War Talk Boosts Military Budgets
On the Rim of a Maelstrom
The Title of this post is borrowed from a chapter heading in
Volume 5 of Manning Clark’s A History of Australia: The People Make Laws
1888 – 1915.
Manning Clark was writing, from an Australian perspective
about the events leading up to the beginning of the First World War. I hope
that the following illustrates why I have entitled my post in this way.
On Monday April 24, 2023 the state funded Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) posted a piece entitled “Defence force shifts
posture to ready Australia for 'missile age', and combat threats further from
shore” on its news web site.
The article written by political reporter Jake Evans declared:
“The world has entered a new military age and Australia
must "re-posture", the first major review of the nation’s defence
forces in a generation has concluded.”
Referencing the public version of the Australian Federal
Government’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR), proclaimed to the Australian
public on the same day Mr. Evans wrote:
“Australia is entering the "missile age", and
is no longer as protected by its geography or the limited ability of other
nations to project power, according to the landmark Defence Strategic Review.”
Summarising the authors of the DSR Mr. Evans wrote:
“Professor Smith and Sir Angus (Houston) specifically
laid out the threat China posed to the region, and the consequence that had for
Australia’s defences, which have been focused on "low-level regional
threats".”
According to Mr. Evans the authors of the DSR warn:
"China’s military build-up is now the largest and
most ambitious of any country since the end of the Second World War … this
build up is occurring without transparency or reassurance to the Indo-Pacific
region of China’s strategic intent."
"As a consequence, for the first time in 80 years,
we must go back to fundamentals, to take a first-principles approach as to how
we manage and seek to avoid the highest level of strategic risk we now face as
a nation: The prospect of major conflict in the region that directly threatens
our national interest."
Also, on the April 24, 2023 the ABC published a report by
Defence Correspondent Andrew Greene. The title of the piece is “Australia to
accelerate missile build-up as defence industry anxiously awaits review
recommendations”.
Concerning the authors of the DSR Mr. Greene writes:
“Their review warns of the rapidly diminishing warning
time for strategic thinking, and the need to dramatically increase Australia's
acquisition process for new military platforms.”
Mr. Green continues with this salutary piece of
intelligence:
“The ABC understands regional concerns such as the
increasing use of grey-zone warfare, the challenges presented by climate change
and risks to the US alliance are also canvassed, while certain assessments on
China will remain only in the classified version.”
Mr. Greene continues:
“Already the government has confirmed it will move to
expand and fast track its acquisition of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket
(HIMARS) system, technology used with devastating effect by Ukraine's army.”
The timing of the DRS and the ABC articles is alarming in
that all of this comes at a time that has historical significance for
Australian society.
There is an event that takes place every year on April 25
that the international community is generally unaware of. The event, is, in the
main the commemoration of the Australian New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) 1915
participation at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915 as well the engagement
of this Corps in other terrible battles of the First World War.
The lessons learned from this commemoration have global
import in terms of the lessons that can be drawn concerning war, military
alliances and the clash of empires.
Paul Daley writing for the Guardian Australia in an article
entitled: This Anzac Day, beware politicians glossing over war’s evils to
justify further military adventurism published on April 25, 2023 wrote:
“Anzac Day arrives again with its hardy perennial of
hyperbole about how a failed military operation on an obscure finger of the
Ottoman Empire birthed the Australian nation, one soldier’s words particularly
resonate.”
Mr. Daly quotes the words of a Vietnam veteran as follows:
“Try to avoid the utterly demeaning term ‘fallen’ when
speaking of war dead – they did not trip over a stick or a garden hose, they
were drowned, burned, shot, gassed and eviscerated to lie face down in mud or
sand or at the bottom of the ocean… War is humankind’s most horrific activity
and it must be portrayed as such for that is how veterans see it. It should not
be made to appear otherwise by false sensitivity or photos of politicians
trying to look dutifully serious.”
Reflecting on these words Mr. Daly wrote:
“If ever a discomfiting truth was spoken to power this,
is it. Politicians will always send young people to conflict – and in
Australia’s case, into far too many imperial wars of others. And you can bet
they’ll always adopt such language when they do so – and when they come to
commemorate the young who die in the name of their politics – that aims to
sanitise the prosaic horror of combat death.”
Mr. Daly’s uncomfortable truth concerning the hypocrisy of
politicians in their referring to the war dead as “fallen or the “glorious
dead” ought not just resonate with Australia and New Zealand but also in North
America and Europe as well.
