Australia’s army is suffering from a crisis of identity and confidence

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The Australian Army does not have a social licence problem, it has self-confidence issue.

On balance, the community from which the Australian Army is drawn, and that it serves, values and implicitly permits the army’s existence. While we can argue the toss in terms of whether the army should be the first port of call for national disaster relief, it remains the fact Australian society looks to our army in times of peril.

But the army has not pushed back, and the list of society’s requirements continues to grow. We ask more and more of our army and, rightly or not, lash it when it stumbles. Truth is, the army has ceded too much territory in our national debate to woke politics. Our army has overcorrected on its course correction following the Brereton inquiry.

The army’s fundamental role is the application of lethal force in our name—to kill. The army does not go out of its way to remind Australians that this task is one we consciously place on its shoulders. So, we tend to forget about it.

Perhaps the army has an identity problem. Australian Bureau of Statistics data indicates the proportion of Australian citizens who were born overseas (first-generation Australians) or have a parent born overseas (second generation) has surpassed 50 per cent of our population. This has direct implications for the story our army tells. Anzac Day commemorations strike a chord with an ever-narrowing group. Society is shifting and our shared stories are no longer simply grandfather stories of World War II.

The new histories and composition of our community make it slightly more difficult to pinpoint an Australian brand of duty. The army must think differently about the society it serves and from which it draws.

The recruitment focus on school-leavers is too late. Given our cultural diversity, it is important to capture the interest of much younger children. The army might consider a primary school focus akin to the Constable Kenny Koala program, whereby Annie Army visits schools to spark early interest in a life of service.

Recent census data shows that in five years from 2016 the largest source of community growth was Nepal. Australia’s Nepalese community grew by 124 per cent. There is an opportunity for a real marriage of service, identity and cultural affinity here: a targeted recruitment effort to establish an Australian Army Gurkha Brigade.

The army continues to operate with a sense of restriction. Its recruitment efforts are tailored at fiscal benefits, social opportunities and travel. While these are commendable draw cards, the army is about so much more.

Our army needs to rediscover confidence before society to follow suit. It has owned mistakes made and committed to do better. Instead of cracking on, our army seems to find itself in a constant state of flight or fight, anxious to not make headlines. This reinforces challenges in recruitment and retention, too.

It is time for the army to reintroduce itself to Australia. We can easily capture army composition from headcounts or gender statistics, and from doctrine understand its mission, purpose and ethos. This tells us what the army is but not who. I think this is a significant distinction to overlook.

The Australian Army is a living, breathing entity. This is something Winston Churchill captured: ‘The army is not like a limited liability company, to be reconstructed, remodelled, liquidated, refloated from week to week as the money market fluctuates. It is not an inanimate thing, like a house, to be pulled down or enlarged or structurally altered at the caprice of the tenant or the owner; it is a living thing.’

It must act like one.

Of course, our army is both a profession and a bureaucracy. But in recent times the bureaucracy has outweighed profession. While both must feature, ideally in equilibrium, for a righteous and efficient Australian Army to exist we must rebalance the scales. The army should cultivate a sense of calling, of pride, of duty, among those who serve as well as the community served.

Instead, our army appears unconfident in its purpose—seeking too much direction from the society it serves, allowing its bureaucratic nature to take hold and frame service as a job. How odd it is to have such a stellar international reputation as a reliable and skilled boutique force respected by allies and enemies, only to be consumed by a crisis of confidence at home.

To return to Churchill, it is true that if an army ‘is bullied, it sulks; if it is unhappy, it pines; if it is harried, it gets feverish; if it is sufficiently disturbed, it will wither and dwindle and almost die; and when it comes to this last serious condition, it is only revived by lots of time and lots of money’.

Our army is sufficiently disturbed—disconnected—and lacks adequate self-confidence. Australia lacks time and money to throw at the problem but this does not excuse us from an honest discussion about our army. The army must be ready to respond with unashamed confidence in its vital purpose. A life of service and duty is to be celebrated, aspired to and revered for its contribution to the prosperity and security of our country.

Using open-source AI, sophisticated cyber ops will proliferate

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Open-source AI models are on track to disrupt the cyber security paradigm. With the proliferation of such models—those whose parameters are freely accessible—sophisticated cyber operations will become available to a broader pool of hostile actors.

AI insiders and Australian policymakers have a starkly different sense of urgency around advancing AI capabilities. AI leaders like Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, and Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, forecast that AI systems that surpass Nobel laureate-level expertise across multiple domains could emerge as early as 2026.

On the other hand, Australia’s Cyber Security Strategy, intended to guide us through to 2030, mentions AI only briefly, says innovation is ‘near impossible to predict’, and focuses on economic benefits over security risks.

Experts are alarmed because AI capability has been subject to scaling laws—the idea that capability climbs steadily and predictably, just as in Moore’s Law for semiconductors. Billions of dollars are pouring into leading labs. More talented engineers are writing ever-better code. Larger data centres are running more and faster chips to train new models with larger datasets.

The emergence of reasoning models, such as OpenAI’s o1, shows that giving a model time to think in operation, maybe for a minute or two, increases performance in complex tasks, and giving models more time to think increases performance further. Even if the chief executives’ timelines are optimistic, capability growth will likely be dramatic and expecting transformative AI this decade is reasonable.

The effect of the introduction of thinking time on performance, as assessed in three benchmarks. The o1 systems are built on the same model as gpt4o but benefit from thinking time. Source: Zijian Yang/Medium.

Detractors of AI capabilities downplay concern, arguing, for example, that high-quality data may run out before we reach risky capabilities or that developers will prevent powerful models falling into the wrong hands. Yet these arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny. Data bottlenecks are a real problem, but the best estimates place them relatively far in the future. The availability of open-source models, the weak cyber security of labs and the ease of jailbreaks (removing software restrictions) make it almost inevitable that powerful models will proliferate.

Some also argue we shouldn’t be concerned because powerful AI will help cyber-defenders just as much as attackers. But defenders will benefit only if they appreciate the magnitude of the problem and act accordingly. If we want that to happen, contrary to the Cyber Security Strategy, we must make reasonable predictions about AI capabilities and move urgently to keep ahead of the risks.

