This is a strange one. Al Qaeda has committed countless atrocities over the last couple of decades, yet Time Magazine's Joe Klein thinks Zawahiri's racial epithet is going to make a difference to how they are perceived:

The Zawahiri letter is one of the first real indications we have of the new international state of affairs...The terrorists are now exposed as racists, on top of everything else. We have many miles to go in Afghanistan and the northern and western precincts of Pakistan, and more blood to shed--and innumerable ways to screw up, since no one has ever gotten Afghanistan right--but the wind seems to have shifted slightly and is now at our back.

Was there ever really any doubt that al Qaeda is composed of troglodyte bigots?

It seems to me the key to winning the public relations battle against al Qaeda is not to convince the world that they are bad, but to convince the world that they don't matter. Inflating the group's significance has been a counterproductive strategy. So instead of making pious statement about al Qaeda's brand of evil, mockery might be a better strategy, or just silence.

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?

Coming on top of recent reports that China is close to reaching a deal with Russia for carrier-based fighters, the Financial Times writes that a Chinese Major General, while not commenting on China's carrier ambitions specifically, has made  'the defence ministry’s most forthright statement yet on the issue':

“The navy of any great power . . . has the dream to have one or more aircraft carriers,” he said in the interview, which aides said was the first arranged by the defence ministry on its own premises. “The question is not whether you have an aircraft carrier, but what you do with your aircraft carrier.”

Major General Qian Lihua goes on to argue that China would use its carriers for offshore defence rather than global reach. Translated, that means they could be used in a Taiwan War scenario, but not to project power globally like the US does with its carriers.

As the FT says, such assurances are unlikely to reassure many, and they are unconvincing anyway, since carriers are probably not that useful to China in a Taiwan scenario. The island is well within range of Chinese air bases, and if China wanted to extend its air 'umbrella' over Taiwan, it would be cheaper to invest in air-to-air refuellers than carriers.

That doesn't mean we should leap to the opposite conclusion that China is racing toward a naval fleet to challenge the US. It will take China years (perhaps more than a decade) to actually build the carriers and escort ships, and to have crews trained to use them. They are only just starting this process by slowly refurbishing a half-finished ex-Soviet carrier (photo below courtesy of Sinodefence.com), which might be used as  training vessel.

So what we will see initially is a fleet similar in capability to that of France or the UK, rather than a competitor to the US.  Still, that would be a massive leap forward for a navy that was, until the 90s, a rather antiquated coastal defence force.

So the financial collapse is now more damaging than the 9/11 attacks,  at least in terms of retail sales.

We have discussed previously the possibility of terrorists launching attacks against financial systems, and when terrorists hear analysis like this from Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, they can only be encouraged:

The array of financial instruments deployed within the global financial system has become so complex that it defies understanding. It is not just that nobody understands the whole system; that's hardly surprising. What is worrying, though, is the very large number of senior finance sector executives who don't appear to understand the consequences of even their own decisions.

If we don't understand it, how on earth can we protect it?

Awhile ago, there was a debate on The Interpreter and the ANU’s East Asia Forum about the pros and cons of the latest deal struck between Washington and Pyongyang and then presented to the other members of the Six-Party Talks. I focussed on the potential strategic cons, while East Asia Forum retorted with the supposed pros.

Alas, for the supporters of the latest deal, pithily called the ‘get real’ school of diplomacy by East Asia Forum's Peter Drysdale, it appears Pyongyang believes it has reached a much different and more favourable agreement with Christopher Hill than the one American officials told us about. Basically, North Korea is saying it only agreed to what it has already offered before, nothing new, and only after it gets all the fuel it has been promised for progress it has not followed through on.

If this deal really has kept North Korea 'on track to denuclearisation', it seems that Pyongyang continues to be walking backwards on this track and not forward.

Associate Professor Ian Wing writes:

I couldn’t agree more with your comments about the latest Cordesman appearance on the 7.30 Report. Cordesman was incorrect when he spruiked the benefits of the US President being at the ‘apex’ of US intelligence. Cordesman’s claims are generally way off the mark anyway – especially on Iraq and Afghanistan where, despite apparently sounding critical of the Bush Administration, he has consistently under-estimated our adversaries. 

The best thing Obama could do is keep the CIA and Dick Cheney’s other ‘groupthinked’ minions at arms length. Instead, Obama should receive his advice from a range of expert intelligence sources while tempering that advice with insights gained from others – area specialists, military experts, foreign intelligence services, journalists, businessmen, academics, activists etc. Perhaps if Bush had followed this advice we wouldn’t be in such a strategic mess.

