Box 59, Item 680: Draft of Australia's defence philosophy: further investigation of the nonexistent

Box 59, Item 680: Draft of Australia's defence philosophy: further investigation of the nonexistent

Computer printout. Handwritten annotation on page 1: War & Peace III.

Note, one of four papers digitised from item 680.

The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 59, Item 680

This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.

For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.

[43] leaves. 25.63 MB.

Manuscript

Como - Cupboard - Pile 3

AUSTRALIA’S DEFENCE PHILOSOPHY:

Further investigations of the nonexistent.
‘The opinions of philosophers, with regard to the conditions of the possibility of a
public peace, shall be taken into consideration by states armed for war’ (Kant, ‘A
[the only!] secret article for perpetual peace’, p.158 - a surprising article, flattering no
doubt to philosophers, but neglecting their dominant bellicose tradition).

A defence philosophy is much more than a defence policy, just as a philosophy of
technology comprises much more than a technology policy. A policy can be given merely by a

list of directives as to what do in various circumstances; even at its best it need only involve
practical wisdom.

By contrast, a philosophy goes deeper and requires theoretical wisdom,

integration of the policy into a theoretical setting, which looks, among other things, at the

central arguments and key concepts involved: here, security, stability, control, protection,

defence, interests, national interests, intelligence, war, etc.

Defence philosophy is thus a

branch of political and social philosophy, and has long been treated as such, though under

such more familiar and honest headings as “of war” and “of peace”.

Like most parts of

philosophy, it can be applied, for instance in shaping policies, in regional ways among others.

A defence philosophy should integrate appropriate defence arrangements and approaches

to war and peace, not merely or superficially into “foreign policy” or assumed “international
relations”, but into the way and intended way of life of a country, both into on-going culture
and into the intended or planned cultural arrangements.

A defence policy typically takes

prevailing socio-political arrangements and power structures for granted; a defence philosophy

again penetrates deeper, questioning or rejecting features of these structures, enquiring as to
the merits of things and institutions of which defence is planned, asking what sort of society

should be defended by what sort of appropriate methods and at what lengths.

What, for

instance, is Australia, what are Australians, defending, concerned to defend, aiming to
defend? Here in Australia? In the region? Abroad? How much of what others have, or what

we have, is worth defending, preserving?

Does Randwick Racecourse, or Pine Gap, merit

defending?

Would anyone stage a last stand for Oaks Estate, one of Canberra’s dreariest

suburbs?

If the Indonesians

made a lightning strike in

Australia just

to remove

Bjelke-Petersen,1 should we resist?

Few of the necessary prerequisites have been adequately thought about in Australia,
where unplanned muddling through from immediate problem to immediate problem - reactive
contingency “planning”, if you want to be generous - is the main style of political life , and,

along with the traditional political game of “follow the leader”, of defence planning. Australia

2

does not yet have a defence philosophy. Some of its critical philosophers could help to supply

it with the rudiments of one or more, and to inject some depth into broader defence

theorizing.

What follows is intended as a modest beginning: much of what is attempted,

unearthing arguments and assumptions, followed by analysis and criticism, and some

elaboration of alternative principles, falls squarely within the domains both of applied

philosophy and traditional philosophical practice.
1. Australia’s
inappropriate.

defence

“policy”:

incoherent,

obsolescent

Australia seems to lack even a clear and coherent defence policy.

American,

This is a commonplace

charge (made even by friends of Defence, interested in obtaining extra public funding for

defence and elements of C3I).^ The reasons concern not merely the major unsolved issues of

exactly what is being defended, what things and objects and what interests, and whose, what
freedoms and values, and what role American defence facilities in Australia are supposed to

have in this.

They concern the status of present treaty arrangements, such as the

“cornerstone”/“millstone” ANZUS treaty, signed between Australia, New Zealand and the

US, now in disarray (still ’‘maintained” by New Zealand, whom the US has unilaterally
announced expelled), and of subsequent associated memoranda of understanding (some secret,

involving the local storage of US nuclear weapons, entry of American personnel, etc.). They
also concern a range of more detailed lucunae such as: lack of clearly-defined priorities on
what needs defending and how it is to be accomplished; doubtful capacity of present defence
forces to handle low-level contingencies in and to the north of Australia and in maritime
zones; and unsatisfactory (or no) arrangements and planning for “defence-in-depth”, for civil
defence and use of civil infrastructure, mobilisation, wartime administration, protection of key

facilities and areas, and post-nuclear organization.

And, equally damaging, if its policy makers do have a coherent policy it is nowhere
satisfactorily revealed to the peoples of Australia.It is left to journalists and newspaper­
watching academics to winkle out what local defence installations may be for and to make

various conjectures as to what the policy may be.

Of course there are many administrators

and policy makers who think that is the way it should be; the public should not be informed,

but kept satisfied with some “generalised” statements.As to coherence, Australian policy

makers have only recently found out that Australia has a (purely) regional defence role, not a

global one. This they were told by the Americans in Washington in talks allegedly designed
to clarify commitments under treaty arrangements with the USA. It thus begins to look as if
Australia’s defence policy, such as it is, is still as much determined abroad, by US policy

makers, as it is locally in Australia.

3

Much circumstantial evidence can be assembled to confirm the claim that Australia’s

vague defence policy can now be stamped Made in USA, as it used, before the last World War
(and British abandonment), to be stamped Made in UK. For one thing, Australia has had a

bipartisan defence policy, so it is claimed. That “policy” has however been essentially shaped

by the Liberal party, which has governed most of the time (as senior partner in a coalition).
But the Liberal party simply took over US arrangements for Australia (as planned in
Washington for ANZUS) and still does.

For instance, the latest package® from the Liberal

Party “Defence and Foreign Policy Unit” consists largely of US Defence Department material
packaged under a local cover.

The Strategic Basis Papers, endorsed by the Labor

Government, give virtually unqualified support to US military practices and to the American
view of the global strategic situation, and commit Australia to supporting, without any due

reservation, American positions in world forums.' The same dependent-policy conclusion can
be reached by more devious arguments.

regional defence role?

When, for example, did Australia find out it had a

After the Americans had found that they could no longer afford to

police the world on their own and would have to delegate some of that role and offload some

of the heavy associated costs, on reliable dogs-bodies; and also after Labor took some faltering
steps towards developing a broader foreign more independent policy with some indigenous

elements (Australian Minister Hayden was promptly flattened by US heavies such as Schultz).

Australian defence and foreign policy copies American policy in main respects, but lags
it. The Australian defence policy presented by the Labor government, to the extend that it is

visible, is conservative; it coincides with older American defence policy, and diverges from the

new (post-Reagan) American war policy. For Australian Labor defence policy supports what
the American administration supposedly used to support, namely

DI. Multilateral nuclear disarmament (within the framework of series of treaties and
agreements), and

D2. Deterrence in the interim, deterrence through mutual assured destruction (i.e. MAD).
The presence of American military facilities in Australia is supposed to be justified in the
framework of these assumptions.

For they are to assist in making deterrence under D2

effective, and to provide verification for the arms reduction arrangements under DI (both

stabilizing functions).

There is much evidence indicating however that American policy

makers have now abandoned both Dl and D2 and any serious attempts at nuclear arms
control8.

Certainly they have moved on to the following highly destabilizing doctrines:

Nuclear war-fighting, Limited nuclear wars, and Star-Wars (i.e. Strategic Defense Initiative).
While this American war policy may well be accepted by the next Liberal coalition

government, all of these military doctrines are explicitly rejected by the 1985 Labor
government.

Since the American “joint” facilities in Australia also facilitate the rejected

4
objectives, the problems concerning these dubious facilities are much aggravated.

The

Government’s approach concerning them - withholding information concerning the full range

of their functions, and particularly their war-fighting roles from parliament and the public - is

certainly unsatisfactory, as several of its members realise; and as a result the Government

appear in not atypical disarray, further grist for the incoherence theme.

If there is perhaps a coherent Australian global defence approach somewhere away from
public exposure, it is most likely then an old abandoned American policy.9 But in that case it
certainly lacks - what it in any case appears to lack - justification.

For Australia, in

supporting US defence policy and activity, for instance in world forums, is supporting present
offensive American policy, not what it reputedly adheres to, deterrence (through MAD). The
point holds good whether or not American global policy still includes such deterrence as a

proper part10; for it certainly involves other very different and dubious strategies.

The commonplace, but increasingly feeble, justification given for Australian’s tagging

along after America is that Australian interests are the same as American11.
American interests by no means coincide with Australian

.

However

Consider, for instance, such

matters as enriching Americans, making conditions favourable for American business,
promoting Americans and things American.

Consider, differently, American practices in

Latin America, from undercutting Allende’s government in Chile to its practices against

Nicaragua, to its extensive export of arms and violent methods, there and elsewhere in the
world.

Thus America, like Russia, is busy meddling in Africa, but ‘Australian security

interests are not directly involved’ (SB, p.24).

Consider, differently again, escalation of the

nuclear arms race. Or consider American strategic planning, and all the game- and decision-

theoretic models which concern just USA and its adversary USSR, perhaps occasionally
adding Europe as part of the monolithic West, but rarely or never considering the Southern

Hemisphere - so that either Australia is part of America as Poland may be of Russia or it is

nothing.

Or consider American interests not merely in Soviet and communist containment,

but in containing socialism such as might (under more auspicious conditions) flourish in

Australia. An American policy answering to American interests is accordingly inappropriate

for Australia, inappropriate for Antipodean socialism.

Australians should do their own

defence thinking and work out a policy appropriate for Australia.

(That applies also to

Australian political representatives, who should stop parroting implausible American views
and begin developing some genuinely local and original ones.)

Should Australia be tagging along after the Americans in support of installation of their

style of free-enterprise capitalism everywhere feasible (i.e. that the state socialists don’t
already heavily control)?

What they quite seriously call ‘keeping the free world free’?

Of

5

course freedom has, in this sort of context, multiple meanings and associations (as well as

multiple

inconsistencies,

appearing

information” and the like).

overtly

in

subsidized

“free trade”, selective

“free

Significant parts of what mainstream American culture admits

under the freedom umbrella, mainstream Australian culture would exclude: for instance,
active opposition to and undermining of social and socialist programs and governments,

bullying of small countries that impose barriers to US business or military practices (all part
of “free enterprise”), etc.

What of those intangible freedoms the cultures supposedly agree about, civil liberties,

freedom to information, to live and work where one chooses, to travel, and so on? These are

certainly important freedoms, better upheld in some parts of the unaligned West (e.g.
Sweden, Switzerland) than in most parts of the Eastern Block. But such freedoms, which run

counter to dependent policies, hardly require defence subservience.
influenced state practices are fast reducing freedom.

Moreover, military-

Many of the older freedoms have

vanished this century, such as freedom to travel, to work and live abroad, etc.; now one
requires permits, licences, passports, ... . And many more former freedoms are being or have
been eroded; soon it will be identity documents, restricted zones, ID cards, as already in parts

of the “free West”.

Now nuclearism in Europe ‘is devouring the very freedom it is said to

protect: [the Greens] point to the new laws proposed in 1983 designed to keep citizens from
assembling to protest deployment of the Pershing II and cruise missiles’ (Capra and Spretnak,

pp.58-9). Further structural changes required for the security of the state, imcompatible with
democratic freedoms, include ‘secrecy,

lack of commentability, permanent emergency,

concentration of authority, peacetime militarism, extensive apparatus of state intelligence and

police’ (Falk, in Feith p.24).

Nuclearism is not a smart strategy to preserve remaining

freedoms.
2. Inherited other-reliance, and the populist and elitist cases for patronage and
subservience.

Australia’s defence policy, such as it is, is furthermore inherited rather than regularly
(re)thought through.

But that procedure - essentially the legal method of precedence,

whatever its very limited satisfactoriness in legalistic decision making - is defective when
applied in politics or to defence, especially where immediate independent action is required.

