Transcript
BLAMEY ORATION "NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENCE: A DEFENCE MANAGER'S PERPESCTIVE."
PRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF DEFENCE
MR RIC SMITH
TO THE ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE (WA), 27 MAY 2004
INTRODUCTION
I count it a particular honour to have been invited here to deliver this oration this evening. This is especially so because, in my mind anyway, we are honouring not only Field Marshal Blamey, but also the service men and women of a particular era, and especially those who served under his leadership. They included my grandfather, my father - who saw Blamey in Moratai - and several uncles. And of course, as a Western Australian, I'm proud of the opportunity you've given me to speak in my home State, and indeed at a venue which as a boy I passed by so many times on bike or foot.
In preparation for this address I read carefully David Horner's well-crafted biography of Sir Thomas Blamey, a book which I had scanned in the past but not dwelt on much. I read too Norman Carlyon's intriguing little memoir, "I Remember Blamey".
This reading reminded me, incidentally, of what my own modest C.V. has in common with Blamey's - we both attended Fremantle Boys High School, albeit he as a teaching assistant and me as a student, and by my time it had become John Curtin Senior High School (a nice touch, given the linkage between Curtin and Blamey). And we both spent time as school teachers here in Western Australia. Thereafter our careers diverged - it never occurred to me to become a policeman, let alone a lay preacher (which Blamey once was); and I doubt it ever occurred to Blamey to become an un-uniformed public servant, let alone a diplomat.
Beyond these little coincidences, two particular impressions emerged from my reading about Blamey.
The first is that he was indeed a complex person. Horner deftly presented the different shades of the man. In his summing-up he described first what he called the "critics' view" of Blamey - "a self-seeking, devious manipulator, who cared little for Australian lives and who struggled to retain a powerful position to feed his ego." And he remarked trenchantly that "with respect to values…Blamey failed as a leader".
But Horner also noted the other view of Blamey, that is, that "he was Australia's greatest General: he revealed a deep experience of military and political affairs, and proved a wise and forceful administrator. He fought relentlessly to maintain Australian independence in military matters and had a genuine concern for the welfare of his troops." Horner added that without Blamey's efforts MacArthur would have more easily disregarded Australia's wishes - and, I would add, the British might have disregarded them more than they did in the Middle East. Horner then quotes Blamey in saying of MacArthur that "the best and worst things you hear about him are both true", and concludes neatly that the same could be said about Blamey himself.
My second impression from my reading about Blamey is about how many of the issues of his times are still with us in one form or another in Defence - the complicated and little-understood relationship between government and political leaders and military leaders; the importance of personal relationships between military leaders, albeit they are in my experience less fraught and Byzantine today than many of them seemed to have been then; and issues of civilian-military relationships in the organisation, financial accounts and records management in the Defence Force, and so on. And of course there are Horner's references to the need for military leaders to set the example in respect of values, a matter about which the current leadership in the ADF remains very conscious.
This second impression would tempt me to conclude that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In so many ways, that is the case in respect of our Defence Force, its management of its people, and its relationship with government. But in other respects, the environment in which the ADF is situated today is so very different, and accordingly the force itself and the Defence Organisation and its drivers, are so very different not only from what they were 50 years ago, but even from what they were ten years ago.
THE DEFENCE MANAGER'S PERSPECTIVE
The perspective I bring to this evening is that of a defence manager - one who has to plan for and manage a Defence Organisation that is appropriate for the times and must ensure that the forces and capabilities we have are adequate for the threats we face now and for the foreseeable future, and are equipped, prepared, trained and paid for, and accounted for.
It has been my contention since I was appointed in late 2002 to share the leadership of the Defence Organisation with my good friend and colleague, General Peter Cosgrove, that the task of defence management has become increasingly more difficult. Naturally, that's what I would say, but I do have some objective evidence to support this claim.
There have been 15 Secretaries of Defence since 1901; the first eight averaged nearly ten years in office, but the last seven of us have averaged only three and a half years, and one of them had nine years! There are lots of reasons for this more rapid rate of churn - not the least of these being that until the mid 70's there were five departments within the Defence portfolio where now there is one, still responsible for all that the previous five did.
Many factors determine the parameters within which the business of defence management takes place: the strategic environment; the availability of funding - itself a product of the economic environment; technology; industry capability; international relationships; demographics; governance arrangements; and so on.
