A NATIONAL ASSET 50 YEARS OF THE STRATEGIC AND DEFENCE STUDIES CENTRE A NATIONAL ASSET 50 YEARS OF THE STRATEGIC AND DEFENCE STUDIES CENTRE EDITED BY DESMOND BALL AND ANDREW CARR Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: A national asset : 50 years of the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) / editors: Desmond Ball, Andrew Carr. ISBN: 9781760460563 (paperback) 9781760460570 (ebook) Subjects: Australian National University. Strategic and Defence Studies Centre--History. Military research--Australia--History. Other Creators/Contributors: Ball, Desmond, 1947- editor. Carr, Andrew, editor. Dewey Number: 355.070994 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU Press. This edition © 2016 ANU Press Contents About the Book . vii Contributors . ix Foreword: From 1966 to a Different Lens on Peacemaking . xi Preface . xv Acronyms and Abbreviations . xix List of Plates . xxi 1 . Strategic Thought and Security Preoccupations in Australia . 1 Coral Bell 2 . Strategic Studies in a Changing World . 17 T.B. Millar 3 . Strategic Studies in Australia . 39 J.D.B. Miller 4 . From Childhood to Maturity: The SDSC, 1972–82 . 49 Robert O’Neill 5 . Reflections on the SDSC’s Middle Decades . 73 Desmond Ball 6 . SDSC in the Nineties: A Difficult Transition . 101 Paul Dibb 7 . Researching History at SDSC . .. 121 David Horner 8. Same Questions, Different Organisation: SDSC’s Fifth Decade . 137 Hugh White 9 . SDSC at 50: Towards a New Golden Age . 159 Brendan Taylor 50th Anniversary Celebratory Dinner Keynote Speech: ‘To See What is Worth Seeing’ . 177 Brendan Sargeant, Associate Secretary, Department of Defence Conference Program – SDSC at 50: New Directions in Strategic Thinking 2.0 . 187 Appendix: Key SDSC Publications . 189 The SDSC team, December 2015 About the Book This volume commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC). The Centre is Australia’s largest body of scholars dedicated to the analysis of the use of armed force in its political context and one of the earliest generation of post-World War II research institutions on strategic affairs. As a leading international research institution specialising in strategy and defence, SDSC seeks to: 1. provide ‘real world’–focused strategic studies that is research- based, research-led and world-class. Our primary expertise within the broad field of strategic studies consists of three related research clusters: Australian defence, military studies, and Asia- Pacific security. Our scholarship in these areas is intended to be recognised internationally and of value to the Australian policy community 2. prepare and educate the next generation of strategic leaders — military, civilian and academic — in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region by providing world-class graduate and undergraduate programs in strategic and defence studies 3. contribute toward a better informed standard of public debate in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region using high-quality outreach and commentary on issues pertaining to our core areas of expertise. This book contains contributions by the Centre’s six successive heads: Dr T.B. Millar (1966–71, 1982–84), Dr Robert O’Neill (1971–82), Professor Desmond Ball (1984–91), Professor Paul Dibb (1991–2003), Professor Hugh White (2004–11) and Dr Brendan Taylor (2011– ). It also includes contributions by three of its leading scholars over the half century: Dr Coral Bell, who was present at the creation of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London in the vii A NatiONAL ASSeT 1950s, and was a visiting fellow in SDSC from 1990 until her death in 2012; Professor J.D.B. Miller, head of the Department of International Relations at The Australian National University from 1962 to 1987, who, together with Sir John Crawford, then the director of the Research School of Pacific Studies, conceived the idea of the Centre in early 1966; and, finally, Professor David Horner, Australia’s foremost military historian, having led several official history projects on peacekeeping and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and who studied at SDSC and joined the Centre full-time in 1990. These chapters are replete with stories of university politics, internal SDSC activities, cooperation among people with different social and political values, and conflicts between others, as well as the Centre’s public achievements. But they also detail the evolution of strategic studies in Australia and the contribution of academia and defence intellectuals to national defence policy. viii Contributors Desmond Ball is a former head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, where he is currently Emeritus Professor. Coral Bell was a visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre during the 1990s and 2000s. Andrew Carr is a research fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. Paul Dibb is a former