Session 1: Session Summary
Indo-Pacific: The Region of Global Connection
Synthesis
The first session of the Chief of Army Land Forces Seminar (CALFS) looked to establish an understanding of the complex and volatile operating environment in the Indo-Pacific. The session, and the seminar, was opened by the Chief of Army (Australia) Lieutenant General Rick Burr AO, DSC, MVO. He was followed by the newly appointed Minister for Defence, the Honourable Christopher Pyne, MP.
Presenting after the opening remarks were the Commander of the Sri Lanka Army, Lieutenant General N.U.M. Mahesh W. Senanyake RWP, RSP, USP, psc, Mr Michael Shoebridge from the Australian think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and Mr Tom Hamilton, Acting Deputy Security, Strategic Policy and Intelligence, Department of Defence.
Chief of Army Opening Address - Lieutenant General Rick Burr AO, DSC, MVO
In opening CALFS and Session 1, Lieutenant General Burr noted that ‘Armies don’t operate alone’. Domestically, Lieutenant General Burr referenced the value of a joint Australian Defence Force ‘Joint by design, integrated by design’. While internationally he noted that the increasingly complex and constantly changing geo-political environment in the Indo- Pacific region called for a combined approach recognising that ‘no nation is an island’.1 Lieutenant General Burr called on seminar attendees to reflect upon and embrace change, referencing his strategic perspective of the Australian Army as an Army in Motion as laid out in his Commander’s Statement 2 and reinforced in Army’s Futures Statement, Accelerated Warfare.3 His opening remarks focussed on addressing the four key challenges identified in Accelerated Warfare: geopolitics, threat, technology and domains.
Setting the scene for CALFS and the focus on the future of land forces in the Indo-Pacific, Lieutenant General Burr called for the Australian Army to ‘create space for our own transformation’. Inclusive in this is the need for Army to engage with technological innovations and to adopt innovations early and rapidly when appropriate. He simultaneously stressed the need to invoke Army’s moral foundations in the development and application of technology. Notwithstanding the importance of technology, Lieutenant General Burr acknowledged the important role of people in Army – remarking on the value of relationships domestically between forces and agencies, and through building transparent, trusting, international partnerships. Lieutenant General Burr highlighted the multiple domains across which land forces work – land, maritime, air, cyber and space – and the nature of Army’s engagement, which extends beyond combat to humanitarian support in responding to natural disasters, supporting event security as well as local fire and flood relief.
The themes identified by Lieutenant General Burr were echoed throughout the seminar, coalescing into several overarching themes around the importance of partnerships, technology and people to the future of the Indo- Pacific region and the role of armed forces.
The Minister for Defence Opening Address - the Honourable Christopher Pyne, MP4
Minister Pyne’s opening address to CALFS focussed on encouraging continued and increased cooperation and engagement with ‘like-minded international partners’ in the Indo-Pacific region. He pointed to both the 2016 Defence White Paper 5 and the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper 6 to demonstrate Australia’s commitment to ongoing, increased and strengthened engagement for regional prosperity and security. Similarly to Lieutenant General Burr, he highlighted the important role of people, whether through capacity building, joint exercises or humanitarian and disaster relief assistance. He particularly emphasised his belief that diversity - geo-politically and culturally - represented a strength but also a challenge; reinforcing the need for strategic partnerships to build mutual understanding of challenges and responses, building resilience, and importantly, maintaining a ‘rules-based order’.
He highlighted a number of Australia’s initiatives that support international engagement, including increased Defence capabilities for crisis response, training for international military students in Australia, increased participation of the Australian Defence Force in military exercises with partner nations, and the location of ADF personnel overseas for international engagement purposes. Referencing Lieutenant General Burr’s Commander’s Statement, he pointed to the Australian Army’s important role in responding to the region’s challenge as an Army in Motion.
During question time, Minister Pyne reinforced the message of collaboration. He cited our strong people-to-people relationships in Indonesia and the role of Defence Industry as examples of successful engagements. He noted that Defence Industry was able to develop a type of engagement that military-to-military relationships could not. He stressed that while not without challenges, multi-lateral fora played an important role in regional stability, prosperity and security. Minister Pyne concluded by noting it is important to establish relationships before developing solutions.
Presentations
The focus of the three presentations in Session 1 were aptly summarised by Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanyake, Commander of the Sri Lanka Army in his address as follows:
- Defining the term Indo-Pacific,
- Describing the dynamics of the region, and
- Identifying shared challenges and opportunities.
Within this context the key theme of partnerships was at the forefront of challenges and opportunities identified during the session.
Geo-politics in the Indo-Pacific and Regional Challenges
Minister Pyne and Lieutenant General Senanyake emphasised the Indo- Pacific’s geopolitical, cultural and ideological diversity. Lieutenant General Senanyake noted that the Indo-Pacific is strategically important despite debate about its composition and definition. He suggested that the emergence of the term represents the coalescence of a range of geo- political, strategic and economic developments in the region. Mr Michael Shoebridge suggested that the concept of an Indo-Pacific Region is a ‘way of thinking’ that is useful in today’s climate.
