ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI’s work since its creation in August 2001.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ran through Australian military thought and actions for two decades.

The total cost of Australian military operations in Afghanistan over the 20 years was $8.5 billion. The total cost of Australian operations in Iraq to June 2021 was $4.1 billion.

ASPI’s inaugural director, Hugh White, recalled that, as the institute’s first reports were being written in 2002, Australians ‘were starting to debate an issue which became unquestionably the most divisive question of national strategic policy since Vietnam—the proposal to invade Iraq’.

ASPI staff had to be part of that debate, White wrote, but it raised serious challenges for a new institute looking to establish its role as a government-owned and -funded but independent policy player:

The potential for ASPI to find itself embroiled in intense and difficult public debates had, of course, been recognised and accepted from the outset, and some important principles had been established and embodied in ASPI’s charter: that ASPI as an institution would hold no view, but present the views of staff and others who contributed to its work, and that it would seek to publish a range of views on contentious issues. These principles served ASPI well, but it was nonetheless a stern test to find that, within a few months of its launch, ASPI staff were among those arguing against an invasion of Iraq for which the government was doing all it could to build support.

As one of only four members of the military coalition that deposed Iraq’s government in March and April 2003, Australia shared responsibility for what Iraq would become.

On 1 May, US President George W. Bush declared ‘the end of major combat operations’, while ASPI released a paper on 9 May on ‘postwar Iraq from a distinctively Australian perspective’.

Australia was a member of the transitional authority and had a direct responsibility for Iraq’s future, Elsina Wainwright noted. Having participated in the military action, she said, Australia had a moral obligation to contribute to the replacement of the deposed regime with a new and better alternative.

Practically, the United States and the United Kingdom wanted Australia to sustain an active role in Iraq’s administration and political evolution. If things went badly, there was a clear risk the engagement could drag on indefinitely. Australia needed to set a clear limit to its commitment to the reconstruction process. Wainwright also identified—‘not in any priority order’—a lengthy list of Australia’s interests in the outcome:

• long-term stability in the Middle East
• Australia’s commercial stake in Iraq and the Gulf
• Australia’s credentials in the new Iraq
• Australia’s standing in the wider Islamic world
• ready availability of oil at fair prices
• the global credibility of the US
• the strength of the US–Australia alliance
• the effectiveness of the United Nations and the wider Western alliance
• international cooperation to limit weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation
• effective measures to prevent terrorism
• the safety of Australian personnel.

A few months later, Aldo Borgu wrote about the continuing war in ‘post-war’ Iraq. The insurgency, he said, was destined to follow the same path as the 2003 Gulf War, ‘full of myths, misrepresentations, half truths and wishful thinking on both sides of the debate’. The insurgency was a lot more serious than the US admitted publicly, Borgu said, and far less serious than the doomsayers believed:

The major problem the US currently faces is that it has no idea who or what it’s facing. US Administration officials have identified the Iraqi resistance at different times as comprising foreign terrorists, regime loyalists, criminals or combinations of all three. That might be right for now but there is a greater risk that the resistance will begin to develop into a pro-Iraq, anti-American nationalist resistance that has nothing to do with Saddam, Al Qaeda or the Iraqi mafia.

In ASPI’s strategic assessment, Beyond Baghdad, published in May 2004 at a time of widespread fighting in Iraq, Peter Jennings wrote that Iraq’s prospects were poised on a knife edge. One possible outcome was the creation of a stable, more open and prosperous regime in the Middle East. The other was anarchy, and a substantial if temporary rebuff to America’s place in the world, Jennings said: ‘Australia’s involvement in the Coalition is an important signal of our support for the US and for the essential work of rebuilding Iraq. Australia’s interests are served by maintaining a strong commitment to the Coalition and the reconstruction of Iraq.’

The Iraqi national elections held on 30 January 2005 would ‘not by themselves defeat the insurgency in Iraq,’ Peter Khalil wrote. Insurgents would use terrorist tactics to incite sectarian strife, ‘to kill as many Iraqi civilians as possible, in the hope of derailing the political process over the course of 2005 by destabilising Transitional Government and Coalition efforts to help Iraqis establish democratic governing structures’.

Khalil had served as director of national security policy for the Coalition Provisional Authority (August 2003 to May 2004), working to rebuild Iraqi security forces and institutions. He wrote that Australian Army trainers had been more successful with Iraqis than US civilian contractors had been:

The relative effectiveness of Australian trainers is also a result of sharing with Iraqis a common tradition and understanding of British doctrine and tactics. The Australians have shown they can connect with Iraqis through treating Iraqi culture with respect, the lack of which among contracted, non-uniformed trainers has been particularly criticised by Iraqis.