Politics too is important, but fortunately in the Australian system that input is made for us by the elected government of the day. For public servants and humble administrators like myself, it is always sufficient to believe that good policy will surely be good politics.
Dominant among these determinants are two - the strategic and security environment, and the availability of money. Purists in the defence community might think the first is clearly the more important, but in peacetime at least that is arguable. For pragmatists, the words of one of my predecessors, Sir Arthur Tange, ring very true - "before you talk strategy", he said, "talk budgets". The point he was making here is valid if you look at it in these terms: in Australia, Defence spends some 2 per cent of our GDP; if like New Zealand we spent one per cent of our GDP on defence we would have quite a different defence force and strategic posture from that which we now have; equally, if like the U.S. we spent 3.5 per cent of our GDP on defence we would be very different again.
I don't intend to dwell on budget issues this evening. Suffice to say, for the sake of this discussion, that as the Australian economy has prospered in recent years so the defence budget has been able to grow. In my view, the greater challenge for the Australian Defence Organisation at this time is not to get more money, but rather to ensure that the 16 billion dollars we now have is spent well and spent where it is needed most, and that the Government and taxpayers get best value for it. I have no doubt that we are better in those areas now than we have ever been. But nor do I doubt that there is more we can do to get the money to where it is needed most.
What I want to talk more about tonight is three things, all supporting my contention that the job of the defence manager today is more challenging than it has been at any time in the past, our major wars apart. First, I will say something about the way in which the changing strategic environment, or the security or threat environment if you prefer, are complicating the tasks of force structure planning and the role of the defence force itself. Second, I will say a little about the impact of the nature and pace of technology on modern defence management. And finally, I'll say something about the particular effects of these same matters on our defence intelligence community.
THE GLOBAL SECURITY ENVIRONMENT
In my experience, every generation of defence leaders has claimed that the strategic environment in which it is working is "more complicated and complex than ever". I had intended to begin with the same proposition because I believe it is true of our present situation, but I've said it so often before that I decided to look for a different way into describing the global security picture. And I decided to try to do this by relating the security environment to another of my great interests, globalisation.
Globalisation is in my view the dominant theme of the era in which we live. There is an interesting argument to the effect that this is in fact the second era of globalisation, the first being the 25 years or so which preceded World War I, a period which like the present was characterised by high levels of people movement, a passion (among some) for free trade, enormous leaps in technology, especially in communications and transport, and - in consonance with that - considerable strides in war-fighting technology.
It is even tempting to recall that just as terrorism has emerged in this era of globalisation, so too was it a feature of the earlier era. Assassination was then the favoured mode of terrorism, including wide use of bombings with the newly invented dynamite. Victims of terrorist assassination included Tsar Alexander II, President McKinley, President Sadi Carnot of France, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and King Umberto I of Italy - and of course Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.
There are, then, similarities between that era and the present. But they can't be too tightly drawn, because there are also significant differences.
From a defence and security point of view, perhaps the most evident difference between then and now is that, 100 years ago, the notion of the sovereign state was still on the rise, and so was nationalism. The main threats to global security then came from competition and tensions between states, or indeed empires, which of course was what the First World War, and as a consequence, the Second, were all about. Today, by contrast, the challenges come not only from established states in competition with each other but also rather, and arguably more, from failing states, from cross border or transnational issues, and from non-state actors.
The first era of globalisation collapsed in 1914, and was followed by 80 years or so of war, conflict and division - two world wars, the Cold War and, incidentally, a resurgence of protectionism.
The defining characteristics of this period were those of division and separateness. As Thomas Freidman, one of today's gurus of globalisation, defines it, we had during those three generations an international system built around division and defined by walls, typified by the Berlin Wall, while today, he says, we have moved to a system increasingly built around integration and what we call "webs".
Not surprisingly, global power is structured very differently now from the way it was from 1914 through World War II and the Cold War. As Freidman says, "the Cold War system was built primarily around nation states…the Cold War was a drama of states facing states, balancing states, and aligning with states…[it was] balanced at the centre by two super-states: the US and the Soviet Union." As he describes it, the globalisation system which followed the Cold War "is built around three balances which overlap and affect one another. The first is the traditional balance of power between nation-states…The second…is nation-states and global markets…The third…is the balance between individuals and nation-states."
