Hugh White’s considered response to the questions I posed in our recent exchange in the Lowy Interpreter on the fundamentals of Australian defense strategy prods me to elaborate on my previous arguments as well as to make some counterpoints.
On the question of irregular warfare, we seem to be in agreement that it is certainly the most common form of warfare today but we part company on whether it is more important to focus on regular warfare which, while rare, is in Hugh’s judgement more serious for a country like Australia.
Without wishing to engage in a long and arcane definitional debate about regular and irregular warfare, let me make a couple of clarifying comments. Modern warfare does not lend itself to such easy compartmentalization, for even high-end warfare now features many elements once associated with supposedly lower level irregular warfare: the employment of militias and so-called volunteers or separatists to support main force units (Ukraine and Iraq); attempts to disguise or plausibly deny the use of professional armed forces (Ukraine, Georgia); the rapid morphing of terrorist groups into well-armed insurgencies with transnational reach, including the capacity to occupy and govern territory (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan).