{"id":78182,"date":"2023-03-03T15:00:16","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T04:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=78182"},"modified":"2023-03-17T15:20:15","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T04:20:15","slug":"australias-armed-forces-must-be-ready-for-the-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australias-armed-forces-must-be-ready-for-the-worst\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s armed forces must be ready for the worst"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kim Beazley recalls the 1980s when he oversaw a restructuring of Australia\u2019s military establishment comfortable in the knowledge that no major attack was likely in the coming decade. That luxury is gone, he says.<\/p>\n

Beazley, one of Australia\u2019s most experienced and accomplished defence ministers, is asked in a video interview<\/a> as part of ASPI\u2019s \u2018Lessons in leadership\u2019 series what advice he\u2019d have for a counterpart now. He tells former ASPI executive director Peter Jennings: \u2018The whole world\u2019s on your shoulders, mate. If anything goes wrong and the country\u2019s not effectively defended, it\u2019s your fault.\u2019<\/p>\n

Having held the defence portfolio from 1984 to 1990 and served as Australia\u2019s ambassador to the United States from 2010 to 2016, Beazley recalls that when he was minister he\u2019d sometimes wake up and ask himself if Australia had to fight a major war from a standing start, \u2018Could we win?\u2019<\/p>\n

His answer was, \u2018Probably not\u2019, says Beazley. \u2018And that would compel me to work a bit harder.\u2019 He also had the reassurance of knowing that he wasn\u2019t likely to wake up to find his country at war. \u2018You can\u2019t do that now. The current defence minister has to wake up and say, \u201cWhat can I now do from a standing start if tomorrow the balloon goes up?\u201d\u2014because it might!\u2019<\/p>\n

That puts an enormous burden on the minister\u2019s shoulders, he says. \u2018Much more than there was on mine.\u2019<\/p>\n

The minister must issue dire warnings, and those warnings must be accompanied by solutions and not issued on their own, he says. The minister must be sure of getting the best possible advice from the Defence Department and from the armed services. \u2018But at the end of the day, it\u2019s just down to you, and it\u2019s a very heavy weight.\u2019<\/p>\n

Beazley says the government needs to know what, if shooting starts tomorrow, is going to work and how much of it is needed. \u2018We have never done defence on that basis, since World War II.\u2019<\/p>\n

And while there has been much speculation that the army will come off second best when new capabilities and resources are allocated as the recommendations of the just completed defence strategic review are implemented, Beazley has a different view.<\/p>\n

He says a key to defending Australia will be large numbers of missiles with long range, and they\u2019ll have to be mobile. \u2018Basically, that\u2019s the army. So I think that in terms of strike capability and distance, you\u2019re going to see the army with a bigger role. They\u2019re not thinking like that at the moment, really, but they\u2019re going to have to.\u2019<\/p>\n

The government must ensure that the Australian Defence Force has enough weapons and ammunition at hand to fight a war that might last for months, he says.<\/p>\n

Beazley had had a long interest in defence issues before he became minister and had written a master\u2019s thesis on Indian Ocean security.<\/p>\n

He says that after Vietnam, the Americans did not want to focus on this region and US President Richard Nixon made it very clear that Australia had to do more to look after its own security. \u2018I thought that Nixon had done us an enormous favour by telling that the US, like God, helped those who helped themselves. And so he actually made it easy to do a shift in the character of Australian policy.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ensuring Australia\u2019s long-term survival will not be easy, he says. \u2018History has a way of correcting anomalies, and in many ways, we are an anomaly. And that means we have to be not so laid back. We have to be clever.\u2019<\/p>\n

Australia needs to be spending much more than 2% of GDP on defence, but that will be hard to achieve, says Beazley. \u2018It\u2019s difficult to convince people of what you ought to do unless you\u2019re actually in the emergency.\u2019<\/p>\n

When he became defence minister in Bob Hawke\u2019s new government, an early goal was to abolish the Department of Defence Support, which, Beazley says, \u2018was wasting resources by the bushel\u2019. The department was responsible for purchasing or manufacturing much of what Defence needed, carrying out research, developing Australian industry and providing support in dockyards.<\/p>\n

Having those roles in a separate department complicated the running of programs for Defence, says Beazley. Australia\u2019s industries, as they were then set up, were perfectly positioned for the production of ammunition and equipment for World War II, and maybe even the Vietnam War, but not for anything that might happen subsequently, says Beazley.<\/p>\n

Dismantling the Defence Support Department was strongly backed by those running the military.<\/p>\n

Beazley went on to oversee major reforms based in large part on Paul Dibb\u2019s 1986 Review of Australia\u2019s defence capabilities<\/a><\/em> and the 1987 Defence of Australia<\/em> white paper<\/a> of which Dibb was the primary author.<\/p>\n

A high point was the decision to build conventional submarines in Australia. Six Collins-class boats were commissioned, though a regret for Beazley is that the fleet wasn\u2019t increased to eight. \u2018The reason I wanted two more was simply this, and it\u2019s still a consideration: there are about four choke points on entry to Australia; if you\u2019ve got eight submarines, you\u2019ve got a chance of keeping them all covered permanently, and eight was absolutely essential. And, to my mind then, on the math of it, twelve would be better but eight was essential. So that was a failure on my part, not to be able to get there.\u2019<\/p>\n

But he also felt strongly the requirement for a long-range strike capability because Australia needed to be able to hurt an attacker. \u2018They won\u2019t take much notice of you unless they know how much hurt you can inflict. That\u2019s why the F-111s [long-range bombers] were fantastic.\u2019<\/p>\n

Beazley talks at length in the interview about his complex dealings with the US over New Zealand\u2019s ban on visits by warships that might be carrying nuclear weapons, the process of building trust with the US intelligence agencies, and the importance of the shared facilities in Australia, including Pine Gap, which he regarded as critical to the global balance of power.<\/p>\n

And he makes telling observations about Australians at the sharp end of diplomacy, intelligence and the military: \u2018Our Defence and Foreign Affairs officials are probably better than just about anybody I\u2019ve come across. They\u2019re good all-rounders, they have to do a lot of things, so they actually know a lot; they\u2019re not stove-piped. So, our public servants can readily hold their own; our intelligence officers and service personnel can hold their own. The services, I think, really do brilliantly with that. The way American officers are educated is well ahead of us, and they\u2019re better qualified, but I think our guys have a rough and ready intelligence.\u2019<\/p>\n

ASPI\u2019s \u2018Lessons in leadership\u2019 series is produced with the support of Lockheed Martin Australia.<\/em><\/p>\n