The strategic update which Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched in Canberra this week marks some important changes in the government's thinking about Australia's defence. It formally acknowledges that our own region should be the top priority, with US-led operations in the Middle East demoted. It also recognises that Australia needs to be more self-reliant, perhaps a tacit acknowledgment that the alliance with America is of diminishing value.

But there was one other announcement that got attention from journalists and commentators, a far-reaching new military program for the Australian Defence Force which Morrison described in anodyne military jargon as "longer range strike weapons".

"Far reaching" has a double meaning here. Firstly, Morrison is talking about developing the ability to bomb targets potentially thousands of kilometres away, with high accuracy. But secondly, a capability like that could reshape our defence posture and our relations with our neighbours.

Morrison said Australia will develop weapons that are "able to hold potential adversaries, forces, and infrastructure at risk from greater distance and therefore influence their calculus of costs involved in threatening Australia's interests".

As you would expect, Morrison doesn't name the adversary, but it is safe to assume he meant China. Morrison is sending a message to Beijing that Australia is going on the offensive because, as he put it, "maintaining what is a highly capable, but largely defensive force will not equip us to deter attacks against Australia".

Is he right about that? The Prime Minister is arguing that the ability to hit an adversary at long range will deter them from taking military action against Australia in the first place. But as old soldiers sometimes say, the enemy gets a vote – when one side acts, the other side reacts. So we need to think about long-range strike weapons in terms of how they might influence the actions of our adversaries.

To be clear, Australia is not triggering an arms race with this announcement. In fact, it is Australia which is responding to the dramatic growth of Chinese military capabilities over the last two decades and the alarming build-up of its military facilities in the South China Sea. But the way we respond is up to us. We can design our defence force so that it deters China but does not provoke reactions that are destabilising to us and our neighbours.

Long-range strike weapons could provoke counter-reactions that will ultimately make Australia less safe. China could easily counter with the deployment of bombers to the bases in its artificial islands in the South China Sea, or by sending its ships and submarines into the Pacific Islands region more often. The deterrent effect we achieve with a relatively small force of long-range missiles would then by instantly matched.

The size of our long-range strike force would matter too. When the US Navy launches a few dozen cruise missiles at an enemy, the enemy knows there is plenty more where that came from. That's going to influence their decision about whether to hit back. Should Australia ever acquire missiles with the range to hit China or even the bases it has constructed in the South China Sea, the decision-making dynamics will be quite different. A few dozen missiles would perhaps be the limit of our available armoury and China's ability to strike back would dwarf ours.

That's why we're better off with weapons and strategy that don't provoke such a counter-reaction. The strategic update in fact makes some important recommendations in this regard. Australia is buying new anti-ship missiles which can protect our maritime approaches and we're investing in a new generation of naval mines. Then of course there is the submarine program. None of these weapons threatens Chinese territory but they would make it difficult and costly for China to threaten ours.

There's one other important complication arising from long-range strike weapons. It's not just the potential adversary we need to consider. As important as China is going to be for the future of our region, Indonesia will be even more critical. Yet Jakarta, and particularly its nationalist and sometimes paranoid national security establishment, is unlikely to be thrilled by Australia's long-range weapons ambitions. Some will even believe these weapons are aimed at them.

In the past, such suspicions hardly mattered to Australia because Indonesia was weak. But by the middle of this century it could well rank among the top five economies in the world, a nation of truly global stature. Australia will have a great power on its doorstep, one with the resources to deploy advanced long-range weapons of its own.

In short, Indonesia will be a power that Australia needs to have on side. Luckily, we have one crucial security objective in common: neither Jakarta nor Canberra wants south-east Asia to be dominated by Chinese maritime forces. Australia's long-term ambition ought to be to work towards that objective together. The relationship with Jakarta is far from that point now, but acquiring long-range strike weapons won't get us any closer.

Sam Roggeveen is director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/unspoken-danger-in-buying-more-missiles-to-defend-australia-20200702-p558c8.html

We’ve been blowing each other up for about a thousand years now. Gunpowder packed into bamboo tubes to start with. Bamboo abandoned for ceramic pots and then cast-iron casings.

Some thrown by hand, some left in place with a wick burning.

No doubt, witnesses to these early explosions thought that devils or other supernatural forces were at work. A few thoughtful souls may have wondered where it would all end.

The short answer: we’ve made an unsecured promise in which bombs of a sort that could kill all of us in short order – that is, of the nuclear persuasion – must never be used again.

This is the legacy – the prayer, the hope – of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, flattened 75 years ago by atomic bombs, on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively.

Since then, it’s true that tens of thousands of people haven’t been killed in an instant – that is, all at the same time – whilst having their breakfast or walking their children to school.

Big-bang destruction has carried on at a more modest pace. A few hundred here. A few dozen there. Who needs nuclear technology? A well-stuffed backpack does the job. A hijacked plane. Drones piloted remotely by joystick. Missiles roaring from below the sea, drawn on through to sky to their pre-ordained coordinates.

Human beings are drawn to commemorating singular events. The first of anything. The first man on the moon, no matter there were two of them in the landing module. The first man to climb Everest, no matter there were two on a rope. The first city to be winked out in a single blast, no matter there were two in the same week.

