The time has come – indeed, is well past – for those responsible for giving the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) its Length Of Type Extension to decommission it in the manner of a ship of the line, or submarine, whose usefulness to the fleet has demonstrably expired and cannot under any circumstance be regarded as fit for purpose it was designed for.
Retiring it from active service would be a hard call on those parts of it which, over the years, have made, and continue to make frequent important, relevant and research-based contributions to national security issues in the areas of, for example, defence industry, technology and economics, defence infrastructure and the overall supply chain.
For these, a new institutional home should be found because their work makes available the bases for understanding the political and logistical economies of defence to an interested public.
The same cannot be said of the outpouring of ASPI’s political-strategic analyses, most especially those promulgated in recent weeks under the authorship of its Executive Director, Mr. Peter Jennings. They are of a tone – strident, bordering on the manic – and of a type which has all the hallmarks of a sloppy, ahistorical, incurious approach to strategic policy. In short they are the product of an institutional mind closed to moving beyond the surface manifestation of alliance protocols and their intolerance of change and its drivers.
Two recent pieces on this site frame this development: one, by Mike Scrafton identified the hectoring which ASPI has resorted to in its refusal to countenance understandings of China other than its own that might be valid by dismissing the scholars, commentators and analysts holding them as “Beijing’s collection of local useful idiots” (elsewhere he describes them as a “chorus of Beijing’s local fanboys”).
Scrafton also accurately identifies the parading of “indulgent war fantasies” involving what are know as “disruptive technologies” and a conceptual ignorance of what deterrence would be with regard to China in the same document.
The research literature on these subjects is substantial and their findings are devastating for any continued belief in their efficacy of the strategies in question but, to all intents and purposes, they are ignored.
The second piece is Marcus Reubenstein’s analysis of the ASPI’s attempt to intervene in the deliberations of the Australian Research Council as part of a project, funded by the US Stare Department, to link certain academics at Australian universities with programmes favouring the Chinese military.
Between these and other recent posts in The Strategist by Jennings the intellectual character of ASPI is a reproach and betrayal of the organisation’s founding role and principles.
While it was never expected that ASPI would embrace to entire gamut of strategic studies (Critical Security Studies by way of one example), it was, so far as the public record bears witness, never intended to be a stenographer to US psychoses of decline, and a purveyor of what is, with regard to China, Threat Porn.
In its foundational period it produced strategic analyses that were intellectually aware and on important issues and though one might have disagreed with their arguments and conclusions, one did so for serious reasons based on the same levels of engagement and robust propositions. That changed quite some time ago.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in its recent pronouncements on China in particular – which tend to alternate between those of a concierge (most days) and a political-strategic consigliere when irritated by the impertinence of contending voices and points of view.
Informed by the view that Australia’s previously cordial relationship with China was always delusion and is now irretrievable because the latter has disclosed its true, threatening nature, the way forward to peace, apparently, is to reject the gullibility and idiocy of past policies on China and enter into an even tighter geosynchronous orbit around the United States.
As befits such a satellite it should eschew existing relationships with China, forge more links with democracies, fast-track the research, development and eventual production of “complex munitions” (missiles), and aggressively offer to host the newly reconstituted 1st Fleet of the US Navy from HMAS Stirling and the Port of Darwin – a basing arrangement which would complement the already exisiting “rotational presence” of the US Marine Corps.
The objective is a clear and unambiguous endorsement of the July defence strategic update understood as “a new effort to increase the range and hitting per of the Australian Defence Force.”
It would be an understatement to describe the foregoing as poor defence policy recommendations; in essence they are egregious – conspicuously bad and dangerous.
In justification there is no need to look beyond the gravitational centre of them which is to say US global strategy and the ostensible democracies which are to be embraced.
In injuriously brief terms, the United States, by any strict accounting, normally functions as an oligarchy or a plutocracy, depending on the focus; over the last quarter of a century the system manifests itself as an American version conforming to the essential elements of fascism.
Strategically, a close reading of just two documents, National Security Strategy (2017), and Joint Vision 2020 (2000), spell out the non-negotiable objective of “overmatch” / “full spectrum dominance” – which is to say a regime which cannot contemplate strategic parity let alone the legitimate demands of others to contribute to the establishment of the rules of world politics.
In all they provide a blueprint for global politics as a mirror image of US domestic politics: tribalistic, resentful, and incipiently prone to major war.
