The Edge

Net Assessment: Enhancing Strategic Decision-Making by Senior Defence Leaders

In an interconnected world, Australia is influenced by various strategic competition pathways. To comprehend this complex landscape and the motives of different actors, a new approach is needed. The 2023 Defence Strategic Review suggests adopting net assessment, enabling a better understanding of the circumstances Australia faces. This practice will aid in developing a long-term defense strategy, generating capabilities, and aligning military power with other national instruments to achieve government objectives. Implementing net assessment will enhance decision-making among senior Defense leaders and support national strategy implementation.

International Law: A Primer for Military Readers

International law is a topic which confounds most lawyers, let alone members of the general public or military personnel. Despite so much of it having been incorporated into the US Army’s DNA through the law of land warfare, the foundational premise of international law is so poorly understood that it tends to fall into the category of something soldiers have to learn about and comply with, but none really understand.

Thinking Strategically - Reflections

The Australian Government is very active on many fronts, including Defence.^[1] The relatively recent realisation that the world is heading to a great geostrategic reset^[2], leading to a new world order, has raised the anxiety of politicians, agriculturalists, miners, industrialists and the military.^[3] Both the transition and the new geostrategic state are potentially inimical to Australia’s interests and sovereignty, making the work of ‘thinking strategically’ ur

Can Australians fight?

A change in the character of war is the importance of pre-conflict, political warfare to weaken adversaries and undermine their will to fight. Meanwhile, recent wars between states reinforced the enduring nature of protracted, conventional war to avoid existential threats. This essay asks if Australia has the national understanding to counter the impact of political warfare and the commensurate will to endure a protracted war in the Indo-Pacific.

Climate and Australia’s National Security

Climate change matters to Defence and has a direct effect on warfighting. Inaction threatens to undermine Defence’s contribution to Pacific Step-Up initiatives and puts us at a competitive disadvantage in developing regional influence and power projection.

Needless anxiety over China will only make it true

Australians need to rapidly reassess their China-Taiwan calculus, because as it stands we are overstating our global importance and understating realities. Overstating the possibility of conflict risks us creating a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein we make our fears come true.

Cementing Iran into a Russo-Chinese Coalition is Strategic Folly

Bringing Iran in from the cold would not only undercut a potential axis with China and Russia, it would allow the US to concentrate on its main game. Washington’s encouragement of a major rapprochement ^[1] between Israel and Saudi Arabia is intended to simplify the US’s security dilemmas in the region, including as a counter-balance to an increasingly assertive Iran.

China and Russia - The view from the engaged watcher’s armchair

History is sometimes less about logical decisions than it is about the confluence of forces and the egos of humans.

On 24 February 2022, Russia crossed the border into Ukraine, a continuation of the war which had seen the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The build-up of troops on Ukraine’s borders had been watched for months, and while the media and pundits debated whether it constituted a false threat or an invasion, the US was in no doubt.

Enter, the Contemporary Australian Warrant Officer

The specialist skills of Warrant Officers have traditionally made them indispensable across the Services, but is this rank and role in a state of emergence? Could there be even more value in this cohort as modern conflicts emerge in brand new domains?

Rhetoric and Reason; What Drives the US and China

China has long charted its own course towards a defined destiny, while the West drifts from the path of unity towards a destination unknown.

One of China’s greatest strengths in the coming decades is that it knows where it is going. China, unlike the West, has a tangible, common future which it moves towards with fierce conviction. As a result of seeds planted long ago, China is now reaping the fruits of unwavering commitment to its direction at a time when the West faces trouble establishing unity.

Back to the Future for the South West Pacific

As this decade progresses, more and more learned Australians are joining a gospel choir. The melody they intend to sing is that we are at greater risk of a military conflict in our region than at any time since the end of World War II. While conveniently ignoring the brutality of the Korean War and our relatively limited entanglement in Vietnam, the bass and alto vocals are drowned out by the keening of sopranos and tenors. The latter support a bipartisan political system and electoral cycle which reinforce the creed that votes can only be secured by a hawkish approach to Defence.

Online Learning: No Going Back

Having discovered the benefits of online learning when the pandemic gave us no choice, we should embrace it as a valuable addition to our education tools.