In the cyber security context, near-future AI models will be able to continuously probe systems for vulnerabilities, generate and test exploit code, adapt attacks based on defensive responses and automate social engineering at scale. That is, AI models will soon be able to do automatically and at scale many of the tasks currently performed by the top-talent that security agencies are keen to recruit.

Previously, sophisticated cyber weapons, such as Stuxnet, were developed by large teams of specialists working across multiple agencies over months or years. Attacks required detailed knowledge of complex systems and judgement about human factors. With a powerful open-source model, a bad actor could spin-up thousands of AI instances with PhD-equivalent capabilities across multiple domains, working continuously at machine speed. Operations of Stuxnet-level sophistication could be developed and deployed in days.

Today’s cyber strategic balance—based on limited availability of skilled human labour—would evaporate.

The good news is that the open-source AI models that partially drive these risks also create opportunities. Specifically, they give security researchers and Australia’s growing AI safety community access to tools that would otherwise be locked away in leading labs. The ability to fine-tune open-source models fosters innovation but also empowers bad actors.

The open-source ecosystem is just months behind the commercial frontier. Meta’s release of the open-source Llama 3.1 405B in July 2024 demonstrated capabilities matching GPT-4. Chinese startup DeepSeek released R1-Lite-Preview in late November 2024, two months after OpenAI’s release of o1-preview, and will open-source it shortly.

Assuming we can do nothing to stop the proliferation of highly capable models, the best path forward is to use them.

Australia’s growing AI safety community is a powerful, untapped resource. Both the AI safety and national security communities are trying to answer the same questions: how do you reliably direct AI capabilities, when you don’t understand how the systems work and you are unable to verify claims about how they were produced? These communities could cooperate in developing automated tools that serve both security and safety research, with goals such as testing models, generating adversarial examples and monitoring for signs of compromise.

Australia should take two immediate steps: tap into Australia’s AI safety community and establish an AI safety institute.

First, the national security community should reach out to Australia’s top AI safety technical talent in academia and civil society organisations, such as the Gradient Institute and Timaeus, as well as experts in open-source models such as Answer.AI and Harmony Intelligence. Working together can develop a work program that builds on the best open-source models to understand frontier AI capabilities, assess their risk and use those models to our national advantage.

Second, Australia needs to establish an AI safety institute as a mechanism for government, industry and academic collaboration. An open-source framing could give Australia a unique value proposition that builds domestic capability and gives us something valuable to offer our allies

China is buying less from developed countries, but not Australia

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Australia’s exports to China have not returned to the peaks before the Chinese authorities started imposing discriminatory bans, but they are higher than five years ago, unlike China’s imports from every other major advanced economy.

Although there is no official campaign to curb access of western exporters to Chinese markets, there has been a marked shift in China’s imports away from advanced nations to favour the developing world. Australia is the stand-out exception.

Analysis by the Hinrich Foundation shows that the share of China’s imports coming from the G7 nations fell from 27 percent in 2017 to 22 percent in 2023. Japanese and German exports have been particularly hard-hit. The combined share from South Korea and Taiwan dropped from 18 percent to 14 percent.

China has been buying more from the ASEAN nations—their share of China’s imports has risen from 12 percent to just over 15 since 2017, while Russia’s share has doubled to 5 percent. Latin American and African nations have also increased their share of China’s imports.

Australia is an important source of supplies to China, accounting in 2023 for just over 6 percent of its imports, an increase from 5.5 percent in 2017. Australia last year supplied 64 percent of China’s iron ore and more than half its lithium.

There has been some softening of Australia’s exports to China during 2024, mainly reflecting weaker iron ore and lithium prices and a pause in the Chinese central bank’s gold purchases.

However, China’s share of Australia’s goods exports has revived from a low of 29 percent two years ago during China’s campaign of economic coercion to 36 percent now. Australia is thus more dependent on a single market than it has been since the late 1940s, when its biggest export customer was Britain.

Figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade show that in the six months to September, exports to China of coal were up 21 percent from a year earlier, bauxite shipments were up 39 percent and cotton sales were 41 percent higher. China has also returned to Australian wine and barley markets.

China’s share of Australian exports is still short of the levels above 40 percent reached between 2019 and 2021, however that was the result of unsustainably high iron ore prices which in mid-2021 touched a record US$220 a tonne. Iron ore is now down to US$105, with markets expecting further significant falls in 2025.

Chinese authorities remain keen to build their export markets globally, to help offset a weaker domestic economy.

The big shift in China’s export markets has been the rapid fall in sales to the United States. This has been driven by the US rather than by China.

In 2018, the US was taking 22 percent of China’s exports but by 2023, this had plunged to 14 percent. From a US perspective, the share of its imports supplied by China fell from 21 percent to 14 percent.

The tariffs imposed on Chinese goods during the first Trump administration and maintained under President Biden have had a big effect, but US companies have also made a conscious choice to source supplies that carry less geopolitical risk.

There has been a modest diversification of Australia’s imports away from China (and Hong Kong) following its coercive campaign against Australian exports. China’s share of Australia’s imports peaked at 30 percent in the latter half of 2020, but has dropped back to stabilise at about 25 percent since mid-2023.

That is almost double China’s 14 percent share of world exports and highlights Australia’s high dependence on Chinese manufactured goods.

With Christmas around the corner and the return of dialogue between the Australian and Chinese leaders, imports of Chinese goods are accelerating.

Mobile phones and other telephonic gear worth an amazing $1.1 billion were shipped from China into Australia in September, more than double the August tally. Imports of electrical goods, including solar panels and wind turbines, increased 62 percent while shipments of computers rose 27 percent, as did imports of prams, games and toys.

Australia has no obvious mechanism for lowering its trade dependence on China. The legislative charter of trade agency Austrade does not permit it to promote Australia as a market for other countries’ exports. There would, however, be the opportunity to import more Australia’s free-trade partners other than China. Austrade is restricted to promoting exports.

Australia has few alternative suppliers for many of our imports, particularly in telecommunications, computing and renewable energy generation.

