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To the Editors In December of 2003, the Australian Army Journal (AAJ) editorialised that ‘the place of intellectual mastery in preparing armies for warfighting is now well established and Western military journals have often played a key role in shaping change’. It posed a series of questions linked to army personnel, education, training, force structure and how best to meet the challenges of the complex battlefield of the 21st-century. The AAJ has proven itself to be ‘the main forum for such an exchange …
Listed below is a selection from the review copies that have arrived at the Australian Army Journal . Reviews for many of these books can be found online in the relevant edition of the Australian Army Journal at: http://www.defence.gov.au/army/lwsc/Publications/journal/journal.htm Barefoot Soldier, Johnson Beharry, VC, Sphere, ISBN 9780751538793, 434pp. A Devil’s Triangle: Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destructions and Rogue States, Peter Brookes, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0742549534, 272pp. A …
War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History 1500 to Today Written by: Max Boot, Gotham Books, New York, 2006, ISBN: 978-1592402229, 624 pp. Reviewed by: Antony Trentini, Visiting Fellow, Defence and Security Applications Research Centre. While it would seem, on the strength of the book’s title, that Max Boot would present an unbalanced and radical technological determinist argument with War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History 1500 to Today , he does not. Instead, …
An Introduction to the Causes of War: Patterns of Interstate Conflict from World War I to Iraq Written by: Greg Cashman and Leonard C. Robinson, Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, ISBN: 978-1538127780, 423pp. Reviewed by: Dr Gregory P. Gilbert, Senior Research Officer, Sea Power Centre – Australia The majority of people who contribute to Australia’s defence are more involved with their day to day activities than with the international relations theory and practice that underpins their …
Abstract Canadian author Gwynne Dyer was recently in Australia to promote his latest book The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq , which is available from Scribe Publishing. In an interview with the Australian Army Journal he discussed the issues raised in his new book, as well as the strategic concerns facing Australia today. Innumerable books have been written, pundits have held forth on what should and should not be done, and around the globe the television news each night brings the story of a …
Fighting for Fallujah, Written by: John R. Ballard, Praeger Security International, Westport, CT, 2006, ISBN: 9780275990558, 152 pp. No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle of Fallujah Written by: Bing West, Bantam Book, New York, 2006, ISBN: 9780553383195, 378 pp. We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines who took Fallujah Written by: Patrick K. O’Donnell, Da Capo, Cambridge, MA, 2006, ISBN: 9780306815737, 244 pp. For much of 2004 the most consistent problem spot …
General John Stuart Baker AC, DSM (1937–2007) General Baker was born in Melbourne in 1936. He joined the Australian Army in 1954, and graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon into the Royal Australian Engineers. General Baker was a highly intelligent and dedicated military officer. He saw operational service in Papua New Guinea and undertook two tours in Vietnam. For his work in Vietnam with the 1st Australian Civil Affairs Unit, he was Mentioned in Dispatches for his devotion to duty, …
How do you study military history? How often have I been asked that question, and how often have I found that all the enquirer wanted to learn was how to pass an examination? If that is all you want to do don’t bother to read any further, for I am afraid that I don’t know any short cuts, I don’t know of any substitute for work. But if you want to enrich your mind with the military experience of the ages, if you want to broaden your professional knowledge and enhance your capacity to command, if you want to …
Abstract This article reflects on the operation of the Australian Army’s 1st Reconstruction Task Force, which deployed to Afghanistan’s Uruzgan Province in August 2006. The author highlights the importance of civil affairs, such as reconstruction, education and capacity-building, in an overall counterinsurgency effort. As for the character of our enemies, they have been unusually ruthless and nihilistic. Their only purpose in violence has been to tear down, not to build up an alternative vision they …
Abstract While the experience in Iraq has generated a degree of political caution in the West towards mounting military-led interventions, it will inevitably only be a matter of time before fading memory and circumstances reverse this reluctance; this article offers a conceptual construct for such deployments. It first considers the nature of military-led interventions intended to effect regime change, and then develops a conceptual construct for reconstruction and societal reform that intervention forces …