How Whole is Whole of Government? The Reality of Australian Responses to Offshore Contingencies

Abstract

Over the past decade, Australia has been called upon to conduct a range of whole of government interventions, as both a lead and contributing country. The experience has taught us a lot about how to prepare for and conduct such missions. It has also taught us much about the political and risk factors that often work against achieving a unified approach to such contingencies. Ten years on, though, it is fair to say that Australia has improved systemically in being able to mount such operations, but more still needs to be done.

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‘Whole of government’ is a term that suffers from a lack of clarity but an overabundance of usage. Initially the preserve of domestic public policy initiatives that crossed numerous portfolios, it is now applied to overseas commitments of Australian assets to offshore contingencies as varied as disaster relief, dealing with the aftermath of terrorist attacks, and stabilisation or counterinsurgency operations. Even the definition endorsed by the Army’s Chiefs of Staff Committee in 2009 comes from a 2004 Public Service Commission document that is very much about domestic interagency cooperation, reflecting the policy-making antecedents of the concept.¹ The notion of whole of government, however, has moved on from that of purely domestic policy consequence to one that is meant to connote a well coordinated approach using all of the government’s resources to achieve a desired foreign policy outcome offshore in potentially insecure environments.

In reality though, Australia’s ability to conduct truly whole of government missions overseas has not always been in evidence. At times the concept has lived up to its name; the Regional Assistance Mission to Soflomon Islands (RAMSI) intervention that commenced in 2003 was a broad, multi-departmental task force that deployed in an uncertain security environment and continues to provide stability to a near neighbour. The intervention has been praised by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and was the subject of a RAND Corporation report that noted the mission’s signature characteristic as ‘the extent to which the military, police, aid organisations, and foreign affairs organisations cooperated in addressing what they agreed to accomplish and constraining themselves to those areas’.² By contrast, Australia’s whole of government commitment to Iraq was undertaken in a reluctant, limited and piecemeal fashion while the national effort in Afghanistan began in similar fashion but has started to develop in a more coherent multiagency fashion.

Such uneven approaches raise the question as to how much we have learnt from our recent experiences and the degree to which Australia has developed a coordinated and effective approach to interagency operations overseas. Creating well coordinated, whole of government offshore interventions is difficult given the myriad elements required. Some of them are readily quantifiable: interagency planning capacity, availability of assets, well defined control arrangements and interagency liaison capability to name a few. More subjective elements are less easily quantified but have just as significant an impact: departmental interpretation of the national interest involved, and strategic intent for particular missions; the degree of Australian leadership involved and risk tolerance, for example. There are too many variables at play to believe that any broad-based intervention will work perfectly, but the way in which the key elements for interagency cooperation are developed prior to deployments will to a large degree determine how successful the interventions are. This article argues that while we have advanced systemically in our ability to deliver whole of government responses to offshore contingencies, there remains a range of shortfalls and subjective approaches that limit our ability to truly deliver a whole of government outcome.

Creating well coordinated, whole of government offshore interventions is difficult given the myriad elements required.

The Future Reality Of Australian Military Interventions

The future is, as we all know, difficult to predict. While security analysts and military practitioners prophesise about the nature of future war, the conduct of military operations often bears little resemblance to that which the pundits predicted would be the case. Concepts such as the Revolution in Military Affairs emphasised the triumph of technology over mass, while the United States’ ‘shock and awe’ view of future battle was based on the orchestrated use of overwhelming force and rapid manoeuvre during the opening phase of a conflict to paralyse opponents’ abilities to mount effective defences. The experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have shown that such concepts have limited utility in contemporary counterinsurgency operations. ‘Shock and awe’ may be successful in the initial phases of inter-state conflict but in complex socio-political environments its effects dissipate quickly.³ And while the Revolution in Military Affairs has some applicability in both theatres (the use of unmanned aerial vehicles being a good example), the need for troop ‘surges’ show that sometimes mass is an expensive but necessary component for tactical success on the modern battlefield.

Strategic commentators developed these concepts largely in isolation, and based their work on an assumed environment without regard to the geographic or societal limitations on the employment of military technology. There was no room for interagency cooperation in these concepts, so few if any people delved into the complexities of multiagency operations. The United States Marine Corps (USMC) came closest to realising the nature of future operations with their concept of the ‘Three-Block War’, where peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and warfighting were likely to occur simultaneously and in close proximity to each other. General Charles Krulack’s article identified the complexities of future conflicts facing the military but focused on the requirements that would likely be needed by the junior leaders of the future, hence the term the ‘strategic corporal’.⁴ The last decade has seen military operations of the type envisaged by the USMC become the norm and Krulack’s concept of the strategic corporal has proven to be applicable not only to junior military leaders but also to soldiers and officers at all levels, and more importantly increasingly to staff from other government agencies likely to be involved in such operations. The acknowledgement of this new reality was not, however, taken up much outside the USMC at the time.

In the case of Australia neither the Australian Defence Force (ADF) nor other government departments were well prepared for the brave new world of interagency cooperation on the type of operations foretold in Krulack’s conceptual work. For its part, strategic guidance for the ADF had largely focused on the Defence of Australia with a later focus on peacekeeping operations following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Defence of Australia concept would prove to have two deleterious effects on Army. First, emphasising the need to dominate the air-sea gap to our north meant that the requirement for strategic lift assets and logistic and communications support that land forces required for offshore deployments were allowed to wither or be assumed away. The lack of deployable capability and support functions necessary to sustain them were highlighted during the Somalia deployment in 1991 and again as a result of the precautionary deployment of ADF elements to Kuwait (Operation POLLARD) in 1998. Secondly, and just as importantly it also required little to no interaction with other government departments such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) that would later be critical partners in any whole of government response.

