This is no surprise. By regional standards, the Iranian navy represents an atypically strong coastal force with a coherent force structure designed not to defeat a superior naval power so much as impose prohibitive costs on intervening in Iran's southern air and maritime approaches. Built for sea denial, it comprises submarines, mines and fast-attack craft armed with anti-ship cruise missiles. Each of these capabilities is cheap relative to the platforms against which they're being fielded, and each places a disproportionate burden on the side seeking to defend against them. Submarines are hard to find; mines take a long time to clear; and fast-attack craft, especially when used in numbers and in dispersed formations, are difficult to prevent closing to a range at which their missiles become a serious risk to even well protected ships.

The effects of this force are magnified by congenial naval geography. By contrast to the Western Pacific, with its oceanic expanses and concentric archipelagic chains, the Persian Gulf is a narrow body of water, making it conducive to offensive denial operations. It has one constricted entry point. This creates a funneling effect that allows Iranian forces to concentrate their firepower.

Short distances make operations less surveillance intensive, and therefore less technologically demanding. They also compresses the warning time available to an enemy defending against missile strikes, while long stretches of noisy coastal water create an ideal acoustic environment for lurking Iranian submarines.

All of this makes Iran is a tough competitor on its coastline, undoubtedly capable of raising the threshold for US intervention in the Gulf. But it is not, ultimately, insurmountable. Iran's naval potency diminishes sharply with distance and duration. Iran could mine the Straits, restrict commercial traffic and delay entry to US forces while imposing moderate levels of risk in the meantime. However, its sclerotic command and control systems and lack of survivable land-based air-power betray an enduring inability to enforce a close or continuous blockade of the Straits, much less defeat the US Navy in an open, protracted naval war.

No military balance is static, however, and the current extent of Iran's naval inferiority is not necessarily immutable. Over the longer term, two shifts in the geopolitical landscape bode well for continued improvements to Iran's prospects at sea.

First, the emergence of a weak and divided Iraq in the place of a former existential rival is a geostrategic windfall. Historically, the greater salience of defending land borders has been a principal constraint on the development of naval power in countries with both coastlines and contestable continental frontiers – think China or France or Germany. For Iran, that may no longer be the case. With its western continental approaches now largely secure (and with the situation to its east improving as the US backs out of Afghanistan), Tehran can channel a progressively greater proportion of is defence expenditure into its navy.

Second, for China, cultivating Iran's sea-denial capabilities is emerging as the most cost-effective means of diluting US primacy in the Gulf. This matters to Beijing because it is profoundly dependent on the sea-lines traversing the Gulf, yet it is unable to reach or secure them with its own navy and therefore vulnerable to a distant US blockade. There's a reason, after all, why a good number of Iran's anti-ship missiles are already stamped 'Made in China'.

Photo by Flickr user yeowatzup.

1. The proliferation of precision strike: over the past two decades, China has accumulated a formidable array of precision-guided strike capabilities, namely long-range ballistic and cruise missiles. These have been woven into an offensive war-fighting doctrine that places an operational premium on their use early and en masse. Since US bases in Japan, Korea and Guam are now at risk of being saturated by Chinese missiles at the outset of a conflict, they no longer constitute an indefinitely reliable basis from which the US can project power.

The countries of Southeast Asia offer no viable alternative; they also lie within range of Chinese missiles. And though their governments clamour for US support whenever China plays rough, they remain unwilling to be prematurely enlisted in US military plans at the risk of becoming a target or arousing Chinese antipathy. Thus, US interest in Australian real estate reflects a simple desire for time and space and a new operational sanctuary beyond China's striking range.

2. America's two-ocean strategy: as US strategists reckon with the scope of Chinese military progress, they are developing an Indo-Pacific strategy for fighting China. In the Pacific, the US Air Force and Navy are fleshing out the fledgling AirSea Battle concept, a war-fighting doctrine aimed at countering China's area-denial strategy from further back. It's a problematic concept, as I've written elsewhere: costly, risky and excessive. Still, by denying China's capacity for denial, the US intends to preserve its options for sea control and power projection, reinforcing its primacy and role as the region's dominant player.

The second aspect of the strategy involves exploiting China's substantial vulnerabilities in the Indian ocean. Such an approach would involve crippling China's economy by blockading or destroying its merchant shipping and energy supplies in war, and, in peacetime, holding them at risk to encourage Beijing's acquiescence. It's a strategy straight out of Washington's World War II playbook. Indeed, the mere presence of a powerful allied naval contingent along China's sea-lines would require Beijing to divert considerable resources away from its coastline, much as it did with Japan in the 1940s, thereby diluting the singularity of Chinese efforts in the western Pacific.

This is where Australia would come in: as a central point between the two theatres, a hub to reduce transit times between each end, and a base supporting an expanded commerce raiding or blockading campaign against China, most likely in the western reaches of the Indian Ocean, beyond China's naval reach. 