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.

Dominic Meagher at East Asia Forum is far less kind to the Bush Administration's record on China than I was yesterday. Dominic's critique puts me in mind of this James Fallows anecdote, the moral of which is that, had it not been for 9/11, the same neoconservative faction that created the war in Iraq would have fomented a conflict with China.

We're never going to know if that's true, but because John McCain had so many of the same foreign policy instincts as President Bush, I argued some months ago that the danger of conflict with China would be higher under McCain than under Obama. Hugh White, some readers will recall, disagreed. He argued that, as a tough Republican, McCain had the political capital to 'do a Nixon' and create a sustainable modus vivendi with China.

What interests me, however, is the possibility that Bush may already have done this. It is way too early to say what will come of the G20 as an institution, but if, as Graeme Dobell speculates, it becomes a modern equivalent of the Concert of Europe, we may have George W Bush to thank for the decisive move that  makes China an active participant in the global order rather than a resentful and unsatisfied outsider.

One further note on the Cordesman interview I linked to below. I take issue with this statement, which Cordesman made in response to a question about Obama's likely attitude to Iran's nuclear program:

A president who is the Commander in Chief operates at the apex of the American Intelligence Community, its military planning capabilities, its diplomacy. A candidate talks, really, in terms of sound bites. And that transition, which began with the first real intelligence briefing that the President elect got, which was all of 48 hours ago, is really what's going to determine his attitudes.

Whether Cordesman intended it or not, it sounds like he's saying that, with the pesky and distracting democratic process now safely out of the way, the national security bureaucracy can get on with the real work of securing the US.

But Obama's own ideas and convictions, and those of his advisers, should continue to play a decisive role. The intelligence and diplomatic communities are not all-knowing, and they are unlikely to offer blinding new insights that totally undermine everything Obama has learnt up to now about Iran. If they did, wouldn't they have solved the problem by now? 

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...

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.

Jo Gilbert, a PhD candidate at the Griffith Asia Institute, writes in response to my post on US-Taiwan relations:

 I am just wondering where the United States' $6.5 billion arms sale to Taiwan fits into your analysis? 

Thanks for your question, Jo. Three points come to my mind when thinking about the links between the recent arms sale and better US-Taiwan relations under the new KMT government:

1. The largest impediment to the arms sale before Ma’s victory was not US unwillingness to sell arms to Taiwan but the KMT’s use of its control of the Legislative Yuan to block the sale, despite US pressure. The major barrier to the arms sale was Taiwan domestic politics. While in opposition, the KMT was willing to hinder Taiwan-US relations for their own domestic political gain.
2. The fact that Washington was willing to push the arms sale through before the end of Bush’s term is a sign of continuity in US-Taiwan relations and the US definition of the status quo. This is of central importance to Taiwan and probably gives Ma more space to push closer economic ties with China.
3. The fact the deal was approved after the Olympics and was smaller than the original, long-delayed one, may reinforce the point that US-Taiwan relations take place within the larger picture of US-China relations. Luckily, Ma seems to be responding to this powerful strategic reality better than Chen Shui-bian did.

This seems like very encouraging news:

Taiwan and China Tuesday signed a range of deals aimed at bringing the two sides closer economically, after almost 60 years of hostilities that often took them to the brink of war. Officials from the two sides were shown live on television signing four agreements that are potentially worth billions of dollars, after talks that marked a significant warming of ties between the former bitter enemies.

And that's not all. Taiwan is even flirting with the idea of military-to-military contacts, and a formal peace treaty.

The concern in Taiwan is that this is a step toward a Chinese economic takeover of the island. But both Passport and the Washington Realist take the view improved economic linkages are good for Taiwan because they increase the potential costs of war. Closer economic ties, then, make the political status quo between China and Taiwan more stable.

I think this is basically persuasive, but it is worth noting that China's military modernisation of the last two decades has likely had the opposite effect on Chinese thinking, in that it has encouraged the belief that war against Taiwan is winnable.

On the back of a 25-year study by the Japanese Coast Guard, the Japanese Government is planning to submit to the UN a claim for a continental shelf of 740,000 sq km, or about twice the size of Japan today. This ambitious move is tied up with the UN May 2009 deadline for claims to expanded continental shelves. Up to 60 countries are expected to file new, expanded claims before this deadline. It is also tied up with Japan’s quest for resource security, as this new claim covers potential natural gas resources estimated to meet Japan’s natural gas needs for the next century.

