The geopolitical implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

This paper analyses the reasons why President Putin decided to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea, the implications of this for Russia’s return as a major power, and the broader geopolitical policy implications. Executive summary This is the worst crisis in Europe since the end of the Cold War. It marks the return of a Russia hostile to the West that is prepared to reject international norms about state sovereignty and risk confrontation with NATO. Under Putin, we can expect protracted and wider confrontation with the West. Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea because he regarded the threat of Ukraine’s membership of NATO as undermining Russia’s vital national security interests. Russia has significantly improved its military capabilities since its invasion of Georgia in 2008. This was demonstrated in the surprise occupation of Crimea. Moscow’s positioning of 50,000 troops on the eastern Ukrainian border threatens further intervention, the risk of civil war and military conflict with Ukraine. The strategic implications for Australia are whether Washington’s pivot to Asia will now be diverted to Europe and whether China also will be encouraged to greater territorial adventurism. Policy recommendation Australia’s defence strategy should now take account of how major powers such as China and Russia might use conventional force, or threats of use of conventional force, to challenge territorial sovereignty and impose their will more generally. Canberra also needs to factor into its strategic assessments the impact of the Ukrainian crisis on a) China’s strategic policy and regional ambitions and b) the US military commitment to Asia. Given the rise of military capabilities and nationalism in our region, the new Defence White Paper should give appropriate priority to policies of countering conventional threats and coercion, including from major powers

A sovereign submarine capability in Australia’s grand strategy

This paper examines the principal policy issues, both military and non-military, surrounding the decisions to be made about Australia\u27s future submarine capability. The paper starts with a description of Australia\u27s strategic outlook and its implications for our future force structure and then turns to the key defence, political and economic considerations involved. Professor Dibb argues that Australia should focus on conventional submarines, with at least six to nine providing the best option for the nation’s security. Executive summary: Australia needs a post-Afghanistan defence strategy. Tight fiscal conditions are here for the medium term, so defence priorities need to be challenged. A conventional submarine capacity of at least six to nine provides the best option for Australian security. Policy recomendation: Submarines are Australia’s most important strategic asset. Our future submarines will need long range and endurance and, if we are to retain a clear war-fighting advantage, they should be equipped with a US combat system and weapons. Nuclear submarines are not a credible option for Australi

Why China will not become the dominant power in Asia

With the Defence White Paper due for release in 2015, this paper argues the government should bear in mind that planning for an era of Chinese dominance in the region - or even its emergence as an American strategic peer in Asia - would be premature if not improbable. Abstract The belief that China will soon become the dominant power in Asia is based on assumptions that its continued and rapid economic rise, and its emergence as a regional peer of America’s in military terms is all but assured. Such a belief underpins arguments that a fundamental strategic reorganisation of Asia is inevitable, and that it will be necessary and perhaps even desirable to concede to China significant ‘strategic space’. Dependent largely on linear extrapolations about the future, such arguments ignore the implications of China’s economic, social and national fragilities, its lack of major friends or allies in the region as well as the considerable military deficiencies and challenges faced by the People’s Liberation Army. With the Defence White Paper due for release in 2015, the government should bear in mind that planning for an era of Chinese dominance in the region—or even its emergence as an American strategic peer in Asia—would be premature if not improbable. Australia should not design its defence force for war with China, but it should be able to counter Chinese coercion and contribute to Allied military operations if necessary

The nuclear war scare of 1983: How serious was it?

Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union and the United States stood on the brink of nuclear war. The Communist Party leadership in Moscow was convinced that Washington was about to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike, which would require a massive nuclear response. Like most disasters, this one would have resulted from a confluence of errors and misperceptions. In this case it was the profound distrust between the two sides, a sequence of preliminary events that included the shooting down of the airliner, and�perhaps most importantly�an intelligence failure on the behalf of the US. That such a situation could come about after three decades of Cold War, with all the elaborate mechanisms that had been hammered out over the years, is sobering. It�s worth understanding what happened�and what could have been done to avoid it�when we contemplate the growing strategic competition between the nuclear-armed US and China in our region today. The serious message to be taken from this paper is that we shouldn�t be complacent when it comes to contemplating the risk of nuclear weapons being used one day

Strategic Trends

There are positive tendencies, including the resurgence of economic growth and the spread of de- mocracy. But there are a number of negative tendencies that must be of serious concern. The United States needs to develop more coherence and predictability in its Asia-Pacific security strat- egy, and it should listen more carefully to its allies and friends there

The Challenge of Warning Time in the Contemporary Strategic Environment

This Centre of Gravity paper is based on an ANU public lecture given by the authors on 23 June 2021. The lecture in turn drew heavily on the authors’ paper for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Deterrence through denial: a strategy for an era of reduced warning time, published in May 2021.1 The authors are grateful to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute for agreeing that the material could be re-published in this way

Relationship between continuous aerosol measurements and firn core chemistry over a 10-year period at the South Pole

Before ice core chemistry can be used to estimate past atmospheric chemistry it is necessary to establish an unambiguous link between concentrations of chemical species in the air and snow. For the first time a continuous long-term record of aerosol properties (aerosol light scattering coefficient, σsp, and Ångström exponent, å) at the South Pole are compared with the chemical record from a high resolution firn core (∼10 samples per year) covering the period from 1981 to 1991. Seasonal signals in å, associated with winter minima due to coarse mode seasalt and summer maxima due to accumulation mode sulfate aerosol, are reflected in the firn core SO42−/Na+ concentration ratio. Summertime ratios of σsp and aerosol optical depth, τ to corresponding firn core sulfur concentrations are determined and the ‘calibrations’ are applied to sulfur concentrations in snowpits from a previous study. Results show that σsp estimates from snowpit sulfur concentrations are in agreement with atmospheric measurements while τ estimates are significantly different, which is likely due to the lack of understanding of the processes that mix surface air with air aloft