WAR, STRATEGY & HISTORY ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF PROFESSOR ROBERT O’NEILL WAR, STRATEGY & HISTORY ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF PROFESSOR ROBERT O’NEILL EDITED BY DANIEL MARSTON AND TAMARA LEAHY 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: War, strategy and history : essays in honour of professor Robert O’Neill / editors: Daniel Marston, Tamara Leahy. ISBN: 9781760460235 (paperback) 9781760460242 (ebook) Subjects: O’Neill, Robert J. (Robert John), 1936- Strategy. War. Military history. Festschriften--Australia. Other Creators/Contributors: Marston, Daniel, editor. Leahy, Tamara, editor. Dewey Number: 355.02 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. Cover photograph: THE XUYEN MOC BATON. This hand-carved baton was presented to Captain Bob O’Neill by the commander of Xuyen Moc District, Phuoc Tuy Province, Vietnam, Captain Duc, on 4 October 1966. O’Neill made the first visit to this isolated outpost by allied personnel after the arrival of the 1st Australian Task Force in the province. Bob, his interpreter and assistant, and RAAF helicopter pilot and co-pilot, had no confirmation that they were flying into and landing in a secure area. All went well and Captain Duc showed his gratitude by presenting O’Neill with this baton just before departure. Photograph: Stuart Hay. This edition © 2016 ANU Press Contents List of Acronyms and Abbreviations . vii Foreword . ix Michael Howard 1 . Exploring Political–Military Relations: Nazi Germany . 1 Gaines Post 2 . Vietnam: A Winnable War? . 15 Ashley Ekins 3 . The Vietnam Chapter . 31 Tony White 4 . A Strategic Career . 39 Desmond Ball 5 . Robert O’Neill and Australian Security Policy . 47 Paul Dibb 6 . Robert O’Neill and the Australian Official War Histories: Policy and Diplomacy . 61 Peter Edwards 7 . The Evolution of Australian Official War Histories . .. 73 David Horner 8 . The Postwar Evolution of the Field of Strategic Studies: Robert O’Neill in Context . 91 Catherine McArdle Kelleher 9 . Strategic Studies in Britain and the Cold War’s Last Decade . 107 Lawrence Freedman 10 . The Uncomfortable Wars of the 1990s . 127 John Nagl and Octavian Manea 11 . A Mission Too Far? NATO and Afghanistan, 2001–2014 . 155 Mats Berdal 12 . Theory and Practice, Art and Science in Warfare: An Etymological Note . 179 Beatrice Heuser 13 . A Pivotal Moment for Global Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament Policies: The Contribution of Robert O’Neill . 197 Marianne Hanson 14 . Robert O’Neill’s Institutional Leadership: The End of the Cold War and the Re-emergence of a Global World Order . 217 John Hillen 15 . Lessons for Iraq and Afghanistan . 235 Carter Malkasian and Daniel Marston 16 . Robert O’Neill and the Birth of ASPI . 251 Hugh White 17 . The Rumble of Think Tanks: National Security and Public Policy Contestability in Australia . 265 Allan Gyngell 18 . Australian Thinking About Asia . 285 Michael Wesley Contributors . 301 Index . 309 List of Acronyms and Abbreviations 1ATF 1st Australian Task Force 1RAR 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment 2IC Second-in-Command AAA American Australian Association ACRI Australia–China Relations Institute ADF Australian Defence Force AIIA Australian Institute of International Affairs ANSF Afghan National Security Forces APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ARF ASEAN Regional Forum ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASPI Australian Strategic Policy Institute AUMF Authorization for Use of Military Force CEE Central and Eastern Europe CFE Conventional Forces in Europe COIN Counter-insurgency EU European Union FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office ICNND International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament IISS International Institute for Strategic Studies INF Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces ISAF International Security Assistance Force JIO Joint Intelligence Organisation vii WAR, StrategY AND HISTORY KLA Kosovo Liberation Army LSE London School of Economics and Political Science MOOTW Military Operations Other Than War NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NFZ No Fly Zone NGO Non-Government Organisation NLF National Liberation Front (National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam) NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty OEF Operation Enduring Freedom OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe PGM Precision Guided Munition PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team QIP Quick Impact Project R2P Responsibility to Protect RMC Royal Military College RUSI Royal United Services Institute SA Sturmabteilung SDI Strategic Defense Initiative SDSC Strategic and Defence Studies Centre SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute SS Schutzstaffeln START Strategic Arms Reduction Talks viii Foreword Michael