Alan Dupont is right to remind readers of The Australian that we are still waiting for the Government to release its National Security Statement. The rumour I heard is that the PM was ready to launch the paper at the National Press Club on 15 October, but the financial crisis intervened, and he devoted his speech to the stimulus package instead. But that was over a month ago — what's the hold up now?

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner was right to complain about the ridiculous body language interpretation the media has lately been indulging in over one 'frosty' greeting. Yes, maybe Bush was snubbing Prime Minister Rudd over the leaked phone call affair. But maybe he'd just felt a touch of indigestion, or an aid had whispered in his ear that his favourite football team had lost. Who knows?

It is beneath the dignity of a proud nation to place so much stock in these tiny, insignificant gestures from a foreign leader. Isn't that right, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith? Oh, wait:

Now it's unambiguously the case that it's in Australia's national interest to continue with our alliance with the United States and Prime Minister Rudd and President Elect Obama have spoken by telephone; one of the first 10 or dozen foreign leaders to have a phone conversation with him.

Later in the same interview:

And those people who are suggesting that somehow such a report could have some lasting implications, I think a) have been proven wrong with the very speedy way in which Prime Minister Rudd has spoken to president elect Obama. And so for as one of 10 or 12 leaders to do so to date...

 And in parliament on 11 November:

Last time I looked, President-elect Obama had a telephone conversation with the Prime Minister as one of his first 10 conversations with world leaders.

In breaking news, President Bush did sign Kevin Rudd's menu after the G20 dinner, but his inscription apparently just read 'All the best', whereas President Sarkozy's said 'Thanks for coming, Sarki! Maybe we can whittle this forum down a bit in future and get some real work done!' The Prime Minister's office could not be reached for comment.

Aviation journalist Stephen Trimble's blog, The DEW Line, has been an invaluable resource for following the controversy over the performance of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). I missed ABC's Lateline on Monday night, so thanks to Stephen for directing me to their latest report on the JSF.

It's more of the same: JSF critics (Carlo Kopp) line up to say it isn't good enough to beat the Russian Sukhoi fighters being purchased by our regional neighbours, and defenders like Lockheed Martin's Tom Burbage say it aint so.

My main complaint about this is one I've made before: that in treating this purely as a comparison between JSF and Russian Sukhois, Lateline is missing the bigger picture. There are a number of factors that go to create a military capability — maintenance, training, intelligence, command and control, mass. In terms of air power, Australia holds a big regional advantage in all those areas, but one-for-one performance comparisons account for none of them.

One other grumble: reporter Conor Duffy claims that 'With Asia spending on arms like never before, the right decision on the JSF is critical.' Duffy means to imply that we had better decide NOW in case we FALL BEHIND!!! And that's where, despite their differences, JSF critics like Kopp and JSF boosters like Burbage have common cause: they both want Australia to buy more jets. There's no one to argue the case that maybe we could get away with buying fewer JSFs and/or extending the life of our current fleet.

Just what is World Bank President Robert Zoellick up to? He attended the G20 meeting in Brazil over the weekend, only to argue that this is the wrong grouping and should be replaced by a more exclusive gathering. To say the least, this is an unhelpful intervention, not just for Australia (which would be excluded from the Zoellick group) but also for the urgent need to address the current world situation.

Zoellick's attitude ignores the time-consuming negotiations of a decade ago which gathered a consensus around the G20 membership. A cynic might say that it just looks like a spoiling strategy to leave the anachronistic status quo in place, with G7 plus a few ad hoc new recruits who are allowed to sit in on the old club.

The problem with the Zoellick proposal is that it starts with the G7. More...

Things are looking crook for Australia's Joint Strike Fighter purchase when even the vice-president of Lockheed Martin, the company making the plane, is talking down its sales prospects here. Chief of Defence Force Angus Houston sounds a little pessimistic too. Meanwhile, in Washington, this report about unsustainable US weapons programs only speculates about the future of JSF, but it adds to a gloomy picture.

And remember, as Rory argued recently, the number of JSFs bought by the US and other countries is critical for Australia. Even if our defence budget passes through the financial storm unscathed (and who thinks that's likely?), others won't be as lucky. That means other air forces will buy fewer aircraft, pushing up the per-unit cost to us.

I hope to get some answers on these and many other questions when I interview Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon tomorrow. A full recording of that interview, and one with opposition defence spokesman David Johnston, will be posted on The Interpreter later in the week.