This third factor Freidman sees as especially relevant to the terrorism phenomenon of today - "individuals can increasingly act on the world stage directly, unmediated by a state." This he sees as an "incredible force multiplier for individuals", both those who are motivated for good and those who are motivated by evil. Freidman presents a fascinating picture of the role of modern, globalising technology in facilitating terrorism - from the macro level of instant media images conveying the sense of terror generated by, say, the attacks on the World Trade Centre or in Bali or Madrid, to the specific technology of internet communication networks and mobile phones used to detonate bombs.
So this is the context in which what are called "non-state actors" have become so predominant in our security environment. And terrorists are not alone in this category. It includes as well, in the broadest definition of security, activities ranging from people smuggling (not just of illegal entrants to Australia, but also, for example, of women in parts of Asia), to drug running, money laundering, piracy and illegal fishing. These activities are international or transnational, - global, in fact - and they often have their organisations in, or their organisers work in, failed or failing states. Responding to them is an enormous challenge for traditional police forces, but generally at what have been the margins of traditional defence force activities. Yet defence forces have had to become involved, and not only in Australia.
Let me make one further point here about what I've called failed or failing states. Globalisation also has the capacity to spread wealth, but it imposes a very competitive environment, requires certain preconditions, and the fact is that not all states can meet these, or compete adequately in the new world. This has led increasingly to failures, even complete collapses, of government and authority in some states. While in real-politik terms we could once ignore such states if they were geographically remote or distant from our direct interests, it is now not possible to do so because geographic distance no longer matters, and the sorts of "viruses" that grow in such states - like narcotics growing and trafficking, people trafficking and of course terrorism, generally abetted by endemic corruption, can spread quickly. Afghanistan stands out, but there are other cases closer to home in which failures of governance have generated threats - and actual harm - to Australians.
While all these developments have added to the challenges to global security, some constants remain from the past. In particular, relationships between nation states have remained an important element on the global agenda. However important other issues become, states are unlikely ever to forego options for advancing their interests against other sovereign nations, and certainly won't forego the capacity to defend themselves or serve their interests with force at the state level. So for this reason, traditional military structures are still important and still drive defence postures and international defence relationships.
There is a point at which traditional nation-state security approaches intersect with the challenge of the new non-state actors, and that is around proliferation and weapons of mass destruction. WMD and non-proliferation have been on the international agenda for many years, but originally were state matters, and were the subject of drawn out, and extremely esoteric, negotiations between governments. The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the ABM Treaty, were all examples of this.
While the risk of proliferation between states remains a serious concern, greater concern today is attached to the risk of states - including but not only those labelled "rogue states" - becoming sources of WMD for terrorist groups. The nightmare is of an Al-Qaida-type group acquiring a WMD capability - even a crude nuclear weapon. That they have the will to use such weapons if they could acquire them is beyond doubt, and they can probably afford them. Arguably, only opportunity and access to such capabilities have stood in the way, so far, of terrorists using them against civilian targets in the ultimate act of asymmetric warfare.
IMPACT ON DEFENCE PLANNING
How has all of this impacted on Defence management in Australia? It has had a significant impact through the combined effects on capability definition and acquisition, as well as on the rate, and types, of deployments of the ADF.
In the first instance, it has become necessary to consider Australia's security in a more holistic way than the simple notion of its defence implied. It has become evident that new era security threats do not respect geographic distances or "sea-air gaps" on which the concept of the "Defence of Australia" was built. We have had to accept the possibility of having to operate further from home, and against different kinds of targets, and that traditional concepts of warning time against attacks in Australia are not valid.
The impact of this challenge has been debated at some length, and the outcome is reflected in several ways. Broadly, while adjusting the balance of our proposed acquisitions to reflect changing priorities - reflected in the new Defence Capability Plan, announced late last year - we have sought to maintain a force which could defend Australia against conventional attack, bearing in mind that our planning always has to look ahead 15 years or more, while at the same time taking on new or enhanced roles in other areas.
Thus, we've created a Special Operations Command, added an East Coast-based Tactical Assault Group (TAG) to the existing TAG based here in the West at Swanbourne, and developed an Incident Response Regiment with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive response capabilities. And we are in the process of preparing our Reserve force for a greater role in domestic security if needed.
Force structure and capabilities apart, we've also become adept at using our forces differently. The ADF is now committed to eleven operations, many more than it was even a decade ago, and none of them related to the "Defence of Australia" in the traditional narrow sense of that term.
