Eyes on the Indo-Pacific: Australia’s Defence Strategy

Welcome to the War Studies podcast. We bring you world-leading research from the School of Security Studies at King's College London, the largest community of scholars in the world dedicated to the study of all aspects of security. defence and international relations. We explore the complex realm of conflict because the study of war is fundamental to understanding the world we live in and the world we want to live in.

Australia's strategic environment has continued to deteriorate since the release of the Defence Strategic Review, consistent with the trends it identified. The optimism at the end of the Cold War has been replaced by the uncertainty and tensions of entrenched and increasing strategic competition between the US and China. This competition

is being framed by an intense contest of narratives and values. At the same time, volatility is manifesting in conflict and crisis in multiple regions, including Europe and the Middle East. Russia's unprovoked, illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine demonstrates the destructive reality of modern conflict when a nation attempts to achieve its ambitions through force. These dynamics...

are making the pursuits of Australia's interests more challenging. They also reaffirmed the judgment first set out in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update and confirmed in Defence Strategic Review.

that there is no longer a 10-year window of strategic warning time of conflict. My name is Alessio Parlano and I'm a Professor of War and Strategy in East Asia at the Department of War Studies at King's College London. And I am delighted to be here in Brussels in a forward anchorage from where we are recording one of our War Studies podcasts. Together with the Security and Defense Plus Alliance.

that is a part of the international arrangements that King's has with a number of strategic partners, universities, in this case, Arizona State University and UNSW Sydney. I'm delighted to be here sitting next to the new Australian Chief of Defence Forces, Amiral David Johnston. Amiral, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us and welcome to the podcast today. Thank you and it's a pleasure to be with you.

So before we start, I just want to introduce Amil Johnston. Amil Johnston comes from a very diverse, he's wearing a naval uniform, but he comes from a very diverse background of experiences within the context of the Australian Defence. As animal officers, he commanded HMS Adelaide, Newcastle, and was also commander of the Border Protection Command, Chief of Joint Operation, Vice Chief of Defence Forces.

But operationally also brings to the table an incredible wealth of very diverse experiences. Having been involved in operations such as Rilex in 2002. Operation Quick-Step in Fiji in 2006, Operation Resolute in 2007, and Operation Slipper 2010. All going down in history, not only has very important contributions that Australia made too. the strategic stability of the Asia Pacific region, the Indo-Pacific.

and he did more broadly, but also has having some pretty cool names insofar as operations go. Admiral Johnston has also a number of honours and awards, not least the Officer of the Order of Australia. and more recently, Companion of Order of Australia for eminent service to the Australian Defence Force through strategic stewardship and capability engagement. I'm all again delighted to have you here today.

Now, the abstract I was reading earlier on comes from the recently released National Defense Strategy. and then before we sort of get into the thick of the conversation and i just wanted to ask you as a way to set up the context of our conversation today first how Australia has come to talk about the Indo-Pacific. The vocabulary is important. The words that we choose in the way we frame strategic debates do matter.

Why Australia's preference for the Indo-Pacific? And in a way, what should we take away from the importance of using this vocabulary? At least that's a very good place to start. And you're quite right to identify that. Australia's view of its geography, its place in the region and the world over the period of time since our Federation in the early 1900s, of course, has evolved. And militarily, when I look at that question,

Most of our military campaigns, of course, have been conducted well off the shores from Australia. When you see a map of the over 100,000 war dead that we have. very few of them are anywhere near our homeland apart from parts of the Pacific. So our view of the geography over time has has changed and the landing on the Indo-Pacific and particularly the approach that the National Defence Strategy has taken has re-anchored us back in the region.

because of the demands of the environment in which we have found ourselves. And particularly over the last 20 years, like many of our like-minded countries, of course. Much of our security sense was driven by what was happening in Afghanistan or Iraq or through some of the counterinsurgency actions. You consequently saw both Australian military forces deployed in those areas, but that influence back into our force structure baseline, the way we prepared and rotated forces through that.

thinking of how our doctrinal approach would have. The Indo-Pacific brings us back to the core of our region and it recognises that we are bounded by three of the four largest oceans in the world to our east, west and south. But our anchorage is and we were having this discussion in my office, at its centrepiece you would see a map which has Australia and the region tilted to show the Indian Ocean and the Pacific on two sides.

