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...why we need bigger Australian Army is self-evident. This country faces on-going and in my opinion increasing instances of destabilised and failing states in our own region. I believe in the next ten to twenty years Australia will face a number of situations the equivalent of or potentially more challenging than the Solomon Islands and East Timor.
--John Howard, Prime Minister, 2006
In the period of Mr Howard's Prime Ministership, the Southwest Pacific has become an arc of instability.
--Kevin Rudd, Opposition Leader, 2007
QUAGMIRE, FIASCO OR FOLLY, Iraq is turning into a defining moment for United States strategy and future military policy. The change in US military thinking caused by Iraq will affect close American allies such as Australia. The shape of the post-Iraq future will become clearer after January 2009, when America swears in a new president.
The USA will confront a post-Iraq moment in 2009 with some similarities to the post-Vietnam era that it entered after 1975. This is where the Vietnam analogy starts to matter for Australia: how will the USA rethink its military obligations and aims under a new president, as America confronts the Iraq scars? Australia had to develop new thoughts about the alliance, defence policy and Australia's region after Vietnam. The Iraq effect will be similar. A USA less keen on global missions will, in turn, mean an Australia with a clearer regional focus.
The change in US military thinking after Vietnam was a key element in allowing Australia to turn its mind to defending the continent and the countries of the arc of instability. The US effect after Iraq will have a similar clarifying or simplifying impact on the priority Australia is able to devote to the arc.
The two constants, the two poles of Australian strategic thinking in the sixty years since the trauma of the Pacific War, have been the US alliance and what is happening in the countries of the arc. Sometimes these poles attract, sometimes they repel, but always they are fundamental. Thus, you have Peter Edwards writing that the External...
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