What might happen if a future prime-minister allowed a CDF to do to DFAT what former diplomat Sir Arthur Tange did to the defence force and the Department of Defence?
Last Sunday, outside in the garden, I dozed off while reading Peter Edwards’ biography of Sir Arthur Tange.
On Tuesday, as we hurried between meetings, Barney (my boss, Air Marshal Barney Stoush, the VCDF) asked what I was reading at present and I told him.
Prompted perhaps by my story, he recounted at some length a daydream he once had spurred by the very same subject, a sunny late afternoon one weekend and a good red.
This vision apparently involved an incoming Government, elected as a new broom, ‘doing a Tange’ back on DFAT from whence Tange originally came.
The newly-elected prime-minister, who fancied himself an intellectual with reformist pretensions, was perhaps spurred on by an anti-diplomat mindset. He called in the Chief of the Defence Force and authorised him to completely reorganise Australia’s entire diplomatic and trade facilitation structures, on his own, and without having to consult with anyone or be accountable for his actions, ever.
With such mandarin-type powers our CDF set to work. He abolished, amalgamated and gutted DFAT divisions and branches willy nilly.
He appointed former and serving defence force officers as high commissioners and ambassadors as he liked, and ordered the diplomatic finishing school to replace negotiation skills with infantry minor tactics training.
In an enduring masterpiece of empire building he quadrupled the number of Senior Executive Service positions in the department and appointed ex-defence force officers to nearly all the new jobs.
All the senior and experienced diplomats who opposed or just doubted the validity of his wholesale changes — and sought genuine reform instead — were retired, seconded to academia or sent off to run an intelligence agency.
With little effort this CDF then convinced the by now busy and otherwise distracted prime-minister to appoint a weak and compliant senior diplomat as a type of under-boss. They gave him the glorified title Chief of the Diplomatic and Foreign Service (CDFS).
Finally, he imperiously decreed that there would be no reviews or changes to the new DFAT structure for seven years.
After a short time the urge to interfere itched stronger and the CDF thoroughly reorganised the total diplomatic establishment.
He closed down diplomatic posts in countries he did not like and fiddled with every small detail of how Australia’s diplomats undertook their roles and tasks in everyday action.
In so doing he suffered not the remotest twinge of self-doubt. Obviously he instinctively knew best how diplomats actually undertook frontline diplomacy under any and all circumstances.
Our rampaging CDF and his willing ex-military minions throughout the department chose how our diplomats walked, talked, dressed and toasted.
To emphasise their assumed superior knowledge about even the most obscure technical aspects of diplomacy they specified what cars deployed diplomats were to drive, how many they needed, what colours they could be and whether they really needed luxuries such as spare tyres, door-locks, jacks or street directories.
Ostensibly to cut costs, they also instituted a new policy of buying vehicles fitted-for-but-not-with heaters for embassies such as Moscow or Beijing, and then introduced the same policy concerning air-conditioning for the cars to be used in Riyadh and Delhi.
When frontline diplomats complained of the safety, security or operational utility problems incurred by such arbitrary policies our zealous CDF sent them scornful memos and sacked the loudest complainants. Others were exiled to Lagos, Harare and Rangoon.
Whispering campaigns were instituted to destroy the promotion prospects of incipient critics by claiming that they lacked 'policy skills' or were 'recalcitrant' types who simply 'could not get on with the military’.
The more persistent complainants were told time and time again that their desire for a spare tyre or a door-lock was thoroughly unreasonable and was simply ‘gold-plating’ the operational requirement.
Finally, our omniscient CDF insisted that all car-jacks bought be made of cheap plastic as an economy measure, and that only ten-year old photo-copies of street directories be purchased. When questioned he snapped that there was no sound operational requirement for more up-to-date ones as everyone knew none of the vehicles would ever be used in action anyway.
Soon the new DFAT structure became dysfunctional under the weight of all the internal contradictions inflicted.
But our CDF dynast relied on his trusted ex-ADF officers, and a few laterally-recruited pet academics, to defend his legacy and the career structure he had entrenched them in.
When his former ADF acolytes started referring to themselves as an essential ‘diplomatic priesthood’ he applauded and encouraged this as the status quo. Critics among the real diplomats were simply derided as mere malcontents and troublemakers.
The masterpiece of his reorganisation over the long term was his careful selection and grooming of some careerist diplomats who saw which way the wind was blowing and changed course accordingly.
These ‘Uncle Toms’ were promoted to higher and higher rank across the department. They could then be relied on to discreetly punish junior diplomats who protested the destruction of diplomatic professionalism and the decline in Australia’s proud diplomatic capabilities.
Of course not everything went swimmingly with Australia’s international intercourse.
For decades, every few years, various parliamentary and official inquiries were regularly needed to tinker with the unworkable DFAT structure.
Luckily his disciples were able to rely on the short attention span of Cabinet, parliament and the media. It was relatively easy as no-one in any of them had any real experience as a frontline diplomat.
The coterie of ex-ADF officers, academics and Uncle Toms were able to keep snowing thoroughly over-worked Ministers as to the real cause of DFAT’s by now deep-seated institutional culture malaise and structural problems.
Barney confessed, however, that his daydream reverie was eventually disturbed by the simple reality that no responsible Prime-Minister would ever allow a military officer, no matter how distinguished, such destructive latitude. Nor would any responsible PM or minister then ignore the subsequent problems for decades.
No Minister for Foreign Affairs with integrity would preside over or defend such an enduring national scandal.
After all, this would be just like authorising an arrogant diplomat, with no real military experience, to have an unfettered mandate to ignore military professional expertise and completely change the way Australia planned and managed its defence, how the defence force was to be structured and equipped, and how it should actually have to fight.
That would never do would it?