Securing Australia's "special intersection".(How Good Was Howard?)(Company overview)

SINCE FEDERATION Australian defence policy has oscillated between two contradictory schools of thought: continental defence (the security of home territory) and expeditionary defence (the security of vital interests). The intellectual architects of these two strategic schools were the leading Federation-era strategic thinkers, Captain (later Admiral) Sir William Creswell and Colonel (later Brigadier General) Hubert John Foster. In 1908, Creswell, the founding father of the Australian Navy, advocated an Australian defence policy based on continental naval-defence with a subsidiary territorial role for the army. In contrast, Foster, a leading military writer of the time who became Chief of the Australian General Staff in the First World War, called for the adoption of an expeditionary strategy with a major role for the army.

Thus was born the Creswell-Foster divide between continental and expeditionary defence and between region and globe--a divide that came to dominate Australian defence strategy throughout the twentieth century--and which continues to influence the Australian strategic policy debate in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Creswell and Foster outlined enduring questions about Australian defence and security: is Australia's security best-served when policy seeks to exploit regional Asian geography by pursuing a strategy of continental defence with only limited responsibilities assumed offshore? Or is Australian security best upheld when military forces operate forward in an expeditionary mode in order to uphold the nation's liberal democratic values, so helping to sustain a favourable balance of global power? Or to put it another way: is it defence of Asian geographical position or defence of European historical culture that should predominate in Australia's security?

The significance of John Howard in Australian defence and security policy is that he was the first prime minister to consciously attempt to synthesise the twentieth-century Creswell--Foster divide by fashioning a twenty-first-century global-regional calculus in defence and security policy. Howard sought to develop a strategy that would straddle what he memorably called the nation's "special intersection"--the divide between European history and Asian geography and between the American alliance and Asian engagement. Howard called his approach the "intersection theory" of Australian statecraft in which the dialectics between geography and history became additives, not alternatives, in underpinning national security. As he put it in 2001:

 
   We're not an Asian nation. We are a modern 
   Australian nation, in many ways a projection of 
   Western civilisation in our part of the world but 
   with a real difference. We are at a special 
   intersection of history, geography and culture that 
   gives us enormous assets. 

In his endeavour to span the "special intersection", Howard was never a revolutionary in national security affairs; rather he was a seeker of balance, a reformer who sought to integrate defence and diplomacy and to develop a synthesis between Australia's growing regional and global responsibilities. As Prime Minister, Howard was an exemplar of what Peter Loveday has called the Australian political tradition of "ideas embedded in practice". As a strategic policy practitioner, Howard was not guided by any master plan but by a set of deeply-held cultural values and conservative principles that, over the course of a decade, interacted with events to decisively shape a series of incremental, but nonetheless profound, changes to Australia's defence and security policy. On leaving office in November 2007, Howard bequeathed to Australia a record of considerable success in national security affairs, but it is also a legacy whose political intricacies and strategic complexities are likely to demand great skill on behalf of his successors.

This article examines the Howard era in defence and security from four perspectives. First, it argues that Howard's approach to defence matters was firmly grounded in the conservative tradition of Australian foreign policy in which bilateralism and alliances remain vital instruments of statecraft. Second, it examines the process of continuity and change in strategic policy during the Howard era. It suggests that the Howard government undertook a steady shift away from the narrow geostrategic Defence of Australia orthodoxy of the 1980s and 1990s in favour of a broader and global-regional strategy that reflected twenty-first-century security conditions. Third, Howard's reform of the Australian Army is considered, and it is postulated that the restoration of this great national institution represents one of the most significant accomplishments of his leadership. Finally, the essay considers the detailed record of Howard's blending of globalism and regionalism, focusing on such areas as strategic outlook and policy achievements, progress in creating Australian national security architecture and the re-equipment of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) for twenty-first-century challenges.

DEFENCE AND THE CONSERVATIVE TRADITION