Category: Defence

  • Richard Woolcott. Australia’s role is in our region.

    There is no doubt that Malcolm Turnbull’s visit to Indonesia and his and Lucy’s contacts with President Jakowi and his wife have very substantially improved the situation between Indonesia and Australia that existed before Malcolm’s visit.

    The most recent and important meeting was between the Indonesian Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defence with our Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defence.  This meeting of the “two plus two”, as it is called and the press conference which followed underlined how the situation between Australia and Indonesia has changed and substantially improved.  This does not mean however that there are no on-going differences.  It was clear from the responses to the questions at the press conference that Indonesia, which is not a claimant state, is very careful not to adopt a negative attitude towards China’s activities in the South China Sea.  Both the Indonesian Foreign Minister and Defence Minister made it plain that all countries in the region shared an important interest in a stable peaceful approach to claims.

    Both the Indonesian Ministers for Defence and Foreign Affairs made it clear that they wanted Australia to maintain firmly the position that West Papua was a part of Indonesia.  The Australian Ministers in response to these comments indicated that Australia acknowledged West Papua as a part of Indonesia.  This does not entirely rule out Indonesian fears that we may over time change our position as we did in respect of East Timor.  But  East Timor had never been a part of the Dutch East Indies, as was the case with West Papua.

    My considered view is Australia needs to refocus on the important interests in our own Region – South East Asia, North Asia and the South West Pacific in what is now generally called the Asian Century.  Former Indonesian Ambassador to Australian Sabam Saigian and currently the Editor in Chief of the Jakarta Post wrote earlier this year the blunt commentary that “Australia is still stuck in the 20th Century mode.  It is a Monarchy with a Head of State in London and its security arrangements are largely Cold War relics…..Australia is out of sync with the emerging geo-political environment of Asia today”.

    I do consider we need to establish an updated and more balanced approach to the vital relationship between the United States and China.  There is a danger that adversarial attitudes towards China could become a self fulfilling prophecy.  The present debate on China mainly assumes that Australia has no choice but to support American primacy in Asia against the perceived rising Chinese hegemony, something which Xi Jinping has always denied.  Former Prime Ministers Hawke, Keating and the late Malcolm Fraser as well as most former Ambassadors to China and a number of academics can be expected to resist American” hegemony“ although they accept a cooperative and constructive United States role in Asia.  In my view Australia should not take sides on China Japan disputes or on rival territorial claims.  Our focus should be on unimpeded passage through international waters and trade routes.  Provocative actions by all claimants should be avoided.  Malcolm Turnbull was in his very recent visit to Japan cautious in this respect and very firm in opposing the resumption of whaling by Japan.

    Turning to the Middle East we should acknowledge that while there were reasons for joining the US led invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, fourteen years later with forty Australians killed, over five hundred billion dollars spent and more than thirteen thousand Afghan civilians killed on objectives once deemed to be indispensible such as national building and effective counter insurgency have been downgraded or abandoned because there are  no longer adequate resources, time or even a clear US will to achieve them.  Polls suggest that the US public  opposes US ground forces being involved in further conflicts in the Middle East.

    Australia needs a fundamental change in our national psyche focused more on Asia than on our well established links with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand (the “anglosphere”), and Europe.    We need a much more sustained conversation with our neighboring countries in Asia and the South West Pacific.

    Essentially terrorism has to be dealt with in each country, although discussion on dealing with it internationally can be useful and there was evidence  of new discussions between the AFP and the Indonesian police ,, although the Indonesian Foreign Minister did say that Indonesia wanted to check some of the information which they had received from the AFP.

    In the long term no bi-lateral relationship will be more important to Australia than that of Indonesia.  The stability, unity and economic growth of a predominantly (81%) moderate Muslim nation of two hundred and fifty million people stretching across our north and trade routes a distance from Broome to Christchurch in New Zealand is vital to Australia.

    There is some discussion in New York at present about an Australian interest in the Secretary Generalship of the United Nations, at present held by Ban Ki-Moon.  This will come up in the middle of next year.  It would normally be for the Eastern European group to nominate a candidate but there is some doubt that they will be able to agree on a candidate.  Although he publicly says he is not a candidate, it is quite widely regarded that Kevin Rudd is interested in the position and is privately working on securing it.

    We are to some extent locked into participation in the Middle East through our cooperation with the present Iraq Government and our role in support of British air activity. The essential fact however is that Australia cannot influence the outcome of the kaleidoscope  of changing activities between extremist Shiites,  Sunnis and Kurds and a range of countries with different objectives including Saudi Arabia,  Iran, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Israel, China and the Yeman.  Because our role is symbolic in that it will not lead to a solution in the foreseeable future, it would be desirable for Australia to withdraw from the enormously complex situation in the Middle East and focus our attention on our region of the world when we can do so.

    Tony Abbott on a number of occasions said that the first duty of a PM was to increase the safety of the Australian people.In fact his approach has made the Australian people LESS safe.

  • Spencer Zifcak. Co-opting the Judiciary: Counter-Terrorism Laws at Work

    Regrettably, one matter that has drifted to the sidelines in Australian debates about the operation of counter-terrorism laws is that these laws consistently marginalise and undermine the role of the judiciary. Judicial power, and hence the rule of law, is being incrementally distorted and diminished.

    Counter-terrorism law continues to burst from the executive and the legislature.   Just a few months ago, three enormous tranches of such law swept through the parliament. These were the National Security Legislation (Amendment) Act protecting and preventing disclosure of information about special intelligence operations; the Foreign Fighters Act; and the metadata legislation.  (See my chapter on Counter-terrorism and human rights in this blog on 28/05/2015.)

    Now, only months later, three more counter-terrorism laws have passed or are imminent. These are a law to strip dual-nationals involved in terrorist activity of their citizenship; one to imprison people convicted of terrorist offences indefinitely; and another to extend the application of control orders to children as young as 14. In each of these instances, the proper exercise of judicial power is, to a greater or lesser extent, being compromised.

    Take first the citizenship-stripping law. What this does is remove Australian citizenship from any dual-national suspected of engagement with terrorism. Whether or not a suspected individual will have their citizenship revoked is made a matter for executive government. This is so, even though revocation is plainly punitive.

    Traditionally, a person suspected of engaging in criminal activity would be charged and tried. If found guilty, it would be for a court of law to determine an appropriate penalty. Under the rather remarkable new scheme created by the citizenship law, however, the judiciary is cast aside. Revocation is to occur automatically once it is determined that the prohibited behaviour has occurred.

    The scheme is remarkable because this legislation is silent upon the question of who is to decide that terrorist activity has occurred. In a previous draft, the Minister was given a role. But that would have breached the separation of powers by empowering a Minister rather than a judge to decide matters of fact and law and to impose a punishment.

    So, the automaticity mechanism was created instead. A person’s citizenship will be revoked automatically upon engaging in conduct defined with reference to enumerated terrorism offences in the Criminal Code.

    The legislation applies only to cases where the person concerned engages in the relevant conduct outside Australia or where the person has left Australia before (s)he has been tried for the offences alleged. The mechanism is not to be used against a person in Australia and, therefore, available for trial. This narrowing of the legislation’s scope is welcome.

    From thereon, however, the process is a mess. Revocation is said to occur instantly upon a determination that the terrorist activity has been engaged in. But there is no one identified to make that determination.

    Instead, it appears that the law will apply itself. This is a constitutional novelty. How it could work in practice is anyone’s guess. The High Court will have something to say about it.

    If a fair and considered decision is to be made as to whether a person has engaged in a prohibited activity and is to be punished for it, in our system of government that is a decision that should be in the sole province of the judiciary. It is not to be left to some uncertain, mysterious and secretive intra-governmental process.

    At the recent meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, the Prime Minister and the State Premiers agreed to introduce uniform State laws to provide for the indefinite detention of people convicted of terrorist activities. Indefinite detention may be authorised where it is determined that a relevant person is due for release after serving a term of imprisonment but remains a potential threat to national security.

    There is precedent for the establishment of a regime of indefinite detention. Several States have laws providing for the continuing detention of serious sexual offenders and others convicted of serious acts of violence. Somewhat surprisingly, the High Court has decided that such laws are constitutional.

    The problem with indefinite detention laws, however, is that they require State Supreme Courts to engage in deliberations that are not traditionally regarded as part of the proper exercise of judicial power. Judicial power is the power that courts have to decide upon controversies between contesting parties on the basis of pre-existing law. The existence of some pre-existing law as the basis upon which legal disputes are to be resolved is normally regarded as essential.

    In laws providing for indefinite detention, however, legal criteria for decision are absent. Instead, what the court is asked to do is make no more than an educated guess as to whether past criminal behavior is likely to be repeated at some time in the future. How is a rigorous judgment to be made that a person convicted of a single terrorist offence, say a decade ago, remains a threat to national security after the effluxion of that time?

    Psychiatric and psychological research has demonstrated consistently that predictions as to dangerousness are notoriously unreliable. And that is even where the people making those predictions are experts in the field. Judges are not.

    That is why Justice Michael Kirby dissented in the constitutional case. He said that courts should apply punishments only in relation to criminal acts committed in the past. Judges, he said, should not be co-opted into imposing penalties “for crimes that are feared, anticipated or predicated to occur in the future on evidence that is notoriously unreliable and otherwise would be inadmissible, and by people who do not have the gift of prophecy.”

    If prisoners have committed a crime while imprisoned, whether of incitement to violence, conspiracy, threat, intimidation, the infliction of actual physical harm or some other similar offence – charge and try them. If guilty, impose a new sentence.

    If not, they should be released upon the completion of their prescribed term of imprisonment, under surveillance and subject to notification requirements if necessary. And that way, the judiciary will not be required by law to perform functions that are alien to it.

    Finally, there are control orders for children. In Australia, control orders have been part of the counter-terrorism mosaic for several years. They have almost never been used. The former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Brett Walker SC, has cast doubt on their effectiveness. Britain recently dispensed with them.

    Control orders may be imposed upon a person where it is anticipated that the person affected may engage in terrorist activity. The controls imposed may include a prohibition on the use of electronic communications, a ban on meeting certain people or doing certain things, restrictions upon movement, and even house arrest.

    The problem here, again, is that the judicial procedures associated with the imposition of control orders are unusual and unfair. A court may issue a control order in a secret hearing and in the absence of the person subject to it. The person will know nothing about it until he or she is arrested and served with the order. Neither the subject of the order nor their legal representative is provided with a full brief of the evidence against them. Without access to the evidence, the prospects for a successful appeal are minuscule. The judge hears only one side.

    The application of such a draconian process and penalty to a 14 year old child is hardly to be contemplated. It may reasonably be anticipated that such a partial procedure is as likely to alienate and radicalise a young person as it is to rehabilitate them.

    Speaking of this expansion of the control order regime, the former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor said recently that ‘I have a well-known opposition to control orders as, I think, a distraction from what is the fundamental task of the criminal law of investigation, prosecution and, if there’s a conviction after trial, sentencing.”

    There is a better solution to the problems these new laws attempt to address. It can be summarized in three words: ‘charge or release’. We give investigation, prosecution, trial and conviction away at our peril.

    Spencer Zifcak is Allan Myers Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Academy of Law, Australian Catholic University.  He is immediate past president of Liberty Victoria.

     

     

     

  • To solve the Syrian Crisis, we need to overcome these three obstacles.

    In the Huffington Post on 9 December, Seyed Hossein Mousavian describes the three issues that need to be addressed in order to solve the Syrian crisis. For link to this article, see below.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seyed-hossein-mousavian/syria-crisis-obstacles_b_8740514.html?ir=World?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

  • Walter Hamilton. The Great Wall in the South China Sea

    As Australians enter the end-of-year ‘doze zone’ they would do well to take time to watch a report, available online, prepared by the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, which lifts the curtain on China’s bid to permanently militarise the South China Sea.

    Wingfield-Hayes and his crew defied threats from the Chinese Navy in order to video construction activity at several disputed coral reefs currently being turned into military airfields and bases through massive dredging and construction operations. The BBC report shows scores of ships moored around what previously were largely submerged atolls.

    This is the modern equivalent of the Great Wall of China going up before our eyes­­––except that it’s not easy to train our eyes, or our cameras, on specks of land in a distant sea. China is counting on that.

    The Spratly Islands are variously claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and, of course, China. Beijing is intent on resolving this long-running territorial dispute unilaterally, by chasing its rivals out of the area and using its engineering and military muscle to illegally transform several of the atolls into exclusion zones.

    Wingfield-Hayes states the case succinctly:

    China is bound by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which it has ratified. The law states that sub-sea structures, such as reefs, cannot be claimed as sovereign coastline, and that building artificial structures on top of them does not turn them into sovereign territory either.

    A country that owns a natural island can claim a 12-nautical-mile territorial limit around it, both on the sea and in the air. But artificial structures do not confer any such right. In other words, we would be able to fly our aircraft right up to China’s new islands without breaking any international laws, and China should not interfere with our flight.

    But interfere China did. As the BBC-chartered aircraft flew even within 20 nautical miles it was bombarded with radioed warnings: ‘Unidentified military aircraft [the aircraft was a single-engine Cessna, about as civilian as you can get] in west of Nanxun Reef, this is the Chinese Navy. You are threatening the security of our station! In order to prevent miscalculation leave this area immediately!’ Nanxun Reef, also known as the Gaven Reefs, naturally comprise 150 hectares of coral outcrops less than two metres above sea level at their highest point. Furious reclamation activity since last year has turned it into another fortress in the new Great Wall.

    The biggest construction project, however, is at Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys, which, according to reports, is being turned into an artificial island twice the size of the US military base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. At Mischief Reef, just 140 nautical miles from the Philippines coast, a new runway is also under construction. The BBC cameras caught a view of ‘the lagoon teeming with ships large and small. On the new land, cement plants and the foundations of new buildings’.

    The United States and its allies do not recognize China’s bid to assert sovereign rights over virtually the entire South China Sea by means of this island-building exercise. The US military has undertaken well-publicised cruise and overflight operations to uphold ‘freedom of navigation’ principles. Australia, on the other hand, is attempting to steer a middle course––exercising the freedom, but on the quiet. The BBC chanced upon an RAAF aircraft traversing the area and sending out the following radio message:

    China Navy, China Navy, we are an Australian aircraft exercising international freedom of navigation rights in international airspace in accordance with the international civil aviation convention and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea––over.

    The BBC said the message was not acknowledged. But neither was any warning directed against this Australian military aircraft, as it had been against the BBC’s civilian plane even after it identified itself.

    The RAAF overflight, conducted several weeks ago, was not publicised at the time by the Defence Department in Canberra. Only after the BBC report disclosed the incident did the Chinese acknowledge it. Beijing’s position is that it ‘resolutely opposes any country using freedom of navigation and overflight as a pretext for harming China’s national interest’. For now, however, it doesn’t want to draw Australia into the squabble and thus is content to play along with the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ gambit being run out of Russell Hill.

    There is a big game being played out here from which Australia cannot hide. If our rights and interests are being impinged by China, as clearly they are under the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, we should not hesitate from forthrightly defending them. Instead, we invite a Chinese entity, the Landbridge Group, which has close links to the PLA and the Chinese Communist Party, to operate the strategically important port of Darwin, and quietly watch as the new Great Wall goes up across the South China Sea, the main pathway to Darwin.

    When Japan sent ships into the southern ocean to hunt for whales, Australia took it to the International Court of Justice to uphold its rights under the International Whaling Convention. It was a high profile, hard-fought case on a principle. China asks: Why should Australia involve itself in the South China Sea dispute when its ships and planes are still allowed to travel through unimpeded? Japan asks: Why should Australia object to another country catching an unthreatened species of animal that Australians don’t even eat? To both of them, the answer is the same: You signed up to be a good international citizen, behave like one.

    Walter Hamilton is a former ABC Tokyo correspondent.

     

     

     

  • The Refugees and the New War.

    In the New York Review of Books, Michael Ignatieff draws a link between failure of Western policy in the Middle East, it’s failure to counter ISIS and the resulting refugee flow into Europe. He says

    ‘ISIS wants to convince the world of the world’s indifference to the suffering of Muslims; so we should demonstrate the opposite. ISIS wants to drag Syria even further into the inferno. … The US needs to use its refugee policy to help stabilise its allies in the region. … If Europe and the US show them a way out, refugees won’t take their chances by paying smugglers using rubber dinghies.’

