Policy Discussion Paper - Australia Defence Association

Latest ADA Commentary

ADA National Office:

General Enquiries

Feedback to the ADA

Defender

Advertising in Defender

Media Liaison

(02) 6231-4444

+61-2-6231-4444

PO Box 320
Erindale Centre
ACT 2903
Australia

If you have something to say about national security you can also tell these prominent people

Australia's history as a European settlement almost precisely parallels the history of modern warfare between highly mobilised states. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars ushered in the practice of extensive economic and manpower mobilisation to support armed conflict. This practice reached its zenith with World War II which witnessed unparalleled casualty rates and economic destruction. Germany and Japan were destroyed utterly while other countries, notably the Soviet Union, China, France and Italy suffered heavy damage requiring extensive investment to repair. Great Britain was impoverished and even Australia, largely untouched by military operations, lost heavily especially in the agricultural sector as investment and maintenance expenditures were suspended.

Subsequent wars have been much less intense although the call upon resources of manpower and wealth inflicted significant economic damage to the United States. Of course, for the two Koreas and Vietnams, the wars on their territory were total and their effects have not been overcome yet except in South Korea. The 1991 Middle East war which followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait may have signalled the end of the large scale war, at least for several generations. The combination of accurate and destructive conventional weapons, the manifest superiority of well-trained, equipped and motivated forces over conscript armies, and the ability of an enraged coalition of nations to mobilise overwhelming power in a relatively short time was decisive. The damage inflicted on Iraq's large military machine and national infrastructure in a matter of days was so catastrophic as to act as a serious deterrent to future military adventurism. Similar conclusions can be drawn from Israel's series of victories over its numerically superior enemies.

By contrast, the 1982 Falklands War between Britain and Argentina will be a better example of future international conflict. This was a war that was tightly constrained in time, space and intensity almost by mutual agreement. Nevertheless, it was still significantly damaging to Argentina's long-term national interests. Equally, a reversal of the outcome would have hurt Britain in the long term. While certainty is a luxury that cannot be enjoyed by any nation, post-World War II experience suggests that the most substantial conflict that Australia could be involved in on its own is unlikely to be sufficiently intense to engage the full resources of the nation. In any larger conflict, the involvement of key allies can be expected in their own interest of containing conflict and ensuring that aggression is not seen to be successful. As a significant power and a good world citizen with well-established alliances, Australia can confidently expect external support.

On the other hand, human nature being what it is virtually guarantees the continuation of conflict that will extend to armed conflict. Not only will aggressive nations use other nations or sub-national organisations as surrogates but such sub-national groups will themselves pose security threats of varying intensity in their own interest. Some of those will call for multinational responses if only because the interests of several nations will be engaged. Modern warfare - or conflict management - is taking on new forms. The ADF and the Australian community must not only be ready for it but must use their power and influence to shape the strategic environment in which we live. We have to mould our approach on that of the great classical strategist, Sun Tzu, who said that: to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.

Future conflict involving the use of national military forces may involve a multiplicity of challenges. These will range from basic constabulary tasks of using non-lethal weapons to deal with refugees, smugglers, poachers and the like to a highly sophisticated conflict in which the primary weapons may well be electronic rather than explosive. Australia could face international pressure, perhaps with a military dimension, to accept large numbers of refugees or to make resources such as uranium more available to those who need them. Religious conflict, perhaps involving Christian and Islamic nations, could be a factor although given the markedly less militant attitudes to religion in Australia and its region, this contingency currently seems remote. What is certain is that the nature of the conflict will depend heavily upon who the enemy is and how sophisticated is his operational capability.