There is no alternative market for our biggest export, iron ore, while China has no other source of iron ore of comparable scale. Supplies from the Simondou mine in Guinea, which is under construction, are more likely to replace high-cost Chinese iron ore mines, bringing down the world price, than Australian ore.

Both federal and state governments depend heavily on revenue from the resource sector. Last year, it delivered $55 billion in corporate tax payments (equivalent to the defence budget), and $31 billion more in royalty payments to the states.

Darwin is key for undersea data links. We must promote their resilience there

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Australia needs further investment into Darwin’s digital infrastructure to leverage the city’s proximity to Asia and support the resilience of international data flow through subsea cables.

Actions should include establishing an office to coordinate industry and government agencies, and it should build a substantial capability in Darwin to repair cables.

The importance of acting is underscored by Google’s November statement that it would lay a data cable from Darwin to Singapore via Christmas Island and by ongoing joint efforts by Australia, the United States and Japan to increase connectivity in the Pacific.

As subsea links, such as the existing Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable, become Australia’s digital lifelines, their security and resilience become paramount. Disruption to them would have profound consequences for both Australia’s economy and national security.

Darwin’s role in the Indo-Pacific digital ecosystem is growing ever faster, making the city increasingly central to global data flows. Vulnerabilities come with dependence on such infrastructure. Incapacitation of these cables—whether through physical damage or cyber threats—would severely affect Australia’s economy, security, and geopolitical standing.

The government’s current approach to managing subsea cable security lacks the coordination needed to address the growing challenges in this space. With multiple agencies involved, from the Department of Infrastructure to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Australia needs a more unified and proactive approach to safeguarding these assets.

Given the national security stakes, Australia must establish a dedicated domestic subsea cable coordination unit to oversee construction, maintenance and security. This unit should serve as a clearinghouse, working closely with key government stakeholders, telecommunications regulators and private sector players—including major tech firms, such as Google and Meta. By integrating their expertise, the unit could ensure that subsea cables were shielded from physical and cyber threats, coordinating national security efforts and fostering a unified response to emerging risks.

As Darwin continues to evolve as a data hub, Australia’s capacity to swiftly repair damage to its subsea cables is becoming increasingly critical. To maintain resilience, the government must establish a local repair hub. This includes building up domestic repair capabilities, which could be achieved through partnerships with international cable operators or by developing local expertise within the Northern Territory. A dedicated repair ship, staffed with a rapid-response team based in Darwin, would be invaluable, ensuring that cable damage was addressed quickly to minimise disruption. This approach would further strengthen Australia’s position as a reliable player in the global digital infrastructure arena.

To support this growing digital infrastructure, Darwin’s physical and digital capabilities must also be scaled up. This requires robust terrestrial backhaul connections and investment by large cloud-service providers in world-class AI data centres.  We also need a regulatory framework that supports the increasing volume of data while addressing potential physical and cyber threats.

The Northern Territory offers geological stability and an advantageous position for connections to Singapore, itself an important node in the global submarine cable network. These advantages make it an ideal place for increasing Australia’s overall telecommunications and subsea cable resilience by diversifying submarine cable landings from clogged areas like Sydney and existing areas like Perth.

As the volume of data flowing through the region rises, so too must the capacity to handle it securely and efficiently. Strong, resilient infrastructure will not only bolster Australia’s own security but position the country as a reliable alternative to higher-risk regions. It will also attract investment and foster deeper international partnerships, particularly with allies such as the United States and Japan, who are already deeply engaged in securing subsea cable infrastructure.

Australia must also step up its role in the global dialogue surrounding subsea cable security. Given the interconnectedness of these cables and their importance to international trade and security, it cannot afford to act in isolation. Active participation in global initiatives is essential. For example, in September, Australia endorsed the New York Statement on Undersea Cables, which calls for international cooperation to safeguard the links.

By engaging in these discussions, Australia can share insights on emerging threats, establish best practices for protection and help shape global responses to subsea cable disruptions. This leadership would further cement Australia’s position as a key partner in global digital infrastructure security.

The time for action is now. Australia’s government must move decisively to secure the subsea cable infrastructure of the Northern Territory, ensuring long-term resilience and reliability.

With its strategic location in the Indo-Pacific, Darwin is poised to be a cornerstone of global digital connectivity, not only serving as a gateway for Australia but also reinforcing regional security and economic stability. By securing subsea cable infrastructure, Australia will pave the way for a secure, resilient and interconnected future, reinforcing both its national interests and its partnerships with key allies.

From the bookshelf: ‘American Policy Discourses on China’

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In her new book, Yan Chang Bennett explores historical US views of China. They have ranged from evangelical promises of redemption to hard-nosed capitalism exploiting vast opportunities. Bennett argues that these perspectives have shaped US foreign policy for centuries and often form the bases of China policy for new administrations.

Based on examination of recently declassified foreign-policy documents, Bennett guides readers through three centuries of United States-China relations focusing on three pivotal moments: president Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with China; Jimmy Carter’s normalising of US-China relations, and Bill Clinton’s advocacy of China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) accession.

Before Nixon’s presidency, China was viewed in the US as a communist foe. The administration reshaped policy and in doing so drew on 19th and early 20th century US views and sentiments. These included a mix of missionary impulse and the idea of China as an untapped economic opportunity. Nixon promoted the idea that China, if left in isolation, would be an aggrieved giant threatening global peace, whereas reintegrating it into the global community would bring advantages to the US and also to China.

Building on Nixon’s rapprochement policy, and in line with earlier notions that helping China was the US’s ‘special undertaking’, the Carter administration saw the country as a candidate for democratisation as well as a vast market for US goods. It believed that if China normalised relations with the US, its economy could move to free markets, and its system of government could become more like those of Western Europe and the US. Bennett’s historical analysis shows Carter could not have been more naive about these reform prospects when dealing with China’s then leader, Deng Xiaoping.

It was at that time the US acknowledged the Chinese position ‘that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China’, declaring, however, that the US would ‘maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan’ and that it would ‘continue to have an interest in the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue.’ The US opened official diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China on 1 January 1979.

