

Kevin Rudd MP - The Mismanagement of Australia’s National Security   Page:  1





THE MISMANAGEMENT OF AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL  SECURITY

The death of disarmament as a priority of Australian diplomacy

Commemoration of the   10th Anniversary of the Canberra Commission

Hosted by

The University of Queensland

Delivered by Kevin Rudd MP  Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade   & International Security  Federal Member for Griffith



2 August 2006

Customs House  Brisbane





If you are at all interested in the debate on Australia’s national security, a very strange thing happened  the other day.

Australia’s Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, in the middle of the current crisis in the Middle East,  made an unequivocal commitment that Australia would contribute to the deployment of a  multinational force in Southern Lebanon. In case anyone suspects the Labor Party of verballing the  Defence Minister, here is what he had to say in his own words on 23 July:

“If Australia was asked to be a part of the UN stabilisation force, we are in a position to  respond favourably to that and to make a contribution to it.”

Less than a week later the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said that any such Australian  contribution would be little more than a “suicide mission”. Once again, if anyone doubts the accuracy  of the record, here is exactly what the Foreign Minister had to say on 27 July:



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“I think there is no point in sending an international peacekeeping force on a suicide mission.”

Two days later, the Foreign Minister announced the Government’s third position in a single week on  whether or not Australia would be contributing to a multinational force in Southern Lebanon.  Following a meeting with the US Secretary of State in Kuala Lumpur, the Foreign Minister declared  that Australia would have a “niche” position in a multinational force in Southern Lebanon. According  to the Foreign Minister therefore, we would have a niche position in a suicide mission.

So what exactly is going on? Why is all of this so significant? For the simple reason that any decision  to send our men and women in uniform into a war zone is one of the gravest decisions that a  government can make.  In fact, this is a phrase often used by our Prime Minister himself in dispatching

the Australian Defence Force to one part of the world or another.

Yet here we have this grave decision being tossed around like a political football between the Foreign  Minister’s office and the Defence Minister’s office: yes; no; yes but only a little bit. And all within the  space of a few days.

This is the mismanagement of our national security policy decision making processes at its worst.

In part it is the product of a politically ambitious Foreign Minister with his eye on the Deputy  Leadership of the Liberal Party - trying desperately to cut the Defence Minister down to size.

In part it is the product of a Howard Government which, after a decade in office, is increasingly signs  of being more concerned about the political interests of its members rather than the national interests  of Australia.

It is not an isolated incident.

It is part of a much wider pathology of a government which has had its eye off the ball on basic  questions of foreign policy, trade policy and national security policy for some years.

The long term interests of the nation are increasingly taking second place to the short term interests of  a government whose sole credo is political survival and whose principal rationale is now the political  legacy of its Prime Minister.

That’s why it’s important to take stock and ask ourselves some basic questions about the current state  of Australia’s national security. Basic questions such as:

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Is Australia more or less secure than it was ten years ago?

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ What impact has Australian Government policy had on our overall national security  environment?

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ When we look beyond the immediate crises of our near neighbours, our wider region and  beyond, what about the great underlying security policy challenges of our age, of which nuclear  disarmament arguably remains the most critical?

My overall argument is that Australia is now much less secure than it was a decade ago; that while it is  irrational to blame the Australian Government for the totality of this deterioration, the fact remains that  Australian Government policy has increased rather than reduced the national security threats facing  Australia; and that on the critical question of nuclear weapons proliferation, over the last decade  disarmament policy has effectively become the dead man walking of Australian diplomacy.



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Australia’s National Security Environment

If you were to undertake an audit of Australia’s national security environment in 2006 compared to  that which we confronted in 1996, the changes are stark.

No one in the security policy community would argue that there has been anything other than a  considerable deterioration in our national security circumstances compared with a decade ago.

The arc of instability to our near north a decade ago was an academic notion. Now it is a security  policy reality.  From the Solomon Islands across Melanesia to East Timor. And within this arc of  instability, Australia’s strategic and economic influence relative to other external powers is declining.

South East Asia has now become an operating base for terrorist threats against Australians and  Australian interests.  The first Bali bombing in 2002 and the second Bali bombing in 2005, together  with the Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta in 2004, are all external manifestations of a much

deeper security challenge across South East Asia - where Jemaah Islamiah has now become al  Qaeda’s regional terrorism franchise.

