Abstracts

Multilateralism, U.S. Oceans Policy, and Law of the Sea
Professor Harry Scheiber
This paper deals with the several faces of U.S. oceans policy today, especially with respect to the often ambiguous results of America's stated commitment to multilateralism. During World War II, and in the very different context of the post-war years and the Cold War, "multilateralism" was a major theme in U.S. oceans policy as it was in America's foreign policies more generally. Ironically, however, in the matter of ocean law the Truman Proclamations of 1945, issued just after the defeat of Japan, served as a precedent for a distinctly unilateralist approach to international law and oceans policy in the environmental and resources fields. This paper will offer a discussion of the historical development of directions in U.S. ocean policy since that time - both with regard to the evolving question of sustainable management of marine resources, and with regard to the present crisis of global security and other main issues facing the international community today and challenging the aspirations long held for achievement of a stable legal regime for the world's oceans.

Coordination and Capacity in Ocean Governance
Associate Professor Marcus Haward
The last decade has seen increasing attention to institutional arrangements and policy outcomes (governance) affecting the management of seas and oceans at national, regional and international levels. At the international level Australia has made important contributions to, inter alia, the moratorium on commercial whaling, ballast water management and related problems of introduced marine pests, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and (through APEC) regional support for ‘integrated ocean management’. Australia’s international actions have been matched by the development of national oceans governance initiatives including a national Oceans Policy framework. Governance is clearly linked to policy capacity. While policy capacity can be conceptualised in different ways, two key elements are first the ability to make decisions–a process or procedural dimension and second the quality of policy decisions–the substance of policy. Both elements of policy capacity are linked to developing effective ocean governance. Key agencies need to be able to maintain and extend their own capacity, and be able to display leadership in this area, but they also need to be able to work effectively with the range of other actors engaged in work that will contribute such responses. This presentation examines coordination and capacity as significant variables in national and international ocean governance.

Legal Frameworks for Integrated Marine Environmental Management
Associate Professor Gregory Rose
Australia, in common with the United States, has undertaken a wide range of marine environmental management obligations by ratifying international environmental treaties. In common again, various responsibilities for marine environmental management are distributed across levels of a federated nation in a manner determined by history rather than plan. Fulfilment of marine environmental treaty obligations becomes a diffuse and difficult task for each country, hampered by the vertical disconnections between national and regional jurisdictions. Patterns of horizontal coordination across agencies at the same level of government may also display disconnections. Despite the natural connectivity of elements, processes and activities in the marine environment, each government agency has its own respective legal framework and decision-making is disparate. Efforts in Australia to coordinate Commonwealth government decision-making across management agencies have produced an overarching policy but its implementation seems to be foundering. The Australian federal government is rethinking its policy-based approach and a national environmental group is promoting legislation. Does effective coordination of oceans management activities require an overarching legislative framework? Should legislation operate to enforce horizontal coordination? Can it also enforce vertical coordination? This paper explores possible answers to these questions, considering options for a legal framework for integrated marine environmental management in a federal context.

Australian Intervention in the South Pacific: Assessing its Rationale and Effectiveness
Associate Professor Derek McDougall
Australian intervention in Solomon Islands in 2003 has raised the question of the circumstances in which Australia should intervene in South Pacific island countries and how effective that intervention is likely to be. This paper begins by discussing these issues in relation to Solomon Islands, and then asks whether Australian intervention in that situation provides a precedent for similar action in relation to other island countries. The argument is that the particular circumstances of Solomon Islands need to be taken into account and do not necessarily provide a precedent for further interventions. At the same time Australia faces an environment where many of its island neighbours face major problems and intervention could become an issue. Much hinges on the form that intervention might take. This paper suggests that the emphasis should be on enhanced regional cooperation, particularly through the Pacific Plan.

Regionalism and Australia’s Post-9/11 Posture in the Pacific Islands Associate
Professor Richard Herr
Australia has developed and promoted regionalism in the Pacific Islands since 1944 as a contributor to its own national security. The intensity of this commitment has varied over the years from “modest” to “significant”. Canberra’s approach to the Pacific Islands region and to regionalism as a policy in this area has appeared to be “opportunistic” since 9/11. It is difficult to locate any coherence or broader strategic vision in dealing with this region over the past five years although regional mechanisms are still employed for time to time.

