 I'm Joan Beaumont, one of the staff of the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre and it's my great pleasure to chair this final session today and we know our speakers are under strict instructions to be extremely exciting and provocative since it is the last session of the day. The session is entitled, Strategy and Domains and we have a great cast, Professor Paul Dipp, Dr Ewan Graham and Dr Tim Huxley. Now, one of my little quirks is I think one of the reasons that we provide biographies in the program is so that you know who the people are and I don't necessarily need to read everything to you, but Professor Paul Dipp I think will be known to everybody in this audience and he is going to start with the return of geography. Dr Ewan Graham who is head of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney will be speaking about maritime strategy in Asia and Dr Tim Huxley from the IISS office in Singapore will be speaking about the evolution of military capacity in the Indo-Asia Pacific region. Thank you Paul. Thank you Joan. The title I've been given for this talk is the Return of Geography and many of you know I'm a geographer by training and you'll hear more of that. But Joan with that introduction I'm reminded of something that Hadley Bull once said and I quote, professors do not make good policy makers unquote. That is true. The question is whether the reverse applies to policy makers make good professors and I shall leave that to your judgment. It's a pleasure of course for me as the longest serving head of SDSC to celebrate this 50th anniversary. I'm reminded of the 30th anniversary 20 years ago when as David Horner will remember we were close to extinction as a academic organization. The end of the Cold War had seen the drying up of funds including from defence. The master's programme was no longer wanted. We had myself, Des and David and precious little else and now we have in the strategic and defence studies centre Bob on my count, stand corrected by Brendan, over 21 members of academic staff including seven full professors excluding visiting fellows and PhD students and as you said we have a very large teaching programme. The command and staff college run very well by Daniel, our own master's programme and now the very large undergraduate programme. So we're a very big concern. If I might say so and I've said this in staff meetings we just need to pause and think about where we're going. We have expanded very rapidly and I know many colleagues will disagree with what I'm about to say but if we're not careful we'll become a sort of cross between an international relations department and a military studies organisation and we're starting to lose our core capability which Tom Miller, Bob O'Neill, Des Ball built up and that is Australian defence policy. And now there's a lot of competition frankly. The issue of geography in its return whilst it's true that some theoreticians bought the superficial view at the end of the Cold War that geography had had its day that was never the view of those who were senior defence policy officers. Strategic theories come and go but the abiding nature of a nation's geography remains a key defence planning tool. To quote Australia's greatest permanent secretary for defence Sir Arthur Tang in 1986 and I quote the map of one's own country is the most fundamental of all defence documentation. And you've got it there and I shall address that shortly. I've given those of you from overseas a particular Australian geopolitical perspective. Now geography clearly varies according to a nation's strategic circumstances and importantly its perceptions of threat or the lack of one but geography operates for Australia as a crucial consideration when it comes to the defence of the continent and the location of the archipelago to our immediate north which you can see there. Robert Kaplan argues in his book The Revenge of Geography we all need to recover sensibility about the relevance of space that has been lost in the current era when some commentators like the New York columnist Thomas Friedman talk glibly about a flat world where geography no longer matters. As Kaplan notes the end of the Cold War led to a mistaken view that globalisation and economic interdependence would inevitably lead to the end of geopolitical rivalries among the great powers and to the emergence of a more enlightened liberal order. And that has not happened. So despite the trendy talk of a borderless world the control of territory as we've heard in the last day is still fundamental to world politics. I thought I would share with you my own approach to my conceptual approach if you like to the role of geography and geopolitics in the current era. So in the longer paper that I've written for the book first of all I address the importance of geopolitics in Putin's Russia and Moscow's challenge to the established borders in Europe and I've just come back with Michael Wesley and Admiral Barry from a week in Moscow having talks with the Russians. And if you want a one line sentence about a week in Russia I first went there in 68 and as a declared intelligence officer in 76 so much has changed in Moscow and so much absolutely has not. The second issue I want to discuss is China's territorial ambitions. I mentioned the South China Sea but I will not be imposing on my colleague Ewan Grahams at ground in that regard. I want to talk about some other geopolitical perspectives of China which I've experienced in the last ten years representing Australia on behalf of our foreign ministry at ten meetings of the ASEAN regional forum group which goes under the marvellous title of the expert and eminent persons group. I really like that. And third I will if times available discuss the new importance of Australia's geographical location and its relevance to the US pivot to Asia something that my former boss Kim Beasley has brought to public attention. Before I start on Russia I want to say something about if you like my conceptual approach to the current strategic era. I see these three issues I've mentioned. In the broader context of what I fear is a dangerous era, a view I share with my colleague Peter Ho from Singapore, former permanent secretary of defence and the foreign ministry. I fear we're facing a dangerous era unfolding forward strategically at the global level. In my view we have two large authoritarian powers China and Russia challenging the liberal international order led by the United States and its democratic allies at a time when domestic politics in the West are in disarray over the impact of globalization. Look at the United States, I was in the UK for Brexit, look at the rest of Europe and we had some of this a few weeks ago in the Australian election. The reaction adversely to globalization. Now is not the time for the West to be preoccupied domestically just when China and Russia are issuing challenges to the established order and flexing their military muscles in different ways. Coming then to the geographic ambitions of a resurgent Russia. They exist at two levels. To reassert Russia as a great power, Velikaya Dejava, and to recover lost territories. Putin is determined to recover Russia's standing in the Eurasian geopolitical space. As former British ambassador to Russia Roderick Lyne explains, President Russia's new model Russia is that of an independent great power resumed its geopolitical position on its own terms. Lyne states that this reflects a deep sense of insecurity and a fear that Russia's interests would be threatened if it were to lose control of its neighborhood. Putin speaks of Russia's civilizing mission on the Eurasian continent. It's not decadent like Europe, he says. He claims the right to a sphere of strategic interest in Russia's neighborhood in which Western influence and involvement would be limited. That sphere in my view includes not only Crimea and Ukraine, but also the Baltic countries, Belarus, Moldova and Northern Kazakhstan. Putin's Russia is set on a path of confrontation with the West and is now challenging to a degree the established post-World War II security order in Europe. With respect, I disagree with my friend Lawrence Friedman. I think he dismisses Russia's strengths too easily. Sure, their economy has got real problems, sure, their demography has got real problems. Well, don't take any joy from that. From what I know of spending 20 years of my life as an intelligence officer and academic on Russia, Russia, more than any other country, is a prison of its history, its geography and its culture. And the weaker it gets, the more inclined Putin will be to lash out. He will