Alan Dupont: Modern wars can't be based on obsolete battle plans
November 14, 2002
WE are on the cusp of a new, more dangerous and unpredictable era in global
affairs that has profound implications for Australia's defence and national
security.
The tragedies of the Bali bombing and the World Trade Centre in New York
are visible manifestations of a shift in the security paradigm that may
prove, over time, as transformational as the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
The indiscriminate brutality of contemporary terrorism is only one aspect
of a broader assault on the conventions that have governed international
society for the past 100 years. The state-on-state conflicts of the 20th
century are being replaced by hybrid wars and asymmetric contests in which
there is no clear-cut distinction between soldiers and civilians and
between organised violence, terror, crime and war.
Preventing and managing Mad Max future wars requires new strategies and
approaches. However, there is precious little evidence that the architects
of our strategic policy have grasped this point.
During the past few months, Defence Minister Robert Hill has questioned
some of the underlying assumptions of the defence orthodoxy. He is right to
do so because our strategy is firmly rooted in the past, having remained
essentially unchanged since the Dibb review almost 20 years ago.
The Dibb review's central premise, encapsulated in the Defence of Australia
doctrine, is that protecting Australia against conventional military attack
from a hostile state should determine the structure and capability of the
Australian Defence Force. Traditionalists say that "forces structured for
the defence of Australia and its approaches can meet all the tasks asked of
it by the government" despite the unprecedented tempo and range of non-DOA
activities and the repeated overseas deployment of the ADF.
Given the dramatically different strategic circumstances we face, this
position is intellectually bankrupt, politically untenable and
operationally unsustainable. There is a serious mismatch between strategy,
force structure and the emerging threats to Australia's security.
What Australia needs is a strategy for the future, not the past, and a
transformed ADF structured to manage the very different security challenges
of the 21st century.
As a crucial first step, we must rethink a defence strategy that has four
significant failings: It is based on a misplaced geographical determinism
that ignores the diverse and globalised nature of modern conflict. It has
shaped the ADF for the wrong wars. It gives insufficient weight to the
transnational threats that confront us. And it fails to recognise that
modern defence forces must win the peace as well as the war.
The key lesson here is that the ADF is not optimally configured or trained
for today's threats, let alone those of tomorrow. While others restructure
for the conflicts of the future, we, for the most part, remain wedded to
strategic concepts that have long passed their use-by date. It is axiomatic
that the ADF should be able to defend Australia against military attack.
But DOA is too narrowly conceived and disconnected from the security
challenges of the contemporary world to provide the necessary strategic
guidance for an ADF in urgent need of transformation.
It would be a mistake to characterise this call for strategic renewal as
merely the latest incarnation of the longstanding debate between proponents
of forward defence and continental defence. These tired old shibboleths
reflect the linear thinking of a bygone era and shed little light on the
essential defence and security problems for Australia in the 21st century.
Deploying force beyond our immediate neighbourhood is perfectly consistent
with the defence of Australia's vital interests and should not be construed
as fighting someone else's war. But a force designed for state-on-state
conflict will struggle to manage the multifarious security challenges posed
by neo-nationalist guerilla movements, terrorists, new-age mercenaries,
pirates, people-smugglers and global crime syndicates.
Transformation is not a prescription for radical change. Neither does it
mandate increased defence spending. Significant transformation can be
achieved through a modest reordering of priorities and adjustments to
existing programs within the existing budgetary framework.
Transformation means that the ADF must acquire more high-value, niche
capabilities and additional land forces equipped for a wide range of
contingencies across the threat spectrum that can be dispatched rapidly,
with adequate protection, sustainment and command and control. The ADF must
be trained and configured for multifaceted tasks. And although advanced
technology is essential, it must be usable and appropriate for the new wars
as well as the old.
Unfortunately, some of our existing systems fail this crucial test.
Alan Dupont is director of the Asia-Pacific security program at the
Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. This
is an extract from his lecture co-hosted by the Menzies Centre and
Australian Defence Industries in Canberra yesterday.
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