Narrative Detection
Narrative Detection
UPDATE: India’s approach to the upcoming BRICS Summit has become a matter of some controversy, what is being overlooked is that BRICS is a community of powers not seeking the destruction of the world order, but the inclusion of their interests in this order.
Australia’s federal Labor government used the ALP national conference to address internal dissent over the controversial AUKUS security pact and its plan for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
China tech can detect the tiny bubbles nuclear submarines produce, in a development that could jeopardise US operations and undermine the survivability of its underwater nuclear deterrent.
Australian foreign policy faces challenge of the home truths of Narendra Modi’s administration – and Albanese needs to go beyond ‘the boss’ narrative.
India for BRICS in Western world order
By M. K. Bhadrakumar (amended)
Today, when India’s approach to the upcoming BRICS Summit has become a matter of some controversy what is being overlooked is the remarkable consistency in India’s conception of the grouping: that BRICS was a community of revisionist powers who were not seeking the destruction of the world order, but the inclusion of their interests in this order.
India’s relationship with the US is perhaps at its highest point in history – almost a quasi-alliance – and Washington describes it as the “defining partnership” of the century. Arguably, the US sanctions against China could even hold advantages for India.
None of the group’s members have their economic opportunities and political influence grounded in a history of bloody wars, conducted with the purpose of establishing regional and global dominance centered around the wealth accumulated over several centuries. India feels at home.
The core issue of the attraction that BRICS holds for so many countries today that are so patently divergent in their national characteristics, values, and interests – from Indonesia to Iran, Egypt to Saudi Arabia – who tend to regard the grouping as if it is poised to pick up the banner of global governance from the West. Such expectations are irrational, as they are premised on the evolution of the entire international order in a certain predetermined direction, which is of course not the case.
The predicament is acute against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict and the Biden administration’s dual containment strategy against China and Russia, two founding members of BRICS. Unsurprisingly, Chinese and Russian world views have dramatically changed in the most recent past and are robustly countering US hegemony. The “no limits” friendship between these neighboring giants sets them apart somewhat within BRICS, and that cannot but affect the alchemy of the grouping – although the collegial spirit continues, thanks to their pragmatism and sagacity.
Curiously, many of the aspirants who seek association with BRICS could even be getting attracted to the grouping principally for that reason – a sort of second pillar that upholds a more just and less selfish global governance in relation to the small and medium-sized states of the world.
Make no mistake that all the experience of strong institutions and global governance happens to be the experience of the West on the basis of common values and shared interests. Ironically, it also accounts for their “bloc mentality.”BRICS, on the contrary, lacks such cohesiveness and the capacity to set the world agenda, which the G7 had been doing for decades. India prefers to create within the existing order such rules, norms and ways of cooperation that would allow for the preservation of its advantages and the elimination of its shortcomings.
For India, this is both a matter of tactic and strategy. The prevailing rules-based order gives India a sense of security and strengthens multipolarity in Asia. It is a misconception that India is under pressure to bandwagon with the US. That might have been the case previously, but present-day India, under the current leadership in particular, is consciously expanding the relations with the US, which it considers to be in its own national interests.
Several factors are involved here and one main factor is, paradoxically, the phenomenal rise of China, India’s BRICS partner, which raises alarmist sentiments in the country. The partnership with the US is one of the few ways India hopes to address the security paradigm. That said, India’s BRICS partners can and should trust India to continue to pursue an independent foreign policy based on its national interests. There is no reason to doubt that India reposes faith in the decisive influence of the BRICS in the shaping of the main aspects of the global agenda that will make the world more just and stable.
Read more here.
Can US navy overpower China?
By Greg Austin (amended)
Australia’s federal Labor government used the ALP national conference to address internal dissent over the controversial AUKUS security pact and its plan for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
Taxpayers have been asked to fund these subs at an extreme cost, up to A$368 billion, and with many risks in the procurement cycle. This decision, and the price tag, can only be justified by the consideration that Australia would likely join the US in a war against China to protect Taiwan.