Clinton’s presidency, in turn, built on the policy steps taken by Nixon and Carter by championing China’s accession to the WTO. He too was convinced this would lead to liberalisation and democratisation. Bennett argues this enduring belief reflects those long 19th century US attitudes. They were false. At the same time these US policies were being advanced, the Chinese government held its own shrewd and pragmatic perspectives about its relationship with the US, concerned about its interests and historical contexts.

US activities to assist China’s entry to the WTO, which Clinton predicted would enable almost unlimited access to the Chinese market, were flawed on many levels. Systematic misinterpretations came from US perceptions of China that were not rooted in reality.

China did not go for fundamental economic liberalisation, and Bennett says Clinton’s China hands should not have expected any such thing from China’s authoritarian government. For example, Beijing established tighter controls over its giant state-owned enterprises and pegged its currency to the dollar at artificially low levels, ‘bestowing significant competitive advantages to Chinese exporters’.

As Bennett says, it is now clear that WTO accession granted China entry into the world economy, fuelling its astounding economic growth. But what was also clear all along is that China acted in its own economic interest, exploiting Clinton’s vocal support. Not once in Clinton’s eight years in power from 1993 did China say it would become a democracy in the likeness of the US or would make economic reforms that would lead to political liberalisation.

With China rejecting Western ideologies, Bennett advocates a pragmatic reassessment of US policy. She argues it must avoid ‘emotional rhetoric, and idealised frameworks’, such as the belief in liberalisation and democratisation which drove support for China’s accession to the WTO, even though evidence for such hope was weak.

Bennett sees an enduring nature in 19th and early 20th century US perceptions of China, with their repetition in current US policy. Present narratives continue to emphasise China as ‘buried deeply in the past’. They extend to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who is presented in media as a ‘timeless Confucian emperor’.  In fact, since his birth after the establishment of the People’s Republic, his entire education has been steeped in Marxist-Leninist principles of governance.

Using historical data, Bennett’s book offers insights for the incoming administration of Donald Trump. Her analysis matters in a world where China charts an independent path under Xi Jinping and where Trump’s agenda of making America great again aims to counter perceptions of US decline.

Since Trump’s 2024 victory, Bennett has separately proposed six ways for the US to counter China: modernising US military capabilities; prioritising the Indo-Pacific; strengthening economic leverage; sharing the burden of global leadership; investing in technology and innovation; and building energy independence and resilience.

Two concepts of patriotism

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Most Australians would say that they are patriotic, proud to be Australian, and proud of their nation’s history, even for all of its shortcomings. True, self-denunciation of the nation and its history is in vogue among the cultural elite that is so well described by Musa al-Gharbi in We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite (2024). However, their long-term agenda of ending the nation’s ‘structural oppression’ and rewriting its colonial-settler history, in the name of ‘social justice’, will never take hold in the community at large. 

If the suggested remedy for the historical harms of colonisation—the retelling of the nation’s history, and the pursuit of reparations for those harms—were to be pursued seriously, such action would be rejected by most Australians as being too radical, and an unnecessary distraction from meaningfully addressing the real disadvantage that is experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. 

Rather than engaging in such national self-denunciation, most Australians practise what might be termed ‘soft patriotism’, an intuitive love of country that is ingrained from early childhood, for those born here, or rapidly acquired by those who choose to make Australia their home, first as permanent migrants, and then as new citizens. 

Patriotism involves more than going to the beach on a summer’s day on 26 January to celebrate Australia’s national day. It is a love of country. It is an understanding that Australia is not an arbitrary geographical space that happens to be inhabited by randomly selected individuals who lack a connection to one another. It is a cherishing of the nation’s shared heritage, which is the legacy of settlers, pastoralists, farmers, miners, administrators, industrialists, workers, and so many more. 

Our institutions of democratic government were shaped by colonial-era founders, who championed the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia in the second half of the 19th century.  Our economy was also built on foundations laid in colonial Australia, when endowments such as wool and gold, and access to capital and product markets, led to Australia being one of the richest countries in the world on a per capita basis at Federation in 1901. These and other foundations of the nation will need to be better taught to future generations in an era when historical understanding is in decline. 

The patriot also intuitively recognises that being a member of a national political community is the best available means of exercising freedom, democracy, and sovereignty. Maurizio Viroli wrote in For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism that patriotism involves a love of the institutions and the way of life that sustains the common liberty of a national people. In a world of sovereign nation-states, we owe no higher loyalty to a global or supranational form of government, to another nation-state, or to any international organisation. 

When the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 became law on 26 January 1949, it established for the first time the legal status of ‘Australian citizen’. At the first citizenship ceremony, held in Canberra on 3 February 1949, the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, asked the new citizens to respect the Australian flag, and to swear allegiance to ‘our concepts of government’. He explained that Australian democracy was a means for achieving national progress without the ‘chaotic spectacle of revolutionary disturbances ending in dictatorial minority rule’. He said that faith could be placed in the ‘common-sense and national goodwill of the Australian people’, and that political differences could be resolved peaceably through the nation’s democratic processes. That sentiment is today captured in the Australian citizenship pledge, when new citizens are asked to pledge their loyalty to Australia and its people, to share our belief in democracy, to respect our common rights and liberties, and to uphold and obey Australian laws.  

Most Australians embrace this form of patriotism. To call it ‘soft’ is not to diminish it.  Rather, it is to suggest that such patriotism is reflexive and relatively cost-free. It is a love of a readily understood ‘idea of Australia’, which does not require much explanation or ideological rationalisation. 

There is an altogether different, and more challenging, form of patriotism. ‘Hard patriotism’ has a necessarily martial quality, as it is invariably associated with the defence of the nation. It is today being displayed by Ukrainians, and by Israelis. Hard patriotism challenges us to ask of ourselves: what is to be defended, to the last if necessary, and are we prepared to pay that price? 

Hard patriotism cannot be solely expected of our armed forces, although it is intrinsic to the profession of arms, which traditionally have placed a more visible emphasis on duty, honour, service and country. In the event of having to defend the nation, hard patriotism would be required of all. Sacrifice and commitment would be expected from all, subject only to age or incapacity. Hard patriots would need to be found not just in the armed forces, but across a mobilised and resolute population. 