In North East Asia, North Korea during the last decade has declared itself to be a nuclear state,  withdrawn from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, ended its cooperation with the International  Atomic Energy Agency, recommenced nuclear reprocessing at the Yongbyon reactor and has now  conducted two sets of missile tests, including medium range and intercontinental range rockets. North  Korea is now believed to possess sufficient nuclear material to produce 3-4 nuclear devices. And on  top of that, Pyongyang  continues to refuse to engage in the multilateral diplomatic negotiating process  (otherwise called the Six Party Talks) which replaced the Agreed Framework of 1994.

Elsewhere in North East Asia, the Taiwan Straits continue to be a significant source of strategic  tension. Taiwanese President Chen Shuibien remains formally committed to his Democratic Progress  Party’s policy on Taiwanese independence. Meanwhile the PRC remains fundamentally opposed to it.  With two years still to run of the DPP Presidency and with considerable political instability within the  DPP itself, Taiwan continues to be of real “below the radar” concern for policy makers around the  region.

The deterioration in North East Asia’s security environment is also compounded by the increasing  deep-freeze in Sino-Japanese relations and a range of tensions in Korean-Japanese relations as well.  Underlying disagreements on the Yakusuni Shrine, school textbooks and disputed territorial claims  show no signs of early resolution. And it remains to be seen whether Prime Minister Koizumi’s  replacement will be able to bring about any fundamental redirection in the political and strategic drift  that has set into the Tokyo-Beijing relationship in recent years.

In South Asia, the last decade has seen India-Pakistan relations degenerate to the point of nuclear  crisis, followed by a period of political normalisation but with deep underlying tensions over Kashmir  still not far from the surface. Anyone who thought that the India-Pakistan relationship had been fixed  need look no further than the recent train bombing. The relationship between Islamabad and New  Dehli remains volatile - compounded as always both by Kashmir and by regional power politics in  relation to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan itself over the last decade has gone from being the global operational base of al Qaeda, the  focus of the coalition invasion of 2001-02, to a security environment today which once again is  showing great signs of deterioration. The failure to dislodge al Qaeda and the Taliban in 2002-03,  accompanied by a parallel failure to eliminate Afghanistan’s US$2.7 billion opium crop, has resulted  in a Taliban-led resurgence in various parts of the country since 2004.  And Kabul today is beginning



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to exhibit eerie similarities to the fragmentation of security that we saw on the streets of Baghdad back  in 2004.

In Iraq itself, there is a grave risk of the country degenerating into full-blown civil war. The failure of  the political process so far to bring about a reduction, let alone a cessation, in sectarian violence is of  grave concern - as is the capacity of the insurgency to reduce Baghdad and various other urban centres  to a security nightmare. The external measures of deteriorating security in Iraq are there for all to see -  including the UN’s most recent calculation that those killed in country since March 2003 now exceeds  50,000, or more than 1,000 a month.

A major unintended consequence of the security policy failures of the Iraq war has been the  emboldening of Iran. Iran now has greater strategic purchase over southern Iraq, in particular through  the various Shia parties currently controlling Iraqi politics, than at any time in its modern history.

Beyond Iraq, Iran’s political and strategic influence across the broader Middle East has increased  considerably on the back of the pan-regional tide of anti-Americanism flowing from the Iraq war. On  top of this, Iran has suspended cooperation with the (International Atomic Energy Agency) IAEA and  under Prime Minister Ahmadinejad appears determined to pursue its own nuclear program.

The nuclear problem presented by Iran comes to a head this month with the passage of a UN Security  Council resolution only yesterday (adopted without Chinese or Russian opposition) which requires  Iran by 31 August to comply with the IAEA and halt enrichment or face the imposition of economic  sanctions.

It is difficult to predict where the diplomatic process between Iran, the European Union, the US and  the UN will end up in the months after the 31 August deadline. But once again, the security policy  trajectory is negative.

Iran and North Korea bring into sharp focus the fundamental regional and global challenges to the  international order represented by nuclear weapons proliferation. And it is on this score in particular  that we have seen a most disturbing decade.  It is true the Moscow Treaty has brought about significant  reductions in the strategic nuclear stockpiles of Russia and the United States. Agreements have also  been reached also on technical cooperation programs to assist Russia with the retirement of its ageing  nuclear arsenal. Although progress on both fronts has been hostage to the volatile state of the political  relationship between Moscow and Washington, where once again the trajectory in the relationship is  tending negative rather than positive, particularly after the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine of 2004-05. The geo-political relationship between the US and its former rival is now entering a new,  competitive and potentially combative phase.

