Writer
Mike Scrafton
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
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Zero chance of net zero: the human security challenge after 2050
We are condemned to a hot planet. A 4-degree warming is inevitable no matter what measures are taken, so humans must now consider how to cope with this reality. Continue reading »
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Magical thinking: nuclear submarines and Australia’s Maginot Line of the imagination
The relationship between defence policy and the nuclear powered submarines has generated a lot of magical thinking. Continue reading »
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Distracted by the submarine bauble, Labor and the media miss the point
Australia is about to become home to American bases, and potentially a nuclear target, and this seems to have escaped the attention of the Opposition and the media. Continue reading »
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AUSMIN and AUKUS: It’s even worse than you think
Nothing exemplifies the loss of national sovereignty, and the abandonment of strategic autonomy, like handing the war decision over to the US. The submarine issue is simply a blind. AUKUS just a distraction. Continue reading »
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Mike Scrafton: Nuclear-powered submarines are just bad defence policy
Australian governments are now certain to be bedevilled by submarines for generations. Continue reading »
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Obsessing over confrontation with China leads to arid policy grounds
Shaping Australia’s China policy is complex enough without chasing impractical outcomes. Peter Hartcher and Geoffrey Barker are concerned about the threat from China but pursuing a confrontational strategy has shortcomings. Continue reading »
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Biden’s folly: a virtual summit with real consequences
President Joe Biden will convene a ”virtual Summit for Democracy” in December – a brave and foolish move, given the political paralysis and discord in the US. Continue reading »
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Afghanistan is a warning for all US allies
As an ally of the US Australia should be reflecting deeply on America’s third major postwar strategic fiasco. The US military has brought overwhelming military power and technological sophistication to major defeats in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan. In each, the allies have been let down or suffered. Continue reading »
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ASPI outsourcing our defence policy to the gun runners!
Australia’s strategic policy discourse takes place in a fog of claims about risk and the warning time, while the key issues are the balance and trajectory of military forces in the Asia Pacific and the strategic interests of the regional states. Recent exhortations to urgent actions and radical defence reforms are alarmist and confused, and Continue reading »
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ASPI, AZERIs, the ADF, and the Defence hierarchy
ASPI’s Michael Shoebridge’s criticism of the professionalism and competency of the Defence hierarchy is serious. He paints the military and civilian hierarchy in Defence as hidebound, and infers they are placing service personnel and the nation’s security at risk. His analysis, however, displays a surprising degree of unfamiliarity with military affairs, and does not support Continue reading »
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The ‘enemy within the gates’-the key to American politics
It is not at all clear how much more stress, how many more incendiary inputs into its inflammable politics, the American Republic can stand before it becomes fully dysfunctional and unworkable. Continue reading »
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Australia’s strategic conundrum-Is America declining?
Jon Stanford and Hans Ohff criticise the ADF for “[P]lanning for the last war rather than the next”. Yet, their plan returns to a simplistic defence of Australia scenario from the 1980s. Nevertheless, their recent piece in ASPI’s Strategist blog (republished in P&I) provides an entrée to the related conundrums facing Australia’s strategic policy; the Continue reading »
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Biden’s hopes fall short in G7 communique
The results of the G7 summit in Cornwall have received considerable criticism. For many, it was simply a staged production involving smoke and mirrors. Behind the thoroughly estimable objectives littered throughout the communique can be seen the inherent weakness of the G7 grouping. Once mighty, now best at papering over its growing irrelevance. Continue reading »
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Behaviour, the pandemic, and climate change
Implementation of carbon reduction and other global warming-related policies will be an inordinately difficult challenge. The inability of governments to effect widespread, sustained behavioural change has been an outstanding feature of the past eighteen months of the pandemic. In preparation for the transition to a zero-carbon, climate-adapted future, the past assumptions underlying policy implementation need Continue reading »
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Not the war over Taiwan again!