head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and was appointed Emeritus Professor in 2004. David Horner is Official Historian and Emeritus Professor of Australian Defence History at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. T.B. Millar was head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 1966 to 1971 and from 1982 to 1984. J.D.B. Miller was head of the Department of International Relations at The Australian National University from 1962 to 1987, and a member of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre Advisory Committee from 1966 to 1987. Robert O’Neill was head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 1971 to 1982. Brendan Taylor is Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. Hugh White is a former head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and is currently Professor of Strategic Studies at The Australian National University. ix Foreword: From 1966 to a Different Lens on Peacemaking The year 1966 was by all accounts a troubled one. Tensions boiled over in South Vietnam; civil rights protests escalated in the US; coups erupted in Nigeria and Togo; and the international community struggled to hold a consistent line of action in response to security force killings in Rhodesia. In Australia, the leader of the Labor Party, Arthur Calwell, was shot and injured, and Harold Holt became Prime Minister for a short time before tragedy struck. Troubled times can generate innovations in peace making, but cooperation, commitment, generosity and further innovation are needed to sustain them. The innovation and labour of peacemaking and peacekeeping at state and supra-state level since 1945 has been much theorised and discussed. In her 1993 report for RAND, for example, Lynn Davis noted that successful interventions for peace need a shared concern about a situation, a desire to put aside vested interests, a commitment to concrete settlements and a recognition of the need for specialist help with elements of solution finding.1 Peacemaking and peacekeeping are not just writ by nation states. Nor is the analysis of peacemaking and peacekeeping exhausted by including reference to popular or protest movements like those carefully documented in books like Kyle Harvey’s American Anti- Nuclear Activism, 1975–1990: The Challenge of Peace.2 National stances can also rehearse, adopt and adapt institutional voices that run within 1 Davis, Lynn E. Peace Keeping and Peace Making After the Cold War (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1993). www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR281.html, accessed 5 August 2016. 2 Harvey, K., American Anti-Nuclear Activism, 1975–1990: The Challenge of Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). xi A NatiONAL ASSeT and across state boundaries. Those voices may reflect the input of a relatively small group of people, but the impact of acting on them may operate at global scale. The Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) stands out as one of the few lasting global innovations in peacemaking from 1966. That is easily measured not only in scholarly outputs, but also in government and government agency stances and actions on a wide variety of matters, from nuclear non-proliferation to regional tensions, and from the motivations of those who seek violence as well as peace to the boundaries of domestic security. I suspect, however, that reflection on what has made SDSC successful has understandably taken a back seat to these scholarly and policy outcomes. In cases like this, the view of an outsider can help to throw into focus that which is humbly placed aside in the desire to help others. To my view, advising on peacemaking, peacekeeping, non-proliferation of weapons, threat management, conflict and intervention strategy and non-state fighters requires many of the same skills that play out at state level. Arguably too, the SDSC boasts a record of outcomes that equal or better those of some nation states. SDSC provides us with an exemplar of what results when we put aside vested disciplinary interests, when we realise that we need to look at complex, dynamic and unstable problems from multiple directions, when we see the power of collaboration across organisations, and when we acknowledge that innovations have to be communicated in multiple ways for multiple audiences. Most of all, SDSC reflects a shared concern in securing a better world. These norms are in lamentably short supply both within and beyond the academic world. Contemporary funding, policy and scholarly settings tend to drive disciplinary splintering, safe innovations in thought and inward-looking communication. Our times are just as troubled as 1966 and, arguably, the world has more need now for concerted, collective action to ensure that people live with enough safety to access and take advantage of educational, economic, social and cultural opportunities.