By Mike Scrafton – Page 6

Out of shape: Australia’s lack of strategic influence

1 September 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy, International relations, Strategy, defence and security

It seems clear from recent surveys that the Australian government is overestimating its influence in ‘the immediate region’ and underestimating the capacity of the ASEAN states, in particular, to recognise their own strategic interests. The strategic objectives set out in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update rest on the assumptions that Australia will be able to ‘shape’ strategic perceptions in the region, and that this can best be done while acting in close association with the US. Are the foundations of Australia’s strategic logic sound?

A bigger canvas: Russia, China and Australia’s strategic policy

26 August 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Strategy, defence and security

The proximity and size of China, and the belligerence of the US toward China, has occluded the view of Russia among Australia strategic planners. While Russia poses no credible direct threat to Australia, it could be a key player in a conflict between the US and China. Once Russia is factored into the analysis of the situation in East Asia, the global consequences of a war are magnified and the recklessness of contemplating participating in such a conflict becomes even clearer.

Today’s risks and the history of war: recognising the unknowable

14 August 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, International relations, Strategy, defence and security

Is a great power war in prospect? The study of war provides insights into the preconditions for conflict and an awareness of the unpredictable nature of war. It shows that great power wars can be as unpredictable as they are transformational. The winners are hidden from sight at the inception, and the losers risk everything. If Australian leaders assume they could come out unscathed on the winning side of an East Asian war they are taking a huge gamble on behalf of Australian citizens.

Cancel culture and the Harper’s Letter: a moan from the Ivory Tower or call to the liberal battlements?

10 August 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Democracy and governance

The Letter on Justice and Open Debate published on 7 July 2020 and signed by 150 noted authors, academics, and public intellectuals cuts straight to a key fault line in liberalism. A collection of privileged individuals are claiming an unfettered right to say or write whatever they wish on the grounds that this right is the “lifeblood of a liberal society”. If this highly contestable claim is correct, it can then be asked if a liberal society is justifiable.

Australian strategic policy: why we need a robust public debate

7 August 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Strategy, defence and security

Only a select group of voices is heard most often and most loudly on the subject of Australia’s strategic policy. This creates a false sense of certainty around what is a speculative and inexact policy area. The policy choices, and the connection between strategic policy and force structure, deserve to be intensively examined and validated through public debate – not least of all because the opportunity cost of defence investment is huge.

AUSMIN 2020: confirmation of Australia’s abandonment of strategic autonomy?

3 August 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

Australians should not take comfort from recent government statements around the Australia-US Ministerial Consultations – claims that Australia makes its own decisions, its own judgments, in the Australian national interest, in order to uphold Australia’s security, prosperity and values. Reassuring words are the slippery province of diplomacy. Strategic policy is founded in force structure and force posture.

Confronting global warming and other looming crises: can democracies marshall the necessary expertise?

21 July 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Democracy and governance, Global

Confronting the dramatic trends taking place in the rates of global warming, destruction of the environment, extinction of biodiversity, and global social injustice urgently requires unprecedented societal and economic transformations. Can major democratic economies overcome the combination of disillusionment with government and distrust of experts, and position themselves to bring about the transformations these crises demand?

The rationale for Australia’s 2020 Force Structure Plan: A 2040 war?

15 July 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

There is a mismatch between the urgent need to respond to the supposed recent deterioration in Australia’s strategic circumstances, and the timeframe for investments proposed in Australia’s recently-released 2020 Force Structure Plan. Bringing capabilities into the ADF inventory within the next 20 years doesn’t seem to be the priority for government, despite the apparent deterioration in the strategic environment.

A replay of the 1930s: Fact or fearmongering?

13 July 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

The Australian Prime Minister compares the current strategic environment to “the existential threat we faced when the global and regional order collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s”. If he believes current global circumstances are comparable to those that preceded the Second World War, the response in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update is inadequate. If he doesn’t, his references amount to fear-mongering.

Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update: no talk of war here

8 July 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

There is little to quarrel with in Hugh White’s assessment of the uncertainties in East Asia. His counsel to the government on the way forward for strategic policy, on the other hand, is less satisfactory.
To embark on a major expansion of Australia’s military forces is not the way to protect Australia.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne

Australia’s foreign policy: Resurgent realism or the survival of multilateralism?