Foresight or Folly? RAMSI and Australia’s Post-9/11 South Pacific Policies
Mr Christian Hirst
Australia’s contemporary policy approach to the South Pacific has in some ways mirrored Australia’s broader strategic policy response to the September 11 attacks. The conceptual underpinnings of Australia’s post-9/11 strategic posture have altered in fundamental ways. However, this conceptual and declaratory shift has not yet fully filtered through to the hard end of Australian strategy. The ADF’s force structure remains fundamentally unchanged and an alternative set of strategic organising principles have not yet emerged. The opposite has occurred in Australia’s approach to the South Pacific. Despite contentions that the 2003 Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and the 2004 Papua New Guinea Enhanced Cooperation Program (PNG ECP) represented fundamental shifts in Australian South Pacific policy, the conceptual origins of both decisions can be traced to policy shifts that occurred in the late 1980s. However, the PNG ECP and particularly RAMSI do represent an important methodological shift in Australia’ approach to the region. This shift has been underpinned by a number of factors, not least of which has been the changes to Australia’s post-9/11 strategic environment. This paper assesses Australia’s post-9/11 South Pacific policies in the context of both enduring policy themes and goals and shifting policy methods.

The Threat of Maritime Terrorism: What Are We Dealing With?
Dr Sam Bateman
This paper provides a critical assessment of the threat of maritime terrorism with a particular focus on Australia and Southeast Asia, and the threat to port infrastructure. It considers the effectiveness of the new international and regional security measures that have been introduced in recent years to deal with these threats. It also includes consideration of the threat and net impact of piracy, including the possibility that a high incidence of piracy in a particular area might increase the risk of a maritime terrorist attack. Based on a proposition that there may have been rather too much emphasis on highly remote and speculative “doomsday” scenarios in assessing the risks of maritime terrorism, the paper supports the need for balance and equity in managing the threat of terrorism. It attempts to introduce some reality into consideration of the risks and likelihood of a serious maritime terrorist attack occurring in the future. The economic impact of the counter-measures to the threat of maritime terrorism may well be larger than the costs of an actual attack, although undoubtedly the attribution of costs and benefits varies widely between different countries and industries.

Sustainment and Support Models for Terrorists and Extremists
Dr Chris Flaherty
The terrorist sustainment and support model needs to be considered when analysing Terrorist Operations. For instance, Threat Assessment models tend to identify capability as a key factor, but most considerations of capability focus on whether or not the terrorists who will undertake the attack have the capability to do so i.e. access to weapons/explosives, training, etc. However, the logistics of a terrorist attack covers as we can see, in the example of the terrorist sustainment and support model, a lot more than just that. For instance, financial support from expatriate communities. Another example of this type of indirect support is the case of one of the persons jailed in Indonesia following the Bali bombings. His sole role in the attack was to rent safe houses; he claimed 'he was renting flats for friends of friends in the religious community'. As these examples demonstrate, terrorist networks, whatever their structures are a lot larger than the Active Service Unit and its immediate logistical circle, and more research needs to look at this wider network, its shape, structure and dynamics.

The Role of Intelligence in the War on Terrorism
Dr Carl Ungerer
Although several years have passed since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States (U.S.), those events have unleashed an intellectual and practical crisis within the Western intelligence community that has yet to subside. This continuing crisis presents itself as a failure of anticipation; the inability to predict, let alone prevent, the emergence of transnational forces that have ultimately reshaped global politics. Put simply, the intelligence community failed to ‘connect the dots’ concerning the intentions and operations of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network during the 1990s. More recently, the intelligence community’s failure has been compounded by the fact that pre-war intelligence assessments on Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes were, in the words of at least one U.S. Presidential Commission, ‘dead wrong’. Stung by the domestic political fallout from these apparent intelligence failures, governments in Canberra, London, Ottawa and Washington have responded in similar and predictable ways. Attempting to address the immediate task of ‘fixing’ the intelligence apparatus, all four countries have injected new funding and human resources into the intelligence agencies and declared intelligence to be the frontline against the new global terrorist threat. New legislative and operational powers have been given to both the analytical and collection agencies. The enduring paradox at the centre of the global war on terrorism, therefore, is that while confidence in the intelligence services is perhaps at its lowest ebb since many of these agencies were first established at the end of the Second World War, it is to the intelligence community that governments have turned to lead the fight against transnational terrorism. This reorganisation of intelligence and its place in the official hierarchy of policy tools has not been accompanied by a similar level of critical analysis about the actual role of intelligence in the war on terrorism. This paper addresses that question along with the broader issue of the growing intersection between intelligence and foreign policy. It argues that despite the renewed emphasis on reform, the structure and operations of Western intelligence agencies remain ill-suited to the current task of countering the threat from radical Islamic terrorism. In particular, the current proposals for improving intelligence sharing between and among agencies are inadequate and, in some cases, could be counter-productive. Moreover, intelligence cannot and will not be a panacea for policy makers in the global fight against terrorism. Prior to joining the University of Queensland in 2004,