For precedence methods are extraordinarily slow, as well as characteristically conservative,
and as in defence exclude significant and rather urgent alternatives.
The unsatisfactory decision-making practices to be revealed in the case of defence are by

no means restricted to defence but are typical of the kind of advanced age capitalism
Australia operates under, or rather labours under, down under.

In setting down those

4.

6

features of aged capitalism (‘of the Corporate State') that the New Left and Alternative
Australia movements were reacting against, Cock neatly summed up these practices:
Decisions were made from the top and on the basis of vested political interests,
rather than by rational goals and means that served public interests. The people
were rarely consulted effectively before a decision and often only partially informed
afterwards. Planning was based on a mere extension of the present. ... activists felt
they were given little opportunity to choose how they lived or worked.
The
availability of space, time, trees and air was also determined by others ... (p.18
italics added).14

As it was and is with one’s defence, military and civil, so it is with the matter of whether one
lives in a nuclear target zone or not, and so on (though immigration policy, uranium and

woodchip export policies, etc.)

In these areas planning remains top-down, with at best

consultative elements. No real choices are offered to people.
A major inherited assumption is that of other reliance, that Australia’s defence depends

on other more powerful allies. That ally was firstly Britain, and since World War II America;
but in any event the assumption is that to be safe Australia needs a powerful patron, a

protector.

A corollary is that Australia adopts a suitably submissive relation to its patron,

making expected concessions. And for the most part it has; however such a defence insurance
policy does not come cheap.15 It costs not only money and resources, but quality of life,
freedom and independence.

The assumption of other-reliance is however unsound, for several reasons.

Most

important, it characteristically depends upon the following themes, all of which lack solid

foundation:
1. Australia is threatened - or at least
1A. Australia is likely to be threatened in the near future.
2. Australia cannot defend itself.
3. Australia can however depend upon its patron (or ally), i.e. upon the USA.
These three themes in fact make up what has been called the populist case for the ANZUS

alliance.16 It is very different from the elitist case for ANZUS, said to hold sway with the

Australian government, which, while insisting upon premiss 3, essentially rejects 1 and 2 and
claims instead

4. Australian has a vital interest in global stability.
5. Global stability is under threat (constantly) by an expansionist Soviet Union.
6. Only USA can contain the Soviet threat and hold the global balance.
Some of techniques the US deploys for holding global balance operate through

dependent states and a network of alliances like ANZUS. But obviously further premisses are

required to reach the intended conclusions that Australia should be participating in any such

alliance, and what is more, hosting US defence facilities and exercises. A first such premise is

the no-shirking theme, that Australia should be contributing its part to “holding the balance’’

(cf. Bell).

Even this first further step is pretty shaky; as we shall see, one shaky step in a

rather ramshackle case, since premisses 5 and 6 are decidedly dubious (and 4 may involve
equivocation). For it can be plausibly argued that Australia’s vital interests are not

guaranteed by US techniques, which threaten to upset the whole applecart, and can be
obtained by alternative more satisfactory means outside of such soft alliances as ANZUS. In
any case, it is unclear that local contributions enhance global (nuclear) stability (see e.g.

Mack and Davidson).

But first, there is more pernicious regionalist version of the elitist position to be
considered, what might be called the offshore elitist position. This position grants

2A*. Australia can defend itself against regional threats, and can look after itself regionally.

But it does not (as indeed other qualified elitist positions may not) grant 1A.

What the

offshore position insists upon is

1AI*. Australia’s interests could be threatened in the near future.

Since these interests - perhaps concerned with trade, Australian companies or Australians
abroad, or whatever - may have little or nothing to do with internal Australian security, this

premiss represents an extremely important shift (a shift not unrelated to the inverse
bureaucratic shift from war to defence).

It goes further than what has been called forward

defence. In extended form the offshore position does call for some sort of global policeman or

police force ready to intervene whenever a “free port” anywhere looks like closing its doors.
Part of the difficulty in getting to grips with the elitist position is that it tends to slide
through to the offshore position (by way of now evident immediate positions).

The arguments against both the populist and elitist cases, and indeed against virtually
all of themes 1 through 7 are sufficiently familiar to justify but a fairly brief outline of some of

the main points involved.

Of course just a couple of defections from themes 1 through 7

would serve logically defeat both cases, but there have been some interesting repair attempts,
designed to float the arguments on diminished premisses.

3. The brief against the popular populist case; the need for new directions.

Contra 1 and 1A.

While Australia is not at present under notice of threat, veiled threat or

harassment from abroad, a majority of its population appears to believe that it is.

As the

popular view is not the informed, administrative, or parliamentary view, it is worth inquiring

8

why the popular view persists, as the opinion polls reveal it has.

The populace has been

deliberately kept in the dark (or even misinformed), because this suits bipartisan government

purposes.

Although both main Australian political parties are well enough aware that the

main assumptions underlying the populist case are false, the reasons for which they support
the American alliance (e.g. those of the elitist case) are much more difficult to sell to the

public. Accordingly the parties and Government have no political interest in undermining the
unsound populist case. In particular they have gone out of their way not to cast doubt upon
the connected assumption that US is a reliable guarantor against all threats.

Thus long-standing Australian psychological insecurity about security has been allowed
to stand, and has not been assuaged by any requisite informational and educational effort. In

particular, older attitudes to Asia persist not far below the surface of popular Australia: fear,

mistrust and xenophobia, patched over by a pragmatic attachment to trade and tourism.
This misplaced insecurity is fuelled by popular misconceptions of Australia and its place in

the world: metaphorically, that Australia is a luscious plum ripe for Eastern picking, instead

of the Asians view that Australia, so far as they are aware of it at all, is a remote desiccated
uncouth place perhaps good for some trade and investment. Or, to get towards more concrete

assumptions,

Australians

apparently

tend

to

their

view

country

as

affluent

but

underpopulated, resource rich but largely defenceless; yet not far to the north are Asian
hordes who are impoverished, resource poor, and so on

.

Such a view is seriously out of touch with reality.

Parts of Asia are now at least as

affluent (on conventional economic indicators) as Australia.

They do not see themselves as

overpopulated, in a way that calls for mass exodus; and in those areas which are as

overpopulated as Europe, such as Java, bribes and force are required to move people on

transmigration programs to relatively unoccupied parts of the Indonesian empire.

So far as

they require them, they can purchase Australian resources - which are not unique - much more

easily and cheaply (because they even carry significant local subsidies) than they could obtain

•

them by seizure.

1s

For these sorts of reasons, and because Australia itself poses no threat, no other state
has a genuine interest in attempting to invade Australia.

As it is for interests, so it is for

capabilities. No regional power has the capacity to launch a successful invasion of Australia,
or is likely to have such a capacity in the near future. As the joint Parliamentary Committee
concluded,

Currently only the United States would have the physical capacity to launch a full
scale invasion of Australia, and it clearly lacks any motive to do so (TAS, p.94).

9

As the report also stated, quoting Synnot (former Chief of Defence Staff),

... to raise the sort of force which would be required for a mass invasion of Australia
could not possibly be done in under five years by other than the superpowers (TAS).

But neither superpower is at all likely to expend effort or resources to such an end.
An obvious naive question which at once arises is: Why bother then with much defence?

(A later question to entertain is: why not be a free-rider on collectively provided global

security, such as it is?) Why not proceed forthwith to unilateral disarmament? Mack for one,
having reassembled the now-standard telling case that Australia is not threatened ‘now or for
the foreseeable future’, and so having broken the populist argument, is confronted by the

awkward option of unilateral disarmament for Australia. He stages a hasty retreat, points to
the dependence of premisses 1 and 1A on premiss 2, and proceeds to claim that ‘the populist

case for ANZUS is sustained’ even without premisses 1 and 1A.

It is however a decidedly

problematic retreat.

While it is true that the arguments against 1 and 1A may sometimes take it for granted

that Australia can look after itself to some extend, put up some resistance, it is far from clear

that they depend essentially on assumptions approximating premiss 2.

Consider the no­

interests argument, which appears decisive given the (estimated) very limited invasion
capabilities of potential invaders.

The main consideration adduced appears to depend in no

essential way, indeed in no obvious way at all, on Australia’s dynamic fighting forces.
Australian mineral resources, to repeat one of the more sensitive examples involved, can be

obtained more readily and cheaply by trade methods than military ones. What all this seems

to show is that a rather minimal streamlined force, if any, would presently meet Australia’s
military requirements.

It is not as if Australia is ‘entirely defenceless’ without a conventional military force,

like a babe-in-arms.

The whole apparatus of nonmilitary defence is available on a continent

well suited to its use, though lacking a population trained in its techniques. But even without
requisite popular training in defence methods, Australia would be a difficult place to govern,
Australians a difficult lot to subjugate. It was such features of the Australian character that

deterred the Japanese on a previous occasion

“If the invasion is attempted, the Australians, in view of their national character,
would resist to the end. Also, because the geographical conditions of Australia
present numerous difficulties in a military sense, it is apparent that a military
venture in that country would be a difficult one” (TAS, p.62).

The points still hold good, and could be strengthened.

There are several parts to any such

10

program of nonmilitary defence: making it happen, and putting it abroad (ideally with

dinkum Australian exaggeration) that it has happened.

To the issue of alternative defence we are bound to return. For now, when Australia is

not threatened, is a good occasion to reconsider, and begin to adapt, defence arrangements.

For example, it looks very much as if enormous sums, which could be valuably directed
elsewhere, are being spent, largely to make many Australians feel secure.But a much more

effective and inexpensive way to such results would be through requisite popular education

and psychological therapy - with, if it were well done, much more satisfactory results, a more
secure and better informed people.
Contra 2. As a result of post-War developments in weapons systems and C3I capabilities, the

military defence of Australia has become much easier.

It comes down to enhancing, through

new robust and reliable systems, the enormous strategic advantages Australia enjoys by virtue
of geographical isolation. In principle, any maritime invading force can now be detected well
in advance of arrival, through modern radar warning systems, and destroyed by precision

guided munitions.

And any invaders that did manage to gain a foothold on Australian soil

would face severe logistic problems, and be subject to disproportionate responses from local
defence. Standard discussions (as in Dibb, Mack) proceed to introduce a great deal of “Boys’

Own War Games” stuff concerning contemporary weapon and C3I systems; the essential point
is that these could serve to turn Australia into a pretty unvulnerable armed fortress, and into
an extremely difficult territory were the oceanic moat crossed and the fortress entered (see
especially D. Martin).

Under such armed neutrality and (differently) fortified Australia defence scenarios, even

invasion from outside the region by an inimical world power could be resisted with reasonable
prospect of success.

There is no power at all likely to mount such an invasion; there is

apparently (as noted above) only one power that could, that good ally the USA (reckoned

however a likely invader by 6-7% of the Australian population!). Nonetheless the threat of a
Soviet invasion is taken seriously not only by the larger populace but by committees of their

elected representatives.

But the Soviet military has never undertaken such a long-range

massive force projection, is ill-equipped to do so, and lacks any plausible reason to try such a

stunt (for details see, e.g., D. Martin; also SS, ST).

The only credible Soviet threat to

Australia is in the context of a superpower war, when American facilities in Australia and

perhaps Australian cities, would be struck at by intercontinental missiles.

While this would

be bad enough, it is highly unlikely that it would be followed or accompanied by an invasion.

Soviet forces are once again not sufficient, and not thought sufficient by the Soviets for that

sort of diversion; they would be required elsewhere in a superpower war; and they would be

devastated, unless USA is militarily even more incompetent than sometimes depicted.

i.
11

Contra 3.

What will be argued is not the negation of 3, that the Americans cannot be relied

upon, but rather that 3 is dubious, and that it would be rash to place excess reliance on

American protection.

That being so, and other patrons being even less promising, Australia

should look more to its own resources, as the American administration is kindly advising.
Especially since the American “Vietnam debacle” and the fall of Saigon, things have
changed in important ways which cast doubt on the reliability of American patronage. First,
the relative economic and military strength of the USA has declined significantly.