The lack of high-quality strategic analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has been frequently highlighted in P&I. Nonetheless, ASPI’s dangerously inadequate analysis should be regularly confronted. Continue reading »
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Once was a hegemon: Australia and the decline of the US
Australia’s Indo-Pacific obsession hides a radical global geopolitical shift. Australian policymakers will persist in making poor choices unless they accept that the US hegemony has passed a tipping point, and America has already become just one great power among others. Continue reading »
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Warriors, war and Mike Pezzullo’s ANZAC Day message
If Mike Pezzullo, Secretary of Home Affairs, were to move to the top Defence job his views on war become of crucial public interest. The government’s reaction to his message to staff on ANZAC Day emphasises this point. Continue reading »
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Capitalism, COVID, and Climate
The pandemic alliance between Big Pharma and governments foreshadows how the market-based capitalist system will fail to address global warming. Just finding low emissions technology is not an answer. Continue reading »
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Democracy militant: strategic autonomy and Europe’s lessons for Australia
The Biden Administration’s China policy assumes that among democratic nations there is a shared view on an existential competition with China. The re-emergence of the issue of European strategic autonomy highlights President Biden’s misunderstanding. Rather than again uncritically fall in behind America’s foreign and strategic policies, Australia needs to pay heed to Europe’s mature approach Continue reading »
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A Minneapolis community and systematic racism
While I think would be a conceit for outsiders to imagine the lives of the residents of George Floyd’s neighbourhood, the trial in Minneapolis does however provide a limited glimpse of a lived experience which, other than for many indigenous citizens, is alien to most Australians. Continue reading »
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Shifting national interests put Biden’s alliance strategy in doubt
The Biden Administration’s approach to China is anchored in the strength America draws from its alliances. The President and the Secretaries of State and Defense have made this clear. This is an anachronistic basis on which to construct a strategic policy given today’s strategic realities. Continue reading »
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Radical people, not technology, are needed for a sustainable revolution
Michael Keating’s summary and review of Ross Garnaut’s latest book Reset: Restoring Australia after the Pandemic Recession is stimulating and important. While massive sustainable transformations in Australia’s economy and society are required, the emphasis on macroeconomic policies and the faith shown in technology is concerning. Continue reading »
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The persistence of American authoritarianism should worry Australia
America has become less comprehensible and predictable to outside observers. The scale of the support for ex-President Trump’s election fraud claims, the assault on the Capitol, and the failure to convict Trump in the Senate, all seem to be portents of an emerging illiberal authoritarianism. The illiberal forces are barely restrained. Australian policymakers must already Continue reading »
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Competition for technological primacy between the great powers will draw in ASEAN
Scott Morrison assumes the ASEAN states will line up with the US and Australia in attempting to blunt China’s growth and influence. Yet China can offer the ASEAN states solutions to their pressing problems of population growth, poverty and urbanisation through its ‘smart cities’ technologies. Continue reading »
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Taiwan: a ‘wicked’ strategic problem for Australia
ASPI’s executive director Peter Jennings is banging the war drums over Taiwan again. He would have Australia automatically marching into a war in defence of the island. Why would Australia go to war over Taiwan? Continue reading »
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Is Trump’s 1776 Commission report an extremist manifesto?
The 1776 Commission Report released on 18 January 2021 is a time bomb of extremist propaganda; a source document for the arguments and recruitment of white nationalists and white supremacists, and for the apologists of radical libertarianism. Continue reading »
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What should Australia want from a Biden National Security Strategy? Avoiding war in Asia
Australia should hope for a major shift away from President Trump’s strategy but not an uncritical return to President Obama’s 2015 version. For a start a new NSS should reposition the US as a less crusading nation, one more accepting of difference Continue reading »
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Preparing for a 3°C warmer future: the ideological shift and institutional response Australia will need.
Three things are obvious. The collective emission reduction efforts of nations will not avoid 3oC global warming by the century’s end. Therefore, national adaptation actions will need prepare for the worse than expected scale and impact from the effects of climate change. As a result, earlier ideological assumptions about governments will have to give way Continue reading »
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The deceit of deterrence; a bankrupt strategic justification for defence expenditure
Although references to deterrence are regularly trotted out to justify defence acquisition decisions and alliance policy, the place of the idea of deterrence in Australia’s strategic policy is opaque and poorly understood. That the effectiveness of a deterrence strategy is highly dependent on contingent circumstances is regularly left unaddressed by advocates of ever greater defence Continue reading »
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China-Australia relations: it’s not as simple as ABC
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 open and vigorous debate Continue reading »
