- The Strategist - https://www.aspistrategist.org.au -
ASPI’s decades: Confronting threats, facing a pandemic
Posted By Graeme Dobell on August 23, 2021 @ 06:00
Australia can no longer take refuge in the barriers of time and distance as a defence against the pestilence without. It is clear that geographical notions of security and national stability defined in terms of territorial sovereignty and integrity are not the only relevant factors in today’s environment. Not only has the transnational spread of infectious disease transformed our view of national security by producing threats without visible enemies, but it has also rendered the ‘national’ insignificant and replaced it with the ‘international.’
Peter Curson, Invisible enemies, 2005
‘The way forward’ is a topic occupying the minds of many Australians at the moment. When I think about Australia in 12 months and five years’ time in the context of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, I frame my thoughts in the simple, post-operation review process that I was taught in the ADF: to achieve our agreed outcome, what must be sustained and what must be improved? In our current situation, therefore, what policies, programs and actions must be sustained and in what areas must we improve?
The pandemic has shown that far too much of our national resilience, from broadband bandwidth to the capacity to produce basic medical supplies, has been left to market forces and good luck rather than planning. While the global Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, it’s clear that the crisis has brought about seismic social, economic and geopolitical changes to our world.
Simply accelerating or continuing current policies and engagement won’t produce the results we want. Waiting for others to define a post-Covid-19 agenda for us, whether that’s the UN, Washington, Delhi, Tokyo or Brussels, just won’t work, because everyone is groping about in search of solutions.
Notably, in several areas, Australians have done at least as much thinking about this as anyone else on the planet. It turns out that we aren’t bad at navigating concurrent crises and making decisions that attract domestic and international support. Australia’s policy and influence can help lead debates and decisions, just as we have in China policy and in technology policy, notably with 5G and countering foreign interference.
This volume of articles shows us that Australia is entering a more disorderly, poorer world where there’s a real risk of nations and peoples turning inward and hoping that big problems—such as intense China–US struggles over strategic, economic and technological power—will go away without anyone having to make hard choices; that, if we just wait, we can get back to business as usual. That won’t work. The risk of military conflict between the world’s two big powers, involving US allies such as Australia and Japan, will be greater in coming months and years than at most times since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
How Australia assures its prosperity and security after the pandemic is a central concern for our parliamentarians. Different contributors offered alternative models for society, such as using wellbeing as a metric instead of economic output or emphasising improving the climate in the recovery phase of the crisis.
Whatever the topic, our MPs clearly have an intuition that there’s an opportunity for change and that the opportunity needs to be seized to improve Australia’s security and prosperity. It’s obvious that there are strongly divergent views on policy choices here, but a common uniting theme is the need to ensure that Australia learns lessons from the pandemic experience.
Transnational health threats involve every aspect of modern life, including food safety, human rights, organ transplants, travel, commerce and trade, education and environmental law. HIV/AIDS illustrates the extreme challenges faced by countries and their citizens when faced by a virulent infection that affects a large proportion of the population and for which no specific cure or treatment exists. There are many lessons and challenges for Australia here, but the underlying message is that infectious disease needs to be near the top of the national security agenda.
Article printed from The Strategist: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au
URL to article: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/aspis-decades-confronting-threats-facing-a-pandemic/
[1] Invisible enemies: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/import/SI_Enemies.pdf?VersionId=22pJ5vCP8gLGz80NlNdm6fMOy8lOC9cU
[2] Counterterrorism yearbook: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2020-03/ASPI%20Counterterrorism%20YB2020.pdf?XVWQRHtHM0Yjs4OTfES3sLpkmCl36X4e
[3] judged: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2021-03/ASPI%20Counterterrorism%20YB2021-v2.pdf?qRIjpA0b0aLaWsvXREMAf8yo8I.uyWxN
[4] Australia and the world rebuild: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2020-05/After%20Covid-19%20Australia%20and%20the%20world%20rebuild%20%28Volume%201%29_1.pdf?1l8YBWW7I1CYhxOvZatd5fSJbKn1tbrO
[5] Australia, the region and multilateralism: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2020-10/After%20Covid-19%20Volume%202.pdf?oE8oA0fwayBGmtDMQ7itfwkG86SHY9WV
[6] Voices from federal parliament: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/2020-12/After%20Covid-19%20Volume%203_1.pdf?YAvLkXatwCsGNLpd82TXp.B9SGqkci3n