The Failure of Australian Maritime Strategy and its Implications

Ray

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Allergic History: The Failure of Australian Maritime Strategy and its Implications for the Future

The greatest weakness in Australian strategy is the absence of a maritime consciousness. Australian settlement began as a 'fatal shore' and it has not matured to the stage of the 'sea as future history' – a remarkable situation for an island-continent dependent on trade for its prosperity. And yet the concept of the 'sea as future history' is not as much alien as consciously abandoned.


A maritime defence concept was advanced by Federation-era strategic thinkers before the First World War (pdf) and by the service chiefs immediately after the Second World War. On both occasions sea-based joint defence was still-born because of the peculiar impact of the First World War and the Cold War respectively. The First World War aborted any maritime vision in the dark womb of trench warfare creating a military history based on land-based expeditionary forces. The Cold War reinforced not only this tradition, but also inter-war practices of political economy in defence expenditure conditioned by dependence on great and powerful allies. Moreover, Australia's voluntary military contributions to the Great War and the Cold War came to further reflect the cultural values of a continental, not an island, nation. Because of this allergic history, defence officials from the world's largest island-continent only saw fit to employ the orphan term 'maritime strategy' in 2000.

For future requirements, such a heritage is unlikely to provide clear signposts. If Australia is to match its future foreign policy and defence needs to economic prosperity, it must develop a maritime narrative that views the vibrant Asia-Pacific as a zone of national opportunity. As the scholar Saul Bernard Cohen has stated, the question today is not whether Australia is Asian – a futile debate for a nation with Anglo-Celtic institutions – but how it can best adjust to being Asian both as a strategic and economic reality. Our future prosperity will require a proper understanding that Australia is not separated by a sea-air gap so much as it is connected by a sea-air-land bridge to the Southeast Asian and Pacific archipelagos. In the decades ahead, the surrounding seas will be our highways to a better future not moats to defend vanished eras. In maritime affairs, the challenge for Australians is, as it was before 1914 and after 1945, one of strategic foresight – of developing an over-the-horizon perspective and imagination that encompasses sea-going security, trade and national prosperity. Australia must build an ADF that is maritime and balanced in its land, air and sea components; one that supports a maritime strategy that helps to secure the future stability of the Asia-Pacific.

Editor's note: Professor Evans' paper 'The Third Way: Towards an Australian Maritime Strategy for the Twenty-First Century' is available for download here (The Third Way: Towards an Australian Maritime Strategy for the Twenty-first Century - Australian Army)

Allergic History: The Failure of Australian Maritime Strategy and its Implications for the Future - Australian Army
Australia has so far based its security on the munificence of Britain and now on the US.

It was par for the course till now with none of the Asian countries capable of ruling the Indian Ocean and the Pacific wave.

It could thus happily isolate itself from the happenings in Asia, and chameleon itself to be the extension of the Anglo Saxon lineage and affinity, more so with its White Australia policy.

However, the world has changed ever since the sun set on the British Empire and the US challenged by the rag tag 'towel heads' (as they liked to label them) terrorist groups and China.

Australia is thus under threat.

Therefore, Australia can no longer be in a Rip Van Winkle complacent slumber and be isolationist in attitude from Asia.

China is a threat in being given its expansionist thrust as also its quest to be the ruling deity in Asia, and so the threat must be pragmatically recognised by Australia.

it is time that Australia reviews it defence preparedness, the threats and strengthen it Navy and build a larger Army and Air Force clout than what it has.

In the meantime Australia should cosy up with like minded countries and ensure mutual safety and realise they are a part of Asia and not an extension of Europe or the USA.
 

Ray

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Maybe we shall find some sagacious comment from our Australian warriors of the cyberspace so concerned about the collapse of the Western influence on the world stage.
 

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