It no

longer has such a large share of world product(ivity); as a connected matter of policy, US

world warfighting aspirations have been reduced. Its ability to act as, and afford to be, global
policeman has also markedly declined/

Secondly, the willingness of Americans to engage in

remote foreign wars has correspondingly tumbled.

Although the American administration

includes more than enough hawks, to be sure, the people and Congress are not longer in a

mood for gratuitous foreign adventures, especially when the fun may not appear to be in
American interests.

Since Vietnam, US opinion polls regularly show strong popular

opposition to overseas military involvement. This “Vietnam syndrome” has served as a major
constraint on US military policy and foreign involvement.

An important manifestation of these changes is the Guam Doctrine, calling upon US
regional allies to take primary responsibility for their own defence in regional conflicts.
Another important outcome is Defense statements to the pointed effect that before US troops

are committed abroad there must be reasonable assurance of Congressional and popular

support (Weinberger, reported in PC p.14). As Mack comments, ‘such assurance is impossible
to guarantee - especially for remote countries where no US vital national interests are at

stake’. Certainly no more is assured under the ANZUS treaty which provides only that each
signatory ‘act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes’

(article 4).

All the treaty strictly requires is consultation; there is no undertaking or

commitment. Isn’t the treaty backed up by informal verbal reassurances? None that are not

undermined by others, in American administrative multiple-speak.

Even the elite view is that Australia has to ‘work ... to maximize the prospect of US
support’ and that the Americans cannot be counted upon.

For ‘the threshold of direct US

combat involvement could be quite high, and circumstances at the time could significantly

limit US willingness or ability to help Australia in other ways?. ‘... we cannot rely upon US

support in a defence emergency arising within our own neighbourhood’ (SB, pp.29-30).

However a special case has been made for American reliability in Australia’s case - as

12

opposed to examples of American abandonment of earlier military undertakings (in Vietnam,

Cambodia, Iran) - on the basis of permanent friendship, common interests, and shared values
and democratic traditions. There are two difficulties with this type of special pleading: first,
as to the basis, and, second, as to the adequacy of such a basis in by-passing Congress, the

American people, and slow constitutional processes.

Historical evidence hardly sustains the

adequacy of the basis in analogous cases. And here, as already indicated, the basis is shaky.
For there is not a common culture shared by Australia and America: rather values diverge

significantly on quite crucial issues. Even less are interests always common, as the matter of
subsidised agricultural produce reveals, and as missile testing and nuclear ships issues in the

South Pacific have recently confirmed. Interests diverged, for instance, when Australia toyed

with opposing Indonesia’s claim to West Papua. So it is dubious at least that American
interests would coincide with Australian in disputes or confrontation with Asian nations to

the North, e.g. with Indonesia or Japan.

Of course if the special case argument did hold

water, Australia and America really were mates, then the treaty would be otiose. There was

in fact no treaty in operation in 1942; but by then American interests in countering the
Japanese were independently aroused.

4. Other-reliance and regional self-reliance
A major problem with other-reliance for defence is then that it cannot be deemed entirely
reliable, yet precisely here unreliability can hardly be tolerated.

When the Indonesians are

rolling into Brisbane it won’t do for Defense to call up with a message like that from local
Services, "We can’t get there till tomorrow’’, or “until after Congress meets”, or “Sorry,
Mate!”.

More seriously, handing defence over to others means handing control of our lives

over to others; and given nuclear defence, which too many Antipodean administrations have
opted for, it quite likely means literally handing our lives over for many of us. Another
problem of other-reliance is thus its adequacy. A further problem is its cost. In principle, if a

State hires out its defence it would no doubt look, other things being equal, for the cheaper

bidder - if, that is, defence is a commodity of a sort, like national shipping, meterological
services, etc. The trouble with global defence is that the market is monopolistic, with

currently only one supplier of the right complexion22, who accordingly can exact a very high
price, and has - making the whole country a nuclear target and demanding substantial

subservience. Similar points make part of the case, well-enough appreciated, for not trying to

press defence, plainly a collective good, into a marketable commodity.
When a country can supply its own defence, it therefore makes very good sense for it to

do so, since it normally has a stronger interest in its own proper defence than most other

parties. Should it also be cheaper in costs that matter, then self-reliance not just makes good
sense but pays; other-reliance does not.

But in that event, it surely does not need nuclear

13

patrons, or to farm out some of its defence.

Such self-reliance undermines an important part of the older case based on other-reliance

for alliances such as ANZUS. However newer bipartisan approaches to defence try to combine

them (thus e.g. Australian minister Beazley as reported by Davidson) - approaches which thus
begin to empty ANZUS of what little content it had, and remove much of the apparent point
of such older alliances. Since the ANZUS arrangements contain no clear commitments beyond

consultation but are merely vague articles of understanding, a simple course is of course to

allow them to be emptied of content, so that the alliance, an expensive and outdated

“insurance” policy, dies a natural death.

It may however be death by seizure or convulsion

should American defence facilities be closed or internationalised and passage of American
nuclear equipped or powered transport be excluded from Australia.

That would no doubt

sacrifice the deterrence and other advantages the treaty supposedly affords

, while making

way for the greater advantages of friendly nonalignment, of no longer being a nuclear target,

or so on.

But self-reliance pure and simple is insufficient. The world does not consist of separable
isolated pieces, as becomes increasingly evident. Most dramatically, Australia will not escape

the effects of nuclear winter.

The picture is much the same as for other dynamic subjects,

such as plants which are not internally self-sufficient but depend crucially on their
environment - and indeed as for States themselves. The question then is what form the
additional holistic component of policy should take? Put this way, it is almost obvious that

the appropriate move is not taking sides (as in a kids’ war game or tug-of-war game that is
already set up) and doing one’s bit for confrontation. For that will not contribute to stability,
to a proper holistic approach, but rather to sectionalism and fragmentation, and to bringing
nuclear winter closer.

Other-reliance and self-reliance typically present a false contrast, and certainly do with

pure self-reliance - a false contrast like that of holism and partism (EE, p.223), and of

dependence versus isolationism. In between lie a range of positions, one of which - favoured
by a long line of peacefully-disposed philosophers from Rousseau and Kant onwards - might be
called integrated reliance or federated reliance. The elitist case, insofar as it were to call for

such reliance (e.g. in assumption 4), could hardly be faulted. But it doesn’t; and is satisfied

with much less.

Integration may reach only certain inadequate levels, the level of modern

alliances and alignment, which are essentially coupled with opposition to an other side, e.g.
the monolithic East (or West). It is into just this trap that elitist arguments fall.

14

5. The decline and fall of elitist arguments.

Premisses 4 and 5 of the elitist argument turn around the crucial notion of stability, as related
arguments revolve around that of security. But stability and security are value-laden terms,
which are not cultural invariants.

What stability comprehends in American administrative

perception is very different from what highland villages take it to include.

In each case a system is stable if it returns to a given stationary state under

perturbations of sufficiently small magnitude. But both the relevant states and the stationary

among them are relative to given frames of reference; for instance, what is stable at a

macrolevel may well not be at a microlevel. As Trudeau has said of the superpowers, ‘they
share a global perception according to which even remote events can threaten their interests
or their associates’ (p.10) and disturb stability.

But lesser states or regional people, not

counting remote business or military interests as relevant, report no instability. Bureaucrats
invariably view bombs as necessary to stability, and the nuclear fix as stability; by contrast,

gentle people increasingly see bombs as tools of terrorism and as characteristically antithetical
to peace.
ad 4: Of course Australia has a vital interest in global stability and security: what sizeable

nation does not? But the determinable motherhood interpretation (of italicised terms), while

no doubt diplomatically convenient, conceals crucial differences, highly material to the
argument. For one global stability means something different in USA from what it means in
Costa Rica and likely what it intends in Australia. Certainly vital interests are different.

America is interested in containing socialism (in Australia as elsewhere), and it tends, in more
popular rhetoric at least, to equate containing socialism with containing communism and both

with Soviet containment. A continental swing to socialism (or Non-Soviet communism) in
Latin America, or in Africa, would upset global stability, on American perception, and would

indeed have significant effects on US business or investment; but it would not on its own
upset or affect most Australians or directly threaten Antipodean stability, and it certainly

need not affect nuclear stability. Australians generally are not opposed in principle to

socialism or notably interested in containing its spread (indeed perhaps the opposite).
Australia is not interested in (and oughtn’t to be charmed by the idea of) defence of the

(American) “free enterprise” system, or in the defence of uglier forms of capitalism wherever
they are presently initiated or opposed (cf. Chomsky and Herman).

Contra 5.

It can be conceded, without granting the main thrust of the premiss, that the

Soviets are expansionistic, at least in that they are interested in extending their influence
where they can.

So also are most empires, including American and Indonesian (so for that

matter are many academics and most sales-people).

But the Soviets have an ideological

15

message to spread, Marxism-Leninism, an ideology they used to anticipate being installed

everywhere.

But the Americans also have a message, a capitalist message, Free Enterprise

Inc, which they are working to sell pretty much everywhere accessible to them.

And they

need to be expansionistic to have it adopted, whereas the Russians and Chinese need simply
wait for history to take its allegedly determined course (though a little assistance - reflecting

legitimate doubt about this determinism? - would surely spread their disconcertingly different

forms of “progress” without interfering). But surely the Russian message is pernicious?

All

these messages are pernicious (for familiar reasons: see e.g. Erlich).
The proper question is whether on its own Soviet international activity threatens, in
some damaging way, global stability. Undoubtedly Soviet-American confrontation, as in the

Cuban missile affair, does threaten global stability; though not in a way that has any bearing
on Australian defence.

In fact no Russian expansionary tendency, military or otherwise, has

an untoward direct effect on Australia, little of significance reaches into the Antipodes (see
Dibb SS). So what is the local excitement about? In large measure the excitement has been

drummed up by the political right, East European expatriates, and pork-barrelling politicians.

The effect of Soviet expansionism is much exaggerated and overexploited (Mack ST).
Viewed from the Antipodes it is hardly a problem, unless the Soviets should get locked into
military confrontation with USA - a real problem to be addressed.

With that problem

however, the Antipodes can better assist as part of a third nonaligned group which helps to
referee and to prize apart the heavies, not by seconding and inciting the USA.

But

confrontation apart, Soviet internationalism, hardly a great success story, does not seriously
disturb global stability, as seen from Australia.

For a proper assessment of Soviet internationalism, types of expansion should be

distinguished - military, potential military, influence with military access, and mere influence.

In actual military expansion and involvement since W’orld War II, the Russian record is
hardly striking by comparison with the USA or several other states.

The one conspicuous

case involving control of new territory, that of Afghanistan, has actually had little effect on
global stability.

The usual Western apprehension concerns not anything the Soviets have

accomplished, but what they might attempt militarily, especially in Europe.

But the idea of

Soviet military adventure in Europe is a Western invention and bogey, lacking in plausibility.
The Soviet military lacks the force ratio needed to be assured of military success in Europe,

both by their own standards of what is required and by Western strategic standards. And the
Soviets have no good reasons or interests in undertaking such an exercise which would draw

them into nuclear war. They already face enough economic difficulties and troubles with East
European client states which they cannot control satisfactorily.

16

The extension of Soviet influence has largely been in the Third world.

But it has

hardly been successful, with as many failures and losses to record as Soviet “gains” - gains
which add to the imperial burden since they involve countries wracked with problems, such as

Vietnam.

The Third World exercises are marred by Soviet inaptitude and limited by the

state of their own economy.

They scarcely displace the global structure enough to test its

stability; and they produce no shock waves or even significant ripples in the Antipodes.

Contra 6.

The main current threat to world stability appears to come not from one of the

dancers in the East-West dance of death, but from the escalating confrontation, easily ignited,
between the lead dancers. With this US policies and practices have at least as much to do as
USSR ones.

Recent US practices are more destabilizing than Soviet ones, and indeed highly

destabilising, because of new weapons and weapons systems, because of rejection of arms
control and Soviet proposals, and because of “star wars” preparation which both accelerates

the arms race on earth and begins a new one in space.