Interests, force and the future of the ANZUS alliance
Dr Rod Lyon
Congruence of security interests drives nations to work together to confront common challenges. Alliances imply the most vigorous form of cooperation: actually going to war together. But lately Western alliances have been hamstrung by the most basic questions of all. What is ‘war’? How usable is military force? Those questions lie at the heart of current alliance issues within both ANZUS and other Western ‘legacy’ alliances. Use of force is a delicate issue. In the Cold War it was answered principally by constructing a security system in which the gravitational use of force predominated. A global system of security was built upon a notion of deterrence. Only belatedly did we realize that the doctrine was not universally applicable, true for all seasons. September 11 was a critical turning point. In the United States, strategic planners began to speak of different strategies for the use of force, talking increasingly about preemption, preventive war, proactive intervention, and the very long war. All of those strategies pulled us away from entrenched understandings about the use of force, that force was best used reactively and defensively, and that wars were best kept short Not surprisingly, a fierce argument broke into the open over the issue of use of force. This argument poses special challenges to alliances, where a shared understanding of the place of force in international security is central to alliance integrity; indeed we might even say that such a shared understanding is one of the congruent interests upon which alliances are based. This paper explores the dimensions of the argument over the use of force and its implications for alliance solidarity.

ANZUS: Alliance at a Crossroads
Professor William Tow
Australia's benefits of alliance partnership with the U.S. have been self evident. Australia has unique access to U.S. military technology and intelligence. It has extracted U.S. extended deterrence guarantees. Its close relations with the world's major superpower has it to 'punch above its own weight' in regional security politics. These advantages, however, are now being challenged. Australia's alliance affiliation has been viewed by critics as nothing more than geopolitical subservience to the United States. This paper argues that ANZUS managers will need to be more discerning and persuasive in shaping and selling future ANZUS agendas if the alliance is to continue enjoying support in both countries' electorates.

Converging Without a Trilateral ANZUS? Australia, New Zealand, the US and the Regional Balance in Asia
Dr Robert Ayson
Strong bilateral ANZUS relations between Australia and the United States and ongoing defence cooperation between Australia and New Zealand appear to leave in sharp relief the suspension of formal ANZUS security relations between New Zealand and the United States since the 1985 crisis over nuclear ship visits. While this reality cannot be ignored, two important factors need to be considered in the early 21st century (i) common elements in the Australian and New Zealand responses to the largely US-led campaign against international terrorism, and (ii) common interests between Australia, New Zealand and the United States in the changing East Asian balance of power in which maritime considerations loom large. This paper examines Australian and New Zealand contributions to the US-led ‘war on terror’, noting similarities and differences (including their respective responses to the Iraq issue in 2003). While this period has offered Canberra and Wellington significant opportunities in their relations with Washington, this paper argues that the main longterm strategic interests of Australia and New Zealand – and the main point of convergence with the United States – is in terms of the East Asian balance. This paper will therefore undertake to examine the way Australia and New Zealand are responding to that changing balance (including in relation to China’s rise) and the extent of their interests in maintaining a strong US role in the region.

US-China Relations: A Tragedy in One Act?
Professor Douglas T. Stuart
This paper will address the prospects for US-China confrontation, with specific reference to Robert Jervis’ observation that the defining characteristic of international relations is “not evil, but tragedy.” I will begin by addressing Robert Kaplan’s controversial and influential assertion that “the American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the 21st Century.” I will evaluate this argument from the point of view of international relations theory and then look at both the actions of, and the policy pronouncements by, representatives of the US and Chinese governments. I will consider the implications of growing US-China tension for US-Australia relations and then conclude with some policy recommendations for American and Australian foreign and defence planners.

Dangerous Liaisons: China, ASEAN, the US and the South China Sea
Dr Remy Davison
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) describes the South China Sea as its ‘historic waters’, and claims sovereignty over the Spratly Islands, as well the sea. In 2001, an incident between a US NSA plane and a Chinese military aircraft created an international incident. China’s claim is resisted by ASEAN, while the PRC government views the South China Sea as a critical test of Beijing's role as a regional and global power in Asia in the twenty-first century. Both the PRC and ASEAN have undertaken significant military modernization in recent years, which has escalated threat perceptions within the region. This paper evaluates the military postures of three major actors within the region with interests in the South China sea: the PRC, the US and ASEAN. The paper also discusses recent attempts to mediate the South China Sea dispute, and provides an assessment of the relative success of various bilateral and multilateral initiatives, such as the multilateral talks between ASEAN and the PRC.