Fortunately, this expanded claim avoids the areas around the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands in dispute between Japan and China and the Takeshima/Dokdo islets in dispute between Japan and the Koreas. All is not good, though, as China does not recognize Japan’s claim to the Okinotori islands that are central to this new claim.

PS. Looks like Japan and South Korea have got over their most recent tiff over these disputed islets, as the first trilateral defence strategy meeting between the US, Japan and South Korea since 2006 is in the offing. 

Earlier this week, the assembled minds of the Institute got together to discuss the geo-political consequences of the ongoing global financial turmoil. One of the suggestions was that it might crimp regional arms spending and related fears of arms races (or as Graeme Dobell nicely calls them, arms strolls). In line with this, Malaysia, citing the financial crisis, recently announced it would shelve an order for 12 military helicopters.

Alas, recent border tensions between Thailand and Cambodia have led Cambodia to announce plans to double its military budget next year. The most recent collapse in the southern Philippines peace process has also led the chronically under-funded armed forces to call for more money (gold) and guns. Looks like new global troubles are bad for the regional arms trade while long-running local ones are good for it.

One thing John McCain and Barack Obama seem to agree on is the need for 'energy independence'. In fact, the need to wean the US from dependence on Middle Eastern oil has been something of a staple of US politics since at least the 80s, and economists are fond of pointing out the sheer dopiness of it.

One recent example I found (via Will Wilkinson's excellent blog) by David Henderson from the Hoover Institution makes an admirably clear case for treating oil like any other commodity. No economically rational country wants to be self-sufficient in bananas or coffee if others can produce those goods more cheaply. Why should oil be any different? Cutting foreign supplies by raising the tarriff would massively raise the price of domestic oil to consumers. And government subsidies for oil substitutes aren't the answer either, since subsidies are just a hidden and costly tax.

All good stuff, but on the geopolitical issues, the argument is a little weaker. Energy independence advocates argue that American dependence on Middle Eastern oil puts it at the mercy of unfriendly regimes like Saudi Arabia. Henderson is right that this is a poor argument for independence, since Saudi Arabia has absolutely no interest in cutting off this supply and couldn't selectively target America through an oil boycott even if it wanted to.

But is this really what people like John McCain have in mind when they refer to buying oil from regimes that 'don't like us very much'? I would have thought that their fear is not about economic strangulation at the hands of Saudi Arabia, but about the fact that Saudi Arabia funds Islamist extremists who wish to do the US great harm. By buying Saudi oil, the argument goes, the US is indirectly funding such activity.

Not that this makes the case for energy independence any more plausible: cutting oil imports from Saudi Arabia would just free up the supply for somebody else. Saudi Arabia would still get its petro-dollars, and hence so would the extremists. The US would just be penalising itself for the sake of a useless feel-good gesture. So in neglecting the terrorism angle, Henderson's argument is incomplete, but the substance of his case still holds.

Where Henderson does fall short is in failing to acknowledge the massive levels of US government intervention in the present oil economy.More...

I recently attended a workshop at All Souls College, Oxford, conducted by the Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. The workshop, sponsored by the French Army’s École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, was investigating the doctrinal approaches that regular armies take in response to irregular threats. My primary task at the event was to present a paper about the development of the Australian Army’s new Counterinsurgency Manual, published earlier this month.

The discussion at the workshop was fascinating and wide ranging – frankly, it needed to be in order to stop the continual distraction offered by All Souls’ amazing architecture, which dates back to the early 15th century. 

The body of the workshop was conducted under the Chatham House rule, so I cannot report on the detail of the presentations, suffice to say that they were by highly credible people and were extremely interesting to a student of counterinsurgency. The Director of the Changing Character of War Programme, Hew Strachan (also the Chichele Professor of the history of war) went on the record with some interesting observations during the day’s summation.

One observation was that the day’s discussion had highlighted again the imperative for contemporary counterinsurgents to have sound information operations campaigns both within the operational theatre and linked to the home audience. The 2008 Lowy Institute Poll result, showing a decline in public support for our involvement in the Afghan conflict, reinforces the argument that creating a compelling narrative to explain the conflict to the ‘home front’ is an important issue in countering insurgencies. More...

