Can we defend ourselves against terrorism? (Defence).

If you entrench yourself behind strong fortifications, you compel the enemy to seek a solution elsewhere.

--Clausewitz

MAJOR WAR is now almost casualty-free, measured in days, push-button precise and surgically clean--just look at Operation "Iraqi Freedom". Never in the field of human history has so much raw military power been concentrated in so dominant a global political entity. The USA is the preponderant military, economic and cultural force on the planet. It is unrivalled and will remain so for at least a generation. But it is this very military strength that forced America's enemies to use unconventional means to attack it in September 2001.

The strategic world has been fixated on American military might ever since Saddam's army collapsed after three days of ground war back in 1991. This military-technolust has only intensified as events have unfolded in Iraq in 2003. This deep fascination with military technology is especially tree in Australian strategic circles. Given Australia's size, population and revenue base, it is essential that our defence forces are high-tech. But a preoccupation with the means of war at the expense of the ends of strategy will cost Australia dearly.

A blind spot currently exists in Australian strategic policy. The stated mission of the ADF is to "defend Australia and its interests". But the policy that supports this aim is focused on defending the northern coastline from conventional military attack, not defending Australia sui generis. To defend Australia, and not just its northern coastline, requires a policy and strategy for deterring and countering asymmetric and unconventional attacks against population centres, national icons and critical infrastructure. No such policy exists. Notwithstanding the fact that the first shots of any "Red Team" attack on Australia or its interests have concentrated on asymmetric targets in every major wargame run by the majestically titled "Office of the Revolution in Military Affairs", such contingencies remain excluded from defence policy. Even the spectacular example of September 11 has not persuaded Australian planners that strategy is about much more than what type of weapons system we will buy next year.

Since the spectacular success of the first Gulf War the ADF has placed much store on a vague notion of a "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) as the silver bullet that will solve many of the Department of Defence's otherwise intractable problems. But ADF efforts in this endeavour are at best patchy--a few visits from important US thinkers, a local conference starring US speakers, and a few papers regurgitating US arguments. When an organisation is so dependent for its ideas on an external source, patchy performance should not come as a surprise.

In the few Australian works on the subject, the RMA is essentially taken to be shorthand for the computerised integration of the full spectrum of advanced US military technology, from logistics to sensors to shooters. The effect of decades of advances in conventional warfighting capabilities applied to a weak regime in a desert certainly appear revolutionary when watched on television from one's armchair.