Lieutenant General Senanyake suggested that despite the lack of homogeneity and defined boundaries, the outcome of rapidly accelerating economic and security connections is a ‘single strategic system’. Mr Shoebridge emphasised the economic importance and interconnectedness of the region describing the Indo-Pacific as ‘a system of flows and interdependencies of economy’. Regardless of the somewhat amorphous nature of the Indo-Pacific, all speakers agreed that it was strategically important and required cooperation to mitigate threats and maintain mutually beneficial economic advantages, security and prosperity.
Speakers identified a number of key collective challenges faced by the region that were reiterated by speakers throughout CALFS. Lieutenant General Senanyake indicated that from Sri Lanka’s experience there are seven key challenges. He suggested that natural disasters represented the greatest threat – pointing out that the region is considered the ‘World’s Disaster Belt’. Additional key challenges he identified, resulting from diverse drivers, included:
- drug trafficking
- arms trafficking
- sea piracy
- overfishing and illegal fishing
- territorial disputes
- terrorism (the focus of Session 2).
Mr Shoebridge and Mr Hamilton also detailed key challenges and strategic drivers which, from the Australian perspective, represent challenges to the ‘rules-based’ global order. These are both geographic and non-geographic and include:
- a rising, though not uniform, population and a higher standard of living
- a trend towards an aging population that is not uniform
- increased urbanisation
- a changing climate resulting in natural disasters and reduced access to arable land which had the potential to influence the mass movement of people
- an explosion in the collection and creation of information
- technological change-generating disruption in domains such as cyberspace and outer space
- a shift in the world’s economic centre of gravity to Asia
- the increased pace of military modernisation with potential improvements for inter-operability but which also presented challenges
- major power competition, especially between the U.S. and China.
Mr Shoebridge suggested that nations are now able to project power much further than their historical territorial claims, citing the South China Sea as an example of resultant tension. Lieutenant General Senanyake suggested that the region has become a locus for great power competition and posited that China’s One Belt, One Road initiative on one hand was being met by a cooperative alliance between the United States, Australian, Japan and India. Mr Hamilton reinforced the importance of Australia’s strong relationship with the U.S. in this context of change.
Reinforcing the need to address challenges as an interconnected region, Lieutenant General Senanyake echoed Lieutenant General Burr’s sentiment that ‘no nation is an island’ and promoted the value of trusted relationships. Similarly Mr Shoebridge pointed to trusted partnerships and encouraged the region to be ‘clear-eyed and honest’ when differences occur. Mr Hamilton further reiterated the importance of trust, and transparency in partnerships – indicating that Australia’s regular release of White Papers form part Australia’s transparent strategic messaging to the region. Lieutenant General Senanyake and Mr Hamilton mirrored the value placed on regional fora by Minister Pyne, citing a number of successful multilateral events such as the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which he presented as further opportunities for cementing regional cooperation.
Importance of Armed Forces
In highlighting the importance of armed land forces Lieutenant General Senanyake described his nation’s struggle with terrorism and stated ‘peace of the sea depends on the stability, peace and prosperity of the land’. He noted the importance of land forces’ regardless of the type of threat (traditional/non-traditional or asymmetric/symmetric) and stressed regional inter-connectedness requires cooperation and partnership to mitigate threats. Similarly, Mr Shoebridge highlighted the importance of cooperative armed land forces, stating ‘control over sea routes can be exercised from land, by joint forces’.
While on the one hand noting the mostly maritime nature of the Indo-Pacific, Mr Hamilton suggested that the ongoing strategic geo-political changes in the region pose challenges that ‘will have to be at the core of planning for future land forces’. In particular he suggested that key considerations for armed forces related to increased agility, mobility, lethality, protection and situational awareness. Importantly, he pointed to Defence Industry as a core component of these plans. The role of industry and the need for strong partnerships was similarly identified by Minister Pyne.
Figure 9. Australian Defence Force Service Chiefs attending the Chief of Army’s Land Forces Seminar 2018. Left to right: Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Michael Noonan, AO, RAN; Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Rick Burr, AO, DSC, MVO; and Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Leo Davies, AO, CSC. (Photo: DoD.)
Endnotes
- Reference to a speech made by Professor Rory Medcalf, Australian National University, June 2018.
- Chief of Army, 13 July 2018, Australia’s Army – An Army in Motion, Australian Army, sourced from https://army.govcms.gov.au/our-work/from-the-chief-of-army/australias- army-an-army-in-motion on 19 October 2018
- Chief of Army, 02 August 2018, Accelerated Warfare, Australian Army, sourced from https://army.govcms.gov.au/our-work/from-the-chief-of-army/accelerated-… on 19 October 2018
- A full transcript of this speech can be found at https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/ minister/christopher-pyne/speeches/speech-chief-armys-land-forces-seminar
- 2016 Defence White Paper, Australian Government at:http://www.defence.gov.au/ whitepaper/Docs/2016-Defence-White-Paper.pdf
- 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper, Australian Government at: https://www.fpwhitepaper. gov.au/foreign-policy-white-paper