Professor Robyn Lim from the University of Queensland responds to Rory Medcalf's post on Prime Minister Rudd's nuclear commission, in particular Rory's reference to a Foreign Affairs article that describes how the US could safely reduce its arsenal to zero (my response follows):

Nothing could be more dangerous to our security than to advocate that the US abandon its nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons did much to keep the Cold war cold. The Soviets did not fear conventional war. But they did fear nuclear war because it would have destroyed their political system.

The French and British are not going to give up their nuclear weapons, whatever they may say to the contrary. That is mostly because they are never again going to risk the mass casualties of the two world wars. Abolishing nuclear weapons, they think, would make conventional war more, not less, likely. Currently, China and Russia are modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Russia, because of the diminution in its conventional forces, is placing more emphasis on its nuclear arsenal, as shown by its abandonment of the 'no first use' policy. More...

Guest blogger: Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and is serving as a member of the US Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.

It's the perfect man-made nuclear proliferation storm:  Congress passes the US-India nuclear deal without making sure it complies with the Hyde Act, and China follow suit and breaks the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) rules by supplying two reactors to Pakistan; India endorses the deal because India would rather see the NSG dead and be free of NSG restrictions than deny Pakistan access to reactors. Pakistan, meanwhile, is so broke it is pleading with the IMF for an unrestricted emergency loan. Normally, the IMF conditions its loans against wasteful government spending, such as uneconomical nuclear power plants. 

The US is absolutely silent about all of this. More...

Suggestions that the new Nuclear Disarmament Commission, sponsored by Australia and Japan, should come up with an instant plan to turn North Korea, Iran and others away from the nuclear-weapons path essentially miss the point. Nobody is pretending that a project like the Commission is a substitute for direct pressure on North Korea and Iran, or that it can produce immediate results.

Chris Skinner is right that there is a need to craft and articulate compelling arguments for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Indeed, in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal do just that. Given that Daalder advises Obama on nuclear arms control, this article’s arguments for ‘the logic of zero’ should be taken very seriously indeed.

I too hope that the International Commission for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament will make a strong case for the logic of non-proliferation, smaller arsenals, less reliance on nuclear weapons and ultimately their abolition. But the greater challenge for the Commission will be to map the outlines of a much-needed new global consensus on how to pursue those goals, in which all countries – nuclear-armed and non-nuclear, NPT states or not – are willing to make concessions. This won’t only require exceptional diplomacy, but time, and the Commission’s first meeting concluded just a few days ago. Getting the attention of major powers, notably the new US Administration and Russia, will be critical.

Disclosure: The author is serving as an occasional research consultant to the Commission.

Photo by Flickr user mpp26, used under a Creative Commons license.

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...

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).

Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post thinks so:

If you wanted to destabilize a country, wouldn't this be an excellent time to do it? If Country X's stock market can crash after the publication of a single article in an obscure newspaper, think what might happen if someone conducted a systematic campaign against Country X. And if you can imagine this, so can others.

Actually, Applebaum names political opposition movements and foreign enemies among those who could use such tactics, but why not terrorists? It remains something of a mystery why terrorists continue to focus so much on causing death and physical destruction, and largely fail to use tactics that would undermine institutions. More...

Chris Skinner ties together some recent debates on The Interpreter, and concludes that Prime Minister Rudd's Nuclear Commission has much work to do (my comment follows):

There has been a lot of fascinating debate on North Korean accommodation by Washington and its implications for Japan and South Korea. Earlier, there was a similar though less strongly debated discussion on the Iran nuclear potential as it affects Israel and other US allies in the Middle East. Isn’t it now high time for the much vaunted Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Commission to start articulating the arguments that will persuade all of the above that disarmament is both desirable and practical in an uncertain world?

Frankly I think the whole idea of the Commission is idealistic but impractical, as there is no real incentive to advance its cause. Sometimes the world is unable to move forward without the real experience of a disaster to provide the compelling spectre of a doomsday alternative. More...

The Australian today notes the first meeting of Prime Minister Rudd's Nuclear Disarmament Commission. But an accompanying piece on Co-Chair (and former Australian foreign minister) Gareth Evans contains a rather basic error, though it's not clear whether it belongs to the journo or to Evans. The article claims that:

A particular risk was crude devices known as "dirty bombs" that could ravage cities and kill 100,000 people.

Dirty bombs are otherwise known as radioactive dispersal devices or RDDs, and are defined as a conventional explosives coupled with radioactive material. An RDD would spread radiation but would not cause a nuclear explosion since it is not a nuclear weapon. At most, an RDD might kill hundreds of people, and probably fewer.

