|
||
|
1 December 2013 Snowden Progress
Snowden's drip-feed means tricky time for all Greg Sheridan
The Australian AUSTRALIA could be in for a very rough patch in some key Asian relationships as a result of what could be another two years of diabolical revelations from US intelligence documents stolen by Edward Snowden. This will be a searching test for the Abbott government but it will also be a test of the maturity and sophistication of the Australian political class as a whole. The revelations are likely to be eye-watering in their extent and detail, but they will not show any Australian official or agency doing anything illegal. Not only that, while they will reveal a good deal of secret information, responsible institutions and participants in the national debate will also need to keep in mind the fact that crucial elements of context, such as specific threat assessments, will not be known to the public. The prospect of future Snowden-based revelations is one of the important limitations on the Abbott government in the way it can respond to the recent controversy concerning Defence Signals Directorate phone-tapping directed at the Indonesian President in 2009. So far, Tony Abbott and his Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, have handled these matters well. They have identified and articulated core national interests, especially in the relationship with Indonesia, and have safeguarded as far as possible Australia's national security assets. There is no other responsible course for an Australian government to take. Politically, they are somewhat assisted by the widening web of nations being caught up in these revelations, other Asian nations who also helped the US. These revelations will produce their own political fallout in time, but they certainly spread the load for Australia and demonstrate that Australian agencies were only doing what most other countries do when they can. The Abbott government may yet be able to salvage something positive out of this difficulty with Indonesia. If the protocols to be negotiated over future intelligence arrangements between the two countries are done well, then they could be very useful to both nations in the future. Canberra could do more to help Jakarta manage its own issues of cyber security. The Indonesians, like most other nations in the region, have been subject to Chinese and Russian cyber intrusion. Canberra could also help Indonesia with more extensive intelligence training. However, some analysts and commentators are overestimating how much such an agreement can insulate the relationship from trouble arising out of the Snowden revelations. Australia and Indonesia already have detailed intelligence-sharing and other protocols, and extensive consultative and symbolic security agreements, chief among them the Lombok Treaty on mutual security. No such agreement ever insulates you against damage of the kind arising out of the recent phone-tapping revelations. This is all a problem from hell for the Abbott government. It cannot control the timing or extent of any future revelations and it cannot control the political fallout in nations these revelations affect. Nor can it affect the hysteria with which institutions that already dislike it, such as the ABC, respond to the Snowden revelations. But these issues are also a huge challenge for Bill Shorten's Labor opposition. In the nature of the timing of these things, the most sensational matters will be ones that occurred under the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, although there is every chance that older operations under John Howard will also be revealed. If Labor tries to make political mileage out of future Snowden revelations, it will not only be hypocritical - it will run the danger of looking irresponsible on national security. In the past, this has been devastating for Labor's electoral chances, whatever the short-term attraction might be from scoring a political point. Michael Wesley, professor of national security at the Australian National University and a former senior analyst with the Office of National Assessments, told me he thinks the Snowden affair "the most important intelligence crisis and intelligence failure the West has suffered since the end of World War II". He believes it will have an effect not only on the trust the US and its tight allies enjoy with other countries, but also will substantially affect relations within the "five eyes" intelligence alliance, which consists of the US, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. "It will move us back to a culture of intensely protecting intelligence and sharing it only on a strict need-to-know basis," he says. "It will reverse all the advances we have made since 9/11 on intelligence sharing and take us back to the intelligence culture of the early 1990s." We have no idea where the Snowden revelations will ultimately lead us politically. But this issue is likely to challenge the maturity, sophistication and devotion to the national interest of all the significant institutions that deal with these matters in Australia. A great deal is at stake.
|