03mar03
LAST week confirmed the Howard Government failed utterly to foresee any of the security crises that have erupted around us in the past three years.
This has been a serious lapse in analysis and judgment by the Government and its top security officials.
Yet to this day we have not been told how our experts got it so wrong. Or how they'll do better.
Less than three years ago, the Howard Government unveiled what it bragged was "the most specific and detailed defence plan in more than 25 years".
Its Defence 2000 White Paper would set "Australia's strategic policy over the next decade".
Next decade? This 10-year plan lasted less than a year, before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States blasted it to bits.
Let me whiz you through just some of its lowlights.
Defence 2000 mentioned the word "terrorism" in just two fleeting sentences in its 123 pages, listing it merely a potential problem, and suggesting not one response.
Since then, of course, al-Qaida and its allies have struck around the world, and 88 Australians have been blown up in Bali.
Defence 2000 suggested North Korea was calming down and that reconciliation with South Korea "seems closer now than for many years".
Since then, North Korea has unveiled its secret nuclear weapons program, told its people to prepare for war, fired a warning missile and warned it will scrap its armistice with South Korea.
Defence 2000 didn't mention Iraq once. Or Afghanistan. It even predicted that if we had to fight outside the Asia Pacific, we'd send "only a relatively modest contribution", because the further away a crisis, the less threatening it probably was.
Since then, our soldiers have fought in Afghanistan, and we've sent ships, planes and 2000 troops to deal with Iraq. Crucially, we have tragically learned that globalisation makes distance no defence to terrorists.
Defence 2000 said that in any action, we would "more likely involve air or naval forces than land forces".
Since then, our soldiers have been called upon most to fight, with our special operations forces alone needing 305 more men.
Defence 2000 declared the main job of our armed forces was to "defend Australia without relying on the combat forces of other countries", and that they should be equipped and organised specifically for that role.
Since then, our armed forces have been used exclusively overseas, and as a junior partner to the United States -- the ally which ultimately guarantees our security. Moreover, it hasn't had all the equipment it needs to wage these distant coalition wars.
Defence 2000 said weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were "horrors", and we must remain "vigilant" about the missiles which could deliver them, but it was "very unlikely" we'd be attacked with them.
Since then, we've learned that North Korea, for one, is building missiles which could reach Australia, and groups like al-Qaida, which lists us as a target, have worked on biological and nuclear weapons. We've had to rush in smallpox vaccine.
Defence 2000 claimed the United Nations "has become more active and effective" in taming rogue states.
Since then we've found it cannot be counted on even to disarm genocidal Iraq.
These are just some of the blunders in this plan that was supposed to safeguard our security until 2010 and beyond. It could hardly have been more wrong.
Yes, no one predicted the September 11 attacks, which changed everything. But we pay a lot of spies, analysts, strategists and politicians to see into our security future. Instead, they've stared at out past.
You'd think having misjudged something so critical the Government would at least root out those responsible.
Instead, some of the same people behind our now dated defence plans have fought hard to stop Defence Minister Robert Hill from rewriting them to adapt to the bloody new realities.
Twice they sent him a draft rewrite which seemed to treat terrorism as just a little hiccup with few implications for our armed forces. Twice Hill tore it up.
Last week he finally got what he wanted, an almost alarmist document titled Australia's National Security: A Defence Update 2003.
It warned that although the threat of a direct military attack on us was very remote, we faced terrorist groups that had "demonstrated both willingness and capability to inflict massive casualties on civilian targets as a strategic end".
There was now a "great risk" that these groups had set their "sights higher, possibly including the acquisition and use of WMD". They could buy these weapons from rogue states such as North Korea, which was developing nuclear weapons, plus ballistic missiles able to spear them at targets thousands of kilometres away.
"The threats of terrorism and WMD are real and immediate," the report said.
More importantly, we had to accept that the war on terrorism was a "global conflict", and we must be prepared to fight anywhere.
There were also frank warnings that failing states in South-East Asia and the Pacific could collapse, and that China could make a "miscalculation" over Taiwan.
And the conclusion: We are now desperately trying to catch up, increasing our special operations forces, buying the equipment to deploy our forces overseas, ramping up our intelligence services and enlarging our Incident Response Regiment to deal with WMD.
We will even investigate joining America's missile defence system to protect our soldiers from attack.
The report, in so radically recasting the Government Defence 2000 planning of just 2 1/2 years ago, simply confirms how flawed that first document was.
But left unsaid is how Defence 2000 got it so wrong, and what is being done to ensure no further slip ups.
All I can tell you is that the lead author of Defence 2000, Hugh White, has since been appointed head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a new government-funded defence think-tank. And his predictions continue to be alarmingly wrong.
Last year, before the Bali bombing, he said al-Qaida members had moved into Indonesia, but "this may mean little", because the September 11 attacks were looking more like an "isolated tragedy" and our next terrorists were "just as likely to be home-grown zealots like . . . our own psychopathic killer, Martin Bryant".
Six months ago, he said the US had "decided not to go it alone and invade Iraq . . . with or without UN endorsement".
Three strikes, Hugh, and you're out of the debate. The defence of this country is too serious for muddling.
The question is: Which politicians and bureaucrats should be sidelined, too? http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,6064929%255E25717,00.html