So then the archipelago leading north from Australia up through Southeast Asia into North Asia. So the Indo-Pacific term is an important mindset shift. both within our security community, but particularly within the fence itself. This is where our security effort needs to be best placed. And the pace of change that has occurred, particularly in the last decade, requires us to come back and reconsider.

What is important to us for our national security? How do we best achieve those objectives? And the Indo-Pacific frames the prioritization and the way we are approaching that question.

I want to go back to one point that you just raised about the changing security landscape in the region that inevitably informs how you think about your strategic questions.

if you want. But there's something in there that you said about the way you look at a map. It really defines enormously how you organize your security priorities. And it seems to me that in Australia's case, the sort of post-Afghanistan-led security prioritization process really unleashed this idea that, after all, Australia, yes, it is a large continent in one sense. but it is also a large continent that sits at the heart of a fundamentally maritime region.

And if you're in Australia, you can't really separate Southeast Asia from Eastern North Asia or the South Pacific or the Indian Ocean. There are threads that are interwoven and you can't really sort of disentangle. And I think there is a lesson for everybody else in terms of that relationship between geography, not as an absolute factor.

but as a factor that shapes your perception of the world or that reflects your worldview in many ways. And so the shape of Australian economy, the interaction and connectivity with the rest of the world rewards. a maritime, if you want, centric approach to it, which I think, again, it's remarkable how it comes across very strongly in the defence strategic review, as well as in the national defence strategy.

And in particular on this, I wanted to ask a little bit more about the question of the strategic war in time. Now, this is a concept that as a scholar of the Indo-Pacific, you really... come across in this formulation the first time you start sort of looking into the Australian national security debate. Because the concept of strategic warning time very much captures an Australian approach to

the problems ahead and how you reverse engineer for the type of problems you might expect down the road. But I think it's a very helpful concept, particularly because as the abstract and the highlighted, we live in a much more contested, volatile time. So having an understanding of what does urgency mean and how does that create, therefore, requirements that need steps that need to be taken today.

in order to be able to change that future or buy yourself more into that strategy one time is really important. And the strategy makes a very important point in highlighting that this strategic warning time now is falling short the 10-year window. That's a really important statement. And I think it really grounds and anchors the sense of urgency. Can you explain us a little bit more about how...

the Australian national security elites went through this conversation in crafting the national defense strategy on the back of the defense strategic review. That you're right to identify that judgment about a change in largely a policy approach around strategic warning times is one of the most profound judgments. that the National Defense Strategy incorporates with it. The process that we went through is for the benefit, and I know there are

many versions of how people might define strategic warning time. The Australian interpretation of it is the length of time it would take a nation from determining that it wants to have the ability to conduct a major conflict, to organise itself to be able to do so. So that's the definitional view that we'd applied. And when our setting was that that was 10 years or more, which until 2020 and then reinforced in the 2024 national defense strategy was our view of course it gives you

a security or comfort blanket that you can cling to that prevents you from having to consider a whole series of quite... fundamental questions about not just your defense force, but the way your nation considers its national security. So the adjustment that occurred in the last two strategic documents has caused us to have to come back and reconsider some of our... fundamentals. So even within Defence and the Australian Defence Force as well, the profound nature of that has taken some time.

to sink in as we now wrestle with the decisions that need to be made around immediate priorities versus long-term priorities. But we looked at the circumstances that were occurring in our region. Clearly, the rise of China has been profound as a superpower. The scale of military modernization that's occurring within the region are used as an example. that the Chinese naval force is growing by the size of the Royal Navy.

every two years. So there's a very large shift that is occurring, not just within naval forces, China's nuclear capability. their cyber capabilities are well known, their land force and anti-access aerial denial. So we've had to consider capability changes in the region, not limited to China. We could talk about North Korea and others. all going through military modernization and observing patterns of behavior to form a sense of intent or national objectives that occur.

