Late in the evening of 22 February 1946, a little-known American diplomat in Moscow sent a dispatch that would shape the next four decades of global politics. George F. Kennan’s “Long Telegram” wasn’t intended as a piece of grand strategy – he simply wanted Washington to understand its new adversary. Comparing his task to a doctor studying an “unruly and unreasonable individual”, Kennan argued that only by carefully diagnosing Soviet behaviour could America craft an effective response.
What Ministers need isn’t another long framework document but a clear diagnosis of our core strategic problems and real options for to address them.
Today, Australia faces its own 1946 moment, with confusion and conflict rife and a new order emerging. Yet Australian officials have few opportunities to inform and craft long term policy. At best, Canberra dedicates a lot of staff time to producing big framework documents such as White Papers and National Security Strategies. Since the year 2000, 13 such documents have been published in Australia. Yet this style of strategy making, because of its need for breadth and public release, excels mainly at producing “a lovely coffee table book that is a list of everything that is important”, as former US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Michèle Flournoy put it.
Framework documents like a Foreign Policy White Paper don’t help Ministers know what the balance of power in Southeast Asia is, nor how to connect various initiatives in countries across the Pacific Islands into a coherent strategy. They sit at a high level, when what Ministers need is long-term but detailed assessments of how to overcome the core problems the nation faces.
This framework obsession is particularly frustrating given Australia’s history as a pragmatic problem solver. In the early 1990s, the middle-power “niche diplomacy” agenda prioritised regional problems where Australia could make a distinctive contribution – from post-war Cambodia to chemical weapons proliferation. In the early 2000s, Australian diplomats achieved remarkable regional cooperation on irregular migration and terrorism through targeted, behind-the-scenes work.
The solution is surprisingly simple: stop trying to capture everything important and instead focus on diagnosing the most important problems strategic competition throws at us. Andrew Marshall, who led the US net assessment office for five decades, used his position to continually remind the military that they could not simply outspend the Soviets, nor treat them as a mindless omniscient threat. Instead, diplomatic, economic and military policies should be viewed as “moves” in a competition – and selected based on the favourable asymmetries they may generate.
Marshall spent the next half-century refining this process into what we now call net assessments: comparative evaluations that go beyond counting ships and dollars to examine doctrine, organisation, culture, and politics. Most importantly, net assessments search for opportunities, identifying how asymmetries can be exploited to strengthen one’s competitive position. In more recent years the UK and Japan have adopted net assessments to help them diagnose an increasingly complex world, and Australia has established an office in our Department of Defence.
Yet Australia’s security, and its need for strategic analysis, goes well beyond military issues. As I argue in my new Lowy Policy Brief, Net Assessments for Australia, the Albanese government should also set up Directorates of Net Assessment in DFAT, Home Affairs, Treasury and PM&C. We know these departments excel at tactics, but our era demands they function as strategic leaders as well.
A Directorate of Net Assessment would enable DFAT to meet Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s pledge that Australia will “contribute to the regional balance of power that keeps the peace by shaping the region we want”. That task requires a finely grained understanding of the different balances of power that matter most – across distinct geographic and policy domains – and deep dives into specific strategic problems and how to overcome them. DFAT should seize this opportunity to become the nation’s strategic brains trust for an age of competition.
So too, Home Affairs has an essential role with its responsibility for non-kinetic threats to national security. And Treasury, as the 2024 Independent Intelligence Review found, needs to pursue “analysis of [the] long-term implications of Australia’s economic security decisions … horizon-scanning … [and] scenario planning”. Indeed, all departments would benefit from more such futures work, and this is best done through the discipline and problem-solving orientation of net assessments.
Such an approach fits Australia’s national character. We excel when focused on solving real problems rather than writing elegant strategies. Net assessments would help Ministers understand the choices before them and use daily decisions – on capabilities, personnel, funding, partnerships – to strengthen Australia’s competitive position. After decades of producing endless White Papers that now gather dust on our shelves, what Ministers need isn’t another long framework document but a clear diagnosis of our core strategic problems and real options to address them.
DFAT, Home Affairs, Treasury and PM&C already have the expertise, they just need permission to use it differently. We should give officials the tools to diagnose why China succeeds in some Pacific nations but fails in others, what AI means for cybersecurity, and how to achieve deterrence without destabilisation. Let them identify which Australian strengths create genuine competitive advantages. The ministers who receive such analysis won’t need another White Paper because they’ll have something better: a playbook for winning the strategic competitions that matter.
Andrew Carr’s Lowy Institute Policy Brief, Net Assessments for Australia, was published this week.
