Australian defence is divided in political doctrine between the Regionalists and the Expeditionists. Tempered in with these two doctrines is the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy which both major parties follow. Under the Howard Government Expeditionists have been claiming victory, unfortunately procurement in the last nine years has been highly unfocused, and will have a deleterious effect on Australian projection. The Expeditionist viewpoint is inherently limiting as it is dependent upon the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine and cannot serve as the basis for an independent Australian military or foreign policy.

Expeditionism vs Regionalism

The expeditionalists believe that Australia's global interests should come first and believe the Australian Defence Force (ADF) should be structured to that end. The regionalist believe that Australian defence needs to be focused regionally and the ADF structured with the necessary projection in mind.

The expeditionists cannot be entwined from the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy. This is where Australia places its security in subservience to the current superpower and then tries to influence the superpower toward Australian interests.

This was initially used by Billy Hughes at Versailles in 1919. It has been used by every government since. Menzies and Curtin were both hopelessly dependent upon the doctrine. Hawke and Keating were probably the most indifferent toward the doctrine. The Howard years have seen a re-alignment of foreign policy toward uncritical support of the current superpower/hyperpower.

Given this intersection between political doctrine and strategic doctrine it is worthy to understand just what the purposes of the ADF are. From the Fundamentals of Australian Aerospace Power;

... strategic doctrine is the the collection of fundamental principles associated with the application of military force as part of a national effort .... Senior commanders, attempting to contribute to the employment of national power, are, on a daily basis, exposed to the doctrines of other government organizations. The government of the day, together with its supporting bureaucracy, has its doctrine on which the political party is founded and on which it bases its approach to all matters of national importance ....

Central to the military is power. The "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine deliberately secedes Australian effort to another nation. Australia's national effort toward a goal is immediately removed as being necessary. The expeditionist school of military power diffuses Australian military power until Australia is absolutely dependent upon a superpower for security. Both these doctrines, political and strategic defray Australian ability to act independently in military and foreign policy matters.

Projection

Central to Australian regional projection is the triumvirate of the F111, Collins Class Attack Submarines and the Orion P3C. A simple fact of Australian geography is that only a long range aircraft with good speed and endurance will get into the sea approaches where we are vulnerable. Australian defence is dominated by an air-sea gap. This air-sea gap is the Timor Sea, the Coral Sea and the North-West shelf. These areas also comprise national assets such as oil and fishing grounds.

The second major component of Australian projection is the logistical side. Australia is a large continent and our interests reach far out into the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and Indonesia Archipelago. Consequently Australian airlift ability and sea-going logistical support across the Timor Sea is highly important.

The expeditionist school also quickly forgets that two of Australia's most successful expeditions were across the Timor Sea and Coral Sea. This is where Australian projected its soft and hard power across the air-sea gap. The F111 has also been a remarkable regional deterrent. It should not be forgotten that the moving of an F111 strike force to the Northern Territory was a necessary prelude to the Indonesian Government requesting the UN to come and secure the East Timor situation.

Recent Procurement

Recent procurement for the ADF has been odd. Given the confusion in Australian Government as to the role of the ADF and the changing manner in which the US has used its forces since September 11th, the Australian Government has responded by entertaining big ticket items that do nothing to resolve either expeditionist or regionalist requirements. It looks like the ADF is taking advantage of a government naive on defence and requesting macro weaponry of little use to Australian strategic doctrine.

The Army recently requested and got Abrams tanks. The tanks were surplus US battle tanks that had seen action in the 1991 Gulf War. The cost for these sixty tanks was $550 million. The rhetoric was that it made the Australian-American alliance closer and gave Australian greater operational compatibility with the US.

The problem is the Australian Army does not do "Operation Desert Storm" and if we did, the thirty or so Abrams that left Wooloomolloo would not be enough. The Abrams is a big ticket item that will see the same role as the HMAS Melbourne did. It can never be a front-line battle tank. Australia doesn't have the tank numbers, nor does it keep up with the cutting edge technology.

The $550 million would have been better spent on creating a new specification for an armoured vehicle to match Australian needs on the continent, and in deployments like East Timor and the Solomons. Australian industry would have leapt at the chance to create a flexible tank that fits the Australian Army's operational needs.

The Landing Helicopter Dock

The Navy has also been on a big ticket item binge. It requested two 27,000 tonne Landing Helicopter Dock flat-tops and the upcoming Air Defence Destroyers. the LHDs look like aircraft carriers but are amphibious ships for the landing of troops on hostile shores. They carry helicopter support and are quite large. They are 7,000 tonnes larger than the last Australian aircraft carrier - the HMAS Melbourne. Hugh White writes ;

One of the Howard Government's key defence policy achievements has been to reorient the army towards operations in our immediate neighbourhood - such as East Timor and Solomon Islands. We need amphibious ships for such missions.

But smaller amphibious ships in the 12,000-tonne range - such as the ones we were planning to buy - are fine for these kinds of lower-level operations, and they would be capable of handling tougher fights against the kinds of forces we might find in our immediate neighbourhood.

The bigger ships come into their own in high-level conflicts. They are designed specifically for what are called amphibious assaults: D-day style operations in which forces are landed directly against strong opponents in well-defended positions. An LHD can launch a lot of helicopters at the same time. That lets you put a lot of troops on the objective at once - a big advantage.

Both the East Timor and Solomons deployments came with the consent of the governments of those nations. The ADF weren't hitting hot landing zones when Australian troops landed. One aspect of the regional expeditions where Australia has had the greatest effect has been the diplomacy that went on before to ensure that it was a security operation, not warfare.

It is questionable whether Australia needs such size and power in amphibious naval ships. The Tasmanian company, Incat, supplied the HMAS Jervis Bay during the East Timor crisis which as a littoral ship performed superbly. Incat has also come up with innovative designs in amphibious and aviation support ships. Before a mammoth piece of iron is bought from overseas, the indigenous designs should be reviewed and exhausted first.

Once again Australian industry is quite capable of supplying platforms that more than meet Australia's strategic and operational needs. All that is missing is the government's confidence in Australian industry to provide those solutions.

Air-Warfare Destroyers

Australia has put out tenders for six billion dollars worth of Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD). These are large ships that are intended to replace the Frigates that are currently in service. The Frigates since the First Gulf War have been used as a token coalition force. Even during the height of Australian contribution to the Second Gulf War, the Frigate forces comprised nearly half of Australian commitments in manpower.

These destroyers are also quite large. Again Hugh White writes;

The proposed new ships look nothing like the ships they are replacing. For a start they will be much bigger. At 6000 tonnes (possibly more), they would be bigger than any frigate, destroyer or cruiser the navy has commissioned since World War II. ....

But the new destroyers are not just big, they are complex. Called Air Warfare Destroyers (AWDs in defence speak), their main task is to defend themselves and other ships from air attack. To do that they have powerful radar and potent anti-aircraft missiles, as well as a lot of other sophisticated systems, all of which have to be made to work together. They will be by far the most complex warships we have ever built.

Why would we want such ships? The Government has never given a comprehensive answer, but the brief comments in the Defence Minister's press releases say that the ships are needed to protect amphibious deployments of Australian land forces. Fair enough: if Australia ever finds itself deploying an amphibious task group against a capable adversary in a major conventional conflict, it would be very important to protect them from air attack. But do we need AWDs to do that?

As long as our ships are operating within range of our own or allied air bases, our fighters would be much more effective than the AWDs in defending the fleet from air attack. And bombing enemy aircraft on the ground before they take off would be even better.

This is the crux of it, the Navy somehow thinks that it will be fighting independently in the Mediterrainian, while the Army thinks that its sixty tanks are going to take Rommel on in North Africa. Even worse, the Government thinks the same way and has been giving the Navy and Army what it wants.