Winston Churchill’s ‘darkest hour’ speeches of 1940 are a supreme example of hard patriotism, expressed in magnificently eloquent words. His theme was ‘never surrender’, because he knew that surrender would mean the loss of liberty and sovereignty, and the end of the British way of life. The British people rose to the occasion, as did the Empire, which for a time stood alone against Nazi Germany.  Compare this with France. French historian Marc Bloch described in The Strange Defeat—written in 1940 and published posthumously in 1946—how the French were still a patriotic people in 1940. However, after a period of national malaise in the 1930s, which had led to a loss of self-confidence, they were not prepared—strategically or morally—for the Nazi onslaught. Soft, demoralised France fell in 1940, while hard, patriotic Britain fought on. Later, Charles de Gaulle emerged as the hard Free French patriot who restored French honour. 

Hard patriotism is the willingness to fight to the end if necessary for three treasured national possessions: freedom, or the liberty to live as we choose, subject only to our own laws; democracy, or our institutions of government that allow us to choose our leaders and lawmakers, and to check abuses of power; and sovereignty, or our capacity to control our territory and resources, and to pursue economic and social development as we see fit, free from external coercion and intimidation. 

Australia has no threatening neighbours, or historical enemies. If we did, hard patriotism would be intuitive and reflexive. Instead, for more than two centuries, we have mentally lived in an imagined ‘sheltered land’, far from strife. No matter that the security of our ‘sheltered land’ has been a function of Australia being prepared to fight distant wars (and a close one in 1942-44) against Eurasian powers, thereby assisting first the British Empire, and then the United States, to prevail over aspiring Eurasian hegemons. 

Today, we still live in a ‘sheltered land’, at least in our national imagination. In the absence of enemies at the gate, it is hard to appreciate that our way of life might one day be threatened—if not necessarily by invasion, then by other forms of strategic coercion or military attack. Australian strategic and defence policy is not couched in the language of hard patriotism. Even though we appear to be pursuing an implied grand strategy of working with the US and others to prevent Chinese hegemony, it is a strategy that dares not speak its name in those terms—principally so as to not disturb the foreign policy of ‘speaking softly’ and stabilising ties with China, but also to avoid the challenge that would be inherent in building hard patriotism. 

Therein lies the problem. Hard patriotism cannot be conjured into being suddenly on the eve of a military crisis, or at the outbreak of a war. Moreso than a significant financial crisis, a serious public health emergency, or a catastrophic natural event, a major war would throw its terrible shadow across society in ways that would require a more far-reaching  mobilisation of the nation, and greater sacrifices. 

A determined and resolute government could today make the case for hard patriotism, so that we were better prepared for the unlikely but credible prospect of major war. This would require a different discussion between the government and the people. Such a discussion would begin with a more honest explanation of the precarious nature of our strategic circumstances. The ‘sheltered land’ of our national imagination is no more. The Eurasian axis of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is seriously challenging the US and its allies in the struggle for mastery in Eurasia, and therefore globally. Distance no longer affords us the protection that it once did, as potential adversaries field longer-range weapons, and potent offensive cyber capabilities. 

In a more honest discussion, we have to consider the possibility of the emergence of a world where an isolated US, following either military defeat or strategic withdrawal, was either unwilling or unable to extend its protective shield over Australia and other allies. In that world, US forces and facilities would not be present in Australia, and its nuclear forces would not protect us. China would rule the waves of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and its military bases would be in our sea-air approaches, including probably in East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands. 

A hegemonic China would be free to impose its will on Australia, including in relation to trade, investment, resources, energy, and more besides. There would be little that we could do about resisting Chinese pressure, other than to develop significantly larger armed forces and military capabilities in an effort to independently deter a military attack. This would probably have to include an independent nuclear deterrent. 

Australia would come under pressure to free up its markets for Chinese investment and acquisition, to drop restrictions on technology access—for instance, regarding 7G and successor technologies—and agree to more China-favourable terms for access to our resources and energy. We would also come under pressure to extradite persons of interest to China, and to ensure that Australian media and public discourse exhibited the ‘correct understanding’ of China and its interests. Local quisling political and business leaders would emerge, who would urge their fellow Australians to ‘adjust’ to the new reality of Chinese supremacy. 

To avoid the possibility of such a future, Australia should be doing more to support the US-led deterrence of China, including being prepared to go to war if required to thwart Chinese hegemony. This would require the building of a hard Australian patriotism, the kind that is seen in frontline states that have a threatening neighbour. 

In any such war, China would employ advanced methods and techniques to undermine the national will to fight, sow discord among the people, fracture the community, amplify quisling voices, and generally attempt to demoralise the population. Cognitive warfare would be employed, waged over TikTok and the like, using technology-enabled propaganda and disinformation. An early objective would be to have sections of the community question the legitimacy of any such war, or at least Australia’s participation in it. Attempts might even be made to undermine Australia’s very legitimacy, perhaps by emphasising its origin as a European settler-colonial society, an ‘outsider’ in greater Asia, with a shameful, racist past. 

China’s President Xi Jinping has made Chinese nationalism a co-equal component, with Marxism, in his overarching ideological framework, as explained by Kevin Rudd in On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World. Chinese strategy mobilises national history and national identity, in competition and in conflict.  Nationalism is employed to sustain a dual narrative of China’s re-emerging to its rightful place of international prestige and leadership, and its cultural superiority, relative to the declining West. China would go into any conflict confident and self-assured, not agonising over a supposedly shameful past. National self-confidence would be crucial to success. Like France in 1940, any soft and demoralised nations would lack the will to fight such a war, calculating that yielding to the ascendent power was the more tolerable course.      

Political leaders in democracies are invariably focused on the domestic priorities of their citizens. They are measured on their ability to deliver prosperity, and not their ability to wage war, unlike earlier times when waging war was central to the prestige of the state. Issues of statecraft typically hold no interest for parochial citizens. In such an environment, building hard patriotism in the absence of a visible threat is almost impossible. However, leaving it to the coming of darker days would be too late. 

