Canberra Times: Defence has said much about what it wants, but little about how it will get it

Originally published in the Canberra Times on 23 December 2023.

The passage of time in Defence can be measured as much by ministers, secretaries, and chiefs as by the publication of key white papers, strategies, and reviews.

Some have retained prominence decades later, such as the 1987 Defence white paper and its preceding 1986 Dibb Review. Others, like the 2009 Defence white paper, are more often remembered for their disconnect between ambition and resources.

With the announcement of the AUKUS nuclear submarine pathway in March, the publication of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) in April, and the final decision on the recapitalisation of Army’s armoured vehicle fleet in July, 2023 may yet come to mark another seminal year in contemporary defence policymaking. However, this will all count for nought if it is not followed by a rigorous and comprehensive National Defence Strategy (NDS) in 2024.

The NDS will replace the current “intermittent” publication of Defence white papers with a new biennial document which forms the highest level of publicly available defence strategic planning guidance.

The DSR states that this will “ensure strategic consistency and coordination of national policy implementation”, while offering a more regular indication of government priorities – both to Defence and industry – that keeps abreast of the rapid pace of change in Australia’s strategic environment.

Much as the 1986 Dibb Review formed the basis of the 1987 Defence white paper, it is reasonable to assume that the key concepts and recommendations of the DSR will form the core of the NDS.

The DSR is not a defence strategy, however. This distinction may seem semantic, but it is a crucial one. In simple terms, the NDS will need to articulate how Defence is to achieve what is articulated in the DSR.

That process brings with it a range of complex questions and trade-offs which may prove difficult to reconcile. For instance, the DSR states that “Defence funding should be increased to meet our strategic circumstances” and accepts that Australia can no longer expect 10 years’ warning time to prepare for a conflict.

And yet, the release of the Navy’s surface combatant review has been delayed until early 2024 and a decision on the location of an east coast submarine base put off for the best part of a decade. Likewise, mindful of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, it is hard to expect significant budget increases in the short term.

Reconciling these challenges and devising an effective way forward is the key task of the NDS, and it will certainly be a difficult one. Defence planners and the government will both need to grapple with which of their priorities can be met, and which may need to be discarded in the harsh light of fiscal and political realities.

However, to strike a more positive note, the NDS also has the potential to initiate lasting structural change in Defence, with lessons to be applied across the whole-of-government approach to strategic planning.

Firstly, as noted above, Defence white papers have, to date, not been produced with any clear rhythm or frequency.

As such, they are typically developed by temporary taskforces drawn from within the department.

This not only strains Defence’s resources, but offers limited enduring lessons or efficiencies. Much as Defence has emphasised the advantages of a continuous shipbuilding program, the same principle applies here: the NDS represents a process of continuous strategy- making.

Secondly, the biennial publication schedule offers greater transparency into Defence strategy and policy for the wider Australian public.

This more frequent public release of strategic guidance will be a marked improvement on the current approach. While Defence is a complex and sensitive portfolio, if the large funding increases that the DSR calls for are to be explained and justified to the Australian people, bringing the public more fully into that conversation through frequent policy updates is an important way to make the case and build trust.

Thirdly, and relatedly, as a defence strategy would typically form just one of a suite of classified and unclassified planning documents, the implementation of the NDS offers an opportunity to reassess the whole-of-government approach to strategy formulation. In the United States, for example, there are quadrennial, publicly-released National Security, Defense, and Military Strategies, issued by the President, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff respectively.

The Australian system is, unfortunately, far more opaque. The interplay between forms of strategic guidance is articulated in the Strategy Framework, which was last publicly updated in 2017 following the release of the 2016 Defence white paper.

The 2023 Defence Corporate Plan notes that the Strategy Framework will need to be updated to reflect the DSR and NDS, but it has seemingly remained a classified (or at least unpublicised) document for the past six years. Similarly, while an Australian Military Strategy was produced in 2016, it is not publicly available.

Looking beyond Defence, Australia has only once had a National Security Strategy, in 2013. Recently, prominent Australian strategists such as Dr Heather Smith, Professor Rory Medcalf, and Major General (Ret’d) Mick Ryan have publicly called for the development of a new national security strategy, but to no avail.

However, as noted above such an undertaking would seemingly correspond with the DSR’s recommendation for the adoption of “a whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach to our strategic environment”. Lessons could be drawn from Defence’s new approach to apply to a future National Security Strategy that would set the parameters for not only the NDS but whole-of-government strategies concerning space, cyber, or maritime security, for example.

This may seem a grand vision, but we have reason to be aspirational for the NDS. The DSR has set out a bold agenda for reform across the Defence portfolio, and of these, the NDS has the potential to be one of the most impactful.

Implementation remains the crux of the issue – a neat and clearly devised strategy doesn’t solve anything by itself – but the NDS presents the opportunity to more effectively embed a strategy-led approach to Australian defence and security policymaking that will be crucial in the years ahead.