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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MIKE SCRAFTON. The Chief of the Defence Force and political warfare
General Angus Campbell’s presentation at ASPI’s conference War in 2015 was thoughtful and provocative. Some of the CDF’s views are germane and apt are others contestable. He opened by saying, ‘I sense a renewed concern in the world for the potential for state-on-state conflict’; however ‘political warfare’ was his main concern. Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Strategy In A Bubble: ASPI’s war plans
ASPI’s relentless push for ever greater defence spending gets another iteration in Malcolm Davis’s Forward defence in depth for Australia . As a breathless list of ‘key horizon technologies’, Davis’s paper makes entertaining and informative reading. As a justification for putting Australia on a permanent war footing it is wanting. Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. The new national security – protection from global warming
Ian Dunlop has argued persuasively that global warming now represents an emergency situation ‘akin to wartime’. The alarmingly obstinate year-on-year increase in the levels of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere has brought this about and will ensure the IPCC prediction that ‘[G]lobal warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Unquantifiable strategic madness of war on Iran
There have been reports that President Trump is less enthusiastic about attacking Iran than his advisers. For the moment, an unanticipated source of sanity. The current US posturing against Iran seems confected. It also seems mad. A US attack on Iran would be blatant and naked aggression. The knock on consequences could have strategic dimensions Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. IPBES and IPCC: Calamity cannot be averted
The key messages contained Intergovernmental Science- Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ (IPBES) Summary For Policymakers are not surprising. The trends have been well known for a long time, perhaps only the current scale of the crisis might be news. But if earlier reports like the IPCC’s Global Warming of 1.5C or UN’s World Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. The rules-based international order; or a ‘dead parrot’.
Strategic policy is perhaps the most challenging area of government. For decades policy settings have largely been perfunctory with the US alliance occupying the central place. The post-Cold War setting of a single dominant hegemon has meant policy makers haven’t had to operate in an international order characterised by balance-of-power considerations. Even the confrontation between Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. China in Australia’s Defence and Strategic Policy
An incoming government addressing China in defence policy and strategic policy must overcome the natural impulse to assume the future will be a linear projection of the present. There is no reasonable scenario in which a major war in East Asia involving China does not end in disastrous outcomes for Australia and that determines the Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Political leadership and the next war.
If there is any consensus among commentators on geopolitics and strategic policy, it is that the world is entering into uncertain and dangerous times. In the term of the next Australian government political leadership could confront grave situations requiring decisions about war and peace. Few of Australia’s leaders, if any, have seen combat let alone Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Warner’s blinkered warnings
Geraldine Dooge interviewed Nick Warner Director General of the Office of National Intelligence (podcast) for Radio National. As Warner is the principal adviser to the Prime Minister on intelligence matters his assessments of the strategic environment are of great interest. Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. The Golan Heights: Whose rules?
President Trump has recognised the 1981 Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights. Whatever Trump’s motives—genuine concern for Israel’s security, geostrategic positioning in the struggle against Iran, fulfilling a divine mission, or domestic politics—his act raises important geopolitical issues and questions of international law. Trump’s move should force the Australian government to revisit its prioritisation of Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON.Extremism and race: slaying the phantom
There will be many views on the priority to be given to domestic race-based extremism and the best way in which it should be approached. Recently, Mike Pezzullo didn’t mention race-based violence among his ‘seven gathering storms’ facing Australia. An omission retrospectively corrected post-Christchurch at Senate Estimates. But his Harmony Day message displays a shallow Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Defending against the sacrificial knight errant on an existential crusade
Hopefully the security agencies won’t simply default to the jihadist archetype in their response to the atrocity in Christchurch, as the media has. Distinguishing between motives of the perpetrators of such unpardonable acts and understanding the internal logic by which they justify their actions is important. Marques like far right, white supremacist, white nationalist, neo-Nazi, Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Another American civil war?
The silhouette of yet another potential catastrophe is beginning to take shape. To add to the dissolution of the post war global order, global warming, mass species extinction, and great power conflict, there seems now the prospect of a post-Trump Presidency American civil war. Maybe. Not really? Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Morrison is not the man for the times
Last month Scott Morrison delivered ‘Our plan for keeping Australians safe and secure’ to the National Press Club. Not so much a headland speech as a report from the bookkeeper. Not FDR’s Four Freedoms address to Congress or Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri; the Prime Minister’s flat rhetoric avoided the big strategic issues Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. ASPI’s Agenda for change 2019
To pinch an epigram from former Air Force colleagues in Defence, ASPI’s ‘Agenda for change 2019: Strategic choices for the next government’ is a target rich environment. The contributors set out a smorgasbord of advice on strategic policy issues for the next government to chew on; some of which is commonplace, some keen insights, some Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Facilitating repression, abandoning values.