not take yet another collapse of Russia after the failure of the Bolshevik Revolution in which he says Russia was plundered and robbed by the West. Moscow, according to unclassified sources, is now capable with no intelligence warning of deploying 150,000 troops with little or no warning, as I've said, under the disguise of a major exercise into any of the countries of its near abroad. This is not to argue, let me stress, that Russia has recovered the military power of the former Soviet Union. It has not, but it needs to be remembered from Putin's perspective that Russia faces a weakened divided Europe, and it is a fact, whether we like it or not, that overwhelming percentage of Russians do not accept that there can be such an independent state as a place called Ukraine. Putin describes it as Novorossiya, New Russia, which was conquered in Catherine the Great's time from the Crimean Tatars. Many Western observers have consistently misread Russia and the way it's driven, as I've said, by its geography and history and culture. Reaching the increasing threats Russia poses to international order is now arguably the most serious issue facing the Western international community. This is not to underestimate the challenge emanating from a rising China, which I'll address momentarily, but China, unlike Russia, does not pose the same potential existential threat to world peace in the same way. It still has active and reserve over 5,000 strategic nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of tactical nuclear weapons, unlike China. At the very least, Moscow's attitude over the status of the 14 newly independent states formed out of the collapse of the Soviet Union is that they are intimately linked to Russia, are to a greater or lesser extent historically part of Russia, and form Russia's security perimeter. From Moscow's perspective, they must therefore be recognised as within Russia's sphere of strategic interest, and must not be permitted to act in ways that are deemed to be contrary to Russia's vital interests. As I've said, Putin sees his country as facing a weak Europe, ineffective and leaderless, overwhelmed by a huge refugee problem, and with the UK's exit from the EU has harrowed in the unraveling of European unity. Now, a lot of people in this audience won't agree with what I've just said, but I do want to correct where I think Lawrence is from. It would be a grave underestimation. It's not to say that NATO is a complete weakness with regard to its military capabilities, but I'm trying to give you some idea of what I think Russia thinks about it and what we divined from our stay in Moscow a few weeks ago. The final issue I want to raise about Russia, and I'm very much compressing a 5,000 word article here, is some of the disturbing geopolitical propositions that have been gaining traction in Moscow. But prominently, there is the idea of Eurasia, which Putin is proselytizing. Starting with the slavophiles in the 19th century, many Russian intellectuals saw European-ness as the main problem of defining Russia's nationhood. Since 1991, the terms Eurasia and Eurasianism have once again come on the post-Soviet political scene. As Marlene Ladoll states in her book about Eurasianism, this terminology suggests that Russia occupies a dual or median position between Europe and Asia. It rejects the view that Russia is on the periphery of Europe, and on the contrary, it interprets the country's geographic location as grounds for choosing a messianic third way. Neo-Eurasianism has found its place within the new patriotic doctrine of Putin's Russia, and the main proponent of the new geopolitical right wing is one, Alexander Dugan. Before that, it was proselytized by Lev Gumilov, the son of the famous Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and before that in the 19th century by Nikolai Danilevsky, who wrote a famous book about the inevitability of war between Russia and Europe. Dugan opposes American globalization and describes his geopolitical doctrines as sacred geography, sacralnaia geografia. In his book, and listen to the title, The Last War of the World Island, Dugan argues that Russia's return to its geopolitical function as the continental heartland, his word, a concept he deliberately copies from Halford MacKinder. He identifies Russia as a civilization of land. He calls that telluric. And that Russia's occupation of the heartland is the land-based core of the entire Eurasian continent, in what he describes as its unchanging geopolitical space, Ramson. Dugan proclaims that Russia is doomed to conflict with the civilization of the sea, Thalesic, embodied today in the United States and the Unipolar American Central Word Order. You may ask, what is some academic, what sort of influence does he have? Well, it should be noticed, his books are assigned as required reading as textbooks at the General Staff Academy and other military universities. He's been quoted by Nikolai Patreshev, the Secretary General of the Security Council, and Putin regularly now uses the phrase Eurasia. Let me stress there'll be many in this audience that disagree with what I have to say. If you're interested in what I have to say, as be two weeks ago, produced a 10,000-word document, and we're going to try and get some copies to some of you. China. Unlike Russia, China has not yet used direct military power to assert its territorial claims. But it is used in such harsh coercion that, like Russia, it has caused an extreme apprehension in its neighborhood. We heard today how China continues to assert the right to use military force to recover Taiwan and has built up powerful military forces opposite Taiwan. And when some people argue that America needs to move over and allow China strategic space, we need to ask those people, what do you mean? What strategic space? Is it the sacrifice of the democracy of the vital Taiwan of 24 million people on the name of trading off strategic space or indulging in so-called grand bargain? Not for me. China's territorial ambitions in the South and East China seas have been pursued with great belligerence in recent years. And in my view, are the most likely source of miscalculation leading to direct military conflict with the US and its allies. We know that China is heavily dependent upon unhindered maritime traffic through the South China Sea, through which one third of the world's trade and 80% of China's imports pass. When President Xi Jinping terms China's Malacca dilemma, the bottleneck of the Malacca Straits, this has led him in part, in my view, to be driven to propose a geopolitical alternative called One Belt, One Road, that would see more secure Chinese transportation routes across the Indian Ocean as well as through Central Asia, which would avoid the strategic bottlenecks of Southeast Asia. All I have to say about that is it will take some time to say the least. An important issue I want to raise with you is that, like Russia, China is a continental power, with little historical experience of being a maritime power. Robert Ross has argued that China's maritime power will be limited by the constraints experienced by all land powers, including the geopolitical sources of the repeated failure of land powers to secure maritime power. His main thesis is that land powers confront internal threats that impose severe resource constraints in developing maritime power, whereas the geographic circumstances of maritime powers offers enduring internal border security and ready access to the sea. And he points out to the failure of the Soviet Union in Germany with regard to maritime power. And it's a telling point in this regard, by the way, that China continues to spend as much on internal security as it does on defense build-up. With regard to China's territorial ambitions, I think right now it is backing off somewhat with regard to the Senkaku-Dioded Thai islands, where of course America's made it clear they come under the treaty with Japan. So it's turning its focus heavily onto the South China Sea and it's played its cards craftily by undertaking land reclamation, building infrastructure, and introducing so-called habitation on an incremental basis, whilst at the same time avoiding, so far, the direct use of military force. It is persistently lied about not militarizing these islands, rocks and reefs, and China does all this while asserting that it has, quote, indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and adjacent waters. I'm not going to address the findings of the arbitration court. My friend, you and I think we'll raise that. So while China claims it remains committed to resolving the relevant disputes