AIIA National Conference 2024 – Facing Fragmentation
The Realm, Canberra ACT
Monday 11th, November 2024
[Greetings omitted]
An important day, Remembrance Day, a critical day in our nation as it is in so many around the world. As today we reflect 106 years ago upon the armistice and the conclusion of World War One. It’s a time also, of course, to reflect on the reality that the end of World War I saw a period of great turmoil, great disruption, and of further tragedy in World War II. We mark this year 85 years since England and France, to be followed by Australia and other allies, declared war on Germany. 85 years ago, the world embarked after the silencing 106 years ago, of the guns at the end of World War I. 85 years ago, the world embarked on another calamitous tragedy. But of course, that battle was equally ultimately fortunate and heroic.
As freedom loving people. We owe everything to that generation who carried the day in World War II against oppression and aggression at the time. Their victory after two World Wars within three decades, was followed by a determination to try to prevent that from happening again. It gave birth to what we now somewhat bureaucratically refer to as the global rules-based system. The United Nations Charter of 1945 subsequently complemented by a maze of well-intentioned agreements and organisations, but at its core, the ambition of this new system of global cooperation was a plan to avoid a future world war or another global conflict.
In the words of the UN charter. “To unite our strength to maintain international peace and security.”
On one score, we’ve had limited success. For decades the Cold War raged, nuclear weapons proliferated, and real wars like those in Vietnam, Korea or Afghanistan saw many more lives sacrificed. Yet a world war was avoided. Prosperity proliferated across open economies, and alongside the fall of communism, a burst of demilitarisation occurred and new cooperative ways of keeping the peace were pursued in troubled spots, as exemplified by those deployments we saw at different times of blue beret wearing peacekeepers.
Then, on September 11th, 2001, terrorism burst the bubble of peaceful optimism that generations like mine and many of you in this room had embraced. The end of history was, in fact, something more insidious. Initially, the global rules-based system responded in ways that its founders perhaps envisaged. But the nature of another long war in Afghanistan and a more contested conflict in Iraq tested that resolve. While support for these conflicts waned an ideologically or religiously motivated terrorism expanded its network. New threats have grown. A variety of non-nuclear weapon states have pursued nuclear capabilities. With ill-intentioned regimes in North Korea and Iran, showing scant regard or respect for efforts to contain their ambitions.
Simultaneously, a new mark of leadership has emerged in superpowers old and new, namely Russia and China. Today, we find a rising disregard for the peaceful ambitions and rules that follow the aftermath of World War II and with that, growing global consequences. As you all know, Russia has brought bloody state on state land based territorial war back to European shores with its invasion of Ukraine. Firstly, by creeping acquisition, which left unchecked and deliberately appeased, has only led to a further attempted full-scale invasion.
Iran sponsors terrorists who are waging war or attacks from bases including, of course, in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, prompting massive human suffering and a war with Israel and major threats to global trade through the Red Sea. North Korea and Iran enthusiastically sell arms to support Russia, while Chinese components and funds also help to sustain Russia’s war effort. China has chosen to use its very welcome economic growth, which has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, to also pursue the fastest military build-up of our time. Under Xi Jinping, China has crushed freedoms in Hong Kong, aggressively pursues territorial claims in the South China Sea and sought to militarily intimidate Taiwan. In a signal that can hardly be read as well-intentioned. Concurrent with this escalation of conflict, these four countries have pursued joint military exercises of defence collaboration while Russia and China declared a no limits friendship.
Elsewhere around the world, civil wars continued to take a heavy toll on human life. Civil wars that gained too little attention and effort to resolve. In places like Myanmar, the Maghreb region of North Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria and the Congo. Those blue beret peacekeeping initiatives seem to be a long time ago now in their effectiveness. The sum of all that we face today is a multilateral system that is as challenged as at any point in its history, and a world more challenging than at any point in recent history. We indeed face real efforts and challenges as to how we seek to ensure, as a world, that we actually deliver on the potential of multilateral engagement in a world aware who the powers are is increasingly questioned, including debates about whether we do face an era of multipolarity ahead.
The paramount objective of preventing war is transparently failing. Conflicts are being waged and supported actively or tacitly, with an aim of securing a broader geopolitical advantage. The actions or ambitions of some, accompanied by the understandable and growing distrust of others, now fuels the rapid rate of global military build-up. To avoid a repeat of 85 years ago, deterrence must be more effective today than appeasement was then. We must deliver deterrence via example, via defence capabilities, and via effective diplomacy.
Of course, we are having this meeting today in the shadow of the US election from last week. President Trump, the US does have an incoming president who is less predictable, who is proudly a disrupter, who is prone to making and pursuing less conventional policies and making bolder pronouncements. But we should not instantly catastrophise that. Indeed, I was part of a government where we worked with the first Trump administration to shape and influence it. We have and other countries have done so before, done so effectively and good can come. Think of the Abraham Accords, for example, and indeed the enduring nature of the Abraham Accords that have been tested in ways that none of us would have envisaged over the last 13 or 14 months. And yet they have stood and are a demonstration that disruption and unconventional ?? approaches can sometimes achieve breakthroughs. And that is what we have to try as a world to ensure we engage in ways and pursue that those breakthroughs are in our national interests and in global interests.
To deter future aggressive actions, of course, Ukraine is going to be an early test and debate. It is important that we demonstrate strength in the resolution of that conflict. Ukraine must be helped to secure a just, lasting and comprehensive peace. While strong support has prevented Ukraine from failing during its war as so many initially predicted, excessive caution has potentially also prevented it from prevailing. The sliding doors moments in this war included debates about enforcing a no-fly zone, delivering longer range missiles, and providing air combat capabilities, or the limits imposed on Ukraine’s use of the weapons provided to it. None of us would ever wish to see a broadening of this war, but nor is it acceptable to just let it drag out to the very last Ukrainian.
To help deter Russia and other global disrupters from future acts of aggression, the future of Ukraine must be strong and be seen to be strong. Vladimir Putin cannot be provided with the scale of victory he desires, and to be able to deter future aggression, Ukraine must be set in the strongest possible position of that just and enduring peace. In addition to setting deterrence via the type of example that can be had if Ukraine is to have a more secure and more just future, we must also create deterrence via effective defence capabilities.
Such capabilities go to investment, innovation and cooperation. Back in 2013, the then newly elected Liberal-led government in Australia began delivering upon a very prescient election commitment to restore defence investment to 2% of GDP after the previous government had allowed it to fall to the lowest level since World War II. Think about that. That was 2013, before Donald Trump was elected, and made achieving such benchmarks a key part of the US test that is applied. It was, of course, before we saw the outbreak of the types of conflicts and tension that we are so openly discussing today.
But Australia took the initiative and moved at the time and followed through to increase and restore those defence investments. And that investment made subsequent capability decisions possible, including being a sufficiently credible partner to convince the United States to share their nuclear-powered submarine technology with another nation for only the second time in history.
Again, in the wash up of last week, there is much discussion at present about the future of AUKUS. I am confident in the future of AUKUS. AUKUS is mutually beneficial to Australia, to the United States and the United Kingdom. It is clearly in the interests of the US, for Australia to increase our own military capabilities and our own defence industrial capabilities. And AUKUS sees us paying our way to do just that through the shared technology.
The birth of AUKUS in 2022 was built upon the trust established through 63 years of effective US-UK cooperation. It’s a recognition that we all need to invest in creating an effective deterrence, and that investment needs to boost both that defence capability and the defence industrial capability. AUKUS, alongside other immediate and longer-term defence capability requirements, demands us to go beyond that 2% budget investment. It also demands us to think big about cooperation, removing the trade restrictions through the International Traffic in Arms Regulations reforms was an early win for why AUKUS matters. It’s a win for which I give Kevin Rudd, some of the credit.
Industry and governments should be seeking to build upon this breakthrough in the exchange of equipment and subsequent breakthroughs in the exchange of people. AUKUS partners also need more transferable security clearances and specialist visas, so that our human capital is as well placed as possible to deliver our much-needed security capabilities. Within Pillar Two of AUKUS and beyond we must ensure that amongst democratic nations, we are at the cutting edge of defence capability and strategy. Other nations are knocking on the door of AUKUS while the Indo-Pacific four nations of Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia also seek to ensure that we have greater access to the various capability interests that NATO can share with us.
We should neither expect nor seek for NATO to have any type of hard military presence in the Indo-Pacific, but we should be looking to embed the best of strategic cooperation, interoperability and knowledge sharing across all of our nations. Liberal democratic market economies come together through the OECD to advance our economic cooperation, and we can do similarly through the sharing of knowledge and through those other security partnerships. It can be especially beneficial in the new borderless defence domains of cyber and space where neither attack nor defence are necessarily matters of territorial borders.
Critically, though, it shouldn’t be limited to those traditional partners. The opportunity in those areas such as cyber and space for deeper, richer partnerships and deterrence capabilities with partners like India is huge given their technological prowess and investment. And it does warrant our investment in the time and resources to build out those partnerships, too.
A key point of creating deterrence via example and via defence capability is ultimately to then give room for diplomacy to do its job. It’s called deterrence for a reason. To deter conflict. And you need the effective tools of diplomacy to then make that a success. While talks in and of themselves can rarely produce peace when the conditions for conflict are already present, where those talks are, instead from positions of shared strength or shared potential loss, then leaders have the incentive to avert conflict.
We should be building out our pillars of diplomatic deterrence through overlapping networks of minilateralism. AUKUS and the Quad are two examples of such Australian engagement. Indeed, regionally pursuing relationships with our key partners, other G20 nations immediately in our region, such as Indonesia and India are crucial. As I said before, we cannot just be amongst NATO or OECD nations. Australia’s existing strength as ASEAN’s longest dialogue partner, as indeed largest closest partner to the Pacific Island Forum nations are crucial, and we must look further to strengthen those diplomatic partnerships with all who share our interest in respect for sovereignty and stability.
The so-called Global South cannot be left to be disproportionately influenced or led by those who drive divisions based on their own pursuit of power, or on an exploitation of perceived injustices, or who use financial means to distort or coerce current decision making. Our position is one of wanting to see the agency and sovereignty of each nation, big and small, receive the respect it deserves so long as they respect each other. This should be the guiding principle that binds us.
All nations should be brought to stand against what is happening to Ukraine or the Philippines less the same ever occur to them.
Our diplomatic efforts accompanied by the deterrence framework I have outlined must aim to breathe life back into the primary founding objective of the UN to avert global war. Aggressive states or oppressive states cannot be tolerated. And unlike 85 years ago, they should not be appeased. We must deter them from such aggression towards or oppression of their neighbours or any other neighbours.
As King George VI said 85 years ago, at the outbreak of that horrid Second World War,
the primitive doctrine of might must be avoided. Instead, the pursuit of all hopes of peace and of the security of justice and liberty of all nations.
Those generations prevailed. Our work, our effort, and our responsibility is to ensure that so too does ours. Thank you very much.
[ENDS]
Q&A section here – https://www.senatorbirmingham.com.au/aiia-national-conference-q-a/