{"id":75824,"date":"2022-10-17T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2022-10-16T19:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=75824"},"modified":"2022-10-17T07:41:36","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T20:41:36","slug":"parliament-ponders-the-way-australia-goes-to-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/parliament-ponders-the-way-australia-goes-to-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Parliament ponders the way Australia goes to war"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

When Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901, it was at war in South Africa and China.<\/p>\n

The six Australian colonies had sent militia and bushmen contingents to the Boer War<\/a> (1899\u20131902) and dispatched troops and ships to the Boxer Rebellion<\/a> (1900\u201301).<\/p>\n

The Commonwealth of Australia was blessed with its own continent and the most peaceful act of national creation. The federation was formed by agreement and referendum. Yet the Commonwealth inherited a foreign military tradition at its birth.<\/p>\n

The first military unit established by the new federal government was the \u2018Australian Commonwealth Horse\u2019, which served in the final stage of the South African conflict. They were the first Australian troops to wear the rising sun badge, clipping the brim of the slouch hat. One of Australia\u2019s most questionable fights, the Boer War, has one of Canberra\u2019s most striking memorials<\/a>\u2014a patrol of four mounted soldiers edging their bronze horses down a slope to Anzac Parade.<\/p>\n

The memorial has a verse from the journalist-poet Banjo Patterson, who served as a correspondent in South Africa:<\/p>\n

When the dash and the excitement and the novelty are dead,
\nAnd you’ve seen a load of wounded once or twice,
\nOr you’ve watched your old mate dying\u2014with the\u00a0vultures\u00a0overhead,
\nWell, you wonder if the\u00a0war\u00a0is worth the price.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Patterson\u2019s \u2018worth the price\u2019 question often recurs in considering the nine times Australia committed to war in the 90 years from 1914 to 2003<\/a>. What he reported as an imperial war would become alliance wars. The distinction between wars of choice and wars of necessity is fraught, yet the Boer War counts as our first war of choice\u2014Vietnam and Iraq are later additions to that column.<\/p>\n

Australia goes abroad to fight for its alliance, to help set the central balance, and for what we now call the rules-based global order. We send our diggers offshore. Statecraft meets strategy as the expeditionary force sets out.<\/p>\n

Australia has spent much of its history, as Coral Bell masterfully recounted, as a \u2018dependent ally\u2019<\/a>, but it is a finely calculated reliance. Dissecting Australia\u2019s strategic culture<\/a> and way of war, Michael Evans observed that our pragmatic politics meant this \u2018dependency has always been clever, cynical and calculated\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Boer War heralded another constant in the way the nation goes to war\u2014the lack of any initiating role for the federal parliament. When Australian troops first sailed for South Africa, parliament didn\u2019t even exist. In every war since, it has been the ghost with no formal voice in the most fundamental choice a nation can make. The executive has almost unfettered war powers.<\/p>\n

The prime minister declares the deployment or announces the conflict and the military march. This is the leader\u2019s most profound prerogative<\/a>. The prime minister confident of cabinet and party can act without any authorisation or resolution from the parliament.<\/p>\n

All this frames the just-announced parliamentary inquiry<\/a> into \u2018how Australia makes decisions to send service personnel into international armed conflict\u2019. The review will wrestle with issues that echo down our 120 years of federation.<\/p>\n

Previous pushes to give parliament a voice over war powers have come from minor parties in the Senate\u2014the Australian Democrats and the Greens. This time, the discussion has been set in motion by a new government.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese\u2019s government is acting on the platform it took to the May election. Under the heading \u2018Armed conflict\u2019<\/a>, the Australian Labor Party\u2019s national platform conference resolved:<\/p>\n

that an Albanese Labor Government will refer the issue of how Australia makes decisions to send service personnel into international armed conflict to an inquiry to be conducted by the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The terms of reference<\/a> set by Defence Minister Richard Marles ask the inquiry to consider:<\/p>\n