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Major General Ross Buchan, AO (Retd) (1935-2003) Major General Ross Buchan entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1954, graduating into the Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery in 1957. His 37-year career thus mirrored the role that Australia’s professional army played in the Cold War and his personal development as an officer was forged by the active and varied military life that was open to a promising officer during this period. His was a rich and exciting life, and despite his too early …

Major General Ronald Hughes, CBE, DSO (RETD) (1920-2003) Major General Ronald Hughes was an infantry officer whose distinguished career typified the critical contribution that the Australian Army’s officer corps has made to Australian security. His career spanned four decades: from entry to the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1937 until his retirement in 1977. He fought in three wars and served as Australia’s Military Attaché in Indonesia during the period of Confrontation. His was a varied and …

Editor’s Note: In April 1995 members of the Australian Defence Force Medical Support Force, a component of the Australian Contingent of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) were deployed to the Kibeho displaced persons’ camp. The camp had been surrounded by two battalions of Tutsi troops from the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), which regarded it as a sanctuary for Hutu perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. In the ethnic slaughter that followed, the RPA killed some 4000 of the camp’s …

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 …