Iraq is struggling to create a unified and stable nation amid appalling terrorism and violence. The future of Afghanistan looks shaky as the Taliban regroups and NATO partners are reluctant to send more troops. East Timor remains one of the world's poorest countries. Most disturbing is the International Institute of Strategic Studies' last annual survey. It says that al-Qaeda is resurgent, and Osama bin Laden continues to claim that "as you violate our security, so we violate yours". Indeed, one of the 2004 bombers of Australia's Jakarta embassy told police he joined the plot because Australia was supporting America in "slaughtering Muslims in Iraq".
12 March 2008: Canberra Times
By Anthony Burke
When the Howard government sent SAS commandos to board the MV Tampa in the last week of August 2001, something profound and disturbing happened to Australia's national security policy. Rather than being focused on threats from other states, nuclear proliferation or terrorism, Australia was now seeking security from vulnerable people fleeing abusive regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, while putting its own security and wellbeing at risk.
As they were placed in long-term detention in the Pacific, and other asylum-seekers were incarcerated at Woomera, Port Hedland and Villawood, naval and air force units were tasked to patrol our northern approaches, and preventing "illegal immigration" became a core mission of our defence forces.
Even with fresh memories of involvement in Vietnam and the embrace of Suharto while his troops raped East Timor, rarely had Australia so blatantly purchased its national security at the expense of other human beings. Seven years into the war on terror, the moral and strategic costs of this approach have come home to us.
Iraq is struggling to create a unified and stable nation amid appalling terrorism and violence. The future of Afghanistan looks shaky as the Taliban regroups and NATO partners are reluctant to send more troops. East Timor remains one of the world's poorest countries. Most disturbing is the International Institute of Strategic Studies' last annual survey. It says that al-Qaeda is resurgent, and Osama bin Laden continues to claim that "as you violate our security, so we violate yours". Indeed, one of the 2004 bombers of Australia's Jakarta embassy told police he joined the plot because Australia was supporting America in "slaughtering Muslims in Iraq".
Having recently commissioned a new defence white paper and a broad reassessment of Australia's national security strategy, the Rudd Government has the opportunity to chart a far more effective and decent path, but I fear it will fail to grasp its chance.
It has signalled it will broaden Australia's security policy to consider threats from the economy and climate change, and reach out to Muslim communities for better intelligence and to prevent radicalisation. It has flagged new efforts to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime, and softened the previous government's harsh approach to detaining asylum-seekers. But it is still building a big detention centre at Christmas Island, and is showing no sign of making the big shift in thinking that's needed.
The key to obtaining security in today's world is to focus on human security. The security of nations follows automatically. This view has been widely taken up in the United Nations, by security specialists around the world, and by aid and other humanitarian organisations, but has been ignored by Labor and Coalition governments.
Defence white papers over the past decade have been arid documents focusing on Australia's "national" interests and security, while barely acknowledging international law and the sheer complexity of contemporary conflicts and processes which create threats to human beings.
Such abstract concepts have shaped policy even as we have actually supported human security with missions to East Timor, the Solomons, and Indonesia after the tsunami and the Jogjakarta earthquake. Yet we continue to treat symptoms rather than create a world where people's basic security can be guaranteed on an enduring basis. Iraq is a classic example where poor "national security" policy and alliance politics caused grave threats to human and national security. An illegitimate use of force in 2003 was compounded by bad postwar policy and disregard for civilian lives and basic needs. Food prices and unemployment rocketed, hospitals struggled on a few hours of power each day, and militants flooded in to punish US troops far from home. Iraq has seen some of the most lethal terrorist atrocities after September 11, 2001. More than 65,000 people have been killed while three million others are refugees.
Australia's Department of Defence is being told by close advisers that such messy "postmodern" wars are the conflicts of the future. They are not being told that solving them is impossible to do with military force alone, and a new security approach can prevent them ever occurring. If the Rudd Government is willing to broaden its thinking and its sources of advice, it can create a security policy that contributes to a much safer world for Australians and their global neighbours.
Anthony Burke is an associate professor of international relations at the Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW, and the author of Fear of Security: Australia's Invasion Anxiety.
