Colonel Michael Krause is Director, Future Warfighting in the Military Strategy Branch, Australian Defence Force Headquarters. He is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, and of the Australian Command and Staff College. He has served with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment and the 1st Armoured Regiment, and saw operational service in Iran-Iraq with the British Queens Dragoon Guards. Recently Colonel Krause was Military Adviser to the Special Coordinator in the Solomon Islands. His staff appointments …

Wing Commander Chris Mills joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1964 and completed his officer training at the RAAF Academy. His career has included operational tours in transport and fighter aircraft. Wing Commander Mills planned and flew many air-to-sea operations in Mirage aircraft based in Butterworth and Singapore, before joining an operations research unit in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. He assisted the Defence Capability Review in 2003 and transferred to the Air Force …

Barak Salmoni is Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His primary focus has been on the Middle East, Islam, and civil–military relations in the Middle East. He is also the current Director, Tactical Culture for Marine Expeditionary Forces, and provides cultural and human terrain training to Marines deploying to Iraq, sponsored by Marine Corps Training and Education Command. He was embedded with the Iraqi Security Forces’ …

Volume 2, Number 2 …

Kokoda Commander   Written by: Stuart Braga, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN: 9780195516388, 374 pp. Reviewed by: John Donovan Since at least the 1930s, the friction between regular and citizen soldiers has remained an enduring element in the historiography of the Australian Army. This book sheds much light on that friction, while rehabilitating the reputation of Major General Arthur ‘Tubby’ Allen, one of Australia’s more notable citizen soldiers. It is a valuable addition to the work sponsored by the …

To Villers-Bretonneux with Brigadier-General William Glasgow, DSO and the 13th Australian Infantry Brigade   Written by: Peter Edgar, Australian Military History Publications, NSW, 20061 ISBN: 9781876439460, 284pp. Reviewed by: Lieutenant Colonel Miles Farmer, OAM (Retd) Readers interested in the study of the battles on the Western Front in World War I will be familiar with the battle of Villers-Bretonneux on 25 April 1918—said by many to have been the turning point of the war. Be that as it may, it …

Thunder from the Silent Zone: Rethinking China   Written by: Paul Monk, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2005, ISBN: 9781920769376, 309 pp, notes, index. Reviewed by: Anthony Robinson Too often strategic analysts and the business community focus on the ‘inevitable’ rise of China as an economic superpower, casting away any sensible analysis of a very complex nation with a rich and varied history. Simply by extrapolating linear trends it is possible to come up with a number of outcomes, most of which bear …

Strategic Command: General Sir John Wilton and Australia’s Asian Wars   Written by: David Horner, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2005 ISBN: 9780195552829, 400 pp. Reviewed by: Colonel John Blaxland Professor David Horner is a prolific writer and pre-eminent historian on Australian defence matters, having written a plethora of works that have significantly contributed to the store of corporate knowledge on the Army and the wider Defence organisation. Much of what he has written concerns higher-level …

On Shaggy Ridge   Written by: Phillip Bradley, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN: 9780195551006, 240 pp. Reviewed by: John Donovan It is possible to argue that this book need not have been written, for the events covered have been fully described in the official history. However, one must admit that World War II official histories do not adorn many bookcases these days, and it seems probable that the copies in libraries spend very little time in the hands of borrowers. This book, then, joins others in …

I note with interest the debate over Michael Evans’s monograph, The Tyranny of Dissonance in the AAJ ’s new ‘Forum’ section. I have also recently attended a briefing by Professor Paul Dibb on what he describes as the enduring relevance of strategic geography to Australian defence planning. In light of what are apparently opposite views, I can’t help but think that the antithetical perspectives presented are due for a synthesis that supersedes the old strategic dialectic between the two positions, namely …