3. Keeping Canberra on the leash: the third motivation for an expanded US presence in Australia is political. Washington is keenly aware of the centrality of China to Australia's economic wellbeing. American strategists also recognise the extraordinary geographic advantages that Australia enjoys — a shoulder each in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, its back to Antarctica and shielded by a long archipelago. They understand what many Australian fail to see: that Canberra could, with some clear thinking and a substantial yet sustainable increase in spending, defend itself without becoming entangled in the power-politics of Northeast Asia. And they are determined to prevent that from happening.

In this regard, Washington is being clever. It is taking full advantage of Australia's current strategic dependence, locking in Canberra's political and military support, thereby minimising the likelihood of any future Australian defection.

Photo by Flickr user Turkinator.

The problem is not unique to Australia. In his 'Farewell Address' to the American people, George Washington, attuned to his nation's idealistic disposition, warned about the dangers of permanent alliances. 'A passionate attachment of one nation for another', he argued, 'facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists and … betrays the former into … the quarrels and wars of the latter.'

The US long ago discarded that wisdom, of course, while Australia never adhered to it. As a former Director of the Lowy Institute once said, 'We love foreign entanglements.' Indeed, the loneliness and anxiety that pervades Australia's world view has historically led Canberra to conflate, and in many cases subordinate, its own interests to those of its major power allies  — whether out of cultural allegiance, as Andrew suggests, out of apprehension about the futility of an independent defence effort, or most likely some combination of both.

Australia's involvement in World War I illustrates the point. In purely strategic terms, there was no compelling justification for deploying a massive land force to the shores of Gallipoli and the fields of Western Europe. Having federated over a decade earlier in recognition of the need for a national defence effort, Australia would have been far better served by defining its interests narrowly and building a powerful navy to defend them against the still distant threat posed by Japan. Instead, Australia unnecessarily sacrificed a generation of young men out of sentimental affection for the Empire and an unwillingness to reckon with own defensive requirements.

Worst of all, Australia didn't learn its lesson. More than two decades later, when the threat was finally materialising, Canberra still hadn't adequately provided for its own defence. Once again, Canberra deployed land forces at Britain's behest in the forlorn hope the favour would be returned — and avoided catastrophic consequences only by its deliverance at the hands of the US.

Remarkably, having been entrapped in World War I and abandoned in World War II, Australia has remained deeply committed to its strategy of dependence, which has necessitated participation in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, the mindset lives on, and without a major enhancement of Australia's independent strategic weight — which would entail a diminution of the alliance in Australia's long-term military planning, as well as a much-needed overhaul of the administrative foundations of Australian defence policy — Canberra risks making the same mistakes again.

Photo, of Australia's WWII War Council, courtesy of the National Archives of Australia.

The reality is somewhat different. In fact, Washington's sudden interest in Australian real estate says less about its resilience than about its relative decline. In particular, it reflects the way in which China's growing power has already begun hollowing out US military dominance, pushing back the boundaries of US primacy.

The logic is straightforward. Since US bases in Japan, South Korea and Guam face an increasing risk from Chinese missiles, they no longer constitute an indefinitely reliable sanctuary from which the US can project power. The countries of Southeast Asia offer no viable alternative. They also lie within China's military reach, and in any case are too shrewd to be prematurely enlisted in America's strategic plans at the risk of upsetting China.

So Washington is looking to Australia, partly with a view to consolidating its position in the Indian Ocean as a way of offsetting the less favourable shifts in the Pacific military balance.

Yet US basing is not necessarily cost or risk free for Australia, and Canberra needs to be attuned to the potential dangers. Because such bases are likely to feature prominently in US contingencies aimed at throttling China's energy supply from the Indian Ocean, they will beckon Chinese attention.

In this regard, US bases may create an incentive for Beijing, however muted at first, to transpose its military strategy into Australia's own neighbourhood, even if that takes a decade or so to happen. This would involve Beijing either expanding the number and range of its missiles or deploying them further afield, along with associated air and naval platforms, within range of US bases in Australia, much as it has with other US bases across the region.

US military basing entails political risks as well. While Australia already hosts a small number of joint facilities, a more extensive basing arrangement risks imposing further strictures on Canberra's ability to avoid becoming entangled in a crisis between the US and China (should one occur), including one in which Australia has potentially no direct interest and which its fortuitous geography —  far away from Northeast Asia, beyond an archipelagic screen — might otherwise allow it to avoid.

In this regard, Washington is being clever. It seems to be taking full advantage of Australia's current strategic dependence, locking in Canberra's political and military support early, thereby minimising the possibility of any future Australian realignment.

In short, Australia today finds itself in an uncomfortably familiar situation, though one it would prefer to ignore. The costs and risks of Australia's alliance are going up as the value of the alliance is coming down. Meanwhile, there are faint echoes of the 1930s: preoccupied with its alliance, Canberra is neglecting preparations for contingencies in which it may have to go it alone.

Photo courtesy of the Department of Defence.

Contrary to James' argument, then, the de-politicisation of Afghanistan lies at the heart of the problem. The ready bipartisan acceptance of our soldiers' deaths and funerals has engendered, and compounded, the kind of complacency that lets our Prime Minister get away without 'working hard to prevent Australian soldiers from being killed in the future' — even if to do so only requires, at a minimum, placing a few additional strictures on the kinds of operations they perform, and comes at no real cost to our national interest.