However, an RDD would be extremely disruptive, necessitating large-scale evacuations, decontamination of large areas and populations, and perhaps demolition of buildings or even whole neighbourhoods. So 'ravage cities' could be about right, but the casualty figure is way inflated.

My original post noting my concerns about the latest bilateral agreement between Pyongyang and Washington and the health of the Six-Party Talks has sparked a healthy debate. It has even hit the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald and led Peter Drysdale to castigate me for being 'unreal'. Here are my last thoughts on this thread.

My biggest worry about the latest US-North Korea bilateral deal and the progress of the Six-Party Talks over the last two years or so is that I find it hard to conclude that these talks are pushing Pyongyang in any serious way towards comprehensive denuclearisation. Aren’t we really still talking about Yongbyon two decades on and preventing a second North Korean test – where is the vaunted 'real' progress?

I find it much more 'real' to see that the recent direction of these talks are placing new and serious strains on the US-Japan, and to a lesser extent, US-South Korea alliance relationships, the central planks of the US security presence in the region. More...

Professor Robyn Lim from the University of Queensland has more on our North Korea debate (And Peter Drysdale at East Asia Forum has also joined the discussion):

I agree with Malcolm Cook that a new trilateral arrangement for Northeast Asia (US, DPRK, China) would be a very silly idea, excluding as it does the key US allies in Northeast Asia — South Korea and Japan. But  I can't agree with Malcolm that the US-Japan alliance is 'certain'.

To the contrary, victory has historically been the solvent of alliances and there is no reason to assume that the US-Japan alliance is somehow immune. The 'glue' in this alliance was the shared fixed enmity towards the USSR during the Cold War. But that glue dissolved along with the end of the Cold War. More...

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

I’m feeling a little like Japan following the latest US-North Korea nuclear deal – isolated and excluded — after my proposal for a China-North Korea-US mechanism touched so many raw nerves. But I remain convinced that this offers us the best way out of the dangerous and protracted North Korean nuclear crisis.

First, a China-North Korea-US trilateral arrangement actually minimizes the chances that Pyongyang can play Washington off against its most important regional allies. The larger the grouping, the more vulnerable it is to such a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. Added to this, of course, is the ultimate dilemma of multilateralism – the greater the number of parties involved, the lower the common denominator which needs to be accommodated. My trilateral alternative substantially reduces both problems. More...

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...

Thanks Brendan for your proposal for a new trilateral arrangement for Northeast Asia featuring the US, DPRK and China as an alternative to the Six-Party Talks. It has kept my mind turning over ever since.

While you present it, in the interests of intellectual speculation, as a better alternative to the present Six-Party Talks, I can’t help but conclude, speculatively, that it would not only be a worse option for regional security and nuclear non-proliferation, but might even by the worst option. Here is why. More...

Below, two reader responses to Brendan Taylor's guest post about the Six-Party Talks, in which he suggested 'a trilateral China-North Korea-US mechanism as an alternative to the Six-Party Talks...Tokyo will not be fond of this idea. But peace in Asia is ultimately contingent upon the ability of Beijing and Washington to get along, not Tokyo and Washington...as Japan’s own economic and strategic weight gradually diminishes...Tokyo can increasingly expect more of the same...they may just have to learn to live with it.'

Robyn Lim has a response to this argument below, but first, Peter Alford:

The important thing is Tokyo and Beijing working out a modus operandi, which they’ve been trying for. And actually, if Tokyo does not accept that peace in Asia is mediated by Washington and Beijing (and particularly though an agency as odd as Christopher Hill), it will express its differing strategic interests in certain ways. For instance, it’s assumed Japan can get a deliverable nuclear capability in about 12 months.

China knows this and behaves accordingly, it’s interesting that other folks don’t. And from where does your correspondent draw the view that Japan’s economic weight, at least, has diminished in recent months? It seems to have increased.

And here are Robyn Lim's thoughts (just to note, the phrase 'lump it' appeared only in the title of Brendan's post, and was my invention, not his):

The idea that Japan should just like it or lump it shows how little understanding there often is in Australian academic circles about the reality of security issues in North Asia. More...

For all the fashionable criticism of George Bush’s foreign policy, he has managed relations with China well at a challenging time, putting in place an effective conceptual and practical framework (Zoellick’s ‘responsible stakeholder’ and the accompanying myriad of bilateral dialogues), and managing tensions over Taiwan, trade and human rights.