True, Australians are likely to unite in a crisis, as was seen in the COVID pandemic and during natural disasters such as the Black Summer of 2019-20. They tend to be trusting of the institutions of government during such crises, even if there is grumbling at inconvenience. However, in those circumstances, governments tend to have more direct levers and a greater power of initiative, such as introducing urgent fiscal stimulus measures, or enforcing strict public health measures. A war fought in defence of the nation would be a more challenging affair. It would require broader and deeper mobilisation, and more directive control being exercised by the federal government, as compared, for instance, with what occurred during the COVID pandemic. 

How might a balance be struck between trying to rally a sceptical people too soon, when many are unlikely to see the need, as against trying to build the hard patriotism that would be required in wartime, when it might be too late? One way might be to ask all citizens, perhaps aged 18-65, to affirm annually a ‘pledge of service’, where we would all be asked to register the kind of national service that we would be willing to render in the event of a military emergency involving the defence of the nation. This would not be limited to being willing to take up arms. It would include other categories of service such as medical, construction, logistics, and so on. Establishing such a register, perhaps as a prelude to establishing an Australian national service scheme—solely for the territorial defence of the nation—would form the basis for a very different discussion between the government and the people about the realities of our strategic circumstances. 

Pursuing this and other initiatives, such as preparing a War Book, and treating national security like the national budget—through an annual,  prime-time, national security statement to the nation—would better prepare the people for what are said to be the worst strategic circumstances since the Second World War. A harder patriotism would build steadily, as the people began to appreciate the stakes, and the potential sacrifices that might have to be made in order to protect all that we cherish about Australia. Unfortunately, Australia is no longer a ‘sheltered land’, and the times call for a new Australian patriotism. 

US tech-defence leaders want to upend the establishment

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Elon Musk wants to cancel the F-35, get rid of manned combat aircraft generally and rely more on drones.

It was no surprise, even without Musk’s comments along those lines, that the US Air Force punted any decision on the Next Generation Air Dominance air-combat project to the next administration. Leadership been undecided about how to proceed and about the impact of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program upon requirements. And the incoming Trump administration has dialled the chaos to 11.

It is not just the nomination of the problematic Pete Hedgseth as secretary of defense. In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, Musk emerged as a powerful support for Trump, and he has been constantly close to the president-elect since election. Trump has appointed Musk and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy to run a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): its formal status remains uncertain but it can make its writ run via the Oval Office.

This followed the nomination of JD Vance as vice-president—less than two years after the author and venture capitalist was helped into the Senate by Peter Thiel, founder of data-analysis software firm Palantir and the major backer of defence-technology company Anduril.

The Tech Bros’ hold over the administration would look like a virtual coup even if Trump was an engaged and savvy leader. But Trump has no great reputation for deep understanding of technology.

The tech-defence community, centred around Musk, Thiel and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, have been clear about their intention to reboot the defence establishment—comprising the Department of Defense (DoD), armed services and industry—which they argue has ossified since the end of the Cold War and will be unable to match China.

At the end of October, Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar published 18 Theses for defense reformation. ‘Everyone, including the Russians and the Chinese, has given up on communism,’ Sankar writes, ‘except for Cuba and the DoD. The only problem is that we are bad commies.’

Sankar’s diagnosis is that consolidation has stifled innovation blocked vital change, while leading to poor performance on major programs such as F-35, KC-46 tanker and Sentinel nuclear ballistic missile. His prescription is to break up acquisition and hand it to combatant commands; end cost-plus contracting; and move away from pure-play defence primes to mixed commercial-defence enterprises—like Palantir and SpaceX.

Trump’s Tech Bros could change rules and divert cash from current programs to new systems.

The Pentagon might announce a slowdown and early end to F-35 procurement and a greater emphasis on CCA, while requiring bidders to invest in development—as General Atomics did in the first decade of the century—in return for higher margins. In that case, venture-capital-backed firms will be well positioned to dislodge the major primes.

The Tech Bros will not be dictators. Republican states dependent on Defense don’t want to lose those well-paid jobs, or trade them for automated gigafactories. Most of DOGE’s targeted ‘government bureaucrats’ work for contractors or as civilians on military bases and pay taxes all over the country.

The military itself has been successful at negating or outlasting civilian revolutionaries. (‘Musk is Robert McNamara 2.0.’ Discuss.) Whatever one’s view of the F-35, it can’t be replaced by a quadcopter. The Western Pacific is emphatically not Ukraine and the need for reach—range and speed—sets a limit to small and cheap.

Above all, the armed services need a continuing supply of hardware and can argue against disruption in the face of an imminent threat. They can make a case that civilians have been proclaiming the death of the manned aircraft, the tank and the aircraft carrier for 70 years.

But what if the military sees the White House as a temporary ally, to make politically unpalatable changes? On 5 December, Air Force Global Strike Command chief General Thomas Bussiere was asked about the future of the over-cost and behind-schedule Sentinel: ‘If the nation directs us to do something different … some kind of mobile system,’ Bussiere said, ‘we will develop such concepts.’ But he was far more positive about the need for more B-21s to meet ‘an unprecedented demand signal’ for the bomber force.

The Sentinel program is pouring air force money into holes in the ground (the missile is fine, and the overruns are in silos and bunkers) and stands apart from other missions. The F-35 continues to incur heavy research and development bills. Redirecting resources from money pits into force redesign centred on bombers and bomber-launched weapons—the air force’s first love—while blaming Musk might not be without its appeal.

We are in a moment in US politics like none other since Reconstruction. There is much left to be settled between now and 20 January, Inauguration day, but there are all kinds of revolutionary ambitions in the mix—and the history of revolutions is that the outcome isn’t usually what the instigators planned.

Syria’s house of cards

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Some 54 years after Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria, rebels overthrew the dynasty his son Bashar squandered. Bashar al-Assad’s downfall was made possible partly by the fact that his Iranian and Russian patrons were distracted by their own existential problems. But it was Assad’s own shortcomings that hastened the regime’s collapse. Hemmed in by a parasitic economy and an ossified political system that brooked no dissent, Assad lacked the strength to reform much of anything.