Each of those in conclusion led us to come to a judgment that the circumstances were different from they had been. Perhaps the most acute example I would offer of why it is important is... When you look at Australia, we introduced in 2024 the notion of the cyber domain and space as two war fighting domains that required us to organise ourselves, to approach them in that manner. Well, I think we could all agree in cyber...

Warning time is certainly not more than 10 years. And the reasonable case you could mount that there are cyber attacks and intrusion occurring now and every day. The ability to look at domains and form a different view around warning time allows us to reconsider how we both refine and apportion effort to be able to best.

address the risks that we believe are in front of us. So I think there's two things that really strike me, what you just said. One is the ability to shape responses in relation to the particular type of challenge. And because this challenge is cut across well beyond just the military rail traditionally defined, you will have... requirements for being faster and quicker because as you said in some domains

what is happening already now fits into that sort of category of risk that speaks to a strategic point in time. But there's something else that you said about how you prepare. for a major mobilization. And again, this is something that might strike to the historian in me as obvious, but not so much in policy acknowledgements of the implications of a vocabulary that speaks to the urgency of... national security, that this document certainly does. And that is, this isn't just about readiness.

to fight tonight. This is about everything behind it that enable us to get to that point. It's a comprehensive whole of nation endeavor that requires us to look into how we think about defense industry. We think about supply chains, the preparation of our people, and not just within the military, but also across society, how to integrate the risk of war and the implications for society in a way that perhaps we've not been accustomed to. And so in that sense...

I think what you just said is really important, even in terms of many countries, including the UK, undergoing their strategic defence review process. But I think one of the other... interesting elements that is pointed out in this document and in other speeches that you yourself have given recently is the coming together, for lack of a better word, of our competitors.

What was the reasoning in the way you thought about the coming together of competitors, particularly this convergence between China, Russia, North Korea, as we've seen it unfolding? From your point of view, is this just a more ad hoc, sort of led by case by case, or there is truth to the Russia-Chinese joint statement about the... partnership with no limits we know there are limits but are those limits limited in nature at least yeah i'm going to ask for your forbearance and i'm just going to

make a comment on your, about the strategy and then I will come to the partnerships. But I think that what I might point out is that the key is and the clue to our approach is very much in the title of the national defense strategy this is not a strategy for defense it is a national and that the national part of the title is the key and because it's a recognition that we cannot sufficiently address our security challenges.

purely through military means. And the approach, the document talks to a denial, a strategy, a denial being the essence of the Australian approach to avoid conflict from occurring. in the first place and to take the measures that are necessary to enable that to be the case that requires much more than what we can do militarily. It's why we are a trading nation, the way we look at our economic arrangements, our diplomatic arrangements, partnership components.

good point and I wanted to elaborate a little on that. We've all been looking for the right terminology to describe what is emerging between the interests of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

We would add to that. And of course, our communities have spent a lot of time trying to address that question. It is of no surprise that countries... through prosecuting their own national interests, occasionally find overlaps on where those interests may align with others and seek to exploit those opportunities from the overlapping that is occurring.

I, like you, will have read many judgments from it is a relationship of convenience to perhaps it is something more than that. I think in what we have observed, particularly over the last uh 24 months or more causes me to go back into our community and to re-prosecute that question because it is quite a fundamental shift. If it is more than just an arrangement of convenience or an alignment to something that becomes more deeply embedded, then that deserves a proper consideration.

countries like ours, like-minded partners that we have, or what does that all mean for us? the evidence is still being assessed, the judgments will fall, but it is a question that is important that we ask, in part because the consequence of the judgment that we might make is it then may require us to take more than a sub-regional or regional.

view of how are we responding to that outcome to truly thinking it on a global scale. And that will require a degree of cooperation, opens questions of how do we bring our collective national... interests together to have to contend with what the consequences of whether it's a partnership or alliance or something else that might mean.

On this particular point, if I may, there's something, again, very profound to just put out there. Let's flip the coin. Do you think that in our communities, because we have experience of strong alliances, whether it is in a NATO context, or in a bilateral context, or in a Five Eyes context.