    John Menadue.

    Michael Ignatieff is Edward R Murrow Professor of Practice at Harvard Kennedy School. He was formerly Leader of the Liberal party of Canada.  See article link below.

     

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/refugees-and-new-war/

  • Gabrielle Appleby. What say do our elected representatives have in going to war?

    The authorisation of military force is one of the most serious and consequential powers that governments possess. This power should be exercised with appropriate caution and, where circumstances allow, considered deliberation. Governments should be publicly accountable for its exercise.

    Across the world, debates have emerged around the extent to which the legislative branch should be involved in – and even have the final say on – authorisation of military deployment. So what are the debates, and current practice in, three key Western nations grappling with the threat posed by Islamic State (IS) – the UK, the US and Australia?

    In these three countries, the legislature’s involvement in decisions to use force has little connection to explicit constitutional or statutory provisions. Rather, it is governed by practice and convention, and the ongoing political commitment to such practices by both the government and the legislature.

    The UK: convention requires parliamentary approval

    In the UK, the power to make war, deploy military force and declare peace forms part of the “prerogatives”. The government of the day can exercise these powers without any obligation to consult, or seek authorisation from, parliament.

    Like Australia, the UK operates under a parliamentary system. As such, the government’s exercise of its powers is always subject to scrutiny by the parliament through Prime Minister’s Questions (known as Question Time in Australia) and committee inquiries, or subject to override or control by legislation.

    The government’s exercise of its powers is also often constrained by constitutional “conventions” – established practices that have strong political and moral force, even though they may not be legally enforceable.

    In the last 15 years, a constitutional convention has developed that the government will consult the House of Commons and seek its approval before deploying military force. The practice was first invoked in 2003, when then-prime minister Tony Blair asked for parliamentary authorisation for Britain to enter the Iraq War.

    Parliamentary approval for use of force is not required by any constitutional or legislative provision in the UK. But, by 2011, the government acknowledged that – except in cases of emergency – convention required it to provide the House of Commons with an opportunity to debate and authorise military force.

    There have been some calls to pass this practice into law, or at least formalise it in a parliamentary resolution. But there has been little movement to clarify it, or protect its status in this way.

    Nonetheless, the force of this convention has proven remarkably strong. In August 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron accepted the outcome of the House of Commons vote against further use of military force in Syria. Last week, Cameron again felt obliged to seek approval to expand the British military’s role in Syria. The House of Commons passed the motion after ten hours of debate.

    The US: constitutional requirement is largely inconsequential

    Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution provides that:

    Congress shall have power to declare war.

    On its face, this provision places responsibility to initiate war in the legislature’s hands. However, since the second world war there have been no formal declarations of war. The constitutional requirement is now largely inconsequential.

    But, in 1973, following the unpopular involvement in Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. This requires – with some emergency exceptions – the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing American armed forces to hostilities, and congressional approval to continue that commitment beyond 60 days.

    Despite these provisions, as a matter of practice Congress has ineffectively constrained and scrutinised the president’s power to deploy the military. Bill Clinton committed forces to the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo without seeking congressional authorisation, beyond pointing to congressional authorisation of military funding for the campaign.

    Barack Obama committed American forces to Libya in 2011 without seeking congressional approval. The president claimed that the commitment fell short of hostilities that would engage the War Powers Resolution. Congress issued Obama with a rebuke for not complying with the resolution, but brought no further sanctions against him.

    Obama’s deployment of forces in Iraq and Syria against IS reveals that the responsibility for the failure to obtain congressional approval may at least partly lie with Congress itself. That is, while presidents might be inclined not to seek authorisation, Congress has also been inclined not to insist upon it.

    Obama’s initial decision to deploy forces to Iraq and Syria in September 2014 purportedlyrelied on previous congressional authorisations to use force following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. But by February 2015, Obama attempted to obtain new congressional authorisation. Congress, unable to agree on whether to expand or constrict the campaign, has yet to consider it.

    Australia: calls for reform grow louder

    The Australian Constitution makes no mention of the government’s power to declare war and deploy military forces overseas. Rather, this forms part of the executive powers contained in Section 61 of the Constitution. Their extent and restrictions are considered to mirror the UK government’s foreign affairs prerogatives.

    In direct contrast to the US Constitution, there is no requirement in the Australian Constitution for parliamentary authorisation – or even a requirement to consult parliament – before these powers are exercised.

    Historically, however, there was a practice that following the declaration of war or the deployment of forces, the government would inform parliament and a debate would occur. It did not amount to authorisation. But this practice was consistent with fundamental tenets of Australia’s parliamentary system, where the government’s actions should be reported to and scrutinised by parliament.

    Since the commitment of Australian forces to Afghanistan in 2001, this practice has fallen away. In contrast to the increased parliamentary involvement in the UK since 2001, in Australia there has been a general resistance across both major parties to greater parliamentary involvement by allowing more substantial debate, let alone authorisation.

    The Greens and independent MPs (and before them, the Australian Democrats) have consistently called for the deployment of military force to be preconditioned on parliamentary debate and authorisation. But government decisions to deploy the military generally receive strong bipartisan support.

    Thus, neither the government of the day nor the parliament has sought or insisted upon greater transparency or parliamentary scrutiny.

    However, there are some signs this might be changing. In October, Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek moved a motion that parliament be given an opportunity to debate the government’s strategy in Iraq and Syria.

    Since taking office, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has made repeated promises to increase the level and openness of public debate over government policy. This is yet to materialise with respect to use of military force. But these statements provide promising signs for reconsideration of Australia’s current practice.

    Gabrielle Appleby is Associate professor, UNSW Law School. This article was first published in The Conversation on 10 December 2015P

  • Allan Patience. Fighting Holy Wars in the Middle East

    How do we deal with Daesh? The Islamic State (ISIS) has proven to be a brutally formidable force in Syria and Iraq. As we saw recently in Paris, it has spread its vicious tentacles into Europe. It is highly probable that we’ll see it erupt in North America and very possibly again here in Australia, quite soon. It is clear that for all the blood and treasure invested in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria – heavy bombing raids, military advisors/trainers on the ground, intelligence gathering on an apocalyptic scale, all to the tune of billions of dollars – little has been won and much has been lost. Death rates and injuries (especially among civilians) are mounting every day and the refugee crisis is now counted in the millions. What is to be done?

    Tony Abbott spent much of his onerous prime ministership weighing into the conceptually confused, strategically clouded, and ultimately futile military debacle in the Middle East. Most of his interventions were designed to invoke fear and loathing, especially of Islam. In his latest (post-prime ministerial) intervention he called on Islam to reform itself. He also proposed a hierarchical theory of cultures – certain cultures, he suggests, are superior to others and Islamic cultures are apparently inferior to Western cultures. The implication is that the most advanced cultures are to be found within his beloved “Anglosphere” which includes America, Britain, and the former white settler British colonies of Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

    Daesh claims to be fighting a series of holy wars. In the process its counterfeit imams are grotesquely distorting an absolutely central component of the historical human experience – viz., that humankind possesses a deeply ingrained religious instinct that the full barrage of modernity’s scientism, rationalism and secularism has failed to obliterate. In fact modernity has a worrying record of misunderstanding and distorting the deeply experienced human drive for searching for transcendental meaning in the face of a cruel and unjust world. Modern critics of religion conventionally view that drive as irrational. Moreover, its myriad distortions (whether self-made or externally inflicted) make it particularly vulnerable to attack. Yet for all its being ridiculed down the years, it has been remarkably resilient despite all of modernity’s secular (and mostly reductive) accounts of what it means to be human.

    What do we make of Abbott’s demand that Islam reform itself? First, it shows how ignorant he is about Islam. He clearly does not understand that it is one of the most sophisticated versions of the monotheism to come out of the historical Middle East. Its sister religions are Judaism and Christianity with which it shares many theological insights, ethical principles, prophetic traditions, and historical experiences. And all three of them draw heavily from Hinduism, the central wellspring of advanced religious thought.

    Nor does Abbott show any understanding of the historical causes of the contemporary crisis in the Middle East. At the forefront of those causes are the egregious colonial adventures of Britain (the centre of his Anglosphere). The role of the British in dominating Egypt for their own purposes and disregarding Palestinian resistance to the creation of Israel, and their imperial arrogance in other zones in the region, constitute one of the most ignominious eras in all of colonial history. The world is now reaping in the Middle East what the British sowed in centuries past.

    Misunderstandings abound among Islam’s critics and enemies, especially those – like Abbott – who want us to believe that it is the fons et origo of Islamist terrorism in contemporary global politics. But this ignores (probably for ulterior purposes) the fact that central to those conflicts are the brutal machinations of tribal warlords, crime bosses, crazed firebrands, mercenaries, naïve fools, angry young men, and insurgents in the contemporary Islamic world. While imposing an Islamist gloss on what in truth are fights about who wields power, occupies territory, monopolizes resources and controls states, the combatants in these conflicts are appropriating a religious identity to which they have no legitimate theological claim. They slander Islam into the bargain. This is by no means the first time a religious tradition has been maligned by being associated with malevolent political causes. Christianity’s record in this is also appalling.

    The Koranic tradition teaches that Jihad is an intensely personal struggle with one’s conscience. It entails submitting one’s self-hood to Allah through the teachings of the Prophet. It is fundamentally about being a good human being, compassionate, tolerant and peace loving. As with the Bible, its underlying message requires a deep understanding of its central hermeneutic. And precisely like the Bible, the Koran contains some horrific passages that can be simplistically lifted out of context by malevolent commentators and used as a blanket condemnation of the entire religion. This is evidence of bad faith and appallingly third-rate scholarship. Just as we should expect people like Tony Abbott to respect Christianity’s central message of loving unconditionally – despite the Spanish Inquisition, for example, or those in the Catholic hierarchy today who would cover up for pedophile priests – so we should expect them to recognize the profound dignity of Islam, despite the evil fanaticism of fundamentalist Islamism today.

    Abbott’s assertion that some cultures are superior to others is an echo from a dead imperialist past. It belongs to the discredited “class of civilizations” thesis once spruiked by the late Samuel Huntington. Edward Said reminds us that all cultures are intertwined. They all influence and transform each other all the time. All cultures are hybrid. Islam played a major – indeed vital – historical role in curating and contributing to classical Greek philosophy and scientific theorising, ensuring that this knowledge was available to the West at the beginning of the Renaissance. There would have been no Renaissance without it. In short, historical Islam has played a major civilizing role in the evolution of the West. Abbott seems ignorant of this history. His clumsy foray into cultural studies would be risible were it not so crude.

    Dealing with Daesh means we have to sort out the religious wheat from the political chaff. It will also require a general acknowledgement that the religious instinct is an unchangeable aspect of the human condition that urgently needs far greater understanding than modernity has so far been able to offer. And it will require an educated awareness that Islam is being dangerously slandered by commentators like Tony Abbott whose own religious backyard is a foul’s own nest if ever there were one.

     

    Allan Patience is a Principal Fellow in the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.

     

  • Jon Stanford. Defence procurement and the new submarine

    When people remember Gough Whitlam, few would identify him as an economic rationalist. Economics was not his primary interest and, partly because of the perceived urgency of implementing “the programme” after 23 years in opposition, partly because of the incompetence of some of his Ministers, the budget blew out excessively on his watch. Yet in terms of microeconomic reform his record was, in many ways, better than that of previous and subsequent Coalition governments. Even including all the reforms by the Hawke/Keating governments in the 1980s and 1990s, Whitlam’s 25 per cent tariff cut in 1973 remains the single greatest stand alone initiative to open the Australian economy to international competition.

    A lesson from the past

    Whitlam’s economically rational approach also spilled over into defence procurement. This is an area, as experience demonstrates, that provides spectacular opportunities for squandering public money, not least in the naval shipbuilding industry.

    By the early 1970s, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) needed to replace some obsolescent warships of British origin, many of which had been built at high cost and over excessive lengths of time in Australia’s government-owned shipyards. Defence’s preference was to design and build locally an Australian light destroyer, the DDL project. When the Whitlam government came to power, design work on the DDL had been going on for some years under the Coalition and the Navy was an enthusiastic supporter of the project.

    While there would have been significant political benefits in endorsing the project, clearly the risks of a local design and build would have been high. The complexities of integrating a new platform with overseas sensors and weapons, even the less complex systems available in the 1970s, would have led to substantial risks. Building ships locally to an original design would have inevitably resulted in higher unit costs, even in an efficient shipyard, than purchasing a ship from a longer production line overseas. On the basis of the local shipyards’ demonstrated past performance, bringing the project in on time and on budget was highly unlikely.

    In 1973, soon after coming to office, the Whitlam government considered the proposed DDL project. While recognising the need for a new acquisition, it also considered that there was no unique mission for a surface warship in the RAN that would justify the costs and risks of designing and building a new Australian platform. The government therefore rejected the DDL and told Defence to go away and look at overseas platforms. Grumpily, Defence came up with two options. The Navy liked the handsome British Type 42 destroyer platform but not its sensors and weapons systems. It approved of the US Oliver Hazard Perry class (FFG) systems and missiles but not the platform, which had a single propeller shaft and resembled a container ship. Typically, Defence sought to mix and match. It wanted the British platform with the US missiles and radars and an American 5-inch gun.

    The Whitlam government faced Defence down again. It rejected the mix and match option as being excessively risky and an Australian build as not cost-effective. In 1974 it ordered the FFG ships with all their systems, to be built in the United States with no significant modifications. The Navy was not happy. The Perry design had been described huffily by Defence project staff as “a second rate escort that falls short of the DDL requirements on virtually every respect”.[1] But the government understood that the frigate would provide technological superiority in our region at low cost, with the Australian ships coming off a production run of over 50 vessels. The RAN did not require the world’s best frigate; it was unlikely to be confronting the Northern Red Banner Fleet in the Barents Sea.

    In service, the FFGs have been successful. They were minimalist platforms that did the job, to the extent that subsequent governments decided to build two more ships locally (a decision that initially seemed disastrous until Transfield acquired the Williamstown shipyard from government and delivered them on time and on budget). They were also tough and durable. The Perry class USS Stark survived two hits from Exocet missiles, while the Type 42 HMS Sheffield, with significant aluminium in its platform, was destroyed by one. Critically, because they were not unique ships for which the RAN had parent navy responsibilities, through life support and maintenance, undertaken in Australia to US schedules, was cost effective.

    More recent history

    To clarify, through life support for the FFGs was cost-effective during their planned economic lives, but then Defence delayed the procurement process for their replacement, namely the air warfare destroyers (AWDs). Seriously bad decisions then raised their ugly head.

