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General Peter Cosgrove, AC, MC, was the Chief of the Defence Force. A graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, he has held many appointments throughout his career, including Commandant of the Infantry Centre, the Australian Defence Warfare Centre and the Royal Military College, Duntroon. He has commanded the 6th Brigade and the 1st Division and has seen active service in Vietnam. As Commander of the Deployable Joint Force Headquarters, General Cosgrove led the International Force in East Timor in …

Dr Christopher Flaherty worked as a lawyer and Australian Aboriginal ethnographer before moving to the University of Melbourne to take up a position as a researcher. He has held appointments in the Department of Defence since 2000, and received his doctorate from the University of Melbourne in 2002. … Christopher …

Living by the Sword? The Ethics of Armed Intervention   Written by: Tom Frame, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2004,  ISBN: 9780868405193, 278pp. Reviewed by: Christian Enemark, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus admonished his disciple Peter: ‘All who live by the sword will die by the sword’. For centuries, theologians have debated what Jesus really meant by this statement in order to determine the moral status of those who engage in armed …

Globalisation and the New Terror: The Asia Pacific Dimension   Written by: David Martin Jones (ed.),  Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK,2004,  ISBN: 9781845427771, xv + 316pp. Reviewed by: Michael Evans, Head of the Land Warfare Studies Centre and coeditor of the AAJ. The study of terrorism is a field that often lends itself to sensationalism and instant books based on breathless narrative and journalistic impression. None of these features characterises Globalisation and the New Terror . On the contrary, the …

Future Armies, Future Challenges: Land Warfare in the Information Age   Written by: Michael Evans, Russell Parkin and Alan Ryan (eds), Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2004, paperback, ISBN: 9781865086262, 370pp. Reviewed by: Professor Jeffrey Grey, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. There is an art to editing conference proceedings, which too often when published are less than the sum of their parts. They often date quickly, and it seems strange that, in the era of the Internet, …

Surprise, Security and the American Experience   Written by: John Lewis Gaddis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004, ISBN: 9780674011748, 150pp. Reviewed by: Russell Parkin, Senior Research Fellow at the Land Warfare Studies Centre and coeditor of the AAJ. At the end of the Cold War, the American scholar, Walter Russell Meade, wrote a book entitled Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World . A key thesis of Meade’s book was based on the identification of four …

Stray Voltage: War in the Information Age   Written by: Wayne Michael Hall, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2003, ISBN: 9781591143505, 219pp. Reviewed by: Michael Evans, Head of the Land Warfare Studies Centre and coeditor of the AAJ. In this interesting and stimulating study, author Wayne Michael Hall—a retired American brigadier general who directed the US Army’s Intelligence XXI study—argues that, because of the ascent of the digital age, the face of battle is rapidly changing. Increasingly, the …

Field Artillery and Firepower   Written by: Major General J. B. A. Bailey, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2004, ISBN: 9781591140290, 633pp. Reviewed by: Michael Evans, Head of the Land Warfare Studies Centre and coeditor of the AAJ. When this book was first published in 1989 by the then Major Jonathan Bailey of the Royal Artillery, it rapidly became known as the best single source on field artillery in the English language. Bailey’s brilliant study did for field artillery what Richard Simpkin’s work …

Dear Editors, While reading Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen’s interesting article ‘Combined Arms and the Close Battle in Complex Terrain’ in the December 2003 edition of the AAJ , I noticed a point that needs amplification. Lieutenant Colonel Kilcullen states, quite correctly, that British artillery pieces never entered Basra, although mortars were employed. He is right, but it should be noted that Basra lies along a waterway that is never more that about 7 km wide. Unlike infantry mortars, field guns …

We are pleased to announce that Dr Michael Evans, coeditor of the Australian Army Journal and Head of the Land Warfare Studies Centre, has won the Hugh G. Nott Award for the best article published in the United States Naval War College Review for 2003. The Naval War College Review is one of the premier publications in the United States in the area of military strategy. The prize for the best article is awarded annually by the Naval War College Foundation in memory of Captain Hugh G. Nott, US Navy, who made …