... strategic guidance for the ADF had largely focused on the Defence of Australia with a later focus on peacekeeping operations ...

Australia’s subsequent experiences with the Peace Monitoring Group in Bougainville from 1998 and Solomon Islands from 2003 had given Australia a sense that it was capable of effective whole of government responses. But these were small-scale interventions in benign environments, operating close to Australia and involving small Pacific islands coalitions in which Australia was far and away the dominant partner. It was not until the complex, large-scale coalition operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that the government became focused on a more holistic approach to offshore contingencies. By 2008, the government was acknowledging that for Defence:

A(nother) strategic imperative is pursuing whole of government approaches in response to the challenges of a complex and uncertain international environment. Many future challenges will not restrict themselves neatly to the responsibilities of individual government departments ... Responding to ... challenges requires a broader, whole of government approach – not just a military commitment – to address the underlying causes of violence.⁵

Official direction to Defence to change its approach to what had traditionally been regarded as offshore military operations was set out in the 2009 Australian Defence White Paper, which noted the evolving nature of security operations would require a broader and more integrated response in the future as

... security objectives in intra-state conflict situations are increasingly interdependent with broader political, humanitarian, economic and development goals. These operations require a ‘whole-of-government’ response on the part of military and civilian agencies, extending beyond individual agency operations, and integrating security and other objectives into comprehensive political-military strategies.⁶

The ADF was initially slow to move towards the type of interagency cooperation envisaged in the White Paper, in part because it had spent much of the previous decade focusing on achieving greater operational interconnectedness internally between each of its Services. This culminated in the establishment of a purpose-built Joint Operations Command at Bungendore that centralised all of the ADF’s operational planning and execution. The move allowed for a single point of contact for ADF operational-level matters, which in theory at least should have proven beneficial to the establishment of whole of government capabilities on operations. When it began to address the issue of interagency cooperation, the ADF was at least able to draw from its experience in two relevant areas: the long and difficult path to bring together essentially independent Services with different operating cultures to achieve a joint operational capability, and the need to develop deployable land elements capable of operating in high threat environments where policy guidance had confined them largely to domestic contingencies or low-threat regional responses.

The ADF was initially slow to move towards the type of interagency cooperation envisaged in the White Paper ...

Difficult as these two issues were to resolve, being limited to the one department meant they were more easily addressed than achieving interagency cooperation. They are nevertheless relevant to whole of government responses because for the ADF strategic interagency cooperation is viewed as a joint responsibility while the tactical level of cooperation is in nearly all instances in high-threat environments a land responsibility. As a consequence, Army has taken the lead in addressing the doctrinal aspects of interagency operations. The Army’s current operating concept encapsulated in Adaptive Campaigning defines its approach as ‘Actions taken by the Land Force as part of the military contribution to a Joint and Whole of Government approach to resolving conflicts’.⁷ In late 2009, an Army and Whole of Government Operations concept paper was developed and accepted for further development, reflecting an understanding that Army needed to position itself intellectually for more cooperative interventions in the future.

For their part, other government departments have until recently been similarly focused on working unilaterally overseas, placing a greater focus on the ability to deploy their own assets rather than in addressing interagency interoperability issues. AusAID has developed a Rapid Response Team concept, designed to react to shortnotice humanitarian missions and has had some experience in working offshore with the ADF, most recently during the provision of ADF and AusAID medical teams in response to the Pakistan floods. AusAID has also been given responsibility for the development of the Australian Civilian Corps, which has been designed to broaden the skill sets and number of civilian specialists able to be deployed at short notice, as well as providing a means of transitioning from the short-term response to the long-term development or peace-building phases.

The AFP have also expended a great deal of effort in developing the ability to deploy police officers offshore for a range of tasks. Traditionally an organisation that has focused on national and transnational crime, but with some experience of offshore deployments particularly from their long involvement with the United Nations in Cyprus, the requirement for a deployable capability to ‘contribute to offshore law enforcement initiatives and participate in capacity development programs within the Law and Justice Sector’ became readily apparent.⁸ In 2004 the AFP established the International Deployment Group. Its focus has been on capacity building through the training and mentoring of regional police forces and the provision of forensic capabilities. In 2007 an Operational Response Group was added that gave the International Deployment Group the capability for riot response up to and including the use of lethal force.

The AFP have also expended a great deal of effort in developing the ability to deploy police officers offshore for a range of tasks.

Coordination of Whole of Government Approaches

Deployable capabilities are simply the building blocks of a truly integrated whole of government approach and there are many other areas, such as the planning, coordination and control of the agencies’ efforts to achieve specific outcomes that ultimately determines the success or otherwise of a multiagency approach. Most countries are relative newcomers to this area, particularly working within coalitions in hostile security environments, so it is only natural that teething problems have occurred. Although Australia has been focused on our immediate region, our requirement to operate as part of larger coalitions with our main alliance partners has focused attention on the way in which the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted to develop a systematic approach to the coordination of whole of government efforts.

The United States Model

The size of the US whole of government contributions to offshore contingencies dwarfs that of most countries. The complexity of the tasks they undertake, the resources both financial and human required to run these projects and the domestic political equities tied up in these interventions demands a tight and well-defined coordination mechanism to run it. It has, however, taken the United States a long time to come to terms with whole of government responses within insecure and complex social environments. The lack of planning, interagency coordination and resourcing during the immediate post-invasion phase of Iraq illustrated the poor channels of communication that existed within the US system. Prior to 2007, the decision on which agency would lead a whole of government crisis response was made on a case-by-case basis by the National Security Council. In response to the disorder that characterised the US intervention in Iraq and the lack of progress in Afghanistan, President George W Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 44. This directive made the Department of State the lead agency ‘to coordinate and lead integrated USG efforts to prepare, plan for, and conduct reconstruction and stabilization activities’.⁹

The size of the US whole of government contributions to offshore contingencies dwarfs that of most countries.

In response to this directive, the Department of State’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization established the Interagency Management System in 2007. This system consists of three bodies for each whole of government operation: a country reconstruction and stabilisation group that resides in Washington as the senior interagency decision-making body; an integration planning cell that deploys alongside the combatant commander’s planning staff; and an advance civilian team that augments the chief of mission’s staff to coordinate interagency efforts on the ground.¹⁰ Despite these organisational reforms, there are challenges in translating policy-making primacy to implementation primacy on the ground. The State Department’s relatively poor funding compared to Defense provides a clear limit on their ability to dictate terms, as does strong political support for Defense relative to the State Department.

The difficulty faced by the chief of mission in coordinating the national effort in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan is that he/she has no responsibility for forces assigned to combatant commanders. Consequently the combatant commander possesses all the hard power and significant (and wide ranging) financial resources dedicated to the country’s stabilisation effort. For example, in addition to the funding for indigenous military training and capacity building measures, the US Defense Department is often as significant a player as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in funding reconstruction projects. The main vehicle for this, the Commander’s Emergency Response Program has provided over USD 4.6 billion on projects in Afghanistan and Iraq.¹¹ Other US agencies have similar programs in place, such as the Department of State’s Provincial Reconstruction Development Council (PRDC) program and several USAID programs.¹² To give an idea of the relative funding available, in FY 07 Defense’s Commander’s Emergency Response Program in Iraq spent US$900 million compared to State’s PRDC expenditure of US$600 million and the USAID’s US$449 million.¹³

... in FY 07 Defense’s Commander’s Emergency Response Program in Iraq spent US$900 million ...

For all the difficulties faced by the United States in its whole of government approach to interventions such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the Haiti earthquake in January 2010 provides a useful case study of how the United States can conduct an effective whole of government crisis response, albeit in a low-threat environment.¹⁴ While the Interagency Management System was not activated, USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance quickly formed an interagency task force known as the Response Management Team that was responsible for the coordination of all US government agencies contributing to the crisis response. USAID organised and dispatched a seventeen-strong Disaster Assistance Response Team that assessed humanitarian needs on the ground and coordinated response activities with the US embassy, Haitian government, non-government organisations and the international community.

The US Department of Defense’s rapid response and close cooperation with the ambassador, embassy staff and United Nations mission was aided by the fact that the deputy combatant commander of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM)—Lieutenant General Ken Keen—was meeting with the US ambassador in his residence in Port-au-Prince at the time the quake struck. On ¹⁴ January, SOUTHCOM established Joint Task Force Haiti, headed by General Keen, to support USAID’s efforts to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.¹⁵ The USAID interagency task force had clear leadership, and the US combatant commander, through his deputy commander on the ground, worked in support of the ambassador and the USAID coordination team. With this operational level of coordination in place from the outset, the crisis response operation in Haiti exhibited none of the disorder, chaos or confusion that had characterised early interagency efforts in Afghanistan or Iraq. After six months, JTF-Haiti’s mission was declared complete, and the last units departed for the United States on 1 June 2010.¹⁶

UK Whole of Government Responses to Crisis Situations

As a consequence of its colonial experience the United Kingdom had, prior to their engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq, a record of integrated civil-military responses to crisis situations, exemplified by its actions in Malaya and Oman, and the still delicate situation in Northern Ireland. But such experience had not resulted in any formalised interagency coordination mechanism. Prior to 11 September 2001 the United Kingdom had been examining its ability to respond in a more coordinated fashion to the challenges it was likely to face in responding to crises in fragile states. In 2000 the decision was taken to form the Global Conflict Prevention Pools (GCPP) within the UK government. The GCPP is not a standing body; rather it is a means of coordinating state efforts on reducing conflict in target areas by bringing together funds and staff effort from the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Department for International Development (DFID), and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) into an integrated policy-making and action body.

Prior to 11 September 2001 the United Kingdom had been examining its ability to respond in a more coordinated fashion ...

The GCPP is overseen by a committee consisting of the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for International Development (the committee chairperson), the Defence Secretary and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It bids for money separate to its contributing agencies, giving it a degree of independence and authority to make decisions regarding the conflict prevention and post-conflict management aspects of UK foreign policy.¹⁷

Sitting astride both the tactical and operational level of multiagency interventions is the UK Stabilisation Unit. Originally established as the Post Conflict Reconstruction Unit in 2004, it is the UK government’s central whole of government planning and coordination body for the key non-military elements as part of stabilisation operations overseas. Again, this body draws personnel and funds from the MoD, FCO and DFID and reports back to those departments. At its heart is the Civilian Stabilisation Group, a pool of over 800 deployable civilian experts and more than 200 members of the Civil Service Stabilisation Cadre that represent thirty-three government departments.¹⁸ The Civilian Stabilisation Group for instance is the main source of individuals for the UK Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), and served as the model for the Australian Civilian Corps.

The Australian 'System'

Australia has consciously eschewed the concept of a standing body to coordinate interagency offshore deployments. Rather, it has maintained responsibility for strategic decision-making with the National Security Council and formed interdepartmental emergency task forces/working groups when necessary for the period of the commitment to act as the key day-to-day decision-making and strategic whole of government coordinating body, while trusting in the existing arrangements developed by each department to provide capabilities when necessary.

Control of offshore deployments has rarely followed the same pattern. In the Solomon Islands in 2003 a special coordinator from DFAT was appointed as the ‘first among equals’; in the 2006 East Timor intervention the military stabilisation force commander was given a former ambassador to East Timor as his senior adviser, while in Afghanistan the DFAT head of the PRT reports tactically to the International Security Assistance Force and nationally through the head of mission in Kabul to Canberra, while the military commander reports tactically to ISAF and nationally to the Australian national command headquarters in the United Arab Emirates. These differing approaches to the way in which whole of government deployments are coordinated are driven as much by the various domestic political and bureaucratic considerations of departments and powerful individuals within these departments as they are the practical considerations regarding the best way to manage interagency interventions. 

The absence of a single person with responsibility for coordinating interagency responses on the ground is not necessarily an impediment to the successful prosecution of a mission. It can, however, lead to a dynamic tension between strategic direction from Canberra and perceptions of operational necessities in theatre. There is also a feeling among non-military (and some military) elements that the ADF’s national command structure impedes the speed and unity of messages back to Canberra. Whereas the United States and United Kingdom ‘dual-role’ the senior military commander in-theatre as the national commander and leave national support functions to another officer, the ADF has a dedicated national commander along with a headquarters. In Afghanistan for example, this means that while the ambassador is able to speak directly to Canberra about Afghan and Coalition issues in-theatre, the senior military officer in-country must report through his national commander, who then reports to Headquarters Joint Operations Command (HQJOC) who then reports to Defence Headquarters. The delay, lack of context and possibility for dilution of the message from within theatre is self-evident. The difficulty in maintaining a cohesive national approach between departments is even more difficult when Australia is part of a coalition and the national political representative (the ambassador) and the national military representatives are located in different countries. It is important in such interventions to be as well attuned to the coalition environment as possible and be able to influence events within as it is to understand the local political and security environment. Divorcing Australia’s national military commander from the coalition military headquarters makes this task more difficult than it needs to be.

The absence of a single person with responsibility for coordinating interagency responses on the ground is not necessarily an impediment ...

That having been said, it is not always the case that those on the ground are best placed to determine the priority for the allocation of national effort. In Iraq for example, the deployment of the battle group to al-Muthana province gave the Australian military effort a geographic (if time limited) focus, but one that was not shared by other departments. A visiting Senate Committee delegation commented on the fact that they

... observed the potential for Australia to establish a Whole of Government effort in the south, under the protection of Australian troops, to make a significant impact on the quality of life of the local population. Any Australian effort would be of a higher profile than that achieved in Baghdad where AusAID efforts are potentially swallowed up by the larger donor countries and security overheads.¹⁹

While the task group did have some funds to be spent on local projects, these were normally spent with short-term tactical considerations uppermost. The Senate Committee’s remarks reveal that little consideration was given to the nature of Australian aid (much of which was for debt relief),²⁰ the difficulty of the long-term sustainability of aid projects or the ability for institutional capacity building after the inevitable withdrawal of Australian forces. The military saw its presence alone as justification for national aid delivery whereas aid providers understood the limited nature of the deployment and sought to deploy their aid resources in a manner consistent with a long-term view of assistance to Iraq.

The Senate Committee’s remarks reveal that little consideration was given to the nature of Australian aid ...

Capabilities and Constraints

There are essentially two elements that determine the efficiency and effectiveness of whole of government commitments: operational capabilities and political considerations. In general terms the former provides a quantifiable measure of the ability of government departments to deliver options to their ministers that can be considered as part of a whole of government response, while the latter is normally the final determinant of what is to be contributed, where it is to be deployed, what tasks it will undertake and as a consequence how truly whole of government any overseas crisis response is considered to be.

Systemic Capabilites

Subjective areas such as the differences in priorities between departments, and even the actual enthusiasm for deployments, are to a large degree driven by personality and self-interest and thus difficult to overcome. However, it is in the practical and quantifiable areas where shortfalls can be identified and advances made. Over the past decade there has been significant improvement in the ability of individual departments in key practical areas to react to overseas contingencies, although shortfalls remain:

A. Planning

The military has always seen planning as a core staff function separate from running current operations, and maintains planning branches to conduct detailed appreciations and potential courses of action for a variety of contingencies. While most of these contingencies may never eventuate, a range of likely scenarios has at least been considered and partially addressed. Non-military agencies tend to eschew military notions of detailed future planning for ‘crisis management’ or what may pass for ‘immediate planning’, using staff that are often neither trained nor specialised in planning functions. There are practical reasons for this approach—the lack of a compulsory career-long training culture within the public service, concentration on policy development rather than deployment, the small numbers of personnel that these departments have traditionally deployed to overseas crises and the resultant limited requirement for detailed planning for their deployment, sustainment or protection. That having been said, both the AFP’s International Deployment Group and the nascent Australian Civilian Corps have small planning cells, illustrating that the importance of planning as a dedicated function for deployable elements is being acknowledged in other areas of government.