The American futurists, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, refer to three waves of civilisation, the First Wave being agricultural, the Second industrial and the Third based on information or knowledge. They argue that the making and conduct of war by any country reflects its civilised status. Inevitably there is some overlap between the three but the differences are substantial. Australia as a community demonstrates elements of all three but is rapidly becoming a Third Wave nation. Second Wave warfare is the kind with which Australians are most familiar. Second Wave warfare, the warfare of the Industrial Revolution, is based upon the mass mobilisation of the economy and population for military purposes. It is characterised by massive destruction and casualties as well as crippling cost. It reached its peak in World War II but the Cold War with its development of largely invulnerable weapons of mass destruction and the great compression of time and space has made this form of warfare simply too dangerous.

The more primitive pre-industrial countries of the so-called Third World still fight their wars on a First Wave basis. They lack the resources for large scale sustained conflict although their access to modern weapons, mostly basic items such as small arms and land mines, make their wars more destructive of people than was customary. Third Wave warfare will focus on the vulnerabilities of Third Wave societies - their access to information and knowledge, and their ability to exchange these commodities. It will target communications especially because that is where such societies are most vulnerable. It is cheaper, easier and more damaging to destroy the computer systems which control telecommunications networks than it is to destroy some major resource or infrastructure installation. That is not to argue, however, that Third Wave nations are not vulnerable to the destruction of important resources or industrial facilities

As an added challenge, the First and Second Wave nations with which Australia may find itself in conflict are not so vulnerable to attacks on their information systems. We can rarely pick our enemy and we must always identify his particular vulnerabilities and attack them. The nature of any conflict will depend heavily upon the status and vulnerabilities of the enemy. Given that Australia could be - and has been - in conflict with First and Second Wave societies and could conceivably be with a Third Wave society, the ADF will need to develop or be able to call upon a wide range of capabilities.

Reflecting these changes, some modern thought, especially in the United States, refers to a 'Revolution in Military Affairs' or 'The Military-Technical Revolution'. To a considerable extent, the concept of this 'revolution' is centred in the United States and focuses more upon technology than operational concepts or organisation. This paper does not attempt to canvass the range of views, many of them sceptical, about this so-called 'revolution'. In fact, any attempt to so encapsulate the rapid changes in technology, organisation and operational concepts may well be misleading. The nature of modern conflict will depend heavily upon the task, the development status of the enemy and the objectives set by the national authority. These will affect critical elements such as Rules of Engagement, the types of weapons that can be deployed and used, possible requirements to actively limit collateral damage and so on. Armed forces need to develop the maximum adaptability to meet the particular circumstances and avoid rigid concepts or doctrines that will be too limiting.

On a more positive note, the complex demands of particular circumstances coupled with the availability to the individual soldier of near-real time intelligence, sophisticated sensors and powerful weapons will empower junior leaders (including NCOs) and perhaps even private soldiers. Battlefield commanders and national command authorities will have to delegate greater powers to subordinates or risk defeat. Commanders will have greater ability to monitor events on the battlefield but, paradoxically, will be less able to intervene and manage the battle. This development has substantially positive benefits for Australia. The traditional Australian military qualities of adaptability, improvisation and high quality junior leadership will vastly enhance the power of the ADF if these qualities continue to be fostered. It is to this extent that the so-called Revolution has less relevance to Australia than it does to the mass formations of large armies of more populous countries.

While there can be considerable optimism that Australia's future will be free of large-scale military conflict, any assumption that the same future will be conflict-free is naive. The extent of Australia's regional and global interests, especially the interest in containing conflict, demands that the national government have the option to use or threaten to use military force to support its policies. That interest is shared by many other nations including Australia’s traditional allies of the West. These particularly include the ABCA nations - America, Britain, Canada and Australia, to which should be added New Zealand. This grouping which is linked by tradition, history, language and social institutions should provide a core of respected and powerful countries which can combine as they have in the past to intervene to reduce conflict. While there is no formal treaty structure linking all these nations (and there is probably no need for one), policy should continue to sustain the combined political and military strengths of the group.