for negotiation and consultation with the countries directly concerned on the basis of respecting historical facts, there can be in my view no expectation of any resolution of this potentially dangerous territorial standoff. And in particular, and you'll hear me say this in a moment, not least because of the weakness and the divisions within a very damaged ASEAN who I've spent 10 years of my life negotiating with, to no avail. Tension seems now to rise in my view and it remains to be seen what Beijing's next step will be. Australia's former ambassador to China, Jeff Rebe, believes that in the end, all that has left is diplomacy and that negotiation between claimant states is the only path towards some sort of resolution. But he also acknowledges that China's leaders are now under enormous popular pressure to be seen to be standing up for China's territorial sovereignty. He acknowledges that any sign of weakness in the face of what will be seen widely in China as a territorial humiliation by the court of arbitration will provide a legitimate opening to attack in Xi Jinping. So the fact now is there's a much greater chance of miscalculation or accidental military confrontation. I acknowledge there are those who believe, and there's power in this thought, that China and America are now so intertwined economically that military conflict is out of the question and now is the time for restraint. That may be true, but in my view, I'm no longer an official and haven't been for a long time, in my view, the time has come when the US and its allies, including Australia, will have to demonstrate to China that we cannot make, that China cannot make, unilateral territorial land grabs. This will involve us clearly, undertaking deliberate and separate freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and conducting regular intrusive aerial surveillance. There is one final Chinese territorial proposal I need to address. In the various regional forum I've experienced, including this particular ARF forum I've been involved with, China is pushing hard the idea of a need for a comprehensive review of regional security architecture. This includes examining the rationale for an ingredients of a new security order for the region at a time of major rebalancing between rising and established powers. The idea here is in the Chinese words to critically revisit the existing security order including the system of bilateral alliances. And I've told the Chinese representatives that is a dangerous proposition and they should be careful what they wish for. Because the collapse of the US alliance system in our region would inevitably lead to a nuclear armed Japan within 18 months of a decision, a nuclear armed South Korea and Taiwan, which would arguably against China's national interests. It might lead to some other countries reviewing their situation. Okay, turning now quickly to Australia's new strategic geography. America's pivot to Asia, main counter-China's rise in the region, has made Australia's geographical location much more important than the Cold War. In the Cold War, Australia was distant from the main theatres of military confrontation in Europe and in North East Asia. Now, however, Australia is critically located between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and relatively near to Southeast Asia and the South China Sea flashpoint. Unlike US military forces stationed in Japan, South Korea and Guam, Australia is not within the range of China's anti-access area denial weapons. Australia can offer America access to naval harbours and military airfields in the West and North of Australia so it can project power into the Eastern Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian waters. Southeast Asia is of critical importance to Australia's security and you can see it on that map. It is a shield to Australia's sparsely populated and resource-rich northern approaches. We would be concerned about the threat of a foreign military power, seeking a sphere of influence in Southeast Asia in ways that could ultimately challenge the security of our maritime approaches. Very quickly, classified concerns about China's military buildup and its continuing provocations in the South China Sea caused the 2016 Defense White Paper released in February to elevate the security of Southeast Asia, particularly maritime Southeast Asia, to Australia's most important strategic interest after the defense of the continent and our northern approaches. As the White Paper observed, the geography of the archipelago to Australia's immediate north will always have particular significance to our security because any conventional military threat is most likely to approach through the archipelago. Finally, in addition to its heavy focus on maritime Southeast Asia, the White Paper revisits the importance of Australia's military facilities in the remote north and west of the continent, which have been run down in recent years. These facilities will have enhanced capabilities to support joint-strike fighters, wedge-tail early warning and control aircraft, and air-to-refuelers. The over-the-rise and genderly radar network and other surveillance space and air defense facilities in the north will be upgraded. There is also a commitment, which is very important, to upgrade the infrastructure on Cocos-Keelin Islands in the Indian Ocean to support flights by the new P-88 Poseidon Maritime Surveillance Aircraft and give access to America for that. So, my final words with regard to Australia, all this that I've described to you amounts to a significant geographical refocusing of the Australian Defense Force, which has been preoccupied over the last 15 years with almost continuous deployments to the Middle East and Afghanistan. The geographical refocus now on maritime Southeast Asia and the complementary upgrading of military bases in the vulnerable north of Australia after years of lack of attention, marks in my view, and I'm biased, a triumphant return of geography to Australia's defense planning. Thank you. Happy birthday, ASDSC. Could I ask for the map to be restored? I'm going to try and free ride off that. Thank you. That's the one. Thank you to Brendan Taylor and SDSC for the invitation to come back home in a way. I came here in 1996 as a milk bottle, white, fresh-faced PhD candidate, and it's great to see where SDSC has come since. You've got it in a good place, so congratulations, Brendan. The composition of this panel is also perfect in a way. I don't know whether that was coincidental or not, but Tim Huxley was the reason that I first chose SDSC for my PhD. He was my supervisor in the University of Hull, so the path led from there. Paul was head of centre when I arrived. And Joan, who I just met last week, came to a session we held at the Lowy Institute. We don't normally do historical retrospectives, but we couldn't move past the opportunity of the 100th anniversary of Formel to have a retrospective with Sir Hugh Straughn. Also, I'm here for this event as a participant, so it's all come together nicely. My brief was to speak about maritime strategy in Asia, which I'm going to introduce and abuse to talk about the South China Sea, which is a bit of a sin because there is obviously a lot more at play in the region other than the South China Sea, but I think it's the issue of the day and it merits some concentration. Maritime strategy, if not careful, leads all too easily into abstract statements that encourage a deterministic view of great power competition leading to armed conflict. And when talking about the South China Sea, one has to be doubly careful to avoid platitudes because so much ink has been spilled on the subject, so I tread rather carefully. But nonetheless, I think the military strategic element is undoubtedly growing as a driver in the South China Sea and maybe it will become its defining characteristic in future as China's defense infrastructure is developed more overtly on the artificial islands and its maritime power projection grows more generally and in reaction, other states in the region continue to reactively acquire more advanced military capabilities, which Tim will no doubt go on to talk about. There's also a nuclear dimension which is becoming a growing influence on the value that China places on the South China Sea, paradoxically promising to contribute to greater stability in U.S.