Budget lift will take army to war footing

Australia is boosting its army by several thousand, or at least thats the plan. PM John Howard has cited the recent interventions to quell unrest in East Timor and the Solomons as examples of Australia’s strategic challenges. The Australian Army will be at its largest since the Vietnam War.

The last statement is interesting. Consider the differences between the Australian defence forces then and now: During the Vietnam War, Australia supplemented the army using a draft. This is out of the question now. Also, a massive world war was considered possible, if not likely. Strategic threats in the 1960s and 70s were rather different to East Timor and the Solomons.

Neither of those cases looks lkely to escalate to Vietnam levels, so if Australia does need a bigger army than it did fighting in the Vietnam War, it is probably actually the result of the fear of hundreds of millions of Indonesians or Chinese descending southward in search of mineral wealth and Lebensraum. Besides, Australia’s largest overseas deployments are in Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than the Pacific.

However, Australia is ideally placed to assume a leadership role in the region. Preventing the “Africanization” of the South-West Pacific “arc of instability” must be a priority, to ensure Australian control over borders – failed states export boat people, drugs, small arms, diseases, even terrorism. The questions are, will Australia actually assume this regional role, or continue to follow America’s lead in Asia and the Middle East? What will Indonesia’s response be to this buildup? And, perhaps most importantly – will Australia’s army become fatter, less fit, and generally dodgier?

Convictions for minor drug offences, tattoos and piercings, and asthma will no longer be barriers for joining the army. People with weight problems and those older than traditional recruits will also be admitted.

Hmmm…

Posted by Phil on Saturday, August 26th, 2006 at 4:22 am.