Book Review - The War Game. Australian War Leadership from Gallipoli to Iraq

Written by David Horner

Allen & Unwin Book Publishers, 2022, 464 pp

Paperback ISBN: 9781761065958

Reviewed by: John Nash

Eminent historian David Horner’s latest work is concerned with Australian war leadership and asks the question: ‘Why has Australia gone to war nine times in a century?’ It focuses on the politicians and top-level military leaders in Australian history and examines why and how Australia committed its troops to wars, from the First World War through to the second Iraq War in 2003. The nine wars that he examines comprise both World Wars, Korea, the Malayan Emergency, the Confrontation with Indonesia, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, operations in Afghanistan, and finally the 2003 Iraq War. Not surprisingly, the First and Second World Wars take up the first half of the book, with three and four chapters respectively. 

This is not a book about leadership in battle, or the conduct of military campaigns. Instead it is focused on the politicians who commit to war and on the high-level military officers and public servants who advise and assist them before and during the conflict. This approach offers a fresh perspective from previous works. In this sense there are two parts to the examination of each war: the first is the commitment to the war, and the second part looks at the conduct of the war. 

For Australia, the decision to commit was straightforward when it came to the two World Wars. Where the mother country Britain went, Australia followed, even into war. This sense of obligation is best encapsulated by Horner’s quotation of Prime Minister Menzies’s radio address on 3 September 1939, when he declared to his fellow Australians that it was his ‘melancholy duty’ to tell them that, as a result of Britain declaring war on Germany, ‘Australia is also at war’. As Horner points out, technically Australia could have made its own declaration of war in 1939, but the connection to Britain was still so great that it was taken for granted Australia would be there.[1] 

Less straightforward were the political decisions taken during these wars. Australia’s lack of agency was often highlighted by its forces being committed to battles or campaigns by the British High Command, with little or no consultation, leaving Australia to find out after the fact. In the case of Australian troops landing at Gallipoli, the Australian Government found out four days afterwards.[2] Likewise in the Second World War, the Royal Australian Navy was under British Admiralty command and Australian Army divisions were often committed with little to no Australian input, or with inadequate information provided to its commanders.

After the Second World War, the policy of automatically following Britain into battle came to be replaced by a heightened awareness of how Australia engages on the world stage, including what conflicts Australia commits to and how its forces operate. Australia’s military response to the Korean War marked the beginning of this change. Being under the auspices of the United Nations, the commitment itself was rather uncontentious. While Australia controlled its forces’ commitment carefully, it nevertheless still had little say in their operational employment while they were in Korea. In contrast, by the time of the Vietnam War and Indonesia’s confrontation with Malaysia, Australia was carefully controlling both what forces it committed and how those forces were employed. 

To illustrate this progression, Horner cites several examples. He contrasts Australia’s lack of oversight during the two World Wars with Cabinet’s deliberate decision-making concerning the possible commitment of 4 RAR for operations in Sarawak, Malaysia, in 1966. He also shows how close oversight of military personnel commitments became a predominant government consideration throughout the period from the Vietnam War to the Gulf War. Indeed, it is apparent that successive governments have had an obsession with personnel numbers. For instance, in 1966 when Australia already had 4,554 troops in Malaysia, the chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Wilton, had to seek formal approval from the Minister for Defence to increase the force by 69 personnel.[3] This ‘cap’ on personnel numbers in theatre would become a contentious issue in 2003, during Operations BASTILLE and FALCONER in Iraq, when the deployment cap of 2,058 Australian Defence Force personnel was seemingly a hard ceiling.[4] 

What is made clear by Horner’s history is that Australian defence policy on military commitments has followed a fairly basic principle since Korea:

Australia was finely calibrating how much military support it needed to commit to gain approval form the United States, while ensuring that the commitment was not too burdensome, and that casualties were limited. It was a strategy Australia had applied since 1950 and one that would be pursued for the next 60 years.[5]

This is not a new sentiment, but Horner’s work helps explore how this basic strategic principle has played out in the post-Second World war era. What is less clear are his prescriptions for the future. Horner quotes pessimistic views on the risk to Australia of tying itself to the supposed decline of American power but does not proffer a view as to what the alternative might be. Exhortations to do better in the future when committing Australian forces to war ring hollow without a guide as to what strategic threshold would better support Australian military commitments, or how Australia would defend itself in lieu of its primary alliance.

The book is well referenced, using a variety of sources including interviews, archival material, and secondary literature. There is a nice selection of black-and-white photos included in the middle section, focused on the politicians and military leaders that appear throughout. However, as Horner acknowledges, a major issue bedevilling the final chapter of the book on Afghanistan and Iraq is the lack of publicly available records. This gap will no doubt be filled by the Australian Government’s forthcoming four-volume Official History series on operations in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2014. In that series, decisions relating to Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan and then Iraq will undoubtedly be better unravelled, especially with regard to decisions around what forces and capabilities would be committed and why. So too might the issue of personnel caps be better illuminated. Overall, The War Game is recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the history of Australia’s strategic policy.