-China strategic relations at one level while at the regional level, undermining strategic stability as it encourages China to thicken its conventional military footprint in the South China Sea and to act increasingly aggressively towards its rival territorial claimants as well as the United States and its allies. However, geostrategically important the South China Sea is and the reason I want to free ride off that map is because you can see it's perfectly central to this Indo-Pacific region that is now officially embraced in Australia. However important it is, I find it hard to reduce it to a classical strategic maritime paradigm, ala mahan. It operates, I think, in parallel as a sort of symbolic sparring ground where normative factors are also in the mix. Personally I'm skeptical that China is about to pull back anytime soon in the South China Sea but last week's ruling out of the Hague from the Permanent Court of Arbitration is I think a genuine inflection point. A threshold, a window if you like between where lawfare ends and warfare starts. I don't want to over dramatize it but it may be the last best opportunity of its kind I think to pull back from a spiral that's leading us somewhere rather darker. Now if China's expansionism in the South China Sea is driven solely by strategic motivations that there is a plan and that plan is now unfolding inexorably then I think it follows that the Hague ruling will have a marginal effect after all it's not enforceable. Beijing would brush it aside I think and continue with the island building, the militarization of the features and assertions of historical rights verging into the exclusive economic zones of Southeast Asian states that make up the majority after all of the South China Sea littoral. If that is the case then I think we're in for a much more overt strategic phase in the South China Sea. However currently after the ruling I do believe we are in a strategic pause. No more than that but no less either and I think there is a sliver of a hope. I put it as grimly as that but a sliver nonetheless that China will recalibrate on the basis of that ruling. I'll come back to that later on after taking a short historical intermission. To look a little bit further back in the South China Sea and just how strategic has been in the past and it's striking actually looking back over the world wars and the Cold War that the South China Sea has actually avoided major maritime conflict except around its periphery. In the second world war Japanese forces invaded the Malay Peninsula through the South China Sea including the famous sinking of the Royal Navy battleships Prince of Wales and repulse the first sinking by aircraft of battleships that occurred at the southern edge of Kuantan of Malaya but the South China Sea itself was not a focus for major naval battles in the war that followed or operations for the remainder of the war. Japan maintained sea control within the first island chain and notably Japan also used the terminology of the first island chain and the second island chain in its strategic approach to the sea until eventually the US challenged it on the eastern periphery by baking through in the Philippines but there again it was on the periphery of the South China Sea. Perhaps the most significant action to have occurred during the second world war was the US submarine anti-shipping campaign which is something I wrote about in my PhD thesis at SDSC. That gets much less attention than it deserves but it was centred in particular on the Luzon Strait and the Bashi Channel as the South China Sea's primary northern choke point controlling access into the western Pacific and not for coincidental reasons that is again an area of strategic focus for denial and for control. In the post-1945 era, the Vietnam War was obviously the major conflict to have occurred near by the South China Sea, again fought on the periphery. It's not primarily thought of as a maritime campaign because US naval predominance meant that it had the freedom to deploy air power and logistics supply chains from the sea right up to Vietnam's coastline without meaningful challenge. The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident was the trigger event for the US wider intervention against North Vietnam but it remains one of very few maritime clashes to have actually escalated into a broader conflict and in many ways I think it's more of the exception that proves the rule. And the other, the terminal phase of the US intervention in Vietnam was bookended by the mining of Haiphong Harbour in North Vietnam notable as one of the very few miniature sea denial operations undertaken by the US since the Second World War and again occurring on the South China Sea's periphery. Following that, the current focus of strategic competition, the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands were throughout this period largely peripheral. The exception being the small scale but still significant as a precedent for understanding China's approach to maritime operations and to the fusion of militia with regular forces, the 1974 takeover of the Paracel Islands. Following that, China and Vietnam clashed once again in 1988 at Johnson Reef in the Spratlys and that was the last real military clash involving loss of life. It's noteworthy that despite all the recurrent tension since then, we haven't had any recurrence of that despite the occupation of Mischief Reef in 1995 or the standoff between the Philippines and China over Scarborough Shoal in 2012, neither resulted in military grey-on-grey clashes. Losses of life have occurred on a small scale but mainly involving fishermen or law enforcement vessels. So what does this tell us, this historical intermission? Well, not exclusively but I'll pick out a few points. The South China Sea has avoided major fleet actions throughout modern history, despite its importance to trade. The most notable naval operations have mainly been of a denial nature rather than a sea control nature and notably the two significant sea denial operations that I mentioned were in fact prosecuted by the United States. The importance of the South China Sea to submarine operations, perhaps more inchoate in that early period of history has certainly now become much more notable it for geographical reasons being one of the largest deepest bodies of water within the first island chain. And then finally China's rise brings a new strategic dynamic. The tensions have been constant but there is also a very contradictory if you like reluctance to use military force. The model of the parasails takeover still applies. The reluctance to fire the first shot, winning without fighting, probing to see what strategic gains could be made short of the threshold of armed force. So back to the permanent court of arbitration and to put it in a more recent context where does China go from here? Why do I think there's a sliver of a hope? Well, on the negative side, the chief of naval operations recently met with Admiral Wuxiang Li, his Chinese counterpart, and reported out of that encounter, there was in fact an insistence that China would continue to build its artificial structures without any delay or harassment not to leave them half built. But China's actions since the ruling, China's actions, not its words, have been rather limited. There was an affirmation of the right to declare an air defence identification zone, but none has happened. What we've had instead are air combat patrols but I would say there's a really no more than an aerial version of showing the flag. And the Philippines, which of course is the one that sinned in China's eyes by raising the court case has itself been relatively immune from those sorts of physical kinetic pressure tactics that have more recently actually been directed further south towards Indonesia and Malaysia. But in the broader, more normative battle of wills that defines the geopolitical significance of the South China Sea, I think it's possible to see the permanent Court of Arbitration ruling in a rather more different and consequential light as the first real resistance that China has encountered at least under Xi Jinping's watch as national leader. In that sense, I would actually regard it as something like a soft trip wire. It's an asymmetrical approach that actually has caught China rather on the back foot in my view and has at least robbed it temporarily of the initiative. The strategic pause that we are seeing, I think, is a time for China really to digest the ruling in its entirety to lick its wounds, if you like. It's not yet clear which direction it could go. But although the court ruling was judged to be firmly on the Philippines side, and I think on 15 counts, Philippines got about 14 ruled in its favor. But nonetheless, I think there are ways in which China could come back at this without having to necessarily compromise on its core