Defence and Security
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AMY ZEGART AND MICHAEL MORELL. Spies, Lies, and Algorithms. Why U.S. Intelligence Agencies Must Adapt or Fail. (Foreign Affairs 20.4.2019)
For U.S. intelligence agencies, the twenty-first century began with a shock, when 19 al Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes and perpetrated the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil. In the wake of the attack, the intelligence community mobilized with one overriding goal: preventing another 9/11. The CIA, the National Security Agency, and the 15 other 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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VACY VLAZNA. The Sarafand Massacre and Anzac Cover-up, Part 2
Cover-ups are a reprehensible part and parcel of military history and testimonies collected on Australian Military History of the Early 20th Century: Desert Column siteare tainted with fundamental lies and racist justifications that have become the prototype for subsequent historical and newspaper accounts of the Sarafand Massacre. 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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VACY VLAZNA. The Sarafand Massacre and Anzac Cover-up, Part 1
In the early winter of 1918, the wheat, barley and sesame fields of Sarafand al-Kharab lay fallow. Oranges, figs, almonds and olives had been harvested, the summer honey stored. At night the goats and sheep were brought into the warmth of the adobe brick houses. Continue reading »
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What we forget on Anzac Day
On the first Anzac Day, 25 April 1915, the Australian Imperial and New Zealand Expeditionary Forces landed at Gallipoli. On Anzac Day 2019, Anzac forces are again in the Middle East – and Afghanistan – this time 16 years after their initial deployments at the beginning of the Iraq War. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Best we forget – the Frontier and Maori Wars. An update
The Frontier Wars were the most destructive and decisive in our history. The first war we fought alongside ‘New Zealanders’ was not at Gallipoli in 1915 but in the Maori Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet both wars are ignored by the Australian War Memorial. The AWM promotes myths about the wars Continue reading »
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DAVID STEPHENS. Beneath the tumult and the shouting: Anzac Day as a private experience.
Anzac should be mostly private. It should be about the quiet, within-family, remembrance of – and caring about – people who have suffered in war, those who have been killed and not come home, those who have come home injured in body or mind, and those who live with the memory of the dead and Continue reading »
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There is no business like show business
The relationship between John Howard and former AFP Commissioner, Mick Keelty, put the AFP in a bad place from which it has not recovered. The solution is a full blown inquiry followed by reform, a change of culture and better leadership. There is a case for dismantling Border Force. Continue reading »
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BEVAN RAMSDEN. Do the US Marines in Darwin pose a risk to our peace and security?
A recent US war exercise involving US Marines landing, capturing and securing an island off the coast of Okinawa is touted as a new US military strategy to use in its challenge to China in the South China Sea. Is the imbedding of US marines in war exercises on HMAS Adelaide, which has been fitted Continue reading »
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DUNCAN GRAHAM Kingsford Smith forecast: Expect churls Inbox x
In his 9 April post on this website ANU Professor Ramesh Thakur put the question: Who Will Bell the Sydney Airport Security Madness? The expert on disarmament then asked: Is it possible that pranksters with a perverse sense of humour are in charge of security procedures at Sydney InternationalAirport? Perhaps they are trying to test the limits of traveller tolerance. 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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Who Will Bell the Sydney Airport Security Madness?
Is it possible that pranksters with a perverse sense of humour are in charge of security procedures at Sydney International Airport? Perhaps they are trying to test the limits of traveller tolerance. If so, they might be close to succeeding with me. I am slowly approaching the tipping point where either I will break and Continue reading »
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YELENA BIBERMAN, JARED SCHWARTZ. Pakistan is ready for stability in Afghanistan (East Asia Forum).
The Afghan government has an unexpectedly ardent advocate in current peace negotiations between the United States and Taliban—Pakistan. This surprising supporter has been providing sanctuary to the Taliban, thereby placing a pricey bet on its alleged proxy’s recapture of Afghanistan following a US withdrawal. The Taliban’s refusal to negotiate with the government in Kabul is 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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JAMES O’NEILL. Australian defence strategy still locked in a past era
According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald (25 March 2019) the coalition government, if re-elected, would spend $2.5 billion on an air defence system. The object of the expenditure is said to “bolster Australia’s capacity to intercept enemy aircraft”. The new system will also defend against helicopters, cruise missiles and unmanned aerial systems. 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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JAMES O’NEILL. The Douma “chemical attack”: still waiting for an apology.
On 7 April 2018 an alleged chemical attack took place in the city of Douma in the Syrian Arab Republic. Dramatic footage of the “victims” was widely broadcast throughout the western mainstream media. Particularly prominent were images of children foaming at the mouth and being hosed down. The footage for these dramatic depictions was almost entirely 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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MACK WILLIAMS. Bolton’s Syria “Fix” ?
The international focus on the failed Hanoi Summit and affairs Korean has diverted attention from the looming issues in Syria as the IS caliphate ‘disappears’. Media commentary around the shrinking IS presence on the ground in Syria and the significant numbers of “foreign” IS fighters and families has also overshadowed the urgent problem for the Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Some Coalition legacies that a new government must confront
There are several major issues that dominate public life today and require resolution. Those issues are –the growing existential threat of climate change, the dire consequences following the Iraq invasion, tax cuts during the mining boom that result in continuing budget deficits and debt increases, the NBN debacle, hostility to refugees and asylum seekers, and 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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PETER O’HARA. My Lunch with French Secret Service Agents Who Sank Rainbow Warrior.
Dateline: 1986 in the remote South Pacific. For thirty years French ‘atomic bombs’ were exploded in atoll islands of the Tuamotus archipelago in French Polynesia. I was Qantas area manager based in the capital Papeete. A dream job some would say, and interesting times in that hub of political agitation. Lunch with French secret service 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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DUNCAN GRAHAM. Old soldiers don’t die – they just imagine
Historians and older Westerners know well what followed the 1933 events in Germany known as ‘the burning of the books.’ Few Indonesians are aware that the forceful Student Union campaign against literature which didn’t promote the ‘German spirit’, fomented fascism. They should because it’s happening in their young democracy and threatening its future. Continue reading »
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MACK WILLIAMS. The Second Trump:Kim Summit – Just another step along the way?
Amid all the media speculation feeding off Trump’s own optimistic commentary and resolute scepticism of many long term Korea watchers there are some recent glimmers of very limited progress emerging from the Hanoi Summit. After a late start, the lead US negotiator Biegun has reported encouraging discussions with Kim’s negotiating team first in Sweden and Continue reading »