But the government hasn’t specifically acknowledged that. Its public rationale for going ahead with the subs is to counter China’s growing military influence in the Asia-Pacific, especially in the maritime domain.
“China’s military buildup is now the largest and most ambitious we have seen by any country since the end of the second world war,” according to Defence Minister Richard Marles.
But how great is China’s naval capability?
The truth is the US navy, alongside its allied navies, especially Japan, remains much more powerful compared with China’s navy – and that’s likely to continue.
The Australian government isn’t being fully open about the cost-benefit analysis. It hasn’t publicly laid out its case for why its pursuit of such extremely expensive subs in relatively small numbers would help redress negative implications of the Chinese military buildup for Australian security.
What’s more, the AUKUS arrangements add little to the security commitment the US and Australia already have. We already have the closest possible alliance with the US, and even the government has said to our Asian neighbours that AUKUS doesn’t upgrade the security guarantees of the US to Australia.
So how do we assess the naval balance of power between China and the US, and do the AUKUS submarines arriving in the 2030s figure in those assessments?
The ‘missile age’
In today’s world, the ability of a country to carry out missile strikes is a far more important consideration than simply the number of warships.
The US can readily compensate for China’s numerical advantage in light warship numbers with “stand-off” missiles, which can be launched from long distances (more than 1,500km).
In modern war, the count of “weapons platforms” (any structure from which weapons can be deployed, including ships) is far less important than the number of missiles that can be fired from a variety of platforms against enemy targets.
A US think tank has estimated that in the event of China starting a war with Taiwan, the US could fire more than 5,000 anti-ship missiles over the first 3-4 weeks.
The simulation was pessimistic about whether this number would be adequate to hold the Chinese attack at bay or defeat it in the first weeks, but it still saw China suffer significant ship losses. The simulation didn’t include US attacks on Chinese naval bases, which could significantly alter the missile advantage in favour of the US.
In a war between the US and China, we could expect the US would be prepared to undertake crippling cruise missile strikes on naval bases and other targets inside China. Even on short warning, the US navy could, for example, launch more than 1,000 cruise missiles against the Chinese mainland in an initial engagement over several days if it chose to do so.
According to the US Congressional Research Service, the US navy has 9,000 missile vertical launch tubes to deliver long-range cruise missiles, compared with China’s 1,000.
The Australian public need not be so spooked about China’s naval buildup, given the US’s supremacy in the “missile age”.
The US also has the cyber advantage
The US navy also has superior cyber capabilities compared with the Chinese navy.
Its cyber resources are concentrated in its “Tenth Fleet”, with more than 19,000 active and reserve personnel. It has 26 active commands, 40 cyber mission force units, and 29 reserve commands around the world, which could be available to strike China in the event of war. Such missions would likely aim to disable, disrupt or destroy the command and control and fighting effectiveness of the Chinese navy.
For example, it was US navy cyber personnel, alongside Ukrainian counterparts, who successfully blocked what could have been crippling cyber attacks by Russia ahead of its invasion in early 2022.
In contrast, China doesn’t appear to have a dedicated naval cyber command, corresponding forces, or such a substantial global footprint.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has assessed that China is at least ten years behind the US in its cyber power.
This judgement is based on the US’s industrial and technological supremacy, and its much longer history of integrating cyber operations into military planning.
In a war with China, the US could count on the active support of key allies, such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, through remote cyber military attacks against China.
The AUKUS pact enhances the strength of this cyber alliance. Australia having nuclear-powered submarines doesn’t hugely change the US/China balance of power.
The allied cyber capabilities together far outweigh those of China. China has no strong cyber allies and has weak cyber defences compared with the US.
What about the long term?
The Congressional Research Service’s May 2023 report assesses that the naval balance remains in favour of the US, especially in submarine capability.
