The fundamental problem at the heart of defence policy
The noise over meeting US demands on military spending underlines the fundamental problem at the heart of Australian defence policy: there is no strategy.
You can walk into any pet shop in Australia and find the resident galah talking about what percentage of GDP Australia should be spending on its defence, with apologies to Paul Keating.
The numbers appear to oscillate anywhere from 2.5 to 3 per cent, sometimes higher. It is not so much a case of defence dither, though of that in recent decades there has been a great deal, as defence blather.
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James Curran is professor of modern history at Sydney University.
