* This article is based on the author’s winning entry in the Chief of Army’s Essay Competition 2003.
It probably never made sense to conceptualise our security interests as a series of diminishing concentric circles around our coastline, but it certainly does not do so now.
- Senator Robert Hill1
The White Paper, Defence 2000: Our Future Defence Force, affirms the ‘defence of Australia’ (DOA) paradigm as the strategic foundation and primary forcestructure determinant for the Australian Defence Force (ADF).2 Despite this commitment, the Minister for Defence, Senator Robert Hill, made it very clear in a recent address to the Australian Defence College that he considers Australia’s current defence strategy to be inappropriate given new strategic circumstances. Citing the presence of a mismatch between strategic policy and operational reality, the Minister stated that purely geostrategic considerations should no longer define Australia’s defence strategy because of the globalised nature of contemporary security concerns.3
The Minister’s address to the Australian Defence College represented not only a significant departure from Australian strategic thinking built up over the past twenty-five years, but it was also a rejection of the Government’s extant defence policy espousing strategic geography as the foundation of Australian military strategy.
Senator Hill is not the only critic of the geographical construct of DOA. Other critics, such as Australian National University academic, Alan Dupont, have argued that Australia’s defence strategy is an anachronism and that most contemporary Western states are reordering their priorities in order to put less emphasis on conventional conflict in favour of the diverse range of security and constabulary tasks dominating the global strategic landscape.4 Traditionalists, such as Paul Dibb, have replied to the criticism by arguing that previous successful deployments in operations in Cambodia, Somalia and East Timor demonstrate that forces structured for DOA can meet all the tasks required of the ADF. This article argues that the strategic paradigm of DOA is too narrowly conceived and is inappropriate as a force structure determinant for the ADF in the new millennium. An examination of the evolution of Australia’s defence strategy, and of the current regional and global security environment, suggests that DOA is temporally and functionally disconnected from the reality of contemporary security challenges. In short, DOA doctrine has been exposed as containing too many weaknesses to serve as the strategic foundation for, and force structure determinant of, the ADF.
The Relationship Between Strategic Guidance and Force Structure
Before embarking on an analysis of Australia’s defence imperatives, it is necessary to examine the nexus between strategy and force structure. Strategic guidance is the foundation from which defence capability decisions are derived. Strategic guidance stipulates the tasks expected of the ADF and allows defence planners to formulate the most appropriate force structures in order to achieve strategic aims. Unfortunately, there are three inherent conceptual problems at work in the relationship between strategic guidance and force structure. Firstly, inappropriate or faulty strategic guidance risks distorting the process of force structure determination. In simple terms, if Australian strategic guidance is flawed, then the ADF risks finding itself structured for the wrong military tasks. Second, because strategic conditions are based on the ebb and flow of politics, strategy will always change faster than a new force structure can be developed.5 The sudden end of the Cold War in the early 1990s and the unexpected terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in 2001 provide classic examples of the politics of strategic unpredictability affecting force structure planning. Third, if strategic guidance is not accompanied by sufficient funding, no satisfactory force structure can be realised. Over the past fifteen years Australia’s defence budget has fallen from 2.5 per cent to 1.9 per cent of gross domestic product, with corresponding difficulties in meeting force structure requirements.6
The Evolution of Australia's Defence Strategy Since 1972
During the 1970s, following withdrawal from Vietnam, Australia’s strategic thinking changed from an emphasis on forward defence towards the adoption of a continental strategy, based on the defence of geography. There was considerable debate in Canberra between the Australian military and the Defence civilian bureaucracy as to how the ADF should realise a new continental defence strategy. By the mid-1980s the inability of ADF and Department of Defence staff to agree on basic force structure concepts, and the level of conflict against which the ADF should be structured, ultimately led to the commissioning of a special review into Australia’s Defence capabilities.7 The 1986 Review of Australia’s Defence Capabilities by Professor Paul Dibb provided the philosophical basis for the 1987, 1994 and 2000 White Papers. In all essentials, the 1986 Dibb Report remains the foundation stone of Australia’s strategic policy in 2003 and is reflected in much of the ADF’s current force structure.
By balancing Australia’s unique geostrategic position, the lack of any defined threat, and the ADF’s legacy force structure and capabilities, Dibb succeeded in outlining a strategy for the development of future ADF capabilities for DOA, thus appeasing both military professionals and civilian bureaucrats within the Department of Defence. With only minor changes, Dibb’s Review became the basis for the 1987 Defence White Paper. The latter aimed to defeat all credible threats to Australia through denial of the sea–air gap to the north out to a distance of 1000 nautical miles. Yet it was perhaps prophetic that, within weeks of the release of the 1987 White Paper, a military coup in Fiji revealed significant shortfalls in the force structure and readiness of the ADF for offshore contingencies.8 The Fiji coup foreshadowed the kinds of challenges that would emerge in the late 1990s and early 21st century—challenges that were not properly appreciated under Dibb’s narrow geostrategic approach to defence policy.