By 2006, ASPI’s Iraq headline thought was the need to think clearly about what ‘staying the course’ meant. Rod Lyon argued that ‘we tried to do too many things in Iraq, and set ourselves an impossible mission’, aiming for a set of outcomes that were ‘the equivalent of trying to hit seven birds with one stone’—plus, the act of intervening had its own unintended consequences.

Lyon said the coalition forces should tick off what had been achieved: no Iraqi WMDs, Saddam Hussein toppled and prosecuted, sanctions lifted, and the prospect of Iraqi state sponsorship of terrorism minimised. The long-term objective of embedding democracy would depend on Iraq.

Australia wanted an exit strategy that pocketed those gains and left behind some form of stability for Iraq and the Gulf states, Lyon wrote: ‘We also have a fundamental interest in the continuing good health of our own alliance, and so, in helping our ally to find a graceful exit route. It is not in our interests to have the United States slump into a “post-Iraq syndrome” similar to the post-Vietnam one.’

In 2007, Leanne Piggott produced an ASPI report on what Iraq meant for Middle East security:

The spill-over of jihadi-salafist terrorism from Iraq to neighbouring countries and beyond has to date been the deadliest effect of the Iraq war. Like Afghanistan before it, Iraq has provided an ideal training ground for jihadi terrorists from around the region who bring home with them newly honed skills in bomb-making and other aspects of insurgent warfare.

For Australia, Piggott argued, the two important exports from the Middle East were oil and ‘the ideology underpinning global terrorism, jihadi-salafism, and the terrorists themselves’. The Iraq imperative for Australia was to continue to support coalition partners in providing security for the Iraqi people:

The challenge of reaching the point of sustainable security and political reconciliation in Iraq is a formidable one, particularly in the light of the decades of tyranny and division that preceded the 2003 US-led invasion. Regardless of the mistakes in US policy to date, Australia has an obligation as a coalition partner to do all that is possible to ensure that Iraqi society does not collapse and degenerate into all out civil war.

Drawn from the book on the institute’s first 20 years: An informed and independent voice: ASPI, 2001–2021.

Two of Australia’s most influential political figures of recent decades have delivered frank views on subjects including the likely state of the world after the Covid-19 pandemic, the possibility of a ‘hot war’ with China, the need for Australia to be able to defend itself, and the devastating strategic impact climate change could have.

Over more than 90 minutes, Walkley Award-winning journalist Stan Grant has interviewed former prime minister John Howard and Kim Beazley, governor of Western Australia, ambassador to the US for six years and onetime leader of the Labor Party in opposition.

This was the first of a series of online interviews with key Australian and international figures that, in the Covid-19 era, has replaced ASPI’s annual conference.

Howard said the Covid-19 pandemic would have an impact on the world and it had devastated the lives of many millions of people, but he said we should not ‘go overboard’ with the view that the world would never be the same. ‘I think the world will be substantially the same’, Howard said. The biggest impact was likely to be how the pandemic affected the governance of individual countries. Some countries had handled it well, he said, and others badly. ‘I think our own country has handled the pandemic extremely well.’

Howard did not think the pandemic would change the world balance of power. ‘We entered the pandemic with the great rivalry between the US and China. That is still the great rivalry.’ Howard said he did not think many of the basics of great-power rivalry would be altered. ‘We will have learned the value of international cooperation.’ He strongly rejected the view that the world was entering a post-American era.

On concerns about Taiwan and the South China Sea being potential flash points that would lead to a major conflict, Howard replied: ‘I don’t think China wants a hot war. Nobody does.’ But it would still not be easy to handle the relationship, he said. ‘Is it hard? Yes.’

Beazley held the view that there could be a ‘hot war on Taiwan’ because that was where the US had drawn a red line.

And while Howard praised some of Donald Trump’s decisions, he said the US president had not handled the pandemic well and that could have an impact on the November election.

Howard said Australia had to find a way to balance its trading relationship with a China that was more overtly aggressive in its diplomatic language and its behaviour in the South China Sea. Yes, they are authoritarian but still important to us, he said.

‘But we have to understand that. We don’t want to overreact to it, but equally we don’t want to recoil from it.’ He did not believe Australia was being dragged along by the Americans. As democracies speaking ‘more or less the same language’, the two nations had many similar interests but Australia had, over decades, made many decisions independently of Washington.

Howard noted that relations between the US and China as rival powers had been closer in the past and he implied that they could be again. He recalled a speech China’s then president, Jiang Zemin, made in English after the 2001 terrorist attacks in which he reached out to the Americans across a substantial ideological divide.

Beazley observed that educating thousands of Chinese students had not just benefited Australia’s economy. ‘We’ve given thousands of Chinese students nation-building skills through our education system’, he said. ‘We have been of enormous assistance in the growth of China.’

Howard and Beazley both supported the increase in the military capabilities of the Australian Defence Force as set out in the recent strategic update.

‘Part of being an effective middle power is having a capacity to exhibit power when needed’, Howard said. ‘You can’t do that without spending money on defence.