Key to this achievement has been Washington’s success in revitalising its traditional alliances in Asia (particularly with Japan and Australia) and bringing into play potential new strategic partners: the historic breakthrough with India is the most significant here, but US relations with Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam have also made significant gains under Bush. The key principle underpinning this approach has been that getting China right means getting Asia right first – a subtle and sophisticated strategy sometimes wrongly caricatured as containment.

That’s why it is so unfortunate that the administration has blotted its Asia record in the home straight by capitulating to Pyongyang’s crude but proven extortion tactics More...

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

It’s not often I disagree with my good friend Malcolm Cook. But his latest post oversells the Six-Party Talks, in my view. Malcolm argues that the talks were well placed to achieve five goals (my comments in italics):

1. Preclude bilateral talks with Pyongyang: But US-North Korea negotiations were increasingly occurring on the sidelines of the Six-Party Talks. Hence they have fuelled bilateralism, not precluded it.
2. Stronger US communication and coordination with other five parties: The Six-Party Talks have just as often exposed divisions and a lack of coordination, particularly between the US and Japan over the abductions issue.
3. Concerted pressure on Pyongyang from the US and other negotiating parties: The ‘on again-off again’ history of the Six-Party Talks is hardly consistent with concerted pressure.
4. Reassert the US’s central constructive security role in Northeast Asia: The Six-Party Talks have exposed how much Washington increasingly needs Beijing to get anything done in Northeast Asia.
5. Stop North Korea going nuclear: The Six-Party Talks have already failed to prevent that outcome.

Malcolm is also unduly harsh in his criticism of the Bush Administration. More...

I'm happy to be corrected by Mark on the proportion of Field Manuals the US military has produced on 'small wars'. I'm also prepared to revise my view that the 'small war' school is in the ascendency in the US. But we can't base that debate on a numeric comparison of Field Manuals alone. One critical factor to be considered is US military leadership, and on that score, General Petraeus and Secretary Gates can surely count as strong advocates for the 'small war' worldview.

Sam’s call that the so called ‘small war'school within the US military is in ‘ascendency’ because of the recent publication of  US Army Field Manual (FM) 3-07 Stability Operations is overstated. One of anything is not ascendency. When put into the context of the literally hundreds of doctrinal publication issued annually every year by the US military, it is not even a weak trend.
 
Consider this: in the six years since the US became heavily involved in ‘stability’ operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has issued only two major pieces of doctrine dealing specifically with the subject – FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency and FM 3-07 Stability Operations. Such is the US military’s doctrinal response to an enterprise that has cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars.  

I wonder what people would consider as failure for both the ‘small war' school and the ongoing efforts to describe and understand what is occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan if two publications in six years constitute an ‘ascendency’ of thought. 

Times are bad for East Asian security when Christopher Hill, the US envoy to the Six-Party Talks, is more welcome in Pyongyang – the outpost of tyranny and source of nuclear proliferation — than he is in Tokyo, the most important US ally in the region, a country that has the best record in nuclear constraint, and an alliance partner that has contributed to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Times are worse when the American envoy carries out bilateral negotiations with the North Koreans, strikes a deal and then goes to Seoul and Tokyo (US allies both with weak, pro-US governments) and tells them what the deal is. Unlike the US, both Japan and South Korea face an imminent threat from North Korea and both governments are much less sanguine about this deal. Reportedly, departing Secretary of State Rice had a long and angry phone call with Japan’s new foreign minister. Not a good way to start relations. Even candidates Obama and McCain thought allies should have been treated better.

The latest bilateral deal, struck by Hill after negotiations in Pyongyang, seems to usurp the whole rationale for the Six-Party Talks process, while achieving very little in terms of getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. More...

The document seems to confirm the ascendency of the 'small war' school in US military thinking (a debate we discussed last week), by arguing that the major future threat to US security comes from small, failing states rather than peer competitors. The field manual seeks to describe how operations to rebuild such states can be done better.

Given the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan, you can understand why the US Army is preoccupied with such questions, just as our military probably is. But as I've said before, arguing about how to do stability operations better precludes one option that needs serious thought: not doing stability operations at all, or at least, doing far fewer of them.

It will be interesting to see how the coming straitened economic circumstances affect this debate. As Judah Grunstein at World Politics Review has noted, it's going to be increasingly difficult for Western countries to justify long foreign deployments when money is tight domestically.

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...