The biggest deficiencies in Australian projection have become Aerospace projection and the diggers on the ground. The Australian Air Force is facing block obsolescence. Its most powerful strike weapon is being phased out early, with nothing to replace it. Our Army is facing deployments in Iraq, East Timor and the Solomons. An Army requires a large tail to teeth ratio - often as high as seven to one - this can leave the teeth stretched as it gets deployed far and wide.

The F111

The F111 has been the best deterrent Australia has ever had. it can range up to six thousand kilometres armed with a heavy load of precision weaponry. In comparison the F18 can only manage nine hundred kilometres and the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) two thousand. The F111 is a powerful, autonomous and independent precision strike weapon.

The F111 is an aging airframe and is expensive to maintain in operational condition. It is necessary to replace it with a similarly potent platform for Australian projection. Unfortunately the Government has decided to retire the platform early in 2010, with nothing to replace it. The JSF is not expected to start service until 2012 - assuming there are no delays in the JSF's development schedule. This leaves a large capability gap.

Australia has bought $450 million worth of cruise missiles, for 2007/2009, to try and replace the loss of projection with the early retirement of the F111. The cruise missile will be able to be fitted on the F18 and P3C aircraft. The cruise missiles are capable of around four hundred kilometres range. They do not replace the F111 unfortunately.

The procurement of the JSF in 2012 will still leave Australia with a drop in projection. The US military has the largest back-end on the planet that is filled to the brim with force multipliers. The United States maintains its power through the heavy use of these force multipliers such as Air to Air Refuelling (AAR) and Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C).

The AAR component of the Australian Air Force is in dire need of modernisation. Currently Australia uses a couple of converted 707s. Australia still does not have an AEW&C system, being entirely reliant on the United States for that capability. Thankfully the the Wedgetail project is nearing deployment . But again, the Australian Government showed their lack of care for Australian projection and opted out of the largely paid for eighth Wedgetail.

For the JSF to achieve the same level of projection as the F111 it will be reliant on the AAR and AEW&C force multipliers. Unfortunately the force multipliers are themselves fat, slow and highly vulnerable targets that need protecting with JSF escort. This diffuses the number of JSF available to project power. If Australia is going to pursue the JSF, then to squeeze the maximum of project from the platform, it will need numbers. The six billion that is thought of being spent on the Air Warfare Destroyers would be better spent on more JSF aircraft.

Australian Solutions for Australian Issues

The fact of the matter is that the world doesn't make weaponry for Australia any longer. If Australia is going to satisfy its strategic and operation needs it is going to need a more vigorous indigenous defence industry that designs and manufactures all manner of systems, from micro to macro.

The United States and United Kingdom are both more interested in global projection, which Australia does not have an interest in, nor the Defence budget to make a reality. The European defence industry are still making point to point weaponry for a mix of western European warfare and colonial deployment. There is none making air-sea gap projection weaponry any longer.

Australia is not alone in this need however, there are several other air-sea gap nations that need these type of defence systems . Japan, South Korea, Taiwan - even Indonesia. If the American and European defence industries are not supplying then Australia must look to its own industries to supply these needs. If the project requires a great deal of capital and knowledge, then we need to look to our regional neighbours as partners; who are equally forgotten in the defence marketplace. There we can forge new defence, technology, industry and political ties.

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The Australian Republican doctrine is built upon, amongst others, principles of independence, autonomy and the belief that Australian solutions to Australian issues are superior. Australian foreign policy has been afflicted for a century by the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine. This foreign policy has been a constant failure, has weakened Australian military capability and is not compatible with Republican principles. Consequently the Australian military needs revision.

Australian Republican Doctrine

Australian Republican doctrine is founded on several basic principles that have wider application. These principles have been the basis for Australian Republican doctrine for the last two hundred years and serve as a powerful conduit for individual, cultural and political growth. They are;

• Independence
• Autonomy
• Inviolable Rights
• Equity under the Law
• Australian solutions to Australian issues are superior.
• Self-confidence on the global stage.

These have been achieved at the individual, social and cultural levels - it is only our government that lags behind us. The areas where the government is dragging the ball and chain of the 16th Century with them is in the areas of constutition, foreign policy and military policy. The latter two are entwined issues and need a good dose of Australian Republican doctrine to straighten them out.

Foreign Policy

Australian Governments have used the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy since Billy Hughes used Britain's influence at Versaille in an attempt to further Australian international interests. This foreign policy is a failure and has been for a century. As Gareth Evans said;

The ... underlying reality about Australian foreign policy in the contemporary era is that we have very little capacity to advance our interests, however defeined, by relying on our great and powerful friends. Those days are over. Our great and powerful friends have interests of their own.

Evans is incorrect, those days never even existed. One of the worst aspects of the foreign policy is how it defrays Australian military self-sufficiency. The most critical example of this was in 1942 when Australia found itself without a navy to challenge for blue water superiority. Australia also lacked an air-force that could defend Australia.

In 1942 the Royal Navy was tied up in Europe. The Australian Navy was an ad-hoc collection of cruisers that were not capable of command and control, they were themselves designed to slot into a larger British capital ship group. In terms of aerial projection, Australia was defending New Guinea with one fighter squadron. Australia was undefended by any Australian fighter aircraft - fortunately the US supplied a couple of their squadrons to defend Darwin until 1943.

Richard Williams had established an Australian aerospace industry which ultimately produced the CAC Boomerang "Panic Fighter" in late 1942. Without that foundation, the Boomerang would never have appeared. Williams had to fight with the Navy and Singapore for funding. In the 1930s, the Australian Government indulged in defence on the cheap, and what money it did allocate to the Australian military, it gave eighty percent of it to the Navy and Singapore. Both the Navy and Singapore were dismal flops in WWII because they were designed around our "Great and Powerful Friend".

Force Multipliers

Modern capability and projection is a networked affair of multiple inputs that sum to be greater than the parts. Until Australia invests fully in force multipliers it will be a second rate force unable to operate independently or sustainably. What is a force multiplier? From the Fundamentals of Australian Aerospace Power;

Force Multipliers provide external capabilities to increase the effectiveness of combat systems.

In an aerospace context, Air to Air Refueling (AAR) is an example of this. It allows an airborne combat system to increase its endurance, and consequently its capability. Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) is another example. Space based communications and surveillance systems another. These are areas that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is highly deficient.

Our tankers are converted 707 from the 1960s. We are only just getting AEW&Cs, and we have no space based capability. We are dependent upon the United States leasing us space capability when we need it. Both major factions - Liberal and Labor - place heavy weight in their political defence doctrine on the United States leasing us what we need when we want it. Even small and simple systems. This is not unlike the Australian Government in the 1930s expecting the Royal Navy to sail into the Pacific en-masse when needed.

Behind The Times

The lack of high-tech systems has been an ongoing issue for Australian combat systems. From "Highest Traditions", an example of an Australian Canberra bomber in Vietnam not having the latest technology putting the crew in peril;

[They] ... were flying ... close to the Loation border ... just as they turned left ofr the attack, the sky to their immediate 2 o'clock position lit up with angry fireballs of flak. .... A hurried call to their United States ground radar controller that they were taking heavy AAA solicited the query, "Roger Magpie, confirm that your ECM gear is on?". The navigator quickly countered: "What ECM? We're a bloody Canberra!"

ECM is electronic counter measures that jams the enemy systems that try to get a firing solution on the aircraft.

Weakened Australia

Another issue that is ongoing with Australian procurement of American weapon systems is that there are so many restrictions placed on it. Every US Senator puts their own little piece of legislation on export of military technology so that Australia is unable to procure complete systems.