... the importance of planning as a dedicated function for deployable elements is being acknowledged in other areas of government.

That is not to say that the ADF is a natural repository of multiagency planning capability or that it is easy to develop. It has taken the ADF the best part of two decades to come to terms with the concept of synchronising the operational effectiveness of the three Services to create a joint operational outcome. Even within a single military it has been a drawn-out process to establish joint doctrine and training and overcome sometimes competing single-Service cultures and agendas in order to establish a functioning and sustainable joint planning and operational capability. It should come as no surprise then that the ability to synchronise the efforts of different government agencies that come from entirely different and separate operating cultures, answering to different ministers and with their own funding lines, will not be easy to achieve.

The military planning process, as developed as it is, nevertheless relies on a common training standard and language that is often impenetrable for many,²¹ and consequently gives the impression that the ADF sees itself as the agency in control of the intervention. The planning functions, timelines, language and requirements may differ too much between departments to achieve a standardised multiagency operational plan but that does not mean that departmental plans need to be done in isolation. It is possible for different organisations to synchronise their efforts effectively through the establishment of close liaison at the planning level. For that reason, both AusAID and the AFP have liaison officers resident in HQJOC, while the ADF has recently placed a liaison officer within AusAID. By passing military planning advice to their home department and providing departmental input into the development of military operational plans, it is possible for effective coordination of effort to occur at the operational level. This will of course be dependent on the seniority and capability of the liaison officers, their ability to meet ADF planning timelines, and the willingness of ADF planning staff to take their requirements into account.

B. Enablers

The ADF provides a wide range of enabling capabilities designed to move, house, sustain, communicate with and provide health care to deployed personnel. Many of these capabilities are unique to the ADF or are of such prohibitive cost and/or demand if provided by contractors that the ADF remains the provider of choice. Whole of government responses rely to a marked degree on the ADF for these same support mechanisms, particularly in the early phases of deployment before such operations mature and other government agencies are able to access contracted service providers.

C. Preparedness

The military has long realised the unsustainable cost of having all elements on short preparedness timeframes and has staggered its force elements so that some are trained and resourced for short notice deployment on a range of contingencies, while others are at longer notice for follow-on efforts. There is also the need for reconstitution of the elements that have been deployed, so that the military does not just provide the government with a ‘single-shot’ capability. In the whole of government environment, there is a commensurate need for non-military elements to develop a similar focus on preparedness. This has been recognised and other agencies have created rapid response elements to react at short notice to a range of overseas contingencies.

The military has long realised the unsustainable cost of having all elements on short preparedness timeframes and has staggered its force elements ...

DFAT regularly sends teams to supplement diplomatic missions during times of crisis. But these are normally individuals who provide consular assistance and the system for deploying them is relatively ad hoc. AusAID has a well-developed humanitarian assistance capability resident in the Rapid Response Team. The team is designed for responses to humanitarian disasters and has exercised and deployed internationally,²² most recently as part of a joint ADF–AusAID disaster relief effort (Operation PAKISTAN ASSIST) in the aftermath of the devastating Pakistan floods. The capacity to provide individuals with a range of skill sets who will be able to contribute to both short-term contingencies as well as longer-term stabilisation operations will be resident in the Australian Civilian Corps, although the capability is still being developed.

The AFP has developed a comprehensive system of pre-deployment training at its own complex at Majura and the International Deployment Group and Operational Response Group (ORG) have been deployed on several interagency developments, most notably as the lead agency in RAMSI. But there are still significant limitations regarding the circumstances in which they are likely to be deployed. While the ORG is more than capable of reacting to situations involving civil unrest, both Iraq and Afghanistan have revealed the very real limitations to police involvement, particularly where there has been no tradition of community policing on which to build. Despite the positive view of one academic regarding the development of the ORG because ‘it makes good sense to build up the capability the AFP has to go in at the sharp end of activities, more alongside the ADF’,²³ there are degrees of ‘sharp end’ and the utility of the ORG lays in regional fragile state intervention rather than counterinsurgency of the Iraq and Afghanistan variety.

D. Doctrine, Training and Learning

Doctrine. Of all the systemic difficulties in achieving interagency synchronisation the development of interagency doctrine is perhaps the most difficult. The more agencies whose agreement is required for such a document the more difficult it is to achieve and, while training, preparedness and planning are all necessary but practical means to achieve an operational outcome, doctrine requires a commitment to a written document that may tie agencies to agreed tasks that prove problematic in future interventions. For that reason alone, such documents are notoriously difficult to develop. There is also the issue of who is delegated to write the doctrine and in what institution(s) such doctrine will be taught.

Of all the systemic difficulties in achieving interagency synchronisation the development of interagency doctrine is perhaps the most difficult.

Australia is by no means alone in this. The US Defense Department’s 2009 Quadrennial Roles and Missions Review Report called for the publication of ‘an authoritative national-level strategic guidance document that addresses interagency roles and responsibilities, and resolves seam issues between agencies’.²⁴ The former head of the UK Stabilisation Unit noted in a speech in February 2010 that ‘Crossgovernment agreed stabilisation “doctrine” or best practice principles are required ... we need concise, specific guidance on how government comes together to set priorities and achieve coherent and effective delivery’.²⁵

Given the proliferation of government strategic guidance regarding the need for interagency cooperation contained in the 2008 National Security Statement, the 2009 Defence White Paper and the 2003 DFAT White Paper, the lack of Australian whole of government intervention doctrine is disappointing but not unexpected. The Asia-Pacific Civil-Military Centre of Excellence (APCMCOE) was given the remit in the 2009 Defence White Paper through research, education and doctrine development to deal with intra-state conflict.²⁶ But such direction falls short of giving APCMCOE responsibility for interagency doctrine development and, given that it was contained in a Defence document it has no powers of compulsion on other government departments to cooperate in such a venture.