It finds China would have to maintain its robust naval buildup and modernisation for quite some time if that were to change (though it doesn’t estimate a timeline for this). If that transpires, the report concludes China “might eventually draw even with or surpass the United States in overall naval capability”, though in my view this outcome is far from certain.
I estimate the US advantage in naval power over China will likely remain in place for at least the next decade, and probably longer. The government owes the Australian public a granular accounting of the military balance for the longer term.
Read more here.
Can China detect US nuclear submarines
Chinese scientists claim existing tech allows for detection of the nearly imperceptible tiny bubbles nuclear submarines produce. China may have landed on a way to better detect stealth nuclear submarines, a development that could jeopardize US operations in the contested South China Sea and more significantly undermine the survivability of its underwater nuclear deterrent.
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter discovered an ultra-sensitive submarine detector based on existing technologies that can detect traces of the most advanced submarine from great distances.
The science team, led by Zou Shengnan, published their findings in the peer-reviewed Chinese Journal of Ship Research, run by the China Ship Scientific Research Center and noted for its history of being at the forefront of ship and ocean engineering developments.
SCMP notes that the Chinese science team used computer modeling to determine the possibility of detecting the near-imperceptible bubbles a nuclear submarine produces. It says that the extremely low frequency (ELF) signal generated by these bubbles could be many times stronger than the sensitivities of advanced magnetic anomaly detectors.
The bubbles form when a submarine cruises due to increased kinetic energy and a corresponding decrease in potential energy expressed as pressure. This happens because the system’s total energy remains constant but the balance between kinetic and potential energy shifts.
This creates turbulence and can lead to an electromagnetic signature through the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effect, with computer models showing that electric field signals could be detected around different parts of the hull.
The researchers found that electromagnetic emissions produced by the cavitation bubbles fluctuate over time, generating a distinct signal in the ELF range from 49.94 Hz to 34.19 Hz.
Lead researcher Zou said that the findings could be used to provide a reference for selecting electromagnetic communication frequencies for high-speed submarines, as ELF signals can travel great distances, penetrate water and reach the ionosphere, which reflects them to the Earth’s surface.
Some suggest the discovery could be a game-changer for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) operations. In an August 2020 article for The Strategist, Sebastian Brixey-Williams notes that modern ASW uses active and passive sonar with magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) to extract submarine signals from ocean noise, noting the methods are expected to remain crucial for the foreseeable future.
Submarines are significant metallic anomalies moving in the upper portion of the water column, producing sound and changing the water’s physical, chemical, and biological properties, disturbing Earth’s magnetic field and unavoidably emitting radiation in the case of nuclear submarines.
Brixey-Williams notes that as sensor resolution, processing power and machine autonomy improve, the range of detectable signals will expand, making it possible to distinguish other previously indistinguishable signals.
He also notes that non-acoustic detection techniques have been known for decades but only recently became exploitable due to faster computer processors, noting that oceanographic models can run in real-time.
Moreover, according to a March 2021 paper by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), the utilization of both commercial and open-source technologies such as commercial satellite imagery, synthetic aperture radar and social media disseminated tracking can enhance the identification of submarine fleets, track the development of submarines and submarine bases, and potentially gain insights into their patrol patterns and actions.
Given that, Roger Bradbury and other writers note in a March 2023 article that it’s very likely (90%) that oceans will become transparent by the 2050s, with at least a 75% chance in most modeled cases, with the software used in their analysis evaluating the estimates with a high certainty of above 70%.
They stress that despite advancements in stealth technologies, submarines, including nuclear-powered ones, can still be detected in the world’s oceans due to parallel progress in science and technology.
Such developments may complicate US plans to hunt down and detect Chinese nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) patrolling the South China Sea. US nuclear attack submarines (SSN) are known to be operating in the South China Sea, with USNI reporting on November 2021 about the collision of the USS Connecticut against an uncharted seamount in the hotly-disputed semi-enclosed body of water.
Asia Times reported in April 2023 that China now can mount round-the-clock SSBN patrols, keeping one of its six Type 094 SSBNs on patrol at all times.