    First, at a time when the US was retiring their Perry class FFGs, Australia decided on a unique major upgrade for its six ships, including improved sensors, modern systems, better anti-submarine weapons and vertically launched anti-air and anti-ship missiles. Awkwardly for those who believe we need to build ships locally in order to modify them, ADI (later Thales) in Sydney won this contract in competition with the Transfield shipyard in Williamstown that had very recently built the last two FFGs. The cost and timeline for the upgrade blew out substantially, with the modifications then being limited to four of the six ships. The other two FFGs were scrapped much earlier than intended. The cost ended up being $1.6 billion for four ships as against a budget of $1.266 billion for six, a blowout per ship of 90 per cent. Two ships short, they were also delivered two years late. In addition, there have been suggestions that the additional weight exceeds the ships’ design parameters, potentially creating stability problems.[2]

    Secondly, following the successful local construction of the Anzac class frigates, the Howard government decided to procure the AWDs locally. Compared to the Anzac acquisition, the decision was a bad one for a number of reasons. First, there was no fixed price contract for the successful tenderer or any notion of specifying a similar cost to acquiring the ships offshore. Secondly and quite extraordinarily, while the Williamstown yard with its experienced workforce on the Anzac ships still in place was a tenderer, the contract was awarded to ASC in Adelaide that had never built a surface ship. The shipyard was dedicated to submarine maintenance and had no shipbuilding workforce. Thirdly, building three ships locally (as against ten Anzacs) was never going to be economic because of limited opportunities to exploit scale economies and learning curve benefits. Overall, if we had bought three larger and more capable Arleigh Burke ships off a 100 plus production run in the US, the RAN would already be deploying them and, rather than waiting for three smaller ships to be delivered three years late, the government would have banked significant budget savings.[3]

    Lessons learnt

    There are multiple lessons to be learned from these and other recent acquisition experiences. In particular:

    1. Acquiring a unique platform, as Australia did with the Collins class submarines, brings with it substantial risks and almost certainly excessive costs compared to an off the shelf acquisition. Some of these costs are reflected in the parent navy responsibilities for a unique class, which lead to higher through life support costs – currently running at nearly $1 billion annually for Collins. Implication: if Australia does not have a unique defence mission, then we should not acquire a unique platform.
    2. Mixing platforms from one country with systems from another involves very high risks, and frequently gives rise to unforeseen costs and delays that exceed substantially any perceived military benefits. Implication: only mix and match systems and platforms as a last resort and only if the risks are understood and accounted for in the budget and timeline.
    3. Developments in technology mean that obsolescent platforms do not necessarily need to be replaced by similar assets. For example, some of the roles of a submarine could be taken over by aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles or the Australian Signals Directorate. Implication: focus on the defence requirement, not the particular platform, and assess how it might be best achieved at lowest cost and acceptable risk.
    4. Building major defence assets locally often involves very substantial risks, higher costs and contingent liabilities that are almost impossible to justify. For example, we would not contemplate designing and building in Australia a major aircraft like the F-35 joint strike fighter or a main battle tank for the Army. There are no significant defence benefits in building platforms locally and the level of protection to naval shipbuilding is higher than for the car industry. Implication: only build major platforms locally under a fixed price contract and where the cost is comparable with that of offshore acquisition – it’s time to end the age of entitlement for the naval shipbuilding industry.
    5. The main role of defence industry should be through life support – as Australia’s record with RAAF assets show, we don’t need to build platforms locally in order to sustain them at the highest level. Implication: try to shift the political debate away from building defence assets, which leads us into sub-optimal acquisitions, to focussing on the benefits of maintaining Australia’s assets in top condition for the benefit of ADF personnel.

    Implications for the new submarine

    On the basis of the above analysis, we need to consider the implications for Australia’s new submarine’s acquisition process. Currently, three broad proposals have recently been lodged by shipbuilders in France, Germany and Japan. These proposals are for a large conventional platform, unique to Australia, with a combat system and weapons systems sourced from the United States. The government intends to select one of these proposals in the near future to be taken forward in a detailed design.

    In terms of the first implication above, the fundamental question is whether Australia needs to acquire a unique submarine platform to meet its requirement and discharge its mission. The only fairly detailed definition of the new submarine’s mission was contained in the 2009 Defence White Paper:

    The Future Submarine will be capable of a range of tasks such as anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare; strategic strike; mine detection and mine-laying operations; intelligence collection; supporting special forces (including infiltration and exfiltration missions); and gathering battle space data in support of operations. [4](Page 70.)

    Subsequently, the then Chief of Navy suggested that the main task of the new submarine was “sinking hostile ships and submarines” with “the South China Sea as the area of most interest”.[5] Overall, it seemed clear that one important role for the new submarine was power projection in waters far from home.

    While this is an ambitious mission, particular for a middle power, it is by no means unique. All five of the permanent members of the UN Security Council would have a similar role for their submarines. Among western platforms, the power projection role in the South China Sea, although challenging, could be best discharged either by a Virginia class submarine from the US, an Astute from the UK or a Suffren boat from France. These are all nuclear submarines. While Australia would face some challenges in acquiring nuclear submarines, these are not insuperable. A nuclear submarine off these existing production lines may well be no more expensive than the unique conventional submarines under consideration and we would need fewer of them.

    On the other hand, attempting to undertake this mission in a conventional submarine would be less effective and more dangerous. The submarine’s slow underwater speed and significant indiscretion rate would increase the risk of detection and destruction. The recent acquisition of nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) by China and India in our region suggest that any conventional boat operated by Australia would not enjoy technological superiority in the South China Sea. By the time the new Australian submarines are commissioned in ten or fifteen years time, both countries are likely to possess a fleet of SSNs, the more modern ones of which will be quieter and more efficient than the prototypes. This raises the awkward question of whether an Australian government would be willing to send young Australians into harm’s way in very expensive but technologically inadequate kit.

    If the answer to this is “No” but the government remains unwilling to acquire nuclear submarines, then logic suggests that the mission needs to change. Specifically, the government could discard the power projection role and leave that task to a better-equipped ally. Forget discharging cruise missiles at a “major adversary” and scratch the idea of sinking ships in the South China Sea. This then leads to a sea denial role in the context of the defence of Australia, with additional intelligence gathering responsibilities. Would this require a unique platform? Again the answer is “No”. These tasks could be undertaken by existing conventional submarines available off the shelf from a number of shipbuilders, including all three of those in the design competition for Australia’s new submarine. One obvious candidate would be the existing Soryu class, which is larger than other available designs and, in its latest guise, takes advantage of advanced Japanese Lithium-ion technology.

    If the government were to change the mission to sea denial and intelligence gathering, however, then it should first look at whether a submarine provides the most cost-effective means of fulfilling this role (see the third implication above). The capability of conventional submarines in the sea denial role is compromised by their slow speed, while to send a submarine to snoop off a neighbour’s shore is not necessarily the most cost-effective way of recording wireless transmissions overseas. By contrast, some of the RAAF’s fleet of modern aircraft, including the E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control platform and, in the future, the P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, have a potent capability in both sea denial and intelligence gathering.

     

    Conclusions

    In short, this analysis suggests three alternative ways forward for the new submarine:

    • Maintain the current mission and seek to acquire perhaps six nuclear attack submarines (at most) from the US, the UK or France.
    • Reduce the scope of the submarine’s role to sea denial and intelligence gathering and acquire, say, between four and six conventional boats off existing production lines overseas (possibly from Japan).
    • Examine whether the sea denial and intelligence missions can be delivered more cost-effectively by platforms other than submarines, such as aircraft already in service or currently being acquired.

    None of these options requires a unique platform or merits an Australian build. Importantly, all three options offer significant savings compared to the current approach. Even if the SSN option were to be pursued (it would require difficult negotiations with the United States and assistance in maintaining the reactors), the overall cost would be significantly lower than buying 12 unique platforms with a mixture of systems, particularly if they were built in Australia.

    All three options, however, would mean abandoning the current acquisition process. It is not too late to do that, but government would need to enter into an intensive process with some urgency to analyse the options in more detail. While strategic and technical military analysis is clearly required, it is of critical importance that these technical data should then be fed into an evaluation of risks, costs and potential pay-off for each option. It is not clear that such an approach, which would combine rigorous cost-benefit analysis with the investment appraisal disciplines of financial economics, is generally employed when Defence is assessing costly new acquisitions. Because Defence still has a single line budget appropriation (why?), its internal processes are often impenetrable to the keepers of the keys in Finance and Treasury.

    Why I began this article by reference to Gough Whitlam and the proposed DDL acquisition was to suggest, in agreement with Laura Tingle, that the government has lost its corporate memory and its ability to learn lessons from previous approaches.[6] It seems remarkable, for example, that our defence acquisitions keep repeating the mistakes of the past, from mixing and matching systems inappropriately and accepting excessive risks, to allowing political judgements to override efficiency considerations and the proper regard for the public purse. In the new submarine acquisition, we seem even to have learned nothing from the Collins class procurement. In both cases the French, surely laughing up their elegant sleeves, have offered us a dumbed down version of an existing nuclear submarine, with the reactor replaced by an updated version of the same diesel-electric technology that powered Australia’s first submarine, AE1, on its epic voyage from the UK in 1913.

    “We learn from history that we do not learn from history,” was Hegel’s gloomy prognosis. I prefer Santayana’s view, quoted by Laura Tingle, because it seems to offer a shred of hope: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

     

    Jon Stanford is a Director of Insight Economics. He had a significant career as an economist in the Australian Public Service, ultimately in the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. He has worked extensively on economic and policy issues around defence procurement and naval shipbuilding. 

    [1] Jones, Peter (2001). “1972–1983: Towards Self-Reliance”, in Stevens, David. The Royal Australian Navy. The Australian Centenary History of Defence (vol III). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press, page 220.

    [2] Defense Industry Daily (2014), http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/australias-hazardous-frigate-upgrade-04586/

    [3] In the early 2000s, the US offered to sell three second-hand Arleigh Burkes to Australia for a good price so as to avoid the risky upgrade to the FFGs. The RAN rejected this, just as previously it had, with more justification, rejected the offer of the four very large destroyers of the Kidd class.

    [4] Australian Government (2009), Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century, Defence White Paper, Canberra, page 70.

    [5] Peter Layton (2015), “Australia’s next submarine – will it be the Soryu”, Defence Today, Vol 11, No 4, page 8.

    [6] Laura Tingle (2015), “Political Amnesia: How we forgot how to govern”, Quarterly Essay No. 60, Schwartz Media, Melbourne.

  • Turkey and Daesh

    In this blog on 6 December 2015 ‘Turkey’s new neighbour – Daesh (Islamic State)‘  John Tulloh referred to an article by David Graeber in The Guardian on how Turkey is obstructing Kurdish forces that are the most effective opponents of Daesh.

    In that article, David Graeber asserts that ‘Western leaders could destroy Islamic State by calling on [President] Erdogan to end his attacks on Kurdish forces in Syria and Turkey and allow them to fight ISIS on the ground‘.

    David Graeber is an American anthropologist, political activist and author. He is currently a Professor at the London School of Economics and was formerly an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University.

    John Menadue

    David Graeber’s  article ‘Turkey could cut off Islamic State’s supply lines. So why doesn’t it?’ is linked below. This article first appeared in The Guardian on 19 November 2015.

    http://gu.com/p/4ebvc/sbl

  • John Tulloh. Turkey’s new neighbour – DAESH (Islamic State)

    President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey must feel like a chess grand master playing several games simultaneously. He has far more neighbours and different cultures to contend with than most leaders: eight in all. They are a mixed bag across more than 2600 kms of borders – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, an Azerbaijan enclave, Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece. And across the Black Sea he has Russia. Now he has an unofficial neighbour: Daesh, also known as Islamic State. It has been active along Turkey’s frontier inside Syria and regards territory it has seized as part of its self-styled caliphate.

    It poses a dilemma for President Erdogan. He has 1.5 million refugees on his hands, mainly from Syria as a result of barbaric actions by Daesh. The EU has offered him what some see as a generous bribe to deter the refugees from heading west to Europe. He has joined the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Daesh, but is his heart really in it even though he has blamed it for killing 100 people at a peace rally in Turkey in October? His air force by all accounts prefers to attack Kurdish targets. His critics say he tolerates Daesh as being good for business and helping deal with what he sees as his real enemy, the Kurds. But for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Daesh, it is the Kurds who have done more than any other force on the ground in repelling its advances.

    David Graeber, a professor at the London School of Economics, thinks he has the answer to eliminate Daesh. Writing in the Guardian, he says:

    ‘All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) guerrillas in Iraq and Turkey. But instead the YPG-controlled territory in Syria finds itself placed under a total embargo by Turkey and the PKK forces are under continual bombardment by the Turkish air force. Not only has Erdogan done almost everything he can to cripple the forces actually fighting (Daesh); there is considerable evidence that his government has been at least tacitly aiding (Daesh) itself’. 

         That aid concerns oil which Daesh has looted from Syria and Iraq and sells on the black market. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said it enters Turkey on ‘an industrial scale’. Russia a few days ago released satellite images they claim show columns of tanker trucks loading with oil at an installation controlled by Daesh in Syria, before crossing the border into Turkey.

    Last year, a member of the Turkish parliamentary opposition, Ali Edibogluan, claimed Daesh had smuggled $800 million worth of oil into Turkey from Syria and Iraq. Now a former Iraqi MP, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, has backed up that claim, saying ‘Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market is like the oxygen supply to (Daesh) and its operation’.

    But President Erdogan was indignant about such claims as well as a Russian one that he and his family were profiting from it. He said that, if there were proof Turkey was cooperating with Daesh, he would resign.

    He presides over a powerful country which possibly has the most strategic location of any nation in the world with its Eurasia presence. His ruling party now has a parliamentary majority which may give him the temptation to broaden his own powers. Since 2011, he has encouraged the Islamisation of Turkey which for nearly a century prided itself on its secular outlook. But he knows he cannot push his luck too far when EU membership remains a goal.

    It is a conundrum when Daesh is, according to Time, ‘a fibroid of territory enmeshed in a cat’s cradle of ethnic, tribal, religious and geopolitical strands so densely tangled as to defy solution’.

    Just as Turkey has a foot in both Europe and Asia, President Erdogan will need all his political wiles to maintain a balance between being seen to be supporting the action against Daesh while stopping its influence spilling over into Turkey and yet maintaining business as usual.

    Whatever happens, you can be certain that the restless Kurds, who make up 20% of Turkey’s population, will remain President Erdogan’s biggest concern, especially the PKK with its territorial ambitions.

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

  • Richard Butler. Bombing Syria: Where’s our Debate?

    On December 2nd, the UK House of Commons debated for 10 hours, a motion moved by the Government, that it should authorise bombing of DAESH targets in Syria by UK airforces. (Prime Minister Cameron announced early in his statement that, henceforth, ISIL should be referred to as DAESH: the acronym of its name in Arabic).

    Some 150 members of the House took part in the debate. The motion was approved by a vote of 397 for, 223 against. Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn had approved a “free vote” for members of his party. 66 Labour members exercised that right and voted with the Government.

    The debate saw repeated interventions on points of order and points of detail from both sides. More significantly, it was somewhat overshadowed by repeated opposition demands that the Prime Minister withdraw and apologize for remarks he was heard to have made, the previous day, that those who would vote against his motion would do so because they were “terrorist sympathizers”. He refused to do this.

    The debate was certainly lively, if not always edifying. It served to justify the notion of a house of elected representatives of the people as the key place in which matters of undoubted public importance and policy should be aired.

    That airing included the reliance, by both sides, on their gut political credo, rather than on hard evidence for any particular point of view. Prime Minister Cameron, was particularly light on evidence for his views.

    On the Conservative side, the main elements of that credo, were the beliefs in: the efficacy of military action in bringing about political outcomes; fighting the enemy abroad would keep the homeland safe; and, the notion that Britain had an indispensable role in maintaining a civilized world. This last idea seems not dissimilar from the US’ notion that it is the “exceptional country”, or indeed former Prime Minister Abbott’s now revealed notion that the current crises in the Arab and Russian worlds meant that history had, once again, handed to the “Anglosphere” the unique duty to put things to rights

    On the Labour side, the fundamental concerns expressed were: that military action was not the solution to the problem of DAESH; what was needed was concerted political/diplomatic action to bring about an end to the Syrian war, and extreme doubt that expanded military action would be effective in both curtailing DAESH or preventing further terrorist acts outside the Middle East, indeed, it might fuel them.

    The undoubtedly remarkable feature of the debate was that it took place. It was never going to fully satisfy the evident need for an improved public and revealed official understanding of the dreadful complexity of the situation in the region extending from Turkey in the North West to Yemen and the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, in the South East. The same would appear to be true of the extent to which the turmoil in that region is authoring a post-Cold War competition, by proxy, between the US and Russia.

    But, the debate will surely prove to be an important marker in the passage towards resolution of the challenges now posed by the disorder in the post colonial Arab world, the need for what could be termed a post Cold War settlement, and the challenges posed to international law and order posed by non-State actors such as DAESH.

    Where is the debate in the Australian Parliament? The Abbott government committed Australian military assets to action in both Iraq and Syria without any such debate. Labor acquiesced, for reasons unstated.

    Infamously, Prime Minister Howard committed Australia to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, ignoring massive public demonstrations against it and without Parliamentary debate. That invasion is now widely regarded as having stimulated the formation of DAESH.