We have our own bias, right? We tend to judge others against the fact that like, well, we know how an alliance works and that doesn't look like that. Do you think that's part of our sort of challenge? Yes, I think it is. Because we have such a strong foundation in our relationships, which have led us to being able to form the type of partnerships that we have, I think we do have a bias to a view of what does.

a series of partnerships or arrangements look like in order for them to be effective. So I think we should challenge that perception to particularly make sure we don't mischaracterise what might be occurring and therefore not treat it with the gravity that it might require. And for the audience that is less familiar with the dynamics here, Perhaps I should point out that in Brussels and within NATO circles, and as someone who worked on the so-called grey zone before it became a thing,

And it was interesting in the mid-2010, when in a maritime context, we had China's behavior in the South China Sea, in the East China Sea, and speaking to the use of coercion as a means to advance a particular claims on the back of a broader strategic consideration. In Europe, you had the conversation over Russian behaviors, particularly in light of Crimea in the hybrid space. And there was a tendency to keep them separate and to judge.

was interesting the fact that oh but within a NATO context we know how to sort of challenger from an alliance perspective looking down at how australia japan the united states were addressing similar problems together but not in a way nato would do it you could argue that both sides were

looking at each other with a with a minor degree of suspicion because like oh we think we're doing it better but it's like no we think we're doing it better and it really sort of is stuck on the back of my mind uh that perhaps that becomes a part of our problem, our bias that we need to overcome. Because it might actually turn out that not all relationship for them to produce effects that are valued.

Biden needs to work it the way we think they should work, right? And I think that could be really much part of the conversation over this convergence of the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic.

What does that sort of convergence of the Indo-Pacific or the indivisibility of the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic mean to you? So I think if we... look at some of what is occurring in either various theatres or regions and try to determine where are the common threads that we might pull out that give us some insights into what... is occurring in the Indo-Pacific, in the Euro-Atlantic, in Africa. And I think if you see some trends like efforts to undermine the rules-based global order,

efforts perhaps to undermine the way Liberal nations have come together to be able to conduct their national business in the way that over the last few decades have been to our collective good. You see similar trends.

emerging in a way that leads us reasonably to form conclusions that what is happening in one region is not independent from that which is occurring in others. And the most acute example that we are all talking about, of course, is North Korean assistance both in material terms and now with soldiers fighting alongside Russians in Ukraine. considerable impact in Europe for the outcome of that conflict. But we're equally watching what is occurring in return of the technical.

potentially technology change from Russia back into North Korea. The experience that North Koreans will get through comet operation is that. of what are the underlying issues that are occurring, but equally the nations that are choosing to participate in these and how the consequences of their participation. emanate back through the regions in which they exist.

these things draw the connections very strongly together. And it's why Australia has provided $1.5 billion worth of material aid to Ukraine. apart from us holding the view that it was illegal and immoral, is what happens in Europe when the international rules-based order or international law is undermined through the use of force has consequences in our region as well.

And I have to say, both the Defence Minister and the Foreign Minister in Australia, they've been very clear in articulating why Australia is contributing to Ukraine and how that is one of the ways in which...

you can use as a starting point for reflection of these connections. And there is a point that you made about North Korea in terms of technology transfer that, again, places North Korea back into their broader trans-regional relevance of space, because this isn't just about summoning technology that might be transferred to the North Koreans to enable them to complete projects.

they've had for quite some time uh but it's also about missile uh proliferation this is about nuclear proliferation so hands control doesn't really start an end in northeast asia once you're talking about north korea inevitably it sort of it has uh reverberance um in other parts of the world from the middle east down to europe

Which leads me to a second part of the conversation that I wanted to sort of touch upon. It's something also that you mentioned earlier about that national adjective in the title. And that is very much... a question that we're all wrestling with, in the sense that if the strategic work in time is a short of 10 years, and we have to start taking action now to change the environment.

How do we balance the things that we don't have and we really need to have, but they require a longer-term investment, therefore that long-term trajectory, with the requirements of the here and now?

And that readiness that speaks to deterrence that shapes the environment now. And presumably, this is probably a question that you've been wrestling with yourself, because certainly that's the one in the UK that we're strongly wrestling with in like what is happening in Ukraine. And how are we going to think about... being long-term commitments to capabilities and short-term requirements of deterrence.