The consolidation of the US Defence industry also means that Australia's bartering position against these giant American firms is weakened - to the point that Australia has trouble getting source code from firms like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Dynamics.

The large US Defence firms also reduce Australian engineers to integrators of American technology. Of all the defence projects mentioned in the 2003 Defence Budget, only one partnership - between Australia and the UK for a missile system - involved genuine technology sharing. The rest were integration projects.

A Military Doctrine

The "Great and Powerful friends" foreign policy doctrine is a meme that must die. It is the complete anti-thesis of Australian Republican doctrine. The "Great and Powerful friends" is dependent, subservient, weakening and a good example of the Australian political cringe. So that both major factions do not rely on this reflexive cringe any longer, it is important that the Australian military become a capable force based on independent strategic doctrine, autonomous capability and sustainable projection power.

The only way this can be achieved is if Australia creates a technologically perfect force that matches our regional needs. We are not alone in this need. Many of our Asian neighbours are also disenfranchised from American foreign policy and the US Defence industries. Japan recently changed a law that prohibited their defence industry from exporting military technology. This was so they could join in projects that required technology sharing. The oppurtunities are there for Australia to partner in new technology sharing defence projects to fill our capability and projection gaps.

Australian military spending on defence needs to increase by forty percent. This will add approximately six billion to the defence budget. This is an affordable increase that must - and I repeat - must go to research and development. Not toward procurement of American weapon systems. Australia must develop its own technologies or partner with like-minded countries in genuine technology sharing projects with this money. It is not for useless big ticket items that the Navy and Army lust after.

The six billion is a subsidy to applied science and engineering which is essential in any high-tech economy. This coupled with business managers that can turn an R&D dollar into a product/service dollar it makes for a powerful economy. Capitalism is geared toward technology, and it rewards innovative business models that leverage technology. The dot-com boom of the 1990s was on the back of the internet. A classic disruptive technology. The internet came from US Military engineering investment in DARPA and European applied science investment in CERN.

Conclusion

The sustained funding of military technology and military research and development will give the Australian Defence Force the systems it requires to become an independent, autonomous and sustainable force. It will remove the anti-Republican "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine from Australian foreign policy. Finally it will advance Australia away from a commodity-based "hole in the ground" economy toward a high-tech economy that has an increased possibility of supplying the world with the next disruptive technology.

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Australia was reliant upon the British Foreign Office for its foreign policy until the Department of External Affairs grew in cabinet importance in the 1940s. Previously the department had not been focused on foreign policy at all. Central to the department's new importance in foreign affairs was the changing circumstance of the Cold War, the decolonisation of former European Empires and the loss of power and prestige of Britain. Another reason, was the vibrant energy of Herbert Vere "Doc" Evatt.

The path to an independent foreign affairs department was not simple, other cabinet heavyweights such as defence, trade, immigration and even the Prime Minister were keen to protect their bureaucratic turf and existing power. There was also the question of competing philosophies on foreign policy - the advent of the United Nations and Soviet aggression was to bring those philosophies into sharp focus.

Doc Evatt

Evatt was born in Maitland, NSW in 1894. Law was to become a focus of his early career, as he graduate first with Bachelors, and then with a Doctorate in law from Sydney University. Soon after he was elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly before being appointed, at age thirty-six, as the youngest justice to serve in the High Court of Australia. He retired from that position to run for the Federal seat of Barton in 1940 and soon found himself as Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin Government.

Previous to Evatt taking over External Affairs, there was no real department for foreign policy, nor foreign affairs. Australia was the last dominion to let go of Britain as its guiding light in foreign policy, and as a consequence the Prime Minister had a great deal of influence in this area. The Prime Minister appointed the Australian High Commissioner to London, who was responsible to the Prime Minister, and not the Department of External Affairs.

This power structure between the Prime Minister and the "Great and Powerful Friend" was to be disastrous when Curtin acted toward American General Douglas MacArthur in the same way, giving MacArthur constant access to Curtin, and Curtin not involving the Australian military in any of the decisions.

The Cold War

For a new foreign affairs department, the challenges in the aftermath of World War II were large. The traditional Western European powers had been either defeated, or bankrupted. Their power and influence was at an end. The European empires had colonies around the world and many near Australia. The Dutch with Indonesia, the Portuguese with East Timor, the British with Malaya, the French with Vietnam and New Caledonia; the stability of all these colonies was in doubt.

The Department of External Affairs did not doubt that the European powers would retreat from their colonies, but there were several unknowns. Were the colonies capable of self-governance now, would the European powers let them self-govern if they were, and would it take generations until European power was finally spent. There was the additional irony that Australia was firmly wedded to a British Empire, that had retracted heavily during World War II.

Another new power relationship had emerged, and that was the United States and Soviet Russia. The United States was predicated on free markets and the open movement of capital, whereas the Soviet Union was defined by a centrally controlled economy and regulated to the minutest input and output. The Cold War was to become an economic war, but in 1946, there remained the apprehension that it would become another war of aggression which would reach every corner of the globe.

Another dynamic which came to the fore after World War II was the theme of global governance, which after the San Francisco conference, was to become the United Nations. The body was set up to create new ways for nation-states to interact and communicate outside of "power politics" which many saw as being the cause for two World Wars in the space of thirty years.

Optimists and Realists

Frederick Eggleston lectured future diplomats for the Department of External Affairs and categorized his students into two camps; Optimists and Realists. Eggleston called the Optimists those that were liberal internationalists. They saw peace as the normal state of international affairs and war as the anomaly. Consequently they sought meta-national structures which promoted the communication between potential conflicting nations, and the dismantling of irrational power bases; such as empires, colonialism, dictatorships, despots, and arms races. In addition they sought universal human rights.

The Realists by comparison were still wedded to the "power politics" that had dominated Western Europe for centuries. In Australia's case this meant following the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy, seeking an iron-tight alliance with the great power of the time, the United States. The Realists also saw the Cold War in binary and absolutist terms, there would be no empathising with the Soviet Union. Power was respected for its own means, and if a dictatorship or despot was part of the alliance, then their crimes against liberty were to be over-looked. The Realists also believed that the European powers should return to their colonies and grant them self-government over several generations, rather than immediately.

Both camps looked to an external body of higher coercion to implement their international goals however. The Optimists in the United Nations, and the Realists in the United States. Neither philosophy truly had an independent Australian foreign policy at heart. It is interesting to note that at the end of World War II, Australia had the fourth largest Air Force on the planet after the United States, Russia and Britain. Yet the Realists were prepared to see that instrument of power go, and a reliance on American military power replace it. There is no doubt, despite their efforts, that neither the Optimists, nor the Realists, saw Australia in terms of an independent country.

Defence and Immigration

The Defence Department in the 1940s was extremely conservative. Those that sought an independent Australian military with the short funds that it could muster in the 1930s were ultimately ousted. The great pro-Australian Air-Marshal Richard Williams was removed by Robert Menzies in a political move. Yet it was Williams' foresight to establish an Australian aerospace industry, with the intent of making the RAAF an indigenously sustainable force, that enabled Australia to license build aircraft until the 1980s.

Evatt and his secretary, John Burton, thought the military leaders too wedded to British ways, and "inadequately Australian". Not only were the defence department concerned about the growing influence of the Department of External Affairs, but there now arose the challenge of Australian military doctrine having to fit a foreign policy that wasn't dictated by Britain. Previously the military only had to worry about transparently slotting in to the British military and ensuring suitable numbers of Australian troops were available for a Middle Eastern theatre.