This political situation is unlikely to change. If Prime Minister Gillard is to be jolted out of her complacency, the impetus will have to come from her own conscience. That, in turn, will rely on her remaining fully, and personally, attuned to the scale of pain and suffering that her policies are producing, manifest most obviously in the form of military funerals.

For this reason, and others, she should definitely keep going to military funerals — provided, of course, that her attendance does not conflict with the wishes or preferences of the bereaved. She should also make regular visits to repatriation wards around Australia. There, missing arms and legs, the use of colostomy bags and the stricken faces of young men with post-traumatic stress disorder testify to the true cost of our reckless unwillingness to change tack in Afghanistan. 

Photo courtesy of the Prime Minister's Flickr account.

One reason, among others, involves a potent historical narrative that militates against any inclination to compromise. For China, the prospect of sitting at a table with a militarily dominant US, accepting limits, however modest, on its own prerogative and in its own backyard, echoes the most painful episodes in the Chinese national consciousness.

The legacy of China's 'century of humiliation', so called in part because of the imposition by Western maritime powers of unequal treaties that circumscribed Chinese sovereignty, is to be divested as China grows stronger, not reprised. For many in China, particularly the military, the enduring and inherent inequality in its dealings with the US makes such talks a non-starter on principle.

This is a principle that, deep down, the US understands well. In 1812 Washington acted even more extremely on the same rationale. As the Napoleonic wars raged in Europe, the US went to war against Britain in the western hemisphere to preserve its own sovereign prerogative in waters that it considered vital to American security, prestige and economic well-being.

In the face of British maritime dominance, and in the context of increasing diplomatic tensions arising out of an asymmetric balance of power, negotiation (though almost certainly a better option for the US, given the outcome of the war) was deemed unbefitting of an ambitious maritime nation.

China is unlikely to make the mistake of deliberately initiating war before it's ready — and that won't be for a another decade or two yet. In other important respects, however, Beijing is reading straight out of Washington's very own geopolitical playbook.

Photo courtesy of the US Department of Defence.

Europe today is enjoying one of its most benign eras in 500 years. Competition among the region's major powers — Germany, France and Britain — is held in abeyance by a range of factors. Russia, though busy re-establishing its dominance in Eastern Europe, remains a shadow of its former self. It evinces no overweening territorial ambitions beyond the former Soviet Union (or perhaps Poland), and is in no hurry to arouse the collective balancing efforts of western Europe. Consequently, the risk of war is remote.

Asia is a different story. The region is home to a hegemonic rivalry involving China, a dissatisfied superpower already in the process of establishing new red lines. Asia's strategic environment is also replete with unresolved territorial claims, unreconstructed historical antipathies and interactive patterns of military procurement that betray all the hallmarks of an incipient arms race. From North Korea and Taiwan to the South China Sea, strategic competition is the new regional reality. What does this say about the relative commitment of US allies?

Europe continues to pay a considerable alliance premium for US strategic assurances that it needs less and less. Washington's Asian allies, on the other hand, do little more than Europe, and maybe less, for assurances they need more and more. If Gates thinks European free-riding is bad, just wait until his successors try to outsource greater commitments, and more demanding tasks, to their allies in Asia. Washington is in for a rude awakening.

Photo by Flickr user jackol.

Afghanistan in 2014 will look much like it does today, just as Afghanistan today looks much like it did three, four or five years ago. The central government will be weak and corrupt, its inadequate security services littered with all the wrong elements. The Taliban will exist and, with Pakistani support, may even enjoy a more prominent political role. Across the rest of Afghanistan, warlords, drug-lords, tribesman and bandits will be fending for themselves.

In 2014 the great-power struggle for Afghanistan is likely to be even more intense. Pakistan and India will continue to jostle there to keep each other off balance. Their superpower patrons — the US and China — may look on uneasily, but the need to free up their clients, to harness them for their own geopolitical needs, is likely to override any reluctance to take sides. The inevitable result will be more of the same.

The only difference for Australia is that many more of our fellow countrymen will be dead, wounded and maimed. More still will bear the mental scars of their prolonged exposure to war. Prime Minister Gillard, Defence Minister Smith and the Government need to be held to account for their failure to impose sharper limits on the risks to our forces, as well as their unwillingness to begin negotiating a withdrawal, in line with almost every other country.

More importantly, they need to be jolted out of the comfortable habits of indifference which appear to have set in after ten years of perpetual war. That means commencing the withdrawal of Australia from Afghanistan and, in the meantime, pulling back to inside the base to minimise the risk of further casualties.

Nor do the rest of us get off easily. It is a testament to the poverty of our reflection that the sexual hijinks of a few impudent ADFA brats could fix our attention, could elicit a public outcry that forces wholesale change on Defence, while a war devoid of any compelling purpose exacts an increasing human cost without so much as a whimper.

Photo, of Australian special forces in the Shah Wali Kot region of northern Kandahar, courtesy of the Australian Army.