Compounding these challenges at the strategic nuclear level are the new problems which have emerged  with so-called horizontal proliferation over the course of the last decade. India and Pakistan conducted  back to back nuclear weapons tests in 1998. Other risks of horizontal proliferation arising in North  East Asia depend on Japan’s reaction to any future North Korean detonation of a nuclear device. And  beyond nation states themselves, the continued determination of various terrorist organisations to  acquire weapons of mass destruction is of grave proliferation concern.

It has been during this decade of discouragement on the nuclear proliferation front that the global  political momentum in support of multilateral disarmament and arms control initiatives has ground to a  halt. It should never be forgotten that the destructive capability of a single nuclear weapon is of an  order of magnitude that of itself should propel itself to the top of the global security policy agenda.

So any quick audit of Australia’s overall national security environment today produces some  disturbing results. This audit excludes other national security policy challenges such as globally



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transmittable diseases (such as Avian Influenza), international organised crime, together with the  clearly defined threat of global climate change.  Furthermore, any audit of Australia’s national security  circumstances would be incomplete in the absence of an analysis of our level of national preparedness  to deal with large scale consular crises abroad of the type that Australia has had to respond to most  recently in Lebanon. With one million Australians offshore at any one time, the continuing threat of  global terrorism and globally communicable diseases now present unprecedented challenges to our  ability to provide proper support to our citizens abroad.



Australian Policy Responses

I said before that it’s irrational to blame the Australian Government for every aspect of Australia’s  deteriorating environment.

Plainly there are many factors beyond our national control. And nobody should pretend otherwise.

But some of these factors have been within our control, or if not within our control, then certainly  within our sphere of influence.

The bottom line is that various policy responses (including non-responses) by the Howard Government  to Australia’s complex security policy environment have compounded rather than reduced the security  threat to Australian interests.

We can see evidence of this in the Government’s lethargic policy response within the arc of instability;  Australia’s failure to develop a comprehensive counter terrorism strategy with our friends and partners  in South East Asia; the Government making Australia a greater terrorist target than would have  otherwise been the case as a result of our involvement in the Iraq war; the Government’s gross  negligence allowing the $300 million wheat for weapons scandal to occur over five years despite 27  separate warnings; our failure to stay the course in Afghanistan after the initial invasion of 2001-02 in  order to backfill our military commitment to Iraq; Australia’s half-hearted response to the regional  threat of Avian Influenza; together with the Government’s campaign of global vandalism in response  to the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change. Then there is the death of disarmament policy as a key  element of Australia’s multilateral diplomacy.

These represent a growing pattern of mismanagement of Australia’s national security interests. In  some cases it reflects basic miscalculation. In other cases it represents simple indifference on the part  of Mr Downer. In others again, it represents a failure to prioritise properly the allocation of Australia’s  scarce national security resources. Incompetence has played its part as well. As has the negligence of a

Foreign Minister increasingly preoccupied with how to replace Mr Costello as the Deputy Leader of  the Liberal Party and as Treasurer.

Arc of Instability

Both in the Solomon Islands and in East Timor, the mismanagement of Australia’s national security  response is now a matter of documentary record. In the Solomons, a prime ministerial request for a  modest force of approximately 50 police in 2001 was rejected out of hand by Mr Downer. Mr Downer  ruled out any form of intervention whatsoever until it was all too late and the political and legal fabric  of the Solomon Islands collapsed completely, resulting in a massive military and police commitment in  2003 in the form of RAMSI at the cost of $1 billion. This is a massive bill to pay by Australian  taxpayers for a Foreign Minister who simply didn’t do his job back in 2001.

The same mismanagement is evident in the Government’s decision to cut and run from East Timor in  2003-05 despite opposition from the UN, the East Timorese Government and ourselves. Mr Downer



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reduced Australia’s contribution to the UN’s peacekeeping force in East Timor to virtually zero by  mid-2005. The result was a security vacuum at a time when East Timorese politics was still fragile,  brittle and unstable.

And then we saw the outbreak of violence in Dili barely six months after the final withdrawal of  Australian troops.  Once again, who paid the cost? The Australian taxpayer funded the massive  deployment of a 2300-strong force to try and repair the damage.  The common denominator between  these two sets of events (the Solomon Islands and East Timor) is the Australian Defence Force having  to go in and clean up a foreign policy mess left by Alexander Downer.

Iraq

Mr Howard’s $2 billion, three and a half year war in Iraq falls largely into the same category.  Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war is looming as this country’s single greatest foreign policy  failure since Vietnam.

None of the objectives given for the war have been met: no weapons of mass destruction were found;  the terrorist threat has increased rather than decreased as a result of the invasion; and rather than  Australian troops just being in Iraq for a matter of months, three and a half years later they are still  there and in increasing numbers.