concerns. Overriding all of those is the notion of sovereignty, which has been a recurrent theme throughout today. I think there's scope for China to do so without compromising on sovereignty. That's the advantage of the way that the arbitral case was framed. There is no adjudication on who owns what features. It is rather a ruling about what the features are entitled to generate in terms of maritime jurisdiction. China doesn't even have to drop the nine-dash line. Reports that it's been declared illegal are somewhat exaggerated. It is rather the historical rights have been removed in the court's view from any entitlement from the nine-dash line. But the nine-dash line could be reinterpreted as a short-hand sort of cartographical device, if you like, but nonetheless one that can be brought into conformity with the UN law of the sea based on a claim solely to the high-water features within it. The ruling does require an adjustment from China on what it can claim in terms of jurisdiction from those land-based features, be they from China's coastline, from the islands, or from the rocks or reefs. So far, Chinese statements, and it is early days, it's only been a week, point to a somewhat ambiguous, but potentially positive response. It's possible that Beijing will declare straight baselines in the Spratlys, which would not be a great outcome. There is no entitlement to do so under the law of the sea. China has already done that in the Paracels. That's one possibility. Historic rights, I think, there will be no resiling from that either. But where those historic rights are asserted and how they are asserted could also change. There is at least one piece of evidence that suggests that China will, instead of be claiming unilateral jurisdiction of historical fishing rights, it's rather non-exclusive access to overlapping EEZs. Again, not an optimal outcome, but an improvement. And the trend line for those within China who are urging a position of caution, I think should be given the time to at least develop that position. Not open-ended, but we're talking really about a strategic interregnum, perhaps of a few weeks, maybe a little bit longer. But I think the PCA judgment, its influence, will more likely be felt in the long term rather than the short term. It tends to be the international law because it's not enforceable, has a slower burn influence, a more normative influence. And I think that will also take time to really shake out. And beyond the South China Sea, the influence will also be felt for other questionable claims elsewhere in the region. And I think when the questionable claims are questioned, the challenge should be graciously accepted, I think as a price worth paying for the Philippines' contribution to the rules-based order. It's too early to say which way China will go. I think the greatest uncertainty, and I'm not a China watcher, and I don't read Chinese, but I think it seems to me entirely plausible and obvious that the potential for having essentially wrapped himself in the flag for Xi Jinping now to find himself a lightning rod for domestic criticism, if that's the route that it takes within China, could, essentially, as a stark choice, China could either go hardline, double down on its claims, and then we see the unfolding of a strategic phase that'll be much more open in the South China Sea. And one way that might manifest, talking about domains, which is our brief after all, we have anti-submarine warfare, I think already firmly established as a operational focus for the South China Sea. Air warfare, I think, will also be a related part of that, but also in the electronic domain. And thinking after all of Des Ball, who was my supervisor at SDSC, if Des finds it within him to do a study of the electronic surveillance capabilities in those reclaimed Spratly Island features, or that's something that SDSC itself could embraces some research. I think that would be a very valuable contribution. Just looking at the recent deployment of electronic warfare growler aircrafts, the Philippines from the United States, I think was a straw in the wind of that particular dynamic. But as I say, I'm not wholly pessimistic. I think there is a sliver of a hope. The door has been left open. The finer points of the PCA judgment do actually, I think, allow China to maintain the core of its position, of its imaginative in the way that it does, and shows some genuine flexibility while the door is still open and the hand held out from the Philippines, which I think has to be commended so far for its humble, low-key, but so far firm approach in having refused China's initial demand to drop the ruling as a basis of bilateral negotiations. The one outlier, and I think just to finish on a point of detail, but I think if we're looking for where point of tension might resurface post-ruling, it would be mischief reef, because I think a clear implication of the ruling is that China is in a state of unlawful occupation of that feature, which is a low tide feature, now within an unopposed exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. The Philippines has been, I think, cautious sensibly in how it has not let that conclusion, but I think that's the clear next line of legal manoeuvre and one that might also lead to a recalibrated approach on the United States part in view of potential freedom of navigation operations and the allies that will take part alongside in that. So thank you very much. I'll conclude there. Before starting, I'd like to thank Brendan Taylor and the SDSC for the very kind invitation to this conference and to speak here this afternoon. It's a great pleasure to be involved in this event, particularly as my own connection goes back 36 years to my time as a PhD student in the IR department under Bob O'Neill's supervision starting in January, 1980. In my presentation this afternoon, I'm going to talk about the development of military capabilities in the broad Asia region. I'll also attempt, perhaps presumptuously, to draw out some implications for Australia. Over the last 50 years, the distribution of military power in what I've called here the Indo-Asia Pacific region has evolved significantly. At the same time, the relative weight of Asian states military power in global terms has increased and clearly continues to increase. Compare the few pages that were devoted to Asia in the 1966 edition of the military balance produced by my current employer with the substantial Asia Pacific sections in the most recent 2016 edition. In broad terms, this redistribution of military power has reflected the economic success of many Asian states and the decline over time in the relative economic strength of the United States and the West in general. But Asian states didn't need, automatically, to divert such large resources to their armed forces. This process has also reflected a determined effort by Asian political elites to strengthen their country's military power. There've been diverse reasons for this, but the most important reason for governments across the region to do this has been their pervasive and persistent sense of insecurity in relation to other states, ranging from neighboring countries to extra-regional powers. But what do we mean by military power? The focus for many, perhaps most academic, investigations of military power in our region has been on the relatively more easily understood metrics of military spending, weapons procurement, and armed forces personnel strength. But we know, in reality, these can only provide the crudest indications of the value of a country's armed forces. If we are to understand better the region's military dynamics, then we need to think more clearly about military capability. In other words, the capacity of armed forces to engage in combat effectively or to deter likely adversaries. Ultimately, spending a lot of money on the armed forces, having large numbers of military personnel, and even buying the types of weapon systems, often enumerated by academic researchers, not to mention the media, may mean little unless the other elements that go into making military capability are in short supply. As well as some less easily identifiable equipment-based elements, notably in the realms of logistics, C4ISR, including space-based assets, EW, and cyber. Other important capability elements include, but by no means limited to, operational experience, alliance relations and other international partnerships, training standards, morale, leadership, defense industrial R&D and defense science capacity and community support. That these absolutely vital elements of military capability are difficult to measure and