It is with complete irony that ANZUS is used as such a crutch by modern Australian Governments. The ANZUS Treaty was established by John Foster-Dulles with the urging of Britain so that Australia would send troops to the Middle East in any future war. The treaty was written so that the United States would ensure Australian sovereignty in the Pacific in the case of a second front arising, so that Australia would not do what it did in 1941 and attempt to bring them home, or even worse, defy London and Washington and demand they be employed in the defence of Australia. The ANZUS Treaty was so Australia would not do a "Curtin" with the 7th Division again.

In the 1940s Australia suffered from the White Australia Policy with Arthur Calwell enforced as the Minister for Immigration. The Department of External Affairs wanted to establish strong ties with the newly emerging and developing Asian nations in Australia's region, but many actions of Calwell angered the Asian nations, making diplomacy a difficult exercise.

A Loud Voice And A Small Stick

Australia has often been accused of braying loudly but carrying a small stick. Evatt saw the possibility of the United Nations as enabling a middle power such as Australia to have undue influence on the major powers. This is the core of the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine. It is predicated on subservience to the current super-power but seeking to advance Australia's national interests, security and economic, within the interests of the super-power. Evatt saw subservience to the UN as offering the possibility to influence multiple powers at once, including the US, UK, France and the Soviet Union. It was as mis-guided as the current bilateral relationship with the US, and doomed to fail. Power politics dominated in the UN as well.

Evatt and Burton both saw secrecy as hampering foreign relations. They were open in their communications with anyone who wanted to communicate, including communist nations. They were also often exceedingly blunt with other nations, and did not use the garrulous forms of diplomatic language to explain themselves. However their approach did mean that the world knew Australia now had a Department of Foreign Affairs that dealt in foreign policy.

Conclusion

At the end of Evatt's term as Minister for External Affairs, the department remained in the maturation stage even though it had achieved prominence in the Executive Cabinet. Despite the categorization of diplomats by Egglestone, the Department's outlook was grey and often pragmatic, dealing as Optimists when they could and Realists when they could not. Evatt is well known for his role in establishing the United Nations, but Australian foreign policy remained trapped by alliance diplomacy, that would lead to the uncritical support of the United States over the next half-century and continue through today.

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John Reeve calls the Anglo dominance of the oceans the Lucky League . Britannia carried blue water supremacy until they obsoleted themselves with the Dreadnought. British supremacy lingered until World War II, when the United States leap-frogged them, and all other nations in a four year bound. America has been the barely disputed champion of the oceans since. Reeve argues that our tangential inclusion in that Anglo dominance has been positive for Australia. He is arguing for the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy.

The Navy And The Nation

John Reeve has written the concluding article for the book, The Navy and the Nation . This book looks at the Navy's role in Australian nationhood. Since the Royal Australian Navy only appeared with the Defence Act of 1903, prior to that Australian naval involvement was as state based littoral ships, a federal tribute to the Royal Navy for defence purposes, and direct Royal Navy control of the colonies. The book focuses on naval influence in Australia rather than independent Australian achievements, even though pioneers such as William Clarkson are discussed.

This is a valid approach in viewing the naval history in Australia. The colony of New South Wales was founded with the intent of establishing a British naval outpost in the Pacific to counter French power in the region. Reeves writes;

The Royal Navy was the initial creator of modern Australia. The first British settlement was intended to serve the strategic interests of a global maritime empire, and the Navy was the protector and effectively director of the new colony.

Until self-government in Victoria and New South Wales in the 1850s, the Governor's of the colonies were naval officers. Some of the big names in Australian political history were naval; for instance Governor's King, Bligh, Macquarie and Hotham.

The book also discusses the achievements of the British officers in the sciences such as botanical and medical sciences in Australia. Joseph Banks being one notable example. But these claims are tangential. They occurred in Australia, rather than being Australian achievements in science. While they are examples of colonial R&D being done through the Royal Navy, they cannot be claimed as contributing to Australian nationhood, or Australian sense of self.

The Australian defence forces are constantly starved for money in R&D - our politicians preferring low risk integration with American technologies than a trust in Australian scientists and engineers to produce revolutionary weapon systems. The integrating of American technologies also aids the GAPF doctrine, where we can slip in easily with the dominant force. Our Frigates in the Gulf being a good example of this.

Naval Conservatism

Reeve argues that a Navy is an extremely complex force to develop, maintain and use. Apart from being capital intensive, it requires a level of social, technological, political and bureaucratic organisation that few societies achieve. He argues that the British Navy in the 18thC was probably the largest and most sophisticated organisation in British society.

But Australia has a pretty small and weak Navy. Until the 1940s we were dependant upon the British Navy for our blue water projection, and since then we have been dependant upon the United States Navy. So if the establishment of a Navy is an achievement in social organisation, we have not progressed far, as the Australian Navy remains a subservient force to our GAPF.

Reeve notes that Australia did not want to give up the imperial protection of the Royal Navy with federation, and was dragged kicking and screaming into creating an indigenous navy. The Australian Navy has been the most conservative of the Australian arms, it maintained the British Naval white ensign until Vietnam which Britain was not involved in. Even then, the British which ensign was only removed on the request of Britain who did not want Australian ships confused with British ones in the warzone.

The Navy did not have the culture of nationalism that the ANZAC myth gave the Army. Nor did it have the rugged individualism myth which the Air Force has. The Air Force was helped on by the very individualistic Richard Williams as well as the gun-toting fighter pilot ace image. It is probably no surprise that Air Force aces in WWII mounted a mutiny to protest that they weren't seeing enough action.

But the conservatism of the Navy can be traced to the conservatism of a political elite who saw foreign policy entwined with security. This is the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] in a nutshell. Since Billy Hughes, every Australian government has placed Australian security in the hands of a super-power. In return Australia makes its foreign policy an extension of the super-power, but Australia also hopes for economic benefits in return.

A good example is the Howard Government. Australian defence is an extension of the US military. We buy Abrams tanks, Joint Strike Fighters, LHDs etc etc. Any military excursion the US military is involved in, Australia supports. For instance Afghanistan and Iraq - even if it is not in Australia's direct interest. In return we hope for economic benefits. The recent Au-US FTA was trumpeted as an example of the benefits of our uncritical support of the US in military and foreign policy goals

Cultural Syncopation

The Navy remains the strongest example of the GAPF in Australia. Frigates have been in the Gulf non-stop since 1991. Other than a short blip when Australian maintained aircraft carriers in the HMAS Sydney and HMAS Melbourne, our blue water projection has not been strong. Even those carriers were not frontline, they would have been relegated to supporting trade routes in any flare up of the Cold War. The Melbourne was also maintained longer than expected due to tensions between Australia and Indonesia.

The 1950s saw a cultural fault-line develop between conservative and independent minded Australians. When Dutton and Horne were writing their articles and books advocating a republic, Robert Menzies remained in the grips of anglophilia. Thich included loyalist clap-trap such as, "We love the Queen. We honour the Queen. And through her our greatness as a Commonwealth is emphasised and enhanced." This was when he wasn't telling everyone that he fell in love with her when she was passing by.

We cringe at those thoughts today. But this was the conservative political environment that the GAPF and structural basis for the Australian Navy were dreamed up in. Yet despite the Australian people striding this globe with a humble independent self-confidence, the political elite and Navy still have not caught up. Our foreign, military and defence policies remain out of sync with the independent mind of the Australian people.

Economic Development

This is where Reeve's arguments are the strongest. He writes;

The Navy's contribution to the nation has been tangibly material in its roles as a guardian of seaborne trade and as a producer of industrial infrastructure.

The Collins subs, the ANZAC Frigates are modern examples of Australia investing in its local industrial innovation and output. It is sad that we cannot expand this political confidence in the maritime industry to the aerospace industry. We once did, and Australian engineers and scientists responded with designs and innovations that matched Australian strategic needs. That aerospace capability has been lost for over twenty years now.