For China, in short, controlling the South China Sea in the face of countervailing capabilities has become a truly formidable undertaking, one that raises real doubts about the viability of even limited power projection against major power resistance.

This points to the most likely explanation for China's carrier: what Sinologist Robert Ross calls 'naval nationalism'. In this vision. China's aircraft carrier is not the product of rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Nor does it reflect China's urgent strategic priorities. Rather, it is a status symbol, a source of pride and prestige designed to convey to the Chinese people the attainment of military power commensurate with China's newfound economic fortunes.

The exact institutional drivers of such policies are hard to discern. What is clear is that support within China for aircraft carriers has expanded beyond the military establishment, as Ross notes, 'to the provinces and to all sectors of China's society, including to universities, government think tanks, industrial circles, the political elite, and the general public.'

In many respects, this explanation is the least disturbing, and is consistent with the measured pace of Chinese carrier development thus far. It suggests that China's carrier acquisition is domestically driven, underpinned by a desire among China's leaders to consolidate their legitimacy. This does reflect the fact that Chinese nationalism is rising and beginning to manifest itself militarily. But in practical terms, China's pursuit of aircraft carriers will carry with it increasing opportunity costs, including for the acquisition of more potent denial capabilities.

Photo courtesy of sinodefenceforum.

1. No vital interest
For starters, no one but its immediate neighbours has vital strategic interests in Libya — not Britain, France or the US. This matters, because military force remains a particularly blunt instrument of statecraft, one which despite technological improvements, usually needs to be employed more intensively than is anticipated.

Even when it is done properly, the commencement of war entails immense suffering and financial cost and in many cases gives rise to unintended consequences with the potential to bedevil policy-makers as much if not more than the original cause of war. For these reasons, military force is best reserved for use in genuinely critical situations — that is, against direct challenges to national security or vital interests — even if that means accepting sharper limits on our capacity to shape far-away events.

Libya doesn't qualify. While it has been a substantial oil producer for some time, it is hardly indispensable. It has a small population and economy; a decrepit military, devoid of destructive weaponry; and, with sea and land borders, a remote geographic location that renders it perpetually vulnerable and for the most part able to be kept in line.

As a consequence, Libya has since World War II been little more than a strategic sideshow in the Middle East, with limited diplomatic weight and virtually no bearing on events throughout the wider region.

2. Unlimited ends
With no vital interest at stake, military intervention in Libya was justified by humanitarian concerns. What mattered was to prevent a massacre that, in President Obama's words, 'would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world'. That seemed to many like an intuitively appreciable cause for war. In fact, it was deceptively problematic.

For one thing, as my colleague Crispin Rovere has noted, events in Libya did not portend a systematic slaughter reminiscent of Rwanda or Bosnia, as was widely presumed, but rather a civil war, replete with the usual range of human rights abuses. For another, however bad these might have been, they paled into insignificance compared with the nature and scale of atrocities being perpetrated elsewhere — for example in Sudan or the Congo — which have barely elicited any meaningful response from the West, much less military intervention.

Strategically, however, the biggest problem with the Libyan end-game is that, having been poorly defined to begin with, it became too expansive and amorphous to provide any clear guide to action. Statesmen often prefer not to articulate clear objectives, so as to preserve their ability to shift the goal posts as required. But this also obscures the means necessary to succeed and makes it harder to discern whether the intervention is practical and worth the endeavour.

Did protecting civilians mean simply preventing Benghazi from being overrun? Did it mean helping the rebel movement to victory? Or was it about ousting Qadhafi, facilitating a democratic transition, and stoking the democratic impulses convulsing the Middle East?

With the defence of humanity at stake, moreover, the objective did not avail itself of any obvious limit, becoming gradually more absolute as the weeks went by. Thus, what began as an attempt to protect Libyan civilians has, in spite of Obama's prevarication, now graduated to the goal of wholesale regime change.

3. Inadequate means
Finally, in pursuit of maximalist aims, the West has made the mistake of committing only minimal means, insufficient to achieve its objectives. As Jim Molan points out, the much vaunted 'no-fly-zone' didn't work. Nor did the 'no-drive-zone', which only forced the Libyan army off the roads and into populated urban areas.

With the stalemate now entrenched and mission creep setting in, attention has focused on arming and training the rebels, as well as expanding the target set to include palaces, command centres and headquarters — all of which, if it is to break the stalemate or tip Qadhafi from power, will take considerably longer.

The failure to align military means with ends is hardly unique to Libya. The same problem beset American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is symptomatic of two deeper dilemmas. First, in situations where no vital interests are at stake but where Western leaders nevertheless feel compelled to act, there's a temptation to do military intervention on the cheap.

This saves money and minimises the risk to life, thereby preserving support among sceptical or war weary publics — even as it means often failing to attain the military objective at hand.

Second, since the end of the Cold War, asymmetries in the world's distribution of capabilities has consistently led to the overestimation of US military power and, by corollary, to the underestimation of the tasks to which it's assigned.

