What are perennial problems with planning Australia's defence and formulating national security policy?

The ten enduring principles of Australian national security planning

As discussed in more detail on our history page, the forming of the Australia Defence Association in mid 1975 resulted from our founders coming to ten fundamental conclusions and consequent principles about defence and wider national security issues in Australia, public debate about them, and the need for fresh thinking without abandoning hard-won historical and enduring lessons:

  • Australia's national wealth, standard of living and whole way of life generally have always depended heavily on our ability to import and export goods and commodities respectively via seaborne international trade over secure lines of communication in a stable strategic environment regionally and globally.

    • Australia has therefore long had enduring national interests beyond our shores and indeed the "bush-focused", continental-minded cultural perspectives of many Australians traditionally.

    • We rely fundamentally on an international system that allows such trade and associated intercourse to occur securely, efficiently, freely and according to the rule-of-law internationally.

    • Over 99 per cent of our exports by volume, and over 75 per cent by value, travel in ships. Without the ability to sustain maritime trade Australia would be a very different country.

    • The fall of Saigon in May 1975 to a major North Vietnamese conventional invasion was a strategic watershed for Australia.

    • This development followed the strategic withdrawal of the US from the South East Asian mainland over the 1972-75 period, the earlier British strategic withdrawal from 'east of Suez' by 1971, and in 1969 the USA's declaration of the Guam Doctrine concerning allied responsibilities for defence self-reliance. New and integrated thinking on how to defend Australia was and remains needed.

  • Australia's conceptualisation and practice of national security therefore need to encompass the protection and advancement of our national sovereignty and strategic freedom of action in the fullest sense.

    • This means protecting and furthering our national interests as well as just defending our physical territory, territorial seas, territorial airspace, extended economic zones and offshore resources.

    • Our national interests are primarily of an economic and strategic nature, but traditionally Australia has also had other national interests concerning the moral and legal basis, and effective operation, of the international system.

    • These latter interests include our collective security responsibilities as a (founding) United Nations member under the UN Charter, our collective defence responsibilities under several mutual defence treaties and guarantees in our region, and Australia's longstanding membership of — and political and cultural affinity with — the informal coalition of older and newer liberal democracies generally known as the Western Alliance.

  • Public argument over Australian participation in the Vietnam War during the 1962-1975 period had become very politically polarised, and often simplistic and subjective (either way).

    • Objective and informed debate for or against the commitment had tended to be increasingly swamped by extreme, violently expressed and often highly emotional and uninformed opinion.

    • These high degrees of polarisation and subjectivity had crossed over to wider debate on defence and broader national security issues generally. This trend continued after Australia's active participation in the Vietnam War had ended in late 1972.

    • It has unfortunately lingered to the present day among many Australians, particularly those whose thinking remains trapped in the outmoded cultural and ideological paradigms of the 1960s and 1970s rather than acknowledging or understanding Australia's current and future strategic challenges.

  • Public interest in defence and wider national security issues in Australia is also often marred by widespread lack of interest, limited knowledge and even outright ignorance.

    • It tends to cycle between apathy (the opinion that Australia cannot be defended so why try) on the one extreme, and irrational fears or ideological fixations on the other.

    • Such fears include phenomena such as 'Yellow peril' invasion scares and irrational suspicions and misunderstandings about our near neighbour, Indonesia.

    • The ideological fixations have included the complacent belief during the Cold War that there was absolutely not any threat from communism or that some form of strategic or moral neutrality was and remains a serious or even viable option for Australia's modern strategic posture.

  • Even among those Australians who take some interest in defence and national security matters, there is often a pervasive but unrealistic belief that our defence planning should be based solely on the perceived absence or presence of threats that might be readily identified and agreed upon at any one time. This belief runs counter to historical experience and commonsense because it disregards:

    • the intrinsic unpredictability of the future;

    • the speed at which unforseen or new strategic challenges tend to emerge;

    • the difficulty in actually identifying threats early enough to respond to them effectively anyway;

    • the perpetual difficulty of securing agreement by our government (and the wider Australian community) that a threat or risk now exists; and

    • constant and usually irreconcilable background arguments about what is, and is not, a potential threat and what its perceived likelihood or seriousness might be.

Entirely threat-based paradigms are therefore an ineffective means on which to base Australian strategic policy and defence capability development (not least because of the very long time scales and considered efforts involved with the latter). It would be better instead to develop and maintain a balanced and versatile defence force, that can be reasonably capable of coping with or adapting to the types of future strategic challenge that usually cannot be predicted with much accuracy – if indeed all or even any of them can be forecast or assessed in detail effectively at all.

  • Often allied to narrow or inappropriate dependence on threat-based paradigms is a politically convenient but historically disproven belief. This is that Australian strategic policy, and consequently prudent levels of investment in our defence, should be based on the funding thought to be available politically at any one time, rather than what is actually needed by strategic reality or proper risk management in the short term and over the long run.

    • Again it would be better instead to base Australian strategic policy on intellectually objective and robust assessments of future risks and, only then, decide the level of investment that can be afforded accordingly – and the risk management strategies that would need to be implemented where levels of possible investment alone are or might become insufficient.

    • The strategies and defence capabilities we need should drive national investment in our defence and foreign policy.

    • Not, as usually happens in Australia under governments of both political persuasions, the dollars thought to be available politically driving politically convenient but inadequate strategic policy and defence capability development.

  • Effective defence capability development programs require decades to implement.

    • They need to be sustained by a robust and consistent approach to strategic policy development and force structuring, and by consistent and adequate funding over lengthy periods.

    • This is also far more economic and efficient over the long run than the fluctuating levels of investment that Australian governments  have tended to allocate to national defence responsibilities.

    • Proper consideration of defence and wider national security matters in Australia has instead tended to bog down continually in a mix of :

      • party-political rivalries;

      • ideological constructs;

      • bureaucratic processes;

      • insufficient investment;

      •  narrowly-defined academic theories and fads concerning potential threats and their perceived likelihood or absence; and

      •  the endemic short-term perspectives engendered by Australia’s three-year federal electoral cycle and its attendant party-political, media and public debate cultures.

  • Australia therefore needs an independent public ‘ginger group’ in a permanent public-interest watchdog role to:

    • help stimulate, nurture, inform and monitor effective public debate on defence and wider national security issues;

    • provide an independent, long-term and authorative perspective to such debate;

    • help keep the national political process honest in regard to defence and wider national security issues;

    • help keep public debate genuinely informed rather than subject to political, ideological or academic fads and biases; and

    • help educate the Australian public in such matters.

  • To enable the informed, balanced and longer-term perspectives required such a public-interest watchdog organisation must:

    • incorporate both public-interest guardianship and 'think-tank' functions in order to provide reasoned advocacy based on sound and objective research, a long-term view and long-term corporate knowledge;

    • be credible by being truly independent, scrupulously non-partisan and determinedly apolitical;

    • be particularly independent from sectional interests and biases such as political parties, the various bureaucratic elements involved with defence or national security policy, defence industry and other commercial interests, and the defence force or the intelligence services as both institutions and professions; and

    • embody the principle that defence is a universal civic responsibility of all Australians by being broadly community-based, rather than Association membership and support relying on participation by only those Australians with, say, defence force, intelligence agency or similar service at some time in their lives.