Search

The main and obvious difference between peace enforcement and war is impartiality. In peace enforcement, military operations are directed against anyone who has violated agreements or the formally expressed will of the international community. The key difference from war is that there is no designated ‘enemy.’ In war, the enemy has to be rendered powerless. In peace enforcement, the idea is not to render him powerless—the aim of ‘victory’ takes second place to the achievement of measures, which will …

From this place and this time forth commences a new era in world history and you can all say that you were present at its birth. With these famous words, the great German poet-philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, captured the historical significance of the battle of Valmy fought on 20 September 1792. At Valmy, ragged French citizen-soldiers used a blazing cannonade to defeat Prussian regular troops and secured the French Revolution. The age of the Enlightenment abruptly gave way to an age of revolution …

While historians have thoroughly examined the Australian and New Zealand role in the Vietnam War, much less has been written about the working relationship between the Australian and New Zealand forces and their American counterparts. Of particular interest in this regard is the 2d Battalion, 35th Field Artillery, a unit equipped with M109 155 mm self-propelled guns that operated alongside the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF) from 1966 until 1971. Nicknamed the ‘Huskies’, the 2d Battalion had the …

Introduction For almost the entire period between the two world wars, Australia experienced what could at best be termed a cantankerous relationship between the Government and its senior Army officers. By the end of 1922, the Government and the Army had made conflicting assessments of the Australian national security environment and put into place divergent policies to address their separate concerns. At no point during this period were the two parties able to overcome their differing opinions and agree on …

Collective training in the Australian Army is undergoing a process of fundamental change. Over the next four years, the Army will introduce a live Combat Training Centre (CTC) in a revolutionary approach to readiness evaluation. The new initiative builds on the success of an Interim Combat Training Centre project and is aimed at preparing Australian soldiers for the new and diverse challenges of military operations in the 21st century. The new CTC is expected to use advanced exercises against a notional …

The Media in its Present Form The traditional concept of the media has been substantially eroded over the past decade with the emergence of a disturbing new trend. In a potentially confusing marriage of fact and fantasy, the entertainment industry has tightened its grip on the companies that produce news worldwide. CNN is now owned by Time Warner, of Warner Brothers fame, the 26 billion-dollar group that brought the world the Harry Potter phenomenon. The American ABC is owned by Walt Disney, the 23 …

On 11 September 2001, the United States homeland was subjected to a complex, coordinated and devastating terrorist attack. In less than two hours, New York’s World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon had been destroyed, and four commercial airliners had been lost with all passengers and crew. The death toll from these attacks was over three thousand, causing the United States to respond to the tragedy by declaring a ‘war on terrorism’. President George W. Bush stated that the elimination of …

Like many Australian soldiers who have served large parts of their careers between the end of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s and the deployments to East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq since the end of the 1990s, I have not participated in a combined arms assault. The long years during which the Army was confined to continental defence resulted in a dichotomy between our doctrinal theory and military practice. Since the adoption by the Army of a maritime concept of strategy, there has been considerable …

This article is about contemporary dismounted infantry tactics. It argues that the Australian Army should reconsider some aspects of its approach to manoeuvre and suppression in the close battle. The article does not argue for a particular solution. Rather, it highlights some apparent problems with our current doctrine and poses a challenge to innovate, and to debate the issues. The aim is to encourage professional debate about tactical innovation within infantry. Whether that debate takes place in the …

Since becoming Chief of Army in the middle of 2002, I have been guided by a core question: ‘How will the Australian Army operate in a post-Cold War world of failing states and non-state actors?’. At the beginning of the 21st century, there can be little doubt that the Australian Army faces an environment in which the forces of globalisation and fragmentation are simultaneously challenging many of our traditional ideas about the character of military power. We are faced with multiple challenges across a …