    We now learn from Peter Hartcher’s series, “Shirtfronted” (SMH), that the basis of Abbott’s decisions on these matters was gut instinct.

    We have not yet heard from Prime Minister Turnbull on how he might arrive at decisions on matters which might involve Australian forces, although we also learn from Hartcher that Abbott exclude him from membership of the National Security Committee of Cabinet because he knew Turnbull would not support his gut instincts.

    In the new circumstances of a growing international coalition against DAESH and the UN Security Council resolution following the Paris attacks, authorizing states to “take all necessary measures”, the Australian people have a right to know what it is the Government proposes to do, why, and what it hopes to achieve. A debate in Parliament would serve that purpose.

     

     

    Richard Butler AC, is former Ambassador to the United Nations and Head of the UN Special Commission to disarm Iraq

  • Travers McLeod. Relaxing airstrike rules is a recipe for disaster.

    Tony Abbott has argued Australia and her allies should relax targeting rules for airstrikes to destroy the Islamic State.

    At best, he is ignorant of the lessons of the military campaigns waged in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. At worst, he is willing to repeat mistakes to differentiate himself on national security and open a pathway to take his job back.

    Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Abbott isn’t as narcissistic as the latter reading suggests. Let’s assume he was insufficiently briefed on recent military campaigns or has forgotten the lessons of our longest wars.

    The battle of ideas, not body counts, will determine this war. Disproportionate use of force will only inflame and grow the Daesh insurgency. There is no military solution to destroy IS.

    “A military force, culturally programmed to respond conventionally (and predictably) to insurgent attacks,”wrote General Stanley McChrystal in November 2009, “is akin to the bull that repeatedly charges a matador’s cape – only to tire and eventually be defeated by a much weaker opponent.”

    McChrystal should know. He was commander of the United States-led coalition of forces in Afghanistan from 2009-2010 and headed up US Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan from September 2003 until February 2006.

    When McChrystal took over as commander he told his troops to “get rid of the conventional mindset”.

    We know the prequel. In 2005 the US was accused of being a “lawless hegemon”, one that avoided the laws of war or sought to exploit gaps within it. Commanders misunderstood the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their “enemy-centric” mindset harmed civilians and alienated the people. David Kilcullen described US forces as “chasing their tails”.

    From late 2006 military doctrine, strategy, tactics and rules of engagement began to shift decisively. Australian military advisers and judge advocates were pivotal in this change of mindset.

    Phillip Bobbitt put the new position best in 2010: “The war aim in a war against terror is not territory, or access to resources, or conversion to our way of political life,” Bobbitt wrote. “It is protection of civilians within the rule of law.”

    McChrystal’s tactical directive to troops in July 2009 made this explicit. “We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories – but suffering strategic defeats – by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people.”

    Losing popular support would “translate into more insurgent recruits, more IEDs, and a prolonged conflict with an uncertain outcome.”

    McChrystal prohibited the use of air-to-ground or indirect fire against residential compounds with three tightly-specified exceptions, installed new battle damage assessment requirements, denied capacity for unilateral missions without regional command approval, raised the approval level for night raids, tightened escalation of force procedures and mandated civilian casualty investigations and reporting up the chain of command within 24 hours from any given incident.

    McChrystal was clear: “Our success depends on our ability to escalate force proportionally, in a manner that the average Afghan civilian can understand, and respects the fact that this is their country.”

    Successive studies of countering insurgencies reveal that if one loses legitimacy they lose the war. This means one cannot separate the conduct of operations from the broader, contested narrative of a war.

    Securing the population and killing the enemy is a necessary condition to countering Daesh. But the chief lesson of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns is that the legality of the conduct of those operations is central to their legitimacy.

    This is why proportionality has become a watchword for countering insurgencies successfully. It requires a delicate but appropriate balance to be struck between military necessity and collateral damage, in an age when allegations of disproportionality can be uploaded to YouTube and viewed across the world in seconds.

    US military doctrine now asserts that “all interactions between security forces and the population directly impact legitimacy”. Complying with the law of war helps to gain local trust – violations “have a direct and significant negative impact on the ability to conduct successful counterinsurgency operations”.

    Abbott now advocates “less restrictive targeting rules for airstrikes”. His position may be more nuanced. He may dispute current distinctions between civilians and combatants, including what it means for civilians to participate directly in hostilities. As stated, his position is pregnant with ambiguity.

    Such hawkish ambiguity is exactly what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ruled out last Tuesday in his National Security Statement to Parliament. Turnbull called for “calm, clinical, professional, effective” conduct to defeat IS, not “gestures or machismo”. He said “the strongest weapons we bring to this battle are ourselves, our values, our way of life”.

    In war the most significant distinction is between civilians and combatants. The latter are lawful targets who can be killed. We water down the distinction at our peril. This is but one way in which our military forces live our (and their) values.

    Countering insurgencies, former US Central Command head General James Mattis once said, is only new if “we don’t read our own history”.

    Given our focus these past weeks on France, it’s worth recalling that the best-known military theorist and practitioner of counterinsurgency was French. Lieutenant Colonel David Galula’s formula was simple: win the support of the people. “Antagonising the population will not help,” he wrote in 1964, “rash actions on the part of the forces should be kept to a minimum.”

    An ad-hoc legal approach to fighting terrorism would return us to the fog of law within the fog of war. It is a recipe ripe for disaster.

    Travers McLeod is chief executive of the Centre for Policy Development and the author of “Rule of Law in War: International Law and United States Counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan” (Oxford University Press, 2015).

  • Michael Kelly SJ. Treating Islam’s clerics like their Christian equivalents will save lives

    There is an unexpected upside to the mayhem and carnage across the world, visited on the unsuspecting innocents of countries where Muslims are not a majority of the population – Europe and beyond. It’s something the Catholic Church has had to learn, too.

    And that is the simple fact that that misbehavior among religious adherents towards members of the faith community as well as those outside it – requires external intervention to be rectified and hopefully crushed.

    This can be done by subjecting the verification and authorization of religious officials and organizations to the same stringent tests that have either long been applied – or should have been applied to those of the Catholic and other mainstream Christian Churches.

    The worldwide crisis of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is nothing of the sort. That tragedy was and is a crisis of episcopal mismanagement. In country after country, bishops have demonstrated their incapacity to handle the scale of clerical sex abuse and the necessary measures required to address it.

    In other words the Catholic Church, in too many places, and until very recently with the implicit authorization of the Vatican, has demonstrated its inability to manage its own affairs. And in country after country, state and their police and judicial processes have had to intervene to protect the vulnerable, doing for the Church what it should have done on instinct and in line with its own moral teaching.

    But this intervention by the State and the Courts is only the latest instance of the Church and its personnel being made accountable, Internally and externally, Church institutions and their managers and operatives are held accountable in manifold ways.

    Across the world, in authoritarian polities such as China or Vietnam and democracies alike the institutions, personnel and operations of the Church are accountable to State authorities on behalf of the wider community.

    Individual Church workers – clerics and lay people – are, in some places registered for payment by the State, in most places for taxation under various forms and are subject to determinations by civil authorities if they wish to alter buildings. In many parts of the world, clerics have to undergo training and receive accreditation before they can work with or near children.

    As well, church workers are appointed to positions in church institutions provided they have qualified with degrees and periods of probation in educational settings that frequently are subject to State scrutiny and accreditation.

    Church buildings are registered in various ways. Places of worship come under specific zoning regulations and are subject to various types of taxation. Charities, schools and hospitals are similarly scrutinized for their meeting performance criteria set by the State, which in turn issues permits to operate.

    Much of the agitation coming from the Islamic community is either stirred up or rationalized by Muslim clerics. Islamic communities will have their own standards and criteria for selecting and appointing Imams. But how does the wider community in countries where Muslims are a minority effectively minimize fears for the safety of their communities ?

    The recruitment locations for the suicide bombers and murderers terrorizing Western cities, as shown in Paris, London, Madrid and Brussels in recent times are in fact in mosques in European and other capitals. And recruits in their hundreds, perhaps thousands are coming to Daesh, or the self-styled Islamic State from across the world – Europe, North Africa, Asia, Australia.

    Ordinarily, immigrants to any country go through a process of assessment before a visa is granted to the migrant by the country of welcome. Frequently, there are processes in place to see that new arrivals are inducted in the values of their new home, that institutions and processes are explained and sometimes that the new arrival has the opportunity to join an existing community already inserted into the social fabric of the host nation.

    In the case of skilled or professional migrants, assessments of the international standing of the migrants’ qualifications are made. It happens with academics, doctors, engineers and accountants. It happens with Catholic clerics too. In an age where clerical numbers are not equal to the requirements of Catholic communities in Europe, the US and Australia, imported clerics have to establish their professional bona fides.

    One way of ensuring that clerics recruited from Muslim majority countries to serve Islamic communities in countries where Islam is a minority faith, is to insist on processes of acculturation and tertiary qualifications that are recognized in the country where the cleric arrives to work.

    The first step is to insist that Muslim clerics get a full cultural and intellectual acculturation to the country they land in to serve the Muslim community there. What is its cultural mix? What is the history of the ethnic and religious make up of the country? What are the academic courses inducting the Muslim cleric into the context where he is to serve? What are the standards the host country insists on for a cleric to be accredited?

    Then there are the internal processes within Islam for the accreditation of the cleric serving in the host country. The insistence on training and formation standards within Islam works well when the Muslim denominations have a structure to fall back on, where the formation of the clergy and laity, their expressions of faith and theology are shaped by a structure that follows a pattern and some guidelines applicable to all within those communities.

    The Islamic world has many such groups that follow a systematic framework of formation. For example, a Bohra Muslim in Asia will have the same training and background if he wants to be a cleric as in the United States or anywhere because he comes under the same scrutiny and sanctions everywhere to be able to do what he is ordained to do.

    This cannot be said for the whole Muslim world where very often local people in local communities are answerable to no one but themselves and very often follow an interpretation of doctrine that has no direct connection with the rest of those professing the same faith.

    This is where the challenge to integrate and regulate what are essentially maverick Islamic communities in the West must to be addressed.

    The groups that are hierarchical and structured within the Shia and Sunni communities tend to have more cohesion and follow checks and balances that make their clerics accountable.

    Otherwise, patterns akin to some of the practices in Pentecostal and Protestant sects, for instance – where pastors may proclaim themselves pastors and create their own congregations – develop that have nothing much in common with the common expression of faith with others, except following the same scriptural source. Indeed, this has led to problems of sometimes violent Christian fundamentalism, especially in the United States as witness by increasing frequent and often deadly frequent attacks on pro-abortion staff and proponents.

    Making Islamic communities accountable in societies where they are not majorities is not difficult and there is an existing model to follow. Pluralistic societies throughout the West have the means to do it via long tested rule of law regimes and tested regulation. Those means need to be urgently extended and adapted to Islam forthwith.

     

     

     

  • Cavan Hogue. Turkey shoots down Russian aircraft.

    Russia supports the (Shia) Assad regime backed by Iran and others while Turkey supports the Sunni backed bySaudi Arabia, the USA and others. The Turks claim the Shia are terrorists while Russia supports them as allies of the Shia, (i.e. Assad) who support Russian strategic interests.. This is an oversimplified picture but it is relevant to the shooting down of a Russian fighter. The Turks claims it was in Turkish airspace which the Russians deny. Turkey probably overreacted but it is perfectly possible that Russians were attacking anti-Assad forces within Turkey or strayed over the border in pursuit of such forces. Either way the Russians are going to deny that they were to blame and the Turks are going to say it was all Russia’s fault.

    If left to themselves, Russia and Turkey will almost certainly sort it out with much rhetoric and ittle action but the danger is that NATO will get into the act either by itself or at the urging of Turkey. This would not be a good idea. All this does, however, highlight a basic problem in the whole situation. It is not just the bad guys, ISIS, versus the good guys, everyone else. It is a host of conflicting factions and interests which overlap and vary like the bits of a kaleidascope. The more the parties involved insist on a goodies and baddies analysis the less likely it is that a solution will be found.

    Everyone has an interest in opposing ISIS but how do you do this? As has been wisely said, ISIS is not an army or a state but an Ideal. Western countries find it hard to accept that local people see the West as the baddies although a brief foray into history might show them why.

    This situation is unlikely to lead to wider conflict.  US increased training of Ukrainians to “combat Russian aggression” is a greater threat. The behaviour of both Russia and the US takes us back to the Cold War but more accurately should be seen as a contest for influence between two great powers. It has nothing to do with morals or political systems. The common fight against ISIS in particular and terrorism in general creates a bond which puts pressure on all parties to work together at least against ISIS. The question is, what happens next? The Coaition of the Willing opened Pandora’s box. Who will put the lid back on it?

    Cavan Hogue is former Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia.

  • John Menadue. Minimising IS will take a while.

    We have had a lot of apocalyptic talk about IS – we are at war, it is a death cult, it threatens civilisation. Unfortunately these exaggerations don’t help a measured and holistic response. These exaggerations play into the hands of terrorists who hope for our over-reaction and the promotion of fear.

    We know from experience that terrorism ebbs and flows over the years in intensity. We must be ready for the long haul.

    There is no doubt that IS is a threat but we need to consider carefully some important facts and to put the matter in perspective.

    One important fact is that climate change is really an existential threat and vastly more serious than the terrorist threat.

    Many politicians seize opportunities to exploit fear. It is noteworthy that those who decry government spending in so many areas are the first to propose substantial increases in spending for intelligence and police agencies. Terrorism is good politics for conservative politicians although Malcolm Turnbull seems more sensible than most.

    The Paris attack was one of many. A larger number of people were killed in the IS bombing of a Russian aircraft over Sinai. Only a few days before the Paris attacks, there were large numbers killed in Lebanon. The most violent of all is probably Boko Haram which has conducted mass abductions and killed over 17,000 people since 2009 in Africa. Columnist David Brooks, reports in the New York Times that since 1984 an estimated 1.5 million Christians have been killed by Islamic terrorists in Sudan. There is also not much doubt that in the birthplace of Christianity, the future of Christian communities is extremely bleak.

    As an important news hub, Paris attracts a great deal of media attention, but the atrocities have been much worse elsewhere. We do have a ‘white man’s media’ in Australia. Just recall the almost never-ending coverage of the bombings of the Boston marathon.

    It is also no consolation to remind ourselves that the threat of terrorism in Australia is small compared with the other threats we face in daily life.

    The IS threat has grown out of centuries of Western involvement and humiliation of the people of the Middle East. That involvement was accelerated by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. From that time on Western countries have occupied, plundered and exploited the resources and the people of the Middle East. The most recent calamity was the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK and ourselves. That invasion has cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. Our intervention, which our media choses to forget, sowed the seeds of the bitter harvest that we are now reaping.

    With a history of ethnic, sectarian and political conflict, our participation in the invasion of Iraq triggered so much of the catastrophe we face today.

    And we are so unfamiliar with the determination of IS fighters. They see themselves as martyrs and the more they sacrifice and die, the more they feel justified and rewarded. Dying is seen as desirable.

    There must be a political settlement and hopefully the US and Russia can support a transitional government that will reflect the interests of all the people in the region and most importantly of all, reconcile Shia and Sunni antagonists. The Iraq war effectively disenfranchised tens of millions of Sunnis in the region. We may be called to support a peace-keeping operation. We should be willing to do that in the right circumstances.

    The powers of the regional patrons, Saudi Arabia and Iran, must be encouraged to find an accommodation and a cease-fire.

    It is also unlikely that there can be peace in the Middle East without a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

    On the domestic front, we need more proactive domestic programs to focus young Muslims away from terrorist possibilities. Muslim leaders and elders are essential in this process. They have not done well.

    Clearly, our intelligence and police agencies are keys in helping to keep us safe. They have received large increases in funding. Their powers have been increased. But what we saw in the Lindt Café siege points to the need for much improved performance and supervision.

    We will have to learn to live with terrorism for a while. Picking soft targets is in the view of terrorists a legitimate and necessary response to overwhelming military power. Too often IS and other terrorists succeed in provoking an over-reaction which helps the terrorist cause. The French reaction to the attacks by dramatically increasing bombing in Syria is likely to be counter-productive. In frustration the French took the IS bait.

