Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

To defend our homeland, our forces must be equipped to operate overseas

By Des Moore - posted Wednesday, 17 December 2003


Some commentators play down the terrorist challenge as not being an existential threat and so as not justifying the use of our armed forces, especially in distant lands.

Such people, wedded to old ways of thinking and to defending past stands, continue advocating the discredited concentric circles theory.

This says - wrongly and dangerously - that threat automatically diminishes with distance, that only threats of invasion matter, and that these are best left to be met on our beaches and in the nearby “air-sea gap”.

Advertisement

But the defence of Australia is far better pursued by operations further out in space and time, to prevent our security circumstances worsening to the point where invasion becomes an imminent possibility.

Moreover, invasion is not the only way in which Australia’s territorial integrity and political independence can be violated; terrorist acts in Australia, inspired or enabled or directed from outside, are equally violations.

True, coping with the terrorist threat IN Australia is largely a matter for the police and ASIO; but the terrorist threat TO Australia can require armed action overseas against rogue or failed states, such as Afghanistan and Iraq were, which allow or encourage or arm or finance terrorist acts directed against us in Australia or overseas.

The stick-in-the-mud commentators criticise that on four grounds.

Australia is putting close ties to America above our national interest, which is Asia.

Asians believe fervently in the principle of “non-interference”, and so are put offside by Australia’s readiness to place above that principle the right to self-defence against Islamist terrorism.

Advertisement

So Australia should “hasten to reposition itself” alongside Asia, not America, and give up restructuring the ADF to make more effective our participation in future coalitions of the willing.

In any case, ADF rebalancing is pointless, as the world will see no more Iraqs. For America is being given a bloody nose there, is in barely disguised retreat, and in no shape to repeat the exercise.

All four criticisms are misplaced.

We are not being led by the nose by America in adding our weight to international counter-terrorism efforts. Plainly our national interest is in reducing the terrorist threat, not in sitting irresponsibly by waiting for the threat to Australia to be made manifest in Australia - or to be removed by others for us.

Neither are we harming ourselves in Asia, nearly every country in which supported in word or deed the coalition against Iraq. Furthermore, Asia is not the only region of the world important to Australia; to believe otherwise is to succumb to the Tyranny of Proximity, which foolishly puts mileage above consequence.

Nor is the Australian Government misguided in modestly rebalancing the ADF’s capability the better to fight alongside US forces in the far abroad when that is in Australia’s interests. The Government needs to be able to choose from a variety of options, and not be constricted by a clanking machine designed for only one purpose - the close territorial defence of Australia.

Finally, “no more Iraqs” is much too premature a judgment. True, America is most unlikely to try to remove by force the regimes in Iran and North Korea. But that was so, each for its own reasons, even before the Iraq war.

And nobody can rule out a future need to deal by the use of force with an emergent situation. So the rebalancing of the ADF is far from unnecessary.

One frequent defence commentator (principal author of the 2000 Defence White Paper) claims that that rebalancing has gone the wrong way, in favour of “fewer and bigger” capabilities designed for higher-intensity conventional conflicts rather than lower-intensity unconventional operations.

But the true issue is the combat power available in conflict wherever occurring and for whatever reason, not whether the conflict is of low or high intensity.

For example, tanks are not an encumbrance to our light forces - the lightest in the First World - but a necessary addition to their combat and protective strength.

Likewise, the new but fewer patrol boats will have greater capabilities, able to operate 300 days a year instead of the current 200. And the new bigger troopships will provide greater capabilities wherever deployed.

In the air too, it is wrong to play down the capabilities of the cruise missile-armed F/A-18 compared to the F-111, and to decry, as this critic does, improved helicopter capability as useful only for landing troops “against stiff opposition”. In fact, helicopters are essential to any littoral operations wherever occurring - but heliborne movement would never be undertaken against stiff opposition.

One can only wonder when some self-concerned old stagers will catch up.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All

This article was first published in The Canberra Times on 15 December 2003.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Des Moore is Director, Institute for Private Enterprise and a former Deputy Secretary, Treasury. He authored Schooling Victorians, 1992, Institute of Public Affairs as part of the Project Victoria series which contributed to the educational and other reforms instituted by the Kennett Government. The views are his own.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Des Moore
Related Links
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Institute for Private Enterprise
Photo of Des Moore
Article Tools
Comment Comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy