Australian focus – Here and there

No justice for Djokovic: the danger of different rules for politicians

19 January 2022 Mike Scrafton Australian focus

Plenty of Australian parliamentarians have made more incendiary statements against Covid vaccination than the tennis star ever did. Who might this arbitrary censorship power fall on next?

Global warming: the nine essential questions for candidates at election 2022

13 January 2022 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, Climate crisis

Trends in Australia’s emissions growth are disturbing. What questions should be put to the political classes who aspire to take on the responsibility for the wellbeing, welfare, prosperity and security of Australian citizens?

More than an acronym: AUKUS must be an election issue in 2022

21 December 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, Strategy, defence and security

When the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines are delivered, they will be expensive white elephants. And this strategically unsupportable and inordinately expensive project will distort defence policy for a generation.

Magical thinking: nuclear submarines and Australia’s Maginot Line of the imagination

6 October 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus

The prospect of nuclear powered submarines has generated a lot of magical thinking in defence and strategic policy circles. But the incontrovertible fact is that submarines that don’t exist cannot either defend or deter.

Nuclear-powered submarines are just bad defence policy

19 September 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus

Leaving aside the potentially adverse strategic implications of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine decision, for those who think a submarine capability is important, it is simply bad defence policy. Australian governments are now certain to be bedevilled by submarines for generations.

Is ASPI advocating outsourcing defence policy to the gun-runners?

3 August 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus

Is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute advocating that Defence policy should be outsourced to weapon system manufacturers? Commercial organisations responsible to shareholders, often foreign interests, should not be responsible for identifying and pursuing Australia’s national interest.

Australia’s strategic conundrum – is America declining?

14 July 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus

The key judgement Australian decision-makers need to confront concerns the sustainability of the United States’ great power status. Is America reaching a tipping point; an inflexion point where the upward great power trajectory it has been on for over a century is reversed?

Warriors, war and Mike Pezzullo’s ANZAC Day message

8 May 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, Strategy, defence and security

What are the ‘drums of war’ that senior Australian public servant, Michael Pezzullo, can hear? His words have been understood as echoing anti-China warmongering found among some commentators and hinting strongly at the current hysteria around Taiwan. So how did the Australian government deal with a senior public servant stepping into the political limelight in this way?

Democracy militant: strategic autonomy and Europe’s lessons for Australia

27 April 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy

The Europeans won’t join with the like-minded allies massing behind America’s banner of democracy militant. While they will add theirs to other voices standing up for human rights, international laws and norms, and multilateralism, the EU won’t follow Biden’s clarion call into an all out multi-spectrum confrontation with China. Is there a lesson here for Australia?

The persistence of American authoritarianism should worry Australia

28 February 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

Has an enduring predisposition to authoritarianism been activated in the US that will continue to destabilise its domestic politics? If so, the US could become an unreliable ally. Should Australia be imagining a post-alliance future?

ASEAN: central to whose vision for the Indo-Pacific?

24 February 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, International relations

Australia places ASEAN “at the heart of our vision for the Indo-Pacific”. But a powerful dynamic, unrelated to the Indo-Pacific concept, is drawing ASEAN countries closer to China. In future, Southeast Asia may at best be neutral, or may possibly be more closely aligned with China. ASEAN could then be central to China’s “vision”.

Taiwan: a ‘wicked’ strategic problem for Australia

1 February 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Strategy, defence and security

For Australia, the question of Taiwan remains a ‘wicked’ strategic problem. The Taiwanese have over time established strong claims for their autonomy. The US has a huge investment in Taiwan’s security, while not denying it is part of China. And defence of Taiwan could see the island devastated, the ANZUS alliance become irrelevant, and Australia’s security lost. Why would Australia go to war over Taiwan?

The curious case of the ‘United States Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific’

27 January 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Strategy, defence and security

On 12 January 2021, the then US National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien, released a declassified document titled the United States Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific. The document was declassified for release on 5 January 2021, thirty years before this was due, in the last days of the outgoing Trump Administration. What should an Australian analyst make of this document?

What should Australia want from a Biden National Security Strategy?

20 January 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

If President Biden produces a National Security Strategy in 2021, Australia should hope for a major shift away from that of President Trump. But not an uncritical return to the 2015 version of President Obama. If stability and a workable international system are the outcomes the Biden Administration seeks, then three deeply interwoven issues need to be given serious attention: leadership, democracy, and sovereignty.

China-Australia decoupling? ASPI float a hydrogen balloon

27 December 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, Strategy, defence and security

It will become increasingly the case that if Australia doesn’t address the demands of the next economy, its prosperity, and therefore its security, will decline. In this context the development of an Australian clean steel industry using green hydrogen, proposed by ASPI’s Michael Shoebridge, looks enticing. But is it feasible of itself, let alone as part of decoupling from China’s economy? Or is it a distraction from the real economic and security issues facing Australia?

The deceit of deterrence: a bankrupt strategic justification for defence expenditure

23 December 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, Strategy, defence and security

One of Australia’s three key strategic objectives is to “deter actions against our interests”, although what this means in practice is largely unexamined. Yet the concept of deterrence is frequently used to justify acquiring expensive, high-tech weapons platforms and systems. But what does the government envisage the submarines, new naval vessels, F-35s, and variety of long-range missiles will deter? In Australia’s strategic circumstances, what part can deterrence play in its strategic policy?

China-Australia relations: it’s not as simple as ABC

18 December 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy

There are many commentators with strong and legitimate concerns about China. The relationship between Australia and China is a very important one and it warrants being debated openly and vigorously. But when those with privileged access to the public square confuse name calling and assertion with rational argument, it is important to point this out. The recent ABC article As Australia’s relationship with China deteriorates beyond repair, we need to find new trade partners is a case in point.

Strategic capitalism, geoeconomics and Australia’s choices

26 November 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

As market-based economic globalisation gives way to a system of state relations based largely on strategic capitalism, the Australian government seems to be using an outdated operating system. The demise of the multi-lateral, rules-based and open world will pose problems that demand imagination, innovation and deft and agile policy and diplomacy. In this environment Australia has a difficult course to chart.

The metrics of strategic competition with China don’t add up

19 November 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Strategy, defence and security

The recent Belfer Center report by RAAF Group Captain Jason Begley, Winning Strategic Competition in the Indo-Pacific, offers important insights into the strategic thinking of the Australian military. The author’s analysis of the strategic competition with China in which the US and Australia have engaged far surpasses the level of the policy arguments offered in the Australian government’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update.

The open secret of US war plans: what does Australia know?

16 November 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Strategy, defence and security

The influence of the US in Eurasia will continue to falter, and as its economic, diplomatic, and moral potency dwindles, America’s military will become its primary asset. In America’s strategic logic, loss of leadership demands a military response – and the nature of the military preparations for war on a recognised emerging Asia hegemon are now well known. While the trajectory to war is not irreversible, and the step to launching a war is huge, the consequences would be calamitous. Is Australia complicit in the preparations?