The case for a national security strategy.

There are no experts in national security. There are only experts on aspects of the problem.

--Harold Lasswell, National Security and Individual Freedom (1950)

SINCE THE END of the Cold War, Australian strategic policy has been forced to confront a series of challenges stemming from the changed political conditions of an era marked by globalisation. Australia's response to the 1999 crisis in East Timor, to the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been pragmatic and incremental. Although extant strategic guidance in the form of Defence 2000 upholds a geographical focus on "Defence of Australia", the Howard government did not hesitate to adjust policy, where necessary, to meet new global requirements. In particular, over the last decade, the Australian Army has been refashioned from a force designed for continental defence towards a mobile expeditionary force capable of serving political interests rather than geographical environments.

Despite policy pragmatism, strategic doctrine has been slow in adjusting to the challenges of a new, globalised security environment. Indeed, the disjunction between strategic theory and military practice has become sharp, creating what this author has styled elsewhere a "tyranny of dissonance". Because the parameters of strategic practice no longer conform to the guidance laid down in Defence 2000, any consensus on future direction within the Australian strategic studies community has disappeared. A sharp debate has developed based on two contending schools of thought whose diverse origins can be traced back to the early days of Federation.

The first school is that of the defender-regionalists, whose main focus is the geographical logic of strategy, the traditional balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region and the impact of the rise of China. The second school is that of the reformer-globalists, whose main focus is on the political logic of strategy, balancing a global-regional nexus and blending the networked challenges of globalised security into a new policy calculus for the twenty-first century. These two schools of thought differ on the fundamental philosophical issue of the meaning of the twenty-first-century security environment. From this disagreement flows division over strategic priorities, force structure, capability acquisitions and the role of land forces.

Despite three Defence Updates in 2003, 2005 and 2007 which collectively seem to have moved strategic policy towards a reformer-globalist position, it is unlikely that Australia's future national security needs can be met within the framework of the Department of Defence. The Defence White Paper commissioned by the new Rudd Labor government and due for release in December is also unlikely to resolve matters unless it is situated in a broader conceptual framework.

The character of the globalised security environment is now simply too complex for mastery by any single government department. The combination of global networks, technological diffusion and social mobility challenge not simply the traditional defence of the state, but increasingly the security of society and its citizens. This deeper reality has led Australian observers such as Fred Brenchley, Allan Behm, Stephan Fruhling and David Connery to call for the creation of a "whole-of government" national security strategy involving a reformed bureaucratic structure more capable of integrated activity.