(The blog formerly known as) All Things Counter Terrorism

Had enough of the Australian Prime Minister’s counter terrorism huffy puffy? I have. I’ve seen Post-it Notes containing more useful insight and strategy than what is being offered up by our PM and by extension his government. So in the spirit of that comment, and as a late substitute for a Cynical Friday post, I offer you a Sunday night Post-it Note summary of National Security and CT by Captain Tony.

Now before anyone goes and concludes from this that I don’t like him or the coalition, don’t bother.  I don’t like politicians full stop–especially when they politicise CT and make it harder for the  folks out there in CT arenas to do their work.

The politicisation of counter terrorism in Australia is not only infuriating, it is counter productive and the hubris with which politicians of all stripes are approaching the issue is truly disgusting.

In fairness, it’s not a politician’s job to be a specialist on terrorism. It is, however, their job to take advice from agencies that do have expertise in this area. Right now, I see very little of evidence of that happening. If the PM didn’t even consult the relevant ministers on some of the citizenship initiatives presented for ‘discussion’, it’s fairly reasonable to assume the agencies they oversee didn’t get a say.

Even if they did, they would be unlikely to be heard over the din of all of the fear mongering rhetoric that is dished out on an almost daily basis and that serves to do much of the propaganda dirty work for these groups (in direct contravention, I might add, to some of the National Security Public Information Guidelines that stress to government officials to minimise terrorist propaganda but which clearly don’t apply to politicians).

Basically we’re getting a lot of rhetoric and very little in the way of substance. Where is the progress on the new national counter terrorism strategy recommended by the DPMC Review? Where do all of these new initiatives fit into the old strategy or the new one? Has work even started on a new strategy? And where the hell is a white paper on all of this? I’d like the government to put its money where its mouth is and explain the state of play to the Australian public. It should provide a document that outlines how all these measures it is enacting will make for more effective counter terrorism and keep people safe and to do so in a way that shows this is the view shared by people who actually know about and do CT instead of a group of politicians. It’s a not an unreasonable ask.

With so much talk of its national security credentials and wanting to keep Australia safe and have national conversations on counter terrorism issues, it is remarkable that this government hasn’t even managed to author a white paper that would and should do all of this. The DPMC document was excellent, but it is not a white paper, or a strategy.  I’d like to know why this government feels that document was sufficient. But we don’t even get an explanation or update. We get nothing that reflects a whole of government consensus on counter terrorism at the strategic level, presents a balanced assessment from our agencies and explains to the public why all of this is necessary. Instead all we get is Post-it Note politics and an opposition that can’t even get its act together enough to ask some of these questions. It is shameful, and Australians deserve better.

I have just created a new page to house an extended series my colleague and I authored and from which we’ve drawn for a range of works. With my colleague Nick’s permission I’ve put a copy up here because this really is an important issue that just hasn’t had the traction that it should in Australia — although its relevance extends out to all those countries facing an increasingly complex threat environment. It is not an anti-media piece or an anti-government piece; it attempts to highlight the risks and to spur a discussion on what more can be done to ensure the safety of all those involved in such incidents is protected. A brief abstract follows the longer series of posts, placed here together for ease of reading.

Survivors of the hostage crisis that rocked Paris in January this year recently filed an unprecedented complaint against French media for endangerment and called for a new legal framework to police live coverage of events. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office is now investigating, while French Broadcast authorities are considering further regulatory action. In the aftermath of the Sydney siege, Australia’s media was heavily lauded for its responsible coverage. But it was not without incident or problems, many of which could have resulted in harm to hostages and adversely affected the outcome of the incident. Because they did not, they are unlikely to come to further attention in Australia, but are nonetheless important to consider. Had events unfolded differently in Sydney, legal action similar to that now underway in Paris could be before Australian courts. This should be cause for concern for Australian media and government. It should also stimulate a discussion between them on whether it is time to codify what type of responsible media practices are required when covering such an event and how these might best be regulated. To date, it has not. In this series of posts we outline the risks of such coverage and look at how other countries have attempted to deal with balancing press freedoms with protecting public safety and order before turning to consider what might be an appropriate response for Australia.

https://allthingscounterterrorism.com/hostage-taking-events-media-coverage-and-government-broadcast-regulation-striking-the-right-balance/

Dr Nicholas Gilmour is a Teaching Fellow at Massey University in Wellington teaching Intelligence, Crime and Security and Crime Science. Nicholas is a former British and New Zealand Police Officer and hostage negotiator. Dr Leah Farrall is a Research Associate at the University of Sydney’s USSC, and a Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at Massey University. She was formerly a Counter Terrorism Intelligence Analyst with the Australian Federal Police.

