Address by Dr Brendan Nelson
Minister for Defence, Australia
To the 5th IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore
4 June 2006
(transcript)
Thank you very much, John, and congratulations on the work that you are doing and in the convention of the dialogue. To Deputy Prime Minister Najib and Minister Sudarsono, it is my privilege to share the platform with you today. Mr Teo, I congratulate you and the Singaporean Government on the outstanding arrangements for the dialogue.
Excellencies, members of the broader Asian defence community, this is individually my first Shangri-la Dialogue, and of course the 5th anniversary of the event. Australia strongly supports this dialogue and very much believes in it.
We believe that it is the preeminent meeting of defence ministers in our region and indeed today we also consider it to be an essential part of the Asian defence diplomacy architecture.
I have been asked, along with my ministerial colleagues here, to discuss constructing an original security community, and we certainly often hear it said in Australia, as you do throughout the region that there is a community in the Asia-Pacific, but, like most people, I often ask myself, what does that actually mean in any practical sense?
What kind of community do we have in Asia? How does each of us, as individual nations, see it? What are our common challenges? What are those things that we face that transcend our individual interests and priorities? And how in particular can we most effectively address the security threats in our part of the world?
Western countries frequently view multilateralism and collective security through global frameworks and institutions, the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation perhaps being foremost among them.
But our observation is that Asian countries frequently, notwithstanding their cultural, political, and economic differences, share a vibrant set of long-standing relationships and indeed shared approaches to common problems. But what Asian countries in our experience tend to do is they do it without excessive emphasis on formal multilateral architecture.
Since the end of World War II, Australia has sought to support East Asian regional border building in a number of ways. Firstly, the Manila Pact, then of course the Five Power Defence Arrangements, ANZUS Treaty and the stabilising influence of the United States in
our region we have considered to be very important, and then, more recently, of course, the ASEAN Regional Forum which, whilst being a product of foreign ministers, we do believe is contributing to a sense of community in our part of the world.
We'd also suggest that we are different from the European Union, and the future security of our community is not likely to ever mirror that of NATO, but that at any stage a community will emerge instead from clusters of bilateral relationships and be driven by practical
At the moment, as has been referred to, particularly by Minister Najib, East Timor is the youngest nation in our region. It is also in need of our help. A number of countries in our region are responding already, as they have done previously; New Zealand, Malaysia,Portugal, of course, and of course Australia.
As a region, we need to be able to respond very quickly to requests for help, and, in that regard, I commend Minister Najib on his suggestion of standing arrangements within our region, which I'm sure will be the subject of much discussion.
If asked by Timor Leste and if other countries respond, then a broader coalition may be built in assisting it.
It is important from our perspective that the political and judicial and administrative reconciliation and reconstruction of Timor Leste be led essentially by the United Nations and supported by the Timor Leste government, but, in terms of supporting its security, that it should be endorsed by the United Nations, but include a broad coalition of countries from our region.
It's in all of our interests to see that we do not have failed states in our region, that we cannot afford to have Timor Leste become one of those, and, in doing so, become a haven, perhaps, for transnational crime,for terrorism, and indeed humanitarian disasters and injustice.
From an Australian perspective, we believe that it's important we focus on our common challenges throughout our region, of terrorism, of humanitarian disaster and pandemics amongst them, and that these require consultation and cooperation and relationships.
Relationships build community interest, and they also bring with them a sense of shared responsibility. For example, APEC's approach to the avian flu pandemic is one example. We from Australia intend to bring forward proposals to deal with manual portable air defence systems as one of the things which we are concerned that terrorists will be increasingly wanting to use.
Examples of common approaches to security, of course, include the international monitoring efforts in the Southern Philippines, which Secretary Cruz and his government have commendably been seeking to address; the success of regional peace process in the Aceh monitoring mission; the response to the Indian Ocean tsunami
of December 2004, and not just the response to it, but of course reconstruction following it and the development of the Indian Ocean tsunami warning system.
