Given he was the principal author of the 2000 Defence White Paper, it is reassuring to know that Hugh White agrees with me that Australian strategic policy needs a rethink, even if he is not persuaded by all of my prescriptions. So, in the spirit of a full and frank debate about what needs to be done, let me respond to Hugh’s observations and counterpoints to my Lowy Analysis paper, Full-Spectrum Defence: Re-thinking the Fundamentals of Australian Defence Strategy.
To begin with, I agree the ADF should be structured to respond to threats from other countries’ armed forces. Defending against such threats must be a primary mission, and I have not argued otherwise. But the military threats we confront today are more diverse and interlocked than ever before. They are increasingly playing out over five domains (land, sea, air, space and cyber) rather than just land, sea and air. And the growing military prowess and information-warfare capabilities of non-state actors warrants greater consideration in our strategy and force structure calculations.
Consider Russia’s involvement in Ukraine as an example of what future armed conflict between states might look like: there was no declaration of war and no readily identifiable Russian force streaming into eastern Ukraine with pennants flying. Instead, Moscow opted for plausible deniability, using a mix of irregular and conventional forces supported by an effective information-warfare campaign, including cyber attacks, to achieve its initial political and military objectives.