Within South-East Asia, the growing relationship between the ASEAN nations and the other members of the ASEAN Regional Forum offers prospects for continuing stability that will protect Australia by creating a buffer of friendly nations around the continent. Although not bound by any military alliance, the relationship notionally confers mutual strength on every member of the group and is a factor that any potential enemy must take into account. Of course, it follows that the strength and resilience of each of these groupings depends heavily upon mutual assistance. If any member manifestly lacked the capability to support the others and if its declaratory policies appeared to rule out mutual assistance, not only would the deterrent effect be reduced but the resultant suspicion would sharply reduce the protective effect of the alliance. Regrettably, the management of change in East Timor has revealed rather than caused inherent weaknesses in these regional security structures.

Since the end of the Cold War, the capacity of the United Nations Security Council to fulfil its designed role of peacekeeping has been significantly enhanced, at least at the conceptual level. The ending of the incessant Soviet veto of proposals for UN intervention has resulted in a vast increase in the number and extent of commitments to peacekeeping and, more tentatively, peacemaking operations. That many of these, especially the latter, have been noted failures does not obviate the potential for success in the longer term future. In this context, the UN system is in a period of transition and it is clearly in the interests of the non-great power members of the UN to try to make the system work effectively. As an important power with a long-standing commitment to forms of collective security, Australia has a large interest in contributing to the success of peacemaking and peacekeeping.

Finally, although because of its wealth, space and generally tolerant society, Australia is potentially attractive to various forms of pressure, it also has the capacity to neutralise hostile direct pressures because of its wider regional and global relationships. But, as described above, Australia's relative immunity from direct pressure upon its territorial integrity does not mean that its broader national interests are equally immune. The reality suggests that Australia's strategic priorities ought to be reversed so that territorial integrity is downgraded as a priority in favour of a more expansive security outlook. Thus our defence strategy ought to be based upon the following approach:

Adoption of such priorities takes advantage of Australia's existing and potential strategic assets. No policy should surrender or appear to surrender those assets without being forced to do so. In the worst conceivable case, possession of these assets allows Australia to trade space for time but also ensures that Australia cannot be isolated without allies. Moreover a proactive rather than reactive approach to security issues and the use of the Australian Defence Force to further these strategies gives Australia a greater ability to control its own security environment. These priorities should also drive force capability decisions because they then maximise our combat potential. By creating opportunities to gain wider and deeper experience within a small ADF, they actually serve to maintain a more effective expansion base should that be needed.

Clearly the Australian experience has been to use the ADF in support of the government's broad security policy even though the force has rarely been prepared to or capable of responding to the specific contingency. Thus the notion of structuring the ADF to respond to the so-called 'credible contingencies' or of reducing the concept of threat to one or a small number of possible scenarios automatically and voluntarily reduces the ability of the national government to formulate and implement a genuine national security policy. The current fashion of defining security so widely that almost any issue, even unemployment, can be asserted to be a security issue does not negate the fundamental reality that the armed forces of any nation exist to support national policy by the use or threat of use of armed force against some external actor. This conventional view, familiar to most nations, can be extended to include the passive concept that a nation's armed forces by their manifest existence and capability reduce the options of any potential enemy. Implicit in this general concept is that the ADF has value by its existence provided that it is capable of being used. Whether any government has the desire or intention to use the ADF in any circumstance is irrelevant; the ADF will be factored in to the calculations of others as well as by ourselves.

On the other hand, if the ADF is manifestly incapable of performing some tasks, that incapacity has the potential to attract the attention of a potential aggressor. Similarly if Australia asserts before the event that, as a matter of policy, it will not use the ADF in a range of circumstances, that assertion reduces the level of uncertainty for a potential enemy. The task of defence policy then is to provide government with the widest range of options for the use or threat of use of military force in its dealings with other nations. For Australia's neighbours, the development of a force with more flexible capabilities should not be seen to be threatening if only because Australia manifestly has no serious claims upon any other country nor can its forces of themselves ever be large enough seriously to threaten the survival of another. Furthermore the manifestation of an Australian military capacity to respond effectively to a wide range of circumstances generates confidence among friends and wider international influence which can, in turn, be used to promote national interests.