Naval development is also a capital intensive exercise at the research and industrial level. Aerospace differs significantly in that the research component dwarfs the industrial component. Aerospace is more high-tech, rather than big-industrial. This may be related more to the ability of Australian lobbyists to get the construction capability of the naval weaponry being built done indigenously.

Reeve notes that at the end of the twentieth century ninety-five percent of Australian trade by volume travelled by sea. I can recall being asked by a former American Marine many years ago why Australia doesn't have such a potent Navy. Given Australia's geographic location and ocean-borders he assumed Australia would be a maritime nation. We aren't. I answered, "We use your navy for that mate."

But if brown and blue water trade stability is the reason for our Navy, why are we seeing regional piracy, illegal fishing and even sea-going bandits shooting RPGs at cruise ships? Where are our Frigates, Escort Carriers and naval UAVs in the Celebes, Sulu, Mollucca and Phillipine Seas working with other regional nations to deter this high-seas lawlessness? Once again we hope for the USN to provide it instead.

The Lucky League

Reeve calls the Lucky League those naval nations which stem from the decline of British naval imperialism;

As the maritime residue of the British Empire, including the United States - in the British Isles, North America and Australasia - the lucky league is effectively an extended family bound by various treaties and by informal but powerful bonds.

We are lucky that we are the detritus of a broken empire? This is Donald Horne's thesis in the Lucky Country . It is not by good management, or by good political leadership that Australia is what it is today, it is despite this drag on the nation from the politicians, we have achieved what we have been able to. We have certainly done little to contribute meaningfully to the USN's or Royal Navy's dominance of the oceans. We have been lucky in the same way a cork is lucky in a tide. Without direction, without guidance, or independent input.

Reeve is most likely describing the modern view of the Anglosphere. Compare the above statement of Reeve's to a speech made by Robert Menzies in 1954;

... the Crown serves as the legal nexus between all the British countries and all the British people; and that, because this is so, the existence of the Crown converts what would otherwise be a friendly partnership of people with some common interests into an organic structure rising far superior to a partnership of convenience. That is something tremendously important to us. For, although in the history of our race we have had many old and well tried partnerships and alliances, not one of them has had the unique quality which the association between the British peoples all over the world possess.

Sounds like the same thing, though Reeve includes the USA in the anglosphere, which Menzies cannot in the Commonwealth. Instead the USA is embraced uncritically through the GAPF doctrine. Reeve writes on the international co-operation of this league making the modern globalised world possible;

It was during the twentieth century that the league made its greatest contributions to international stability and the principle of self-determination through the its roles in the two world wars and the Cold War. Sea power, with is ability to create global efforts, was fundamental to those contributions. Only navies could take Australians to France and Palestine, Britons to North Africa, New Zealanders to Italy, Canadians to Normandy and Americans to the South West Pacific. Only navies could support Russia in the 1940s and surround it in the 1980s.

But the league, with its maritime power, has done more than help defeat tyranny. For almost half a millennium it has promoted international contact and commerce, enhanced scientific knowledge and gone on to fight pirates and slavers. It still has its work cut out for it. Its relations with the great powers of Asia and the states of the Middle East will be critical to the future of world peace.

Reeve jumps around the fact that 99% of this lucky league as he describes it is the United States Navy. If we are part of the lucky league, it is by six degreees of connection and highly tangential, as opposed to a central or guiding role. Under this description, the Australian Navy isn't really an Australia Navy it is a "lucky league" navy. One that isn't demanded for national defence, or regional projection but for the purpose of slotting in to the nearest great and powerful friend. This is an argument for the GAPF and an anglospheric reading of it as a strategic and national defence policy.

Conclusion

Reeve brings nothing new to the debate, just an argument for the status quo. If the Navy is supposed to help provide national identity and purpose, the Australian Navy has failed that. According to Reeve, we are part of a lucky league, based on a collapsed naval empire, and where our national naval identity is subsumed by the GAPF. In the entire section of his article on the Lucky League there is no mention of the Australian Navy, just an amorphous international mix of naval assets.

The GAPF is more Horne-ish than anything else and a left over of an Australian political demand to subserviency despite federation and self-government.

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Australia has not produced a Defence White Paper since 2000. I recently argued that we needed a new Defence White Paper as the 2003 Update and Defence Capability Plan were not sufficient enough to determine future defence doctrine. The United States military recently released the Quadrennial Defense Review Report [QDR] which acts as a similar statement on doctrine, capability and force planning as the Defence White Paper does in Australia. Since Australia adheres to the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy where Australian forces accept American leadership and the ADF is designed to slot in transparently into US forces, this will have an effect on Australian doctrine as well.

Quadrennial Defense Review

The document opens with a political statement of the military's challenges;

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has fought a global war against violent extremists who use terrorism as their weapon of choice, and who seek to destroy our free way of life. Our enemies seek weapons of mass destruction and, if they are successful, will likely attempt to use them in their conflict with free people everywhere. Currently, the struggle is centered in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we will need to be prepared and arranged to successfully defend our Nation and its interests around the globe for years to come. This 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review is submitted in the fifth year of this long war.

The rhetoric of the long war is an indication that the military spending from the Cold War is no longer a state of exception, but now one of permanence . There will be no peace dividend; where money that flowed to the military to contain the Soviet Union can now serve as tax cuts, or be diverted to social programs. The United States is now on a permanent war footing as it was during the Cold War. This reflects Neo-conservative thinking, where political power is an extension of military power, and the military is used as a blunt instrument of political change. The industrial-military complex becomes the political-industrial-military.

September 11th was a case of central planning, one which sends fear through nation-states who are themselves very centralised in control and planning. But since then, rather than big centralised operations, or attempts to blow up dirty bombs in Baltimore, asymmetric warfare has taken a reductionist path, and has not needed to go beyond small bombs strapped to a person, or detonated remotely. Systems disruption which attacks the weaknesses in centralised structures has been sufficient enough to immobilise efforts.

The statement also includes that the military's focus will be global. A war without end and without limits. The statement carries the implication that success of the Nation in this war, and the freedom of the people of the globe, is dependent upon the state. The 2002 Fundamentals in Australian Aerospace Power manual notes the political change as to what determines security;

The concept of national security has changed. It has expanded to incorporate individual security as well as the earlier ideas of national defence.

This fits with the Neo-conservative foreign policy and statist domestic policies of the Bush Administration. The domestic security policies in Australia under the Howard government have followed a similar path. Gary Sauer-Thompson has called this domestic view of security the National Security State .

From Clash Of The Nation-States To ...