I think that is the question that every military planner or counterpart of mine is dealing with. In Australia's case, The strategy of denial doesn't wait for it to start conveniently in two years or five years or 10 years. It starts now. So our perspective needs to be How do we make sure that strategy is alive and by the actions that we take both today, tomorrow, in 12 months and beyond for it?

We are consumed with that question. One of the benefits that we have is the decision that we will revisit our national defence strategy every two years. allows you to continue to recalibrate your approach to it and to test the strategic assessments and intelligence that underpin how we weight our effort. But we've taken a number of steps to answer your question.

question. We have, and you will see in particularly in the Integrated Investment Program, the notion introduced of time epochs. The first time epoch concludes in 2027, now to 2030 for the second and beyond.

The discipline that that brought to us was when capability proposals were being developed, there had been a criticism in our own defence strategic review of, in some cases, we had sought the gold-plated long-term outcome that delivered little in the nearer term, but with the hope that quite a substantial outcome over the longer term.

In this environment, that isn't sufficient. In some cases, a nuclear submarine acquisition, it will be a long-term acquisition. But we've had to come back and recalibrate. And as we consider capability proposals, ask the question of what is delivered in Time Epoch 1. two, and three, to force that question to be present in our minds. We've also made an adjustment to introduce an approach called minimum viable capability. And it's become a wide...

used term, perhaps with some distortion to the convenience of who might be using it. But its concept is what could be delivered? quickly to provide an operational effect soon, which we might evolve and improve over time, or we might cease its development entirely and move to a different approach. Its most acute examples would be in uncrewed systems. which we might take a very disposable view of.

plan to bring it in for five years you would use it heavily and then you get rid of the system entirely because the technology is changing at such a place you want to be ready to refresh it but it might be with something completely different so Our mindset shift needed to occur to look at capability delivery differently. We've made similar adjustments to reduce the time from concept idea through to acquisition.

We've had to rework with industry to try to reduce the burden in order that they can move more quickly than some of our requirements imposed on them. But the balance, as you have very well put on. what do we uplift in current readiness or what do we invest in? And some of the decisions would be an example. We had a program for our Anzac class frigates that would have taken them through a further midlife upgrade, particularly...

with their weapons systems. We considered the potential that that offered when it came to a view that while it was an important program, we couldn't sufficiently enhance that platform's effectiveness in the environment in which we needed to be able to conduct operational activities to make that a worthwhile proposition. And so we took a risk-based view of we will live with the limitations of that platform, but seek to.

introduce its replacement much earlier, what is now the general purpose frigate program. So if you look at both the strategy and our capability choices, you see the threads of these decisions linking themselves up such that you have a genuine strategy linked to an output both for near-term purposes and long-term outcomes.

And since you mentioned these examples, maritime examples, I must say there's something incredibly brave in what Australia has done in this particular space of the national security conversation because I think we're becoming more... comfortable with the idea that good is better than perfect if it allows to have deliverables quicker, faster.

And so perfect is like not the ultimate goal, but it's a constantly moving goalpost, as it were. And I think also the other thing that the Australian conversation is generating is an awareness of the... tensions between efficiency and effectiveness. We were very much concerned with efficiencies in the last 25 years. And we started to rediscover that efficiency might not be the fast track to effectiveness. And in a harder environment from a security perspective, effectiveness...

really what matters at the end of the day. So I think that there's something particularly brave. so you're entirely right and we look at in capability we tend to measure it in three things the capability outcome the cost of that and the schedule we have done quite well in delivering capability and generally close to the cost.

We've done that by letting schedule slippage. What we have said is that prioritization is no longer appropriate. So the timeliness of schedule might lead to capability adjustments or cost. adjustments, because we're not prepared for time to be the only lever that will continue to pull in that environment. So that's very true. And so building on this, I'm going to approach the

the difficult subject in Brussels about AUKUS. So for those who are not familiar with AUKUS, AUKUS is the trilateral arrangement that links Australia to the UK and the US, hence AUKUS in the title. for around two subjects. The first, the leading part, is about empowering Australia with the nuclear-powered submarine force by the early 2040s.