Howard Fifty years ago, I compiled a Festschrift for Sir Basil Liddell Hart. Naturally, a key contribution had to be something about his influence on German military doctrine, which I had lined up a distinguished German scholar to provide. At the critical moment, he fell ill. I desperately asked Basil’s advice about a replacement, and he made rather a surprising suggestion. There was a very able young Australian Rhodes scholar, he said, who had been consulting him about the thesis he was writing on the German Army and the Nazi Party. Why not try him? I did, and Captain Robert O’Neill produced, bang on time, a superb contribution that more than held its own in the company of those by, among others, Andre Beaufre, Henry Kissinger, Yigal Allon, and Alastair Buchan. A few months later I found myself acting as an examiner for Bob’s PhD thesis. In order to write it Bob had taught himself German well enough not only to read the relevant documents, but to seek out and interview many of the German officers and their relations who figured in his pages. It was a path-breaking piece of scholarship that could have led him straight into a distinguished academic career, had he not decided to remain in the Australian Army for long enough to serve in Vietnam and gain some first-hand experience of war. Had he remained in the army, he would certainly have gone straight to the top of his profession. As it was, after publishing another path-breaking work on General Giap, he reverted to academic life, where he was rapidly snapped up to undertake the thankless but essential task of writing the official history of Australia’s role in the Korean War, a work that remains an indispensable — and highly readable — source for historians. ix WAR, StrategY AND HISTORY Military history remained a major interest for Bob, but it was rapidly overtaken — as it was for many other historians of his generation — by the broader field of strategic studies. He had been in England in the 1960s when we were getting the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) under way, and he became one of our earliest members. After he joined the staff of The Australian National University, we kept closely in touch with his activities, and he with ours. When we were seeking a new director in 1982, the experience Bob had gained and the contacts he had made while running the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in Canberra made him the obvious choice. All his predecessors had been European and their interests focused on the Cold War. Bob’s Antipodean background and contacts enabled him to make the institute truly global at a moment when the Atlantic was ceasing to be the storm-centre of the world, and Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia were becoming major actors on the strategic stage. The five years that Bob spent at the institute gave him an international reputation. When the Oxford Chair of the History of War fell vacant in 1987, he chose to don the gown again and returned to the parochial world of academe. As his predecessor in that chair, I had eased his path by instituting the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 as a special subject for undergraduates, which he taught with all the enthusiasm and expertise to be expected from his background. He strengthened the strategic elements in the international relations courses already established by his fellow countryman Hedley Bull in the previous decade, and he brought new vigour to the extension of postgraduate studies throughout the university. At the same time, his extra-mural activities established him as a national figure. He became a member of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, a Rhodes Trustee, a trustee and later Chairman of the Imperial War Museum, and — not least — Chairman of the Council of the IISS, in which capacity he steered the institute through a constitutional crisis that had threatened to wreck it, and laid the foundations for the enormous expansion it has undergone over the past two decades. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, he returned to Australia to pick up the threads that he had temporarily dropped 19 years before, and to begin a further, but by no means final, stage in a remarkable career. x FOREWORD How did Bob do it? There have been, of course, costs. After his return to academic life he wrote little. But his record of publication already spoke for itself, and he inspired plenty of his pupils to take up the challenge. But basically the key to his success has been his personality. He has an air of easy authority that immediately inspires confidence and marks him out as the obvious person to take charge of any enterprise to which he has set his hand. I have watched Bob’s career for over half a century, and have seen how in every field in which he has been involved, he has won not only the respect of his colleagues, but their deep affection.