By Peter Jennings

The immediate significance of the recent AUKMIN gathering in Sydney (January 21, 2022) was that it took place while a Russian military assault on Ukraine is imminent. Given the threat from Moscow, no one would have been surprised had the UK foreign and defence secretaries delayed their visit.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne told the post-dialogue media conference she had observed an exponential and continued upward commitment of UK engagement in the Indo-Pacific. UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said ‘we are facing global challenges from multiple aggressors’.

That’s the reality of our strategic times. The democracies are working more closely together because they must. Either we find ways to add strength through closer co-operation or else we lose ground to aggressive international behaviour from Russia and China.

The strategic outlook could hardly be more different today compared to the relatively more benign world of 2006, when AUKMIN was established. At that time UK and Australian officials were seized of a common view: they thought the bilateral agreement was a pointless waste of effort. Britain’s future, you see, was in Europe, and Australia was ‘Asian century’-bound.

Former foreign minister Gareth Evans summed up the mood. Writing in 2016 about former prime minister Tony Abbott’s affection for the Anglosphere, Evans claimed ‘the truth of the matter is that the UK has brought nothing of significance to the region’s defence since the fall of Singapore in 1942’. Closer Australia–UK co-operation was simply a ‘nostalgic’ hankering for the past, a ‘fantasy’ of ‘Anglosphere dreamers’, that no one would be interested in, least of all the US, which would focus on the ‘biggest game of all for the foreseeable future’, its competition for ‘global supremacy’ with China.

Evans was far from alone. In January 2011, I attended the third AUKMIN held at HMAS Watson naval base in Sydney. Kevin Rudd as foreign minister and Stephen Smith as defence minister, hardly Anglo-tragics, met their Conservative counterparts, William Hague and Liam Fox.

After a morning of productive talks, officials were told to write up a list of quite ambitious agreed outcomes for ministers to approve after lunch. A strange wrestle ensued with unhappy and jet-lagged Whitehall officials. Their mission was to ensure that nothing too substantial by way of future action was recorded.

We had all heard what the ministers wanted. But the British agenda was ‘curb your enthusiasm, let’s not get carried away here’. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was largely on board the Whitehall bus too. Evans’s Kool-Aid had been drunk deeply, we should stick to our Indo-Pacific knitting.

More than a decade later and it seems little has changed. Ticky Fullerton reported in The Australian on Thursday that Truss had to drive ‘the free-trade agreement with Australia, pushing back against entrenched Euro-centric views of Whitehall public servants’, when she was trade secretary last year.

Significant credit should go to British and Australian politicians of all political stripes for sticking with AUKMIN in the face of indifference from many officials.

Four important lessons come from the AUKMIN story.

First, the historic, linguistic and cultural connections that tie the UK and Australia do matter. Contrary to Payne’s article in The Australian on Thursday, this is not about basking in being ‘two of the most diverse nations on Earth’, it’s our commonalities that bring us together.

For all that is condescendingly decried (in Evans’s words) as a ‘passion for English country walks and pubs’, the truth is that historical closeness translates into effective defence and intelligence co-operation.

Second, Britain and Australia have interests that go beyond our immediate neighbourhoods. We are not small regional players but rather large states with global interests. We cannot be as small as the conventional thinking of some of our officials.

Third, rising aggressive totalitarianism in the form of China and Russia—and let’s add in North Korea and Iran—is the biggest strategic challenge of our age. It is pushing the consequential democracies together.

It is massively to Australia’s benefit that the UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands and others now define Indo-Pacific security as relevant to them. Hugh White dismisses these connections, saying they offer no guarantees of support in conflict: ‘We need to plan to fight alone,’ he maintains.

But we are not on the start line of the conflict today. The issue is what like-minded countries can do to avoid war. Thinking and acting alone is what China wants us to do because it encourages capitulation. Working together in ANZUS, AUKUS, AUKMIN, the Quad and other groupings is what Beijing dislikes because together the democracies are stronger.

A fourth AUKMIN lesson, nicely expressed by British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace on Friday, is that deep alliances can’t just be transactional, trading reciprocal favours. They are based on long-term trusted relationships working towards shared goals. These links take a long time to build.

To really work, alliances need practical outcomes, military engagement, things that really happen.