And then the second component known as a Pillar 2. as opposed to pillar one being the one on the submarine delivery that includes the development of advanced capabilities based on emerging and disruptive technologies that might empower the members of the AUKUS partnership with a strategic advantage and asymmetric advantage in those capabilities. And I wanted to talk a little bit about this because you alluded to it with the summer and procurement comments that you made earlier.

about the fact that August really is going to deliver into 2040s, but what do we do in between? because the warning time is less than that. Obviously, there is a space to fill in. But it seems to me that pillar two was always part of that conversation about the here and now. Can you talk us through a little bit more about the balance?

between these two dimensions. I will, and I'm going to start slightly differently to where you posited the question because sometimes it is lost in answering with the focus around AUKUS. Of course, it is part of the deterrence and a very important component of the deterrence, but it's not all of it. Look at even in the last 12 months, the accompanying activities that are occurring.

put a lot of emphasis on raising the lethality of the current fleet. In this last 12 months, we have done an SM-6 firing for the first time off an air warfare destroyer. We've fired the new, the harpoon replacement, a naval... strike missile off two classes of ship and just before the Christmas period, the first tomahawk firing off one of our platforms. In Army, we have made decisions around their mobility in the amphibious environment.

We've accelerated the introduction of the HIMARS system. Air Force, similarly, its inventory of advanced weaponry is entering in the service. So there is a large body of work which is around. the deterrent strategy that is active. AUKUS complements it. And the nuclear submarine, so you're right, the SSN AUKUS is not due to the 2040s. In 2027...

The first phase of the Pillar 1 program, which is the submarine rotational force out of Western Australia, has the first of the US boats arriving to be in location. sales start for at least three platforms, potentially up to five, then start to enter our own inventory. AUKUS SSN, the boat itself, is important.

but it is part of there are preceding components to Pillar 1 that will be in place well before the 2040s that will complement the other activities around the delivery of deterrence capability.

Number two which is often less known and doesn't have the same focus but your observation equally is it is a here and now prospect for us and it does provide quite a different conceptual basis for initially the UK and the United States and Australia. And of course, there are other partners who have been considered for particular projects. It's done some quite groundbreaking work around our respective defence trade controls on how do we facilitate a degree of collaboration.

not just with the defence primes or defence industry, but our innovation sectors, our academia and research institutions. legislation that passed in Australia and the accompanying work in the other three countries has created quite a fundamentally different license-free environment to enable this collaboration with the purpose of introducing

both asymmetric and new capabilities much quicker into our respective militaries. And I continue to see great opportunity. It's been hard going in some areas. We have the disadvantage of some of its achievements we deliberately don't wish to be talking about in a public environment, so that makes some of the outcomes more difficult to be able to convey, but it remains a very important part of our work.

So to the advantage of our listeners, perhaps it's worth pointing out that very recently in one of the announcements around OQAS Pillar 2 initiatives in Japan and South Korea were mentioned among potential partners. What is very interesting, what you just said about Pillar 2, is that unlike Pillar 1, which is a closed architecture from a political perspective, Pillar 2 is much more of an open architecture based on a project-by-project case.

will you say earlier on in terms of what the Australian Defence Forces is doing on increasing lethality and range. So missile and broader strike capabilities, whether it is a strike, precision strike, long range precision strike, it seems to be a key element of the story. And certainly from what I can see that the conversation is all in NATO, in Europe, certainly.

This is not just the type of concerns Australia is looking at, we're all looking at it. And above all, most of us cannot look at it from sort of like Iron Dome similarity perspective. So let's ask you for example, you were king for a day, or indeed, Chief of Defence Forces.

What would you like to see as the top three projects? I can assure you being the Chief of Defence Force is not like being the king for a day. But I think the clue or the answer that lies in particularly some of the emerging critical... enabling capabilities. So I would put at the top of my list, artificial intelligence. How do we work? There is enormous work between not just the three countries that are part of the pillar two arrangement, but I've had

at one point described to me that artificial intelligence may become as seminal as electricity is to us. So that caused certainly me to sit back in my seat and think. I need to understand the dimensions of what AI might bring to us. So artificial intelligence is very much there. quantum computing, again, one of those opportunities that will have far reaching consequences if we are able to harness the potential that is being provided to us. what it might achieve.