to assess, I think is axiomatic. That's why defense ministries and armed forces have intelligence directorates. Nevertheless, the expert community is capable of making useful capability assessments based on the application of military and country-specific expertise and experience and linguistic knowledge to open source materials. Over the last decade, there's been in particular an impressive expansion of research and publication on the Chinese PLA. Other national military capabilities in Asia haven't been the focus of anything like so much attention, but the series published by Allen and Unwin on the Armed Forces of Asia, this is a series for which Des Ball was the series editor 15 or 20 years ago, did provide some detailed nuanced analyses of the military capabilities of a range of regional states and perhaps provides a model that might be used in the future for looking at Asian states' military capabilities more carefully. Meanwhile, the Defense and Military Analysis Program at the IWS, where I work, has continued to develop the military balance into what we hope will be an even more useful tool for comparing states' national military power, including in this region. Over the last five or six years, we've added narrative assessments of national military capabilities to this annual publication. We intend to do much more in this respect. And we have a long-held ambition of transforming the military balance into an electronic database, and that's going to become a reality within the next 12 months. How then have national military capabilities in this region evolved over the last 50 years? There's an obvious danger of providing what might appear to be a glib response to this huge question, but I think it's possible to highlight some important evolving dimensions of Asian states' military capabilities. China has made huge strides in developing all-round capabilities, particularly over the last decade, and that success reflects a determined effort by the ruling party and the PLA eventually to become the preeminent military power in this region. And they've diverted massive resources to support this effort. The emphasis has been particularly on strengthening nuclear space and missile, naval, and air capabilities. China has had considerable success in building an A2AD, anti-access area denial capability in its maritime literal. But there are important weaknesses in China's capabilities, despite all these efforts and all the resources that have gone into them. Embargos on defense-related imports since 1989 have severely restricted access to Western technology. The PLA's historical land focus has meant that it has necessarily developed many capabilities from an extremely low base. As recently as the 1979 war with Vietnam, for example, China had no useful air power. And of course, the PLA has had absolutely no significant operational experience since that war, a war in 1979 with a much smaller country, and it was a conflict which was, at best, a draw with Vietnam. And moreover, corruption within the party and within the PLA will have an unquantifiable sapping effect on morale and the effectiveness of leadership. In some, the PLA is not a 10-foot giant. Other states in the broad Asian region have also made major capability development efforts and we shouldn't view these as overshadowed by China's. India is emerging as a major military power. Its capabilities are built on a strong military tradition and considerable operational experience. There are well-known weaknesses in India's defense industry, but the potential for New Delhi to import defense equipment and technology relatively freely more than compensates for that weakness. India is now beginning to assert itself as a significant naval power. Japan has self-imposed considerable constraints on the development of its armed forces, but under Shinzo Abe's second leadership, these are being systematically removed or loosened. There are weaknesses in Japan's defense and security establishment, notably in terms of institutional stove piping and the future of the ongoing defense reforms is vulnerable to political changes which could see a less security-oriented leadership after Abe, but it's impressive that Tokyo has already used defense spending capped at around 1% of GDP to develop a self-defense force with impressive capabilities, particularly in the naval sphere. The region's small and medium powers have demonstrated what I suppose you could call mixed determination and success in their capability development efforts. Among the most impressive, though in quite different ways, are those of the two careers. North Korea's nuclear and missile programs are remarkable for such a small, impoverished and isolated country, but they provide only limited military options for the country's leadership and must ultimately be judged as self-defeating. It's clear that any real capability to reach the continental US with nuclear missiles would risk an American preemptive strike. The Republic of Korea, contrastingly, has built armed forces with powerful capabilities relevant not just to deterring the North, but also to projecting maritime power. Taiwan's defense effort was unimpressive under the recently departed KMT administration, and the military balance across the Taiwan Strait shifted in favor of the mainland. But the new president, Tsai Ing-wen, seems set on increasing defense spending, boosting Taiwan's defense industry, ordering new equipment from the US, and revising the former administration's plans to reduce the size of the army. In the medium term, those measures may improve the contribution that Taiwan can make to its own defense. In Southeast Asia, some states, notably Myanmar and the Philippines, have army-dominated armed forces that remain to a greater or lesser extent focused on the demands of internal security. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have developed their air forces and navies, but inefficient procurement decisions involving multiple foreign sources have tended to undermine efforts to build coherent capabilities. As Indonesian concerns over the threat to its interests from China's assertiveness in the South China Sea grows, we may see a more concerted effort to enable the TNE to contribute more effectively to the country's maritime strategy. Meanwhile, two Southeast Asian states have for decades taken the deterrence of external threat extremely seriously, Singapore and Vietnam. The capability development efforts of Singapore and Vietnam have also benefited from the support of political leaderships which have been able to plan for the long term and also from strong economies. So it's evident that not only China, but also India, Japan, the ROK, and some Southeast Asian states have developed military capabilities that would have been hard to imagine 50 years ago when the SDSC was established or even when I was first in the Coombs building looking at Asian armed forces at the beginning of the 1980s. Within their own sub-regional environments, China and some other Asian armed forces have developed what may be effective capabilities for A2AD. We don't know how effective until there's a conflict which we must all hope, of course, will never happen. Despite our Asian armed forces growing capabilities, it seems clear that for many years to come, the US will remain the preeminent military power in the region. As US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter emphasized when he spoke at the 15th double-I-double-S Shangri-La Dialogue last month, the US maintains its world-leading military capabilities because, as he put it, of incomparable investments over decades. So it will take decades or more, he said, before any others can build similar capabilities. Those capabilities are based on America's innovative technological culture and its unrivaled operational experience as well as financial investment. But over the coming years, if China, by far the most likely adversary in the region apart from North Korea, remains on more or less the same economic and capability development trajectory that we've seen over the last decade. That's a big assumption, but perhaps a reasonable assumption. In that case, US military preeminence will inevitably be eroded. China's A2 AD capabilities are already complicating US contingency planning. While the logic that America's strategic weight should be focused on the region that is of greatest long-term importance for the US in economic and security terms is clear, we can't be sure that the rebalance to the Asia Pacific is going to endure in the face of an evolving military balance that is changing and also budgetary challenges. I've