The Perceived Strengths of a DOA Strategy
Dibb’s DOA strategy of the late 1980s was popular for four reasons. First, the notion that the primary role of the ADF was to defend continental Australia made sense to an Australian public generally uninformed about defence issues. Second, DOA was widely accepted by the Australian military largely because the doctrine accommodated the legacy force structures and equipment of the 1970s. At the same time, the new strategy could also be used to justify the acquisition or replacement of equipment ranging from small arms to strategic strike weapons.9 Third, the DOA paradigm was defensive and was perceived by most Australians as unlikely to offend regional sensibilities. Fourth and finally, in the absence of a defined threat and significant operational challenges, DOA facilitated a consistent and long-term approach to force structure and capability development. The ability of DOA to appease all interested parties was particularly useful for the government of the day. Although the end of the Cold War was only two years away and the fall of the Soviet Union a mere four years in the future, the idea that Australian forces designed to defend Australia would soon be called on for offshore tasks, such as peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, was afforded little importance as a force structure determinant.
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 fundamentally altered the global balance of power, and resulted in the emergence of new and a much more fluid international security environment. Throughout the 1990s, successive Australian strategic reviews acknowledged these changes, albeit often slowly. However, the strategic judgment that Australia faced no identifiable threats remained central to Australia’s defence policy.10 This judgment occurred despite clear shortcomings in DOA strategy between declaratory policy and operational reality. From the early 1990s, it was evident that there were tasks for the ADF that did not fit neatly into the DOA geostrategic paradigm. These tasks included peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Rwanda and Cambodia; coalition operations in the Persian Gulf; and disaster relief in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
Thus, the first half of the 1990s presented some fundamental dilemmas for Australian defence planners seeking to come to terms with a much more fluid strategic environment. Official guidance nonetheless steadfastly stood by the DOA paradigm. The 1993 Strategic Review noted that, ‘[while] some operations have necessitated adjustments to peacetime unit structures and equipment acquisition priorities ... they have not caused major force structure changes’.11 As late as 2001, Paul Dibb, the principal architect of continental defence, warned that any change to the defence strategy adopted in 1987 and refined by subsequent White Papers would downgrade the ADF and leave Australia vulnerable to future military challenges.12 Nonetheless, the ADF’s deployment to East Timor after 1999 and the subsequent demands of the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2003 have steadily undermined confidence in the Dibb approach to defence policy.
The 2000 Defence White Paper
With the 1999 INTERFET deployment to East Timor fresh in the minds of Australian defence planners, the 2000 White Paper, Defending Australia, appeared to represent a major shift in official strategic thinking. Prime Minister John Howard described the document as being ‘the most comprehensive reappraisal of Australia’s defence capability for decades’.13 The review appeared to break the hold of strategic geography over Australian force structure by recognising that turbulent conditions in the Asia-Pacific—that which Defence Minister John Moore referred to as a ‘sea of instability’—would be of increasing military importance in the future.14 Yet, despite the appearance of change, a closer examination of the 2000 White Paper suggests that DOA (a denial strategy based on defending the sea–air gap) remains the foundation of Australian strategic doctrine. Although the White Paper attempted to address such shortcomings highlighted during ADF operations in East Timor—notably limited force projection and inadequacies in logistic sustainment—in reality the document failed to address DOA as the root cause of these problems. In the words of one critic, the 2000 White Paper was ‘more the culmination of the government’s recent drive for greater efficiency and accountability in Defence, than a comprehensive review of strategic policy’.15
Australia’s subsequent commitments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Solomon Islands between 2001 and 2003 highlight the conceptual problems and contradictions that are inherent in extant defence strategy. For example, Defence 2000 continues to assign relatively low priority to offshore operations, stating that such activities ‘[should not] detract from the ADF’s core function of defending Australia from armed attack’.16 Yet offshore missions such as peace enforcement and coalition operations are also ‘core tasks’ for the ADF since they impose a substantial burden on military forces structured for two decades for DOA. Similarly, Defence 2000’s continued emphasis on maintaining high-end capabilities in order to meet the needs of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is somewhat inconsistent with repeated assertions in the document that Australia faces no credible conventional threat.17 The content of the February 2003 Defence Update—with its focus on terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and non-state threats—is perhaps the most compelling evidence of a mismatch between Australia’s strategic desires and the structural realities of the ADF.18 It now appears crucial that the contradictions inherent in the 2000 Defence White Paper be addressed since the document provides neither consistent nor coherent guidance for future force-structure development.