Those are two key enablers that may have profound consequences to the way we look at enhancing capabilities that are in service and certainly those that would enter service behind it. I think the third... component of it that is getting our attention considerably and there's some catch up occurring in the west is around hypersonic programs or again systems that uh operate very differently to what we have seen through ballistic missiles.

cruise missiles, shorter range, weaponry, that very much challenge the approach that we will take, both particularly in a defensive, but also in an offensive arrangement for them. But those two first ones... AI and quantum computing, if we can get ahead on understanding and delivering genuine capability outcomes in those areas, they have great potential.

And this nicely leads us to the last part of our conversation, because the strategy, of course, puts the strategy of denial at the centre, and therefore deterrence and defends our core component. And that's what we talked about. But in your last comment, that part of the conversation was about shaping the environment and the environment so that we change the strategic circumstances. and therefore we buy ourselves a longer strategic warning time again for as much as it is possible

And I want to sort of touch base with your visit here in Brussels, because you were here the last couple of days for a very senior meeting within NATO. And I wanted to ask you your reflections from this meeting, because shaping is... also about having a conversation with partners and reaching out to a wider pool of partners to refine how you think about your own international and sort of strategic environment, but also to see whether there are opportunities indeed to expand that shaping phase.

I might just start in the broad and come to your direct question. But the shaping is important, I think, not just for Australia, but the way all countries. And, of course, we consider that in... How do we work together economically? How do we work together diplomatically? Of course, in security matters as well. How do we bring our research and defense industry capabilities to enable...

a stronger collective outcome than individual outcomes. So our interpretation of shaping is how do we press on all of those fronts usefully? And that's why I come back to the national in the National Defence Strategy.

because of the breadth that it offers in the way that we are thinking. For the NATO meeting, so 32 NATO partners, 27 other partner nations invited to attend over the last two days. Of course, that's... a reflection of the convening power of NATO in a very impressive way and an extraordinary opportunity because it included Indo-Pacific participants through to your NATO allies here.

of us being able to achieve something called that shared understanding of what is occurring in each of our regions where, as we have been talking, those linkages. touch each other and informing our thinking as we go back to our national capitals of are we doing the right things to be able to harness that understanding and what else through that breadth of shaping type activities from diplomatic through economic trade and security matters.

do we need to be bringing to the environment in which we find ourselves? And I should say, again, to the benefit of our audience, In fairness to the Australian Defence Forces, having been privileged to speak at the Australian Navy's Sea Power Conference, Australia does have an incredible convening capacity on its own terms because visiting Sydney for the event and see the number of delegations is always something that reminds me very powerfully that Australia's

multidimensional marathon exposure means also that the outreach that it has is quite considerable and different chiefs do accept the invitation to come over. To the benefit of our audience, again, I think it's very important to place in the context of your observations about NATO's convening capacity, because from what I can see, Australia is very keenly aware of the importance of that convening capacity to invest into.

that convening capacity. There's something very positive coming across in your comments. I do value very much what you just said, because I know for a fact that Australia values this shaping engagement dimension of the conversation.

But this leads me also to something else in terms of shaping, because of course, shaping is about the things that you repeatedly mentioned. the things that we do today in order to change the environment tomorrow. And if I go back to the point about the National Indy title,

It's not just about military to military interactions. It's a whole of nation approach. And here I would blow my own horn as an academic. And perhaps ask you something that you briefly mentioned to and perhaps articulate it a little bit more. do you see the people-to-people exchanges, the university environment being helpful?

in propelling that shaping component through research and development, academic sort of interactions. What is the place in that broader national conversation that academia can provide support for? So at least without perhaps inflating your sense of importance, I agree with you completely. And academia absolutely has a role to perform a course. It is in multiple layers. And you gave an example of one, education. So the ability for academia...

to provide professional military education to people in our defence forces is critical to us. So by no means do I undervalue just the education component and people with... your experience who... travel across regions, bring insights, really important as we build the generations of military leaders to have an understanding of how does their role fit within their task, but within a much broader environment.

