Why Australia is less ready to face a more dangerous world in 2024

At Duntroon, we were told on morning parades to “ponder the day ahead”. It was wise advice. Currently, Australian strategists will be pondering the year ahead for our national security.

In Ukraine, Russia seeks to project an air of inevitable victory with a range of offensive activities. This is important tactically, as it seeks to reverse Ukrainian gains from 2023. It is also important politically as Russia approaches its 2024 elections, continues its global misinformation campaigns about Western patience, and offers a “ceasefire” that would allow it to reconstitute its forces for future offensives.

An Israeli solider at an artillery base near the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah has nearly 10 times the number of missiles as Hamas and a bigger, more professional fighting force. Credit: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg

But Ukraine’s development of new defensive lines, and longer-range strike capacity, will make Russian offensives difficult to succeed.

The trajectory of the war in Ukraine in 2024 will be heavily influenced by whether the United States Congress can agree on military assistance. While the Germans, Dutch, Danes and others have stepped up support for Ukraine, this will be insufficient to reconstitute the Ukrainian military for future offensives. US assistance will be essential for Ukraine’s 2024 campaigns.

The West has belatedly realised that Ukraine, and other burgeoning conflicts, are wars of industrial systems. Being able to out-produce adversaries in equipment and munitions is essential to fighting and deterrence. The alignment of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea has developed into an Arsenal of Authoritarians. Western nations must make progress in this area in 2024.

The coming year will see a continuation of the conflict on the borders of Israel. Even when Israel tunes down the intensity of combat in Gaza, Hamas will still conduct ground combat and fire rockets into Israel.

And Israel will rightly continue to conduct operations to protect its sovereignty and recover hostages.

It is fighting other wars on its periphery. The West Bank has continuing tensions, and violence there is transitioning from “rocks to rifles” with more infiltration of Hezbollah from Jordan. In the south, the attacks against shipping by Yemen-based Houthis will continue despite the international armada formed to deter them. Without a campaign of land strikes against the Houthis, the allied maritime taskforce will have minimal impact.

It is on Israel’s northern border where the most danger lurks. As a senior Israeli Defence Force officer told me: “Hamas is minor leagues; Hezbollah are far more capable.” Hezbollah has a stockpile of nearly 150,000 rockets, with longer range and greater precision than Hamas rockets. It also has huge stockpiles of the latest long-range anti-tank weapons and has become adept at using drones for surveillance and kamikaze attacks against the IDF.

Hezbollah is dangerous for two other reasons. First, it has a large ground force which is better trained than Hamas, and has begun to use less centralised command methods. Second, Hezbollah has been able to re-establish itself in southern Lebanon, south of the Litani River, where it was prohibited from operating under UN resolution 1701. This makes it easier for them to surprise Israel and gives their rockets greater reach.

If open conflict emerges there in 2024, it will be more intense, and much bloodier, than the current Gaza conflict.

Finally, our region is becoming more perilous. The Chinese are increasing deployments of their aircraft carrier battle groups further afield, enacting thuggish aggression against nations such as the Philippines on this high seas and interceptions of Western naval and air force assets across the Western Pacific.

They have also ramped up air and sea operations around Taiwan and incursions into its Air Defence Identification Zone. This is designed to test and wear down Taiwanese forces, rehearse the People’s Liberation Army in joint operations, and normalise high levels of activity around the periphery of Taiwan.

Despite Xi Jinping’s recent nice words, actions speak louder. Chinese aggression will continue and expand if it perceives a lack of will among Western politicians to challenge it.

While there are many other issues ahead in 2024, including the Taiwanese, US and Russian elections, Ukraine, Israel and China comprise the “big three” strategic challenges for Western nations. It is starting to dawn on Western nations that, left unchallenged, authoritarian aggression might portend a darker and less free 21st century.

Notwithstanding the preference of the Australian government to shrink its worldview and almost exclusively focus on the South Pacific, the challenges of Ukraine, Israel and China will have a significant impact on our national security. Tactics and technologies from Ukraine and Israel will reshape military organisations – friendly and not so friendly – across the globe. And problems with the global defence supply chain mean Australia must step up its game in efficient, timely and local defence production.

But a flatlined defence budget is being inexorably eaten from within by Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program, so the Australian Defence Force is reducing its combat forces and becoming less ready. Worse, the ADF appears to lack a modern vision for war-fighting. It is yet to show how it will align military strategy, operations and tactics across the domains of land, air, maritime, space and cyber. This is vital in an era when we can see more of the battlefield than ever before, and as autonomous systems become increasingly lethal, and when we need to conduct long-range strike and close combat concurrently.

The year ahead is likely to be more unstable and violent than 2023. This will place a premium on better risk tolerance, improved use of resources, an increased defence budget and, importantly, good leadership in the Australian national security community. A tough 2024 awaits.

Mick Ryan is a retired major general who served in the ADF for more than 35 years and was commander of the Australia Defence College. He is the author of War Transformed and an adjunct fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

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