Implications of a New Global Security Environment
Over the past three years, the rise of a new global security environment has overtaken the content of the 2000 Defence White Paper. Increasingly, global security is resembling the non-state, unconventional conflicts conducted by warlords, insurgents, paramilitary militias and criminal cartels outlined by such thinkers as the Israeli scholar, Martin Van Creveld, during the 1990s.19 As General Charles Krulak, Commandant of the US Marine Corps, once put it, future wars are likely to be ‘the stepchild of Somalia and Chechnya, rather than the son of Desert Storm’.20 Such views predated the al-Qa’ida terrorist attacks on the United States, and if anything the global security of the early 21st century has become even more complicated by adding pre-emption as a tool to counter unpredictable transnational threats. In response to the rise of globalised security, the Minister for Defence, Senator Hill, has stated, ‘the ADF is both more likely to be deployed, and increasingly likely to be deployed, well beyond Australia’.21 In overseas missions such as Afghanistan and Iraq, forces structured and equipped to defend Australia’s geography in conventional conflict have only been deployed in ‘niche’ contributions. A niche strategy is necessary because much of the ADF is not optimised to meet unconventional or offshore threats such as those posed by terrorism and instability in the Asia-Pacific. Local defence commitments, such as the missions to East Timor and the Solomon Islands, suggest that Australia needs much greater capacity for force projection, strategic lift and logistic support if it is to secure its interests in its own immediate region.
Towards a New Defence Strategy
The problem with Australian strategy lies in the construct that Defence of Australia is synonymous with continental defence. There are three fundamental failings in such a construct. The first of these is what Alan Dupont describes as ‘misplaced geographic determinism’.22 Put simply, Defence 2000 focuses too narrowly on structuring forces for operations within the sea–air gap. Yet in recent years operational deployments beyond Australia’s immediate neighbourhood have become the norm rather than the exception. These offshore operations are directly concerned with the Defence of Australia. The harsh reality is that the strategic environment of the early 21st century bears little resemblance to that described in the 2000 Defence White Paper. The current global security environment demonstrates that threats can arise well beyond the sea–air gap and still impact on Australia’s security. In an age of globalised security, threats cannot be easily deterred by either distance or borders. The transnational activities of al-Qa’ida and the international dynamics of the evolving nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula are two examples of the realities of globalised security. Increasingly, contemporary threats may need to be dealt with at their source, and this reality repudiates the notion that Australia’s security interests can be determined by the dictates of geography.23
The second fundamental failing of DOA is that it has not adequately prepared the ADF for the tasks required of it. The DOA concept structures the ADF to defeat conventional threats against Australia even though all Defence White Papers since 1976 have stated that such a threat is highly unlikely. Critics of DOA find it increasingly untenable that Australia consistently affords the highest priority and most resources to the least likely threat.24 Forces structured for DOA are clearly not optimised for the contemporary security challenges confronting the ADF, particularly the emerging phenomena of transnational threats. Recent force-structure changes such as increases in the numbers of Special Forces and the establishment of a chemical, biological and radiological defence capability are attempts to meet such shortcomings. There are also problems in the ADF with respect to readiness. While intelligence assessments state that major threats would be preceded by a warning time of approximately ten years, extant preparedness directives require that conventional forces be at 180 days (or less) notice to move. Similarly, ADF platforms ‘fitted for, but not with’ weapons capabilities under the DOA paradigm are unable to meet contemporary short-notice security tasks.
The third fundamental failing of DOA thinking is its failure to accurately address emerging global security trends, and the growing importance and prevalence of coalition operations. The 2003 Defence Update identifies this trend, noting that ADF involvement in coalition operations further afield is now more likely.25 In the evolving 21st-century strategic environment, Australia’s credibility will not be enhanced by reluctant or token contributions to coalition forces raised on the initiative of other, more proactive nations. Yet this is the situation bequeathed by DOA philosophy and the 2000 Defence White Paper. The increasing requirements of interoperability, logistic sustainment and force protection demonstrate that the DOA paradigm does not structure the ADF to contribute effectively within a multi-national coalition. Changes to force structure are required to provide the capabilities desired by the Australian Government, which needs such capabilities in order to meet an unpredictable and highly fluid strategic environment.