A vast increase in tension and

suspicion accompanies the “arms race” which is in large measure due to US intransigence and

US war-fighting doctrines, new weapons systems, with built-in incentives for pre-emption, and
deliberate abandonment of arms control (see PR).

Such considerations, duly assembled,

demolish the received (but nonetheless crazy) theme that an alliance or alignment with USA

helps increase stability. American practices are to be resisted as much as Soviet.
6. The East-West balance argument: American alignment versus friendly
independence

The need for Australian alignment with the USA is supposed to be shown by the East-West

This politically-important balance argument, which shares key premisses
nr
with the related elitist argument, runs as follows :
balance argument.

7. Global stability is the key to world peace.
8. Stability of the international order is a matter of maintaining a global balance.
But
5. The global balance is constantly threatened by an expansionist USSR.
6A. The threat is [only] checked by the USA, which
(6A.1) guarantees an open and pluralistic international order.
9. Australia’s primary security concern, indeed most vital interest, is this stability.
Hence
10. Australia’s role is to help America maintain the balance.

The rest of Australia’s intervolvement with American military arrangements is then

taken to follow.

But there are many reasons for halting the argument before it reaches this

stage of practical (and allegedly moral) detail. The balance argument assumes much that has
already been rebutted, for instance that the Soviet threat thesis is correct (i.e. 5) and that US

17

policy is stabilizing (part of 6A).

It also takes for granted, what now is at least in serious

doubt, that American policy is directed at balance and deterrence, rather than what the
American administration appears to be aiming at, superiority. But in that event, Australia is

not really engaged in some longer term balancing feat, so much as in helping USA prevail in
nuclear race, contradicting the goal of world peace of premiss 7.

Contra 10. and its derivation.

The derivation is inadequate: it does not follow that

Australia’s role is such a lackey’s one.

If the balance of strength is leaning in America’s

direction, as most less-biassed evidence indicates, then Australia should surely be throwing its

slight weight in with the Eastern team (that is what such images as the balanced tug-of-war
would suggest).

Presumably premiss 6A.1 is designed to exclude this deplorable thought, of

Australia teaming up with totalitarians.

Nevertheless Australia should be putting its slight

weight where it is effective, given its own broader objectives, interests, principles and

supposedly pluralistic ideals.

There are several different roles Australia could fulfil which

would enable it to make a more satisfactory, less passive, contribution to world peace, among
them de-escalation through active nonalignment, appropriate aid, and so forth.
Thus 10 is hardly well-supported or evident. A more direct approach would be better

than throwing Australian weight unreflectively on one side of the balance.

As a little

reflection attests, the balance image and argument point not in the direction intended, but
towards nonalignment.
Contra 6A (and 6). The theme that US maintains the balance, and hence preserves the peace,
is of course false. For again, it takes two to tango. While it can be granted that the USA is

interlocked with and checks the USSR in this munitions dance, the history of the dance
reveals that the pace-escalation has flowed from the interaction of the one partner with the
other.

That is, but for the USA, the USA would not be required to check the USSR (the

interaction is two-way as with Hegel’s famous master-slave relation).
In any case, it looks as if, on a different historical trajectory, the main states of Western

Europe could match the Soviet Union militarily (for they have comparable combined GNP,
technological resources, etc.; cf. note 20) Thus it is doubtful that the current Soviet build-up,
produced in interaction with the USA, could only be, or have been, checked by the US.
ad 6A.1. As the premiss is only of marginal relevance to the argument, it is enough to observe
that the international order the USA helps maintain leaves very much to be desired.

In its

intervention, militarily, economically and indirectly, USA has assisted substantially in

reducing plurality and openness, is well as in establishing or propping up rotten regimes, etc.

The negative side of American imperialism as well-enough documented, if not widely enough
read or known by Americans themselves (cf. again Chomsky and Herman).

Only under

scandalously low redefinitions of ‘open’ and ‘pluralistic’ is the present “free” world order

18

either open or pluralistic.

ad 8, and the damaging equivocation on ‘the balance’.

While balance is one way of

maintaining stability in the world arrangements that have presently come to pass, the balance
structure can only carry so much loading.

Add too much weight (of arms tension, and so

forth) to both sides and the precarious structure will fail, probably catastrophically.
increasing probability of catastrophic breakdown, for a variety of reasons

The

(accident,

miscalculation, computer error, human interference, etc.), has been argued elsewhere (e.g.
WPI).

While a certain neither overloaded nor overstressed balance may serve for stability, the
present increasingly stressed balance will probably not.

The balance argument, however,

neglects this dynamical situation, illegitimately switching from a (certain post) balance in
premiss 8 to the (on-going) balance in subsequent premisses.

The balance argument itself

breaks down through equivocation. What the dynamic picture also indicates is the importance
of removing some weight from the balance, most obviously by arms limitation and tension

reduction. It points too to a different role for Australasia, to a less aligned position genuinely
directed at stability. It is to the emerging case for a different role for Australia, and to action

for achieving this different role, that the positive argument will now begin to swing.

The inadequate East-West balance argument is typically combined with attacks upon

proposals for a different role for Australia than American alliance and. service.
effect of these additions is to generate extra confusion and dust.

The main

For the additions are

inessential to the argument, and do not serve to repair it or reinforce it. For example, against
nonalignment or neutralism is set the alleged pervasiveness of nuclear winter. We might as

well be aligned (it’s good for trade and other economic perquisites), so it is sometimes argued

from up top, because if the central balance fails we are all dead. This is a conspicuous
nonsequitur^, worse than ex nihilo quodlibet (because it also suggests that balance is a

prerequisite for stability). But, in the main, the attack is irrelevant, because the point of

nonalignment is to help remove overload and to break down confrontation and its escalation
to war; it is a thing to do now, be fore winter descends, to delay or halt its descent, and most
important, to reduce its extent and severity.

Australia’s weight may be slight, another irrelevant addition goes, but psychologically it

is important for the West.

Any further spread of the “Kiwi disease” (from New Zealand)

would show the weakening of Western resolve, and give the green light for Soviet
expansionism.

Bell, a leading exponent of the balance argument, virtually gives the

impression that if Australia dropped out of American alignment, the Russians would be on the

road down through the isles to Australia tomorrow/

Much of this sort of rhetoric is

reminiscent of the baseless fear-mongering of an earlier pre-Vietnam time. The Russians have

no such military interests, or present capabilities. And if they were to gear up and set out,
they would be met by substantial resistance along most of the route, resistance obtaining
Western assistance. For America, for one, has major interests, different from Australia’s, in
both Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as elsewhere in East Asia.

The addition, so far

from strengthening the argument, depends, in its “green light for expansion” comparison, on
the previously faulted premiss 5 of Soviet expansionism.

In fact most of the further case for American alignment of one sort or another - when it
is argued-, often nonalignment and neutrality are simply denounced in good old-fashioned
authoritarian style - turns upon already-faulted assumptions.

Catley, for example, another

exponent of “central balance”, presents the following ‘consideration’:

... whatever the Swedes or Swiss may think about the matter, Australia is locked by
considerations of culture, economics, and political philosophy into the defence of the
Western world.

It has both an obligation and a duty to contribute its share to that defence if
necessary by hosting facilities which cannot easily be located elsewhere (p.15).
The premiss is false for reasons essentially indicated: and the premiss in no way sustains the

conclusion, the argument involving among other things, the prescriptive (is-ought) fallacy.
Consider the premiss. Australia is not, unless Catley has information withheld from most of
the rest of us, locked into Western nuclear defence, but in principle independent and free to

reconsider and rethink its options. (American use of the “facilities” is not irrevocable, and

shortly comes up, in principle at least, for reconsideration.)

How do culture, economics and

political philosophy provide locks and chains for Australia but not for nonaligned Western
European states? They do not:

Australia is not a part of USA or altogether a client state;

and the cultures, interests, economic frameworks and political philosophies of the two nations
are significantly different (for details, see CPD). But even if the ideological frameworks were
much more similar than they are, that would not entail similar defence practices (as, e.g.,
ANZUS in all its weakness shows), nor any such defence obligations.

Most of the arguments against nonalignment are of Catley calibre - or worse.

Fortunately, then, such arguments are examined in detail elsewhere, notably by D. Martin in
his examination of counter-arguments to Australian armed neutrality, the legally-recognised

non-belligerent form of nonalignment he favours.

Virtually none of Martin’s counter-case

depends for its success on features of neutrality, which is not advocated here. Virtually all of

Martin’s argument is moreover couched in negative form; his positive brief is very brief. It

20

reduces to this: alignment or alliance with the USA 'cannot make us secure against such
dangers as we may one day have to meet, while it needlessless exposes to other dangers,

including nuclear war (p.l, italics added). While the message is correct enough, and in need
of wide propagation, it does little on its own to support neutrality, and it by no means
exhausts the positive case for weakening alignment. In particular, there are more positive

arguments of much theoretical interest, to be drawn from systems theory and from the
burgeoning theory of collective goods and action.
7. Contributions towards stability: free-riding, enlarging group size, and
increasing variety.

The strategic world situation we now confront can be viewed as a game with more than 100

players, counting in nation-states and leaving out (for convenience) major organisations such

as the largest 100 transnational companies.

These organisational players align themselves

around two large poles, East and West, as indicated:
NON-ALIGNED
N
N

WEST

EAST

India

NATO States
Japan, Israel

Sweden*

Switzerland*

NZUS: Australi

I

Ireland1*

^Most Latin
' American States
I

Tanzania

Costa Rica**

State
capitalist

Key: N:
*:
**:

State
communist

Nuclear weapons states
Neutral states
Nonmilitary states

There are various - a great many - games these state players are playing, some of which are
practically important for peace and for stability. Some of these games, such as World Empire

and Chicken (already played under one representation), are played essentially between the

East-West superplayers.

There are several problems about East-West games: for instance,

what representation they have, the repeatability of the games (clearly some nuclear games

21

may, like Russian roulette, end after one round, as they will with the Big One), and the

negative sum characters of some games. And the monolithic East/monolithic West dichotomy

is misleading, and, as will appear, discards crucial detail (in the way simplifications may). So
game-theoretical modelling will be approached differently and more obliquely.

World Security, like regional and local security, is a collective good (technically, an
item, quality unspecified, in joint supply and precluding exclusion). That is not of course to
say that there are not conditions under which security may leave much to be desired, for

instance where security is guaranteed by a narrow and intolerant despotism; but then, so it
can be argued, the trouble lies with the provisioning, not the particular product.

collective good G for the collection of N nation-states.

It is a

It is, furthermore, a collective good

which permits the possibility of free-riding by nation-states. Looked at from this perspective
the recent American complaint about its allies, Japan for example, and their insufficient
expenditure on defence, is a complaint about their free-riding.

Within the balance of power framework the conditions for free-riding are satisfied, for

instance by unaligned and unilaterally disarming states. For
1. G is available to all N members of the collective if it is available to any, and the
achievement (or maintenance) of G by any will make every member better off.

2. G is achieved iff some number m (no larger than that of group K) contribute towards its
provision, where under the balance of power assumption

Il C K C N and II = {USA, USSR}.
3. The expected value of contributing to G or its maintenance is less than the expected value

of not doing so, i.e. likely costs of contribution exceed likely benefits - except perhaps for
members of II given that G is largely provided by II.

There is what can be called a pegged (or asymmetric) free-rider problem, pegged by members

of II for whom the free-rider option is not open - within the confines of the balance of power
assumption - and for whom condition 3 is only satisfied under certain ways of looking at the
matter (e.g. there will be a war 10 years down the road so the expected costs each year exceed

the expected benefits).

For most members of N, by contrast, the benefits of G are available

even should they reduce their contributions.

