Defence 2000: Our Future Defence Force, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 2000.

Reviewed by Tom O’Lincoln

What an outrage. The Liberals’ "defence" White Paper calls for an increase in military spending of almost $24 billion in real terms over the next ten years. While the government hounds Aborigines, migrants and the unemployed, butchers the health system and wrecks education, here is how the press outlined its spending priorities:

"As expected, the army will gain two extra permanent infantry battalions, taking the total to six and boosting overall defence force numbers across all three services from 51,500 to 54,000. The existing commando battalion will also be fully developed The new structure aims to ensure that the army can sustain a brigade deployed on operations for extended periods, while at the same time maintaining at least a battalion group available for deployment elsewhere. These extra troops will also gain much-needed helicopter support, with two squadrons (about 24 aircraft) of armed reconnaissance helicopters planned to enter service from 2004, to provide mobile firepower support to troops on the ground."

And this even though the same White Paper admits no one is threatening Australia, or is likely to do so.

But outrage isn’t enough: to fight the militarists, we need to understand them. Why is this spending spree happening? Naturally, part of the answer lies in the nature of capitalism itself. A system built on competition inevitably leads to conflict, and with trillions of dollars in profits at stake, the conflict is bound to turn violent sooner or later.

But why now? This kind of spending doesn’t always go up. Contrary to a prediction of mine in 1991, the Gulf War did not herald a surge of Australian militarism. In fact "defence" spending, which had averaged around 2.6 percent of gross domestic product in the 1980s, fell to about 1.8 in the decade past. The neighbouring countries were booming and Canberra relied on rulers like Suharto to maintain stability … until the Asian crisis hit.

Suharto fell, and unrest gripped Indonesia; Jakarta lost its grip on East Timor; then trouble broke out in Fiji and the Solomon Islands. Australia already had a military presence in Bougainville. It became clear that to keep control of the neighbourhood, the Australian ruling class might have to intervene in a series of hot spots. Bougainville had been the first, East Timor was the big one, and after that Australia sent a contingent to the Solomons.

This is why Howard proposes to return spending to 1980s levels. Naturally the White Paper pretends it’s all about defending this country: "At its most basic, Australia’s strategic policy aims to prevent or defeat any armed attack on Australia. This is the bedrock of our security." (p. 29) The trouble for Howard is that such an attack is not going to happen, and the White Paper concedes the fact:

"A full-scale invasion of Australia … is the least likely military contingency Australia might face. No country has either the intent or the ability undertake such a massive task … A major attack on Australia, aimed at seizing and holding Australian territory, or inflicting major damage on our population, infrastructure or economy, remains only a remote possibility." (p. 23)

No doubt the authors would like to conceal this, but all the experts know it’s true. In fact it’s never been any different. Over a century ago, an 1887 review failed to identify any threat, while the Colonial Defence Committee in London declared: "There is no British territory so little liable to aggression as that of Australia."

How then can the White Paper sell us a big spending hike? "But there is more we can do to prevent attack on our territory than building armed forces, and our armed forces need to be able to do more than simply defend our coastline. We have strategic interests and objectives at the global and regional levels." (p. 29)

Already the logic is clearer: the boys and girls in khaki are there to protect "strategic interests", not to defend you and me. What are these interests? The White Paper continues:

"Our second strategic objective is to help foster the stability, integrity and cohesion of our immediate neighbourhood, which we share with Indonesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the island countries of the Southwest Pacific …" (p. 30)

In other words, the objective is to secure our rulers’ economic interests. There is Australian investment to be protected from troublesome trade unionists or nationalisation. There are raw materials, including the oil in the Timor Gap and the rich mines of West Papua and New Guinea. In addition there is the vital issue of sea lanes. A sixth of all Australian trade -- getting on for $30 billion -- passes through Indonesian straits on the way to key trading partners in North Asia.

This strategic logic is also very old. An Intercolonial Military Committee recommended in 1896 that "Instead of thinking in terms of the continent and Tasmania ... the defence region of Australia be extended to include New Zealand, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, New Guinea, and portions of Borneo and Java." Clearly this is the geographically determined imperialist sphere of influence.

Today, with instability mounting in this "defence region" our rulers need firepower, and they’re alarmed at how the reduced spending of the 1990s has eroded it. In June 1999 a secret report told the (then) defence minister, John Moore, that more funding was needed just to maintain current capabilities. Part of the proposed solution is a reorientation away from Gulf War style deployments far afield, and towards the "arc of instability" which the immediate sphere of influence has become. But another part is hiring soldiers and buying weapons: more ground troops and attack helicopters to intefere in other people’s affairs around the region.

There is scope as well for Australian troops to travel much further afield to join imperialist adventures like the Gulf War. This remains important to win points with policy with the "great and powerful friends" in Washington. But the balance has shifted somewhat towards the local turf, because of the growing instability there.