    Our response needs to be holistic and the most important response must be political, backed possibly by some UN military intervention, improved performance by our intelligence agencies and police, and active participation by the elders and leaders in our Muslim community.

     

  • Richard Butler. After Paris

     

    The attacks in Paris were textbook in terms of the philosophy of terrorism: hit publicly, indiscriminately, affecting as large a group of innocent people as possible, attract maximum publicity, generate widespread fear. They also represented a continuation of terrorist actions within metropolitan Europe: Madrid 2004, 191 dead; London 2005, 56 dead; Paris January 2015, 17 dead; and now November 2015 128 dead and still counting. Naturally, statements characterizing this latest outrage have been flowing. It has been described as “France’s September 11”, and according to President Hollande, as constituting a declaration of war on France. IS has claimed responsibility for the attacks and it seems there is now independent evidence that it directed them.

    Clearly military action against IS will be increased. Indeed, French bombing of IS headquarters in Raqaa, Syria, were significantly increased, beginning 2 days after the attacks.

    King Abdullah of Jordan has described the actions of IS as constituting the conduct of “ a global war, a third world war, by other means”. Pope Francis has agreed, describing the existence of a “piecemeal” third world war.

    It is beyond any doubt that the idea that citizens going about their ordinary, even banal business; attending a concert, a football match, eating in a cafe should be arbitrarily blown away is monstrous.

    Equally, it is certain that citizens expect that arrangements in their community, policing etc., will deter or prevent such action. Politicians know this and routinely pledge it, but it is now clear in so many countries, that this promise can’t, reliably, be kept.

    It must also be accepted that the continuing series of atrocities being committed across the middle east by a variety of parties far exceeds what has happened in metropolitan Europe, and holds the prospect of further massive destruction, beyond what has already occurred, particularly in Syria.

    Thus, there is no alternative but to dig deeper into where this has come from and on that basis craft both an effective defense and a more elemental, hopefully enduring, solution.

    There are a number of identifiable sources of the present situation, stretching back to the settlement at the end of the First World War and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. But, the continuous threads are western intervention, which has never been benign, and ethno-confessional disputes, mainly between Sunni and Shia, which the west routinely ignored, misunderstood, or sought to exploit.

    Today, that disgraceful history is now assaulting the west. The invasion of Iraq, by the US, UK, and Australia in 2003 was: contrary to international law, mounted on the basis of fabricated intelligence, and in Australia’s case without parliamentary or constitutionally sound authorization. The number of dead it yielded, on all sides, the massive cost, were dwarfed only by the completeness of its failure as a concept ( to bring democracy to the middle east) and its fuelling of the enduring internal political and confessional conflicts within the region.

    It’s major achievement was that it brought IS into existence, and if King Abdullah is right, a developing third world war. He sees IS as representing “a global franchise”, incorporating branches around the world responsive to directives from headquarters but more than prepared to do their own thing in situ, ranging from recruitment to training to executing attacks. George W Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard, have so far avoided serious public recognition of their responsibility, although Blair might face a problem when the Chillcott report is issued.

    What has been said above with respect to Iraq and Syria, is also similarly true of Libya.

    Clearly, we will now face an indefinite period of yet further surveillance and security checks in a wider number of aspects of our domestic lives. We must insist that they be effective without vitiating the elemental constructs of our rule of law and human rights based society. Were the latter not to be the case then, ironically, the enemy would have won. Also, with respect to the latter, Australia needs a Charter of Human Rights

    On the external sources, the roots of the problem, there are two key areas which now must be addressed in an entirely more committed way: the civil war in Syria; the situation in Palestine.

    On Syria, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, in particular the US and Russia, must craft a joint policy and set of actions to bring about and end to the fighting, and a political settlement in Syria. It seems that this was in fact set in motion, last week, in Vienna.

    The success of this seems to be the last hope for Syria and, if it moves ahead, should then enable other permanent members, particularly, France and Britain, to join with Russia and the US in mounting a serious effort to remove IS from Syria and Iraq.

    Given the terms of the UN Charter, this is precisely the sort of action for which permanent membership of the Council was established and has been so shockingly neglected in the period since the end of the Cold War.

    Russia’s recent unilateral entry into the fighting in Syria, for which it seems to have paid the price of one of its civilian aircraft being bombed out of the sky, seems to have opened up some willingness on its part to act in concert with the US.

    On the problem of Palestine, there must be an end to both: US and Israeli insistence that the Palestine question has nothing to do with support for IS and other anti western political attitudes and actions; and, the continuing failure of the US to deploy all of its self-evident ability to insist to Israel on the conclusion of a two State solution.

    Australia has a role to play in the international consideration of and development of actions to strengthen overall security, as well as its own. Our governments have tended to see this largely in terms of supporting the Americans, and participating in military actions, largely determined by the US. In what he has said, so far, Prime Minister Turnbull has shown a more sophisticated awareness, than his predecessor, of what is at issue in our foreign relations and the challenges revealed by the Paris events, including in Australia domestically.

    Australia can contribute usefully in intelligence sharing, and should make diplomatic action the central contribution it can make as a new international response to IS, is developed. Its current military contribution to the coalition should not be renewed, or perhaps as Canada is doing, be withdrawn. It achieves very little, not because it is incapable, but because of the flawed nature of the US operation. (1). It does serve to expose us to an increased possibility of terrorist action within Australia. We could legitimately consider a military contribution, when an international plan of action, authorized by the Security Council is adopted.

    (1) See, Patrick Coburn: “Too weak, Too strong”. London Review of Books. 5 November 2015

    Richard Butler AC, is former Ambassador to the United Nations and Head of the United Nation Special Commission to disarm Iraq (UNSCOM).

  • Michael Kelly SJ. Paris: the problem is deeper than criminal acts

    There’s something profoundly rotten about cultures that can give birth to the murderous behaviour on show in Paris last Friday. This is just the latest and probably most visible instance because it happened in one of the hubs of the European and North American news media.

     

    These hubs make things that happen in too many other parts of the world actually reach living rooms worldwide. As such, this event is something that makes very clear what has been around for a long while in many parts of the world.Media focus actually makes these events part of the lives of people everywhere.

    And the focus on Paris shows no sign of going away.

    These events are stunning to many viewers and readers. But they will be poorly served by the media channels carrying the news because all seem to share the Western religious illiteracy of so called “developed” secular societies.

    I live in Asia and never cease to marvel that little if any informed attention is given to the religious foundations of much that disturbs Asian societies and is now convulsing Europe. The cultural poverty of the West about religious matters really comes home to roost when events like this occur.

    Not that the cultural ignorance doesn’t have its own causes. It grows out of a history of conflicts based on religion in Europe that can understandably lead to a form of amnesia.

    The medieval Crusades but most importantly the Wars of Religion in the 16th and 17th Centuries showed that Christianity itself was more a trigger to violence than a means of reconciling aggrieved parties.

    The European wars of religion were a series of conflicts from ca. 1524 to 1648, following the onset of the Protestant Reformation in Central, Western and Northern Europe.

    Although sometimes unconnected, all of these wars were strongly influenced by the religious change of the period, and the conflict and rivalry that it produced.

    From those conflicts came a few things:

    • The end of the marriage of altar and throne in the medieval period that had the morals set by the Catholic Church and regulated by Catholic monarchs;
    • The beginnings of the nation state and the recognition that if humanity were to survive, a new and more effective set of values and better ways of regulating social interactions had to be found;
    • The emergence of new cultural forms that applied to every social domain from the development of patterns of politeness in the way people treated one another to the creation of new ways of regulating society exemplified in the establishment of police forces.

    All this has ben clearly explained by the Canadian philosopher and cultural historian, Charles Taylor in his acclaimed and multi-award winning A Secular Age. Taylor argues persuasively that Europeans learnt the hard way how to live with one another over a century or more.

    This is a learning Islam has yet to accommodate. While Islam is divided in a similar way to the one between Catholics and Protestants (the Sunni and Shia divide), Muslims also focus their hostilities and misgivings beyond their own faith community with the barbaric consequences we saw in Paris and could see anywhere.

    Islamic extremists can’t and won’t tolerate difference. But the source of that view comes from the religion itself.

    Say what you like about Christianity, but there’s a mighty different set of resources for Christians to draw on than are readily to hand for Muslims. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has etched into cultures influenced by the Gospel something that neither Islam nor Buddhism, for that matter, have bequeathed to the cultures  they have given birth to.

    The distinctive contribution of Christianity to civilization is a rich and deep sense of paradox and its close relative, irony. It’s where our notions of tragedy come from.It feeds what we got from Greek notions of tragedy. A rich sense of paradox feeds an imagination that can accommodate difference, that sees vitality coming in helplessness, that sees something coming out of nothing.

    Christians should always be open to surprises because the God of Jesus Christ writes straight with crooked lines. And people open to following Jesus are believers that everyone should be given another chance.

    That’s the basis of acceptance of others as they are. The acceptance of difference is hard to find among many Muslims who think that the only good Christian is one who converts to Islam.

    The incarnation of Jesus means Christians have to look at and accept reality in all its complexity and variety as a carrier of, not a distraction from, God’s presence.

    Accepting people as they are is not just absent in the bomb-throwing and machine-gun firing sort of Muslim. The failure to accept people as they are is a broader feature of Islam. Just as Christianity used to be, too many Muslims today unfortunately believe we all should be followers of the Prophet.

    These murderous beings at work in Paris and in the Middle East have only one response to enemies: kill them and forget about it. The objects of their behavior have no right to be respected especially because they’re wrong.

    I think the world has outgrown the ability to accommodate this sort of Islam. It’s up to Muslims to explain to us why they can’t offer the rest of us the tolerance and welcome that we offer them.

    It might be some time in coming.

  • Cavan Hogue. The Paris attacks.

    The Paris attacks are yet another piece of savagery by young alienated Muslims but the question we need to ask is what is the real cause? Should we be searching the Koran or should we be looking at what motivates young idealists to die for a cause and why are these ones doing it? We may not like their cause and we may condemn their cruelty but that is not the point. Should  we perhaps be looking at the Red Guards, the IRA, the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge the Holy Inquisition, the young Europeans who fought for the Spanish Republic and hosts of other examples?

    Just as the Christian Devil can cite scripture to his purpose so can Shaitan do the same with Islamic scripture. Are these attacks really about Islam or are they political, emotional and psychological? The illegal invasion of Iraq by the Coalition of the Willing opened Pandora’s Box and let loose sectarian hatreds and fanatics of dubious sanity. It built on decades of Western aggression in the Middle East.  Thus, the attacks are not just on Westerners but also by Sunni on Shia and vice versa. Shades of Belfast! The creation of Israel is seen by Arabs not as freedom for an people oppressed by Christians and who have through the centuries been treated decently by Muslims but as an invasion of Arab lands. This simply adds fuel to the fire.

    Of course this kind of terrorism simply invites the victims to hit back and may well push Europe and North America to up the ante. However, is there a viable military solution? Even if we could eliminate ISIS the Sunni/Shia conflict would remain and this is complicated by tribal allegiances. Then what are we going to do about the Kurds who want a homeland which is surely a reasonable demand but is opposed by Turkey, Iran and Iraq? As the Israel/Palestinian conflict has shown every time one side attacks the other the immediate response is a revenge attack dressed up as teaching the others a lesson.

    Finally, the attack is likely to lead to an emotional response from Europeans which will make it harder for their governments to take more refugees and quite possibly lead to violence against refugees who have been accepted or who arrive illegally. Will it make young people more or less likely to get involved with messianic cults like ISIS or will it make no difference?

    Australians naturally feel sympathy for France and so we should but we are a marginal player in this game. We can talk about it being a world problem and about how we will play our part but nothing we do is going to make a difference. Our participation in  the military action in Iraq and Syria simply makes us a potential target for terrorists as a proxy for the US. We are also selective. Compare the media coverage of the terrorist bomb on a Russian aircraft which killed twice as many people as the massacre in Paris.

    These are all very hard questions to answer and governments naturally want to reassure their people that they are doing something. But what are they doing and is it effective? By focusing on police and military action are we attacking the symptoms rather than the cause? Certainly we need to treat the symptoms but if don’t know what the disease is, how can we do more than treat the symptoms?

    Cavan Hogue was former Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia.

  • Cavan Hogue. Russian airliner and ISIS.

    The almost gleeful attacks by columnists and cartoonists on Vladimir Putin when the Russian plane went down were in very bad taste. The difference between this and MH17 is clear. MH17 was shot down by accident in Ukrainian territory probably by rebels who thought they were shooting down a warplane from Kiev. It was not a deliberate act by Russians, let alone ordered by Putin. (Russia could however be criticised for not putting more pressure on those who control the crash site to cooperate with the investigators – most likely they know what happened and don’t want to admit it.)
      The Russian airliner was almost certainly blown up deliberately by ISIS because Russian warplanes are in action against ISIS. It could just as easily have been an American or Australian plane for the same reason. One interesting conclusion must be that Russia is in fact targetting ISIS fighters otherwise why would they target a Russian aircraft?
    This is yet another example of the bias and ignorance on the part of mainstream media and politicians in Australia of both Russia and the Middle East. It is interesting to note that the Dutch led report on MH17 specifically criticised the Kiev Government for not closing the relevant air space but did not suggest that this was a deliberate act by Russia. The Australian media played down the Report’s criticisms of Kiev and got stuck into Putin instead.
    Putin has clear aims in Syria. It is in Russian strategic interests to support Assad or anyone who will give them what he gives them just as it is in US interests to ally itself with Saudi Arabia. Neither Syria or Saudi Arabia is a bastion of democracy and human rights. Australia as usual is there on the American coat tails. This is a very complex situation and a solution is hard to find. The US seems to be working with the Kurds but will it support an independent Kurdish homeland against Syria,Turkey and Iran? The whole muddle is not just about ISIS – bad as they undoubtedly are – but also about Kurdish desire for a homeland like Israel, Sunni versus Shia, Iran versus Arabs and all kinds of tribal groups.
    This whole situation is not about different ideologies but about great power rivalry and local conflicts all wrapped up in moral rhetoric.
    Cavan Hogue was former Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia. 

  • Ian Richards. Australia’s new submarine.

    Jon Stanford’s article ‘Australia’s new submarine: what is its mission?’ is spot on.

    The trouble with Defence planning and White Papers is that they all start off with what in my early days in the Navy was called a “Staff Requirement”.  This thing, this equipment or ship is what we “require”.  The first chapter of a Defence White Paper should be “How much money have we got”!

    The bureaucratic Canberra attitude to money is that it just “comes”.  A very competent technical Admiral once said to me in my days as Deputy Chief “Ian, are you saying we can’t do this just because of money?”

    The 2009 White Paper is off in dreamland.  Structuring Australia’s forces with the objective of the South China Sea as one of our possible areas of major Australia alone defence interest is just nonsense.  For example:

    • Day One.   The “major adversary” is trembling in its shelters!  An Australian conventional submarine is threatening us in the South China Sea!!  And it has conventional cruise missiles!!!
    • Day Two.   Scratch one Australian submarine.
    • Day Three.  Scratch Perth/Fremantle.

    Planners who suggest the ADF is unilaterally going to attack a nuclear-armed adversary in Asia are away with the fairies.

    There are some simple facts.

    1. Australia has never and will never in current lifetimes operate significant military forces beyond the Australian area other than in concert with other (almost certainly more powerful) nations. Examples are WW2 to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria.
    2. Australian forces in Syria and the Red Sea are providing the tip of the arrow as political support.  The shaft and the bow belong to others – without them, the arrow tips would be useless.

    Turning to intelligence gathering, I also agree entirely.  If you want to listen to any type of radio transmission, put the receiver into a ship (war or merchant), shore station, embassy or satellite.  The worst place is in a submarine.  If you want a clear picture of something, don’t enlist a blind man and put him in a dark room.