On this test the AUKMIN communique delivers a set of interesting outcomes, although perhaps none as startling as the AUKUS nuclear propulsion announcement of last September. (To be fair, those sorts of ‘deliverables’ are rare.)

Off the table is the idea of basing a Royal Navy Astute-class submarine at an Australian base, but the promise is for ‘greater rotations’ of British vessels into the region. The RN will deploy two offshore patrol vessels, HMS Spey and HMS Tamar, ‘re-establishing a persistent Indo-Pacific presence’ this year.

That’s a significant commitment. Australia should encourage the RN to make one of our naval bases its long-term centre for operations, treating this as a joint endeavour.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton stressed the ‘seamless’ progress in negotiations on nuclear propulsion and the wider technological agenda for joint work on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonic vehicles and underwater systems.

One can only hope AUKUS delivers. On submarines, going into Friday’s meeting, Truss pointed to the possibility of ‘collaborative development by the three AUKUS parties rather than a choice of Britain’s Astute class or America’s Virginia class’.

There is promise in that approach, which could produce a design common to all three navies. Ministers will be keenly aware of the risks and challenges posed by the nuclear propulsion plan for Australia. This is one heck of a project to land.

The AUKMIN partners signed agreements for a ‘cyber and critical technology partnership’ and for ‘clean, reliable and transparent infrastructure investment in the Indo-Pacific’. This points to a broadening of co-operation beyond traditional defence and intelligence roots.

In many ways, the competition for influence between the democracies and the dictatorships in the Indo-Pacific comes down to those countries looking for ‘clean, reliable and transparent’ co-operation and those who will settle for Beijing’s money, which is anything but clean.

How curious that, for decades, Canberra’s response to globalisation was to obsessively narrow our interests to a thin slice of Asia. Australia and Britain are stronger because of AUKMIN. Britain is again, and Australia is at last, thinking about our interests on a global scale. We have much to live up to.

Peter Jennings is the executive director of ASPI and a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department.

A version of this article was published in the Weekend Australian.

The featured mage: Bianca De Marchi/Pool/AFP/Getty Images.

This article was published by ASPI on January 24, 2022.

 

 

By James Durso

Afghanistan’s Taliban recently proposed it take a role in aid distribution via the creation of a joint mechanism with international aid organizations to coordinate the distribution of food aid to the country. According to the Taliban, “The goal of this committee is coordination on a higher level for facilitating humanitarian aid of the international community and to distribute aid for needy people.”

Taliban representatives recently met with Western government officials and Afghan women’s rights and human rights activists in Norway. The U.S. delegation addressed “the formation of a representative political system; responses to the urgent humanitarian and economic crises; security and counterterrorism concerns; and human rights, especially education for girls and women.”

Afghanistan’s neighbors Central Asia and India aren’t dallying. They recently met and agreed to create working groups to address Afghanistan’s food emergency, recognition of the Taliban, and the development of the Iranian port of Chabahar. The U.S. and Europe can help by holding their fire as the neighbors of heavily-sanctioned Iran and Afghanistan attempt to stabilize the region and create economic opportunity that will allow them to distance themselves from China’s thrust into the region.

The West needs to get a move on as the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)  have declared that 19 million people in Afghanistan are experiencing “high levels of acute food insecurity” and that that number will climb to 22.8 million this winter unless action is taken.

Washington’s priorities of a satisfactory (to the U.S.)  representative government, and its desires for Afghan women girls should take a back seat to averting a humanitarian catastrophe this winter. Afghans are being forced to sell their children for food, so more public engagement along will U.S. food aid will rebound to Washington’s benefit.

U.S. policymakers no doubt feel anger and humiliation at the public failure of their two-decade project to reform Pashtun culture.

But refusing practical steps to engage now with the new government in Kabul as disaster looms will show the U.S. and its confederates to be both incompetent and spiteful, a massive in-kind donation to the Taliban’s PR campaign internally and aimed at the wider Muslim world.

Recent visitors to Kabul report the Taliban want Americans to return to the country (“Even Erik Prince can come here!”), one reason being to counter Chinese expansion in the region.

A good start would be visits by U.S. officials to Kabul, as limiting their contacts to the Taliban political office in Doha, Qatar may also be interpreted as a lack of physical courage, which won’t inspire confidence in Kabul’s new chiefs. It will also give U.S. officials an opportunity to meet the Taliban out of earshot of Qatari officials who, while they have been helpful to the U.S., have their own agenda.

