Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“All of those styles of intelligence except the last one —HUMINT—  is, of course, undergoing fantastically rapid change in the last few decades and that doesn't look like ending. I mean, SIGINT, when I first got into the business SIGINT was still largely a matter of, well, intercepting high frequency transmissions — if you go back to the sort of World War One, World War Two era. And, you know, then getting into satellites and so on.” 

“But these days, intercepting other people's or intruding into other people's computer systems has become a vast part of the process. And so, the whole shape of what we used to call SIGINIT hardly seems an adequate word anymore”

“Signals is a very World War two word.”

“You know, it used to be the case that when you're trying to intercept other people's signals, you either had to get alongside a cable like the British splicing into the transatlantic cable at the beginning of World War One, sp they could they could intercept what the what the Germans were doing, or listening to high frequency radio, which is a very geographically based business where you could set up your antenna to listen became really critical.

“These days, that being what it is, the geography has almost become irrelevant.”

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Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“Can I just finish this sector on one observation, which might seem a little bit impertinent, and that is I don't think, in the grand sweep of history, what happens in the Middle East matters very much. 

“The future of the global order, the future of America's role in the global order, will be decided in Europe and Asia, where it always is decided, because that's where the big power is.

“A great secret about the Middle East is that in the end, it's always kind of marginal. During the Cold War, it wasn't one of the central fronts. It wasn't until 1980 that the Carter Doctrine declared that the Americans would keep them out. 

“During the post-Cold War era, the fact that the Middle East was the only part of the world that didn't seriously sign of, least for for a while, seriously sign on to the idea of American primacy didn't get in the way of the fact that American primacy became, for a while, the sort of, focus of of global order.”

Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.

Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“But there's another layer on top of this which is the Treaty of Rarotonga—the South Pacific Free Zone Treaty. And that treaty, to which Australia is a signatory, says that nuclear weapons shall not be stationed on the territory of any signatory of that treaty. And so, we get around that by talking about a rotational arrangement. 

“And as Mike Pezzullo, former colleague of yours, Deputy Secretary in the Defence Department, has helpfully pointed out in The Australian in recent weeks, come 2032 or thereabouts, the United States is going to be once again putting nuclear weapons on board its fast attack submarines.

“And some of those fast attack submarines are going to be stationed, or I should say rotating, through Submarine Rotational Force West at HMAS Stirling.

“So that raises a thorny problem for Australia: if those nuclear armed vessels are going to be rotated through HMAS Stirling. Does that put us in breach of the treaty?"

Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.

Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

Subscribe to Australian Foreign Affairs: https://www.australianforeignaffairs.com/subscribe

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“And great powers do use armed force against countries that obstruct their vision of regional, or for that matter, global order. And, you know, it's worth remembering that that's why the United States has a great power went to war with Vietnam and Iraq and Iraq again, and Iran and Afghanistan. 

“So, you know, Australia, thinking about its strategic future in Asia, can't afford to overlook the possibility that if Australia does effectively and sort of systematically oppose China's vision of regional order, then we can expect to get some pushback, and we can’t rule out the possibility that pushback includes military pushback.”

Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.

Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“I don't think we should also underestimate our capacity to overplay our hands here. 

“There is a bit of a bullying tone to some of this stuff. I mean —leaving aside the fact that article two of the Ocean of Peace treaty declares our shared values, including the party's commitment to free and democratic institutions — that’s a bit rich when you’re signing the treaty with Sitiveni Rabuka— you know, leader of two coups.

“But also there's language about about not permitting, and this is not just in the in the Fiji agreement, but in all of the agreements in different ways, language about not allowing other countries to establish bases and so on.

“You know, and it's a bit asymmetrical. In the Vanuatu treaty, for example, it says is not allowed to have foreign bases, but we are.

“The sort of cuteness of some of this. I think we need to be very careful that we don't overplay our hand.”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“You have to be very clear where the capability trends are going. 

“Intentions can change quickly, but it's worth making the point that the broader geostrategic framework within which intentions evolve can change more slowly. 

“When we made the foundation of Australian defense policy throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, even into the 2000, it was that: we didn't have to care much about China's military capabilities because we could not conceive that it would have an intention to use force against us. “Now, what's the big thing that's changed on the intention side is that in the decades ahead, we're expecting China to be much less constrained by American power and therefore to have opportunities, if it chooses, to use force against Australia free of interference from the United States. Which it wouldn't have had, which we didn't conceive it having decades ago.”

“There’s an element of intention that changes slowly, too.

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“The life type extension of the Collins—keeping as many Collins as possible in service and operationally viable for as long as possible—is really critical to the whole AUKUS[...]for two reasons.”“The first is because we won't have a submarine capability otherwise“But the second is we won't have enough submarines at sea to provide the training opportunities for enough submariners to ensure that we actually have the personnel required to sustain a viable submarine capability when the US boats arrive.“And I've long been of the view that the first hurdle at which we're likely to fall in getting to where the AUKUS plan was meant to take us was that we wouldn't succeed in upgrading, prolonging the life of the Collins sufficiently to keep enough submarines in water, to keep enough trainees going to sea, to give ourselves the personnel required to operate the AUKUS boats when they arrive. And that’s become more likely”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“This has been by far the biggest ballistic missile we've ever seen. I don't think we've ever seen anything like this number of ballistic missiles used in anger…”“Now, part of the story of the war so far is that a very high proportion of the Iranian missiles have been shot down… it demonstrates the importance of more sophisticated ballistic missiles that can evade defenses and which is really what the Hypersonics story is about.“But I bet you'll find one of the things that's happening to the Chinese is studying what's been happening, to maximize their chance of getting their ballistic missiles under the targets and avoid the defenses.”

“I want to bring this home to our part of the world, our region. And your point about this being essentially performative tends to cut against one theory that's become popular among a certain element of the commentariat, which is that this is all about China.“That at the base of all this and the Venezuela operation, as well, and American statecraft, if we can call it that, under Donald Trump, is somehow all explainable by a long term competition with China and that the United States is involved in this very far sighted strategy of trying to isolate China and to deny it allies.“I'd like to say that's rubbish.”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“I want to quote from the speech itself…“The speech begins with a familiar critique. Anti-free trade, anti-mass migration…anti-welfare state, a critique of deindustrialisation in the West. And then Rubio says:“‘ Four, five centuries before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.“‘But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. The Great Western empires had entered into terminal decline. Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a saint and feeble echo of our past.“‘But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before. And this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.”