    The intelligence-gathering feature of submarines appeals to The Hunt for Red October fans.  It has a lovely emotional tang about it.  So what is the “Australian contribution to the Five Power intelligence club” if an Australian conventional powered submarine sitting off Shanghai/Vladivostok (which will have been detected by the Chinese/Russians) can tell the US that an SSK (conventional submarine) has left harbour?  The Americans will know that because they saw it on satellite.  Or perhaps our submarine will be operating in the Eastern approaches to Singapore Strait – the South China Sea choke point – where submerged submarines can be seen from the air and sonar ranges are extreme.

    Ian Richards AO was formerly Deputy Chief, Naval Staff when he retired as Rear Admiral in 1984.

     

     

  • Douglas Newton. Australia’s Leap into the Great War.

    One of the great clichés of Australia’s entry into the Great War is that Australia stepped up to ‘answer the call’ of the Mother Country. Much of the press coverage of the centenary of Anzac repeats this claim and adds a nationalist frosting: our entry into the Great War was a moment of national awakening. The facts fly in the face of this. Australia did not ‘answer the call’ in August 1914 – Australia jumped the gun. It was not a stand-tall moment of national awakening but of willing imperial subservience.

    At the heart of the story of Australia’s response to the international crisis of July-August 1914 was the decision of the Cabinet of Australian Liberal Prime Minister Joseph Cook to cable London in the early evening of Monday 3 August, offering an expeditionary force to Britain and the transfer of the Royal Australian Navy to the British Admiralty – almost forty hours in real time before Britain’s declaration of war (deep in the evening of Tuesday 4 August). Of course, Australia had no power to choose neutrality in 1914. That Australia would fight on Britain’s side in a great war was certain. But Australia’s plunge into war through her government’s offer of an expeditionary force on Monday 3 August was excessive, reckless, and scarcely a democratic decision. A handful of decision-makers in Melbourne pushed ahead of events and chose to immerse Australia utterly in the looming war.

    Events in Britain are crucial to the story. In London, during the last days of peace, the British Cabinet of Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith was evenly divided on the question of British intervention in any European war. On one side stood the faction of Liberal Imperialists, keen to act loyally with Britain’s Entente partners, Russia and France, in order to safeguard the British Empire from those two Powers as much as Germany. On the other side stood a faction of Radicals, anxious to preserve Britain’s neutrality, and pleading that she should focus upon mediating the dispute and restraining Russia in particular. The decision hung in the balance. Then, over the last weekend of peace, New Zealand, Canada and then Australia cabled the offers of expeditionary forces, to anywhere, for any objective. The Dominions appeared to be eager for war – champing at the bit. This boosted the campaign on the right of British politics for instant intervention in any war. It was one factor helping to push Britain over the edge.

    Australia’s decision was made in the din of politics. The nation was in the throes of a bitter federal election campaign. At rallies on Friday 31 July, both the Liberal leader Cook and the Labor opposition leader Andrew Fisher promised Britain unlimited assistance (Fisher’s ‘last man and last shilling’). Over the weekend that followed, Liberal politicians, seeking political advantage, alleged that Labor was lukewarm on the Empire and a Fisher government would neglect Australia’s defence. Spooked, the Labor leaders pledged to support all Cook’s measures to secure Australia in this crisis. Seeking political safety in the middle of the election, they sidelined the ALP as a voice for caution at this critical hour. On Sunday, Cook’s ministers ordered the ‘precautionary stage’ of mobilisation, prompted by Britain’s ‘warning telegram’ seeking mere preliminary steps. Then, on Monday 3 August, Cook’s government sought 20,000 points on the political scoreboard, to eclipse Fisher’s vague ‘last man and last shilling’: a public offer of an expeditionary force of 20,0000 men, in any composition, to any destination, under British command, with Australia picking up the entire bill. This far exceeded the measures agreed between Australia and Britain as necessary upon the receipt of a ‘warning telegram’.

    Australia’s offer is praised in nationalist histories as democratic audacity in action. In fact, it was imitative, reckless and driven by the politicians’ pursuit of political advantage. The bitter truth – that Australia’s rushed offer of an expeditionary force added to the momentum of reactionaries pressing for war in London – is scarcely recognised. Moreover, the offer was a dangerous precedent for Australia. Her politicians forfeited the chance to weigh carefully war aims against costs, in life and treasure. Australia was taken for granted, and scarcely gained any role in the high diplomacy of Britain’s war.

    Was this a moment of national awakening for Australia? Just ten days into the war The Times of London drew the obvious lesson from Australia’s impetuosity. In an editorial it explained that the Dominion force that had been offered ‘is instantly under the orders of those who direct the movements of our Armies. They will go, without question and with eager alacrity, wherever they are sent. They will do what they are told to do. Theirs is not to reason why.’[1] A stand-tall moment? For Australia? We were hell-bent – and we got there.

    Assoc. Prof. Douglas Newton is a retired academic. He has taught history at Macquarie University, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ, and the University of Western Sydney. He is the author of a number of studies of war and peace, including most recently, ‘The Darkest Days: The Truth Behind Britain’s Rush to War, 1914 (London, Verso: 2014) and Hell-bent: Australia’s Leap into the Great War (Melbourne: Scribe, 2014). This article is based on a longer article which appeared in The La Trobe Journal. See link below.

    http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-publications/la-trobe-journal/la-trobe-journal-no-96-september-2015

    [1] ‘Brothers in Arms’, editorial, The Times, 13 Aug. 1914.

  • John Menadue. Abbott lectures London on how to ‘stop the boats’.

    Tony Abbott has been at it again, this time in London, claiming that he stopped the boats and that Europeans should follow suit. It is an oft repeated untruth that he stopped the boats. His one-liners are not supported by the facts. But the lie is deeply imbedded.

    Last month, Peter Hughes and I posted two articles on ‘Slogans vs Facts on boat arrivals’. Part 1 was entitled ‘How Tony Abbott helped to keep the door open for people-smugglers. Part 2 was entitled ‘Tony Abbott did not stop the boats’

    Let me briefly summarise a few facts from these two posts.

    First, the Coalition decision to oppose legislation in September 2011 to implement the Malaysian Arrangement gave the green light for people-smugglers to expand their business. People arriving by boat increased from 319 in September 2011 to 4,230 in July 2013. By opposing the implementation of the Malaysian Arrangement the Coalition showed that it did not want to stop the boats, but for political reasons wanted to stop Labor stopping the boats.

    Secondly, the rapid decline in people arriving by boat began in July 2013 when Kevin Rudd announced that in future no people arriving by boat would ever be settled in Australia. As a result people arriving on 47 boats fell from 4,230 in July 2013 to 355 on 7 boats in December 2013 when Tony Abbott’s Operation Sovereign Borders and boat turn-backs commenced. By the time OSB came into effect, boat arrivals had turned into a trickle. The game was almost over. Tony Abbott made a quite marginal contribution to stopping the boats. With boat arrivals down to 7 in December 2013, turn-backs were possible. They would not have been possible if they had been running at 47 a month as they were in July 2013.

    I often ponder why the untruths about boat arrivals have become so embedded and accepted in public discourse. I suggest there are three main reasons.

    First, Tony Abbott was able to effectively exploit xenophobia. He was very successful with his one liners in many areas. He did not bother to look at the facts, but successfully prosecuted a successful public relations and political campaign. Perceptions counted more than facts.

    Second, the ALP has been reluctant to argue that its hard-line policies had in effect stopped the boats. It was fearful of offending many of its traditional supporters who favoured a more generous approach to asylum seekers.

    Thirdly, under-resourced journalists didn’t bother to check the facts and they locked themselves in to uncritical acceptance of government propaganda. They now find it hard to accept that they were conned.

    The facts are clear. In September 2011 Tony Abbott’s policies gave a green light to people smugglers. The dramatic fall in boat arrivals commenced many months before Abbott’s Operation Sovereign Borders came into effect.

  • Sam Bateman. US muddle in South China Sea.

    Strong calls continue to be made in Washington for the US Navy to increase its freedom of navigation (FON) activities in the South China Sea. This is despite apparent differences of view between the Pentagon and the White House about the wisdom of such action. The US has done little in 2015 to ease concerns about whether it knows what it’s doing in the South China Sea. If anything, the rhetoric coming out of the Pentagon, and the US Navy in particular, has become stronger.While extensive land reclamations in the South China Sea have not helped China’s image, none of its current actions justify deliberate provocations by the United States. It’s not clear just what Washington is protesting in the South China Sea. There are three possibilities, some or all of which may apply.

    One explanation may be that the United States is protesting against China’s claim to sovereignty over disputed features. But Washington has repeatedly said that it doesn’t take sides in the island disputes. An authoritative report last year from the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington concluded that ‘[t]he absence of an unambiguous legal case in any of these disputes reinforces the wisdom of the US policy of not taking a position regarding which country’s sovereignty claim is superior’.

    But FON operations against only China’s claims suggest that the United States has taken sides. Washington hotly denies this, but it is how people in the streets of Beijing, Hanoi and Manila see US actions. Resulting surges in nationalism in these capitals are not helpful for resolving the disputes.

    A second possibility is that the United States is protesting China’s claim to a territorial sea around built-up, low-tide features in the South China Sea. But only three features fall within this category (Subi, Hughes and Mischief Reefs) and China has not actually made formal claims to any territorial sea from these features. It would be preferable to wait until such claims were made before responding with diplomatic protests rather than ‘rocking the boat’ now. In any case, it’s a fairly trifling issue on which to risk a dangerous incident between Chinese and American forces.

    Finally the United States may be protesting a general threat by China to FON in the South China Sea. But China has repeatedly denied it poses such a threat. And with so much of China’s own trade passing through the sea it’s nonsensical to suggest that it would. American commentators invariably overstate the value of US trade passing through the South China Sea. They fail to recognise that the vast majority of US trade with East Asia does not go through the area. For their part, Australian politicians also often grossly inflate the amount of foreign trade going through the South China Sea. In the event of some crisis, the trade of other Northeast Asian countries could readily be re-routed away from the South China Sea albeit at some cost in time and distance.

    At the heart of the US protests are peculiarly American concerns about FON that relatively few regional countries share. In particular, these include the freedoms to conduct so-called ‘military surveys’ in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of another country. Another is the right of a warship to transit a territorial sea without giving prior notification to the coastal state.

    It looks as though the United States is trying to turn back the clock on the carefully balanced EEZ regime in United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. American commentaries regularly fail to acknowledge that navigational freedoms are not absolute in another country’s EEZ. Military activities in the EEZ should only be conducted with ‘due regard’ to the rights and duties of the coastal state. Much of what the United States calls military surveys really constitutes marine scientific research, which is under the jurisdiction of the coastal state.

    A group of Chinese warships recently transited through the US territorial sea around the Aleutian Islands. This led to claims from the United States that China, by not seeking permission to do so, had gone against its own policies of area denial. But China’s conception of FON is different to what the United States is contemplating in the South China Sea. Whereas sending ships patrolling into another country’s territorial sea specifically to demonstrate a right of passage could be a breach of innocent passage, the Chinese ships were on a direct passage.

    US commentators also express concerns that China intends to use various facilities it has built in the South China Sea, such as airstrips, for military purposes. But this is another myth. These features have no real utility as military ‘bases’ in view of their vulnerability and the difficulties of their re-supply.

    The United States frequently condemns China for ‘militarising’ the South China Sea. But increased American naval activity in the region and the threatened FON operations constitute greater militarisation. The United States is in conflict with China on all fronts – economic, political, strategic and military.

    As a middle-power and US ally with close ties to the region, Australia needs to be cautious in getting too involved in these bilateral tensions. Its best response at this time is to maintain the established pattern of Operation Gateway surveillance flights in the area. And it should be prepared to make a diplomatic protest should China make some formal claim with which Australia does not agree.

    Sam Bateman is an adviser to the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. This article first appeared in the East Asia Forum on October 20, 2015.

  • John Tulloh. Turkey at a dangerous crossroad.

    Spare a thought for Turkey as it goes to the polls on November 1. It straddles Europe and Asia, but it is not sure if it is part of either. Nor is it part of the Middle East, yet it shelters more Arab refugees than any other country there. They number two million – mainly Syrian – who are not exactly welcome. It is the south-east European bulwark for NATO, but the EU has taken fright at the idea of a secular Islamic nation of 76,000,000 people becoming a member. It shares a large border with two of the most unstable states in the world, Iraq and Syria. It is overwhelmingly Sunni and has the ambitious Shia stronghold of Iran as another neighbour. Its two-year truce with the Kurdish PKK, a terrorist organisation, has been shattered. It stood by and did nothing while Islamic State (IS) roamed unchecked on its very doorstep in Syria, causing the refugee exodus. It now has IS jihadists in its midst inasmuch they were blamed for the recent Ankara suicide bombings which claimed 105 lives. And Turkey’s president has been accused of trying to manipulate the political process in order to become a dictator.

    The election is for a new parliament. It is aimed at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reasserting his authority. He has ruled Turkey since 2003. But his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in the last election in June and now President Erdogan wants it back. He also wants more, according to his critics. One, Daniel Pipes, president of the conservative Middle East Forum, claims President Erdogan plans to establish a dictatorship, possibly hostile to Western interests, and even introduce sharia law. In the past five years under his watch, Islamic schools have proliferated and the number of students jumped from 60,000 to 1.6 million.

    Turkey has always been troubled by division: secular and religious, rich and poor and Turks (80%) and Kurds (20%). At one time, President Erdogan seemed capable of resolving those differences, according to the New York Times. ‘He sought peace with the Kurds, empowered the formerly oppressed religious masses and presided for a time over a robust economy’, it said. All that has now changed.

    ‘Turkey is so deeply polarised after 13 years of AKP. rule’, according to Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He now fears it is ‘about to come apart at the seams’. The prominent Turkish novelist, Eli Shafak, was quoted in news reports as saying ‘Today, so deep is the rift between the pro-government and anti-government sides that it cannot be bridged anymore, not even in celebration or grief’.

    It will be the fourth parliamentary election in just over 18 months. The best outcome would be a coalition with the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), says former MP Suat Kiniklioglu, writing in the Huffington Post. ‘It would lessen the tension and polarisation in the country’, he says. ‘But the AKP has been used to running the country unchallenged for more than a decade and is not ready to share power’. One reason is that the CHP would want to pursue the matter of corruption allegations against President Erdogan and his son.

    The AKP’s chances have been boosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s startling promise to support Turkey’s entry into the EU and ease visa and travel restrictions for Turks. Her promise was a surprise as she has long opposed Turkey joining the EU. But Turkey’s pledge to try to stem the flow of refugees to Europe, particularly to Germany where she faces an electoral backlash, was enough to change her mind or at least for now.

    Turkey’s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Turkey was ‘not a concentration camp’ and would not host refugees permanently to appease the EU which has donated $4.7 billion towards their upkeep. ‘We cannot accept an understanding like “give us the money and they stay in Turkey”’, he said. A recent poll quoted by the Wall Street Journal said 70% of Turks want the Syrians to return home, not least because they are potential threat to jobs.

    The election is no threat to President Erdogan’s own position. But a majority victory for his AKP would enable him to achieve what he has long desired: to change the constitution to make his job, the presidency, the absolute ruler of Turkey and for 10 years.

    Daniel Pipes warns that ‘Whereas Ataturk and several generations of leaders wanted Turkey to be in Europe, President Erdogan brought it thunderingly back to the Middle East and to the tyranny, corruption, female subjugation and other hallmarks of a region in crisis’.

    Turkey’s powerful military, which has often intervened at times of crisis, will be watching developments with close interest.

    FOOTNOTE. Back in the 60s, I took the weekly train from Beirut to Istanbul. Although I bought only a second class ticket, I was put in an ancient first class sleeping car on the grounds that, as a Christian, I might get in the way of Islamic passengers with their daily prayers. We left Beirut at 7 o’clock on a Saturday night. The next day in Aleppo, we linked up with the weekly train from Baghdad which had a dining car. When would we arrive in Istanbul? The Turkish guard shrugged. It depended on how long it would take to get over some mountains in Anatolia without the need for back-up. The steam train panted into Istanbul several hours behind its supposed schedule. But no one was upset and everyone – Turks, Arabs and Christians – enjoyed the fellowship and hospitality of that journey. Would it be so today?

     

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Jon Stanford. Australia’s New Submarine: What is its Mission?