A nation's defence doctrine is determined by its vulnerabilities. These can be geographical, natural resources, political, economic or even social. From the document and the list of shifts in emphasis, it appears the Pentagon sees the current military structure of the United States military as a vulnerability. The shifts in emphasis include;

• From a peacetime tempo - to a wartime sense of urgency.
• From a time of reasonable predictability - to an era of surprise and uncertainty.
• From single-focused threats - to multiple, complex challenges.
• From conducting war against nations - to conducting war in countries we are not at war with (safe havens).
• From "one size fits all" deterrence - to tailored deterrence for rogue powers, terrorist networks and near-peer competitors.
• From responding after a crisis starts (reactive) - to preventive actions so problems do not become crises (proactive).
• From crisis response - to shaping the future.
• From threat-based planning - to capabilities based planning.
• From peacetime planning - to rapid adaptive planning.
• From a focus on kinetics - to a focus on effects.
• From 20th century processes - to 21st century integrated approaches.
• From static defense, garrison forces - to mobile, expeditionary operations.
• From under-resourced, standby forces (hollow units) - to fully-equipped and fully-manned forces (combat ready units).
• From a battle-ready force (peace) - to battlehardened forces (war).
• From large institutional forces (tail) - to more powerful operational capabilities (teeth).
• From major conventional combat operations - to multiple irregular, asymmetric operations.
• From separate military Service concepts of operation - to joint and combined operations.
• From forces that need to deconfl ict - to integrated, interdependent forces.
• From exposed forces forward - to reaching back to CONUS to support expeditionary forces.
• From an emphasis on ships, guns, tanks and planes - to focus on information, knowledge and timely, actionable intelligence.
• From massing forces - to massing effects.
• From set-piece maneuver and mass - to agility and precision.
• From single Service acquisition systems - to joint portfolio management.
• From broad-based industrial mobilization - to targeted commercial solutions.
• From Service and agency intelligence - to truly Joint Information Operations Centers.
• From vertical structures and processes (stovepipes) - to more transparent, horizontal integration (matrix).
• From moving the user to the data - to moving data to the user.
• From fragmented homeland assistance - to integrated homeland security.
• From static alliances - to dynamic partnerships.
• From predetermined force packages - to tailored, flexible forces.
• From the U.S. military performing tasks - to a focus on building partner capabilities.
• From static post-operations analysis - to dynamic diagnostics and real-time lessons learned.
• From focusing on inputs (effort) - to tracking outputs (results).
• From Department of Defense solutions - to interagency approaches.

But the US military has been very effective in combat situations over the last four years. Afghanistan and Iraq were good examples of the dominance of the US Military. The organised insurgency in Afghanistan is now limited to Al Queda and Taliban operatives unable to penetrate far beyond the Afghan-Pakistan border. The limitation there is political, not military.

The US military is already exceptionally mobile. Force projection is rapid and global through the US Carrier fleets. The United States Marine Corp can bring great force to bear on the ground in a quick and sustainable manner. Not to mention the US logistical train which quickly brought 140,000 troops into the Middle East and has sustained that commitment and tempo for over three years. The US military is mobile, rapid and can maintain a large force indefinitely.

The bullet points do contain Neo-conservative thinking in them. For instance the; From crisis response - to shaping the future. This sums up the invasion of Iraq. The military were used as a political instrument. Much of the turgidity and failure of Iraq has been the lack of military goals once the Iraqi military was destroyed as a fighting force. Since then the political goals have moved constantly in response to the domestic American political climate. That is no way to run a military.

Political management of the media may be two-faced, fraught with deception and in perpetual policy motion, but this is not a suitable manner to guide military goals. The task of reconstructing Iraq and ensuring it is a safe and secure democracy is a civil task, not a military one. This is a limitation of Neo-conservative ideology.

Decentralised Strength

The report also notes the vulnerability of civil systems;

Non-state enemies could attempt to attack a wide range of targets including government facilities; commercial and financial systems; cultural and historical landmarks; food, water, and power supplies; and information, transport, and energy networks. They will employ unconventional means to penetrate homeland defenses and exploit the very nature of western societies - their openness - to attack their citizens, economic institutions, physical infrastructure and social fabric.

The main vulnerability is the centralised nature, and interdependence of western systems; energy, water, sewerage etc. These are largely artifacts of the economies of scale achieved in post World War II town planning. These are not military issues, as much of this mis-named war on terror, but instead civil problems.

Source: QDR 2006

There is a lot of science, technology and development of decentralised systems, but this is often thwarted by big centralised government enforcing its demands on the population and town planning. For instance a decentralised water/sewerage/timber system of town planning was envisaged by Sydney-sider P.A. Yeomans in the 1970s. Tasmanian Bill Mollison wrote in detail of decentralised food production in his Permaculture book .Big response statism has also led to the world's dryest continent being dependent on centralised water systems.

Unfortunately the terrorists of September 11th did not use unconventional means to penetrate the United States, or its domestic airline system. They used passports and drivers licenses. This is definitely not a weakness of western openness. Bot documents are a fact of life in participating, rental cars require driver's licenses, drinking requires verification etc etc.

Blunting Asymmetric Warfare

The report sees the increase of Special Forces as a means to defeat terrorism. The number Special Operations Forces will increase by 15% and the Special Forces Battalions by one third. This places them around the fifty thousand mark. Almost double Australia's Army, and approximately ten percent of the US's Army.

Australia has used its Special Forces domestically, one of the recurring images during the Sydney 2000 Olympics was black balaclavad SASR dropping from an Australian Army Blackhawk. The QDR also includes the capability for the military to become involved in domestic security;

To strengthen homeland defense and homeland security, the Department will fund a $1.5 billion initiative over the next five years to develop broad-spectrum medical countermeasures against the threat of genetically engineered bio-terror agents. Additional initiatives will include developing advanced detection and deterrent technologies and facilitating full-scale civil-military exercises to improve interagency planning for complex homeland security contingencies.

I question the utility of this approach. Terrorism is a civil issue, and the terrorist attacks in the last several years could have been stopped with the force that a citizen or policeman can bring to bear. The fourth aircraft on September 11th and the shoe-bomber are good examples of this. Recent catastrophes in the United States have also shown the resilience of the population and civil emergency structures, September 11th, the NY Black-out and Katrina Hurricane did not require a full scale military response.

In Australia's case the separation of civil and military responsibilities is important. Australia has volunteer civil structures like the State Emergency Services and the Bush Fire Brigade. It is far better to train agencies such as these than maintain the knowledge with specialists in the military. Not only is a knowledgeable population one, a ready one, but the volunteer nature means that know-how will disperse through the wider population.

Another reason to ensure a separation of military and civil forces, even in an emergency, is that unscrupulous political leaders will use the military to political advantage. To our near north, Suharto's Indonesia used the military to ensure civil order. Until recently Indonesia did not have a police force, its military supplied nearly half its number toward civil order. KOPASSUS was used as a political instrument domestically, as well as in Malaya, Thailand, East Timor and Irian Jira.

Seven years later the Indonesians are doing everything they can to eradicate the military influence in their government and economy, but remnants of the entwining of military and civil power still remain.

We Love Our Great and Powerful Friends

Australia's relationship with the US gets a mention;

The United States places great value on its unique relationships with the United Kingdom and Australia, whose forces stand with the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan and many other operations. These close military relations are models for the breadth and depth of cooperation that the United States seeks to foster with other allies and partners around the world. Implementation of the QDR's agenda will serve to reinforce these enduring links.

The United States should be ticked off at us. For all our rhetoric, and flag-waving support, we have about 1,000 troops in Iraq. Approximately 0.66% of the American contingent. Richard Woolcott wrote in 2004 that ;

The reality is that Australia's presence, however capable and efficient our forces, can make no meaningful contribution to the two major objectives: the reconstruction of that country [Iraq] and the establishment of a viable democratic government there.

The Great and Powerful Friends doctrine is a passive one - we become dependent upon other nations, and other militaries for our success. We leave ourselves no control over the outcome, whether success or failure. The Australian involvement in Iraq has been no different.

Macro-weaponry

The United States still sees China as its next potential nation-state opponent. This poses projection problems for the United States. The report lays out plans to;

Develop a new land-based, penetrating long range strike capability to be fielded by 2018 while modernizing the current bomber force.

Restructure the Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) program and develop an unmanned longer-range carrier-based aircraft capable of being air-refueled to provide greater standoff capability, to expand payload and launch options, and to increase naval reach and persistence.

Nearly double UAV coverage capacity by accelerating the acquisition of Predator UAVs and Global Hawk.