In place of a single authoritative guidance document, individual departments have developed bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) as a means of articulating interagency cooperation responsibilities. AusAID has signed strategic partnership agreements with Defence (2009) and the AFP (2004) that have formalised understandings between the two agencies regarding roles and responsibilities, secondments and in some cases protocols for cooperation. The ADF and the AFP signed an Interoperability MOU in 2008 that covered issues such as common procurement solutions and established a Joint Steering Committee on Interoperability chaired by the national manager of the AFP’s International Deployment Group and Chief Joint Operations. But these are nearly exclusively working-level documents, and while they undoubtedly alleviate some of the frustrations that occur between the two agencies once deployed, they fall well short of outlining the way in which multilateral agency operations are conducted.

Training. A difficulty in providing mission-specific training for multiagency interventions is that in many cases these operations do not begin as whole of government interventions and therefore establishing cooperative relationships, reporting chains and de-confliction mechanisms are often done retrospectively. Interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, were solely military conflicts to begin with, with other government departments becoming part of the national effort much later. This can lead to tensions as the military is required to accommodate disparate government elements through the provision of security and logistic enablers that had not been catered for in its original planning. At the same time, other government organisations feel that their contributions get overlooked as the media and public concentrate on the military aspects of the operation to the exclusion of other agencies whose efforts are just as critical to mission success.

... other government organisations feel that their contributions get overlooked as the media and public concentrate on the military aspects ...

There have been improvements in the general area of interagency participation in military exercises, most notably on the large combined Exercise TALISMAN SABRE 2011. It not only included elements from DFAT, AusAID and the AFP, but it also enabled those elements to work with their US counterparts from the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilisation, and members from the FBI, USAID, Department of State and others.

It is notable that senior elements involved in the original RAMSI intervention found the most useful interagency activity they conducted prior to deployment was a short-notice ‘desk-top’ operational and tactical-level planning day. Responses to likely scenarios were worked through, agency capabilities and limitations confirmed and possible points of friction worked through with the people who were going to exercise responsibility once deployed.

This naturally is the ideal—just in time delivery of training to disparate organisations in order to appraise each other of capabilities, limitations and agreements/ directives. Of course the ideal rarely ever exists but this type of operational-level interagency operational planning has been very much the exception rather than the rule. Such are the benefits of this type of training that its formalisation merits a more considered and systematic treatment. Despite the growth of interagency educational institutions such as the Australian National University’s National Security College and the APCMCOE, their training is based more on individual professional education rather than collective staff training. The lack of a mission rehearsal training capability for principal staff officers on interagency deployments is a shortfall in current approaches to whole of government offshore deployments. Even if the various agencies rotate their people at different times, it would be possible to conduct scenario-based training utilising people experienced in, or recently returned from interagency deployments to take the place of individuals who may already be in-theatre.

Learning. The experience that Australian agencies have gained in whole of government deployments over the last decade should have established a good base of knowledge regarding what aspects have worked or otherwise, and what elements should be addressed in the future. But a system for the collection, assimilation and implementation of whole of government lessons from Australia’s various deployments does not exist in any formal sense. In Afghanistan for example, Australia is for the first time leading a multinational PRT in a hostile security environment. Without a system in place to not only capture the experiences of the key ADF, DFAT, AFP and AusAID members but to also incorporate them into future training, the hard-won lessons learnt will be lost. In the same way there has been no formal debrief and centralisation of the key lessons learnt from the initial and mature RAMSI intervention.

The ADF has an exhaustive process of capturing lessons, while DFAT has recently commenced doing the same for its Afghanistan commitment. But nowhere are these integrated, and as noted above, even if they were there is no institution responsible for their collection, integration, dissemination and review. APCMCOE has identified the need for this type of capability²⁷ but again, without formal agreement from all involved agencies to centralise interagency operational-level doctrine development and training, no single organisation has the mandate to conduct such a task.

The ADF has an exhaustive process of capturing lessons, while DFAT has recently commenced doing the same for its Afghanistan commitment.

The Political Dimension

It goes without saying that whole of government approaches to crises work most effectively when all departments participating in the mission approach the task with the same urgency, enthusiasm and focus as each other. And for all the advances that Australia has made in developing multiagency interoperability over the last ten years, there are subjective impediments to achieving a truly unified whole of government approach that are realistically part of the nature of governance, and will likely feature in future whole of government interventions.

The subjective constraints are most likely to manifest themselves in interventions that were traditionally the preserve of the military—nation-building in hostile security environments. But risk, while probably the most significant, is not the only issue that inhibits the establishment of a unified approach to whole of government efforts. Rather, the degree to which an effective whole of government approach emerges is influenced by three main factors:

a. the perception and acceptance of risk (both physical and reputational),

b. Australia’s leadership role, and

c. the degree to which the mission is considered to be in Australia’s direct national interest.

In the case of natural disasters where humanitarian need is readily apparent, where there is little to no security risk and Australian national interests are obvious, then unity of purpose is easily established and the whole of government machinery has shown itself capable of responding in a timely and appropriate manner. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2002 Bali bombing brought a range of government and non-government organisations together effectively, while PAKISTAN ASSIST II and the Japanese tsunami were good recent examples of where the ADF, AusAID and state emergency services respectively were able to provide an effective interagency response to a country outside our immediate region, where we were relatively minor participants, but where Australia had significant strategic interests at play.