Bashar was never groomed to lead Syria. His elder brother, Bassel, was their father’s heir apparent. But after Bassel’s untimely death in 1994, Bashar was summoned home from his ophthalmology residency in London.

When Hafez died in 2000, he bequeathed his son a strong and stable state. Syria’s days as a pariah were over. It no longer clashed with America by shooting down navy pilots. After Hafez pledged troops to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, he became a partner in the quest for peace, developing a close rapport with US President Bill Clinton.

Many hoped Bashar’s exposure to the West, which his father lacked, would help him moderate the ruling Ba’ath Party in power since 1963. Initially, Bashar seemed to embrace the role of reformer, releasing political prisoners and allowing intellectual salons to flourish.

But he abruptly changed tack, stifling dissent and allowing corruption to run rampant. To compensate, he diverted Syrians’ frustrations by demonising foreign bogeymen. He blamed Jews for betraying Jesus. He opened his country to foreign jihadists, facilitating their travel to Iraq to fight Americans. And he proved willing to emulate his father’s violent proclivities. When Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri refused to toe the line, Bashar threatened to ‘break Lebanon’ and conspired with Hezbollah to assassinate him.

Bashar was shackled to the Ba’ath regime his father cobbled together from minorities to rule over the Arab Sunnis, who comprise around 64 percent of the Syrian population. The Ba’ath also appealed to provincial Sunnis who had long faced discrimination by urban elites. Any reform would jeopardise the supremacy of Assad’s Alawi sect, a Shia offshoot accounting for around 12 percent of the population.

By 2006, even Syria’s most fervent Western supporters had broken with Assad. French President Jacques Chirac, an ally of Hafez, confessed that Bashar ‘seemed to me incompatible with security and peace.’ Some nicknamed him the ‘blind eye doctor’. Others dubbed him ‘Fredo’, after Don Corleone’s blundering middle son in The Godfather.

So, when revolts erupted throughout the Arab world in 2011, it was logical to believe the contagion would reach Syria. But Bashar was either oblivious to Syrians’ grievances or chose to ignore them. Weeks before they took to the streets, he told the Wall Street Journal, ‘we are outside of this’, and that Syria was stable because he was ‘closely linked to the beliefs of the people’.

But when the regime’s rural base turned on it, protests erupted. To blunt the rebellion, Assad leaned on urban elites, who disdained the bumpkins, and on the working class, who never identified with rural grievances.

This did not suffice to save Bashar, however, and he was compelled to turn to the Russians for air support and Iran-backed militias, especially Hezbollah. After several years of fighting, Bashar was able to claw back control of most territory comprising the spine of the country, from Aleppo in the north to Damascus in the south, where most Syrians live.

Like his father, Bashar was afforded a second chance; unlike his father, he frittered it away. Unable to secure political reform, his supporters now clamoured for economic change, homing in on the distribution of resources and reconstruction. But a regime with so many similarities to the Sopranos could never concede its coveted rents, even if doing so would have brought social harmony. Like the fictional mafia family, Assad’s regime relied on kickbacks from wealthy business owners and shaking down foreigners. When the World Food Program neglected to pay bribes at Syrian ports, its rice shipment rotted in storage. Similarly, Bashar’s uncle once intimated to an American diplomat that Syria would purchase Boeing planes if he was appointed the sales agent.

With sufficient revenue streams, the regime forged a trickle-down economic model, placating society with subsidised commodities while enriching itself with ill-gotten gains. But the civil war shrank the revenue base from which to extract domestic rents, and there were no more foreigners to extort. Today, Syria earns almost twice as much from illicit exports of the amphetamine Captagon as it does from legal trade. With the economy contracting and cuts to subsidies making everyday staples unaffordable for the average wage earner, around 70 percent of Syrian households say they cannot meet their basic needs.

Nor are the poor the only ones who suffered under Assad. A regime built on capturing resources eventually turned on the entrepreneurs and business leaders whose legitimate companies sustained it.

Consider the case of Samer al-Dibs, a scion of the pre-Ba’ath elite who ruled Syria from 1860–1963. His family is active in industries ranging from paper manufacturing to banking. He never supported the protests in 2011 and was even willing to represent the regime at international conferences. But in parliamentary elections this past July, the regime deprived him of the seat he had held for 17 years, denying him the prerogatives that he and others leveraged to expand their businesses.

So, when the rebels launched their blitzkrieg 12 days ago, such figures refused to support the regime. And, consumed with more pressing conflicts against Israel and Ukraine, Bashar’s Iranian and Russian patrons lacked the resources to rescue him again. But it was his hubris and refusal to embrace economic and political reform which ultimately doomed his rule.

Adapting all-domain forces to changes in land warfare

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Many elements of 21st-century warfare echo those of the 20th century. The nature of war as a brutal and fundamentally human endeavour has endured despite the introduction of stealth aircraft, precision missiles, drones, satellites and cyber capabilities to contemporary battlefields. Making sense of this context is just one of many challenges confronting the Australian Army and how it best contributes to the joint force.

Transitioning to an Australian Defence Force that can generate decisive battlefield effects in all domains in Australia’s immediate region is no trivial task. The role of land forces in deterrence and war is being reshaped by emerging technologies and social circumstances for warfare, the growing connection between forces on the land and at sea, the tendency for wars to be prolonged and the relative merits of heavy ground units in the Indo-Pacific.

These are among the developments I explore in a new ASPI report, The implications of emerging changes in land warfare for the focused all-domain defence force.

The report is presented in good faith for the sake of further discussion and the contest of ideas. It derives from a strong personal sense of obligation for senior leaders of the profession of arms to lead and encourage professional discourse on the ever-changing features of warfare.

Current strategic guidance makes clear that strike capability is viewed as an essential and dominant feature of future warfare and a core part of a diverse joint or all-domain mix. That mix includes carefully designed and prepared conventional ground forces that are capable of long-range strike and of defence from enemy missiles and drones. But it also includes capabilities and forces designed and postured for conventional attack and defence from and through fortified positions on land at close quarters. Australia’s National Defence Strategy provides for this with an amphibious-capable combined-arms land system.