I thank you for that. The research work that academia can do, and we've mentioned, I'd say one of the great advantages of the outcomes of AUKUS Pillar 2 is that liberalizing the ability for research institutions. in the UK and the US in particular to work closer together in a more license-free environment and enables us to harness that great innovation that lives within the three countries and to consider.

how it best also supports our national security. And just the sheer collaboration of that communities of coming together to be able to have the same type of engagement and discourse. that we have been having. All of those help inform the stakeholders and communities that we work with. So, yes, your role and that of your counterparts is something that is very important to us.

and is a part of the national approach that we have around the way we consider security. Well, that's very kind. Thank you. I think perhaps in what you just said, there is something to be said about how... academia can help bridge the gap between particularly in the research and development sort of what is the future capabilities that we need between industry and the war fighters the operators those who are in the policy making because

Correct me if I'm wrong, my impression sometimes is that there is a genuine challenge. If you exist in the military capabilities procurement space, Life is quite linear in a way because you have an output that you have to deliver. And perhaps the rule of academia in that sense is almost radio comms check. As in like, are we on the right path? The whole thing is to move someone else. I think that's very... There can be an orthodoxy, a merge through.

both capability thinking or in military doctrinal terms, academia has a role to continue to put a mirror back to our face and to test some of the... core propositions that we work through. And that balances well with the innovation sector by identifying ways of conducting business, delivering. My preference is I like talking in a... Thanks.

So it's not platform or particular, because it liberalizes our ability to think of a different way of achieving those effects and why you see in our own capability plan, we talk about they're not organized by... Navy, Army, Air Force. It's organized by domain and type. Yes. And that's a very deliberate shift in our own thinking to try to draw some independence between the means by which it's delivered to the effect.

you're trying to generate in those particular domains. So I think in all of those, you're quite right, the role of academia should be also to keep... being somewhat annoyingly persistent in just testing the propositions that we have to make sure the judgments that we are making are as well-founded as they can.

Kerem, if I'm wrong, you say something really important. If you shift the perception away from just the service-centric orientation into effects, it becomes easier also to circle back to the strategic problem. Because effects are... only they only make sense if they correlate to a particular puzzle that you're trying to address do you think that that's that's where you were coming from absolutely so it does it just it frees you from boundaries self-imposed boundaries

that we often apply to us, but assist with your ability to link it to your core strategic purpose and test the propositions that you're considering.

So just a final note, because in everything that we talked about, I think there is a broader conversation, at least the way it's perceived in academia. And in part, I think it's also particularly for those who are familiar with the AUKUS environment. There seems to be a tendency that in this brave new world and technology making such a difference, which it certainly does, STEM, science, engineering.

is the thing we should be or what we should be concerned with. As a historian, I find the proposition somewhat problematic and puzzling, because I do think we've been there before. But at the same time, the question for you is, what do you think is the role of past experience? the value of history and placing a problem into a broader strategic conversation in the way forward. Do we risk? And I think the emphasis on science is absolutely crucial.

Should we also have a bit of a word of caution and not forgetting that we need to go back to from time to time to sort of making sure that we're on the right path and perhaps history and past experiences is a place to go. I'm not a historian. but I value the insight that comes from history enormously because I think it provides context. It provides that insight, particularly to...

measures that have been taken in the past potentially and in sufficient parallel nature to be able to draw future lessons from. So there is absolutely a place for it, I think. regardless of whether you are at the most senior ranks or others, having the ability to access history and understanding. improves our ability to make decisions, much less is new than people often think is the case. And those views that this is a new environment are often caused by an absence of understanding.

history itself. It has great utility. I'm sure that our students would be happy to hear that. But above all, thank you so much for your generosity to share your time with us and looking forward to seeing you in London soon enough. Thank you very much, Liz. Thank you. You've been listening to the War Studies podcast, produced and edited by the School of Security Studies communications team. For more information on our work,

visit our website, which you'll find in the podcast description. If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review us on your preferred podcast provider. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on the War Studies Podcast.