evidence, to a target of bureaucratic and organisational guerrilla warfare.  From within the state and parliamentary system, attacks of one type or another come without warning, raising questions about who is ruling and who is merely governing.    (more…)

  • SAUL ESLAKE. The quest for ‘security’. Is it rational? Has it made us safer? And at what cost? (reposted from 23/2/2018)

    In November last year, I gave an address to the Royal Society of Tasmania – the oldest such society ‘dedicated to the advancement of knowledge’ outside of the United Kingdom – at an event hosted by the Governor of Tasmania, Her Excellency Professor Kate Warner AC, at her official residence in Hobart.  In this address I posed, and sought to answer, three questions:

    • How significant a risk is the threat of terrorism in Australia, both in absolute terms and relative to some of the other risks and threats on our horizon?
    • How effective in reducing that risk have the various measures enacted in the name of ‘security’ actually been? and
    • How does whatever reduction in the risks posed by terrorism which has been obtained compare with the costs, broadly defined, of those measures? 

    (more…)

  • ROSS GITTINS. The threat of terrorism in Australia is a scam that costs us dearly (SMH 25/7/2017)

  • ADAM NI. Despite strong words, the US has few options left to reverse China’s gains in the South China Sea.

    At a top regional security forum on Saturday, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said China’s recent militarisation efforts in the disputed South China Sea were intended to intimidate and coerce regional countries. (more…)

  • MICHAEL McKINLEY. Are we preparing to fight the wrong war : an interesting but lower order question.

    In weapons systems, as in many other areas of life, Artificial Intelligence is being heralded as “the future for all humankind”.  This description is part of the problem: it comprises a submission to a fatalistic view of the future in which we are all information organisms (“inforgs”).  It does not have to be this way but the omens are discouraging: understanding the nature of the problem is the first step to countering it.  (more…)

  • LUCY BERAUD-SUDREAU. Asia’s defence budgets dispel ‘arms race’ myth.

    Asian defence spending has not grown faster than the region’s economies – and the share of defence budgets allocated to procurement and R&D has held steady over time. (more…)

  • WAYNE SWAN. Foreign influence and foreign donations in Australia.

    The debate over foreign influence in our domestic politics and policymaking is an important one for our country – too important for political point-scoring and manipulation by vested interests and political vendettas.   (more…)

  • RICHARD TANTER. Pine Gap electricity supply and the Ausgrid controversy

    The giant Pine Gap intelligence and military base outside Alice Springs consumes a great deal of electricity to operate its intelligence-gathering and analysis operations.  

    It now appears that the Turnbull government’s rejection of a $25 bn. bid for the NSW-government owned Ausgrid electricity distribution company on national security grounds from the Cheung Kong Consortium (CKI), owned by Asia’s second richest man, Li Ka-Shing, and State Grid of China (SGC) was prompted by concerns about Pine Gap, possibly including its electricity supply.   (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE   Our security agencies are not accountable.

    The performance and integrity of our security services is a serious national problem. These are particular problems for agencies which operate in secret and with few public checks. We have seen that they are prepared to upstage ministers and undermine governments on key public issues like  relations with China at the moment. There is no effective supervision in the public interest as the Hastie/Lewis mess illustrates. Governments must make our security services accountable. But they are frightened to do so. This is an urgent public issue. And the ALP has gone AWOL.   (more…)