In prosecuting the first Gulf War, Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, promulgated a doctrine that sought to internalise the most critical lessons of the failure in Vietnam. Henceforth, he argued, the US should go to war only in defence of vital interests, and then only using overwhelming force to achieve limited goals.

The intervention in Libya fails on every count.

Photo by Flickr user Abraxas3d.

Moreover, Jim's role in Iraq was itself symptomatic of this approach. By allowing an experienced and committed general to assume a senior command position, Canberra was able to establish presence — that is, demonstrate its fidelity to the alliance — without placing large numbers of Australian soldiers at risk. Jim served — perhaps unwittingly — as a force multiplier in the kind of pragmatic alliance management strategy he now recoils from.

The same principles apply to Afghanistan. Our involvement there has always been about giving meaning to Canberra's expressions of alliance solidarity. This is a political objective distinct from Washington's broader war aims, and can be achieved — indeed, already has been achieved — with little regard to the overall progress or eventual outcome of the war and, ideally, without unnecessarily risking the lives of large numbers of Australian personnel.

Moreover, despite Jim's doubts about the practicality of this approach, it's worked, allowing successive Australian governments to enjoy, at a comparatively low cost, the demonstrable benefits of the alliance, including strategic assurances and virtually unfettered access to intelligence and defence material. What more does he want?

Indeed, having achieved all this, there are now diminishing returns for staying on and risking more Australian lives. This is especially true as the fighting season resumes, posing greater risks to our forces, and as Washington begins looking to us to accept a greater share of the burden in balancing China's rising power.

Of course, this whole approach to alliance management is, as Jim points out, selfish and unsentimental, designed to maximise Australia's alliance dividends while minimising costs and risks. As such, it does not accord with Jim's notion of 'honour', which is to him inseparable from calculations about political objectives and military means — and which led him once to recommend sending 6000 Australian troops to Afghanistan. This is what Clausewitz was getting at when he talked about war, devoid of political purpose, tending toward extremes.

Photo by Flickr user Jonathan_W.

As Hugh White points out, even Washington has begun to accept the reality of an ignominious conclusion to the war. President Obama has outlined a time-frame for America's withdrawal, beginning in July this year. He's also initiated talks with senior Taliban leaders aimed at exploring a political settlement to end the war.

In the meantime, each side will be aiming translate its military fortunes into leverage at the negotiating table. But make no mistake: the Taliban has the upper-hand, and it's now a matter of time before a deal is cut, whether formally or not, that cedes to them vast amounts of power and territory. In fact, the withdrawal last month of US forces from the Pech Valley, an area once described as critical to the war effort, suggests this process may already be underway.

What should Gillard do?

For one thing, she needs to begin from the premise that, with no direct interests at stake and no hope of success, the struggle for Afghanistan is not worthy of any more Australian lives. As such, she'll need to negotiate a compressed time-frame for Australia's withdrawal and, more immediately, a new set of rules that minimise the risks to Australian personnel.

The combat element of Australia's contingent should be taken out of the line of fire as soon as possible and sent home for a well-earned break. The bulk of Australia's forces, those involved in training the Afghan army, could stay on a fraction longer, but only under much tighter restrictions. That would mean no patrolling dangerous roads, no defusing road-side bombs and training Afghan forces only from inside the base.

For Gillard, all of this will require enormous courage, leadership and diplomatic skill. The Army won't like it and even minor adjustments to Australia's role will elicit cries that she risks ruining the alliance. She should pay no attention.

In fact, as China rises and Asia becomes more contested, Australia is becoming more, not less, relevant to the US. The last thing Washington needs right now is a dispute with one of its most devoted Asian allies. This gives Gillard considerable leverage to reshape the Afghanistan deployment in ways that better reflect our interests.

Photo by FLickr user ISAF Media. 

There are a number of reasons to be pessimistic. To begin with, Australia's nuclear dilemma reflects a broader problem in its alliance relations with the US, which I've explored elsewhere. The dual risks of abandonment and entrapment, common to all alliances, sharpen as the distribution of world power shifts, with important implications for the credibility of America's nuclear umbrella.

The risks of entrapment arise in two forms. At a general level, Canberra's strategic dependence on Washington, including for END, circumscribes its ability to dissent from American policies that may not accord with Australian interests. Cognisant of its privileged place under the US nuclear umbrella — and of its limited range of alternatives, should END be withdrawn in the event of Australian non-compliance (a la New Zealand circa 1984-1987) — Canberra could find itself dragged into a costly war alongside the US that its fortuitous strategic geography might otherwise allow it to avoid.

More directly, the joint facilities that Australia hosts as a quid-pro-quo for US nuclear assurances — critical as they are to America's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance network — could present as valuable targets in major war that, by virtue of their distance from Northeast Asia, only nuclear-tipped ICBMs may be reliably assured of destroying.

This may sound rather fantastic, yet it's not a consideration that Australian defence planners can automatically discount. Moreover, there is a historical basis to such concerns. As former defence minister Kim Beazley once noted in the context of the Cold War, 'we accepted that the joint facilities were probably targets, but we accepted the risk of that for what we saw as the benefits of global stability.'