In regard to border security for instance, we've long had Patrol Boats assisting in managing illegal fishing, but now ADF assets - ships, aircraft, and men and women - play a greater role in other areas of border security, notably of course in responding to attempted illegal immigration. The ADF's role in this regard was particularly prominent in 2001 in response to the alarming upsurge if attempted arrivals, and the operation - codenamed RELEX - has continued since then.
In taking on these roles, we have had to work more then ever with other government agencies, including immigration, ASIO, the police and customs. It has also of course required closer coordination across these agencies, led by the Prime Minister's Department. This has required a bit of learning on all sides, and some adjustments in culture, but in my experience it is working very effectively.
This was demonstrated so well when ADF special force elements worked with State and Federal police to apprehend the North Korean vessel, the Pong Su, off Sydney last year.
As I noted earlier, not only for traditional moral and humanitarian reasons, we now have to address failed or failing states more seriously. For the most part that is an issue for international development and aid agencies, but there are occasions, and will be more, in which, almost as a last resort, defence force involvement will be necessary. Our intervention as part of a coalition in Afghanistan was a case in point, America's intervention in Liberia is another.
Another, less extreme example, is our current involvement in the Solomon Islands, where some 2000 personnel, including 1500 from the ADF, established a security "foot-print" in which the police could operate and the judiciary and other civil institutions could be re-established. This was done incidentally without a shot being fired, but there is no doubt that the military presence mattered in sending a clear message to the renegades. It was also one of those operations which required a very close relationship between the ADF, the Federal Police, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and AusAID.
In all this, the ADF has not foregone its traditional capabilities. Indeed, in its range of capabilities and its skills in applying them, our force remains, in my view, quite remarkable for its size. On the one hand our people have shown their skills at the "high end" of warfare in Iraq. And on the other, they are showing their skills at the "low end" in the Solomon Islands.
Looking at the eleven operations the ADF is currently engaged in, and noting the great differences between many of them, and the successes being enjoyed, you have to conclude that pound for pound the ADF must be one of the world's most versatile and adaptable forces. But, as I have emphasised, the task of defence planners and managers in ensuring this in an increasingly varied and complex international security environment, against a widely different range of threats and challenges, has undoubtedly become more difficult over these past few years.
TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
Let me turn now to the effect of technology change for defence managers. The speed of technological progress has been a challenge for defence organisations for a significant period. Although it might be argued that the rate of progress has now peaked, we still face enormous challenges in the integration of complex technological change because technology permeates much of our activity. This is especially so given that this change remains particularly rapid in areas relevant to military affairs.
Consider the advances we have seen in the past decade in communications technology, in precision weaponry and stand-off firepower, in global positioning, remote sensing, commercial imagery, and spatial data; the implications of the revolution in biochemical technology for counter-proliferation regimes; and advances in communications and cryptographic technology. Numerous other examples jump to mind.
One effect of this has been to change the nature of warfighting. The much-hyped communications and information technology revolution in the civilian world has had equally significant impacts in the realm of military affairs. Indeed we are beginning to see the development of information as a capability through concepts such as information operations and network-centric warfare. The effective employment of information and networking can provide armed forces with greater precision in the command and control of operations and in the application of force, and afford significant new strategic advantages. And we have already witnessed the effects of a network-centric approach in improvements in the speed and precision of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
While it might be thought that information-based operations, or network-centric warfare, only deliver advantages to industrial countries, in fact it can prove to be the opposite - with relatively small investments and by developing and harnessing their intellectual strength, less developed countries whose forces are outclassed on the battlefield can, potentially, negate the advantages of very sophisticated weaponry. The effect of this is to pose a whole new set of capability challenges.
Warfighting methodologies apart, technological change impacts at several other levels. The capabilities available to potential adversaries grow, of course, and so therefore does the level of what is needed to counter them and to stay ahead, or to maintain the "capability edge" we need.
As well, the cost of equipment grows, and becomes harder to predict, and lead times for building and acquiring it far exceed the rate of change in the technology, so "evolutionary acquisitions" become increasingly important. And the demand grows for higher levels of skill in the Defence Force, leading then to higher personnel costs.
In trying to meet the needs for new, enhanced, or rebalanced capabilities, the rapidly changing technological environment makes acquisition and procurement even more complex and difficult as we face the dilemma of looking to purchase capability which will have enduring utility, while minimising the risk of investing in unproven technology. This complexity could cause paralysis if - as can be tempting - we were to wait for our strategic circumstances to stabilise, or for technology advances to plateau. As General Cosgrove noted earlier this year in regard to the ADF's need for an automated logistics system, we have been watching the "galloping technology", but at some stage we need to "jump into the swimming pool …spend money [and] buy a system".