The first item is interesting. Australia is retiring its long-range strike bomber early due to maintenance costs but it is leaving us with a drop in projection ability. Australia's geographic vulnerabilities are the North-West shelf, the Timor Sea and the Coral Sea. A land based strike bomber would increase Australia's capability and projection in that area.

If there is a Dreadnought in the US's armoury, it is the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles [UAV]. I do not doubt that this technology will quickly commoditise and become available to all militaries, if not civil operators as well. UAVs actually carry higher operational costs than a standard manned fighter. The pilots rotate in three shifts, which increases labor costs beyond a manned aircraft. In addition the UAV requires all the ground based support that a manned aircraft does. UAVs are an area that Australia can re-establish its aerospace industry. We should pursue domestic development programs for this technology.

Australian technology also gets a mention in the QDR;

Source: QDR 2006

Which begs the question, why aren't our defence industries more involved in developing new technology - rather than just being integrators of American systems.

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The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution depends upon the problem of law-governed external relations among nations and cannot be solved until the latter is.

Immanuel Kant

That quote is from Immanuel Kant's Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Purpose: Seventh Principle which Lee brought to my attention.

Kant argues that natural state of nature for mankind, and nations, is a brutal state of freedom. Where individuals and states act in arbitrary and violent means in order to preserve their perfect freedom and autonomy of action.

To Kant a perfect civil constitution is impossible while there are outside pressures on it, as the permanent state of war, or preparation for war is ultimately destabilising as the state bends the individual to the state's will.

Kant concludes;

As long as states will use all their resources for their vain and violent designs for expansion and thus will continually hinder the slow efforts toward the inner shaping of the minds of their citizens, and even withdraw from their citizens all encouragement in this respect, we cannot hope for much because a great exertion by each commonwealth on behalf of the education of their citizens is required for this goal.

Every pretended good that is not grafted upon a morally good frame of mind is nothing more than a pretence and glittering misery. Mankind will probably remain in this condition until, as I have said, it has struggled out of the chaotic condition of the relations among its states.

International liberalism's answer to this conundrum is meta-national institutions for nations to air their grievances. It attempts to replace violence with direct communication. This philosophy grew out of the depravities of World War I and World War II where violence between the nations consumed the whole globe.

Statesmen such as Woodrow Wilson and Australia's Doc Evatt were heavily involved in the forming of meta-national institutions such as the League of Nations and United Nations. Doc Evatt and John Burton often took the principle of brutal and honest communication to extremes, shocking diplomats from other nations in their plain talk.

The other side to international liberalism is power politics. This seeks to replace communication with sheer power in terms of military and economic might backing up diplomatic movements. The two purist players in power politics are the United States and France, the latter following the Gaullist tradition of foreign policy. Unsurprisingly the Americans and French butt heads often.

The neo-conservative movement in the United States has derided the United Nations as irrelevant. Ironically the United Nations itself often served as an institution for factions in its membership to push their interests. Wars were fought for instance in Korea with the United Nations against North Korea and China.

Power politics has left the Middle East in a maelstrom benefiting the control and collapse of power to the central governments of the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia. While leaving Iraq and Afghanistan without an enforceable civil constitution. They exist in a vacuum of civil stability.

Is there a third way, or are we just left to hope that trade and globalisation will smooth out the wrinkles between nation-states?

Engagement

Paul Keating and Gareth Evans undertook a foreign policy known as Asian Engagement . This was a radical break from past Australian foreign policy doctrine which I don't think has been fully appreciated yet by political commentators.

The Howard and Hawke governments, as well as every government prior until Billy Hughes practised the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy. It was first developed by Billy Hughes at Versailles in 1919 when he used Australia's efforts of supporting Britain in WWI to get a seat at the table.

He was challenged by Woodrow Wilson to explain why Australia, a dominion of the British Empire, should be represented at the table by Hughes and not by Britain's foreign minister, Lloyd George. Hughes replied that he; " represented 60,000 dead. "

Once gaining a seat Hughes did not advance Australian interests, he advanced British interests. Britain was a huge trading market for Australia and he was worried that if Australia was disloyal, then Canada, and in particular its wheat, would get favoured access to British markets.

Hughes was also concerned that Australian security depended on the Royal Navy. So he subsumed Australian military and foreign policy to replicate British interests - uncritically - in order to guarantee British security for Australia and access to British markets.

It was a bit of a furphy. Britain knew it could not protect Australia if there was simultaneous conflicts in Europe and Asia. Australia knew it too. Australian subservience in foreign policy did not get us any improved access to British markets either. Australians found new markets to export into - as entrepreneurs do.

All The Way With LBJ!

That was Harold Holt's cry when he promised increased Australian involvement in Vietnam. It is indicative of the uncritical nature of our relationship with our Great and Powerful Friend which after World War II was the United States, not Britain.

John Curtin is often acknowledged for his courage in defying Winston Churchill and uttering the words in 1941;

Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

This is the same policy - just swapping Britain for America. Since then Menzies followed it, though grudgingly with America, seeking to return to Britain's fold through the Commonwealth. Both Fraser and Hawke did; and now Howard, who returned to the policy with an almost violent thud. Menzies and Curtin could not have scripted Howard's doctrine and its perceived benefits more closely.

Howard has added another permutation to this policy, namely the complete absence of power politics. The Howard government is highly uncritical of the United States, even when there has been plenty of room for meaningful criticism. Howard has acted in a similar way with other countries, particularly China.

The Complete Approach

Asian Engagement is predicated on several premises;

• Australia is located in the South Pacific and South-East Asia
• We are a regional military and economic power
• Our main trading partners are regional (our biggest is Japan)
• Regional stability and prosperity will come through the complete political, military, economic, social and cultural engagement of the nations in the region.
• Australian power and influence can be advanced beyond the region through this engagement doctrine.

It is a kind of diplomatic globalisation where the nations enmesh to such a point that violence, warfare and cutting of communication is unthinkable. The radical nature of it is not only in how Australia projects itself, but also the confidence Australia has in being able to project its identity as well as absorb the identities of others into itself.

This policy is an improvement over the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine and in my opinion is superior for countering terrorism than a policy of hard power and the GAPF policy. I have also argued for the defence style of engagement that is inherent in the Engagement doctrine which would both secure our region while simultaneously advancing our interests.

Back To Kant

Neither of these four foreign policy methods solve the problem that Kant proposed that the constant violence and preparing for violence between nations must first be solved before a perfect civil constitution can be constructed. I believe that the Engagement doctrine is the superior one of all the options.

However, I still maintain that a policy of strong defence capability is necessary.

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Owen Harries recasts the GAPF doctrine as a pro-stability doctrine, in order to argue for a break with it.

Australia was and is a satisfied, status quo state. A huge, well-endowed country with a population of only 20 million, it has a lot more than its share of the world's good things.

It does not want that state of affairs to change. It cannot sensibly hope to get even more than it has, but upheaval and turbulence could easily result in it having less. So aligning itself with the leading status quo countries made good realist sense.

Harries argues that as the US under George Bush is no longer a status-quo state, we can no longer follow such a simple foreign policy.

Which is well and good, but the US hardly remains in an adventurous mood after the bitter haul in Iraq. So Harries is really using Iraq as a reference point for the potential pitfalls in putting all your security eggs in someone else's basket.

Is Australia in Iraq for oil or is it because of the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy? In my opinion, while energy security plays a minor role, it is predominantly because of the latter.

There has been a media and blogger gotcha moment when Brendan Nelson mentioned that armed intervention in Iraq was related to securing energy supplies. We know that the Carter Doctrine from 1980 stated clearly that the US would use military might in the Gulf region if American national interests, read energy interests, were placed in danger. So any politician who denies there was a strategic interest in securing the region for energy purposes is being dishonest. Nelson was stating the obvious there.