As for the other democracies, almost certainly they will have to include the other members of The Quad – India and Japan. Neither should be thought appropriate and reliable security partners; and neither is on a political trajectory that is remotely democratic (see recent posts by Ramesh Thakur and Gavan McCormack).
To say the least, this is a scandalous state of affairs for an organisation dedicated to providing policy advice on national security. And it is only made worse by a particularly disingenuous aside – namely, that the funding that ASPI receives from the Australian defence industry has no more impact on its analyses than does the substantial defence and industry funding on the analyses of most Australian universities.
This is a curious confession: on the one hand it does not deny the influence of funding on analysis; on the other it is ignorant of the public record – specifically, the admissions by one professorial head the International Relations Department of the ANU and another by the head of the same university’s Peace Research Centre. In both cases they stated that they engaged in self-censorship because they operated within a threat environment which could see them closed down for producing analyses and positions unpleasing to Government.
Such honesty was welcome and refreshing, albeit late and somewhat muted, and it goes to the heart of the malaise of ASPI – now concerned, in the main, to circumvent critics thought and critical engagement in the interests of peddling half-truths and illusions.
Michael McKinley is a member of the Emeritus Faculty, the Australian National University; he taught Strategy, Diplomacy and International Conflict at the University of Western Australia and the ANU.
Michael McKinley is a member of the Emeritus Faculty, the Australian National University; he taught Strategy, Diplomacy and International Conflict at the University of Western Australia and the ANU.
Comments
26 responses to “It’s time to decommission ASPI”
To the list to be wound up include Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Lowe Institute. There are more lurking out there particularly within the universities. Nations are understood as ‘strategic powers” and relations as either ally or enemy. This provides the premise for concocting security threats to justify public financing of defence expenditure by military corporations that finance the concoction.
As Gavan Macormack says in relation to Abe, ”“One strong” implies “many weak.”
I sometimes wonder if Peter Jennings is quite right in the head? Sad to say
“involving what are know as ”
“in their efficacy of the strategies in question”
“The US Stare Department”…
“Threat Porn“…
“the range and hitting per of the Australian Defence Force”…
“the essential elements of fascism“…
“critics thought“…
These must be the Irritations part. They’re certainly not the Pearls.
Well thought out piece from Michael McKinley. It is worth noting that ASPI is well aware of the serious shortcomings of its research. Its China projects are virtually all authored by young analysts (in their early 20s) with no background in strategic studies, no post-grad qualifications and – as for its ‘top’ researcher on Xinjiang human rights abuses – a 23 year old ANU dropout from an undergrad course in Middle Eastern Studies.
Crucially, Peter Jennings (a career political operative) never puts his name to their reports and has no direct involvement in their launch or promotion. Though he spearheads this anti-China propaganda outfit, I cannot recall him ever standing shoulder to shoulder with these junior China hawks. It begs the question if this ASPI research (funded by the US and its weapons makers and promoted globally) is truly ground-breaking, why would ASPI’s senior management completely distance themselves from their organisation’s work?
Young ASPI analysts are extremely active on Twitter (one often likening ASPI critics to Nazis). Yet they are careful to never make any references at all to Jennings or the fact that he ultimately commissions their work. Though social media is a central plank of the think tank’s promotion strategy, Jennings himself is one of the only ASPI staff not to hold a Twitter account. In the great military tradition Jennings has set up his ‘plausible deniability’ and will never be tagged by his Twitter trolls who at times make outrageous claims in social media.
Decommissioning is an unlikely prospect under the current LNP – though a future government could dismantle ASPI and reconstitute a think-tank whose funding would be directly dependent on sticking to the charter.
Marcus, many thanks for you thoughtful and very informative comment. Your assessment of apparent divisions in the assessment of the China Threat thesis is interesting and appreciated. I agree that the decommissioning ASPI is an unlikely prospect, and that means that the knowledgeable insights provided by those in the area of technical-economic analysis are tainted by being under the aegis of the sloppy threat peddling in other areas which attract a great deal of attention, not least by the mainstream media.
Yes Marcus, young ASPI ‘analysts’ like Vicky Xu:
https://www.aspi.org.au/bio/vicky-xiuzhong-xu
https://www.vickyxu.com/
She’s a comedian!!
Ditto Alex Joske, whose nutty ‘expertise’ is also being used by senior ASPI jokers to spin their China scare stories.
Do we laugh, or do we cry for Australia?
It’s arguable whether we are carrying out a kind of seppuku on ourselves, without quite knowing it.