There is a straightforward case (in narrow game-theoretical terms) for recommending
Australian, and regional, free-riding on the balance of power provision of G. Some arguments,

beyond or adding to those already in effect presented, are these:- Either stability breaks down

catastrophically and there is a large-scale war or it does not. If it does then the region is

22

better off than it would be if (strongly) aligned because it is unlikely to be (so heavily)

targetted. (Here the dreadful new argument that nuclear winter means that the Antipodes
might as well be involved gets challenged and rejected: as to how see e.g. MF and B. Martin).
If, alternatively, stability doesn’t break down then the region has the benefits in any case,

without the costs. For there is no clear evidence that our alignment and cooperation with the
USA enhances global stability, etc.; indeed, as remarked and will be further argued, the
evidence points to the contrary. As regards Australasian regional weight in the Western block,

do we seriously believe it is significant? That the Australian voice, though useful for
propaganda purposes, makes much real difference in the halls of Northern power? We
shouldn’t: and if we do we’re living in a delusional framework. Australia has been left out of
the picture in virtually all major strategic planning exercises, most difference-making peace

initiatives, etc.,etc.

Now Eastern block countries would hardly object to Antipodean free-riding, rather than
no
offering support (however trifling), comfort and incitement to their opposition/ Furthermore

free-riding is how the Americans, on their theoretical principles, would expect Australia to
act, the rational self-interested procedure (see CPD). It is how lesser nations should act. For

it is economically rational; contributing is not. But won’t the US make things economically

dear for Australia? In threats and theory, yes; but in practice, no more than it has already
done with subsidized wheat deals to the Soviets, no more than it threatened to do already in
the case of New Zealand over the nuclear-ships issue. For except for short term aberrations,
America will never give up trade or business arrangements: one gets the impressions that
America would trade with the Devil Himself, if doing so would open some new markets in
Hell.

Despite its political stigma, free-riding need be no problem, or in any way immoral or
irregular. Perhaps the buses are free; perhaps there is a voluntary payment system, to which

only some need contribute, etc.

With the nuclear fix, free-riding is indeed the moral course;

contributing is not.29 Free-riding, though often protrayed as a problem, is only a problem in

certain cases of collective provisioning, where the good involved is sufficiently desirable and

will not be provided because of too many free- riders.

This is not the situation with global

security, which will be provided, in the curious and precarious way that it is, whether or not

Australia stays on the escalating treadmill or gets off and rides free.

Australia's free-riding

may be a problem for America; it is not for Australia. Interests diverge again.

What is more, judicious free-riding can increase stability.

In pictorial terms, the

stability of a structure is typically increased up to a certain point by securing it more

23

adequately; for example, if it is a wind tower or similar building, by increasing its rigid ties or

supports to the ground. Then a tripod (or better still a quadrapod) tower is much less likely

to topple than a bipedal one, and requires less guying to stay up. Increasing the diversity, or
variety, of supports increases stability. The theme that diversity correlates with stability has

been sharpened and confirmed in ecology, for instance in the theory of “spreading the risks”

(see EW). The related theme, that a certain variety increases stability, has been elaborated
in cybernetics.

The core eco-systemic idea to be developed is that Australia’s free-riding in

defence, and consequent nonalignment, could help to enhance diversity and variety, and

accordingly to increase stability (especially if done in concert with other client and suppliant

states).

Two interlocked supports in tension, East and West, well dug in but hardly well guyed,

are inadequate for the long-term stability of the precarious structure of world peace.

What

makes engineering sense is not however adding weight to the structure, or even strengthening

the supports that are there, helping the East when the balance is disturbed by the more

powerful West’s surging ahead and likely overburdening the structure. What makes more
sense is increasing the variety of supports, enlarging and diversifying group size, as significant

independent grouping could do.

The monolithic East/monolithic West picture is much more than a convenient
simplification, for instance for strategic thinking.

It may force damaging mistakes in

conceptualisation, mzsconceptualisation perhaps convenient for some larger players.

One

main reason for mistakes concerns group size. Whereas 11+ = {West, East} is a small group,
the number N of nation-states is not, but is considerably larger. But the collective behaviour

of large groups differs in theory from that of small groups; group size is a highly significant

factor (though its precise import remains contentious).

The group N of nation-states is a large group, of essentially self-interested parties,
indeed of substantially economic actors.

collective action applies:

So we may expect that the American theory of

that the groups will behave in a counterintuitive way.

Though

expected to act in the common interest, to obtain security in particular, the collection will

not. On this account (that elaborated by Olson), the common interest can only be guaranteed
by outside influence or imposition (coercion in Olson’s rapid thinking).

But with the

collective of nations, there is, as experience has shown, no outside mediator or influence of
sufficient authority to ensure attainment of the collective good.

The prognosis looks very

gloomy: this most important (though far from unique) collective good will not be provided.

Fortunately the reasoning, like much of the “logic” of collective action, has been too

21

swift.

The group, though large, is highly privileged, in containing several actors for whom

costs of war exceed benefits (note the shift in perspective from the earlier free-riding condition
3).

Indeed an important economic effect of the knowledge of an ominous nuclear winter is

that virtually all actors involved should now be in that position; for (subjectively) expected

costs of nuclear war have become very high.

To go back to basics, Olson's grand theory is

based on the accountants’ tautology (defining ‘net’)
net agent benefit = gross agent benefits - gross agent costs, i.e. in symbols, for each agent or
o
actor i (in collective N), A- = V-Cj. A group is privileged if Aj is positive for some i in N. It

needs little argument to show that for vulnerable European nation-states the net benefits of
global security are decidedly positive (e.g. with a nuclear war their respective future GDPs
would expectedly fall to near zero). The fact that the group of nation-states is privileged does

not however imply that the collective good involved, security, will be supplied, particularly in
the longer term. The simple logic is not dynamic; it takes no account of mistake, error, or the

like, or of stability achieved through superiority or intermediate instability. An improved
modelling - which can take some account of group size and of the dynamics, through iterated

games - is gained by returning to game-theoretic grounds.

A free rider “problem” is tantamount to a dilemma of some sort; according to the
conventional wisdom, it is a prisoners’ dilemma (cf.

Pettit, but contrast Taylor and Ward).

The argument can go this way:- a free rider problem or issue is defined in terms of the

provisioning of a collective good; but the theory of collective goods is equivalent to that of a
.QI,
generalised prisoners’ dilemma.
Certainly the global nuclear situation appears to present a
dilemma; as much is a commonplace claim. Elsewhere (e.g. WPI) it is argued in detail that it
does indeed present a moral dilemma.

Here the argument - which can proceed through the

theoretical route just sketched above or in the more piecemeal way to be indicated - is that it
is also a prudential dilemma (for many members of N).°2

Consider first, since these have obtained some investigation (e.g. Hardin), the range of
apparent two party games being played by the US and Soviet Union administration (labelled

US and SU respectively) in 1985 as regards the moves of further nuclear armament, A, or
nuclear disarmament, N. (It is supposed, naturally, that the game is set in some background

context, e.g. nuclear disarmament is not considered in isolation from on-going French and
Chinese nuclear armament).

It is important here, as other places, to distinguish the

administration - which for the most part calls the shots - from the society and the people. It
is administrations or governments that generally take people into war; etc.

The American

people seem rather more inclined towards nuclear de-escalation than their administration; the

German people were clearly opposed to the new nuclear missiles their administration
proceeded to install.

The strategy games involved are then administration games, which we

25

can suppose to be played over successive time intervals, e.g. years; so there is interaction and
feedback as the games go on - until the Big Ones explode.

Within this simplistic setting, the apparent games being played by US and SU are those

diagrammed next:

New Initial game

Prisoners’ Dilemma Game

SU

SU
D
US
A

Revised Game

D
2,2

A
4,1

1,4

3,3

D
US
A

SU

D
3,2

A
4,1

1,4

2,3

D
US
A

D
3,3

A
4,1

1,4

2,2

According to Hardin, ‘giving evidence of [his] deformation professionelle’, the Prisoners’
Dilemma (PD) ‘represents the preference ordering of virtually all the articulate policy

analysts in the United States and presumably also in the Soviet Union’ (p.248). While PD
may have represented US policy, there is considerable evidence (as already indicated) that it

no longer does, that the US administration has shifted to a more aggressive, war-fighting,
phase.

That is, the US has interchanged its rankings of (D,D) and (A,A), presumably some

time between 1978 and 1984 games. The Soviets, who have been much more consistent (and

no doubt better censored) in their policy pronouncements, appear not to have changed their
game, but have stuck with their form of deterrence and no-first-strike.

However they are

bound to try to keep up with the Americans, and so are presumably pushed towards the

Revised Game shown, which pleasantly restores symmetry.

Stable or equilibrium outcomes for each game are circled.

An outcome is said to be

stable if neither player has incentive to switch strategies unilaterally on the strength of the
game, i.e. to alter the outcome except by influencing the other player also to alter strategies.
All these games provide dilemmas, in a broad sense, that equilibrium is achieved in an
undesirable and dangerous outcome.

In all the apparent games, arming is the dominant

strategy for each player; yet in the PD game that is even Pareto-suboptimal, whence the

economic fascination.

But as the other games deliver results which are socially suboptimal

(and below a satisfying threshold), all these games are dilemmas.

And the same applies to

suggested alternative games that might plausibly be taken to represent the superpower

situation, and such as Chicken.

A recognisably suboptimal outcome is guaranteed by the

independent ‘‘stable” strategies. What is worse, iteration of games does not help (as it may in

other political circumstances). For there are substantial political and military incentives for
the superpower players not to adjust their preferences substantially in socially superior

directions after repeated games, but to do what the US at least appears to have done, to make
the situation worse.

26

It is important then to attempt to modify or curtail these self-interested superpower

games.

There are various connected ways of going about this.

One is for other parties to

combine to limit or discourage these games. Another alternative is for them to try to alter the
games. Thus much socially preferable would be a switch to a coordination game of some sort;
for instance, to the game which neutrals tend to play (and which Lackey, in contrast to other

more bellicose utilitarians, sees utilitarian superpowers playing; hence Hardin’s provocative

label for this game, ‘Lackey’s game’). In the coordination game diagrammed, WN represents
a western-inclined neutral and EN an Eastern inclined neutral (e.g. Yugoslavia):

EN

WN

D

D
1,1

A
3,2

A

2,3

4,4

[Other coordination games, with
(D,D) assigned (1,1)]

Now the dilemmatic and coordination games are not played in isolation; they come
together in international settings such as United Nations’ committees (and elsewhere, since
coordination games are frequently peoples’ games as well).

Superimposing the games, with

coordination games of the first sort applied to previously given US and SU games, leads to the
following augmented East (E) and West (W) games:

New
Game, Augmented

Prisoners’ Dilemma
Augmented

E

E

A

D

Revised
Game, Augmented

A
4,1

2,2 :

*4,1' \

: 3^2 ’

D 1
:
W .........
1,4:
A
2/3:

2/3;

D ; 1
w ........
: 1,4

3,3 ;

a
4

;

E

D

2/3

• • — •-

: 3-3’**:
D ; 1
W

I

2,3

; .

• 2.3

A

D

2/3
2,2

a
4

■ 4,1*

! . ;
: 2/3 J

4

Key: rh represents a sequence of ms, i.e. m, m, m ... for each coordination player; 2/3 a

sequence of 2s and 3s in some order.

As augmenting games reveals, to play with a superpower is to help reinforce a stable
deadlock.

But playing an independent coordination game increases variety and can help in

breaking the deadlock, in fact in several ways. For one, enough significant players playing a

coordination game can alter the overall dominant strategy towards disarmament.

For

another, much more pressure can be brought to bear on the superpowers. For example, with
less support, unilateral action by the US administration on Star-Wars and arms build-up can

be exposed.

Superpower

militarism and

power excursions would stand

naked

and

27

unsupported.

Australia’s impact, in particular, would be rather greater as a nonaligned

free-rider pressing seriously for disarmament and regional nuclear-freedom (instead of, as at
present, white-wash polemics and token ambassadors, undermined by a none-too-tacit policy
of US support).