The media game of sink-the-Prime-Minister’s-alleged-arms-race-theory continues. The latest salvo comes from the Financial Review, which has a report (subscribers only) citing comments last week by the Chief of the Royal Australian Navy, Vice-Admiral Russ Crane. Decide for yourself whether the Chief was firing a shot across the Prime Ministerial bow: the text of his speech is on the ASPI website.

The main comments quoted by the newspaper – in which the Chief of Navy reportedly describes Chinese and Indian military modernisation as ‘normal’ – were presumably made in the question and answer session. After all, the Q&A typically provides richer waters for journalists to trawl than does the prepared speech.

The initial media reports which quoted Prime Minister Rudd referring to an arms race were based on a momentary lapse during such a session in September, when he did indeed use that term, only to immediately correct himself. (Mind you, in that same appearance he spoke of an arms-buying ‘explosion’ in the region – even more alarming and debatable a metaphor.)   

For his part, Vice-Admiral Crane last week emphasised the maritime nature of Australia’s strategic environment and the need for Australia’s military strategy to be maritime, echoing a similar point from the PM’s September Townsville speech. More...

It's sad to see the end of one of the first and best Australian political blogs, Road to Surfdom. The retirement of Surfdom's creator, Tim Dunlop, from the Ozblogosphere (Tim also recently quit his mainstream media blogging gig, Blogocracy) puts a bit of a dent in the optimism I have lately felt about the future of Australian political blogging.

Tim's parting post about the deficiencies of Australia's mainstream media and the need for independent online media coverage of political events has raised some interesting discussion on other blogs. One thing Dunlop and at least two other bloggers discussing this issue seem to agree on is that, for such new voices to be heard, what's needed above all is money.

Not to get too crassly self-promotional here, but that is exactly what the Lowy Institute provided when it launched The Interpreter a little over a year ago. More...

The headline of Peter Hartcher's story in today's Sydney Morning Herald — Obama to ask for troops in 'war we need to win' — promises more than it delivers. First of all, the main quotes in the story come from a Brookings Institution scholar who advised the Obama campaign, and not the Obama camp itself. And second, Jeffrey Bader never mentions troops, only saying that 'We would be looking to have different allies to make a contribution'. That's barely even grammatical and could refer to any number of countries.

Still, the broad proposition that the Obama Administration will ask more of its allies is one that I have heard from other good sources. One to watch.

UPDATE: It seems my boss agrees.

Greg Sheridan's cover article on Prime Minister Rudd's Asia policy for the November issue of the Australian Literary Review is definitely worth your time. I'll say why in a moment, but first, I want to get one whinge out of the way: the massive chip Sheridan has on his shoulder regarding foreign policy 'commentators'. It's a consistent theme in his writing, implying that only Sheridan himself is brave and smart enough to stand up against a stultifying orthodoxy.

I counted four critical references to these commentators in the essay, one reference to the 'international relations orthodoxy', and then this extraordinary spray: More...

The esteemed Chicago Council on Global Affairs recently published its poll results on American views of Asia, particularly Japan and China. These show some interesting parallels and differences from our own Lowy Poll. Also, both polls were carried out in July 2007, strengthening their comparability.

Parallels:

• Australians and Americans both have noticeably warmer views towards Japan (64% for Australians and 59% for Americans) than towards China (56% and 41% respectively), with feelings towards Japan remaining largely consistent over the last few years, while those towards China experienced a moderate downturn.
• A slight majority of respondents in both countries also support their country joining others to limit’s China’s rising influence. In the case of the Chicago poll, this question was narrowed to whether the US and Japan should work together to limit China’s growing power.

Differences:

• Americans clearly do no rate Indonesia as an important country for the US, with only 14% (the lowest rating for all countries listed) picking it as a country that is 'very important'. Egypt was deemed to be more important to the US than Indonesia, while Australia did not even make the list.
• Echoing this difference in geography and worldview, Americans still see Europe as more important than Asia (54% to 42%), though this gap has been shrinking.

So the White House denies that President Bush asked Prime Minister Rudd, in the course of a recent phone conversation about the financial crisis, to explain what the G20 was.

The Age rather gleefully reports this story today, presumably because it was their competitor, The Australian, which got the scoop on Saturday (I wrote a short post about it on Monday). The Australian's report was unsourced, but The Age surmises today that, given the level of detail about the conversation, 'it must have been informed by sources close to the PM.' Maybe, but it didn't necessarily come from Rudd's office, as transcripts of such conversations routinely make their way around the bureaucracy and to other ministers.