deliberately left consideration of Australian military capabilities until last. Given the likely size of Australia's future economy and population, even in 2066 when the SDSC celebrates its 100th anniversary, Australia is unlikely to be one of the world's major military powers. However, the country's sustained economic growth and successive government's commitments to substantial funding for defense have ensured that it's not a negligible military power either. Australia has substantial military capabilities, particularly in terms of air and naval power. And those are set to continue growing in absolute terms over the coming decades. Whatever one's view on the choice of partner for the new submarine program, it remains an important initiative with the potential to transform the Royal Australian Navy's long-range striking power. The development of an amphibious warfare capability is also significant in regional terms and the air force will be transformed with the introduction of the F-35 to operate alongside force multipliers such as the KC-30 and Wedgetail. But these continuing Australian capability improvements are not happening in a sub-regional vacuum. If their long-term strategic benefit is to be maximized, they need to fit into a regional strategy that will help reinforce the existing Indo-Asia Pacific security order in the face of growing challenges. Those challenges include not only China's assertiveness and the threat that that poses to maritime freedoms and the threat from North Korea, but also the risk of declining U.S. capacity and will in the long term. Allies and security partners need to play their part in a more coordinated fashion in maintaining the current regional order. When Ashok Carter spoke at the most recent Shangri-La Dialogue, he referred repeatedly to what he called a principled security network for the region. From Australia's perspective, alliance with the U.S. forms an overarching framework for engagement in that network. But on its own, it's insufficient to provide a synergizing context for Australia's defense efforts. It will also be important to continue deepening cooperation with not only the other major U.S. regional ally, Japan, but also the most important U.S. security partner, India. This is already happening, but a major push might be needed to restore the momentum of military cooperation with Japan in the wake of the decision on submarine procurement. The area of regional defense cooperation that needs substantially more attention though concerns the development of much closer strategic links with Southeast Asian partners. As Ben Shreer and I have argued in a recent op-ed, if Australia wants to play a strategically significant role in Southeast Asia, perhaps it needs to think in terms of dramatically rather than incrementally extending and deepening its defense cooperation with key states there, particularly Singapore and Indonesia. In the medium to long-term, such steps could add up to movement towards a coalition-type arrangement between Australia and key Southeast Asian partners. The alternative to Australia becoming increasingly enmeshed with regional partners might be to be increasingly vulnerable to changes in the regional distribution of military power. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much to our three speakers. We have, I think, about 20 minutes for comments and questions. Yes, Rob. Microphones? No, no, down towards the second table from the front, please. It doesn't seem to be. Do you want to just come up to the podium? Might be an idea. Oh, no, here comes the microphone. A brilliant student to the rescue. Thank you. One of the... Sorry, I need to steal the... But one of the interesting issues is there's a lot... And this is for all three. There's clearly arms build-ups. There's clearly pushing and probing. There's a fluid distribution of power. But to pick up on one of the points of the couple of you, there's not much evidence of knowing what the operational experience and capabilities of these various forces are. I guess my question is, how worried should we be about an unintentional conflict in maritime Asia based on misperception and misjudgment of each other's capabilities and willingness to do something? I don't think there are many actors in the region that actually want to fight, but they may get themselves into a situation where because of misjudgment and misperception, you know, a gap that isn't there or a gap that they don't see that is there, they may get themselves into deep trouble because of the... Basically, they just don't get the assessments of the distribution of military power and military commitment is completely off. So could I ask that question? We would like to start. You want? Yes and no. I mean, I think the focus on unintentional conflict is justified, but it's not the only thing that should be focused on because if all of the focus is on conflict by misperception, I think it misses maybe the broader strategic risk of precisely an approach that's premised on pushing but below that threshold. So it's not a panacea, but it can play a compartmentalized important role in minimizing the danger of conflict. I worry about the inexperience level if there is that unintended flash point, you don't want to be the first, particularly Chinese military leader to lose a war that's been fought with a military built up at such a vast expense for such a long time in which effectively the national prestige is riding on. We don't think very much about walls of demonstrations anymore, I think we probably do need to think more about that in our region. It may not be through a deliberate war of aggression but I think that demonstration dynamic certainly does kick in if there is an armed conflict through miscalculation and the escalation risks that will flow from that. I think one of the serious concerns which I alluded to that didn't have sufficient time to address is our Chinese friends. We've just got to be careful not to build up the so-called military threat from China in the way we did the Soviet threat and look what happened to the Soviet Union. There is naturally, particularly in the United States, an inclination to be looking always for a serious threat and let's not pretend that terrorism and counterinsurgencies is a serious issue. It has to be fought but when you look in as a trained military force and the best one in the world then you're looking for a peer competitor or somebody who can be argued to be coming one. I think the issue with China is, as you alluded and so did, the issue is with regard to China, it has no military experience. It has never fought combat since 79 and as you said, and I was in the intelligence community at the time as we watched four divisions come down, we knew their call signs and we watched the fight with a battled heart in the North Vietnamese division at most, as you say, and it was a draw and there was a tremendous loss of face. When you look at China's military capabilities, of course they've made progress. As a colleague of mine said today, that they're getting maritime experience, they're operating off the East Coast of Africa and so on. But other friends of mine who've been on board these ships say they're very pretty, they're very nice, but they have no operational combat experience. America has enormous combat experience. We have a Chinese military that has been trying for 35 years to develop a high performance military jet engine and has failed. Where does it get them from? A place called Russia. Its anti-submarine warfare capabilities are poor. Its newly launched ballistic missile firing submarine makes as much noise as a Soviet era Delta III. God is that noisy. Now, look, don't get me wrong. And as you and says, when we're looking back, beyond my interest, beyond 20 years, who knows? But America's innovation has put it, my personal view, has put it at least 20 years ahead of China in key high-grade technological capabilities. Now, it is true also that Japan doesn't have combat experience and there's some of the risks as they circle around each other in naval maneuvers, confrontations and so on. Do you want to add anything? Yes, just very, very briefly, Rob, I suppose there are two ways of managing that risk. One is through deterrence, which should at least in theory reduce the temptation to risk-taking behavior on the part of an adversary. And the second response is to to build conflict management strategies through the implementation of queues and other measures from the tactical level upwards to make sure that if there is an accidental confrontation or exchange of fire, there are fire breaks there to prevent