Conclusion
In the late 1980s, Paul Dibb’s DOA paradigm provided solace for Australia’s uniformed and civilian planners in the Department of Defence who endured considerable criticism for their lack of unified direction and coherence in strategic thinking. However, during the 1990s the rigidity implied by DOA became increasingly evident. By the end of the decade, there was a growing realisation that operational successes in missions to Somalia and East Timor had occurred not because of DOA force structures, but in spite of them. With this realisation came growing criticism of the DOA paradigm, particularly with respect to the evident mismatch between declaratory strategic policy (defence of continental geography) and operational realities (overseas deployments).
In 2003, with the ADF committed to East Timor, the Persian Gulf, the US-led ‘coalition of the willing’ against Iraq, and the Solomon Islands, it is apparent that the foundations of the DOA paradigm are fatally flawed. As the Minister for Defence implied in his recent address to the Australian Defence College, a strategy of defence-in-depth to counter conventional threats in the air–sea gap—the very essence of the DOA strategic paradigm—has little relevance to current and projected ADF operational activity.
The imperatives of a DOA philosophy based around geography should not be the primary force-structure determinant for the ADF. Such a construct places too much emphasis on geostrategic factors that may have been important during the static years of the Cold War but which are, in 21st-century conditions, no longer relevant to Australia’s security in an era of transnational threats. Persisting with a DOA approach based on strategic tradition and orthodoxy is to persist with a strategy that is temporally and functionally disconnected from contemporary security challenges. As the 2003 Defence Update notes, ‘the prospect of conventional military attack on Australian territory has diminished ... there is less likely to be a need for ADF operations in defence of Australia’.26 With the ADF stretched by deployments to Iraq, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands, and by border protection tasks, it is necessary to develop an appropriate defence policy based on ‘a new strategy for new times’.
Endnotes
1 Senator the Hon. Robert Hill, ‘Beyond the White Paper: Strategic Directions for Defence’, Address to the Australian Defence College, Canberra, 18 June 2002, viewed 24 February 2003, <http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/HillSpeechtpl.cfm?CurrentId=1605>.
2 Department of Defence, Defence 2000: Our Future Defence Force, AGPS, Canberra, 2000, p. xi.
3 Hill, ‘Beyond the White Paper: Strategic Directions for Defence’.
4 Hugh White, ‘Australian defence policy and the possibility of war’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, July 2002, vol. 56, no. 2, p. 253.
5 Alan Hinge, Australian Defence Preparedness: Principles, Problems and Prospects, ADSC, Canberra, 2000, p. 130.
6 Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Sinews of War: The Defence Budget in 2003 and How We Got There, Australian Strategic Policy Institute Ltd, Canberra, 2003, p. 16.
7 I. M. Cumpston, Australia’s Defence Policy 1901–2000, vol. 2, I. M. Cumpston, Canberra, 2001, p. 261.
8 Alan Hinge, Australian Defence Preparedness: Principles, Problems and Prospects, Australian Defence Studies Centre, Canberra, 2000, p. 31.
9 Ibid., p. 131.
10 Ian McLachlan, Michael O’Connor, Stewart Woodman and Derek Woolner, Australia’s Strategic Dilemmas: Options for the Future, Australian Defence Studies Centre, Canberra, 1997, p. 128.
11 Department of Defence, Strategic Review 1993, AGPS, Canberra, 1993, p. 46.
12 Paul Dibb, ‘Tinker with defence policy and risk attack’, Australian, 30 October 2001, p. 13.
13 Peter Chalk, Australian Foreign and Defense Policy in the Wake of the 1999/2000 East Timor Intervention, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 2001, p. 64.
14 Ibid., p. 63.
15 Stewart Woodman, ‘Not quite the full Monty?: Analysing Australia’s Defence White Paper’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, April 2001, vol. 55, no. 1, p. 29.
16 Defence 2000, p. 13.
17 Chalk, Australian Foreign and Defense Policy in the Wake of the 1999/2000 East Timor Intervention, p. 66.
18 Department of Defence, Australia’s National Security: A Defence Update, AGPS, Canberra, 2003.
19 Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War, The Free Press, New York, 1991, pp. 16–32.
20 General Charles C. Krulak, ‘The United States Marine Corps in the 21st Century’, RUSI Journal, vol. CXLI, no. II, August 1996, p. 25.
21 Hill, ‘Beyond the White Paper: Strategic Directions for Defence’.
22 Alan Dupont, ‘Modern wars can’t be based on obsolete battle plans’, Australian, 22 November 2002, p. 11.
23 Alan Dupont, ‘Straitjacket off as defence gets real’, Australian, 27 February 2003, p. 13.
24 M. Beeson, ‘Debating defence: time for a paradigm shift?’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, November 2000, vol. 54, no. 3, p. 257.
25 Australia’s National Security: A Defence Update, p. 23.
26 Ibid.