One reason to think Rudd's staff may not have leaked in this case is that the motivation does not quite fit. Clearly the broad tone of the piece in The Australian made Rudd look very good; firm, statesmanlike and standing up for Australia. But if Rudd's office leaked the conversation, why would they include that line about Bush's ignorance of the G20? How does it help Rudd to embarrass an important foreign leader so publicly?

I notice that every time a new edition of The Atlantic Monthly comes out, I find myself blogging about at least a couple of articles from it. It's just a phenomenal magazine, and I really hope it makes it through the current economic malaise. Discretionary items like magazine subscriptions tend to suffer in downturns, and although I have no idea of The Atlantic's financial position, it does feature weirdly obscure ads from small mail order companies in its back half, which doesn't exactly scream financial solidity. So perhaps it's kept afloat by benefactors, as many such magazines are.

Anyway, I've already featured one Atlantic piece today, and here's the second, a very entertaining article about the farce that is American aviation security. The moral is that most of it is 'security theatre', intended to reassure people their flight is safe from terrorism, but at huge cost and with very little real impact. More...

Terrific op-ed from Shadow Attorney-General George Brandis today on the tensions between former Prime Minister John Howard's conservatism and the liberal traditions of his party. We've talked before on this blog about the uneasy fit between liberalism as it relates domestic policy and its application to foreign policy. I have argued that, altough bilateralism and a strong commitment to the US alliance have come to be associated with the Liberal side of politics, there's no necessary link between those policy stances and liberalism as a political philosophy. Former Shadow Foreign Minister Andrew Robb disagreed with me (here's my response to Robb).

Similarly, although the Howard Goverment came to be known for its close association with the US, there seems to me no reason to regard this as a necessarily conservative stance. In fact, conservatives like Owen Harries have expressed their discomfort with this close association.

Brandis' essay is an extract from a soon-to-be released book called Liberals and Power — The Road Ahead. I look forward to reading the foreign policy section.

What's a whole-of-nation approach to reconstruction? Are we losing institutional knowledge on how to successfully rebuild a country? What's the impact of the financial crisis for defence and what does waning public support for the Australian deployment to Afghanistan mean for our commitment there? 

To get some answers straight from the horse's mouth, listen to the interview below with the Chief of the Australian Army, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, who spoke at the Lowy Institute yesterday about reconstruction and the whole of government approach (podcast here).

Guest blogger: Peter McCawley is a Visiting Fellow at the Indonesia Project, ANU, and former Dean of the ADB Institute, Tokyo.

References are often made in western media reports to the 'generous' amounts of foreign aid provided by rich nations. Australian ministers from both main political parties are also fond of mentioning the 'generous' foreign aid program that Australia provides. The latest mention of generous aid programs came in The New York Times just a day or so ago when it reported that a total of $240 million has now been pledged by a consortium of Western donors (including Australia) to give assistance following the disastrous Cyclone Nargis last May.

The NYT talks of 'showering aid' into the Irrawaddy Delta 'on a scale that this country has perhaps never seen.' There are concerns that the 'intensive effort in the delta' has led to inequalities in the supply of aid because other very poor parts of Myanmar are not getting any aid. This is all very odd. In fact, on any sensible comparison, US$240 million (which has apparently taken over four months to rustle up) is a very small amount of money. More...

Guest blogger: Robert Ayson (pictured) is Director of Studies, Graduate Studies in Strategy and Defence, ANU.

Just a decade ago it would have been foolish to argue that New Zealand’s general election results held little consequence for Australian policy. In the blue corner sat the incumbent National Party coalition, which looked fondly on the old days of an active NZ-US alliance relationship, claimed that Australia and New Zealand constituted a single strategic entity, and that New Zealand needed to maintain a ‘balanced’ defence force (including replacements for the Skyhawks).

In the red corner were Helen Clark’s politically hungry Labour team, which claimed that there was no 'unfinished business’ in Wellington’s relationship with Washington, which emphasised New Zealand’s strategic autonomy (including from Australia), was regarded as a little too enthusiastic about peacekeeping and was expected to cancel New Zealand’s air combat forces.