We are drawn to strangeness. The Human Shadow of Death is a piece of stone from the steps at the entrance of a Hiroshima bank. It’s now an exhibition at the city’s Peace Memorial Park on the river where hundreds of lanterns will be floated to console the spirits of the nuclear dead.

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/08/02/hiroshima-nagasaki-atomic-bomb/

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We have taken note of an article posted on the US Department of Defence website saying that missile defence is allegedly becoming an element of rivalry between the great powers. Citing an unnamed Pentagon official, the article claims that Russia and China are developing several increasingly sophisticated missile defence systems in the context of rivalry with the United States. As follows from the text, the US military sees this as a threat.

We take this post as part of a targeted disinformation campaign seeking to discredit Russia. Clearly, there are unscrupulous attempts to ascribe to us some aggressive and dangerous plans, this time in missile defence. Unmistakably, this is about the United States trying to justify its own large-scale and expensive programmes for creating and modernising weapons and plans to build up its military presence around the world. In order to substantiate these efforts by the United States to ensure overwhelming military superiority to the detriment of the security interests of other states, Pentagon propagandists are using the traditional “rivalry between powers” approach.

By itself, this fake news usually does not contain an in-depth analysis or even a balanced reflection of the situation. The attempts to create the appearance of a “responsible” US approach to anti-missiles made in the article do not hold water and are doomed from the start. We can begin by saying that Washington threw out the 1972 ABM Treaty, thus destroying one of the pillars of the global strategic stability system. Of course, the article doesn’t mention this. The fact that the United States has carried out numerous destabilising anti-missile projects is not mentioned, either.

Notably, the US military is deploying strategic missile defence infrastructure not only within the national boundaries of the United States, but around the world, which makes it a global system in nature. Washington is also thinking about developing the space segment of its missile defence system, in fact, planning to deploy attack weapons in outer space. In addition, in the context of missile defence at the doctrine level, the Pentagon has left open the possibility of delivering preventive “disarming” strikes against other countries in order to destroy missiles before they are launched. Moreover, the United States claims these are defensive actions.

It is important to understand that the fast-expanding architecture of the US missile defence system is changing the strategic balance of forces in the sphere of offensive weapons, creates major additional global instability risks and contributes to forming dangerous conditions for stepping up a nuclear and space arms race.

Russia has repeatedly expressed concern over unilateral and unrestricted US moves to deploy a global missile defence system. After the United States scrapped the ABM Treaty, Russia has more than once come up with initiatives designed to remove any “annoyances” and to establish cooperation in the anti-missile sphere. Washington and its allies have refused to move in this direction and are reluctant to take Russia’s interests into account. So, the desire to shift onto us the responsibility for the situation created by the United States is at least unseemly.

Once again, we urge Washington to take a responsible position and to take a critical look at its missile defence plans, which, if implemented, will not be beneficial for the security of either the United States or its allies. It would also be helpful to abandon these tactics of shifting responsibility to others, which is undignified behaviour for a great power, in order to divert the attention of Americans and the entire international community from their own actions of seeking to ratchet up tensions and break the international stability system.

More than ever before, the world doesn’t need rivalry, which the current US administration is betting on, but cooperation, especially in security. We are ready to discuss missile defence issues with the United States as part of a bilateral strategic dialogue.

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article210627.html

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The Global Peace Index is an annual report produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace, which ranks countries by evaluating such factors as crime levels, security, militarization, internal and external conflicts, potential terrorist acts and peacefulness. 

If you ever wondered what the best place is for weathering out World War III (2020 showed us that anything is possible), then wonder no longer - the Global Peace Index revealed the countries that would likely be safest during a global conflict.

Topping the list is Iceland, the country that has held the position as the most secure and peaceful nation since 2008. The Nordic country has a small population of more than 360,000, with good societal attitudes and no tension between the social classes, which is linked to its high standard of living. Iceland also boasts a low level of crime. It has no standing army, with the country’s Coast Guard acting to defend the nation. Most Icelandic police officers do not carry firearms, and the last time a confrontation between a criminal and law enforcement resulted in the death of a perpetrator occurred in 2013.

New Zealand is second on the list of safest countries and ranked first in the Asia-Pacific region. With a population of almost 5 million, it is one of the world’s least populated nations. The country has also a good rating in terms of the freedom of its citizens and frequently appears on the list of happiest countries. However, Wellington saw a deterioration of its peaceful score by 2.3 percent after a mass-shooting on several mosques which left 51 people dead and 49 injured. The tragedy prompted authorities to ban semi-automatic weapons, and the government launched a buy-back scheme with more than 56,000 weapons handed over to the authorities.

The third-best country to weather out a global conflict is Portugal. Lisbon has seen a huge improvement in recent years, as in 2014 it was ranked only 18th. The oldest country in Europe has been highlighted for its low level of crime, which was achieved due to an increased presence of police. The country is also doing well with respect to the freedom of its citizens and is the world’s leader in renewable energy.

Other countries that made it into the top 10 list of most secure and peaceful countries are – Austria, Denmark, Canada, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Japan and Switzerland.

Afghanistan is the least peaceful country in the world for the second year in a row. The list of most unsafe countries also includes Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and Yemen.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/society/202008201080230191-here-are-the-top-3-co...

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