The mismanagement of our national security interests is at its most acute when we look carefully at the  impact of this military engagement on Australia as a terrorist target. Australia, as one of only two  “coalition of the willing” partners, together with the United States catapulted itself from the margins  into the headlines of the world’s Muslim media. A range of terrorism analysts concur, as does AFP  Commissioner Mick Keelty, that Australia is a greater terrorist target as a result of our involvement in  Iraq than would have otherwise been the case and, having increased Australia’s profile as a terrorist  target, John Howard therefore becomes responsible for taking every reasonable measure on the  Australian home front to protect this country against a future terrorist attack.

All this comes on the back of the most fundamental mismanagement of our national security in the  $300 million wheat for weapons scandal. The Howard Government was responsible under Australian  law for enforcing sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s regime. But instead the Howard Government  became the world’s biggest sanctions busters by allowing the AWB to pay $300 million in bribes to  Saddam. And John Howard then turned around and took us to war against the very same dictator  which an Australian firm, approved by the Australian Government, had been cross-subsidising.

Afghanistan

Mr Howard’s $2 billion war in Iraq also diverted Australia’s limited military resources from the  incomplete military action in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden - as well as from our continuing  responsibilities in East Timor.

Rather than stay until the job was done in Afghanistan after 2001-02 when Osama bin Laden and the  Taliban remained a security threat, Mr Howard withdrew our troops from Afghanistan.

Labor supported this move at the time in good faith - based on the Howard Government’s statements  that the security situation in Afghanistan was under control. But what the Howard Government didn’t  say publicly at the time was that it was withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan in the face of private  diplomatic protests from the Government of Afghanistan - itself pleading to the Australian  Government in a letter dated November 2002 for the continuation of Australian military assistance  because, according to the correspondence, "terrorism is still alive and well". Of course, we now know  that this request was ignored.



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When I visited Afghanistan in April 2004 it was clear that in the border region between Afghanistan  and Pakistan al Qaeda’s command structure (including Osama bin Laden) remained active and  operational. Furthermore, the UN was saying at that time that the value of Afghanistan’s heroin and  opium production was valued at US$2.3 billion and the country was providing 85 per cent of Europe’s  opium supply. Much of the proceeds of these crops were going to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Despite the need to remain militarily engaged in Afghanistan, the Australian Government by that time  had reduced its military presence to a single military officer in country - a single officer of the ADF  attached to the UN base in Kabul at a time when the Taliban was regaining its strength and the dollars

had started to flow from the sale of opium and heroin.

In the three years that the Howard Government’s national security agenda was diverted from  Afghanistan by its involvement in Iraq, the security situation in Afghanistan deteriorated sharply and  the democratically elected Karzai Government has found it increasingly difficult to maintain security  and deliver government services to the provinces.

The country continues to struggle with the re-emergence of the opium industry.  Last year, the  government of Afghanistan and the UN estimated that the total export value of the country’s opium  had increased to US$2.7 billion - representing over 50 per cent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic  product. Today Afghanistan is responsible for 90 per cent of the world’s opium and is the premier  source of the world’s heroin trade. Money continues to flow from this industry into the hands of  international crime syndicates and al Qaeda’s global operations, including in South East Asia.

NATO commander British General David Richards said last week that he considers that much of the  violence and resistance to NATO’s expansion into Southern Afghanistan is drug-related.

The political vacuum in the South and elsewhere in the country has in turn been filled by a Taliban-led  and al Qaeda-financed insurgency. Also in play are an assortment of tribal leaders, warlords and  criminal gangs.

Just one example of this is the impact of the security situation on the education sector.  According to  President Hamid Karzai, as many as 100,000 children who attended school last year are no longer  doing so as a result of the security situation. This is a tragic outcome, given the progress that has been  made since the fall of the oppressive Taliban regime.  According to the World Bank the number of  children enrolled in school in 2001 was only 774,000, and by 2005 this figure had increased more than  five fold to 5.2 million.  Many of these were girls who had been prohibited from attending school  under the medieval Taliban regime.

A recent Human Rights Watch report found that attacks on the education system rose sharply in the  last 18 months with 204 attacks on teachers, students and schools, including at least 17 assassinations  of teachers and education officials. The report found that, while some of the attacks were motivated by  ideological opposition by the Taliban to education for girls, others were attacks on symbols of  government or foreign aid workers.

It was not until July 2005, three years after cutting and running from Afghanistan, that Government  announced the deployment of Special Forces and commando troops to the country and for the first  time committed a small proportion of Australia’s aid budget to support the UN’s counter narcotics

efforts in Afghanistan.