For those of you interested, the United States Study Centre has put up all of the audio and video from the summit it hosted last month: The 9/11 Decade. I plan to make some time to listen to some of the speeches I missed but in the meantime wanted to write a few notes about a couple of things that really stood out for me. Had been planning on doing so for a while but real life has intervened. So here it is, better late than never and consisting of my attempts to turn scrawled notes into coherent sentences in a 2am blog post.

One thing that stood out for me (at least in the sessions I saw) was the focus on China, which one could consider quite interesting given the summit was titled the 9/11 decade. But in some respects, it’s not so curious.

For those who remember back to 2000/2001, and particularly for those who were in an International Relations stream at the time, it’s all too easy to recall that before 9/11 came along and re-ordered everything, the next great big threat was China. And boy was it being hyped.  It’s forgotten now because of what came along after, but at the time there was lots of talk about the new Cold War, and then we had the Hainan Island spy plane incident in early 2001  and it was all doom and gloom forecasts from some quarters, and from others, arguments that there was not a new cold war but instead we’d all have to contend with a  multi-polar system, and a number of regional hegemons, particularly in the Asia Pacific region.

What fascinated me was to hear these things repeated again—almost word for word, a decade later, and after virtual silence on many of these topics (outside of those who specialize in the area). Of course there are a few different things now. Back in 01 the US was strong, and so the discussion was not so much centred on questions like whether the US is in terminal decline, which was an ongoing theme at the summit. So this is a new addition to the discourse and gives rather obvious pause for thought as to how the strategic consequences of the detour into using counter terrorism as an organizational pillar of International Security are going to be viewed by historians over the longer term—particularly in relation to its impact on US power & capabilities across a number of indices.  But, I digress.

Anyway, it was interesting because even those at the summit who were optimistic for America’s capacity for replenishment did seem to grudgingly accept that a change towards multipolarity is coming. I was, however, struck by those who thought that China needs containing. Not by the argument itself but rather the lack of evidence behind it—although in fairness this may be more symptomatic of limited time in sessions. What struck me even more though was the firm belief held by some (again with little behind them in terms of supporting evidence) that the United States could actually contain China.

It seems to me that as things currently stand the best anyone can realistically talk about is power balancing, rather than containment, particularly given the geopolitical realities of the region and also of other regions in which the US sees itself as having vital interests.

Speaking of China and containment, I managed to catch the last of Robert Kaplan’s session, where he was talking about blue water naval capabilities and regional dynamics in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in relation to territorial disputes and SLOC’s.  I found it interesting, although a little alarmist, but that’s just because I woke up the next morning and literally the very first thing I thought about was China, blue water navy capacity, regional instability,  and things going boom. So clearly it stuck in my mind. But I digress.

Another continuity I noticed at the summit was in relation to the complaint/argument that the International Institutions we currently have are (already) insufficient and nowhere near robust and expansive enough to deal with the range and types of situations we will face in the future.  Again, this is nothing new. But it was interesting to see this theme emerge, particularly alongside the theme of the US in a potentially terminal decline–as the last lone superpower. This tied in with another theme: the need for a greater focus on international institutions, cooperation and soft power, diplomacy etc etc. Again, none of this is new. But it has been long drowned out by the absolute militarization of counter terrorism and elevation of counter terrorism to an organizing pillar of international security.

It seemed to me that if the summit with its wide variety of speakers and attendees was any indication, then the pendulum may have finally swung back.  Maybe, just maybe, we can now move beyond the exceptionalism that has characterized the treatment of terrorism as a security threat. I only hope we do not go from one extreme to another and end up with another new cold War/China threat scenario.