‘We’ve got to accept that if we are going to assert ourselves and defend our values, you have to invest in defence.’

Beazley said the Morrison government’s recent defence decisions were driven by the capabilities in the region. ‘The budget is a mess, but unless we stick to our defence plan our voice will be diminished’, he said.

‘Intentions can change overnight, but what cannot change overnight is capabilities. And if you do not have the capacity to match capabilities in the region, you’re dead!’

Beazley said it was not helpful that the US had pulled out of the Paris climate accord. ‘I completely believe in the science related to all of this.’

He warned that climate change could bring devastating impacts with substantial strategic implications. Rising sea levels could have a very great impact on China, he said. ‘Their coastal cities will be under threat. Already their river systems are drying up.’ The great rivers of Southeast and South Asia had their origins in Tibet and already China was damming them heavily. The diversion of the massive Mekong River could have a huge impact on the nations downstream.

‘They can reduce, and probably will over the next 20 years, the flow of the Mekong out through Indo-China to a trickle. If that happens there’s the most extraordinary crisis in Southeast Asia and that certainly will put people on the move.’

Increased rainfall might also increase agricultural production in northern Australia. ‘That will certainly be of interest in the region around us when that occurs.’

It was very likely that China would be hit hard by every aspect of climate change and, as global warming made areas of Alaska, Canada and northern Russia more accessible for agriculture and resource exploitation, China might well look north to territories seized from it in the 19th century. ‘When that happens, there will be an altogether different conversation between Russia and China’, Beazley said.

A video of the opening session of ASPI’s Strategic Vision 2020 conference series is available here (registration required).

My previous column looked at the first half of the cabinet submission that never was—what the Howard government could know and ask in 2002 and early 2003 before committing to the blunder that was the Iraq war. That post looked at intelligence and the nature and future of Iraq. Now for two other topics that should have been in such a submission, sticking to what was knowable at the time (no 20/20 hindsight); merely what the Howard government could have focused on as it prepared to be part of an invading coalition and an occupying power.

3. The geopolitics of the Middle East

John Howard sees himself as a tough realist rather than a mushy multilateralist. Strange that at the time he had such little regard for the realist argument which now he summarises accurately:

‘The realists were probably untroubled by the UN issue, likely believed Saddam had WMDs, and regarded him as a loathsome dictator. Despite this they saw merit in continuing a policy of containing him and eschewing resort to military action. To them the world was too dangerous a place to become involved in such action except in the most compelling circumstances, which they did not think existed in Iraq in 2003.’

The impact on the geopolitics of the Middle East of the Iraq war was understood by many—not least by a generation of US policy makers who couldn’t make George W. Bush listen in 2002.

After throwing Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991, President H.W. Bush (the senior and wiser) stopped short of toppling him from power. The argument the US made to Australia and others following the Kuwait victory had a public and private dimension.

The public line was that freeing Kuwait was the extent of the UN mandate. The private version was that destroying Saddam’s power and remaking Iraq would be a vast, ruinously expensive endeavour that would destroy the regional power balance.

Underline that point about the power realignment. The big winner would be Iran. The US would deliver regional victory to Tehran, aiding the regime it hated the most. It was a strong realist argument in 1991; it needed to be considered in 2002-2003. It turned out to be true.

4. The US alliance

‘Australia’s decision to join the Coalition in Iraq was a product both of our belief at the time that Iraq had WMDs, and the nature of our relationship and alliance with the United States.’

John Howard, April, 2013: ‘Iraq 2003—A retrospective’

The Howard explanation still lists WMDs first and the alliance second. He obscures, still. The cause may have been Iraq but the purpose was always the alliance. The alliance was the central reason, even before the WMDs failed to materialise.

John Howard couldn’t conceive of the US going to war without Australia. Howard was confident the US would win, and that Australia would do its duty. And that’s where the discussion started and ended.

In charting the parallels between Australia’s decision to commit in Vietnam and Iraq, Garry Woodard points to:

‘the dominance of the Prime Minister, decisions made in secret by a small group of ministers obedient to him, minds closed against area expertise, preference for party political advantage over bipartisanship, and willing subservience to and some credulity about an ally, the United States.’

End with a counter-factual. After reading the non-existent cabinet submission on intelligence uncertainty, Iraq sectarian chaos and the impact on the Middle East balance, the Howard government hesitates and urges the Bush White House to reconsider.

Granted this doesn’t sound like John Howard, but such a submission would have forced the National Security Committee of Cabinet to ponder the darkness and depths of the abyss.

In the terms Bush senior used to his biographer, an Australia urging a rethink would have faced Bush junior’s ‘hot rhetoric’, a ‘very hard-line’ Vice President and an ‘iron-ass’ Defence Secretary.