While we welcomed this move, the fact remains that Australian forces were absent during a critical  period in the breakdown of security, stability and central control in Afghanistan - a period during



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which al Qaeda and the Taliban were able to hang on, reconsolidate and then once again go on the  offensive.

Next month the Australian special forces will be replaced by a 240 strong Reconstruction Task Force  which will work on reconstruction and community-based projects in the Uruzgan province.

But with the recent upswing in violence in the South, it is clear that Australian forces will have a very  dangerous job to do.

The UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan recently described the fighting in  the South of the country as an insurgency which was “using terrorist methods” and was “fuelled by  international terrorist networks”.

Significantly from an Australian perspective he described the Uruzgan province, where Australia’s  Reconstruction Task Force is headed, as one of four Southern provinces that is currently “under siege”.

Uruzgan has been a transit point and haven for insurgents and drug syndicates since the fall of the  Taliban in 2001 and the multinational force did not operate in the province in large numbers until  2004.

The ferocity of the opposition experienced by the British forces just across the border in Helmand  province, which saw the death of six British soldiers in the first three weeks of their deployment and  another three soldiers overnight, is unfortunately an indicator of the tough security environment  Australian forces can expect to meet in the neighbouring province of Uruzgan.

In Uruzgan, the security situation is so bad that the new Governor has been practically housebound  since his appointment.  Just this weekend US Special Forces claimed to have killed 20 suspected  Taliban fighters in the province.  In mid July the Afghan National Army claimed to have killed five  insurgents including at least two suspected foreign fighters evidence of international support for the  insurgency.

While a resurgent Taliban, funded and supported by Al Qaeda’s international networks, is posing the  most immediate threat to security in the province, the situation is complicated by the presence of drug  syndicates and tribal warlords.

In the past week we have heard reports that the Government is considering increasing the size of the  Reconstruction Task Force to strengthen the force’s protection element.

Given the security environment the Australian troops will face they must be given all the support they  need.

Once again, Australian troops have become the meat in the sandwich. As with the Solomon Islands  and East Timor, they have been sent very late to try and deal with a much earlier failure of Australian  national security and foreign policy.

It should never have happened that way.

If Australia had acted as an effective ally of the United States in the critical period of 2001-02, we  should have done two things:

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ First, urged the US to remain militarily engaged in large numbers in Afghanistan in order to  complete the task of destroying Osama bin Laden’s and the Taliban’s last remaining  strongholds in the south and in the east; and



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Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Second, urged the US to complete the task and not to divert its (and our) military resources to  Iraq.

While the Iraq war was justified by the Bush Administration and the Howard Government at the time  as an extension and continuation of the war against terrorism, most analysts concur that Saddam  Hussein’s links with al Qaeda had been somewhere between thin and non-existent.

So rather than urge our ally to complete the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, we became their  cheerleaders and camp followers in going into Iraq where we remain stuck in a quagmire three and a  half years later.  The result has been that Iraq has become the training ground for a new generation of  battle-hardened al Qaeda terrorists. And we now see the application in Kabul of the same terrorist  tactics being used in Baghdad. In other words, Iraq has been turned into a new platform for terrorist  training in assistance to the unfolding Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

And it is into this ungodly mess that the Howard Government has now thrown the ADF. Not only did  the Government, in its mismanagement of our national security priorities, withdraw our troops from  Afghanistan too early, the Government may have now recommitted them to Afghanistan too late. Let  us hope not.

In putting these brave men and women in uniform once again into the line of fire, the Howard  Government now has a responsibility to ensure that they are properly protected in the dangerous  operating environment to which they are now being deployed.

The Howard Government has a double responsibility in this regard given its complicity in the  unacceptable reduction in coalition military support for Afghanistan during the years of 2003-04 when  the Taliban was able to survive and regroup.

Having visited this country and knowing various Afghan and Australian personnel on the ground, I  hold grave fears for the safety of this ADF deployment. And I hold grave fears for our ability to  emerge from this deployment without casualties.

I have referred to East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Afghanistan and Iraq as major examples of this  Government’s mismanagement of Australia’s national security. That leaves to one side other  unanswered national security challenges such as a regional strategy for Avian Influenza, an absence of  a comprehensive regional counter terrorism strategy and the Government’s continued campaign of  sabotage against global efforts to combat global climate change.  But the growing pattern of  mismanagement, incompetence and the misallocation of scarce national security resources is clear.



Nuclear Weapons and Global Security

The threat of nuclear weapons proliferation arguably stands above all of these threats in terms of the  fundamental national security challenges of our age.