The Joint Strike Fighter decision is another case in point. Here, we have "jumped into the swimming pool" early, and have taken a risk in the hope of gaining a cutting-edge capability and leap-frogging an expensive generation of combat aircraft. The alternative might have been to select a more proven platform, but we would then have run the significant risk of investing in a capability which was obsolete before we had it in operation.
CHANGES AFFECTING THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
I said at the outset that I would say something about the way in which the sorts of changes I have been talking about affect the intelligence community.
For people and organisations who shy away from the spotlight, and who historically dislike a public profile, the intelligence community has recently seen a surprising succession of its issues competing for space in the media. Indeed, dealing with the consequences of this attention has been a significant challenge in itself for managers of the three Defence intelligence organisations, and for General Cosgrove and me.
The new threat environment has certainly increased the focus on intelligence and the demands we make of it as a frontline capability in combating the non-conventional threats which confront us.
Most immediately, the higher operational tempo of the ADF over the past five years has affected the intelligence world just as it affects the rest of the Defence Organisation. The increase in operations has resulted in a consequent increase in demand for information in support of those operations. And given the breadth of areas of operation, the provision of this support - down to the operational and tactical levels - has required more than a shift in priorities. It has required us in fact to do much more within existing resources.
Beyond this, at the strategic level the focus of the intelligence community has, of course, also shifted in recent years in line with the changed nature of the adversary we are confronting today. The intelligence agencies have found themselves increasingly focussed on the activities and intentions of non-state actors and groups.
For decades the intelligence community was staffed, skilled, and structured primarily to consider the actions and intentions of nation-states and the impact of those actions and intentions on Australia and Australian interests. The non-state actors whom the intelligence community must now target are more flexible and agile, and arguably less predictable than nation-states. They often operate through informal structures on the basis of shared experience and cultural, religious, or ethnic links which make them very hard intelligence targets to penetrate. These groups also tend to develop geographically-dispersed networks and will often train or operate in realms in which we have little or no experience.
Significant advances in technology have of course provided much vaunted advances for intelligence collection and analysis. Improvements in space-based assets and advances in communications technology have substantially improved technical intelligence collection, and new tools have advanced our analytical capability. But these capabilities are not necessarily suited to penetrating loosely-structured networks of non-state actors.
As well, many advances in technology also assist such groups, adding to the challenges faced by the intelligence community. Terrorists, in particular, have proven adept at using technology effectively. To complicate intelligence collection they often mix high and low tech communication channels, combining face-to-face meetings with their use of internet communications. They can employ GPS signals from inexpensive hand-held units; increasingly they can access high-grade cryptography; and they are able to exploit advances in digital imaging to produce forged documentation. It is as though every development makes their task easier.
All of these factors which are complicating the business of intelligence will be taken into account in the review of all Australian intelligence agencies which is currently being undertaken by Mr Philip Flood. We await his conclusions with much interest, but I thought it might be of interest here for me to set out some of the context in which the agencies are now working. And I should conclude on the subject where I started, that is, to note again how the issue of public scrutiny is now part of life in the intelligence community, as indeed it is for all of us in Defence.
CONCLUSION
In my introduction I noted that my reading about Field Marshal Blamey had tempted me to conclude that the more things change, the more they stay the same, but also that in other respects, the environment in which the Defence Organisation must operate is so very different compared to even ten years ago. Having heard me outline the challenges which confront us today, I am confident that many of you will see similarities to the past, but will also appreciate that some of the challenges are indeed entirely new - and potentially open-ended.
Adapting to this new environment is a task without end - we will continue having to refine our understanding of how to operate in these changed strategic circumstances. And the long-standing management challenges within the Defence Organisation will not be easily resolved as the expectations of us grow. On both fronts, however, we are making significant strides and I am constantly, and I might add happily, impressed by the resilience and resourcefulness of the ADF and indeed of the Organisation as a whole.
Finally, I have remarked at several points on the matter of media interest, public scrutiny, and so on. I read recently a criticism of the "secretness" with which Defence does its business. As a practitioner in the business of Defence management, and one who will spend the first two days of next week from 9.00am until 11.00pm before a Senate Committee, I find the claim extraordinary. The level of public accountability has never been higher. That in-turn requires an informed public. I hope I have been able to contribute something in that regard for this audience at least.