We all know what happened in the 1999 election (and again in 2002 and 2005). And when Clark first became Prime Minister, her government’s defence posture did not go down especially well over here. But Labour came to power in a period of close Australia-NZ cooperation in the nearer region: the Interfet mission in East Timor. Canberra and Wellington went on to work together in the Solomon Islands and Tonga interventions. Thanks largely to New Zealand’s contribution to the Afghanistan conflict, the Clark Government substantially improved relations with Washington too. And Canberra eventually got used to the force structure decisions and strategic outlook which set New Zealand apart.

If John Key’s revitalised National Party wins office on 8 November – and the chances of this happening seem very good, even if it means another coalition government under New Zealand’s proportional voting system – all will certainly not change from Canberra’s perspective. After years of struggling to punch holes in Clark’s strategic outlook, National has largely come to accept the blueprint. More...

It can sometimes be hard to interpret Australian attitudes towards climate change. Lowy Institute polling over the years suggested most Australians are very concerned about it and want action. The ALP seemed to tap into this sentiment in the lead up to last year’s election when it portrayed itself as more serious about climate issues than the Coalition. Against that backdrop it was a little surprising to see the reaction to a recent spike in petrol prices: public uproar and politicians debating the pros and cons of a few cents per litre price cuts.

With the ongoing onslaught of the credit crisis the task of developing responsible climate policy seems to have been even further complicated. The 2008 Lowy Poll, released a couple of weeks ago, suggests support for taking immediate action to address global warming has softened since 2006 while economic concerns have increased. 

Support for the most activist response — 'global warming is a serious and pressing problem; we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs' — was down from 68% in 2006 to 60% this year. And when Australians were asked to rank a list of ten foreign policy goals the goal of tackling climate change slipped from equal first place last year to equal fifth this year. In its place economic concerns crept up the list. As for addressing the problem by paying extra on their electricity bill, 53% of Australians didn’t want to pay more than $10 extra a month or, by the ubiquitous caffeine gauge, less than a coffee a week. More...

Last Friday, Professor Xu from Griffith University, an expert in the Chinese electricity sector and the author of the Lowy-Griffith publication China’s Struggle for Power, emailed me questioning local news stories about a looming drop off in China’s demand for coal.

The China demand story for metals and for coal are not the same, and Xu argues that China’s demand for Australian coal is unlikely to drop much, if at all, for four reasons:

1. Over 80% of China’s growing electricity generation comes from coal-fired plants (and this share is growing);
2. China’s domestic coal production is stagnant;
3. While the spot price for coal has dropped in China in line with global prices, the price for coal supply contracts (the key for electricity generators) has gone up recently; and
4. Winter is coming in China.

For those of you who read Chinese, here is a good source from the Chinese media. For those of us who only read English, here is a similar, longer-term argument.

Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has been quick  to point out that the global economic crisis will make Australia’s Defence White Paper challenge ‘far greater’ – as if matching Australia’s military capability plans to an uncertain strategic environment and limited finances was ever going to be easy.

It looks like the Minister has smartly seized upon current financial woes to reel in the government’s stated ambitions for the White Paper. For one thing, we can no longer expect the process to be over by Christmas; all we can expect, it seems, is that by March-April 2009, Canberra will have produced ‘a strategic assessment’. As a White Paper veterans like Hugh White will tell you, and as those of us who have had a hand in strategic assessments will acknowledge, strategic assessments (which are themselves difficult and slippery creatures) are the relatively straightforward part of a White Paper process.

But maybe Mr Fitzgibbon is not being entirely disingenuous when he implies that even producing a strategic assessment by March-April is going to be quite a feat (ie. something that will only happen because he is 'determined' about it). The global security landscape was already in troubling flux; now we have to add the strategic implications of the financial crisis, which are only barely beginning to emerge.

Here are some sub-preliminary prognostications: More...

A key rival to Canberra's 2013-14 UN Security Council bid is Helsinki. And Finland has just scored another feather in its cap for creative small power diplomacy, with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to former president Marti Ahtisaari. His claims to fame includes helping broker peace in Aceh — Australia's immediate neighbourhood.

The success of the Aceh peace process and the subsequent EU monitoring mission is a reminder that distance and detachment can amount to real advantages in acts of good international citizenship. The Aceh problem had reached a hurting stalemate and, in the aftermath of the tsunami, was ripe for resolution. But an Australian effort to mediate and monitor would likely have met with deep (if deeply misplaced) suspicion that Canberra was trying to dismember Indonesia, Timor-style. More...

We are in the economic equivalent of a rolling national security crisis.

