NEWS WRAP

Harris bows out

• California Senator Kamala Harris has withdrawn her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. The decision came after months of disappointing poll numbers, particularly in early voting states, and a failure to capitalise on a strong start to the campaign. Harris was briefly considered a top-tier candidate when her polling and fundraising surged after she took on Joe Biden in the first debate but a series of policy reversals and internal campaign frictions saw the former prosecutor sink back into the large Democratic field. Non-Resident Senior Fellow Bruce Wolpe writes that Senator Harris immediately becomes the most eligible candidate for vice president on the Democratic ticket. READ MORE HERE
   

• As NATO marks its 70th anniversary in London, President Trump hit back at French President Emmanuel Macron for his description of the treaty organisation as "brain dead". Macron's description reflected his concern that NATO member Turkey entered Syria after coordinating with only one other member state, the United States. President Trump described Macron's comments as "very, very nasty" while criticising member states ahead of the meeting by urging them to increase military spending. President Trump also equivocated over whether the United States would come to the defence of every treaty member. READ MORE HERE
   

• President Trump threatened tariffs of 100 per cent on $US2.4 billion-worth of French products in response to digital taxation laws passed in the European nation in July. The US Trade Representative said the 3 per cent tax unfairly targets American companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire labelled the proposed tariffs on goods like wine and cheese "unacceptable" and promised a "strong European riposte". The threat came shortly after President Trump announced in a tweet that he was ordering new duties on industrial metals from Brazil and Argentina, implying that the two struggling South American economies had devalued their currencies at the expense of American farmers and workers. READ MORE HERE
   

• US Attorney General William Barr reportedly disagrees with a key finding in his department's upcoming inspector general report. The Washington Post reports that he told fellow Justice Department officials he disagrees with the conclusion that the FBI had sufficient information in July 2016 to justify launching an investigation of whether associates of the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. The Inspector General's long-anticipated report on the origins of the Mueller investigation will reportedly be more than 400-pages long. The report is expected to be released to the public on 9 December. READ MORE HERE
   

• The suicide rate among Australia's women veterans is more than twice as high as it is among women in Australia's general population. This is according to a new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Non-Resident Fellow Megan Mackenzie spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald about how these findings compare to studies of women veterans in the United States. She said most resources are directed towards male veterans, while women in the armed services are at higher risk of sexual assault, which can lead to victims feeling invisible when they return to civilian life. READ MORE HERE

ANALYSIS

Ebbing opportunity: Australia and the US National Technology and Industrial Base

Brendan Thomas-Noone
Research Fellow, Foreign Policy and Defence Program

The US defence industrial base is failing to draw upon one of Washington’s greatest strengths: its global network of trusted allies.

In response, the National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB) — a US legislative framework — was expanded by Congress in 2017 to include Australia and the United Kingdom. The two countries joined Canada, which was added in 1993, the year of the NTIB’s formation.

The addition of Australia and the United Kingdom was a key allied component of a broader effort to equip the US Department of Defense with the tools necessary to maintain a conventional military-technological advantage in an age of growing strategic competition.

It was premised on a strategic assumption that only some in the US system fully appreciate; namely, that for the United States and its allies to maintain a military-technological edge vis-à-vis great power adversaries, Washington must aggregate the research and development (R&D) and industrial bases of its allies, and incentivise the co-development of new capabilities. But since 2017, efforts to implement the legislation, break down decades-old export control barriers with allies, and establish projects beyond the bare minimum have been limited.

The result is Australia and Australian industry face real and growing opportunity costs which hamper Canberra’s ability to maintain its own competitive military advantage and serve as an effective US ally in the Indo-Pacific. Australian leaders should elevate NTIB progress to the political level and further efforts to make the strategic case in Washington as to why more extensive and ambitious implementation of the original vision of the NTIB is needed.

The NTIB’s congressional authors intended for it to be a political platform for a renewed push for US defence industrial base and defence export reform, with the objective to emulate a “defence free-trade area”. But to-date, the NTIB has only managed to facilitate some limited bilateral cooperation between members, far from the progressive multilateral framework it was intended to be.

The NTIB is defined as encompassing the people and organisations that are involved in national security and dual-use R&D, production and sustainment — or the defence industrial bases of the member countries broadly defined. But the actions to be taken under the NTIB, as it is written in legislation, are fairly narrow.

The direction from Congress given to the US Department of Defense only states the requirement to submit a status report on the members’ collective defence industrial bases as well as propose new initiatives — like export control reform — for Congress to legislate on. Importantly, the expansion of the NTIB in 2017 did not make any material or legal change to Australia and the United Kingdom’s existing defence export relationships or joint-R&D efforts with the United States.

Based on previous export control efforts, forming a defence free-trade area will take time, effort and political actors willing to bear some cost. But until then, the NTIB is in effect a framework with some utility, but significant unrealised potential.

Yet, while the United States moves slowly in facilitating greater integration with its allies, the opportunity costs for Australia and Australian industry are growing. The longer serious progress on implementing the NTIB takes within the US system — either due to bureaucratic inertia or political resistance — the more Australia and other member nations will lack incentive to co-research, co-develop and integrate with the United States altogether. This is largely due to the extraterritoriality of the US defence export control regime and its ambivalence towards trusted allies.

Ultimately, it is in the strategic interests of all NTIB members to quickly transform the existing minimal framework into a practical and effective multilateral defence cooperation zone.

This is an excerpt of Brendan Thomas-Noone's recent report: Ebbing opportunity: Australia and the US National Technology and Industrial Base​

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