Went to see Kim Beazley at the Lowy Institute last night. His speech was on Australia's foreign policy. Some notes on what he said and what I thought:
(BK) Australia is now involved in a civil war in Iraq which is basically clan against clan.
(JT) Seems to me that it's more complex than that. Iraq has become a testing ground in which nation states like Iran and the US are superimposing their struggle for pre-eminence in the region. Also seems like it's in BK's interest to characterise the war as a mess with no broader strategic importance because it's Howard's war.
(BK) Later said that Iran had very successfully done nothing while the US handed them dominance by taking out Iraq then getting stuck there.
(BK) Iraq is different from Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, America had been attacked and thus Australia was obligated to engage under the ANZUS treaty. Also there was an unprecedented global coalition. It was in our interest to be there.
(JT) Not sure the ANZUS treaty applies because Afghanistan did not attack the US (Kate's point). But the conflict can still be characterised as different from Iraq in terms of its international support. The question then becomes on what terms do we engage globally?
(BK) We should be the ally America needs not the ally this current administration wants. "Mates talk straight."
(JT) Vomit inducing quote aside, actually a good point here about how we are their only friend in an important region. Our long term value to them is in things like Pine Gap and our regional capabilities. While it may be politically advantageous in the short term to go crusading with the US, we should instead make ourselves into a really useful regional force.
(BK) Need to focus on our region in both alliances and spending. Buying 2 large amphibious vessels, and investing heavily in the JSF without a stop gap measure gives Australia small amounts of global capability with large risks of overstretching and of losing air dominance in the region. Instead we should be spending more on smaller amphibious vessels for regional incursions, like the ones hired at great expense for operations in East Timor recently. We should also utilise our great local industry in fast catamarans which the US have purchased for their SEAsian forces.
(JT) However also said that regional vs global engagement was a "false choice". I don't understand this. If you have $X and you can either buy aircraft carriers to take tanks to Africa or smaller ships to send troops to the Solomans, it seems to me like there is a choice to be made. More on this below.
(Q) There was a question on whether region matters in our more global age. You've talked about the importance of the Afghan conflict. Is Afghanistan part of our region?
(JT) I thought this was a good question because it showed up the inherent difficulty of criticising procurement of global platforms and emphasising regional engagement while also supporting Australia's role in some global conflicts but not others. Maybe the "false choice" idea was B's way of saying that there can be no hard and fast rule about where and when Australia should engage, only different emphasis and different capabilities.
(BK) However B didn't say that. He said "Of course your region matters, it's where you live."
(JT) Penetrating insight of the quote aside, I tend to think that region does matter. Movement of people is still heavily restricted by both physical limitations (as we have not yet got jetpacks or teleporters) and national barriers. So the people closer to us can still hurt us more easily. I'm not sure if this means that our foreign policy should be defined more by regional than by global interests but I think region still matters.
(BK) We need a Department of Homeland Security in Australia.
(JT) Does another department bring the desired coordination among different services such as intelligence and boarder security? Not sure the experience in the US has been entirely positive.
A company called Ceedo has developed software that when loaded on a USB thumb drive allows a user to carry around his/her entire desktop environment rather than just documents and other files. The idea is that all your programs, settings and files are with you so you always have what you need. Once you 'plug in' to a computer or laptop, you use its screen, keyboard and processing power but everything you see and do is coming from and being stored back on the thumb drive.
This is similar to something that I was thinking about when the 3G spectrum was being auctioned off in 2000. The main problem then (which is still a problem now) was that companies were spending huge amounts of money on spectrum without having a good idea of what services it would enable them to sell.
In what I thought at the time was a pretty solid business plan (but was in retrospect more of a wishlist), I put together a service which I thought would be a killer app for 3G. It had 3 parts:
1. Mobile operators would provide handsets that in effect did what Ceedo does now. They would 'plug in' to any computer or laptop turn that machine into a personalised platform for the user. Your desktop environment would be the same wherever you went.
2. All the user's documents, music, and even programs would be stored on secure remote servers. You would download what you needed, manipulate it on the 'host' computer and upload it when you were finished. Limited functionality would also be available on the go just using the handset.
3. Revenue was to come from bandwidth bills and advertising which would be targetted to you based on a scan of all your personal information stored on the servers. Mobile operators would also allow you to 'subscribe' to software that you wanted to use and revenue share with the developers.
I still really like some aspects of this idea, but having been a 3G user I now think it is pretty unrealistic to rely on that amount of bandwidth to access the files you need to get things done. There are also some pretty considerable privacy concerns with regard to the advertising.
Interestingly, some of the aspects of this idea have come about, and some of the limitations have been circumvented. Ceedo is doing the personalised desktop environment but with USB instead of phones. Streamload and others are doing online storage. Gmail is invading your privacy to give you relevant(ish) ads. Memory prices have dropped to the point where you no longer have to store everything remotely but could keep most of your life on the handset itself. The only laggards have been the mobile operators who have not stitched all of these components together.