In the past, such a big spending boost would have met sharp opposition. This time the government was so confident, it could even hold a limited "community consultation" and be supremely relaxed about the outcome. The reason can be summed up in two words: East Timor.

For years Australian governments were indifferent to the fate of the Timorese. In the run-up to the 1999 ballot, Howard ignored quite pointed intelligence warnings that Jakarta-backed militias planned to wreck the place. While the killing was going on after the ballot, he did nothing. When it had largely subsided, he seized the opportunity to send in troops and turn East Timor into an Australian colony.

The colonisation process has been quite disgusting, with expatriates grabbing business opportunities, while UN administrators treat the East Timorese as second class citizens in their own country. As I write this, there are accusations of torture against Australian soldiers. One charming Aussie capitalist is shifting his battery hen business to Dili to escape humanitarian laws in Queensland. An aid worker reports conversations in which Dili-based UN staff remark that the Timorese "have the IQ of a dog -- well at least I can train my dog", and: "they don’t need electricity because they don’t read or wash".

Yet large sections of the Australian left have cheered it on, swallowing the lie that Australia was somehow standing up to the Indonesian oppressors. In fact Canberra was collaborating with Jakarta, as it always does. INTERFET commander Cosgrove himself has pointed out that:

"the mission in East Timor was accomplished with the co-operation of the Indonesian armed forces not, as has been wrongly described by some commentators, [despite] them or in opposition to them ... There was a shared understanding by General Syahnakri and the Indonesian commanders … that it was in everyone’s interests to stabilise East Timor ... We all co-operated in a common purpose."

The losers were the Timorese; among the winners was the Howard government, which gained a huge new legitimacy for militarism. The Financial Review saw this point immediately, explaining in September 1999 how demands for "peacekeepers" would "dispel the idea that the sole legitimate role for Australian forces is to defend Australian territory":

"The calls for action in Timor are ironic because many of those who fostered the political climate in which the army was run down were the loudest in demanding Australia intervene there. This call to arms has, for the first time in decades, given broad legitimacy to the proposition that Australia should be able to intervene militarily outside its territory."

And so it proved. Almost immediately, figures associated with the political left began saying the most ghastly things. A news report citing Bruce Ruxton as approving of conscription, also quoted the Reverend Tim Costello as saying: "If conscription is necessary, it is now socially and politically acceptable." Meanwhile Phillip Adams was declaring that "a nation of 20 million people, predominantly white and preposterously wealthy, needs to have first-class armed services."

By the following year, there was a strong consensus for military spending. The report on the "community consultation" makes this quite clear:

"Representatives of groups which do not generally favour defence spending seemed to be content to retain the existing level of funding. We believe the success of the East Timor deployment, a cause that was favoured by these groups, had much to do with this view."

Commenting on the considerable public support for higher expenditure, one Defence Department official told a journalist for The Australian that 18 months earlier the government wouldn’t have had "a prayer" with such spending proposals. But East Timor, adds the journalist, "marked a sea change in public interest and support for the military."

Part of the thinking behind the spending hike, and also the increased focus on the local region, arises from America’s sluggish response to the Timor crisis. The American alliance remains a pillar of Australian strategy, and is important in holding down the overall cost, but clearly it’s less reliable than once thought. John Howard is still the "deputy" for U.S. imperialism, but the sheriff is a bit preoccupied elsewhere so Johnny needs a few extra six-guns. The longstanding nationalist demands from some on the left for a "more independent" foreign policy are being partly met -- and under capitalism this was always going to mean a bigger military budget.

Out in redneck territory, the changes are greeted as "standing up to Asia". Here too the nationalists on the left are paying a price for their blindness. For decades, they have accused Australian governments of "appeasing" Jakarta, as if Keating or Howard needed assertiveness training. Consequently when Howard sent in the troops, they cheered, not grasping that the new militarism is directed against the oppressed peoples of the region. It’s no threat to Asian tyrants, quite the contrary. The White Paper says we should be "concerned about major internal challenges that threatened the stability and cohesion of any of these countries." (p. 31) And hence, for example:

"Through the Pacific Patrol Boat project and other programs, some 70 ADF advisers are posted to Pacific Island states, and about 400 members of Pacific security forces receive military, trade, technical, and professional training in Australia each year. We also active in the Southwest Pacific in providing help in appropriate ways to their police forces." (p. 44)

To reassure the Indonesian rulers that they are still John Howard’s friends, the government went out of its way to reaffirm opposition to West Papuan independence just at the time it released the White Paper. For our part, we on the left need to unite with the workers of Asia, not our own ruling class.

There is no reason to despair about the spending plans. The money isn’t spent yet. In fact a few right wing commentators have complained that Howard only plans to spend $500 million on the military before the next election -- and after that, who knows what political pressures he’ll face? They are uneasily aware that we can still stop this new militarist spending spree, if we fight it.