Also, around ANZAC day the ABC posted an article on its news
platform entitled: “Why the hard-hitting 155mm howitzer is crucial to Ukraine's
struggle against Russian invasion”. The opening paragraph trumpeted:
“The 155-millimetre howitzer round is one of the most
requested artillery munitions of the war in Ukraine. The US has shipped more
than 1.5 million of them to Ukraine, but Kyiv still wants more.” The
article went on to enlighten the reader with the following factoids:
“The 155mm shells can be configured in many ways. They
can be packed with high explosive, use precision-guided systems, pierce armour
or produce high fragmentation.”
The rest of the article continued in this matter-of-fact way
to relate the history of this weapon pointing out that:
“The French developed the 155mm round during the trench
warfare of World War I, and early versions included gas shells, historian Keri
Pleasant said. As World War I continued, the 155mm gun became the most common
artillery piece used by the allies, and the US Army later adopted it as its
standard field heavy artillery piece.” The reader’s education was further
extended with a narrative on how the 155mm howitzer is used today in Ukraine.
By way of an aside the ABC article mirrors an Associated
Press (AP) on April 23, 2023 entitled: Why the 155 mm round is so critical
to the war in Ukraine written by Tara Copp.
Borrowing Mr. Daly’s words, the ABC offers it readers a
sanitised history that covers over “the prosaic horror of combat death.”
On April 26, 2023 the ABC continued its military build-up
narrative by publishing, on its news web site a piece entitled “Billions of defence
dollars redirected to rapidly acquiring long-range missile power”. This article
informs us that the Australian Government “…will commit $4.1 billion over
the next four years to obtain more long-range strike systems and manufacture
longer-range munitions in Australia…. The government says the investment
will boost the army's artillery range from 40 kilometres to more than 500
kilometres.”
The military build-up narrative is not just restricted to
Australia it is also happening in Europe. In the United Kingdom, there is a timely
Editorial in the communist and reader owned Morning Star news web site entitled
“As spending on war ramps up, the voices against it are disappearing”. The
Editor informs us as follows:
“New figures on military spending around the world from
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) make grim
reading.”
According to the Morning Star’s editor these figures:
“…show that global expenditure increased in real terms by
almost 4 per cent in 2022 to a new all-time high. The trend is now
remorselessly upwards, after the decline of the early and mid-1990s and during
the international recession that followed the financial crash of 2009-10.”
SIPRI did publish a press release on April 24, 2023. The
release was entitled: World military expenditure reaches new record high as
European spending surges. Only some news media platforms including Reuters and
Aljazeera reported on the SIPRI press release. Up until the moment of writing the
ABC has not reported on it.
To continue, the editor of the Morning Star observed:
“Nor are the prospects for demilitarisation looking any
brighter. The Ukraine war has played the single biggest part in boosting
military budgets. The new cold war against China is also good for business, as
the Aukus pact commits Australia in particular to a major expansion of its arms
programme with imports from the US.”
To conclude it is worth quoting a paragraph from Professor
Clark’s History. It comes from the Chapter that shares the name with my post.
Note how Professor Clark’s satirically eloquent words describing the zeitgeist
in 1914 resonate with what is going on in the world of 2023.
“The admirals assured the citizens of their countries
they could sink the ships of any other country. In February 1914 the British
Admiralty claimed that the 15-inch guns on the battleship Elizabeth would send
any ship to the bottom of the sea. German admirals retorted that the guns of
their ships would inflict tremendous harm. Some Australians had their own
special terror: if war broke out in Europe, the Japanese navy would seize both
Australia and New Zealand. The white man’s dream of the Europeanization of the
world had turned into a nightmare. Through the blind and fatuous folly of the
white man in teaching the Japanese the secrets of industrial technology and
supplying them with essential tools, the Japanese now had the power to smash
European civilisation.”
References
World
military expenditure reaches new record high as European spending surges |
SIPRI
Ukraine
war spurs record global spending on military, Stockholm think tank says |
Reuters
World
military spending reaches all-time high of $2.24 trillion | Military News | Al
Jazeera
Why
the 155 mm round is so critical to the war in Ukraine | AP News
Clark C.M.H. A History of Australia
Volume V The People Make the Laws. Melbourne University Press. 1992. Chapter
10. P.371.
Comments
Post a Comment