Admirable as Senator De Natale’s persistence was in pressing Defence on the issues of military sales to Saudi Arabia, he pursued the wrong issue. Australia is, and will remain, a trivial player in the global arms market and the Yemeni horror is not really pertinent to the sale the Senator was questioning. Clearly Australia’s reputation Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. The dangerous shibboleths of ‘strategists’
Some commentators on strategic policy seem to regard Australia’s national interests as close enough to immutable. That makes strategic policy a trivial and static matter. Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Some possible implications for Australia’s strategic policy in Trump’s emergency
President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency over illegal immigration on the southern border of the US is destined to bring on a short term constitutional and political crisis in the US. The security of the US/Mexican border is not of direct interest to Australia but the longer term outcome of contest between the Executive Continue reading »
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The casual talk of war
The casual talk of war heard today is of great concern. War is treated as if it’s a board game and the only pieces are military forces. The experiences of the twentieth-century, and to a lesser extent those of this century, have demonstrated the widespread destruction and death, social dislocation and economic collapse, political disruption Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. The Problem with the Nationhood Power
When influential public officials take the podium to tell us what’s what we should pay attention, close attention, to their words. Mike Pezzullo is one of the most powerful Federal public servants and therefore his view of the Australian political system in which he operates and the arguments he puts forward in support of those Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. The Intelligent use of Intelligence
The United States Intelligence Community presents an annual assessment of national security threats to Congress. President Trump and the US Intelligence agencies are at odds over the 2019 Report. Putting aside Trump’s simplistic and intuitive understanding and his disregard for any evidence that contradicts his preconceptions, the enthusiasm with which Trump’s antagonists have grasped the Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. The fissures in NATO.
NATO defence ministers will meet in Brussels over 13-14 February. Member states will struggle to find any accord in the face of an array strategic and political challenges from internal and external sources. Overshadowing all else will be the vagaries of American policy and the Administration’s undisguised lack of enthusiasm for NATO, or any multilateral Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Three democracies in crisis
The three nations that gave birth to modern democracy are exhibiting its weaknesses. Democracy is showing its limitations in dealing with contemporary challenges in UK, the US and France. Saving democracy from authoritarianism and populism is a popular subject. Yet first the viability of existing democratic institutions has to be questioned. Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. The Geopolitics of Lombrum Naval Base
It is difficult to find a strong, rational strategic argument for Australia’s to return to Lombrum Naval Base (or HMPNGS Tarangau) on Manus Island. Of course, not all of Defence’s activities have strictly military objectives or relate directly to the defence of Australia and in the Southwest Pacific Defence cooperation has been a major component Continue reading »
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The need to think more seriously about war
Government justifications for major investments in ADF new capability and assertions by defence experts that Australia should substantially expand its defence spending rarely address two important issues. The prospect for military success in a war in East Asia and the expectations around Australian casualties—military and civilian. Thinking about the first issue helps shed some light Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Hunting for the reason-The new frigates.
In line with normal practise, the government has plenty to say about the economic and employment benefits to flow from the acquisition of the new Hunter class frigates and a little bit about what they can do. But offers nothing about the strategic justification for these expensive naval assets. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON: NATO 2018 and Communique Dread
Dread and angst must be haunting the corridors of Europe’s foreign and defence ministries. The NATO Heads of State and Government will meet over 11 to 12 July 2018 in Brussels and the question of the communique will already be weighing heavy on ministers, advisers and officials. NATO is a consensus decision-making body but the Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Looking down from the Trump/Kim summit: a geopolitical view
Of the risks attendant on the summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jung-un, the most grave is that the geopolitical consequences will be ignored. Continue reading »
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MIKE SCRAFTON. Rethinking Strategic Policy
Australia is faces an increasingly novel external environment. For strategic policymakers this means discarding as much old thinking as possible in order to understand the contours of that future. Crucially, the policymaker also must remain cognisant that the sine qua non of strategic policy is the use of lethal armed force in international relations. At Continue reading »