As the NATO-ISAF coalition meets in Chicago, the conventional wisdom is that this signals a move by the nations of the ISAF coalition to withdraw.
In Australia’s case, as this blog has said before, since the original commitment was made in 2001, no sustained effort has been made by any of the Howard, Rudd or Gillard governments to explain the Afghanistan commitment in terms readily comprehensible. Australia is not alone here and none of our major coalition partners in Canada, the United Kingdom or even the United States has conducted anything similar to the war information campaigns of the Second World War. Certainly Australia’s Parliament has reflected the, sadly, provincial and limited grasp of our elected representatives of the nation’s true interests. How else can 10 years of almost undebated war be explained?
Unfortunately, Australia has no formal, organised strategic body. We are a nation without a permanent, legislated and professional national security planning committee. Our nation’s grand strategy, beyond certain fundamental interests in regional stability and freedom of the seas, is not set by the nation’s leaders, nor is it guarded by a cohort of wise mandarins. During the 2010 election campaign, it became known that both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard sent staffers to represent them at the Cabinet’s national security committee meetings, something that would be unthinkable in the United States or the United Kingdom. As a result, because of a lack of structure and a lack of seriousness, wars and military commitments can and do drift along. Afghanistan is not the first example and arguably the East Timor and Solomons’ operations have elements of this though the proximity of these places demands our attention.
Having said all this, even if we have stayed in Afghanistan without a strategic rationale, there are benefits to being ‘over there’ and to us staying there with our American and British allies.
Unspeakable Truth 1: we should only leave with our Allies
Despite the current Australian Parliament being composed by all shades of political opinion, and a minority Labor Government surviving with Greens support, the Afghanistan debate in 2010 reaffirmed a bipartisan consensus on Australia’s commitment: Australian forces are in Afghanistan to prevent it becoming an Al Qaeda sanctuary; to support the United States and key allies such as Britain, Canada and New Zealand; and to train the Afghan security forces to secure their country.
Of these public rationales, however, Australia’s principal strategic reason for being in Afghanistan is to maintain and strengthen the US alliance, with the anti-terrorism campaign an important but secondary priority. While many of the US’ NATO allies will go “wobbly” (per Margaret Thatcher’s phrase), especially as Bin-Laden’s death provides a convenient excuse, Australia entered the Afghanistan war in 2001 alongside the United States (and the United Kingdom) and, realistically, should only leave Afghanistan when the US and the UK are ready to withdraw.
Australia has no strategic interest whatsoever in humiliating the US and the UK by withdrawing on its own and, indeed, it would be an act of strategic folly to do so. The US alliance, as anyone who has served with US Forces knows, provides Australia with a level of strategic support that Australia could not ever build for itself. The US’ professional defence establishment, which sees presidents come and go, remembers very well which of America’s ‘friends’ are friends and which are merely acquaintances. The rapid escalation in the last 10 years of the US and Australia’s already intimate defence relationship is reflective of the US’ perception of Australia as a reliable ally, particularly when other allies hoist the white flag or offer token “civilian advisors” to a war. The same applies in a smaller measure to the old alliance with the UK. For Australia to suddenly decide the future of its Afghan commitment without first examining its effects on the greater alliance relationship, would be a cost benefit analysis done 10 years too late. Those who are against the war for reasons relating to either Christian just war theory and/or the futility of staying in Afghanistan, should at least pause to reflect on Australia's alliances before urging a prompt withdrawal. We might also consider our reputation as a nation that keep its word and whose armed forces carry on the virtues of stoicism, tenacity and grit that it publicly celebrates in its military tradition.
Unspeakable Truth 2: the Afghan war is good experience for the ADF
While it is true that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are strategically flawed, particularly given their dimensions of international social work and “do-gooder” ambition, these conflicts have provided invaluable real-world training benefits to the ADF.
Let there be no misunderstanding: war (and preparing for war) is the business of the armed forces. Australia’s armed forces are composed entirely of volunteers. Each volunteer joins knowing he or she may be sent in harm’s way.
In the quarter of a century from the end of Australia’s Vietnam commitment (1972-1973) to the start of the East Timor campaign (1999-2000), Australia intermittently deployed the Royal Australian Navy to the Persian Gulf, as well as occasionally deployed soldiers in Cambodia, Somalia and Rwanda. However, deployments were for the relatively few, with most serving members knowing nothing but exercises, which could only hope to simulate not just war’s fog but its iron application of Murphy’s law. Since 1999, the ADF has made regular deployments to East Timor, the Solomons, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq. These deployments have resulted in improvements in the skills and operational readiness of the armed forces as a whole. The ADF has grown only stronger, harder and more resilient in the past decade.
More importantly, the last 12 years’ continuous operations have created cohorts of experienced leaders in all services. Whether junior sailors in the Middle East, young Diggers in Afghanistan, or the ‘rookie’ airmen supporting them, the young men and women of the last decade’s operations are forming an experienced cohort from which tomorrow’s ADF will draw its future leaders. The wartime crucible in which young men and women are being tested and are forging new skills and military knowledge is an unfashionable but significant benefit to the ADF. This is particularly so in respect of inter-operability between the services and with allied forces, which is denied to a provincial military that stays at home and which does not deploy. Above all, this experience is training junior leaders to be impatient with red-tape, ‘initiative inertia’ and the ‘cannot do’ attitude of the Canberra bureaucracy. While not (yet) regularly deployed in the manner of Rome’s legions, Spain’s Tercios, or Nelson’s fleets, it is the case that the regular operational deployments of the modern ADF has only benefited the force’s skills, depth and robustness.
Stating this does not ignore the difficulty that Afghanistan may have in satisfying “just war” criteria. However, even if one has qualms about the prudence of what is now a war against the Pashtu, one’s just war criteria is rather narrow if the killing and capturing of jihadists, sworn to destroy infidels such as Australians, is considered illicit.
In short, while various western leaders gather in Chicago and make pious pronouncements about the Afghan war and the “Afghan People”, it is well for Australians to pause and remember that their interests are different from Europeans, mired in welfare state penury, who are loudly reviewing their commitments to the Afghanistan mission.
Australia is a Pacific and Indian Ocean nation – we are surrounded by and exposed to these vast expanses of water and territory in which we have vital interests in maintaining a stable and friendly balance of power. These oceans are our moats – and we need our American and British allies to help us secure our realm. We depend on these (and other) allies’ willingness to commit themselves to these and other areas where Australia’s national interests are the most exposed. It is a small matter, realistically, for us to stay with our American and British allies until such time as all of us agree that it is time to withdraw from Afghanistan. Further, by staying, while we run obvious risks to our own forces, we also increasingly up-skill our military and better develop our future leaders in a demanding operational environment.
Australia’s position should be based on our own national interests, which include upholding and maintaining military alliances critical to our security, as well as a cool and unsentimental realism about the true costs and benefits of the Afghan War. We would do ourselves no favours by succumbing now to a conventional wisdom that is irrelevant to Australia’s geopolitical realities and which, if followed into withdrawal now, would only cause us strategic difficulty.
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