That is because of the sheer destructive power of nuclear weapons which, 60 years after Hiroshima,  remains unmatched in the world today.

The time is now right for a fundamental rethink of the role of nuclear weapons in international  security.

The Cold War is over. But new threats to global security have emerged.



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Technology is advancing at a tremendous pace. And the forces of globalization are contracting  international commerce and communication.

Most importantly, nuclear proliferation pressures are growing.

In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy warned of a potential world in which two dozen  countries possessed the atomic bomb.

Thankfully, that has not happened.

But unless drastic measures are taken soon, Kennedy’s warning may become a reality.

Today, the nuclear club has just ten members. Between them, these ten countries hold approximately  27,000 intact nuclear warheads either in active use or storage.

I say “approximately” because the fact is we just don’t know how many nuclear weapons were actually  made during the Cold War, and we have only incomplete information on the activities of the threshold  states.

Russia and the United States control 97 per cent of these warheads.

As Hedley Bull once said, Moscow and Washington therefore share a ‘great responsibility’ for  managing the nuclear arms race.

But the next generation of nuclear proliferators may not be states.

Osama bin Laden has declared that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is a “religious duty”.

In his most recent statement to the U.S. Congress, the Director of National Intelligence, Mr John  Negroponte, warned that nearly 40 terrorist organizations, insurgencies or cults around the globe are  actively seeking a nuclear, chemical or biological weapons capability.

It may be only a matter of time before they achieve this goal.

The recent discovery of the A.Q. Khan proliferation network in Pakistan has shown that rogue nuclear  scientists have been prepared to sell their secrets to the highest bidder.

And despite US Congressional efforts under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program  to safeguard nuclear materials and redeploy former Soviet nuclear scientists, Russia remains a viable  market for acquiring nuclear technology and know-how.



So what should Australia be doing?

The Canberra Commission

Ten years ago, the Keating Labor government embarked on an ambitious project to redefine  Australia’s non-proliferation and disarmament policy.

It is a policy project that Labor continues today.

In the wake of yet another round of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, Keating had expressed  his frustration with the policy options that were then available to the Australian Government.



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Imposing sanctions against France would have been more symbolic than effective.

And a declaratory foreign policy simply condemning the French action would have been a pointless  gesture.

So Keating pressed his officials to come up with new ideas about how Australia could play a more  pivotal role in the development of a comprehensive nuclear non-proliferation strategy.

The idea that emerged from those discussions was the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of  Nuclear Weapons.

In announcing the formation of the Canberra Commission in October 1995, Keating was adamant that  the Commission should develop “concrete and realistic” steps towards achieving a nuclear weapons-free world.

This was not a typical exercise in public diplomacy whereby inquiries are held, reports presented and  then quickly forgotten.

The Canberra Commission was designed from the outset to confront head-on the complex strategic,  political and technical issues that are bound together in contemporary nuclear weapons policy and  doctrine.

The seventeen Commissioners chosen for the task were not nuclear neophytes.

They were international experts drawn from military, scientific, academic and political backgrounds.

Several of them, including General Lee Butler (U.S.), Field Marshal Michael Carver (UK) and former  U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, had direct experience in the strategic and political  aspects of nuclear weapons policy during the Cold War.



Indeed, General Lee Butler had had a distinguished 27-year career in the US military, including work  on every aspect of nuclear policy as the Commander of the Strategic Nuclear Forces in the early 1990s.

General Butler has since stated that his experiences at the centre of the nuclear establishment,  including the responsibility to draw up nuclear target lists and deal with “a distressing array” of  nuclear accidents had convinced him that maintaining such a destructive arsenal was more a burden

than a benefit.

Other members of the Commission, such as Celso Amorim (Brazil), Jayanatha Dhanapala (Sri Lanka)  and Qian Jiadong (China) were highly-respected policy officials with many years of experience in  negotiating difficult arms control issues.

Together these individuals brought real strategic weight to the debate about the future of nuclear  weapons.

The Commission met four times during 1996 - twice in Australia, once in the United States and once  in Austria.

From the outset, the Australian Government defined its role as a facilitator of the Commission, not as a  participant.



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In his instructions to the Commissioners, Gareth Evans stated that the Canberra Commission should  develop a case, if a case could be made, on the specific steps needed to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free  world.

Not all Commissioners were convinced at the start of the Commission’s deliberations that the  elimination of nuclear weapons could or should be achieved.

Lord Carver and Robert O’Neill, in particular, held reservations about the strategic implications of  dismantling the nuclear deterrence posture of the Western alliance system in the absence of  countervailing security guarantees.

The Commission devoted considerable attention to the wider security environment, particularly the  importance of maintaining strategic stability at lower levels of nuclear deterrence.

In order to offer a credible security alternative to the continued reliance on strategic nuclear arsenals  and (the appropriately named doctrine of) Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the Commissioners  focused much of their discussion on verification and compliance issues that would necessarily need to  accompany any reduction of nuclear forces.

The report they produced, the Canberra Commission Report, makes for compelling reading.

Canberra Commission Recommendations

In many respects, the Canberra Commission Report was ahead of its time.

The Commissioners put the argument simply and eloquently:

“The destructiveness of nuclear weapons is immense. Any use would be  catastrophic.

The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used - either by  accident or decision - defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of  nuclear weapons and assurances that they will never be produced again.”

The possible acquisition by terrorist groups of nuclear weapons or material is a growing threat  to the international community.”

These judgments were prudent and sobering.

In order to achieve the goal of nuclear disarmament, the Commission set down a series of practical  measures - a kind of disarmament road map for the future.

The Commission identified six immediate steps that could be taken by the international community to  reduce nuclear dangers:

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Taking nuclear forces off alert;  Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Removal of warheads from delivery vehicles;  Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Ending deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons;  Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Ending nuclear testing;  Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Initiating negotiations to further reduce United States and Russian nuclear arsenals; and  Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Agreement among the nuclear weapon states of reciprocal no-first-use undertakings, and of a

non-use undertaking by them in relation to the non-nuclear weapon states.



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It is encouraging that in the ten years since the Report was published, many of these goals have been  achieved.

At the 2000 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York, the five  declared nuclear weapon states gave an unequivocal pledge to move forward in good faith on meeting  their article six obligations to achieve nuclear disarmament.

In particular, the signing of the 2002 Moscow Treaty has committed both the United States and Russia  to reducing strategic nuclear forces to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of the decade.

This is a positive and welcome step towards nuclear disarmament.

Unfortunately, more still needs to be done.

The Canberra Commission also recommended that a series of reinforcing steps would be needed to  strengthen the move towards eliminating all nuclear weapons.

Included among these additional measures were the more difficult tasks of:

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Action to prevent further horizontal proliferation  Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Developing effective verification measures  Ã¢ÂÂ¢ Cessation of the production of fissile material

Of these measures, the most compelling is an international agreement to ban the further production of  fissile material for nuclear explosive purposes.

Such an agreement, if universal in both scope and geographical coverage, could add greater  reassurance to uranium exporters such as Australia that uranium would not, and could not, be used for  the development of nuclear weapons in the future.

It is a crucial missing ingredient in the infrastructure of international arms control agreements.

Howard Government reaction

But what was the reaction of our Foreign Minister to the Canberra Commission? He labeled it a  “political stunt”.

Although the Canberra Commission was established by the Keating Labor government, its report was  finalized after the election of the Howard government in March 1996.

The Howard Government allowed the Commission to finish its work, but there was no enthusiasm for  the project.

The Foreign Minister even wrote to the 17 Commissioners demanding that they be “realistic” in their  deliberations, as if this eminent group of individuals was somehow in need of instruction about the  realities of international politics.

It was Keating’s and Evans’s clear intention that the Canberra Commission Report would be used as  the basis of a sustained diplomatic campaign on the elimination of nuclear weapons.

It was anticipated that such a campaign would be conducted both through the United Nations  disarmament machinery in New York and Geneva and at a direct political level with the governments  of the nuclear weapon states.



Kevin Rudd, MP    Page: 14 of 16



Keating and Evans knew that Australia was better placed than most countries to progress such a task.

Australia’s alliance relationship with the US was strong and so was its reputation as an activist and  independent middle power on arms control.

Regrettably, the Howard Government allowed the Canberra Commission Report to wither on the vine.

Although Foreign Minister Downer presented the Report to the UN General Assembly in September  1996, there was no sustained follow-up of the Commission’s recommendations.

Labor policy

Other governments, however, took up the challenge.

In particular, Japan established a second commission in the late 1990s, The Tokyo Forum, which  carried forward many of the Canberra Commission’s ideas.

The ultimate goal of a nuclear weapons free world is not new.

It is a fundamental pillar of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And it has been the long-standing policy of the Australian Labor Party.

In government, Labor has pushed Australia to the forefront of nuclear arms control and disarmament  efforts.

In 1983, in the context of a previous nuclear energy debate, Labor established the position of an  Australian Ambassador for Disarmament.