Russian Maritime Security Policy in the Asia-Pacific
Dr Matthew Sussex
Given the extent to which Russian power has diminished since the end of the Cold War, an assessment of Russian maritime security policy in the Asia-Pacific might seem, at first glance, to be counter-intuitive. In the sense that Russia's ability to guard against conventional security threats in the region has declined, the above statement is probably accurate. However, a host of non-conventional issues (forming part of the so-called 'new agenda' in security studies) involving Russian maritime interests in the region are posing increasingly significant challenges to policymakers in Moscow. This paper assesses the rise to prominence of three important problems affecting Russia's economic 'push' into Asia: transnational organised crime, the securitisation of energy resources, and illegal transborder migration occurring from the sea. It argues that Russian integration into Asian markets will be jeopardised unless the Putin administration is able to ameliorate these problems.

US Approaches to Security Multilateralism in East Asia: Lessons from the Maritime Domain
Dr Brendan Taylor
The George W. Bush Administration has been widely criticised for its rejection of multilateral approaches to security, as evidenced most clearly in the 2003 Iraq War. Understandably preoccupied with waging its recently dubbed ‘Long War’ on terrorism, the Administration has also been derided for its lack of a consistent and coherent strategic approach toward the East Asian region. In the maritime domain, however, the Bush Administration has not displayed this same multilateral aversion, nor could it be accused of inattention toward East Asia. Indeed, two of its most recent multilateral ventures – the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and the Regional Maritime Security Initiative (RMSI) – each exhibit a strong and distinct East Asian focus. It is somewhat puzzling in a region that has traditionally embraced multilateralism, therefore, that neither of these initiatives has been warmly received. This paper seeks to account for that tepid reception, while also considering what these two cases reveal about US approaches to security multilateralism in East Asia more generally.

Capability Sharing in Maritime Security: the Australian Experience
Dr Devinder Grewal and Mr Jeremy Parkinson
Nearly two years after the ISPS Code came into effect, the paradigm has moved towards the broader issues of international maritime security. Not withstanding the responsibility of sovereign states to the safety and welfare of their citizens, while maintaining the momentum of trade, it can be argued that maritime security has become a universal and continuing concern. Global collaboration in support of maritime security has evolved rapidly with the advent of improved technology and shared interests boosted by the momentum of international law and convention in support of maritime trade. Information exchange, shared intelligence and trans-national cooperation in R&D are some of the areas in which the foundations of maritime security are now anchored. Another strata in this foundation is the strategic, yet fundamental, role of knowledge in developing and strengthening the goal of shared common interest, which removes the element of conflict at the interfaces of several self interests. Feasible measures to improve maritime transportation security must remain focused on broader maritime issues related to the facilitation of international trade and protect the interests of all stakeholders, including seafarers. This paper describes some of the initiatives taken by the Australian Government in working collaboratively with our neighbours with the philosophy of capability development, sharing of knowledge, and interfacing, not interference.

Australia's Naval Contribution to Regional Maritime Security Cooperation
Mr Andrew Forbes
The Royal Australian Navy has been involved in maritime capacity and capability building in Australia's region for many years. In Southeast Asia, the focus has been on Navy to Navy relationships, including the use of visits, exchanges, training and exercises to assist regional maritime security cooperation. In the South West Pacific the focus has been on assisting Pacific Island nations with the surveillance of their Exclusive Economic Zones through the Pacific Patrol Boat Program. This paper focuses on activities to date and identifies issues where regional countries might concentrate to further build their capacity and capability.

Counterterrorism: A Subnational Perspective Commander
Tony Mulder
This presentation provides a subnational perspective on marine security enforcement and counterterrorism initiatives demonstrating how state governments work with Australian Government agencies on these policy issues. It gives an overview of the contribution of Tasmania Police to marine enforcement and counterterrorism initiatives and examines the arrangements in place for responding to a terrorist incident across government. This includes discussion of the establishment of a full-time Special Operations Group, the Joint Off-Shore Protection Command, Navy fishing operations in the southern ocean and the development of more flexible arrangements for the deployment of Search and Rescue teams.

New Threats, New Approaches: Australia’s Maritime Security Co-operation in Southeast Asia
Dr Chris Chung
Australia has important political, strategic and economic interests in Southeast Asia. While security co-operation has been grounded principally in the Five Power Defence Arrangement to deal with traditional security concerns, the Superferry 14 bombing in Manila Bay in 2004 highlighted the non-traditional threat posed by maritime terrorism. In responding to this and other maritime threats identified with the “new” security agenda, such as piracy, interdiction of weapons of mass destruction or their component parts and drug and people smuggling, Australia has taken a more proactive approach to co-operate with Southeast Asian countries. This paper focuses on developments in Australia’s maritime security co-operation in the region, critically examining progress, problems and prospects.

