Jim Molan is dismayed by my suggestion that strategic-level policy is not the ADF's strong suit. The offending line — in an article by Sophie Morris in last week's Saturday Paper — accurately reflects my remarks to her. Jim's robust response peppers a rather larger target, however.
Among other things, he attributes to me the view that Defence civilians are much better at strategy than their uniformed colleagues. So to be clear, I do not believe that civilians are any better at providing strategic policy advice than military officers. On the contrary, had I been asked, I would have said that the depth and breadth of strategic policy expertise among civilians in the Defence Department is just as inadequate as it is among their military colleagues. This is a major problem for our defence policy which, to be fair, I believe the senior leadership of the organisation understands.
My primary point to Sophie was simply that serving in the ADF, perhaps at quite a junior level, does not in itself guarantee that a parliamentarian will have special expertise in the defence and strategic policy decisions discussed and made at the political level.
But the broader point remains true too: the ADF as an institution does not generally (with some notable exceptions) excel at the strategic-level tasks of advising governments about when and how they should use force to achieve policy objectives, and about what capabilities Australia needs.
I would offer as evidence the flawed advice that led to Australia's costly strategic failure in Afghanistan (and yes, I have no doubt that it was a failure), and the advice to acquire the amphibious assault ships (pictured), which I believe are now becoming widely recognised as the white elephants they are. I think the ADF's strategic-level advisers, along with their civilian counterparts, must take some share of the responsibility for these decisions, if indeed they spoke in favour of them or failed to speak to robustly against them.
Photo by Flickr user Crouchy69.