5 July 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, Foreign policy, trade and diplomacy, International relations

Conceptual confusion is evident in the speechmaking of leading Australian political figures as the post World War II era’s structured international arrangements of durable institutions and agreed norms – designed to facilitate peaceful dispute resolution and cooperation on security, economic and social matters between nations – are challenged by the United States and others.

Race is not real: It’s time to stop acting as though it is

19 June 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Democracy and governance, Global

For something that doesn’t exist, race exerts a pernicious and persistent influence on society. Placing people into a racial category, based on observable external features, and then attributing to it holistic ‘cultures’ that determine behaviours or moral character, is not supported by evidence.

But even those who are prepared to go to the barricades to oppose racism perpetuate the notion that race is real. This makes the management of entrenched racism inordinately difficult – but belief in race can be undermined – this is what needs to happen.

The Australia-India Strategic Partnership: ‘Shared values’ mask the real strategic purpose

14 June 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton, International relations, Strategy, defence and security

The much-used phrase ‘shared values’ is regularly used as the basis for international relationships and alliances. It can be used to selectively point to values found in political, social or economic ideologies, or in religious or ethical systems – and to divert attention away from substantive issues or conjure up imaginary communities of interest. In the context of the Australia-India Strategic Partnership, does the use of the phrase mask the real strategic purpose of the agreement?

Sovereignty and self-determination: The wider implications of Israel and the West Bank

10 June 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global, Palestine

Australia’s Prime Minister recently said that Australia always respects the sovereignty of other nations, and simply expects the same in return. But cases like Kosovo, Crimea, Jammu-Kashmir and Hong Kong illustrate the tension between sovereignty and self-determination – and the significance of precedent-setting. Recognising Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank requires careful, nuanced consideration. What position will Australia take?

The Deep State conspiracy theory: Is Trump laying the groundwork for The Great Presidential Robbery?

3 June 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global

Should US presidential hopeful Joe Biden prevail in November, the grounds will have been laid for Donald Trump to cry foul – with the potential for a crisis of political legitimacy. Australian policymakers, struggling with balancing the economic relationship with China and the security relationship with the US, should be following domestic trends in America with nervous apprehension.

Historical amnesia: Great power behaviour and criticism of China

25 May 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global

Positioning the adversarial relationship with China as one of morally superior western democratic nations in competition with a somehow illegitimate and malevolent China is an exercise in historical amnesia. The democratic United State’s 1890 – 1920 trajectory from western hemisphere state to global power has some economic, military and foreign policy parallels with authoritarian China’s growth in the twenty-first century.

Eyes wide open, or a blinkered view? The Australia-China relationship in the Antarctic

13 May 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

The recent report ‘Eyes Wide Open: Managing the Australia-China Antarctic Relationship’ contains a lot of information about China’s activities in Antarctica and usefully sets out aspects of the Chinese-Australian relationship.
But are the report’s recommendations a disproportionate reaction to a manufactured crisis regarding China’s presence and activities in Antarctica?

Rising powers: grand strategies, balance of power and Australia

13 May 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

Grand strategies are the territory of great powers, while other states see their strategic independence incorporated into another state’s grand strategy. The comfort that Australia embraced while enclosed in an American grand strategy can’t last, and hard choices lie ahead. In the shifting power balance, Australia will need to recover its autonomy.

Surviving and thriving in the 21st century: the harder reality of humanity’s road to the future

8 May 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Climate crisis

The report from Australia’s Commission for the Human Future sets out clearly and with insight the major and inter-dependent challenges that will persist beyond the pandemic – including global warming, food insecurity, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, resource scarcity and wealth inequality. Action is vital, but how to respond seems as elusive as ever.

Regulation, tariffs and reform of supply chains: neoliberalism under pressure?

29 April 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global

By Mike Scrafton | For the moment, reducing reliance on overseas supply chains appears to be a big lesson out of the COVID-19 pandemic. But reluctance to regulate corporate and commercial activity has been a hallmark of governments across the world. Are neoliberal governments capable of reversing the direction they have been taking for three or four decades?