These concerns notwithstanding, it is the risks associated with abandonment that are the most acute. Credible nuclear deterrence operates on the basis of a defending state's threat — through some combination of explicit pronouncements and the deployment of nuclear capabilities — to impose intolerable costs on an attacker, thereby preventing the attacker from using nuclear weapons against the defender's ally. By contrast to conventional deterrence, where risks are generally limited, nuclear deterrence relies on the defender — in this case, the US — conveying a willingness to sacrifice large swathes of its population on behalf of Australia, which is an essentially non-vital, possibly even marginal, strategic interest. The question for Australian defence planners is: would the US government really trade San Francisco for Sydney?

Indeed, if Canberra's broader quest for self-reliance reflects enduring concerns about the potential limits of Washington's willingness or ability to furnish assistance in a strategic crisis, there is no compelling logical reason why, with the balance of power shifting away from US primacy, those concerns should be so sharply limited to conventional threats. If anything, Australian defence planners should expect Washington to act with greater caution and more reticence in a nuclear crisis, however unlikely one might be, when the costs and risks to itself will inevitably be exponentially greater.

I ventured a few thoughts on how Australia might begin redressing its nuclear dilemma in this article a few years ago. Unfortunately, however, the traditional impetus for change in Australian strategic policy is crisis, or at least perceptions of crisis, at which point it's usually too late to do anything other than 'muddle through'. This is likely to be doubly true of nuclear issues, which, given the wide-spread aversion to even discussing them in Australia, remain largely beyond the realm of acceptable political discourse. So don't expect any movement for at least a couple of decades. 

In the meantime, is END dead? Let's hope we never have to find out.

The story of US overextension in eastern Europe, like so many American mistakes, stems in large part from the pervasive triumphalism that grew out of the end of the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin wall, the end of the Warsaw Pact, Germany's unification and the sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union at once crippled Russia and emboldened NATO, propelling it eastward with the wind of a new ideological convergence behind it.

For Washington’s liberals, power politics was over. The expansion of NATO was the natural outgrowth of a new strategy that emphasised the provision of universal public goods – democracy, human rights, strategic stability and open markets – which were mistakenly assumed to accord with everyone's interests and desires, including Russia's. For realists, the analysis was different but the prescriptions were the same. Expanding NATO was about encircling a weakened Russia, consolidating US primacy and establishing a permanent and unambiguous hierarchy that would leave Moscow in no uncertain terms about the consequences of renewed adventurism.

Despite this, Russia is back – its return to power politics fueled in part by the indignities of the past two decades – and these policies are no longer tenable. In the near term, Washington needs Russia's acquiescence, if not active cooperation, on Iran and Afghanistan. Over longer time frames, as China and Iran manifest hegemonic challenges of their own, Washington needs above all to avoid being drawn into another costly and escalating strategic competition in Europe, which would divert resources from other, more salient challenges.

Whether Obama has done enough to satisfy Moscow, and how much further Washington will have to go, remains unclear. What is clear is that NATO will not be expanding further (indeed, there are serious doubts about whether it has the stomach to honour its extensive commitments as it is), missile defence in Poland and the Czech Republic has been canned, and Moscow has reasserted its dominance over the Ukraine and Georgia.

The 'Russian reset' may have been sealed with an arms control deal, but this unspoken accommodation is what it's all about.

Photo by Flickr user Amio Cajander.

Why, then, this insistence on transparency?

One reason is that it paints China into an unwinnable situation. Imagine a PLA general explaining the truthful rationale behind China's high–end defence acquisitions:

Well, in a crisis over Taiwan, for example, we intend to hold US aircraft carrier groups far enough back, for long enough, to establish a level of superiority across the Straits that allows us to terrorise Taiwan into accepting our terms.

Truthful, for sure, though not particularly reassuring, hardly likely to ameliorate the security dilemma, and not really what the US or anyone else wants to hear.

Since transparency only works as a source of reassurance if it reveals benign intentions, the general's only other option is to prevaricate. Whether he talks about the military's contribution to regional peace and stability or China's commitment to doctrines such as 'peaceful rise' and 'Harmonious World', no one is likely to believe him, and the net effect is to reinforce suspicions of Chinese duplicity. For China, in other words, it's lose–lose.

Another reason why the United States plays the transparency card is because it pits American strengths against Chinese weakness. In strategic affairs, there's a threshold of capacity beneath which it makes eminent sense to conceal your capabilities, as China and many others do, and beyond which it makes equally good sense to display them, like the US.

In this sense, transparency reflects power — and relates inversely to perceptions of vulnerability. To paraphrase a retired PLA general I met recently (who was discussing these issues in the strategic nuclear context):

We could be much more open about our capabilities, but the trade-off would have to be a much bigger, more diverse Chinese arsenal, like Russia's or America's – so is greater transparency really worth it?

All of this suggests that concerns about Chinese opacity have far less to do with what China divulges about its capabilities, than about the fact that it is acquiring them at all. As such, demands for greater transparency should be seen as a proxy, a means of rejecting the legitimacy of a more independent and prominent regional role for China and, by extension, of reasserting US primacy.