Howard knew about the Iraq obsession in Washington, as he recalled:

‘Certainly Iraq was never far from their minds. Within hours of the 9/11 attacks Australia’s then Ambassador to the US, Michael Thawley, said to me that he thought that Iraq would be back on the agenda for the Americans.’

Australia could have been the ally that thought clearly rather than followed a Washington obsession. Canberra could have played the unusual role of the voice of caution in London and Washington.

All the evidence is that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the boys were in no mood to listen. Tony Blair, at least, would have had to listen if not pause. None of that came out of Canberra.

Australia was unwaveringly loyal to the great ally. Howard could argue he succeeded, despite the disaster. He enhanced the alliance, whatever the cost to so many in Iraq and beyond. Confining this only to the alliance, however, the Owen Harries warning deserves note: ‘A reputation for being dumb but loyal and eager is not one to be sought.’

John Howard didn’t have too much support from Australian intelligence in deciding to go to war against Iraq.

The Prime Minister got just enough cover from the Office of National Assessments to meet political needs. Beyond politics, though—as a basis for war—the Oz intelligence supporting war was thin stuff.

So thin, in fact, it was wrong. Iraq didn’t pose a threat because it didn’t have the Weapons of Mass Destruction that was the casus belli used by the US, Britain and Australia.

Intelligence is the starting point for this lessons learned exercise, as discussed in the previous column.

Two documents give the details: the Iraq report by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence at the end of 2003  (in those days formally titled Joint Committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD) and then Philip Flood’s Inquiry into Australian Intelligence Agencies in 2004.

The Intelligence Committee found the Defence Intelligence Organisation was sceptical throughout about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction; on the other hand, the Office of National Assessments (inside the PM’s Department) hardened its line as Howard marched closer to invasion.

The Committee commented on a sudden variation in September 2002, ‘in the nature and tone’ of ONA’s view on Iraq’s WMD:

‘It is so sudden a change in judgement that it appears ONA, at least unconsciously, might have been responding to ‘policy running strong’.’ And by that stage, John Howard was indeed running strong with George W. Bush.

On Iraq’s WMD, Philip Flood lamented ‘a failure rigorously to challenge preconceptions or assumptions about the Iraqi regime’s intentions…there is little evidence that systematic and contestable challenging was applied in a sustained way to analysts’ starting assumptions.’

If you want all this short and sharp, turn to a fine public servant who spent many years in Parliament House serving Parliamentary inquiries—and writing much of what came to be tabled as committee findings.

Margaret Swieringa was secretary of the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee from 2002 to 2007 and was the engine for the Iraq report.  In retirement, she offered this terse judgement on whether John Howard ‘lied’ about intelligence on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: ‘None of the government’s arguments were supported by the intelligence presented to it by its own agencies. None of these arguments were true.’

This is the way Swieringa summarised the Iraq findings of the Joint Intelligence Committee:

1. The scale of threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was less than it had been a decade earlier.
2. Under sanctions that prevailed at the time, Iraq’s military capability remained limited and the country’s infrastructure was still in decline.
3. The nuclear program was unlikely to be far advanced. Iraq was unlikely to have obtained fissile material.
4. Iraq had no ballistic missiles that could reach the US. Most if not all of the few Scuds that were hidden away were likely to be in poor condition.
5. There was no known chemical weapons production.
6. There was no specific evidence of resumed biological weapons production.
7. There was no known biological weapons testing or evaluation since 1991.
8. There was no known Iraq offensive research since 1991.
9. Iraq did not have nuclear weapons.
10. There was no evidence that chemical weapon warheads for Al Samoud or other ballistic missiles had been developed.
11. No intelligence had accurately pointed to the location of weapons of mass destruction.

So the lessons learned on intelligence are the sort of stuff they teach recruits in the induction courses, the verities drenched with blood from Iraq.

Intelligence is always partial, and part will be wrong. The stuff that seems too good to be true often seems good because it isn’t true (a truth as important for journalists as it is for analysts).

The key word that runs through the Flood report is ‘contestability’ (see also here).

Analysts had to be ‘challenged, confronted by different perspectives and alerted to flaws in their arguments.’

In the case of Iraq, ONA ended up building a case for its political master that didn’t really deal with the sceptical questions raised by DIO.

Ironic that such failure resulted in the Oz intelligence community getting big increases in funding for the rest of the decade so it could do a better job thinking about the age of terror.

In a fine discussion in 2011 of what this bigger and richer intelligence community had become, the Director-General of ONA, Allan Gyngell, stressed the point made by Flood, saying analysts ‘must be capable of challenging conventional thinking and, equally, of having their own analysis challenged. ONA is easily the most contestable place in which I’ve ever worked. Our readers can be confident that no piece of product gets out without heavy stress-testing.’

The lesson learned is that the intelligence used to take Australia to any future war needs stress-testing far more rigorous and exacting than occurred before the Iraq war.