{"id":24828,"date":"2016-02-25T14:38:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T03:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=24828"},"modified":"2016-02-25T14:51:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T03:51:47","slug":"the-come-as-you-are-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-come-as-you-are-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018come-as-you-are\u2019 war"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"9379813470_169ddf2ccf_z\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a dominant motif that runs through the strategic assessment underpinning the latest Defence White Paper and, despite what China might think, it\u2019s not containment. It\u2019s uncertainty. Australia is beefing up for an uncertain world. Beneath some reassuring words about growing regional prosperity and the US rebalance lies a set of deep uncertainties\u2014about the resilience of the current regional order; about the magnitude, scope and timing of possible challenges to that order; and about the ease with which strategic competition might spiral more easily into conflict in coming decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the government hasn\u2019t reneged on its earlier commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence. Indeed, it\u2019s brought forward that commitment by three full years, from 2023\u201324 to 2020\u201321. Attracted as it must have been by the prospect of reaching a budget surplus earlier than now, the government\u2019s opted instead for a measured expansion of Australia\u2019s defence capability.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 2013 Defence White Paper, the Gillard government depicted a regional security environment that bore hallmarks of both cooperation and competition. Today\u2019s White Paper signals a judgment\u2014see para 1.6\u2014that the Asian security environment has become more competitive and less cooperative in the intervening years. Moreover, the risk of further slippage in that direction can\u2019t be ignored\u2014and muscling up takes time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unarticulated in the White Paper is any judgment about the shifting nature of conflict\u2014and whether thresholds and firebreaks that we\u2019ve become used to over previous decades are weakening. Surely actors with a greater appetite for strategic risk are pushing at the lower rungs of the escalation ladder? It\u2019s not only the risk of conflict that\u2019s going up. The possibility of unexpected breaches of the thresholds is going up too\u2014making more likely the prospect of sudden conflict with unexpected escalation ladders.<\/span><\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean we stand on the brink of World War 3. Nor is there much prospect of a military attack upon Australian territory by another country. But we do stand on the brink of an age of argy-bargy\u2014though the White Paper doesn\u2019t use that technical term\u2014of a rather less civilised global and regional order. The sort of ADF the White Paper intends to field\u2014an ADF that\u2019s more capable, agile and responsive\u2014is one more suited to that age of argy-bargy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The White Paper doesn\u2019t bury the message; indeed, it rehearses both judgments\u2014about rising uncertainty and the need for a more muscular and responsive ADF\u2014right up front in para 1.1. But there\u2019s relatively little unfolding of either judgment in Chapter 2, which canvasses Australia\u2019s strategic environment. There, the US\u2013China relationship\u2014and Australia\u2019s relationships with both countries\u2014is handled exceedingly diplomatically; as is the section on the rules-based global order. Terrorism is depicted as a threat, and state fragility as an enabler of a range of malign actors. There\u2019s a professional, if dry, section on regional military modernisation, and a set of observations about the cyber and space domains.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coverage of Australia itself and of its immediate neighbourhood follows those earlier topics, before the chapter turns to a closer analysis of North Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and proliferation of WMD. There are some critical judgments here too: I think para 2.83 reflects a new benchmark in Australian positive thinking about Indonesian military modernisation, for example (a position reinforced later at para 5.37). But, again, there\u2019s little sense of alarm. The section on Weapons of Mass Destruction\u2014paras 2.102-2.106\u2014is actually boring. Readers of Chapter 2 will be left wondering quite why we\u2019re embarking on the course we are.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast to previous White Papers, which were constrained by geographical notions of capability priority, Chapter 3 promises an ADF better structured for the full range of its far-regional and global missions. Para 3.10 notes the government\u2019s agreement to three equally-weighted Strategic Defence Objectives to guide the development of the future force\u2014a pleasant and overdue change to earlier doctrine that only the defence of Australia or its near environs could determine force structure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Notwithstanding Chapter 2, the broad setting of the White Paper suggests a sense of urgency. Not only is money being made available more rapidly than before, there\u2019s a broader theme running through the document about our need for an ADF geared to a higher level of preparedness. I think the White Paper gives us the force structure we will want over the next couple of decades. But I\u2019d have been happier with a Chapter 2 that\u00a0was\u00a0less diplomatically phrased.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a dominant motif that runs through the strategic assessment underpinning the latest Defence White Paper and, despite what China might think, it\u2019s not containment. It\u2019s uncertainty. Australia is beefing up for an uncertain world. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":24829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,143,1636,1623],"class_list":["post-24828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-defence-force","tag-asia-pacific","tag-defence-white-paper-2016","tag-funding"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe \u2018come-as-you-are\u2019 war | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-come-as-you-are-war\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The \u2018come-as-you-are\u2019 war | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s a dominant motif that runs through the strategic assessment underpinning the latest Defence White Paper and, despite what China might think, it\u2019s not containment. 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