We played a critical role in the formation of the South Pacific Nuclear Weapon Free Zone.

We established the Australia Group to limit the growing international trade in chemical (and later  biological) weapons and the scientific equipment used to make them.

The Australia Group recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and has become a role model for other  export control regimes.

Labor in 1991 led international efforts to secure a final agreement on the Chemical Weapons  Convention and was instrumental in getting that Convention signed in 1993.

When Labor left office in March 1996, negotiations were also well advanced on both the  Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and a verification protocol to the Biological Weapons  Convention. While the CTBT was subsequently opened for signature, it has not been ratified by the  required number of countries and remains a promise not a fact.

We share the goal of stopping proliferation with many like-minded countries.

Labor has recently announced further measures that will keep Australia at the forefront of these  debates.

In government, Labor will move quickly to reestablish the Canberra Commission on a more permanent  footing.



Kevin Rudd, MP    Page: 15 of 16



It will be tasked to find innovative and new ways to confront the challenge of nuclear, chemical,  biological and missile proliferation, particularly in our region.

And it will have the full authority and backing of the Australian government.

Foreign Minister Downer continues to make speech after speech declaring that Australia is now “a big  player” on the international stage and a country with a “big foreign policy”.

But Mr Downer’s rhetoric masks a simple truth.

On the great challenge of nuclear weapons proliferation, the challenge which Downer himself  describes as “the greatest threat to international peace and security”, the Howard Government has done  nothing.

After ten years in office, the Government cannot point to a single successful initiative which has  advanced the nuclear non-proliferation agenda.

It has squandered the opportunities presented to it over the past decade to make a real difference on  nuclear non-proliferation - to carry on the good work that the Keating Government began.

The nuclear genie may be out of the bottle - and for the sake of future generations, we must make  every effort to find an effective solution to this problem.

Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty

In May this year, the US introduced a draft Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) and presented it to  the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

If passed, this treaty would end the production of both highly-enriched uranium and plutonium for  nuclear weapons.

It is a bold and positive new development.

However, prospects for the early negotiation of an FMCT are not good.

The UN Conference on Disarmament, which works on the basis of consensus, remains mired in  internal squabbles about its future priorities.

No agreement has been reached for over a decade on the appropriate next steps in arms control and  disarmament.

China and Russia in particular would prefer to focus on the question of disarmament in outer space.

As a major uranium exporter, Australia has a direct stake in these negotiations.

We should be prepared to use all diplomatic means necessary to bring about the early negotiation of an  FMCT.

It is in our direct national security interests.

Keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of the hands of rogue states and terrorist groups is a first  order priority.



Kevin Rudd, MP    Page: 16 of 16



We need less fissile material in the world, not more.

Global Nuclear Energy Partnership

The second pillar of the Bush Administration’s recent nuclear policy plan is an initiative called the  Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).

Under this plan, the Bush Administration is seeking to reduce the danger that civilian nuclear programs  might be corrupted for use in the development of nuclear weapons.

The plan seeks to limit the possibility that fissile material could be diverted for nuclear weapons by  containing the number of countries involved in civilian nuclear production and extracting more  efficient energy from existing nuclear fuel.

John Howard’s recent kite-flying over a possible Australian nuclear industry and uranium reprocessing  facilities runs directly counter to the Bush Administration’s attempts to limit and constrain the  availability and production of fissile material.

Recent events in the nuclear debate show that the program of action set down by the Canberra  Commission more than a decade ago remains alive today.

But you need to be realistic.

Nuclear weapons elimination is a long-term goal.

It will only be achieved in a geopolitical security environment in which the political value of nuclear  weapons has been diminished and alternative means can be provided for strategic reassurance.

Australia has a large and growing role to play as both a uranium exporter and a key defender of  international arms control and disarmament measures. Kim Beazley has also put forward recently a  range of proposals for further enhancing the nuclear non proliferation regime.

Conclusion

The mismanagement of national security is no small thing.

Whether it’s the mismanagement of our national security interests in the South West Pacific, South  East Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq, on regional counter terrorism, on a regional strategy to combat Avian  Influenza, on a global strategy for combating climate change or on arms control and nuclear  disarmament, Australia cannot afford to have a Government which increasingly appears to have its eye  off the ball - or else is simply not engaged at all.

Mr Howard is a clever politician. He has always used national security as a means of enhancing his  domestic political interests.

But as this audit of Australia’s national security circumstances reveals, Australia’s national security  interests over time become damaged by a Government preoccupied with short term political gain  rather than investing in our long term national survival.

On national security alone, the case for political change at the next election is clear.