    Recent papers published in Pearls and Irritations by Jon Stanford and Rear-Admiral Ian Richards have suggested respectively that:

    • the case for providing significant financial support to the naval shipbuilding industry is flawed, both on defence policy and industry policy grounds
    • there are unacceptable risks involved in building Australia’s proposed new fleet of submarines locally.

    In this article I seek to move back from the issue of local or overseas acquisition of the new submarines and attempt first to address the more fundamental question of what exactly the Australian government wants these submarines to do. That then leads on to the second question of what technologies the submarines will need to deploy in order to undertake this mission most effectively and at minimal risk to their crews.

    What is the new submarine for?

    The role for the new submarines was set out in the 2009 Defence White Paper prepared by the Rudd government. This remains a remarkable document, particularly in the context of a genre usually characterised by emollient phraseology, platitudes and evasion.[1] In setting out how Australia’s strategic circumstances have changed, largely due to the rise of China, it ventured into territory where previous Defence White Papers had feared to tread:

    “It is conceivable that, over the long period covered by this White Paper, we might have to contend with major power adversaries operating in our approaches – in the most drastic circumstance, as a consequence of a wider conflict in the Asia-Pacific region. In such a circumstance, it is not a current defence planning assumption that Australia would be involved in such a conflict on its own. But we do assume that, except in the case of nuclear attack, Australia has to provide for its own local defence needs without relying on the combat forces of other countries. The Government considered such contingencies because although they are unlikely, they are not so remote as to be beyond contemplation. …In such circumstances, in order to defend ourselves we might also have to selectively project military power beyond the primary operational environment described in this White Paper, for instance in maritime Southeast Asia.” (Page 65.)

    The key requirement here is for the ADF to be capable, not only of operating independently and without the protection of a ‘great and powerful friend’, but ultimately of unilaterally projecting military power a long way from home, in maritime Southeast Asia. Indeed, the White Paper explicitly states that “we will use strategic strike if we have to” (page 59).

    It soon becomes clear from the White Paper that the new submarine would discharge a number of roles, including that of being the primary asset for the delivery of strategic strike:

    “The Future Submarine will be capable of a range of tasks such as anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare; strategic strike; mine detection and mine-laying operations; intelligence collection; supporting special forces (including infiltration and exfiltration missions); and gathering battle space data in support of operations. “(Page 70.)

    How will the strategic strike capability be delivered? The acquisition of cruise missiles was seen as a key priority, to be delivered by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), and, if operating in waters a long way from Australia, it seems clear that submarine launched missiles would be the preferred means of delivery:

    “The Government places a priority on broadening our strategic strike options, which will occur through the acquisition of maritime-based land-attack cruise missiles. These missiles will be fitted to the AWD, Future Frigate and Future Submarine. …The incorporation of a land-attack cruise missile capability will be integral to the design and construction of the Future Frigate and Future Submarine”. (Pages 70 and 81.)

    The 2009 White Paper has been quoted at length because it set out in quite precise terms what the future submarine’s multi-role mission would be. The 2013 White Paper, produced by the Gillard government, was far more reticent in every way than the 2009 version, and was virtually silent on the role required of the new submarine.[2] Yet while the tone may have changed, neither the strategic posture nor the requirements for the future submarine as laid out in the 2009 White Paper have been refuted or significantly amended in subsequent government statements.

    More recently, for example, as evidence of the changed emphasis since 2009, the previous Chief of Navy (2011-14), Rear Admiral Ray Griggs, defined the major operational task for the future submarine as “sinking hostile ships and submarines. In contrast, other roles such as intelligence collection, transporting special force teams and land strike using cruise missiles are very much secondary and not significant design drivers.” Yet force projection operations far from home for the submarines still appear to be high on the agenda. “The area of operations seems clear. Admiral Griggs considers the South China Sea as the area of most interest.”[3]

    In summary, therefore, while the tone may have become more diplomatic, in public at least, the overall mission of the future submarine is very much along the lines set out in the 2009 White Paper. If some roles have been downplayed by Admiral Griggs, none of them has been deleted from the list. Indeed, in proposing that the main area of operations for the future submarine will be the South China Sea, a contested and congested location not easily accessed from Australia, Admiral Griggs has endorsed a high risk, proactive role for the new boats a long way from base. This is entirely consistent with the 2009 White Paper.

    Technology: what kind of submarine does Australia need?

    What does this imply for the design of the new submarine? The problem is that some of the roles set out in the 2009 White Paper and later described by the then Chief of Navy can only be effectively discharged by a nuclear powered attack submarine (SSN). Undertaking strategic strike missions, for example, landing special forces or attacking warships and submarines in the South China Sea requires a submarine to have two important attributes apart from state-of-the-art sensors and weaponry.

    The first vital attribute is high speed. The 2009 White Paper tacitly acknowledged this (page 70): “long transits and potentially short-notice contingencies in our primary operational environment demand high levels of mobility and endurance in the Future Submarine”. A SSN can make 35 knots underwater indefinitely, while a conventional submarine (SSK) may travel at 20 knots using its batteries but only for very short distances. Using air independent propulsion (AIP) it proceeds at a leisurely four knots. The second attribute is a low indiscretion rate. A nuclear submarine never needs to surface when in its patrol zone whereas a SSK without AIP needs to come to periscope depth, where it can be detected by hostile forces, relatively frequently in order to charge its batteries.

    Overall, the high transit speed of a SSN and its ability to remain submerged for weeks on end provide immense strategic advantages. As the British demonstrated in the Falklands War after sinking the General Belgrano, the threat posed by the presence of one or more SSNs can lock up an enemy fleet in port and take it entirely out of the game.

    The government, therefore, has written a job description for a nuclear powered submarine. Yet the 2009 White Paper states clearly (page 70) that the “Government has ruled out nuclear propulsion for these submarines”. This decision has been endorsed by subsequent governments. There is an inherent contradiction here that needs to be addressed.

    To be sure, Defence has stated that Australia’s new submarine will have a greater ability than Collins to remain submerged for longer. Of the three contenders for the contract, both the French and German shipbuilders are offering AIP. This solution would allow the submarines to remain submerged for about two weeks. Speed, however, is limited to less than five knots and the AIP units are heavy and expensive.

    The third contender, the Japanese evolved Soryu class, proposes a different technology, with Lithium-ion batteries replacing lead acid batteries and without recourse to AIP systems. This is potentially a more effective solution and with the rapid development occurring in Lithium-ion technology may well become much better still in the future. More powerful batteries would allow a higher underwater speed, greater endurance and a lower indiscretion rate. Yet there are some significant problems to be overcome. For example, Japanese Lithium-ion batteries used in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner have been known to catch fire, an unacceptable outcome in a submerged submarine, particularly one that is operating in hostile waters.

    While an SSK using AIP or Lithium-ion may be quieter than a nuclear submarine, the advantage when compared to a modern American or British SSN such as Virginia or Astute is now marginal. This benefit is outweighed by a considerably slower transit speed for the SSK, slower speed when operating submerged and higher indiscretion rate.

    Until recently the RAN did not need to consider the acquisition of nuclear submarines in order to retain its technological edge in the region. Only the Americans and Russians operated nuclear submarines in their Pacific fleets and the games they played were predominantly with each other. In the Asian maritime region, first Australia’s Oberon class and then, in their early years at least, the Collins class were leaders in technology. A few other countries operated less effective conventional submarines but nothing that would cause any concern to the RAN.

    That situation has now changed substantially. Several countries in the region operate boats that are technologically more advanced than the Collins class. Even some SSKs, particularly those that are equipped with AIP, outclass Collins in important respects. Of more concern is the upsurge in nuclear submarine acquisitions. Apart from the United States and Russia, both China and India now operate nuclear submarines in the maritime Asia-Pacific and are building up their fleets. Some of these boats have the capability to attack Australian cities with ballistic and cruise missiles. China and India are also building SSNs designed to hunt and destroy other submarines, with the slower SSKs being most vulnerable to such attacks.

    The role of China’s nuclear submarine fleet is fairly clear. If positioned west of Hawaii, the new Jin class of ballistic missile submarines could threaten the whole of the continental United States as well as Australia. On the other hand, the role for the Shang class of SSNs apparently is to establish a strong presence in the South and East China Seas. According to one commentator:

    “One goal of Chinese submarines is to create an anti-access/area denial zone up to what it refers to as the First Island Chain, consisting of the Kuril Islands, Japan, Taiwan, and the South China Sea. The chain represents the absolute minimum to defend the Chinese mainland. The second goal would be to enforce China’s claims on the East and South China Seas.”[4]

    While China’s current fleet of nuclear submarines may lag behind western technological standards at this stage, that nation’s ability to catch up with the west in a short period of time should never be underestimated. Currently, for example, the civilian nuclear industry is developing at a rapid pace in China, with considerable resources devoted to small modular nuclear reactors (aka nuclear submarine power plants). China is also leaping forward in the area of defence electronic systems, particular sensors. Given that Australia’s new submarine will remain in service for perhaps 40 years, it is important to ensure that it is not outclassed before the first boat has left the shipyard.

    In a paper on the Future Submarine presented in 2014, Andrew Davies, a naval specialist at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), has analysed future trends in anti-submarine warfare. He concluded that developments in technology, particularly in sensors, would make life increasingly difficult for all submarines, but particularly SSKs. He stated that:

    “The design of the future submarine has to be cognisant of these trends, which will make penetration of adversary space or operations in contested chokepoints by the submarine itself very much harder. Basing our investment around traditional ideas of submarine operations isn’t likely to be a winning strategy a couple of decades from now”.[5]

    Davies goes on to summarise the implications of his analysis for Australia’s future submarine:

    “The net summary is that future submarines will need to:

    • operate away from chokepoints and contested spaces but be able to project influence into them
    • have a low indiscretion rate
    • be a hub for a suite of long-range sensor and weapon systems
    • be networked with other units, including electronic warfare platforms and systems
    • be able to manoeuvre quickly in response to a rapidly changing threat environment.”[6]

    Davies goes on to say: “of course, that list pretty much says ‘SSN’, but that’s not going to happen”. Because of that restriction Australia needs “to decide whether our subs are going to play in the highest end operations. If we decide we need to, we’re necessarily going up the risk reward curve for a conventional boat.” In layman’s terms, that means that if Australia decides to employ a SSK to undertake missions suitable only for a SSN, the lives of the crew would be put at high risk.

    Implications

    Drawing these threads together, it is not difficult to conclude that, unless the government downgrades the tasks it expects the future submarine to undertake, Australia’s next submarine needs to be nuclear powered. First, any SSK, even a leading-edge boat using Lithium-ion batteries, cannot dominate the battlespace in a region of the world where other countries are deploying nuclear submarines. Secondly, to send a conventional submarine into the South China Sea to attack hostile warships and submarines, to launch cruise missiles or conduct infiltration and exfiltration missions on a hostile shore would not be an efficient or effective use of naval assets and it would place naval personnel at very considerable risk.

    The next question is whether Australia is capable of acquiring and operating a fleet of nuclear submarines. Clearly there would be major hurdles, apart from the domestic political issues (incidentally, it would be impossible to build a SSN locally). First, we would need US support which is not likely to be forthcoming. This may well be negotiable, however, particularly if Australia agreed to assume a greater defence responsibility in the region in the context of the US strategic tilt to Asia.[7] Secondly, because we have no nuclear industry, conventional wisdom suggests Australia cannot maintain a nuclear submarine’s reactor. Perhaps the US Navy could be engaged to undertake this task, preferably in Australia but if necessary in Hawaii.

    If Australia were to acquire an established class of nuclear submarines from the US or Britain the cost could be substantially lower than acquiring a fleet of newly designed SSKs, particularly if they had to be built in Adelaide. We would certainly not require more than six SSNs and, in contrast to the three conventional submarine offerings currently on the table, we would be buying a tried and tested model. We could also acquire them much more quickly and allow the troubled Collins class to sail into a merciful sunset.

    Alternatively, we could accept that Australia would never go to war with a major adversary except as a member of a coalition led by the United States. In that case we could appropriately leave force projection activities in the South China Sea to the US Navy. The role of the ADF, inter alia, would then be to deny any adversary access to the approaches to Australia’s littoral. This may well be a much more realistic and less risky strategy.

    But that raises a critical question. Do we need to spend up to $40 billion on new submarines in order to defend Australia’s maritime approaches? The answer to this may well be in the negative because Australia is already acquiring a number of other advanced defence assets that can accomplish this. These include a new generation of frigates that will be highly capable in anti-submarine warfare (ASW). These will be networked into very substantial RAAF assets, including the six airborne early warning Boeing Wedgetails, up to 12 Boeing P-8 Poseidon long-range maritime patrol aircraft, 36 Super Hornets (including 12 of the very advanced electronic warfare ‘Growler’ version) and 72 F-35 joint strike fighters. We already have an excellent aerial refuelling capability. With its ability to locate and destroy hostile submarines as well as surface ships, the new Poseidon in particular will be an important asset in denying access to Australia’s approaches. It is therefore difficult to see how a SSK would be required to play a role here.

    Finally, to venture into more sensitive territory, it is not difficult to deduce that the main reason the US is keen for Australia to acquire a new generation of SSKs is not power projection but rather the contribution they would make to intelligence gathering, specifically in the area of communications electronics support measures (CESM). The Kestrel CESM system fitted to the Collins class, for example, provides “wideband signal search, narrowband audio interception and direction finding (DF) over the HF, VHF and UHF bands”.[8] Apart from the considerable strategic benefit offered by the intelligence it provides, this capability presently gives Australia valuable ‘coin’ in the intelligence sharing agreement with the US. Whether or not it could be provided safely and effectively by sophisticated aircraft (manned and unmanned) or satellites rather than submarines is a key question.

    Prime Minister Turnbull has stated that, across the broad spectrum of government policy, all options are on the table. In that context, mature analysis of these strategic considerations, before committing to buy very costly submarines, is a major priority. The issue of whether or not the submarines should be built in Adelaide pales into insignificance next to these fundamental questions.

     

    Jon Stanford is a Director of Insight Economics. He had a significant career as an economist in the Australian Public Service, ultimately in the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. He has worked extensively on economic and policy issues around defence procurement and naval shipbuilding both in the public service and subsequently as a consultant. 

     

    [1] Australian Government (2009), Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century, Defence White Paper, Canberra.

    [2] Australian Government (2013), Defending Australia and its National Interests, Defence White Paper 2013, Canberra, pages 81-82.

    [3] Peter Layton (2015), “Australia’s next submarine – will it be the Soryu”, Defence Today, Vol 11, No 4, page 8.

    [4] Kyle Mizokami (2013), “Asia’s Submarine Race”, USNI News, US Naval Institute, November, http://news.usni.org/2013/11/13/asias-submarine-race

    [5] Andrew Davies (2014), Trends in submarine and anti-submarine warfare, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra, http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ASPI-submarine-conference-2014-Davies.pdf

    [6] Ibid.

    [7] In recent times the US has been more forthcoming in terms of its willingness to transfer sensitive defence technologies to Australia. To date, for example, Australia is the only country outside the US to acquire the highly advanced electronic warfare EA-18G ‘Growler’ version of the Super Hornet fighter-bomber.

    [8] Daronmont Technologies, http://www.daronmont.com.au/dartweb/index.php/projects/kestrel

  • Ian Richards. The Submarine Menace

    Way back in the 1980s, then Defence Minister Kim Beasley gave birth to the greatest industrial White Elephant in the history of our nation  –  the establishment of the submarine construction facility in Adelaide,South Australia.   So much has been written and said about the Collins Class submarine construction  project that I do not need to elaborate upon it.  Suffice it to say that it was succinctly described in the media  as a “disaster”. It would be hard  to find many who would disagree.

    Politicians of both persuasions have since that time  prostituted their principles in pursuit of their holy grail – VOTES.  In this case, votes in South Australia. . The beauty of these kinds of long-term projects from a Minister’s perspective is that while they get the kudos from announcing the project and cutting a ribbon, they will be safely drawing their superannuation when the full horror of a disastrous acquisition begins to unfold.