That's an interesting turn of phrase from the Prime Minister. Presumably this was Rudd's attempt to communicate the scale and urgency of the problem, though it's also a reminder that threats to national security aren't always physical. The government has committed itself to maintaining 3% growth in the defence budget to 2018, but there might be some nervous officers on Russell Hill today as they contemplate the future. The government wants to pump prime the economy with new infrastructure projects, and since most of our weapons are bought overseas, could the government consider cuts there in order to boost domestic spending?

UPDATE: A colleague notes that the fall of the Australian dollar will also hurt the Defence Department's buying power when it comes to US and European weapons.

Guest blogger: Peter McCawley is a Visiting Fellow at the Indonesia Project, ANU, and former Dean of the ADB Institute, Tokyo.

Three weeks ago I said (hoped, really) that the US authorities would probably be able to restore order to chaotic markets and that Australia should be able to weather the international economic storm. My proviso was that fast progress was needed from US authorities in tackling basic problems. So where have we got to?

The good news is that, so far, Australia still seems better placed than most major northern hemisphere OECD countries. It's true that some of our markets have taken big hits recently. Commodity prices have fallen sharply, the Australian dollar has plummeted, and not surprisingly, the virulent 'crisis of confidence' virus has caused remarkable falls in the Australian stock market. More...

Sometimes, mind-numbing prolixity can be a virtue. Prime Minister Rudd spent almost all of his 7:30 Report interview last night using his usual mix of cliche and long-windedness to hose down host Kerry O'Brien's barely concealed panic about the financial crisis. For every O'Brien reference to 'depressions', 'tidal waves' and 'huge onslaughts', the PM parried skillfully with 'objective facts', 'substantial measures' and 'the confidence equation'.

Then, right at the end, the iron fist in the terry toweling glove:

KERRY O'BRIEN: What is your biggest fear for Australia, right now, what is your nightmare for Australia?

KEVIN RUDD: Kerry, my responsibility to Australia is to speak objectively about the problems we face, and equally objectively, about the strengths we have. People running around throwing their hands in the air talking about nightmares is not leadership. That's commentary, and I am not in the business of commentary. The nation requires plain talking, straight talking, about the problems we face and the strengths we've got. And that's what I intend to keep doing. (My emphasis.)

Reflecting on the eleven rounds of student debate recently hosted on this blog about what should be in the forthcoming Defence White paper (to see all 11 posts, enter 'white paper debate round' into the search box above), I was astounded that only one of them (this post by my Colleague Rodger Shanahan) mentioned the ongoing wars that Australians are involved in.

Australian Service personnel are engaged in combat in Afghanistan. Despite the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, a number remain in various roles in that country, and our naval forces continue to play a significant role in security operations within the upper Persian Gulf.  

What could be more important to our strategic environment or defence policy than the fact that we are at war? More...

World Bank President Bob Zoellick seems well outside his allocated territory in his speech on modernizing multilateral economic institutions. When Wayne Swan meets him at the Annual Meetings in Washington next week, he might ask him who he speaks for in writing off G20 as 'unwieldy'.

Its precursor group during the Asian Crisis did a far better job than the Bretton-Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank) and showed what can be done with a group this size, given preparation and good chairmanship. If G20 has done less than it could have since then, it is because G7 and the IMF, while unable to adapt themselves to the needs of the current world economy, have at least been able to prevent a rival group from succeeding. More...

As someone who has been cautiously supportive of Prime Minister Rudd's Asia Pacific Community initiative but who is increasingly concerned about what looks like a lack of political and diplomatic momentum behind the idea, I'm inclined to grasp at any piece of vaguely encouraging news. But even as an enthusiast, this defence of the Rudd Government's (in)activity seems like pretty weak tea.

I can just buy Professor Andrew MacIntyre's argument that a lack of regional opposition to Rudd's idea is itself good news. And on the assumption that MacIntyre has good contacts in the government and the region, I'm prepared to take his word for it when he says that 'informal indications are encouraging'. But that's about the only evidence offered, and it is not really strong enough to overturn claims that Rudd's initiative is 'dead in the water'.

That's not to say Barry Desker was right when he made that claim — it's just too early to tell, and the proposal may take several years to mature. But to put to rest any suspicion that Rudd's announcement was merely intended for a quick headline, it might help for the PM or his Foreign Minister to revisit the proposal in a substantive way.

The two most recent Prime Ministerial references I can find to the promised National Security Statement date from about a month ago (see here and here), with the PM promising only that it would be released 'in the near future' (note to the PM from Sir Humphrey Appleby: if you're asked about it again, you can also say 'when the time is ripe' or 'at the appropriate juncture').