The strategy suggested by game-theoretic modelling converges then with that suggested
by other approaches, notably regional and ecological approaches.

The strategy is that of

limitation, of disengagement from escalating US/USSR war games, and progressive alteration
of their likely outcomes by defusing coordination moves.

In more practical terms, the

approaches mean trying to limit and modify superpower games by restricting their games and
supporting regional or local coordination of players, in forms of organisations both of nations

and of people. Such organisations would work, as many have already been doing, to contract

the regions and spheres of influence and access of US and USSR military administrations, and

to diminish support for their war-fighting objectives.

For example, Antipodean groups could, and should, coordinate to ease the American
military out of the South Pacific region, meanwhile resisting any intrusion of Russian
military. Then, while the Europeans are doing their coordinated de-escalating, denuclearising

things right across Europe, the Russian and American war games are progressively excluded
from the entire Southern Hemisphere. An eventual aim geographically is, to send their
weapons of war back home, to restrict their (and French and other) global military enterprises

to their “own” backyards, where they would not always be so enthusiastically received.

Fortunately such an ambitious and optimistic project, so unlikely to come to pass given
present nation-state arrangments, can be accomplished piecemeal, from small and significant

beginnings, already to be seen.

As a result of recent movements in the region, a South Pacific nuclear-free region is now

a politically-achievable option. A first token step has already been taken. But next steps,
towards genuine nuclear-freedom, require above all cooperation of a less aligned Australia,
joining other disengaging “free-riders” in the region.

That in turn requires, as a practical

component, closure of American bases in Australia as their leases terminate, cessation of

American nuclear ship visits and aircraft staging, and an end to uranium mining and sales.
As Australia is the only country in the region supplying uranium, and the main location of US

bases, such steps would be most significant. Even so, the Pacific regional effect would remain
unduly limited, so long as France and the US are based within the region, and transit of

nuclear ships is internationally sanctioned everywhere on the shrinking high seas.

Plainly

there are further more difficult steps on the way to southern Pacific nuclear-freedom and

independence, i.e. even for one of the easier oceanic regions.

But there is no good reason to

28

expect that removing the nuclear scourge, any more than eliminating other major politico­

social evils, will be easy.

Permanent removal and a less dubious “peace” than we presently

enjoy is not something that will be achieved by more of what we have witnessed, or even

through clever diplomacy and smart technological tricks, such as new defensive weapons; it
will take difficult structural and radical design change.

8. On the need for, possibility of, and prospect of appropriate structural
change.
There is little doubt that certain sorts of structural political change would be highly

conducive to peace (e.g. democratic reorganisation of the superpowers), and that certain
fundamental changes may even be sufficient for permanent peace.

With that in view they

have long been advocated - at least from Rousseau and Kant onwards.

But it has also been

supposed that some such changes are necessary for lasting peace; ‘it is also necessary to

transform the structures that lead to war’ (B. Martin, p.12). To render this theme immune to
obvious criticisms - for example, that straightforward authoritarian extension of certain
established structures could bring an end to war - further desiderata, typically presupposed,

are invoked, for instance that certain freedoms, modest material standards of life, and so on,

are duly guaranteed, and also the type of necessity involved is wound back to some lower

technical level (not excluded however by present practicalities). These adjustments make the
necessity theme more difficult to assess, but also more difficult to sustain.

There are two parts to its assessment and defence, a negative and critical part,
demolishing a range of arguments from determinism, human nature, and the like, to the effect

that arrangements have to be more or less the way they are, and a positive part, comprising
direct arguments for the theme.

The large negative part of this enterprise will simply be

illustrated.34

According to deterministic and mechanistic approaches, such as that of (marxist)
technological determinism, nuclear weapons, like megamachines generally, are no aberration.
They are an integral part of the business of industrial and ecological conquest, a further stage
in human intervention which has already involved substantial disruption through pesticides,

wastes, etc. The argument tends to the fatalistic. The megamachines of conquest are made,
and once made they will be used. No change in political arrangement, which would make any
difference, is possible. Sometimes technological enthusiasts push their position and luck, even

further, that a weapon or device once invented by humans will be used: there is no stopping
progress.

But in doing so they overextend themselves.

While there is, sadly a fair induction

from the manufacture of weapons (of any given type, for many batches are never deployed) to

their use, inductions from invention of machines or the like to their manufacture are

c

29

unreliable and subject to many counterexamples (and many machines that do eventually get

made have been reinvented or independently rediscovered).

But even the good inductions do

not show that weapons of various sorts must be used, that a change in background political
organisation would not frustrate the inductions.

The broader deterministic position is of

course that such background changes are not possible either; political arrangements too, like
the rest of social life, are technologically or economically determined.

But (nonanalytical)

determinism, technological and other, is false, so it is argued elsewhere (JB, CPD). Different
political arrangements, which alleviate problems, are technically possible, and arrangements

would be different in differently evolved worlds. Things did not and do not have to be the way

they are, or the social and political sort of way they are.

Many routes, none of deductive strength, lead to the conclusion that the dominant

political structures of our time, fashioned

(with

much input from schemes of past

philosophers) from feudal institutions, require extensive structural alteration.

In particular,

they need to be superseded by alternative structures less intricately tied to war, which do not

promote or lead so readily to war. Such a theme has been argued directly from the nuclear fix

itself (as e.g. WP1, p.47ff.).

But suppose, improbable as it may seem, that nuclear weapons

all vanished, thereby removing the current nuclear fix; for instance, they turned out to be

quietly

self-destructing,

or

a

disarmament actually took place.

massive

thermodynamic

miracle

occurred,

or

nuclear

The problem of war would not be thereby removed, and

even that of nuclear war would only be given some respite. For the structural arrangements

for war would remain intact.04 Conventional weapons would remain, along with weapons
perhaps as dangerous as nuclear weapons, such as chemical and biological ones.

Nuclear

weapons, insofar as they were removed (for small caches are easily hidden away), could soon

be replaced, especially if nuclear power plants remained intact; and nothing would prevent the

development of (Star-Wars) weapons more diabolical than nuclear ones.

War cannot be eliminated while leaving the rest of society as it is - by freezing the
status quo. ... The structural conditions for war need to be removed - not reinforced
as appeals to elites may do - and superseded by alternative structures which do not
lead to war (B. Martin, p.12: Martin goes on to indicate the types of structures, and
how to reach them).

Structural adjustments can provide conditions for lasting satisfactory peace. An initial,
somewhat simplistic, Kantian argument for the proposition that peace is possible (presented

by Latta, introducing Permanent Peace), runs as follows:-

Peace, perpetual peace, is an ideal, not merely of a speculative kind but a practical
idea, a moral principle. Hence this ideal ought to be realised, i.e. there ought
(morally) to be peace. But ought entails can; therefore peace is possible.

30

From Heracleit.us through Hegel there buzzes an impressive swarm of philosophers"*6 who have
rejected the second premiss. Some are even captivated by such extravagant counter-claims as

that with peace everything would stop, that competition, with war as one limit, is essential to
motion and progress!

would

now

be

With the recent shift in philosophical fashions, the second premiss

more widely

conceded,

though

often

not

on

Kantian

grounds,

but

consequentialist. Such grounds to support the theme that peace is desirable and ought to be

realised, but are more discriminating in that they help indicate what sort of peace.
Unfortunately, however it is done, the second premiss does not sustain the conclusion, ought

does not entail can, as many moral dilemmas reveal (see MD, WP1).

So fortunately, there is a more satisfactory and revealing route to the conclusion that

peace is possible, and indeed is feasible. That is the more elaborate method of (semantical)
modelling: present in detail scenarios of societies where peace persists (for the sceptical it may

be necessary to recall n-human models, with n small). This sort of thing is of course already
done, in more pleasing fashion than logicians could hope to emulate, if rather less precisely, by
OQ
novelists and science-fiction writers, and by activists like the different Martins.
What all

these scenarios point to, however, are societies considerably different from our own - though
not in the people involved, who have their weaknesses, their power drives, and so forth, but

because of significant structural alterations in the societies depicted.

By way of such modellings we can not merely argue to the feasibility of lasting peace,
but push ahead with the argument, that societies of these restructured sorts are desirable
alternatives to contemporary military- industrial arrangements.

For those of us then who

want to move towards such pacific alternatives, the practical inference, from feasibility and

desirability is clear: we should begin on the real work of structural change.

Peace is possible and desirable, but the prospects are poor (as Heilbroner has said of the
human prospect).

Present arrangements, though contingent and fashioned in large measure

from the schemes of past intellectuals, are thoroughly entrenched, and enforced, both
ideologically and by much physical power, often as if along with natural law they were God­
given, though they are no longer appropriate. Even small nonstructural changes look difficult

to achieve in present political climates. Through climates have not changed that much, major

social improvements have been gained, not instantanously, but in longer-term struggles with
government. Such short-term difficulties did not deter social theorists such as Kant, who like

Rousseau before him and many after him, were concerned with obtaining lasting peace.

The world has changed enormously since the time of Kant’s proposals for peace (of
1795), and even since the time of Veblen’s more cynical additions (in 1917). Hard science and

31

destructive power have grown enormously; and even theoretical knowledge of collective

behaviour, especially that admitting of game-theoretic treatment, though still slight, has
advanced.

But political arrangements and what can be accomplished politically have, in

important respects, changed very little, since Rousseau complained (around 1761) that
governments were probably too short-sighted to appreciate the merits of his project for

perpetual peace.

Governments have long been, and been seen as, main obstacles to peace. Thus Veblen

rightly maintained that ‘... if the peace is to be kept it will have to come about irrespective of
governmental management, - in spite of the State rather than by its good offices’ (p.7).^^ So

it has been with most major social changes; for they have involved structural political change

disturbing to governmental conservatism.

In his search for the indispensible conditions for lasting peace, Kant claimed, as others

have claimed since, that peace is not possible under present structural arrangements of an

unregulated competing nation-state kind.

As times have changed, so, to a limited extent,

have state structural arrangements, since Kant compiled his conditions. In particular, there is

now, in the shape of the United Nations, a very weak reflection of what Kant looks for, a
world (or European!) federation of nations.

But crucial ingredients in Kant’s resolution are

still lacking:- namely, at the upper level, what is required for a standard resolution of

Prisoners Dilemma type situations - some surrender of national sovereignty, especially as

regards war,

and, at the lower level, “republican” states.

Major blockages to adequate

arrangements for peace remain at two critical levels of organisation, that concentrated upon
of the organisation of collectives of states and, in part by devolution, that of the internal

organisation of individual states themselves.

Much evidence has now accumulated that more far-reaching changes than Kant,

Rousseau and Veblen envisaged are required at both international and nation-state levels if
genuine peace is to be secured. Indeed significant changes are wanted even in republician
states for peace movements to get their mixed message through already fixed channels to state
control systems.

For this sort of reason, movements on a single front, such as peace, are

unlikely to succeed on their own, but should be linked into a broader plurality of movements,

which seek to widen informational and democratic channels, and to alter the character and
membership of state systems, and thereby render them much more controllable and

accountable.40

Many longer-haul structural changes depend upon diverting nuclear war in the

meantime. Thus arguing for more far-reaching changes, for an altered nonaligned Australia,

32

for a nuclear-free South Pacific, for regional structural changes, certainly does not exclude
arguing and working for obvious measures for reducing risks of nuclear war. These include: a

serious commitment to arms control by the superpowers (whose practices threaten our
futures, though most of us lack representation in either); a move away from war-fighting

strategies and associated destabilising weapons-systems;

moderation

of confrontational

rhetoric and other tensions-inducing practices by superpower administrations, and improved
efforts at mutual understanding (as well some appreciation of the elements of political

pluralism); and then, remote though it may appear, significant steps towards nuclear
disarmament.

Richard Sylvan 41
Bungendore NSW

33

NOTES

1.

Queensland premier, with destructive deep-South policies.

2.

The point, which has become controversial, is argued in effect in Gilbert.

3.