    As a result we are now embarked upon the second saga in this sorry tale.  We are building three orphan Destroyers  unique to Australia.  As an alternative, we could have purchased three US built ARLEIGH BURKE class  destroyers – considerably more capable ships – plus a hundred fully equipped regional hospitals for the same total project  cost.  The media reports that the  first ship is way over budget and three years late.  This augurs badly for the future of these ships – if construction delays resulted from unmanageable complexity – and why else??  – the lifetime logistic support will be a nightmare. .  As Australian orphans we will have to provide a costly  inventory of lifetime spares – rather than tap into the US stockpile if we had purchased the ARLEIGH BURKEs. The initial and annual  costs of the Destroyer dedicated bureaucrats in the Defence Materiel Organisation  will amount to a staggering figure.

    A passing comment by an industry rep at a Sydney Trade Fair  some years back perhaps says it all  – “The propeller shafts were designed in Finland, manufactured in Holland and will be powered by what is known in the trade as ‘the bastard Caterpillar’, a US Caterpillar diesel modified by the Spaniards”.  I cannot vouch for his accuracy, but I suspect the principle in his comment is correct. The first of class is already effectively three years old  –  the second and third will be five? six? years out of date on commissioning. Ten years after commissioning, how many of the companies providing installed equipment will still be manufacturing suitable spares?

    The Government is now faced with a decision on the procurement of new submarines.  For a moment, leave aside manufacturing or employment considerations and look only at the requirements for the defence of Australia.

    A fundamental consideration must be – “Conventionally armed conventionally powered submarines have made no significant contribution to strategic imperatives or military operations in the past 70 years”.

    At a Naval seminar some two or three years ago the Chief of Navy laid emphasis on the transition of the Navy to an amphibious capability greatly enhanced by the new CANBERRA class helicopter carriers. An overbalance of submarine capability does not fit into this theme.

    Submarines are a major all-out- war weapon against a major foe.  When our projected  new submarines  are torpedoing  Indonesian, Chinese, Indian,Russian merchant ships and warships or our very expensive very advanced projected  new submarines are firing missiles into Shanghai, or Djakarta or Delhi or Vladivostok  our new submarines could be usefully employed. Short of such a scenario, our new submarines will be of little consequence.

    That said, a case can be made for a small number of modest capability submarines in a balanced Australian Defence Force. A force of 12 submarines for Australia as proposed by the previous Government is nothing short of absurd.

    Looking now at the manufacturing and employment considerations, surely we have demonstrated with the Collins Class and now the Air Warfare Destroyers that it is not possible for a small nation with limited requirements and limited high tech industrial infrastructure to build very advanced warships or submarines in tiny numbers other than at prohibitive cost and with production delays and lifetime logistic problems.  Argentina, a country not too dissimilar to Australia, demonstrated abundantly in their disastrous  submarine building programme why not to go there. “Building submarines” is of course a misnomer  –  we are not “building” submarines, but building a metal box . At least  95% of the contents will be  made overseas – all the weapons and most of the systems and sub-systems will be foreign made. Bought in penny packets, the cost of “making” a motor car in this fashion would be huge  –  for a submarine, even more so. It is almost certainly less costly to buy a submarine complete off the shelf than to buy all the components to assemble it in Australia. The Australian “building” thus adds no value but huge cost to the equation.

    If we were determined to build high tech high risk submarines in Australia, surely we would have chosen one of our industrially developed areas rather than a charming rural backwater that has a demonstrated incapacity to build merchant ships or even motor cars competitively.

    There are so many arguments against this project.  But the White Elephant is trumpeting to be fed, spurred on by its clamourous mahout, the South Australian Parliament.

    The submarine Project is a serious menace to the wellbeing  of Australia’s future taxpayers. It is for the Government to show its wisdom in deciding whether or not  to continue with a project that will extract  $20,000,000,000 or $30,000,000,000 from them  with little improvement in the Nation’s defence. There are many other projects that would be more valuable, create more employment  and justify such expenditure.

    Ian Richards, AO, retired as Rear Admiral, Royal Australian Navy, in 1984. He variously commanded HMAS Perth, Stuart and Third Destroyer Squadron. He was Director of Naval Plans and Chief of Joint Operations, Defence. He was Deputy Chief, Naval Staff, when he retired as Rear Admiral.

  • Cavan Hogue. MH17

    The Dutch led report doesn’t really tell us anything much we couldn’t already work out but it does highlight some valid points.

    That the missile was Russian is hardly news but the report does give us the make, However, while theoretically this might help trace who bought it, missiles have moved around so much that all parties can disclaim ownership and in any case the Russians are certainly capable of faking it. But since all three parties involved have Russian missiles this is not a smoking gun and the report makes it clear that both Russia and Ukraine have this type of missile.

    The report does point the finger of blame at the government in Kiev for not closing the air space over the war zone. While the prime responsibility must remain with whoever shot down the plane, Kiev cannot escape censure for taking risks – presumably for the fees to be collected.

    It is also hard to disagree with the observation that this must surely have been an accident. Nobody had anything to gain by shooting down a Malaysian airliner. The conspiracy theories floating around which blame one party or another for doing it deliberately cannot be taken seriously. The Ukrainian Government’s argument that it was a deliberate act by Russia suffers from the same lack of credence as the Russian claim that it was Ukraine that shot down the plane by air to air rockets. Both claims are propaganda pure and simple.

    The report does not tell us who pushed the button or ordered it pushed. The Dutch criminal investigation taking place may or may not come up with evidence that would hold up in a court of law. No doubt everyone will continue to blame everyone else while the tabloids and shock jocks will show their customary preference for lurid rhetoric over evidence. Nevertheless, the prime suspect must be an incompetent rebel in separatist controlled territory who thought he was shooting down a Ukrainian warplane. Whether the hunt for the blood of that individual will ever bear fruit only time will tell. In the meantime, public statements by all the parties involved will be driven more by their political interests than by a concern for the truth.

    Cavan Hogue was formerly Australian ambassador to USSR and to Russia.

  • Cavan Hogue. Russia in Syria and Australian implications.

    What are Australia’s objectives in the Middle East imbroglio? The simple answer is that it is about the American Alliance. We see ourselves as part of a global alliance led by the USA and generally supported by European powers: countries that  “share our values”. We are there because they are. Therefore the fact that our military presence makes no difference to the situation in Syria or in defeating ISIS is not really relevant. Nor is it relevant that our military presence does nothing to discourage idealistic young Australians from joining ISIS and may even encourage them. Neither is it relevant that the US doesn’t really know what it is doing there. But of course domestic politics in Australia are always relevant.

    Russia does have clear strategic objectives in supporting Bashir al Assad just as it does in Crimea and Ukraine. Western pressure, including sanctions, only entrenches Putin’s domestic popularity because he is seen as a strong man who defends the Motherland against foreign oppressors. So Putin does not need to give in to American and NATO huffing and puffing. Russians distrust NATO and even more the US who they do not believe have any right to the moral highground – especially since it was the illegal Coalition of the Willing that opened Pandora’s Box. So Putin will negotiate but will not give anything important away.  Who is the greater evil: ISIS or Bashir al Assad?  Furthermore it is increasingly obvious that the current strategy is not working so the Americans must eventually go back to the drawing board which means either go home, get heavily involved militarily on the ground or work with Assad. Russia holds the cards in the Ukraine/Crimea situation and no doubt believes it has the winning cards in Syria also. While the aircraft that strayed into Turkish airspace probably was a navigational error as the Russians claim, the Russians argue that everyone opposed to Assad is a terrorist and their aim is to support their rooster against “terrorists”. Therefore they may well be targeting non-ISIS groups opposed to Assad but they are not likely to listen to sermons from NATO. It could also be a ploy to pressure others to support Assad. As the US found out when it armed the Taliban against the USSR, it is not always easy to know who are the goodies and who are the baddies.

    Australia is a babe in the Middle Eastern woods where various factions fight other factions in an ever changing kaleidoscope. We would be well advised to keep out of the region and stop kidding ourselves that we have influence. The US expects us to toe the line but we could try to persuade them to be more realistic and less ideological .However our track record is not encouraging. Russia sees us as simply a camp follower of the USA and so is not really interested in our views .Prime Minister Turnbull is showing some awareness of reality by noting that a military solution is not an option and seems to understand that our military presence in the region is more likely to radicalise young idealists than calm them down. It will be interesting to see what develops.

    Cavan Hogue was formerly Australian ambassador to USSR and to Russia.

  • Richard Butler. Russia and Syria: The continuation of politics by other means.

    In their addresses to the UN General assembly, last week, Presidents Obama and Putin focused on the civil war in Syria. Both emphasized the need for the war, now in its 5th year, to be brought to an end. They both said that a political solution needed to be found, but they differed on a central issue: the role of Syrian President Bashir Al Assad.

    The US position widely supported by western and key regional states and, of course, Syrian groups fighting the regime, was that Assad and his government must go. The Russian position was that Assad’s government is the legitimate authority in Syria and it must have a role in any negotiations to bring about an end to the conflict and determine the future government of Syria. Even before Putin’s public address, Obama stated in his, that Assad might be given a transitional role, but could not be left standing at the end. This was seen as a concession by the US. Indeed, conservative critics of Obama decried this as yet another sign of his inherent weakness.

    Importantly, both Presidents agreed that it was essential for the Islamic State (IS) to be removed. There was an expectation that, in their subsequent private meeting, they might be able to identify ways in which, despite their differing basic positions, they might forge a political/diplomatic process through which an end to the war was negotiated.

    While there was no substantive indication of what took place in that meeting, other events which took place immediately thereafter, were very clear.

    Obama invited States prepared to form a coalition against IS to join him in a meeting, which he chaired. Sixty States took part. Australia was one. Extradordinarily, given the history of US/Iraqi involvement, Iraq was not. This group pledged to step up and coordinate action to defeat IS.

    Putin announced the formation of a group with a similar purpose. It was formed by 4 States: Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. It mirrored the establishment in Baghdad, a few weeks earlier, of a common intelligence and coordination center targeted on the situation in Syria.

    Within the same period and while this public political discourse was taking place at the UN, Russia was moving significant military assets, mainly although not exclusively, aerial assets into western Syria.

    Three days after the UN speeches and talks had concluded, Russia launched its first attacks on targets on the ground in Syria. They have continued daily since then. Credible reports indicate that their targets have been, in the main, forces opposed to the Assad government, not IS. Russia has not stated why this has occurred, what exactly is intended, for how long or far this military action goes.

    But, these things are clear. Russia has now entered the Syrian and regional contest in a significant way. Putin gave some of the reasons for this in his UN speech. Russia is not prepared to accept a world shaped by US power or the notion so favored by the US that is “the exceptional country”. It believes that the west abused the authority given by the UN Security Council to protect threatened citizens in Libya by extending that to regime change in Libya. Russia will never accept external intervention to change a legitimately constituted government.      (See my paper on Russian foreign policy, Pearls and Irritations, January 5th, 2015)

    As ever, in international politics, the stated reasons for extraordinary action, especially military action, are never the whole or real reasons. Naturally, Putin has not highlighted publicly other issues which clearly are of concern to him because of the threat they pose to his hold on power; The existence of potentially jihadist groups within Russia, and his reliance upon support from small but immensely powerful groups in Russia, principally with economic interests.

    He is convinced that this pressure demand from him the visible exercise of strength, of strong government, and this in turn, is a crucial element in his wider public popularity.

    The Russians and others have watched US bombing in Syria for almost a year and have noticed that its usefulness in “degrading and defeating” IS has been questionable, to say the least, but that the impact of the actions of Syrian rebels, supported by the west have been starting to threaten the Assad regime. It is the latter trend that has more likely stimulated Russian military intervention.

    The complexity of the situation in the region, with facets not unlike a rubic cube, is now underlined by immediate reactions to Russia’s military actions and its 4-power coalition.

    Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf States see it entirely through the lens of their obsession with the rise of Iran. They take virtually no refugees from Syria, they supply arms and money to the Syrian rebels, the very groups the Russians are now bombing, because they are opposed to Assad, and that because he is supported by Iran. They welcome some of the US’ actions but not necessarily the nuclear agreement with Iran.

    Turkey, with its long and troubled border with Syria and what it sees as its Kurdish problem, and its fairly good relationship with Russia, but bitter opposition to Assad, has promoted the idea of a safe, no fly zone, in northern Syria. The entry of the Russian air force into the area has rendered that untenable.

    Perhaps above all, the US at least for the current moment seems to have no clear idea what to do, although it has just been reported that it is to increase military support to anti IS forces in Syria. It is now faced with the fact that its main nuclear armed rival has now entered, militarily, into a sphere, the gut politics of which it has thought it controlled, no matter how ineptly, and expected to continue to control. What can be done about the significantly increased possibility of military accidents between them?

    The underlying philosophy advanced by Putin at the UN, a conservative, state centered philosophy, has widespread appeal in UN circles and it is in large measure supported by international law. The US/UK/Australia invasion of Iraq in 2003 was contrary to international law. The removal of the Qadaffi regime in Libya was not what the UN authorized. Russia claims that its current military intervention in Syria is at the invitation of the legitimate government of Syria, and if this is so, then it’s legal. The action Russia then takes within Syria may be another matter and, it’s lying about its targets there is a case in point.

    Von Clausewitz’s now classic observation that, “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, would appear to be alive and well in Syria today and much of the region in which it lives. It is the approach the US has mostly employed, parlayed as pursuing peace through strength, and the Russians have now plainly adopted.

    The trouble with it is that it constitutes a continuum between violence and political settlements. It is always so costly and stupid because the settlement will come, even though it almost certainly will not be the one some would have preferred, yet only after insupportable cost. As Australia has chosen to be a participant in the US led coalition to address problems in Syria and Iraq, indeed has sent military assets there without public or parliamentary debate, we should in these new circumstances, seek respectful inclusion in policy discussion within the coalition. It should not be acceptable for our military simply to be given deployment orders. We should check ourselves any proposed deployments given the shocking errors in the US bombing of Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz.

    As, it seems that military competition between the US and Russia in a common theater is now more likely, and this could lead to calls for further engagement by Australia, the task of clarifying the legitimate legal and political means by which Australia decides to go to war has become urgent .

    (See www.warpowersreform.org.au)

    Richard Butler AC, Former Australian Ambassador to the UN and Executive Chairman of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq (UNSCOM)

  • Why fighters are quitting ISIS.

    The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at Kings College London points to the ways that many thousands of recruits who journeyed to Iraq and Syria may now be regretting their decisions. The more defectors speak out, the more the ISIS cause will suffer. The ICSR Report Executive Summary follows.  John Menadue.

    Executive Summary

    • Defectors from the so-called Islamic State (IS) are a new and growing phenomenon. Since January 2014, at least 58 individuals have left the group and publicly spoken about their defection. They represent a small fraction of the many disillusioned fighters who have turned against IS.

    • The defectors provide unique insight into life in the Islamic State. But their stories can also be used as a potentially powerful tool in the fight against it. The defectors’ very existence shatters the image of unity and determination that IS seeks to convey. Their narratives highlight the group’s contradictions and hypocrisies. Their example encourages members to leave the group. And their experience and credibility can help deter others from joining.

    • The defectors’ reasons for leaving may be as complex as the reasons they joined. Not everyone has become a fervent supporter of liberal democracy. Some may have committed crimes. They joined the most violent and totalitarian organization of our age, yet they are now its worst enemies.

    • Among the stories of the 58 defectors, we identified four key narratives:
    1) ‘IS is more interested in fighting fellow (Sunni) Muslims than the Assad government
    2) ‘IS is involved in brutality and atrocities against (Sunni) Muslims.’
    3) ‘IS is corrupt and un-Islamic.’ 4) ‘Life under IS is harsh and disappointing.’

    • Defecting from IS is complex and dangerous. Wannabe defectors are faced with numerous obstacles. Their first challenge is to separate from IS and make their way into non-IS held territory. But even those who succeed are not necessarily safe. What prevents them from speaking out is the fear of reprisals and the worry that prosecutors may use their openness against them.

    • Our recommendations are for governments and activists to recognize the value and credibility of defector narratives; provide defectors with opportunities to speak out; assist them in resettlement and ensure their safety; and remove legal disincentives that prevent them from going public.