escalation. Tim, I think the other concern related is unlike Europe in the Cold War, in this part of the world, there are no nuclear arms control agreements, there are no counting rules for nuclear weapons, there are no intrusive portal gate inspections of ICBMs, there's no conventional forces in Europe-type agreement and we've only just got the avoidance of naval incidents at sea agreement, but no such bilateral agreement between China and Japan. So I think there is concern and it needs a lot more progress and we're not getting it in the multilateral forums. All we're getting is flim plan. So in other words, we need some arms control measures in the region. Yeah, agree. Other questions? Yes, up the back, thank you. Can't see who it is. Oh, Ron. Ron Huskin, Strategic and Defence Studies. A very interesting panel. I think what it brought home to me is that there are many ways in the Asia Pacific where we have flashpoints of various degrees of severity that could provide a spark that would darken the sort of political and strategic future in the region. But one of them certainly is the South China Sea. And what fascinates me in a way is that China's been sitting on this position for about 60 years. The three speakers have been all contributed to a very gradual process of incidents related with the advancement of that position. The use of military force against South Vietnam and then Vietnam. Mr. Frieff, Scarborough Sholl and so on. One has to believe two things. One is that over those 60 years the Catholic Bureau has at least periodically looked at the claim and the status of China's objectives with respect to that claim. Can we suppress opposition to where we want to go in a decent time frame and get what we want? And the answer appears to have been yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, down the line. And then you get the island project. Seven new islands in eight months. Starting around about October 2014, ending in June of 2015. A stunt by a spectacular, visible, high-risk proposition. And it seems to me that if we want to understand whether we're going to manage the post-arbitration future in the South China Sea, we have to understand where the key players are coming from. And with respect to China, was there something in the years, two, three years ahead of 2014 that caused the Catholic Bureau to say, hang on a minute, we're at risk. Our position, so our objective and the confidence we have in success in achieving that objective doesn't exist anymore. It's at risk. We need to take a higher risk strategy to create irreversible new reality as quickly as possible. And I wonder if the panel has any thoughts on what that trigger might have been. Thank you. In my view, I think the obvious trigger was the legal case itself, because the legal note was submitted by the Philippines in January 2013. Pretty soon after that, the island building campaign started in earnest. In one sense, that was a preemptive response on China's part to say, well, whatever the ruling come judgment day will be here, will be up close in your face, if you like, irreversibly. Also from China's perspective, well, I doubt there are many here who would agree with it, but from China's point of view, that was also a restraint because it was also on the seven features that China already occupied. In other words, it wasn't going to engage in land grabs that reversed the current state of play in terms of who occupied the other features. The outlier to that was Scarborough Shoal. I think that's why Scarborough Shoal is so important. I have heard that that was originally in the PLA's plan, but it was vetoed. It was vetoed at a political level because it was seen as too incendiary. That's why I think Scarborough Shoal has become so important, because it would be a clear new line, I mean, a red line in effect, to go beyond the fortification of already occupied features to one that has been contested and effectively removed from the administration of one country to another. But I think you're right to draw this in long term, Ron, because the point I was trying to make with the historical retrospective is that this does go back several decades. There are go-slow periods, there are go-fast periods, but very obviously China has a long-standing strategic interest that transcends individual leaders. We have a particularly strong and committed leader in the form of Xi Jinping, but it goes, I think, deeper than that. And it would be, I think, unrealistic to expect China to reverse its occupation of those islands, which is why I think Mr. Fried is the next one to look at. And the fact is, you mentioned the Politburo, Ron, unless I'm mistaken, we have no intelligence inside the Politburo, just like we never had inside the Kremlin. And yet intelligence agencies in the Cold War, like the CIA, would write highly classified documents, which I used to read, that would say the Kremlin thinks that, based on nothing. I mean, so, you know, it is a problem trying to read them. And as Yuan says, we need to look very carefully, not just what they say, but what they do. And, you know, just to be a bit oblique in response, one of the things, you know, that they could do is, in addition to the sorts of things that Yuan has mentioned, is they've now been stringing a broken-backed ASEAN group along for 14 years. How many years? 14. To negotiate a code of conduct in the South China Sea. And ASEAN seems, you know, content to put up with that, although in my recent meetings with the ASEAN group in March this year, you started to detect for the first time, and not just the Vietnam and the Philippines, but obviously Singapore and Indonesia starting. Do you agree? Yes. I think the problem with ASEAN is that it includes a very diverse range of states, some of which are small and poor, and which China has strong influence over. Do you have any other questions? Yes? A gentleman in the middle and then a gentleman to our right and on the left. Hi, and this is Prianto from SDSC. My question perhaps related to Tim Huxley, but I will come responses from other panelists. It's about the prevalence of asymmetric maritime capabilities, platforms and weapon systems such as submarines, naval mines, smart torpedoes, they are now cheaply available off the shelf from the market, and some people say that this is a way for smaller weaker navies to build their navies on the cheap. My question is to what extent do these capabilities pose a threat or signify the beginning of the end of blue water capabilities such as the aircraft carriers and other high-value assets? Perhaps it would be useful to think back in the Royal Navy Admiral John Fisher era where it signifies the end of the battleship. Are we seeing the cusp of a similar revolution in naval affairs? Thank you. I think we might take the second question since you've already got five minutes left and then the panel can respond to both questions. Thank you. Steve Meakin, one for Paul. I very much enjoyed your return of geography, rather moving to eternal Russia. You spoke a little about the ambitions of Putin if that's a fair portrayal of it, but I'd be interested in your views about how Putin reconciles the realities of the correlation of forces with, I guess, an average male life expectancy of about where it was in this country at the time of Federation, declining birth rate, an economy that produces very little bits of interest to other countries, save for hydrocarbons, weapons and some metals. All right, well they are quite separate questions, so perhaps we'll take the first one first. Who'd like to? Tim? Yes, that's a good question and it's clear that many countries, navies in Southeast Asia are beginning to expand or even start developing submarine capabilities, but I wouldn't say that developing a submarine capability is an easy or a cheap or a quick option. It takes a long time to develop a submarine capability. It's difficult and it's expensive. Indonesia has had a couple of Type 209s for many years since the 1980s, but I understand that they haven't always been operational. It's actually been difficult for Indonesia to use them. So it's a major investment and it's not a cheap capability, so it's not asymmetric in that sense. So I wouldn't lump submarines together with a mine capability. And then your next question was about whether the development of submarine and other capabilities in the group that you talked about spelled the end of the usefulness of aircraft carriers and other major surface vessels. I think that depends on how strong the other side's ASW capability is because if the other side has a strong ASW capability, your submarines are useless.