Who Would Fight?
Prolonged peace has made most Australians complacent about the need for nationalist morale. We are far more vulnerable than we think, says former major general Jim Molan.
One of the greatest successes of post-World-War-II Australia is that most of us have been protected from the consequences of what previous generations knew as total war, or wars of national survival. Ironically, the fact that we have not experienced such war for over 70 years is also one of the biggest difficulties in preparing this nation for the probability of future wars. Many Australians just don’t believe that the kind of total war could ever happen again.
But there is still evil in the world and when evil is combined with modern weaponry, the results are horrendous. Industrial age warfare is still with us, and in our recent memory a million died in the Iran-Iraq war; uncountable barbarity is being experienced in parts of Africa; Syria is ten times worse than Iraq ever was; the Middle East is on a knife edge; China now controls the South China Sea; and nuclear armed powers look at each other from behind screens of missiles. Some of these nuclear players are not the relatively stable nations that allowed civilisation to survive the Cold War.
Australians should never think that the total war in the two world wars will never be experienced again. Defence is not just ships, planes and tanks. It is far more. It is national resolve, resilience and leadership, culture and confidence, diplomacy, generalship and strategy, statesmanship and luck. All of this is the moral element of defence. Only then is defence about weapons.
Jim Molan before he retired from the army in 2008.
Australia has changed dramatically since the end of World War II. In both world wars it was seen as the norm that a relatively culturally homogenous Australia would deploy its forces overseas to defend the UK and Europe. The institutions that defined our civilisation were British from a Judeo-Christian base and to defend them against fascism and totalitarianism was natural at the time, and may well be again in the future.
The multicultural nature of modern Australia may provide a challenge to a unifying moral approach in an extreme situation caused by war. We have significant Sub-continent, Chinese and Middle East races within our national make-up. Also the religious affiliations of many Australian citizens cross national boundaries, especially in the case of Islam. The role of Australian citizens of Chinese descent in influencing domestic and international policy on behalf of Chinese interests has been a matter of public concern recently, particularly in relation to the South China Sea. In any extreme situation, divided loyalty will detract from the moral factor in national power.
The moral element in war, total or otherwise, is critical. The moral element can be impacted on adversely if governments do not insist that the first loyalty of every Australian citizen is towards Australia, a loyalty that is manifest by a willingness to renounce all other loyalties and citizenships, especially in preparing for an extreme situation. With the moral element established, voting Australians should ensure that governments acting in the name of voters are not taking excessive risk in relation to the military and non-military aspect of defence, by being prepared to engage its citizens directly and openly on its defence policy.
That this is not occurring can only make one suspicious that there are massive deficiencies in our defences, both military and moral, which government is too embarrassed to be open about.
This is an edited extract from Senator Jim Molan's chapter in The Forgotten People Updated: Liberal Essays on Modern Australia.