Photo by Flickr user xiaming, used under a Creative Commons licence. 

With his foreign policy foundering, Obama should have taken the time to find his Kissinger, an adviser with an intuitive understanding of American interests and priorities, a realistic appreciation for the scope and limits of power, and sensitivity to the consequences that actions might be expected to produce.

It's become a very American thing, especially in the post-Cold War era, to conceive of the world in terms of a succession of universal problems to which the US must offer a solution. Yet this approach hasn't worked. It's been costly, ineffectual and indiscriminate. By systematically overestimating the willingness of others to acquiesce to American solutions, it has also engendered in US foreign policy a debilitating level of incoherence.

Today, perhaps more than ever, different aspects of the same foreign policy are colliding, so that efforts in one area are undermining those in another. In the Middle East, Obama is trying to curb Iran's expanding influence. At the same time, he's withdrawing US forces from Iraq, leaving Iran in precisely the dominant position he's trying to deny it. In South Asia, Obama is trying to consolidate ties with India to balance China, but can't because Pakistan, on whom the US also depends, will not allow the US and India to get close.

Obama's Nuclear Posture Review, likewise, seeks to reduce the salience of nuclear deterrence by placing greater emphasis on conventional deterrence, even though America's conventional advantage, as Hugh White has pointed out, is diminishing, not expanding.

It's these kinds of contradictions that a good NSA should help to resolve, or at least clarify. That also depends, however, on the president acknowledging his limits and being prepared to extend some intellectual licence. A colleague here in Washington once said to me that, in foreign policy, Obama suffers from a 'humility deficit' – that is, he reserves for himself the role of grand strategist, preferring advisers to act primarily as enforcers. This latest appointment, unfortunately, seems to affirm that judgement.

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Take the US: even if it was prepared to relinquish its primacy to preserve stability, how could it be sure that China would reciprocate? It couldn't, of course, and this inherent uncertainty means that each side – China, Japan and the US – would have no choice but to try to limit their own liability by accumulating greater increments of power, whether through the acquisition of military capabilities or the formation of alliances.

This is an inescapably zero-sum process — a prisoner's dilemma resolving itself with a security dilemma — which before long would produce precisely the kind of competitive order we're hoping to avoid.

For Hugh, this isn't inevitable. A shared understanding of the costs and risks of escalating competition should, in his view, create strong incentives for systematic cooperation. Yet in the hierarchy of bad outcomes, although a competitive balance of power may be bad, being taken advantage of is even worse, and it is this fear which makes his concert unworkable.

As I argue in the Lowy Institute's latest Strategic Snapshot, a paper which echoes many of Hugh's concerns:

Canberra has nothing to lose by using its good diplomatic standing to encourage Chinese moderation, American accommodation, or Sino-Japanese rapprochement, some coalescence of which is needed to lay the foundations for a benign future in Asia. However, it is only realistic to acknowledge that competition among Asia's major powers is deeply entrenched in the structure of the international system, and as such, may prove impervious to even the most adroit diplomatic efforts.

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When he took command of Afghanistan, McChrystal inherited a war which, as I noted at the time, the US had already lost. Terror central had long ago been resurrected in Pakistan, meaning that Washington had failed — irrevocably, given Pakistan's obstructions — to attain its fundamental strategic objectives. Meanwhile, other regional players had begun jockeying for position with greater intensity than ever, determined to prevent others from translating a foothold in Afghanistan into any geopolitical advantage.

It was onto this situation that McChrystal sought to graft his counterinsurgency. With Obama's eventual blessing, the US would begin not to extricate itself but instead to double down. Where the Taliban could win just by surviving, by hanging on, the US would saddle itself with perpetual nation-building and all the exertion that entails.

'Protecting the population' became the mantra and it meant getting out of the humvees, exposing the troops to greater danger, and interfering more, not less, in the lives of ordinary Afghans – in the vain hope that all of this would somehow defeat the insurgency. Such an approach required more troops, more time, more money and, worst of all, more precious lives lost.

McChrystal might have been sacked for a handful of caustic remarks (most of which, it should be said, seem pretty spot-on). Yet by far his greatest failing is that he, like Obama, is simply a woeful strategist. In the most revealing passages of the now infamous Rolling Stone piece, McChrystal's Chief of Operations, General Bill Mayville, notes that, whatever happens in Afghanistan, 'It's not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win. This is going to end in an argument.'

As the futility of Afghanistan becomes fully apparent to the Administration and the military, and as the reality dawns that there may be no face-saving way out, someone is going to have to take responsibility for losing, and prolonging, the war. With McChrystal having been put to the sword, that argument is just beginning.

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In particular, it's easy to see how the young Rudd might have become so fascinated by China – a country whose national story is in some respects a metaphor for his own private life. In both cases the perception of traumatic loss instills a sense of bereavement and entitlement and a steely determination to succeed. For both, it may well be an ingrained sense of powerlessness and vulnerability which drives their relentless quest for power.