See especially Dibb, as reported in the ANU Reporter, and for a more guarded
elaboration, his IAD (e.g. p.163 ‘At present, planning for the defence of Australia lack
coherence because there is no clear definition, in priority order, of what needs
defending’); see also Sharp, p.l48ff and differently Langtry and Ball, p.575ff., p.6O5ff.
The much-heralded Dibb Review of mid-1986 would, if (as already seems unlikely) it
were adopted, remove some of the lesser incoherence in Australian policy, that involving
details of regional defensive defence (as would also Langtry and Ball, if followed
through).
While Dibb appears to have demolished what he refers to scathingly as the ‘largely
mythical “core force” concept’, a new controversy has sprung up over whether
Australia’s more self-reliant defence should be purely defensive defence, Dibb’s ill-named
‘strategy of denial’, or whether it should include an offensive component. Dibb himself
has rather rapidly shifted ground on this important issue.
In late 1983 he was
contending that ‘Australia should have in the force-in-being significant deterrent
capabilities, based on present air and naval strike assets, which can mount defensive and
offensive operations against attacking forces, their staging bases and lines of resupply’
(IAP, p.166). But in the otherwise conservative Review of 1986 such offensive defence is
abandoned; no such forces and equipment for offensive off-shore operations are
recommended. Instead ‘the review proposes a layered strategy of defence within our
area of direct military interest. Our most important defence planning concern is to
ensure that an enemy would have substantial difficulty in crossing the sea and air gap’.
The new offensive/defensive defence controversy puts the Review’s adoption in
increasing doubt - in which event the local incoherence in strategic planning processes
and militational difficulties Dibb alludes to early in his statement will presumably
persist.

The Review not merely fails to address significant regional issues, as to defence
priorities, and as to multiple purpose roles for Australian armed forces given that they
will be involved in virtually no military activity other than maintenance and a certain
“preparedness” (for on Dibb’s overstatement of the prevailing view of Australia’s very
favourable regional security prospects, ‘there is no conceivable prospect of any power
contemplating invasion of our continent and subjugation of our population’). But
further, the Review is itself vague to incoherent, concerning wider defence issues, vague
as to the post-ANZUS situation, and incoherent about Australia’s role in US global
“defence” activity.
According the Dibb (CT, p.16), ‘there is no requirement for
Australia to become involved in United States contingency planning for global war. The
presence of the joint facilities, together with the access that we provide to visits by
United States warships and the staging through of Australia of B-52 bombers, are a
sufficient tangible contribution to the Alliance.’
These contributions are not
involvement? That is not how the USSR views the matter: they are the reported sole

34

basis of USSR nuclear targetting of Australia (see Dibb. SS p.13).
global stance is left essentially to the USA.

And Australia's

Amazingly, in the Strategic Basis Papers (SB), Australia criticizes New Zealand because
‘it has still developed no policy for national defence and tends to look to ... the US as its
primary source of defence guidance’ (p.29). Note that C3I abbreviates the mouthful,
Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence.

4.

See Sharp, p.l46ff. An Australian policy should moreover fit with the genuine needs
and shared aspirations of local people - to the extent, presumably, that these are
commendable; again the presupposed value framework is critical.

5.

Thus e.g. Gray (p.17) on the Reagan Administration’s ‘foolhardy brief willingness to
talk publicly about nuclear strategy’, and his distain for public involvement or input.
There is some concern, especially among neo-conservatives, about US defence strategies
being ‘undermined by well-meaning persons who believe they are helping the cause of
peace’ (Bell p.10; similarly Gray).
Even those not so far right support partial
information releases which maintain public confidence; e.g. Dibb on ‘the release of a
generalised statement about ;the] functions of the US bases in Australia ... to give
Australians more confidence about their crucial contribution to the Allied cause’ (ISA,
p.166). ‘Our defence policy-making process is probably more “closed” than that of any
other advanced Western democracy’ according to Langtry and Ball (p.608), who
contend that ‘the public needs to be involved much more in our defence planning and
operations'.
For a justified critique of public exclusion and leave-it-to-the-experts
approaches, see B. Martin; also Sharp.

6.

The paper was drafted in mid-1985.

7.

For those amassing evidence that Australia falls into the inexact class of client states,
the following Australian contribution is noteworthy: ‘The US prefers to act as a
member of a group, and a contribution by Australia can also assist in demonstrating to
Congressional and public opinion that the objectives sought are significant enough to
attract allied support’ (SB, p.28)

8.

As to DI and arms control, see, e.g. Mack PR and Gray. As to D2, ‘USA has now an
announced first-strike nuclear targeting policy’ technologically reinforced, Hayes, p.4;
and see also Mack AC, p.111. The goal of the Reagan administration is superiority (a
conveniently ambiguous term). Thus e.g. Gray (p.32): ‘it is of course essential that the
United States modernize its offensive forces so as to render the Soviet Union genuinely
offensive-counterforce incompetent.’

9.

On the major changes in American policy, see e.g. Gray p.118 ff. Though America is
now said to have a ‘new national security concept of which SDI is the centerpiece’ it
may still lack an ‘arms control policy’ (Gray, p.25,pll). Not only arms control, but
American commitment to the security of allies, remain at least decidedly cloudy
matters. Thus it is of little avail to contend that Australia does have a coherent secondorder global policy, namely the (discreditable) one of following prevailing American
policy. For the US lacks a first-order policy which is sufficiently clear in relevant
respects.

The American direction of Australian policy had better be away from too much public
exposure because Australians, no more than New Zealanders, mostly do not like being
pushed around, even by Americans.

35

10.

Thus we can avoid the important debate as to whether, and to what extent, deterrence
remains part of US global “defence” policy (though it certainly remains part of the
policy sold to the American public). As to the philosophical significance of the debate,
see Gay, p.l29ff. and Benn.

11.

The common-interest theme is often traced to (partly self-interested) American action in
the Pacific in World War II. Curiously Australia’s interests are are now said also to
converge with those of Japan, but to be diametrically opposed to those of the USSR
(despite increasing trade).

12.

Nor, though this is a longer story, does Australian culture by any means coincide with
American: see CPD. Thus a uniform treatment is entirely inappropriate. Similarly, a
single overarching treatment for a monolithic West is thoroughly inadequate: see further
below in the text.

13.

Australian planning should be looking at strategic models (game-theoretic and other)
which include Australia. For, as argued below, abandoning the uniformity assumption
of the monolithic West, of the West as one parish, makes significant differences to the
results yielded.

14.

As Cock goes on: ‘These basic issues increasingly become lost in the array of consumer
choices’.

15.

‘The serf societies - more or less willingly - accept the status of “allies”, i.e. protection
with rights and duties as in feudal societies. They become client countries’ (Galtung,
p.169).

16.

So-called by Mack PC. But the formulation presented follows G. Davidson’s more
satisfactory account in Canberra Times, Wednesday, May 8, 1985, p.2. Mack considers
that what amounts to the elitist case is the ‘altogether more sophisticated argument
[which] holds sway ... in government’ (p.l, italics added)!

17.

The “Asian hordes” derive from one of the less spoken about successors to the Yellow
Peril, from the immediate past days of the Asian communist threat, the Domino theory,
and White Australia.

18.

As Stephenson argued, less fortunately, 20 years ago. Even when around World War II
Japan, did have interest in access to strategic raw materials, the Japanese High
Command decided against invading Australia because of the difficulty of dealing with
the people - a point of much importance.

19.

Of course, such military expenditure is also encouraged by economic forces, e.g. like
much Third World hard currency expenditure it helps the American economy along a
bit.

20.

Heilbroner has traced some of the economic components and consequences of what, with
excess exaggeration and insufficient irony, he calls ‘the rise and subsequent fall of the
American imperium’ (p.52): it hasn’t fallen that far yet. ‘Empires have always been
expensive and the American empire was no exception. ... The sheer military cost ... for
the United States alone ... is roughly ten percent of ... GNP for the last 25 years ($2 x
10) in 1972 dollars)’. American imperial spending supplemented by other capitalist
countries fueled inflation, enhanced poverty, etc., and was complements by, what it was
represented as required by, counterexpenditure and efforts by the USSR.

36

‘The establishment of an American hegemony [consisted and: resulted not just in very
large military expenditures, but in the rapid build-up of American capital investments
abroad. Between 1950 and 1970, the value of American-owned plant and equipment
abroad leaped from $12 billion to $78 billion’ (p.54). A result of the expenditure abroad
was a serious balance of payments problem (negative “capital flows” and balances), and
a growing accumulation of IOUs. On this sort of basis, Heilbroner speculates that ‘the
mere operations of the American imperium by itself - deemed of such critical importance
to preserve the peace and security of the capitalist world - was in all likelihood a
sufficient condition for the globalisation of the inflationary phenomena’ (p.57 with insert
from p.56).

According to Heilbroner, ‘Long before the Vietnam debacle, it was clear that American
arms could not prevent the rise of revolutionary governments in the under-developed
world’ (p.57). But really very little evidence of collapse is presented by Heilbroner; and
seemingly there is little. What there is more substantial evidence for is the marked
decline of the American imperium in the period (1973-8) concerned. One piece of
evidence is the sharp decline in America’s share of World GDP, shown in the following
table of select leading national economies:

SHARE OF WORLD GDP (%)

POPULATION
SHARE

COUNTRY

RANK

1968

1975

1984

(1984 est)

USA

1

35.0

24.3

25.0

5.2

USSR

2

11.1

11.0

13.8

6.2

JAPAN

3

5.2

8.0

9.5

2.7

GERMANY FDR

4

5.1

6.7

5.7

1.5

FRANCE

5

4.6

5.4

CHINA

6

2.9

4.8

4.3

22.6

UK

8

2.8

2.8

2.3

1.3

4.4

1.3

INDIA

12

1.3

1.5

1.1

15.1

AUSTRALIA

15

1.1

1.4

1.0

0.3

37

The table should also make it clear that if the USA cannot sustain a grand empire, nor
can the USSR. A totalitarian Pax Sovietica is even less likely than a capitalistic Pax
American was.
21.

Although, so the documents continue, ‘neighbourhood contingencies .... are at present
assessed as impossible’!
The theme that the USA affords no sure guarantee of Australian defence is reiterated in
Langtry and Bell, e.g. p.608. They go on there to outline the major points that reliance
upon the US has distorted Australian arrangements (with forces better equipped to fight
alongside the Americans in Asia than on their own in defending Australia) and has led
to neglect of the regional priorities, ‘to defence planning which at least would recently
paid little attention to the direct defence of our continent and the protection of our
remote communities’ (p.608).

22.

The French, who operate a global network second only to the Americans and more
extensive than the Russians, with many forces in the Pacific region, have never been
seriously considered. Yet in certain significant respects French social and cultural
arrangements are closer to Antipodean ones than American arrangements are. In these
days of technological warfare, the post-Waterloo loss record of the French should not be
given too much weight; we don’t after all look very hard at the American record of
defeats and incompetence. Etc.

23.

If Australia is not likely to be threatened there is no real deterrence advantage because
nothing to deter. Other advantages of the ANZUS alliance such as access to high-level
intelligence are not only dubious (see PC, D. Martin), but not always guaranteed by the
alliance as the blackout of New Zealand shows.

24.

Soviet activity is undoubtedly perceived rather differently by American administrations
than Antipodean ones. ‘An agressive, treacherous, ruthlessly self-interested, expansionist
increasingly powerful, and hence increasingly threatening state - that is the image of the
Soviet Union in America.
It is the image which has legitimised the strategic
modernation and Star Wars programs’ (to adopt Mack ST, pl). To see that this is
indeed the intellectually shoddy route by which these grand and dangerous programs are
justified, it is enough to work through fundamentalist sources, such as Gray. It is
almost as if Americans had projected some of their own occasionally-manifested worst
features into the giant enemy.

25.

After some considerable reconstruction, that is. For the argument, curiously referred as
that of “central balance” in newspaper-level publications of academics (e.g. Catley,
Bell), is never presented in requisite detail - which is one reason why it has proved hard
to criticise and refute.