According to the visitors, the roads are open, free of roadblocks, and repair crews are at work. As the country was historically a trading crossroads, now is the time to again make it the connector between Central and South Asia, and a trade partner with Iran’s 80 million people.

Fortunately, leaders from Central Asia and South Asia — Uzbekistan and Pakistan — previously acted to connect the regions to increase trade and opportunity. In July, Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan met in Tashkent where they signed agreements to upgrade their countries’ economic relations. The leaders may have been racing the clock, but their project requires an Afghan crossroads where their businesses can trade with without fear of the U.S.

The U.S. attempt to export identity politics to Afghanistan (via demands for a “representative government”) may be obliged by the Taliban if they introduce the world to the Afghan Margot Honecker, which will cause wails of “We didn’t mean a woman like that!” The Taliban aren’t neglecting girls’ education as private schools – for boys and girls – are open, and the government  promised public schools will all be open after the Afghan New Year in late March.

After the Taliban’s August victory, there were few revenge killings and no one has been sent to a reeducation camp. If the Taliban deliver on their promise to open girls’ schools in March, the way should be open to consider releasing some Afghan funds seized by the U.S. or waiving sanctions against Taliban leaders so foreign businessmen can start to explore just how ready the Taliban are to engage with them and meet their demands for security and transparency.

The U.S. will have concerns about what the Taliban is doing to repress the Pakistan Taliban (the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)), Al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K). If the Taliban follow through on the girls’ schools, the U.S. should grant concessions that will facilitate regional trade, then ask Kabul to take action against the three extremist groups. The Taliban may then be likely to move against Al-Qaeda and IS-K, but not against the TTP, and the U.S. will know this if it is clear-eyed, though it should call for action against the TTP, at least to keep Pakistan on-side when Islamabad goes into a funk over the latest American “abandonment.”.

Pakistan’s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, described the Afghan Taliban and the TTP as “two sides of the same coin.” The Afghan Taliban see the TTP as their Pashtun allies in a conflict with Pakistan over the nominal border, the contested Durand Line. It is a scrap the U.S. will be wise to otherwise avoid, and instead focus on strengthening local economies as a counter to Beijing’s designs for Central and South Asia.

The Taliban aren’t the baddest actors America ever dealt with.

After World War II, the U.S. quickly hired German scientists and former Nazi officials. The U.S. also gave a pass to leaders of Unit 731, Japan’s germ warfare unit that experimented on Allied POWs.

The difference between then and now is that then the U.S. was the victor, so it was easy to be generous, especially as the West was rapidly retooling to confront Communism.

The question for America now is, as it faces a Communist regime in Beijing instead of Moscow, can it be magnanimous in defeat?

James Durso (@james_durso) is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.

Flag of Taliban is highlighted in the featured graphic. Credit: Bigstock.

We have just published a collection of the essays which Durso has provided over the last couple of years, which provides his unique perspective on Washington and the world:

See also the following:

The Afghan Winter 2022 and Afghan Sanctions

Norway, the Taliban, and the Afghan Situation

Some recent news stories highlight a variety of European actions and reactions in the current Russian-generated Ukraine crisis.

Ukraine is composed of a variety of ethnic groups, and those ethnic groups are largely from its proximate neighbors. The graph below provides an overview.

Source: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/major-ethnic-groups-of-the-ukraine.html

The Hungarian government is one of the most-pro Russian states within NATO. And the government highlights its concerns over the Ukrainian government not protecting Hungarian minorities for its stance in the conflict,

According to an article published by EURACTIV, the author underscores  that the current Ukrainian government’ minority rights stance limits any support which Hungry can provide in the conflict.

If Ukrainians do not back down from their anti-minority policy, it will very much limit the Hungarian government’s ability to provide any kind of support, even in this conflict, Foreign Affairs Minister Péter Szijjártó said in an interview with pro-government Magyar Nemzet outlet on Wednesday (26 January), Telex reported.

Budapest and Kyiv have been locked in a row over minority rights since Ukraine’s parliament in 2017 adopted the law “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language,” which Budapest says tramples on the rights of the Transcarpathian ethnic minority to study in Hungarian.

The number of ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine, most of whom live in the Transcarpathia region, is estimated at 140,000.