Rudd's inexcusable outburst at Copenhagen ('those Chinese f**kers are trying to rat-f**k us') will not soon be forgotten by Beijing (would Rudd himself forgive such an insult?). It reflects the mounting frustration of a politician coming to terms with the imprudence of his decision to tie his political fortunes at home to a grinding multilateral process abroad, and of a man unaccustomed by now to the feeling of being thwarted.

But I wonder whether there mightn't be something else to it. Could it be that, in dealing with Chinese implacability at Copenhagen, Rudd also encountered a version of himself?

From Marr's interpretation it's easy to see how, with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pointedly refusing to leave his hotel room, each Chinese obstruction and obfuscation might have reminded Rudd of characteristics profoundly and irritatingly typical of himself. As Chinese resolve hardened, Rudd's mood clearly metastasised from frustration to rage, revealing – if only for an instant – the angry child who, as Marr suggests, became 'the father of the man'.

But this raises a more general question: if Australia's involvement in Afghanistan is all about supporting the US alliance, why is Canberra so reluctant to speak openly, and truthfully, about it? After all, it's no secret that Australians expect the highest standard of national security, or that, as the just-released 2010 Lowy poll reveals, the US alliance is viewed as an indispensable means of attaining that security. So, why the constant prevarication?

I think there are two factors which go at least some way to explaining it.

The first is ethical. While I agree with Sam that governments tend to be very pragmatic about matters of war, populations generally think about the same issues in more moralistic terms. Like Americans, Australians are naturally reluctant to support a war for anything less than a cause which reflects their deeply held beliefs and values — yet quite willing, even enthusiastic, to go to war on behalf of those values.

With this in mind, and conscious that the cold logic of alliance management is unlikely to suffice as a moral basis for war, Canberra is forced to manipulate its public pronouncements in ways that better accord with the kind of ideals for which people are willing to fight.

The second factor is strategic. For years now Canberra has managed to get extraordinary diplomatic mileage out of essentially token military commitments. The US must be aware that Canberra could do a lot more, and that Australia's commitment does not reflect its potential or rhetoric. But for some reason, Washington has always chosen to just play along.

It seems there's an implicit bargain at the heart of Australia's alliance relationship: Washington, eager to secure greater legitimacy for its actions, accepts Australia's symbolic military contributions in exchange for Canberra's unequivocal political support – and on the tacit condition that Canberra's stated aims are identical to those for which the US itself has chosen to fight.

In this regard, the Australian way of alliance management may be more consensual than many have assumed — less a form of duplicity than a peculiar type of collusion.

This post was lightly edited after publication. Photo by Flickr user madamepsychosis, used under a Creative Commons license.

which might well cause it to fail before it’s even properly begun. While the US is tightening the screws around Iran’s periphery, by withdrawing US forces from Iraq — from 90,000 today to 50,000 by the end of August, with the rest out by the end of 2011 — Obama is alleviating the pressure on Iran in the one place that really matters.

For decades, the central organising principle of Washington’s Middle East policy was to maintain a balance of power between Iran and Iraq, preventing either one from dominating the other and establishing a foothold from which it might attempt to gain control over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states.

When the US toppled Saddam and dismantled the Iraqi military in 2003, it removed Iraq from that balance of power and injected itself in Iraq’s place.

The problem for Obama as he tries to withdraw is that Iraq is in no position to resume its former role in the balance of power, as a bulwark against Iranian expansion — and won’t be for at least the next few years. While a relatively stable equilibrium may have taken hold in Iraq, sufficient at least to hold elections and begin rebuilding the country, Iraq remains unable — and to an extent, unwilling — to resist Iran’s strategic encroachment.

So far Iranian intrusions have been relatively low key, conducted so as not to undermine stability and prolong the presence of US forces. But these can be expected to become more frequent and pervasive, and possibly militarised, as an effective US counterbalance disappears and as Tehran edges closer to a nuclear capability. 

Which leaves Obama facing a major dilemma — though one, I suspect, he may not yet have fully contemplated: he can contain Iran, but only by abandoning his commitment to withdraw hastily and fully from Iraq. Or, he can withdraw from Iraq and hand a potentially nuclear armed Iran the regional hegemony to which it’s long aspired.

That’s a tough call to make, and it’s hard to see much middle ground. So, which is it going to be?

Photo by Flickr user Rishi Menon's photostream, used under a Creative Commons license.

Thus, Robert Zoellick famously called on China to become a ‘responsible stakeholder’, a formulation in which ‘responsibility’ was defined not only by China’s willingness to acknowledge the conventions and institutions of international policy, as Sam suggests, but also its willingness to accommodate itself to US primacy in Asia (more or les indefinitely) and adhere to American preferences on a range of important international issues, including Iran, North Korea and climate change, among many others.

Of course, from Washington’s perspective, things haven’t exactly gone to plan. As Gideon Rachman recently noted, China’s economic miracle has not brought with it inexorable political change, and, strategically, China has not grown up to resemble post-Cold War Japan. By contrast, Beijing has a narrow, clear-eyed view of its national interests, which it is unwilling, especially as its power and wealth accumulates, to subordinate to those of the US. 

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