I already pointed out LIC is war. LIC is always a challenge to any conventional military lacking in ability to respond to a broad spectrum of threats. and the potential for LIC type of conflicts in Southeast Asia is a security challenge for Australia.
Eg: Does India/Pakistan have a good LIC capabilities to deal with Muslim separatists/terrorists, even though they are both nuclear powers? The answer must be: NO! The Indian and Pakistani armies are more ready to fight each other conventionally than to deal with LIC in their respective countries. BTW, Pakistan does not need or want to fight India - they just have to support insurgents, which is a LIC type of security challenge. Think of how my description on LIC conflict preparedness apply to the challenges faced by Australia.
Without sufficient qualification - WRONG!
IMHO,the security challenges in the Asia Pacific are increasing (of which Australia is a part of).
Remember amongst countries, there are no permanent friendships, there are only permanent interests. South Korea and Japan are not natural allies (and are potential competitors) Because of bitter historical reasons, most Koreans are not fans of the Japanese. How does Australia's permanent interests factor in between Korea and Japan?
India was certainly unhappy with Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks. It is in US interests is not to allow both sides to go to war. Please identify the permanent common security interests of India with Australia (in relation to the rise of China), if you think they are going to be great allies.
I'm no willing to respond further, as you don't read enough. There is a complex interplay of national interests, some of which are competing. To think that these countries have a unity of interest - is WRONG!
Can you treat ASEAN as one unitary security interest block? Indonesia is often seen as the de facto leader of ASEAN. Is the interests of ASEAN a subset of Indonesian interest? Did I not mention that Australia could have gone to war with Indonesia over East Timor? Did the ADF, leading the INTERFET forces not score a win against the anti-independence Timorese militias? Read the links provided, don't assume!
There are also weak states in ASEAN who have a poor record in fighting and dealing with insurgents / terrorists / pirates. These are security challenges that will also affect Australia.
Which country in ASEAN does Australia have the closest cooperative military relationship with (under the FDPA umbrella)? Please read and think before responding. You don't seem to read my posts when responding to them, so I'm going to stop responding to your posts in this thread.
Lol, you seem to do a bit of overassuming / putting words into my mouth that simply aren't there.
LIC problems are more of a natural threat with significant proportions of disaffected people in the country. India has a population of 13% muslims who are generally disaffected and not integrated, providing a strong breeding ground for terrorists.
Once again, Australia faces no major
conventional threat, and that is what the original article is hinting at increasing (conventional spending). Australia WILL in the future face a more substantial
conventional threat.
I don't think any regionalist alliance like ASEAN will be subsidiary to the interests of one state, especially if it isn't especially bigger / more powerful than them (eg, US dominated NATO where they were bigger/more powerful, Russia dominated the warsaw pact similarly).
You seem to mention numerous "security" challenges thare are not conventionally related. It's been proven (in vietnam, afghanistan) that no amount of conventional superiority in munitions, technology, etc will stop a determined guerrilla or non conventional fighting force. The main article was about boosting current conventional force spending, not increased spending on counter terrorism, that is more relevant to what "security" challenges that you are talking about
.
You seem to be focussing very heavily on the fact that Australia faces considerable "security" challenges, having completely twisted the fact that the original article is about
conventional warfare and relevant armament.
I don't doubt that what you say about assymetric warfare in relation to Australia is correct. You've got a blue name so you probably know what you're talking about. My point is that i
agree with Australia's defense spending going more NOW towards R&D than boosting current equipment, because Australia's need in the future will be much greater agains the "potential" threat of China.
I believe that in the future that the region will be dominated by two main players, India and China. It's been predicted that by 2050 India's economy will surpass China's, and China's will surpass the US by 2020-30. Can you seriously suggest that power politics regional one upmanship will not result in Australia being drawn into alliance with either India or China? And that's assuming that the two powers end up as antagonists, which historically has been the trend (although recently there has been a slight thawing of relations). There is also the fact that China's main maritime interests are it's island chain policy (string of pearls, first tier, second tier, third tier) and more importantly supply of key resources through the Straits of Malacca (although to an extent this will be less of the case when China gets their pipeline built through Burma).
Once again, i state that it is more important, in my view, that Australia focusses on tomorrow instead of today, because while current threats might be present (in the unconventional form if no other), in the future there is potential for a much more precarious situation. That's what the article, and in my view, this topic is about; not terrorism/insurgencies but conventional forces.
Also, you say that the security challenges are increasing. Well, if they're increasing now, what's to say that they won't have increased by much more in the future?
You mentioned East Timor, and i reply with the fact that the countries DIDN'T go to war over East Timor. It was like all the US and Soviet spending during the cold war. Totally pointless, considering the assymetric threats both countries actually face (the US in Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia in Chechnya). What's more important in my view is researching for the future when a chance of a conflict, or atleast that of one upmanship (eg, the Cuban Missile Crisis) is significant.
While i never said that the countries are united in their interests, are you seriously suggesting that in some doomsday scenario if China invaded South Korea, Japan and the US wouldn't intervene? And that India wouldn't at least issue embargoes? WHile i agree that the concept of a full out war in south east asia is surreal and hopefully unrealistic, that's what militaries are meant for; fighting wars against similarly equipped and trained forces, not insurgencies.
Thus, once again referring back to the original post, you seem to be arguing that Australia faces considerable security risks in form of assymetric players, while the original post is talking about conventional forces (submarines, aircraft). While i don't doubt that conventional superiority probably helps when combatting an insurgency, unless one side is willing to torch the land and destroy the forests, an insurgency can live on, and this doesn't even consider places like Afghanistan that are mostly mountain / desert anyway! And i'm arguing that increasing conventional force levels today isn't important, that planning for the future SHOULD be a priority, as threats on the whole range of spectrum are likely to increase, from asymmetric to conventional.
Just out of question, what is your point?