In turn, Hungary continued to block Ukraine’s cooperation with NATO and the holding of Ukraine-NATO Commission talks.

President Macron with France now assuming the rotating presidency of the EU council for the next six months has taken the opportunity in the crisis to highlight his agenda for European sovereignty.

According to an article published on January 20, 2002 in the EUObserver:

Macron in his speech returned to his theme to call for a more autonomous and sovereign EU.

He said Europe needs to set up its own security framework, and further talks with Moscow.

“In the next months, we should come up with a European proposal, building a new order of security and stability, we must build it among Europeans, then share it with our allies in Nato and then propose it to negotiation with Russia,” Macron said.

Then Europe should “propose it for negotiations with Russia”, he added, saying “we need this dialogue”.

Macron also said the EU cannot be satisfied with only reacting to international crises.

He said the EU should better defend its external borders, and promised to push ahead with an EU rapid reaction force, arguing that Europe needs to better equip itself, and “battle against illegal migration”.

Then in an article published on January 21, 2022 by EURATIV, another element of the French position was highlighted:

France’s plan to possibly deploy troops on NATO’s Eastern flank as fears rise of a Russian attack on Ukraine can be seen as a bid to clarify the ‘misunderstandings’ created by French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently called for the EU to forge its own security pact with Russia, experts say.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday (19 January) expressed France’s “readiness to go further, and within the framework of NATO to commit to new missions … in particular in Romania”.

The move was welcomed by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, who on Thursday said this meant “the Romania-France strategic partnership will thus be strengthened on the eastern flank, in the Black Sea region”.

Romania, a NATO member since 2004 and which already hosts around 1,000 US troops on its territory, also said it was ready to welcome more American soldiers.

And in that EURATIV article, a French expert was quoted as saying:

“It is a message we are sending to Romania, which is rather a Francophile and has fairly difficult relations with Russia”, Edouard Simon, research Fellow for European security and defence at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS), told EURACTIV France.

He also noted that this would signify that “Europeans are increasingly interested in each other’s security interests”.

Macron’s plan “is not to replace NATO or to detach oneself from the United States” but to “simply rebalance” the relationship, said Morcos.

Let us hope Putin understands this subtle message.

And a not so subtle message was expressed by the recent head of the German Navy whose remarks made in India were a cause for him to resign.

An article published on Military.com highlighted this event:

The head of the German navy resigned late Saturday after coming under fire at home and abroad for comments he made on Ukraine and Russia.

Speaking at an event in India on Friday, vice admiral Kay-Achim Schoenbach had said Ukraine would not regain the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.

Schoenbach also said it was important to have Russia on the same side against China, and suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin deserved “respect.”

The Baltic states are sending U.S.-made anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine.

The defense ministers of the three Baltic states said in a joint statement published January 21, 2022 that they “stand united in our commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in face of continued Russian aggression.”

Meanwhile, Germany is blocking such transfers involving German made weapons.

And the Ukrainian defense minister highlighted what he thinks about this as follows:

“They continue to build the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and at the same time block our [purchases of] defensive weapons. This is very unfair,” Ukraine’s defense chief Oleksiy Reznikov stressed in his comments to Financial Times while referring to the Russian gas pipeline that runs through the Baltic Sea to Germany.

The Wall Street Journal provided an overview on the German position seen from the optic of their reliance on Russian gas imports.

Germany’s dependence on Russian gas has left Europe short of options to sanction Moscow if it invades Ukraine—and itself vulnerable should Russia stop gas exports to the West.

A two-decade-old decision to phase out nuclear power and more recent moves to cut reliance on coal in an effort to bring down CO2 emissions mean Germany is now more reliant on Russian gas than most of its neighbors, not just for heating but also for power generation.

This year, the country’s last three nuclear power plants will be closed, just as Germany faces some of the highest energy prices in the developed world. All German coal plants are due to be closed by 2038.

With cheap gas reliably flowing from Russia for decades, successive governments never built an infrastructure to import more expensive liquefied natural gas from major exporters such as the U.S. or Qatar. The country currently has no LNG terminal of its own.