From what I hear, the NSS is stuck on Kevin Rudd's desk, and has been for some time. That would seem consistent with a recent Glenn Milne column that rather cheekily paraphrased some remarks made by former Labor leader Kim Beazley (Beazley made his comments under the Chatham House rule), which described Rudd's management syle as constipated and over-centralised.

Anyway, whatever the reason, it's an important document and a lot of people are looking forward to seeing it. Let's hope it's released soon.

Guest blogger: Brendan Taylor is a lecturer in the Graduate Studies in Strategy and Defence program, ANU.

There’s been a bit of hype about the sudden shift in Australian public attitudes vis-à-vis China revealed in this week’s Lowy poll. But I wouldn’t be reading too much into these figures just yet.

This has been both an important and difficult year for China – but it is also likely to prove the exception to the rule in many respects. The Lowy poll dutifully acknowledges the role which developments such as the Tibet crackdown and the Olympic torch relay might have played in producing such results. The July timeframe in which the polling was conducted is likely to have skewed these results still further. This was in the run up to the Olympics, when Beijing was coming under heavy media criticism over a whole host of issues including pollution, human rights abuses and its capacity to host a terror-free games. More...

In a globalised world, financial markets are a potent transmission channel from the US to the rest of us. Indeed, our stock market responds more to the US than to our domestic fundamentals.

At first sight, last week’s policy mimicry might also suggest that the problems are the same. Australia followed the US and UK in banning short-selling of equities, and Australia’s $4 billion mortgage fund might look like a whimpish counterpart to the $US700 billion mortgage rescue package currently with Congress.

In the case of the provision of mortgage funding, it’s easy to differentiate the two countries. The US package will be used to buy existing housing assets. Whether these assets are 'toxic' or just temporarily undervalued by the market, there seems to be an acceptance that the authorities will pay more-than-market value for them, thus assisting the current holders, some of whom may not deserve help. In Australia, the plan seems to be to fund new housing borrowers: innocent bystanders in the troubles. It may be superfluous and populist, but it’s not a sign that 'this sucker could go down'.

Larvatus Prodeo is one of Australia's more prominent political blogs, and today it has some unkind things to say about the Lowy Institute's annual poll, released this morning. Specifically, the Institute is charged with push polling in regard to one question on climate change, which included the phrase, 'Until we are sure that global warming is really a problem, we should not take any steps that would have economic costs.' Larvatus Prodeo says:

The Lowy pollsters can’t even point to Climate Tragic Michael Costa to justify this anymore. Is this duplicity or just plain laziness?

Since Costa is known as something of a climate change denialist, let's first deal with the implication that the Lowy Institute has a climate change denialist agenda. More...

Kevin Rudd’s speech to the UN General Assembly set out some specifics for reforming the international financial system. It’s good to see him plugging the G20 as the centre-piece of this agenda.

He was diplomatic enough not to draw attention to the irrelevance of the UN’s own specialized institution – the International Monetary Fund – in the current troubles. The IMF’s 185-strong membership is too large and too diverse to have a sensible discussion on this topic. Its smaller governance groupings have been unable to reform their composition to reflect today’s realities rather than the power balance of fifty years ago.

Thus the G20 group would seem to be well suited to work out the Big Picture of what to do. More...

Campbell Micallef is participating in our student blog debate on the Defence White Paper.

Surely Sam is trying to provoke a reaction when he argues that Australia is now committed to perform expeditionary operations because it decided to buy some expensive expeditionary toys. Decisions concerning the acquisition of military capabilities should go hand-in-hand with the types of operations one hopes to perform. Perhaps it is the case that a decision has been made to practise expeditionary operations in the future, and as a result, a decision has been made to build the forces needed to fulfil these operational requirements. More...

Guest blogger: Marc Gugliotta is participating in our student blog debate on the Defence White Paper.

Let’s talk about land forces then. Instead of using our Army for stabilisation and peacekeeping operations, let's create a non-military force whose primary training is to maintain law and order. A rough idea of what I have in mind is the Italian Carabinieri which, in an Australian context, would be an expanded AFP International Deployment Group (IDG). The idea is to have a force that is capable enough to deal with most low-level operations (eg. light armoured mobility and firepower of a light infantry squad) but whose primary focus and training is on how to stabilise and police rather than how to kill. More...