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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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 »
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ASPI resorts to bullying to deter strategic debate on China
Peter Jennings, Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), has launched an ad hominem attack belittling those who take a contrary approach to Australia-China relations rather than advocating for war preparations. But it is his poor grasp of his subject matter that is most disappointing…. Continue reading »
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ASPI’s guide to submarines leaves the biggest strategic questions unanswered
The interested reader would see much of this report as a public relations exercise, talking down to the public, and attempting to divert questions away from the burning one. Is this submarine intended primarily as a contribution by Australia to a possible conflict in the South China Sea? If it is, the Minister and the… Continue reading »
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Exaggerated threats and contrived military strategies: a response to Jon Stanford
For all the discussion of China’s aggression, it is the US and its allies that have been constantly at war for two decades…. Continue reading »
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No power in the Lowy Asia Power Index 2020
The Lowy Asia Power Index 2020 reveals a misunderstanding of the concept of power, and some underlying subjectivity and biases, undermines its usefulness. This is illustrated in the measures used concerning technology, military power, and the impact of the pandemic….This enterprise is at least partly funded by the Australian government security agencies. The benefit to taxpayers… Continue reading »
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IMF on global warming: impractical, naive and important
The response to global warming has to be at the same time political, science-based, and economically informed. Reading the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 2020 World economic outlook: a long and difficult ascent, is instructive on this point…. Continue reading »
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The strategic aspect of human rights: a tool of hegemony
With America’s fading hegemony, new regional powers with regional hegemonic aspirations are displaying their ideas about human rights; ideas based on their particular historical, cultural, political, and religious experiences…. Continue reading »
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The US role in the world: a new normal
President Trump has pursued a different vision of the US’s role in the world. This has had an undeniable impact on the US’s relations with allies and competitors alike, and has reshaped the general perception of the US as a global actor…. Continue reading »
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The bathtub is nearly full: Australia’s extraordinary energy plan
The Coalition government’s energy plan ensures the emissions tap will continue to flow. While economic recovery following the pandemic is an important objective, to ignore the consequences of persisting with fossil fuels is incomprehensible…. Continue reading »
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Will Trump’s rejection of history divide America?
The 1776 Commission proposed by President Trump to counter the New York Times’ 1619 Project and other “narratives about America being pushed by the far left”, is not the equivalent of Australia’s conservative versus liberal history wars. It is about something far more dark…. Continue reading »
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Scientists and capitalists agree on climate. When will governments act?
Time again for Australia’s political leaders to ignore the regular cycle of reports that highlight the failure to deal with the coming climate disaster. The pandemic might provide a “look over there” opportunity to distract citizens, but the recent climate publications warrant close attention…. Continue reading »
