Towards an Australian way of warfare. (Defence).

SINCE THE 1960s there has been considerable interest in the idea that Australia possesses a distinct way of warfare. Debate on the subject has ranged from studies of the Anzac-Digger legend to more recent, high-level institutional analysis of warfighting issues within the Australian Defence Force (ADF). A major weakness in this debate has, however, been a tendency to divorce discussion of a way of warfare from the wider context of Australia's political and strategic cultures.

The purpose of this essay is therefore to broaden the parameters of the Australian way of warfare debate. The objective is to demonstrate how culture, politics and strategy have combined over the past century to influence Australia's approach to warfare.

THE IDEA OF WAYS IN WARFARE

HISTORIANS HAVE long been interested in the idea that the way a particular nation fights reflects its political and social structure. As the doyen of British military historians, Michael Howard, put it in 1966, "the military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of it in its totality". The notion of distinct ways of warfare has stimulated some acclaimed works. Good examples of the genre include Sir Basil Liddell Hart's famous 1932 study The British Way in Warfare and Russell F. Weigley's celebrated book The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, first published in 1973.

More recently, there have been studies of the differences between Western and Eastern theories of military philosophy and practice. Some scholars, notably the American scholar Victor Davis Hanson, have suggested that it is possible to identify the existence of a generic Western way of war derived from the ancient Greeks and based on the ideology of decisive battle. Others such as the British historian Jeremy Black have argued that the modern concept of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is largely a reformulation of the West's cultural preference for a way of warfare based on swift decision and high technology.

While much of this literature is highly illuminating, it often lacks analytical rigour. For instance, when we discuss the idea of a way in warfare, are we discussing policy, strategy, operations or tactics, or all of these? If we are discussing strategy, is it grand strategy--more accurately described today as national security policy--or is it purely military strategy? Or does a way in warfare refer mainly to operational practice and to the operational level of war? Unless we provide some theoretical clarity on these issues, we run the risk that the way in warfare concept will become so generalised as to have little, or no, analytical value. For this reason, there has to be an inter-disciplinary approach to the subject that combines perspectives from both history and from the social science concepts of political culture and strategic culture.

WAYS IN WARFARE, POLITICAL CULTURE AND STRATEGIC CULTURE