Defence Business: A defence strategy for the 21st century - Control and Protect | ADM Nov 2010
For more than one hundred years Australian defence strategy has been based on so-called ‘expeditionary’ operations – that is, on wars of invasion.
If we are going to learn anything from the disasters of the last fifty years in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it should be that this model has become untenable.
Dr Alan Stephens | Canberra
It has failed politically, socially, and militarily; and it has become ethically unacceptable.
Simply put, the era has gone in which predominantly white, predominantly European, predominantly Christian armies could stampede around the world invading countries their governments either don’t like or want to change.
Australia needs a new national defence strategy that recognises those realities, and that reflects the changing nature of international relations in the 21st century.
The world of the 21st century remains a dangerous place, and Australia needs a strong and effective Defence Force.
At the same time, the environment in which we now live is dramatically different from the 20th century.
The phenomenon of globalisation, defined by instantaneous world-wide communications, computers, mass rapid international transport, large-scale population flows, and economic interdependence, has changed everything.
For example, in 1951, Australia’s most important export markets were the United Kingdom and the United States; today, they are China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and India, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Similarly, immediately after World War II, Australia’s cultural background was overwhelmingly British; today, 21 per cent of Australians were born in non-English speaking countries, and 40 per cent have one or more parent born overseas, according to the 2006 Census.
The way we think about national defence cannot be immune from those kinds of profound changes.
The Australian Defence Force’s policies and posture must reflect 21st century attitudes.
Western defence forces, including the ADF, have been exceptionally successful in modernising their equipment and training, achievements that have produced formidable traditional warfighting capabilities.
Whether that modernisation has been extended to strategic thinking is, however, another matter, noting that over the past two decades superficially successful battlefield actions have rarely been translated into satisfactory political outcomes.
The essential problem with the legacy thinking which still dominates Western defence policy has been apparent since the 1960s, yet it is still constantly ignored.
To reiterate: The era has gone in which predominantly white, predominantly European, predominantly Christian armies could stampede around the world invading countries their governments either don’t like or want to control.
The practical and ethical effects of globalisation have made that kind of mentality obsolete.
Implicit in that compelling conclusion is the imperative for defence policy-makers to comprehend three paramount 21st century strategic factors.
First, the distinction between wars of necessity and wars of choice.
Second, the certainty in war of unintended consequences.
Third, the imperative to begin any military planning process by assessing ends and means:
• What the ADF can do,
• What it cannot do, and
• What it should not do.
All of Australia’s defence policy determinations should reflect those factors.
Yet self-evident though the process might seem, the experiences of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan would suggest that it has not always been adequately observed by a succession of Australian governments and their military advisors.
Military conflicts can be categorised as either wars of necessity or wars of choice.
A case can be made that of the many conflicts in which Australians have fought, only the Second World War was a war of necessity.
In other words, it was our free choice to participate in World War I, Malaya, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Without exception, wars lead to injustice and depravity.
They also invariably generate unintended consequences, which may turn out to be worse than the alleged causus belli.
Sixty thousand Australian deaths from a conflict that was supposed to be won by Christmas 1914 is all that needs to be said about the unintended consequences of the Great War.
And it will be years before we understand the full repercussions of the campaigns against ‘terror’ in the Middle East and Central Asia, noting that many senior officials and analysts believe that the 2003 invasion of Iraq has increased rather than reduced the likelihood of terrorist attacks against the West.
Traditional Australian Defence Strategy
Since federation, Australian defence strategy has oscillated between two main forms, expeditionary campaigns and the defence of Australia, with the former being the dominant model.
Within that broad framework, Australian forces commonly have been subsumed as a component part of a larger coalition force, a fate which in general has rendered irrelevant any Australian voice in shaping higher strategy.
Moreover, and without denigrating the courage and professionalism of the service-men and -women concerned, frequently that fate has also rendered irrelevant Australia’s warfighting efforts.
For example, it may be displeasing to hear but it is nevertheless true that in Vietnam and Iraq the operations conducted by Australian Army, Navy and Air Force contingents were of little consequence to the ultimate outcome.
Indeed, within the expeditionary model generally – a category that covers some nine decades – few instances can be found in which Australian forces have played an independent or decisive role.
In other words, an inference of political tokenism as the raison d’être for our expeditionary campaigns – that is, for our wars of choice – would be justified.
The defining characteristic of the expeditionary model is that armed forces from one or more nations are deployed to the territory of one or more other nations.
One man’s ‘expedition’ is, of course, another man’s ‘invasion’.
The deployment of invasion forces immediately alters the dynamics of war. By definition, the land component of those forces will have to fight amongst the people of the invaded country, a circumstance which almost invariably creates profound social, cultural, and political tensions.
In turn, those tensions may fundamentally affect the concept of ‘victory’.
Military operations in themselves rarely provide a satisfactory answer to the often extraordinarily complex socio-political issues that they unleash; on the contrary, consistent with the vexed tradition of unintended consequences, they may well make things worse.
The US-led war in Vietnam provides a salutary case study.
US expectations of a quick victory underwritten by apparently overwhelmingly superior military power were soon frustrated by the enemy’s remarkable resilience and the strong popular support for the Viet Cong throughout South Vietnam.
As US and Australian strategists slowly began to gain some vague inkling of the powerful political and cultural forces that were at the heart of the struggle, they launched a massive civil aid program intended to win the hearts and minds of the local population.
But the delusion that foreign armies could fight a war amongst the people when more often than not those people and the enemy were one and the same invalidated that program from the outset.
Neither senior army officers nor their political leaders seemed to comprehend the stunning contradiction inherent in sending soldiers into a village one week to build schools, wells and market places, then several weeks later sending other soldiers into the same village to kill and maim its residents or to destroy their livelihood.
Thirty-five years later, the decade-long expeditionary war of choice in Afghanistan has once again exposed the West’s inability to comprehend the complexity of trying to fight ‘amongst the people’.
A Uniquely Australian Defence Policy
Neither the expeditionary model nor the defence of Australia model is suitable for the 21st century.
As noted above, the former is now a crude remnant of a bygone era; while as the debate which followed the release of the defence policy paper The Defence of Australia 1987 indicated, the latter is unduly passive.
The start point for any defence policy determination should be the classic strategic continuum of ‘Shape-Deter-Respond’.
Australia’s unique geostrategic circumstances reveal the paramount importance of maintaining a strong strategic reach in our own region, actively shaping our environment to reduce risk and quietly deterring threats.
That is, our focus should be on conflict prevention – on the top end of the continuum - rather than on the lower end, as is the case with the expeditionary model.
‘Respond’ should be a final resort, not a preferred first option.
This is not an argument against engagement. On the contrary, a manifest ability for determined and decisive action is an essential part of deterring and controlling emerging risks.
An active yet carefully selective emphasis on ‘shaping’ and ‘deterring’ resolves the excessively defensive posture implicit in the defence of Australia model.
During this important phase, hopefully at peace although often in tension from various sources, Australia should be active in contributing to widely-supported security actions, such as United Nations-sponsored humanitarian interventions.
We should also cooperate with neighbours, friends, and allies to construct a consensus-based and collaborative approach to regional security.
An integrated combination of advanced air and naval capabilities supported by suitably structured land forces will best allow Australia to:
• shape events in our region to serve our broad national interests,
• deter potentially aggressive behaviour that may be inimical to those interests, and
• respond if necessary by projecting force at very long range into the region.
Control and Protect
Defined as ‘Control and Protect’ Australia’s strategy for the 21st century provides an effects-based solution to our security needs and signifies that we will:
• control our strategic environment,
• protect our people and values,
• cooperate closely with our friends, allies, and neighbours, and
• sustain our alliances.
Militarily the strategy would exploit our comparative advantages instead of responding to those of our opponents.
Drawing on our key advantages of high quality people, advanced technology, and the ability to plan and act with decision superiority and precision, from a distance, the strategy reflects how we want to operate, rather than how our potential enemies might want us to operate, or how we might be compelled to operate in token remote expeditionary operations.
Whether in peace or conflict, selective control of vital national interests and areas will be essential to focus Australia’s limited forces to best effect.
Thus, the Australian Defence Force would be operating asymmetrically.
‘Control and Protect’ directly addresses Australia’s 21st century circumstances because it:
• supersedes both the expeditionary and defence of Australia models,
• sustains our alliances within a distinctively Australian context,
• unambiguously distinguishes between wars of necessity and wars of choice,
• maximises our comparative advantages,
• minimises the risk of unintended consequences,
• does not invent threats,
• recognises that there are things we cannot do, and should not do,
• explicitly connects our national security to that of our neighbours, and
• is not an adjunct to someone else’s policy.
A Defence Strategy for the 21st Century
Neither of Australia’s two traditional defence postures is relevant to 21st century values, politics, demographics, or security developments.
They should be replaced by ‘Control and Protect’, a strategy that emphasises the maintenance of peace and prosperity, avoids inappropriate interference, and is uniquely suited to Australia’s people, values, and place in the world.
Disclaimer: This article has been relieased as a discussion paper by the Williams Foundation.