26.

As well both the premiss and its usual substitutes are false (see MF). The type of
argument exhibited is a good example of prevalent Australian consequentialist thinking.
A parallel argument, enjoying unwarranted popularity, runs: We might as well sell
uranium (e.g. to France), because if we don’t someone else will - as if motives counted
morally for nothing.

27.

See also the discussion of Bell’s claims in D. Martin and in Mack PC.

28.

Since the New Zealand restrictions on nuclear ships, ‘the Soviet media has been full of
gloating references to the prospect of the collapse of the ANZUS treaty’ according to
Dibb (SS, p.14). Given the unimportance of the Antipodes to Soviet interests (as Dibb

38

himself explains), Dibb is surely exaggerating, at least, when he later claims that ‘the
prospect of the breakup of the AN ZUS treaty would be of enormous benefit to the
USSR’s world-wide interests’ (SS p.31).
Soviet support for Antipodean independence and for ‘a real nuclear weapon-free zones'
in the South Pacific has its disconcerting elements (‘with friends like that ...’); but
luckily the quality of ideas does not depend essentially on their sources and supporters.

29.

As WPI serves to show. In a different context, Bell objects to Australian free-loading
‘on other people’s risks and burdens. That has certainly not been our tradition, and I
hope it will not become so, since it is morally quite indefensible’ (p.7). Not so: bludging,
for instance, is a well-established, if disapproved of, part of the tradition; and in some
cases it is morally in order. However, free-riding is not being proposed merely for self
interested reasons, e.g. to remove the present risks of nuclear targetting; it is being
proposed with a view to altering the two great alliance structures that at present
dominate international politics. Bell’s objection to such a course is that it ‘would on the
one hand tend to increase the tendency of the superpowers to unilateralism, and on the
other hand tend to induce many of the minor powers in question (including Australia)
to consider acquiring nuclear capacity’ (p.7). The second alternative neglects the non­
proliferation treaty, to which Australia is a signatory; the first appears to assume
erroneously that friendly relations with America are foregone; both are pretty minor
considerations (and both can be dealt with in other negotiated ways) compared with the
major problem of nuclear war.

30.

The less than perspicuous symbolism is that used in Hardin (CA, p.20, p.39), but with
agents’ costs or contributions, C, duly agent relativized. Hardin misleadingly treats C
as a fixed parameter, thus strictly falsifying the tautology.

31.

Thus Hardin who (in CA) claims to ‘demonstrate the equivalence of the logic of
collective action and the Prisoners’ Dilemma’ (p.4) The demonstration is given on
p.25ff.

32.

But of course the two types of dilemma interconnect.

33.

Even so, significant change in USA looks unlikely. Present arrangements suit not only
the American corporate-administrative power elite, which can direct public opinion
through its control of the main communications media, but many other fat-cat
Americans, rather well. The polarisation of the world into two camps increases US
control of the larger and far wealthier camp, yet scarcely reduces US trade or markets.
While it does limit the global coverage of US business and multinationals, and
somewhat restricts the transfer of other regions’ surplus value to the USA, it ensures the
much greater advantage of being able to maintain the US domestic political economy on
a military basis. The US and the USSR not only dance together; they were made for
each other.

Abroad US hegemony is maintained through a series of alliances and economic control
strategies. Particularly ominous for the South Pacific are the Trilateral and Pacific Rim
arrangements (which, with much local assistance, are helping to send Australia on its
present economic trajectory). When advice or persuasion directed at allies and client
states fail, economic measures can be resorted to (capital outflows, for instance, being a
highly effective mechanism, “aid” a lesser device). For the most part, the imperial war
machine can remain in the background. At home updated and improved imperial
measures also work well. The mass consumerist society affords a rich and diverting
selection of bread (much of it again imported) for a majority of Americans; television

39

and its entertainment variants offer a constant diet of circuses. For passive middle
mainstream America, the vast police and security network remains a largely background
and even unnoticed phenomenon; what is seen is even welcomed as a necessary shield
from that other, dangerous, minority America.
American social, educational and media management of opinion is obviously successful.
Of present relevance, most Americans have been convinced that unilateral disarmament
would be unAmerican. Thus the American administration, being hedged in by opinion
they have helped to generate, cannot move in any such directions. For, given popular
opinion, it would of course be politically disastrous, as well as undemojl’cratic!

In the USSR, where political control is exercised to a much greater extent through overt
power, present change of substance appears even less likely.

34.

More of the negative enterprise is attempted elsewhere, e.g. a critique of the supposed
strait-jacket of human nature is begun in CPD. From Plato through Hegel and into
contemporary times it has been erroneously supposed that war, like aggression, is part
of human nature, that war is a permanent (and perhaps even desirable) condition of
human and social existence. For a refutation, see e.g. Trainer and Waite.

35.

As observed by B. Martin, who uses this important form of argument for institutional
change to get this thick book started (pp.12-13).

36.

The swarm includes some anomalies, such as that somewhat tarnished hero of deep
ecology, Spinoza: see e.g. Northedge.

37.

Perhaps Kant had some such scenario in view in his theme that peace is empirically
possible, which he coupled with his striking claim that peace is morally and rationally
imperative. The latter claim, running in direct opposition to the long line of bellicose
philosophers, really relies on the correct, but controversial, assumption that states are
subject to the same moral relations as individual persons. Both then have an obligation
to seek peace derived from forms of the categorial morality, notably from rational
autonomy, the universality of maxims, and the ultimate value of persons (or, yet more
chauvinistically, of humanity).

38.

Veblen argued against the State on the basis that ‘governmental establishments and ...
powers ... are derived from feudal establishments of the Middle Ages; which in turn, are
of a predatory origin and of an irresponsible character’ (p.9), however the Christianfeudal origin of the State provided only one - and a coersive - evolutionary pattern of
organisation (pp. 12-13), a pattern much influenced moreover by schemes of
intellectuals. Other patterns remain feasible.

39.

There are now theoretical arguments for Kant’s claim, as well as practical arguments of
an inductive sort.

40.

Such is also the new message from America: for the peace movement to get through to
the administration, American democracy must be overhauled and revitalised, capitalist
democracy superseded by true democracy or “republicanism” (see especially Cohen and
Rogers, and earlier Chomsky). But the message, like the US peace movements’ very
limited demands for peace, leaves the State, as the bringer of wars, and main source of
violence essentially intact; the structural changes suggested, which will be slow to
achieve, are much too narrowly conceived.

41.

My thanks for information to Andrew Mack and David Bennett, and for comments to

Grover Foley and Russell Hardin.

REFERENCES

G.
H.

Andrewartha and L.C. Birch, The Ecological Web, University of Chicago Press, 1984.

W.R. Ashby, Design for a Brain, Second edition, Wiley, New York, 1960.
S.Beer, Designing Freedom, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto, 1974.

C. Bell, ‘The case against neutrality’, Current Affairs Bulletin 61(4) (1984) 4-10.

S.I. Benn, ‘Deterrence or appeasement? or, On trying to be rational about nuclear war’,
Journal of Applied Philosophy 1(1984) 5-19.
F. Capra and C. Spretnak, Green Politics, Hutchinson, London, 1984.
R. Catley, ‘Along with the Bomb ...’ (Review of D. Martin), The Weekend Australian
Magazine, 7-8 April, 1984.
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Rights, Black Rose Books,
Montreal, 1979.

P. Cock, Alternative Australia, Quartet Books, Melbourne, 1979.
J. Cohen and J. Rogers, On Democracy, Penguin, New York, 1984.

P. Dibb (as reported) ‘Defence Planning “lacks coherence” - researcher’, ANU Reporter, 1983.

P. Dibb, ‘Issues in Australian defence’, Australian Outlook 37 (1983) 160-166; referred to as
IAD.
P. Dibb, ‘Soviet strategy towards Australia, New Zealand and Oceania’ paper prepared for
Soviet Strategy Against Asia converence, Tokyo, November 1984; referred to as SS.
P. Dibb, Review of Australia's Defence Capabilities, Report to the Minister of Defence,
Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1986; edited text also published in The
Canberra Times, 4 June 1986, pp.16-18; referred to as the Dibb Review.
P. and A. Erlich, Population, Resources, Environment, Second edition, Freeman, San
Francisco, 1976.
H. Feith,‘Richard Falk, World order radical’, Peace Studies 24 (1985) 24-5.
J. Galtung, There are Alternatives, Spokesman, Nottingham, 1984.
W.C. Gay, ‘Myths about nuclear war: misconceptions in public beliefs and governmental
plans’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 9(1982) 117-144.

A. Gilbert, ‘The state and nature in Australia’, Australian Cultural History 1981 (ed.
S. Goldberg and F.B. Smith), Canberra, 1982, pp.9-28.

42

C.S. Gray, ‘The Reagan administration and arms control’, paper presented at The Future of
Arms Control Conference, Canberra. August 1985.

R. Hardin, Collective Action, Resources for the Future, Washington, 1982; referred to as CA.
R. Hardin, ‘Unilateral versus mutual disarmament’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 12(1983)
236-254.

M.D. Hayes, ‘Defending the sunburnt country’, Chain Reaction 33(August-September 1983)
11-17.
R.L. Heilbroner, Beyond Boom and Bust, Norton, New York, 1978.
I. Kant, Perpetual Peace (trans, and introd. M. Campbell Smith), Swan Sonnerschein,
London, 1903 (first published 1795).
J. O. Langtry and D Ball (eds), A Vunerable Country, Australian National University Press,
Canberra, 1986.

A. Mack, ‘Farewell to Arms Controls’, Peace Research 9(1984) 9ff.; referred to as PR.

A. Mack, ‘The pros and cons of ANZUS’, Fabian ANZUS Conference, Lome, 4-5 May 1985;
referred to as PC.
A. Mack, ‘Arms control, disarmament and the concept of defensive defence’, Disarmament
8(3)(1984) 109-119; referred to as AC.

A. Mack, ‘The Soviet threat thesis: perceptions, capabilities and interests’ typescript,
Canberra, May 1985; referred to as ST.
B. Martin, Uprooting War, Freedom Press, London, 1984.
B. Martin, Armed Neutrality for Australia, Drummond Books, Melbourne, 1984.

F.S. Northedge, ‘Peace, war and philosophy’, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed P. Edwards),
Volume 6, Macmillan, New York, 1967, 63-67.

M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965.
P. Pettit, ‘Free riding and foul dealing’, Journal of Philosophy, to appear,
J.J. Rousseau, A Project for Perpetual Peace (trans. E.M. Nuttal), London, 1927 (first
Published 1761).
R. Routley, ‘On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and nuclear deterrence, and the political
fall out’, Discussion papers in Environmental philosophy #5, Research School of Social
Sciences, Australian National University, 1984.
R. Routley, ‘Metaphysical fall-out from the nuclear predicament’, Philosophy and Social
Criticism 3/4(1984) 19-34; referred to as MF.
R. Routley and V. Plumwood, ‘Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions’, Discussion
Papers in Environmental Philosophy #6, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University, 1984; referred to as MD.

43

R. Sharp (ed.), Apocalypse No. Pluto Press, Sydney, 1984.
P.R. Stephenson, The Foundations of Culture, W.J. Miles, Sydney, 1936.

R. Sylvan, ‘Culture and the roots of political divergence’, typescript, Canberra, 1985; referred
to as CPD.

M. Taylor and H. Ward, "Chickens, whales, and bumpy goods: alternative models of public­
goods provision’, Political Studies 30(1982) 350-370.

T. Trainer and H. Waite, ‘Culture and the production of aggression’, in Sharp, ep.cit,
205-226.

The Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy, leaked extracts published in the National
Times, March 30-April 5, 1984, 23-30; referred to as SB.
Threats to Australian Security, Parliamentary Joint Committee for Foreign Affairs and
Defence, Australian Government Printer, Canberra; referred to as TAS.

T. Veblen, An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of its Perpetuation, Viking
Press, New York, 1945 (first published 1917).