Even though she is pretty conflicted and quite deliberately biased, I am reluctant to highlight Vicky Xu. She has recently left ASPI (for reasons that are not altogether clear) and is now the target of an appalling, and very personal, online smear campaign. There is simply no excuse for those attacks, she has done nothing to deserve this.
Ok, thanks for update.
Marcus, it is not just the young analysts that are the problem.
For example Paul Dibb’s last couple of ASPI Special Reports (on Russia and Russia and China) have been appalling in their jingoism, selective use of facts and ignoring key contextual factors; no doubt to support a pre-determined conclusion. It doesn’t say much for the editorial process of the organisation when it allows such reports to be published under its banner.
Yes agreed. I would say Peter Jennings has turned ASPI into a very commercialised propaganda outfit. Since he took over sponsorship revenue has increased by 1,000% and his remuneration has gone up by more than 60%.
ASPI is a voice for the uncontrolled, unstoppable US kleptocracy. As part of it we are guilty of promoting and participating in international interventions for which our political and military leadership must be held responsible
John, holding the political and military leadership responsible for their decisions – many of which are undertaken for reasons that do not qualify as being in the national interest – would be a remarkable and radical step towards democratic politics. As for government being influenced by ASPI, isn’t it truly strange that government need to fund stenographers and echo chambers to repeat what they already know and have decided?
The echo chamber seems to be part of government strategy these days including using certain individuals in the ABC acting outside their paid role as Corporation journalists.
Stan Grant for one who is in the employ of ASPI.
Yes Stephen. High profile aboriginal people seem to be targeted by large corporations, think tanks, etc. I recall actually seeing Charlie Perkins harassing some people in the Pilbara some years ago when he was a consultant for Rio Tinto (Hammersley Iron).
We could start by defunding ASPI – removing nearly 70% of their funding they receive from the Commonwealth
Ken, that would be a start but, as with my article and Marcus Reubenstein’s proposal below, I believe there is a definite need for well-resourced, critically-engaged independent analytical centres because the ongoing national debate on defence and national security requires tham. ASPI once had such a promise – but no more in my view (except in certain technical-economic areas). Such centres would probably need to be funded by government – but then the question is how the organisation’s independence can be guaranteed. Bear in mind, too, that research centres on national defence inside the university system can be quite problematic in their own ways as well.
Well it does its job admirably as a neocon think tank! Neocons control our global strategies
https://twitter.com/i/status/902855541143117825
Amen! Sometimes it seems that the panoply of government departments and analytical intelligence agencies are redundant and the most efficient way of Australia being in harmony and communion with US neocon thinking would be to have state-of-the-art fax machines installed in all relevant ministerial and executive offices. Perhaps that is already the case. If it is, there are considerable savings to be made by cutting out the middlemen.
Considerable they are just a phone call away!
Could you go into a little more detail about the self-censorship at the Peace Research Centre at the ANU ?
It closed in 1997 – https://archivescollection.anu.edu.au/index.php/peace-research-centre-research-school-of-pacific-studies
Peter, as I recall the (to me, very welcome) establishment of the PRC at the ANU, it was the fulfilment of a promise by the given by the ALP when in Opposition. It attracted fine scholars both from within Australia and internationally. The problem was that its major funding was from the DFAT budget, and thus it became a hostage to that arrangement, especially in policy areas inn which there was a tension / contradiction between Australia’s declaratory positions on nuclear arms control and disarmament on the one hand, and the country’s operational strategies within the alliance with the US. The nature of the relationship was best expressed by its foundation Head as being one in which “you can bite the hand which feeds you, but you cannot bite it off.” This self-censorship, however, proved to be futile in the long run: the LNP Government exercised its vandalistic prerogative when the Howard Government was elected in 1996 and funding was withdrawn.
Thanks for reading, Michael
It was this statement that suggested a few more details please, especially about its timing:
“In both cases they stated that they engaged in self-censorship because they operated within a threat environment which could see them closed down for producing analyses and positions unpleasing to Government”.
Was that self-censorship by the PRC at the ANU in 1996 – the first year of Howard ? Or otherwise during the earlier ALP years ?
Peter, my distinct recollection was that it began quite soon after the PRC was established – that is, during the ALP years.
Thanks you again for your prompt responses, Michael
The current Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University show what one person can do after leaving the PRC at the ANU
https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/about/our-people/academic-staff/wendy- and
https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/schools/school-of-social-and-political-sciences/department-of-peace-and-conflict-studies.htmllambourne.html