But what does it have to do with Australia? Other than oil producing nations such as Venezuala (and until recently Indonesia) who buy off their populations dependence on government good-will through the subsidy of oil, America and Australia are two of the lowest cost energy nations on the planet. Certainly amongst the OECD nations, taxes and the cost of energy are extremely low in both the US and Australia. So we do have an interest in a stable Middle East and a breaking of energy cartels such as OPEC.

There still remains the question why we bought into the US military invasion of Iraq. That cannot be understood without a discussion of the foreign policy doctrine which has guided Australian policy making for the last century; the "great and powerful friends" doctrine or GAPF.

Australia has three competing foreign policy doctrines; the GAPF, the Engagement doctrine and International Liberalism. None of them are pursued absolutely, but they have dominated at different times the policy making decisions of Australian governments.

International Liberalism found a dominant voice under Doc Evatt after WWII. It sought to stop violence between nations by communicating openly and having a forum where international politics could compete in an environment that did not lead to brinkmanship or the breaking off of diplomatic relations. This is the basis for the United Nations which Evatt had a large hand in the construction of. Doc Evatt and Sam Burton were pretty blunt about the open communication component of it too, dispensing with diplomatic niceties and double-speak, often shockingly so.

Engagement is a very modern doctrine which Gareth Evans pursued. It seeks to leverage all the intangible soft power such as social, cultural, economic, diasporans and immigrants into national political power. The basis for it is that unless there is complete engagement by all aspects of the national character then security is impossible. It is a policy well suited to globalisation. It has its origins in Asian Engagement which is associated with Paul Keating, but stretches back to Australian support for Asian decolonialisation after WWII and Percy Spender's Colombo Plan.

Those two doctrines have had to compete with the GAPF; though at all times foreign policy has comprised a mix of the doctrines, the GAPF has been the one that has dominated policy making, while not absolutely, sometimes very close to being so.

The 'great and powerful friends' doctrine gets its name from a Robert Menzies speech but it was Billy Hughes in 1919 at Versailles who established it. The basis for the GAPF is that Australia makes its foreign policy subservient to the powerful friend in return for military security and preferential economic treatment. At the time the GAPF was Britain. Hughes was concerned that Australia was undefendable unless the Royal Navy could protect it; his other issue was that he believed, incorrectly, unless there was absolute loyal to Britain, then Canada would get greater access to the British markets for wheat. At the time Britain was a major export market for Australian products.

This was policy practiced by all governments including John Curtin in WWII. It is odd, Curtin's statement that "we look to America" without "any pangs" relating to our traditional relationship with Britain is seen as some watershed in Australian politics. It is not. It is the GAPF doctrine just with a new friend. WWII made it obvious that British blue water supremacy was gone, and replaced by American naval power.

Menzies tried to realign Britain back as the powerful friend, but it was obvious that America was the new western power. Percy Spender had his finger on the rhythms of cold war politics far better than Menzies did, it would have been interesting if Spender had the numbers to become PM. The 50s would have been far more interesting for political historians. Menzies was left promoting Briton culture in Australia while extending the GAPF militarily to the US.

Since Menzies Australian governments have embraced the GAPF uniformly, probably the only break being Keating's government who placed Engagement as a higher priority, but even then, the GAPF played a strong role in policy making. Just as Howard has had to embrace Engagement with China and International Liberalism with East Timor. They all play their role at different times.

The main problem with GAPF is that its three major premises are all based on fallacies. The first is having a subservient foreign policy. This does not isolate or inoculate Australia from bad decision making by the powerful friend. The most recent example of the powerful friend getting it all wrong is the invasion of Iraq. But there have been others in the past; for instance Ford and Kissinger knowing about the invasion of East Timor and not telling Malcolm Fraser; and the Australian involvement in the establishment of a dictator in Chile.

Related to this is the assumption that Australia can influence American policy by its subservience. As the examples above show, international politics is based on power, and the US is often belligerent in how it plays power politics - and why shouldn't it be? The US is the dominant economic, military and political power. Pretending that Australia can influence American policy is setting a national leader up for failure and denying the realities of international power politics. Tony Blair is a good example of this.

The military component of the doctrine finds itself mythologised in the ANZUS Treaty. This was negotiated by John Foster-Dulles specifically to stop Australia 'doing a Curtin' should there be a global war with the Soviet Union. ANZUS is a statement that the US will protect Australia in the case of a global war so that Australia will leave its troops in the Middle East and North Africa - and not bring them home - like it did in 1942.

ANZUS has been sold in many forms to the electorate, recently as the "US Alliance" and meaning more than it really does. When the September 11th attacks occurred and Howard enacted a clause in it, there was a pause from Washington, along with a thank you and a curt reminder that it meant no reciprocal obligations from the US if Australia is hit with a terrorist attack. It was seen as a blatant and clumsy attempt by Australia to force the ANZUS Treaty to be relevant in a post Cold War environment.

ANZUS is myth now, and is a hydra of Australian politicians making that will only end in disappointment when the US inevitably ignores it for reasons of power politics. We saw that level of frustration when the US did not want to take part in the UN mission to East Timor. It has led Australia and Australians to have a sense of entitlement for American involvement in Australian military issues. Which is another negative for the GAPF.

The final fallacy is that the GAPF brings economic benefits. In the last election the Free Trade Agreement with the US was talked up as being a direct result of Australian involvement in Iraq. It was not. Any nation who was prepared to give in on agricultural quotas and who would change their intellectual property laws to match the US's (including the DMCA) got one. Bilateral FTA agreements were US Trade policy; not a result of Australian foreign policy subservience. Singapore and Chile got FTAs despite opposing the invasion of Iraq, and Costa Rica got one, while supporting Iraq, but not sending any forces.

The GAPF is predicated on failure. The only reason I can see for it still being pursued is because it allows for lazy foreign policy, and has been built to mythical standards in the electorate that it is hard to dump it democratically. Then again, Evatt and Evans pursued differing doctrines and the sun didn't stop shining on Australia.

So back to the oil question.

John Howard and John Curtin have probably been the purist supporters of the GAPF doctrine. Securing energy in the Gulf is in American interests, hence it is in Australian interests both indirectly through the GAPF and directly for Australia as a low cost oil nation. Are we there for oil? Tangentially but not really.

Australia is there because of the GAPF doctrine.

Gary Sauer-Thompson discusses the complexity of issues to do with Afghanistan, Iraq and the Australian relationship with the United States. It is a curious nexus of politics, morality and foreign policy doctrines in navigating a path of least dissatisfaction through through the three areas.

Democratically and militarily Australia cannot completely rebuff the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia is too reliant on America for the continuance of Australian military power. Democratically there is a strong conservative media that idealizes the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine who have to be placated, not to mention a significant enough constituency that concurs on the policy.

There is the politics as well. As Hugh White writes Rudd wants to disengage from Iraq while maintaining the relationship with the US. White writes:

Hence Rudd's dilemma. He wants to do the Bush administration some favours, but he is reluctant to send more troops to Iraq. The compromise seems to be that he and his colleagues will urge the Europeans to do more without promising that Australia will do more itself.

White argues that strategically Afghanistan is of no interest to Australia, and he is correct. As he noted extremists are operating in Pakistan now, and the likelihood of Afghanistan transitioning to a secular free-market democracy are slim.

The main difference is morality. Afghanistan is easier to swallow from a moral point of view than Iraq is. We went into Afghanistan to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice for his crimes against humanity. For that reason alone it is more morally palatable than Iraq is, the latter which was predicated on fraud, propaganda and incompetence. I think this is why the Rudd Government will choose to focus on Afghanistan in their policy.