This unity of purpose is not always the case, however. In particular, where there is disquiet among the electorate and/or within government about a deployment’s relevance to the national interest, where Australia is a junior coalition partner and/or where the physical threat is high, a unified approach is harder to achieve. While the National Security Council may make decisions regarding the commitment of Australian assets to particular contingencies, the means by which risk is determined and the level of risk each element is willing to accept, the timetable for their deployment and the manning of the deployed elements are all the responsibility of individual ministers, secretaries and their departments.

Variations in risk acceptance have an obvious impact on the ability to deliver a completely integrated whole of government mission. In the security field, the development of an effective indigenous police and military capability ideally requires a seamless training and mentoring system to ensure that training can be delivered, understood and implemented with the appropriate reviews made along the way. This is a longstanding concept that has been largely effective. The Participating Police Force has had great success in following this model in RAMSI for several years. But in the more dangerous Iraqi and Afghan theatres, Australia’s whole of government effort at the tactical level has had less impact due to the reluctance to accept risk.

Variations in risk acceptance have an obvious impact on the ability to deliver a completely integrated whole of government mission.

Iraq was a contribution largely motivated by alliance maintenance and hence the government’s appetite for risk was low. As a consequence the Australian military training teams largely conducted basic training for Iraqi forces without committing themselves to the more dangerous mentoring role that was left up to the United States. To a degree symbolism was more important at the political level than substance at the tactical level. This was evident in a speech by the then Prime Minister in 2007 when he noted ‘the fact that the training is occurring in Iraq itself is significant, both practically and symbolically. It ensures our trainers have greater credibility and develop stronger bonds of trust with Iraqi recruits.’²⁸ No mention of the unwillingness to mentor those same Iraqis, nor of Australia’s contribution to the training of the Iraqi Police Service that by the Prime Minister’s measure was rather less significant—two Australian police trainers participated in the training of members of the Iraqi Police Service at the Jordan International Police Training Centre between 2004–06.²⁹ Both the military and the police contributions said much about Australia’s reluctance to accept risk in Iraq. Military forces that trained but did not mentor, and a police force that conducted training outside the country.

Afghanistan has also highlighted the differing approaches to force protection between government departments in a high-threat environment. In contrast to Iraq though, there has been a higher degree of risk acceptance adopted by some departments, particularly since Australia took over leadership of the PRT from the Dutch.³⁰ DFAT officers have deployed into some of the patrol bases to conduct key leadership engagement while five AusAID officers are also in Uruzgan monitoring the delivery of development aid. In the security sector though, there remains some anomalies. The task force has undertaken the operational mentoring of the Afghan National Army 4th Brigade, with the Special Operations Task Group mentoring the Afghan Provincial Police Response Companies. The AFP meanwhile has taken on the role of training the local Afghan National Police (ANP) within the Tarin Kowt base without undertaking the mentoring role within the province proper. There are practical reasons for this—small numbers of AFP and the largely static checkpoint duties of the ANP (who are mentored by the US military on such tasks) mean that there is no community policing for the AFP to mentor. By the same token, there are other slightly higher risk tasks that could be done, such as mentoring police command and control elements at the police headquarters in Tarin Kowt town if the AFP elements were allowed to deploy outside the main base. The AFP’s tolerance for risk is shaped by a number of factors, but unlike other agencies it also has a vocal officers’ association to deal with, whose willingness to weigh in on tactical issues is evident in their criticism of the original decision to send additional police trainers to Afghanistan.³¹

Afghanistan has also highlighted the differing approaches to force protection between government departments in a high-threat environment.

Strategic Guidance

The military planning process can become obsessed by the need for an articulated strategic end-state as the starting point for planning, based on the simple assumption that you need to understand where you want to end up before you plan how to get there. But well articulated end states that all agencies should work towards are very much the exception rather than the norm. Given the absence of a systematised planning process other government departments are far less affected by such ambiguity. There is a good reason for governments failing to provide something that represents a fundamental element of effective planning for international deployments—a political opposition. Governments are loath to commit themselves to a publicly stated goal lest it be used against them in parliament and by the press if the intervention does not go as originally envisaged.

There is also the somewhat inconvenient fact that governments may undertake overseas commitments for other than the publicly stated reasons. Iraq’s absence of weapons of mass destruction proved that considerations such as alliance maintenance play a major role in government decisions to commit resources and accept risk in support of the United States’ military deployments. In addition, the dispatch of niche capabilities deployed as part of a broader alliance consideration, with broad generic goals, restricted freedom of action designed to minimise casualties and uncertain measures of effectiveness with which to track progress towards mission accomplishment make it difficult to engender broad national support for government actions. And without a clearly stated national strategic end-state to work towards there is a large grey area that can be exploited by departments that may choose to interpret for their own ends what course of action best meets the government’s intent.

Cobnclusion

There is little doubt that Australia’s systemic ability to undertake multiagency interventions offshore has improved greatly in the past decade. The Army’s ability to deploy formed bodies and individuals, and to conduct training and mentoring of foreign forces has improved markedly through experience since the ADF’s intervention in East Timor in 1999. Similarly, the AFP and AusAID have developed deployable capabilities for offshore contingencies, while the Australian Civilian Corps offers the promise of a broader skills base than currently exists for stabilisation operations. Training for such whole of government deployments still remains somewhat problematic. While organisations that provide the largest numbers to operations such as the ADF and AFP have well developed agency training programs, it is at the operational/strategic level that a training shortfall exists—there is a need for a mechanism by which operational-level, interagency capability and planning considerations are taught to those likely to deploy on interagency interventions. In addition, there is also a need for mission-specific interagency staff training that can be delivered to those identified for deployment.