Those SSBNs are potentially armed with the new JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), which has a 10,000-kilometer range and allows China to hit the continental US from newly-developed and highly-protected bastions in the South China Sea.
Although US SSBNs are considered highly survivable, the growing transparency of oceans and the possibility of China and Russia coming up with a breakthrough in submarine detection technology pose a rising threat to US dominance of the seas.
Despite those concerns, Matt Korda argues in a December 2020 article for Defense One that the US lead in submarine detection and stealth technology, favourable geographic position with no territorial chokepoints and the threat of US nuclear retaliation against an attack on its SSBNs ensures the continued relevance and survivability of US SSBNs as the country’s ultimate nuclear deterrent.
Read more here.
Indian Tales by Anthony Albanese
By Daniel Flitton (amended)
Australian foreign policy faces challenge of the home truths of Narendra Modi’s administration – and Albanese needs to go beyond ‘the boss’ narrative. Anthony Albanese tells a great little story about going to India as a leading member of parliament a few years ago and how he sent the local Australian diplomats into a minor frenzy.
Facing a meticulously planned program of meetings and handshakes, Albanese gave officials the slip. “I horrified the people from the high commission by going to see Akshardham, a Hindu temple,” as the prime minister tells it.
It was 2018, in New Delhi, and Albanese jumped on a local metro train by himself and headed to the outskirts of the capital. He’d been to the city nearly 30 years beforehand, in 1991, as a backpacker on a five-week sojourn.
“But New Delhi has changed,” Albanese explains, with the new giant sprawling temple complex part of that expansion. “In 91, there wasn’t that much there … So, I got on the metro because I hadn’t been on the metro, and I went by myself. And they [the diplomats] were like, ‘You can’t do that.’ And I did, and then did the walk. And it’s such a friendly, amazing place. And the hospitality of the Indian people is just great.”
Albanese will likely roll out similarly happy anecdotes again in the coming weeks as he prepares to travel to New Delhi for the G20 summit on 9-10 September. The message he wants to send is one of opportunities and friendship. Except that is only half the story.
Because India, as events with the country’s main opposition leader last week underscored, also has some discomforting traits. Local politics is not always neatly aligned to the rhetorical values Australia wants to embrace with the “world’s biggest democracy”.
Whether that’s in battles with human rights organisations, crackdowns on social media, internet blackouts in Kashmir, increasing harassment of Muslims, a tardy response to religious violence in the country’s north-east, or in not joining its Quad partners in a forthright condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – all the while happily buying up the Kremlin’s cheap, sanction-hit oil and complaining about the unfairness of scrutiny.
Australia faces an asymmetrical challenge with India that no amount of warm storytelling can quite overcome. Modi may have an approval rating near 80% but elections next year will be a weeks’ long carnival. The local media carries on with an admirable raucousness. When, for example, Modi chose to host a G20 preparatory meeting on tourism in strife-torn Kashmir, as happened in May, he’s stretching the boundaries of good diplomacy. Australia needn’t play along.
Exaggerating claims of national friendship, or indulging in flattery for “the boss”, won’t persuade those who can plainly see the obstacles. And this is not just about Indians offside with Modi’s vision, but also public backing at home for Australian foreign policy.
Interests guide the relationship much more than flowery pleading about common connections or assertions of democratic fraternity. Former PM Tony Abbott would have it that “the answer to almost every question about China is India” but it’s nothing so simple. Realistic expectations will be a firmer foundation for ambition than ignoring the obvious differences.
India, after all, has no compunction putting its view to Australia. Indian officials last year anonymously leaked to the Australian media to warn the government about local Sikh activists. Modi put this complaint directly and publicly to Albanese himself, while Albanese stayed quiet.
An argument goes that it’s not the PM’s job to upset his counterpart. But this convenient dodge ignores that it is Albanese’s role to reflect the Australian people, and a willingness to call out bullshit is a magnificent Australian trait.
Read more here.