The Ukrainians have little reason to negotiate now. The NATO allies and partners are locked in and Ukraine’s strategic objective has now become the objective of the Europeans and North Americans.
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Tag: Strategy, defence and security
All pathways to AUKUS submarines sub-optimal
AUKUS handed the US largely unfettered military access to Northern Australia. In return, Australia became entangled in an undefined process that may or may not deliver nuclear-powered submarines by mid-century. All roads ahead look hard for this project.
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B-21s for Australia? Not to defend against a Chinese base in Australia’s nearer region
A recent ASPI report, arguing for Australia’s acquisition of the B-21 Raider long-range stealth bomber, sees the return of the ‘adversary-base-in-the-archipelago’ bogeyman. Hopefully the forthcoming Defence Strategy Review will not similarly rely on wildly improbable assumptions to justify very costly investments.
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America’s shiny submarine lure reels in Australia’s sovereignty
Arguably, the Americans have brilliantly played successive Australian governments by casting the shiny lure of nuclear submarines out somewhere in the distant future and reeling in control of Australia’s defence policy.
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US National Defence Strategy reveals Australia’s nuclear deterrence role
On PM Albanese’s watch Australia has, without explanation, agreed to host US B-52H Stratofortress aircraft: “a nuclear stand-off platform with global reach”. The recent US National Defence Strategy provides the missing context, and effectively confirms Australia’s role in American nuclear war planning.
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B-52s at RAAF Tindal commits Australia to America’s nuclear war plans
B-52s are part of the US’s nuclear capability. Basing these aircraft at RAAF Tindal draws Australia into America’s nuclear war planning. How did Australia come to this? And why?
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Extent of former US officials’ role in AUKUS submarines decision called into question
Abandoning plans to buy French designed conventionally powered submarines in favour of US or UK supplied nuclear powered submarines has come under sustained criticism on the grounds of strategy, cost, and practicality. Now the involvement of former US officials with potential conflicts of interest gives rise to the possibility that the AUKUS submarines decision itself was tainted.
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America’s proposed Taiwan Policy Act could be a game-changing act of provocation
The US’s proposed Taiwan Policy Act of 2022, if approved, would bring the prospect of war in the Asia-Pacific closer. The draft legislation foreshadows radical changes in US policy, amounting to abandonment of the one-China policy and de facto recognition of Taiwan as a state. What does this mean for Australia?
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Will uncritical faith in America’s future technological dominance be a strategic weakness for Australia?
The rebirth of a lost innovative technological utopia requires a vibrant, stable polity that tolerates debate, dissent, and difference; and supports objective research standards. America looks nothing like this.
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Would Australian defence of Taiwan amount to the crime of aggression?
The people of Taiwan are in a deeply unenviable position. But international law is neutral over political systems, and Taiwan’s democracy gives it no special right to secede. Does advocating for this make Australia a revisionist state?
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Defence reviews: what are they good for?
The recently announced Defence review looks set to be much more than the promised ‘force posture review’. The opportunity to anchor Australia’s strategy and military posture in a broad appreciation of a significantly changed international environment should not be lost.
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Should Australia’s key strategic objective be to secure ‘the rules-based order’?
It has not always been the case that the key strategic objective of Australian governments was to secure something called the ‘rules-based order’. How and why has this come to replace a commitment to upholding international law?
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Mr Marles tugs the forelock in Washington
Submission to US strategic objectives is often on display as new Australian Defence Ministers ritually wend their way to Washington to offer up jaded homilies, full of hagiographic accounts of ANZUS and strained assertions of shared values. The new Minister’s recent visit, however, foreshadows a more dangerous abandonment of fundamental elements of national sovereignty.
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War over the rules-based order doesn’t make sense
Going to war over the ‘rules-based order’ seems unremarkable to our leaders. Its nature, and how it would be preserved by conflict, seems to be intuitively perceived by them. Yet, the elevation of the rules-based order to a status so sacrosanct that the destruction of civilisation is justified in its defence demands investigation.
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Beijing not Madrid, Prime Minister, would be more in Australia’s interests
Australia’s interests are not obviously met by joining gatherings on distant shores with leaders sharing different strategic concerns. The Asia Pacific remains at the heart of Australia’s economic and strategic interests and the crucible where Australia’s prosperity and peace will be forged.
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The American sophist: Blinken weaves a Bidenesque fantasy
Bidenesque tales of a beneficent and wise ruler, who only wants his land to be the richest and strongest nation because of the benefit that it would bring to all, can’t be allowed to obscure the real situation in America, nor its brutally realist pursuit of its own interests through power.
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Proactive Defence diplomacy not American militarism better supports Australia’s security
Credit is due to Australia’s new Prime Minister and Foreign Minister for moving swiftly to correct the foreign and climate policy failures of the Morrison era. But shouldn’t there be a similar rethinking and resetting of strategic policy?
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The window for Albanese to assert Australia’s sovereignty is closing
Before the seductive power that security classifications, codeword documents, need-to-know briefings, and the jargon of militarist advisers blunt the critical faculties of ministers, which it almost always does, the new Australian government needs to consider the matter of war.
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After Ukraine a fractured and unravelling global order will confront the next Australian government
Putin’s forces might not progress far beyond the Dnieper River. And yet the invasion will reshape the world in which the next Australian government operates.
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Ethics and war: the Ukrainian tragedy
Russia’s President Putin rightly bears the greatest moral and legal opprobrium for the appalling death toll, atrocities, and destruction in Ukraine. But once the war reaches its conclusion, retrospectively the contribution of others will come under closer scrutiny.
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