This is important, as the increasing range of emerging land-based strike systems will make the sea a very dangerous place for warships, including ships carrying units of the combined-arms land system. As an Australian force crossed the water to make a landing, it and friendly forces could try to suppress some of the enemy’s ability to attack it. Entirely suppressing that ability may be impossible, however.

One underexplored and perhaps less palatable option to overcoming enemy anti-access and area-denial capabilities is to use large numbers of small, inexpensive, fast and somewhat protected land vehicles and watercraft that overwhelm defensive systems. They would be mixed with autonomous decoys and using technologies to spoof sensors and remain undetected. This idea of small, cheap and many may be an answer to cover no-man’s-lands.

Indeed, the US Marine Corps is already testing low-profile vessels to resupply distant outposts in contested spaces. While seemingly inefficient, the large numbers of small and relatively inexpensive craft could absorb enough of the enemy’s fire to enable a decisive number of troops and materiel to get into the fray to carry the day.

To keep costs down and to ensure the defence industrial base can produce large enough quantities to rapidly reconstitute combat losses, the vessels would need to have minimal defensive capabilities. A premium could be placed on the ability to carry or instantly access command and control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting capabilities. The intention would be to degrade an adversary’s ability to sense and target small watercraft or personnel carriers to enable a landing.

Rather than dismiss or ignore the problem of transportation, critics and advocates should turn their attention to resolving how to manoeuvre naval and land forces and all their supplies and other logistical needs across no-man’s-lands encompassing both sea and land. It’s an all-domain problem and solving it would go a long way towards building confidence that the ADF and potential partners can manoeuvre in the Indo-Pacific at all.

While this report sketches some rough ideas for how land forces might contribute to Australia’s all-domain defence in various scenarios, there’s still a lot of imagination and creativity required. A lack of circumspection about the problems of contemporary warfare will only serve to inhibit that imagination and creativity.

The challenge now is to work out how best to use those ground forces in concert with forces in other domains to create a truly maritime ADF.

Chaos in Syria will complicate an already complicated world

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The Assad family’s half-century rule has come to a seemingly unexpected demise in the span of just 11 days. There is little doubt the end of the 13 years of murderous repression and civil fighting which has fragmented Syria is welcomed. But the need to avoid the establishment of a new Islamic State-style regime or the further implosion of the Syrian state into little fiefdoms requires us to pause any celebration.

While the apparent blow to Iran and Russia’s grip on the region consumes immediate oxygen, the chaos that is likely to follow is the greater strategic concern. As Bruce Hoffman reminds us, the fall of the Shah of Iran was heralded as a positive development as Ayatollah Khomeini triumphantly swept into Tehran. It was the same with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

The prospect of chaos in Syria further complicates an international scene that is already challenging Western countries and their allies—from terrorism to dealing with China and Russia. It heightens the need for them to work together.

The commentator Richard Haass is correct in his observation that the one thing that brought the opposition together is now gone, meaning  we should expect fracturing. The expected power vacuum will make the Middle East less stable and fuel a more combustible mix of internecine rivalries. This will embolden regional and global terrorist actors, such as ISIS or al-Qaeda affiliates, to exploit the chaos, increasing the terrorist threat against Western countries and their allies. A more lethal and fatalistic reincarnation of Jabhat al Nusra, one of the groups in cahoots with ISIS, is also a distinct possibility.

As the founder of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Julani has for almost a decade tried to create an ‘Islamic republic’. While al-Julani has since walked back from previous allegiance to al-Qaeda, purportedly in favour of domestic nationalist ambitions, we should beware his skill in being all things to all people.

Assad’s departure is likely to prompt a new surge in refugees to Europe and calls from European leaders for the (premature) return of Syrian refugees. This in turn will intensify already heated debates about the political, social and economic challenges facing Europe and how it should respond.

But the biggest humanitarian impact lies in Turkey. It hosts nearly three million Syrian refugees. As the country sponsoring the forces that brought down Assad, Turkey is now in the driver’s seat. Turkey has at its disposal the umbrella group of Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army and a relationship of sorts with HTS. Turkey’s response more than any other country’s will shape what happens next.

Russia and Iran, still reeling from the effect of Assad’s fall on their influence, will try harder to protect their strategic interests. Russia could lose its naval base at Tartus in Syria. Iran no longer has a route across Syria for supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Israel is working to ensure the chaos does not pose further threats to its borders. Saying the 1974 border agreement with Syria had collapsed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli army to seize the buffer zone in the occupied Golan Heights.

The world is already dealing with overlapping conflicts, crises and tensions—including the emergence of hybrid threats—challenging the West’s ability to respond.

US president-elect Donald Trump has said the United States should ‘have nothing to do with’ the situation in Syria. While most Americans will agree with Trump, his defence and security advisers will probably recognise the need to ensure terror groups (ISIS in particular) cannot use this uncertain time to rebuild—meaning the US will still have security interests even if they decide they have no Syria domestic interests.

Only a day before the surprise and successful offensive by Syria’s opposition, the chief of MI5, unprompted by developments in Syria, said the British security agency would need to ‘pare back’ its counter-terrorism focus and make ‘uncomfortable choices’ because of the growing threat from Russia, China, Iran and other hostile states.

We should not be surprised. The challenges of prioritisation are not new. Finite resources and capacity require tough choices—especially where it requires investing in new approaches to counter the pre-eminent pacing threat of our times—China, and manifestations of Beijing’s malign influence.

China and Russia’s ‘no limits’ partnership, along with a broader network of autocratic countries—like Iran and its terrorist proxies as well as North Korea—highlights how partnerships built around a shared interest in trashing global rules, wreaking havoc and disrupting and dividing democratic societies are exploiting this turbulence and disruption.

In the same way, it will only be through partnerships and coalitions—new and old—that Western allies will be able to respond.

Sharing the burden of responding to chaos means we will all still have a price to pay (in addition to already heavy current demands), but it will mean a far lesser cost than if we allow the chaos to metastasize as we have done elsewhere before.