The regional assistance mission to the Solomon Islands is but one example more in the Pacific region of us working cooperatively to support peace, order and security and, of course, even more recently that of Timor Leste.
One of the other things to which we in Australia are very committed is the proliferation security initiative, and when first proposed by President Bush in 2003, following the Krakow Group of 8 meeting, we thought immediately there was a lot of sense in this.
And many countries throughout our region have indeed been involved with it, and, by the end of this year, there will have been 29 PSI exercises undertaken throughout the world. Earlier this year we conducted one in Australia.
From our point of view as Australians it isn't about bureaucracy, it's not about establishing another secretariat or a travelling dinner club, it's not impinging on any way into the sovereignty of individual nations.
But instead it's about dealing with questions, about how do we deal with proliferation initiatives, whether by rogue states or rogue organisations, with those things which can support the development of weapons of mass destruction once they leave our borders.
Of course the 2003 incident involving BBC China, the German-owned ship which was carrying materials that were supporting then the nuclear enrichment programme that was envisaged by Libya is but one example of particularly United States, Germany and Italy working together to bring security through the PSI.
Those and other things from our point of view are examples of cooperation which bring relationship and of course ultimately a sense of community.
From our government's perspective, we've invested in the last four years US$100 million in a number of cooperative initiatives in our region, around law enforcement, intelligence, and border control.
We've recently announced that we'll invest another US$75 million over the next four years to work with countries in our region to help boost the fight against terrorism; improving law enforcement, counterterrorism capacity, establishing and supporting liaison networks and intelligence, supporting countries who wish to work with us in improving customs and border control and coordinating activities through the southeast region, further developing the APEC regional movement alert system and working with Indonesia on its border alert system at major ports, improving the coordination of partnerships in counterterrorism, and, of course, we are very proud to be able to work with the Indonesian Government in the East Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
Consistent with the things that have been said by Ministers Sudarsono and Najib, we also believe that the struggles against insurgency and terrorism – and in some ways we see terrorism as being a weapon in the toolbox of a global counterinsurgency movement – we believe that all of the things that we do militarily are extremely important, but we also believe that it's extremely important we focus on education and economic and aid development, and that we work with one another, and perhaps as Socrates once observed that the root of all evil is ignorance, and that applying the military counterterrorism and police efforts that we do are extremely important throughout our region, but equally important is the education of all of our peoples.
From Australia's perspective, in terms of security, we very strongly believe, as everyone here does, that it is about the defence and security of our nation, the protection of our borders, and supporting our sovereignty.
But equally we believe, for humanitarian and also security reasons, that security in our region is important to our security; that whether it be Pacific Island nations or whether it be nations in our region, that economic, political and perhaps even military
threats to our neighbours are threats to us.
But we further take the view that things throughout
the world, that terrorism is a global activity, and part of in a sense a global counterinsurgency movement, that we do take the view that the security of the next generations, not only of Australians, but people in our region requires us to do everything we can to support stability in the Middle East, to recognise the importance of fighting and taking up the fight against terrorism, even if it is quite distant from our own country, and also to support countries who choose to do heavy lifting in that regard.
In Australia we open newspapers and television and we turn on radio on any day of the work, and we often can be forgiven for thinking that our world in this 21st century is being characterised by significant elements of fundamentalist intolerance.
We face enormous global economic uncertainty and we are living in a period of unprecedented technological change. We are of the view that what will most build our community in our region is to recognise that our common enemies are terrorism, it is counterinsurgency, and it is also lethality which may be gained by some failing states and indeed rogue organisations, and in the struggle against these common enemies, the thing that we are going to need most is one another; that notwithstanding all of the differences that we have within our region, unless we are able to work together and to respect and recognise one's sovereignty in that process and not allow ourselves to be crippled with bureaucracy and excessive amounts of secretariat which can characterise – if it's in other parts of the world, then we are not likely to succeed.
Thank you very much.