The UK defence minister provided a robust roll back on Putin’s narrative in a statement which the UK government released on January 17, 2022:

I have lost count of how many times recently I have to had to explain the meaning of the English term “straw man” to my European allies. That is because the best living, breathing “straw man” at the moment is the Kremlin’s claim to be under threat from NATO. In recent weeks the Russian Defence Minister’s comment that the US is “preparing a provocation with chemical components in eastern Ukraine” has made that “straw man” even bigger.

It is obviously the Kremlin’s desire that we all engage with this bogus allegation, instead of challenging the real agenda of the President of the Russian Federation. An examination of the facts rapidly puts a match to the allegations against NATO.

And NORDIC cooperation is deepening in response to the crisis, with the most visible aspect of this the revival of interest in both Sweden and Finland in joining NATO.

But whether they join or not, they are key partners in the process of significantly enhanced direct defense cooperation among the Nordic states since the Crimean seizure by Russia.

The crisis has certainly re-affirmed the Finnish decision to buy the F-35 which opens up direct cooperation with a state like Poland which also has the F-35 and is in line to work direct training with the Nordic F-35 states.

In our co-authored book on the return of direct defense in Europe, we highlighted the importance of enhanced Nordic defense cooperation and NORDEFCO as a coordinating forum, and the high probability that the UK post-Brexit would deepened its relationship with the Nordics as they, in turn, deepened their defense cooperation.

The Nordic cooperation piece was highlighted in the 21 January 2022 declaration Nordic declaration on the Ukrainian situation:

The Nordic Ministers of Defence met virtually on 21 January to discuss the deteriorating situation in and around Ukraine. The ministers monitor the security situation in Ukraine closely, and continue to consult with each other through the NORDEFCO Crisis Consultation Mechanism.

The ministers agree on the gravity of the situation, and the need to seek a diplomatic solution to the current situation. The ministers call on Russia to de-escalate through halting and reversing their ongoing military build-up in the region, and engage in dialogue.

The ministers reaffirm their support to Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and its right to decide its own foreign and security policy, free from outside interference. The fundamental principles underpinning the European security order remain non-negotiable.

The Nordic countries welcome dialogue on European security issues in relevant fora, including the EU, NATO, OSCE and the UN. The Nordic countries welcome the United States’ efforts in engaging Russia in resolving the current crisis.

This is what we wrote about the impact of Nordic defense cooperation in shaping a way ahead for the direct defense of Europe in our co-authored book on European defense:

Nordic defense and security cooperation are part of a broader global trend in which clusters of states are working together to enhance their ability to enhance their defense and security against the return of Russia and the rise of China. Clusterization is the next phase whereby liberal democracies do more for themselves in their joint defense rather than simply relying on diplomatic globalization initiatives through organizations like the EU or NATO to do that for them.

“Clusterization” is key to generating enhanced capabilities that can work interdependently with key allies outside of a regional cluster to reinforce the capabilities in a realistic and effective way to deter core adversaries. In the case of the Nordics, clearly the United States is the key outside power, with Brexit Britain and those states within continental Europe which have capabilities which can show up effectively to bolster the underbelly of the Nordic region are the key players that can reinforce Nordic defense.

But at its heart, the Nordics need to bolster their own capabilities as well to work more effectively with their offshore allies and their continental European partners.

But to be blunt: this requires looking more realistically at what the defense of the Nordic region means against the evolution of Russian policies, strategies, and capabilities rather than simply to assume that NATO as a multimember alliance will simply show up.

The Trident Juncture 2018 exercise in Norway is a good example of how a leading Nordic nation is rethinking its policies. On the one hand, Norway is working their national mobilization approach, and on the other hand, they hosted several allies within Norway, and in part, it is a question of what capabilities can be brought in a timely manner that would really make a difference in a crisis.

It is not simply a question of showing up; it is about blending those domestic and allied capabilities into an effective crisis management force against specific and targeted Russian threats.

But providing for enhanced Nordic capability within a broader transatlantic framework remains a work in progress, notably when measured against Russian activities, behavior, and evolving capabilities.

The Ukrainian crisis and the varied European responses underscore the significant differences in commitment to deal with specific crisis dependent on national interest, current government interpretations of those interests, and the proximity to the threat.

Hence, we a getting more realistic read of how the direct of defense of Europe plays out than simply reading NATO communiques of political statements from Washington. This is of course one of Putin’s key objectives as well.

Featured Graphic: Photo 50468756 / Ukrainian Crisis © Steve Allen | Dreamstime.com