Of course it is difficult to teach these aspects of interagency coordination and cooperation unless there is an agreed doctrine that outlines agencies’ responsibilities and tasks. It suits some departments’ purposes for there to be no doctrine, and in its place some departments have established MOUs with other agencies to articulate bilateral relationships covering specific issues. Until such doctrine is written and more importantly agreed to by all agencies, there will be no source document to which policy-makers or training developers can refer to, leading to a continually fractured approach to whole of government training and capability development.

...  it is difficult to teach these aspects of interagency coordination and cooperation unless there is an agreed doctrine that outlines agencies’ responsibilities and tasks.

There are other aspects that work against a more coherent and integrated approach to whole of government interventions, such as risk management and an ADF national command structure that can be convoluted and inflexible compared to the other agencies. Risk is a difficult concept for departments to agree on, and there is no common method for determining risk within the non-military components. Nevertheless, it has assumed an increasingly important profile since non-military elements have become an integral part of complex interventions in hostile security environments and the differences in risk tolerance have the potential to impinge on the development of a unified approach to an issue.

At the management level, there remains in some instances a disconnect between the ADF and the non-military elements involved in whole of government missions because of the physical dislocation of the national military commander from both Australia’s political representative and the coalition headquarters. This dislocation can slow up the military reporting chain relative to the political, make the national military commander less attuned to Australia’s role in the Coalition, and introduce slight variations in the interagency message as it passes through the various military headquarters.

Australia has shown itself quite capable of undertaking successful whole of government interventions offshore, but the most successful have been those within our immediate region. The further afield they are, the larger the coalition we operate within and the higher the physical risk, the more difficult Australia has found it to achieve a unified and coordinated national approach. These political considerations will be a feature of all future interventions. Improvements can be made in the way in which we organise for and approach future interagency interventions offshore. Firstly, responsibility should be given to a single organisation for the development of whole of government offshore intervention doctrine, the development and conduct of operational-level, whole of government training and interagency ‘force preparation’, and the collection and integration of interagency lessons learned. Second, the acceptable risk profile for all contributing agencies to be agreed to as part of National Security Council considerations, rather than be left to individual departments to determine. And finally, in complex offshore deployments the ADF’s national command and national support functions should be separated so that the national military commander works closely with the senior Australian civilian representative and (where applicable) the coalition partners to maximise his situational awareness and the unity of effort of the Australian contribution.

About the Author

Rodger Shanahan is a former army officer and now a non-resident Fellow at the Lowy Institute. In the Army he served in UNTSO, INTERFET, as the Military Liaison Officer in Beirut during the 2006 war, and has deployed as an operational inquiry officer to Afghanistan several times. He has also served in the Australian embassies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Shanahan has Masters degrees in International Relations and Middle East Studies from ANU and a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from Sydney University. He has written numerous academic, policy and media articles and is the author of Clans, Parties and Clerics: the Shi’a of Lebanon.

Endnotes

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1     Connecting Government: Whole of Government Responses to Australia’s Priority Challenges defined whole of government as ‘public service agencies working across portfolio boundaries to achieve a shared goal and an integrated government response to particular issues. Approaches can be formal and informal. They can focus on policy development, program management and service delivery.’ Australian Public Service Commission, 2004, <http://www.apsc.gov.au/mac/connectinggovernment.pdf&gt; p. 1.

2     Russell W Glenn, Counterinsurgency in a test tube: Analyzing the success of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, 2007, p. 61.

3     A situation now referred to as ‘persistent conflict’.

4     General Charles C Krulack ‘The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War’, Marines Magazine, January 1999 <http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/strategic_corporal.htm&gt;.

5     Warren Snowden, ‘Australia’s Strategic Imperatives’, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel speech to ASPI Global Forces Conference, 2 July 2008 <http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/SnowdonSpeechtpl.cfm?CurrentId=7927&…;.

6     Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century: Force 2030, Defence White Paper 2009, AGPS, Canberra, p. 23.

24    Walter Pincus, ‘Pentagon recommends “Whole of Government” national security plans, 2 February’, 2009 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/01/AR20090…;.

25    ‘Civilian-Military Collaboration: The Stabilisation Unit Coming of Age ?’, speech by Richard Teuten to RUSI, 4 February 2010 <http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/Teuten_Lecture_4feb2010.pdf&gt;.

26    Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century: Force 2030, Defence White Paper 2009.

27    Strengthening Australia’s Conflict and Disaster Management Overseas, Asia Pacific Civil-Military Centre of Excellence, Canberra, 2010.

28    John Howard, ‘Why our troops must stay’, Speech to ASPI, The Age, 22 March 2007 <http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/why-our-troops-must-stay/2007/03/…;.

29    ‘IDG – One year on, Platypus Magazine, June 2005, p. 36 <http://www.afp.gov.au/~/media/afp/pdf/9/9-idg.ashx&gt;.

30    PRTs have an integral military force protection capability.

31    ‘AFP union attacks Afghanistan role for Australian police’, The Australian, 7 December 2009 <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/afp-union-attacks-afghanistan-…;.