Marine Protected Areas in Principle and Practice Professor
Bruce D. Mapstone
The last decade has seen a groundswell of support of the declaration of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in both territorial and international waters globally, largely in response to growing evidence of overexploitation of marine living resources. MPAs have been fostered as protective conservation instruments but also as direct or indirect management instruments of benefit to wild harvest fisheries in surrounding areas. The ecological theory underpinning MPAs is sound for some conservation objectives for their declaration but empirical evidence of effectiveness is scant in many respects, especially where MPAs are predicted to produce tangible benefits to harvesters of resources outside their boundaries. Implementation of MPAs is also a minefield of jurisdictional, regulatory, enforcement, legal and economic obstacles that threaten their prospective effectiveness as either conservation or harvest management instruments. I will present some of the key assumptions underlying the proffered benefits of MPAs, consider the veracity of some of the claimed benefits and discuss some of the mitigating institutional, regulatory and civil factors that have plagued the introduction of MPAs in Australia and that signal significant obstacles for the effectiveness of MPAs in international waters.

Achieving Sustainability in U.S. and Australian Fisheries
Professor Richard Hildreth
Fisheries management is an important sector of ocean governance in Australia and the U.S., with both the federal and state levels of government playing important management roles. Sustainability is an explicit goal of each nation's relevant legislation. Both nations define sustainability consistent with international norms of responsible environmental conduct emphasising biodiversity protection, externality internalisation, and a precautionary approach to resource use. Progress toward sustainability is detectable in both nations implementation of their fisheries legislation and related programs. Fisheries management plans, marine protected area designations, implementing regulations, and court interpretations indicate that four key problems in achieving fisheries sustainability are being addressed: overfishing of target species; incidental bycatch of non- target species; altered predator-prey relationships due to removal of target and non-target species; and other habitat changes caused by fishing activities. Experience is accumulating with a range of tools beyond limits on effort in single species fisheries, including capacity reductions through vessel and license buy-back schemes, limits on entry through dedicated access privileges, and multiple species and ecosystem management plans. In Australia, further progress toward sustainability can be expected due to the greatly expanded no-take zones in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park established on July 1, 2004 and the accompanying Great Barrier Reef Structural Adjustment Package, and similar initiatives being considered as part of a greatly expanded network of marine protected areas in Australian state and federal waters. For U.S. fisheries, further steps toward sustainability are supported by the recent reports of the Pew and United States Ocean Policy commissions, the Presidential Action Plan and Joint Ocean Commission initiatives following up on those reports, and pending Senate Bill 2012 to reauthorise the U.S. Sustainable Fisheries Act.

Forum Shopping, Redundancy, Duplication, Omissions and Overlaps: Some Reflections on Multi-level and Multi-arena Governance
Professor Aynsley Kellow
Oceans governance, like global governance, occurs through a large number of issue-area regimes that constitute multiple arenas of governance at multiple levels. This paper will reflect upon both the threats and opportunities this reality presents, suggesting that the prevailing fragmentation of governance at once presents an obstacle to oceans governance and opportunities for improving oceans governance – and the latter would not occur if a single regime enjoyed a monopoly on governing capacity.

Legitimacy of the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatross and Petrels (ACAP)
Dr Robert Hall
Over the past two decades, it has been estimated that hundreds of thousands of seabirds - especially albatrosses and petrels - have been inadvertently hooked and drowned during long-line fishing operations in the southern oceans. Since the late 1980s, international efforts have been made to address this so-called "bycatch" problem with the creation of an international regime to facilitate cooperative remedial action. A central element of this regime is the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP). Opened for signature on June 19, 2001, this treaty entered into force on February 1, 2004 after the fifth signatory state (Spain) had deposited its instrument of ratification with the Depositary, Australia. Although it is premature to enquire into the effectiveness of ACAP to date, an assessment can be made about its legitimacy - the extent to which those addressed by ACAP rules see themselves obliged.

Mr Earl Irving – U.S. Consul General

Emeritus Professor Peter Boyce Chair: Session 3. Interests, Alliances and Strategic Policy in Asia E meritus

Associate Professor Anthony Bergin Chair: Session 2B. Terrorism and Counterterrorism

Dr Terry Narramore Chair: Session 4. Great Powers and the Asia-Pacific: The Maritime Context