Call halt to loss of life and treasure

The great American airman who commanded allied air forces in New Guinea, Lieutenant General George C. Kenney, was reputed to have said: “Cheap air forces are like losing poker hands. They can cost you plenty but don’t get you much.”

Air power is incredibly ­expensive. Well-meaning activists bemoan how many schools and hospitals could be built for the cost of a single bomber, which they hope will never have to be used.

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As astronomically expensive as defence procurement is, catastrophic failure of military organisations ­imposes costs in blood and treasure also.

Australia has never paid its way on defence or national ­security.

By accident of colonial origin, we have been a beneficiary of a liberal democratic order underwritten by the hegemonic Western maritime power du jour.

Since the eclipse of France after the Seven Years War, that has been either Britain or the US.

While some rant about our slavish involvement in “other people’s wars”, most foreign ­military deployments have been undertaken to ensure the maintenance of that global liberal order, which ensures our access to the global commons and the unimpeded flow of our trade to global markets.

That order is fraying badly. Pessimists argue that it is already over.

I suspect that while the fleeting American hegemony that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall is over, American primacy will survive in the Indo-Pacific for some time. But great power ­rivalry of the type that characterised the global system for most of post-Westphalian history will ­define our strategic reality for the foreseeable future.

Francis Fukuyama’s history did not end. It never really took a vacation.

The era of Western ­interventions in failed and distressed states is over. No longer will the US and its allies embark on expeditionary nation-building, which was really a perversion of counter-insurgency theory in Muslim lands.

It is time to admit defeat as to the misguided folly of spreading democracy to the ­developing word.

In the aftermath of Kosovo and East Timor, I myself believed this doctrine. It has been discredited at a tremendous loss in lives and treasure. It has seriously ­undermined the global order, weakened America and emboldened its enemies.

They have watched with glee as America fought ­interminable losing wars, while they enhanced their regional ­influence, especially in North Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

What can we do? Firstly, we need to end our futile and inconclusive military commitments in the Middle East. And we need to make the same hard-headed judgment about how we can best secure our nation that we made when we brought our defeated army home in the 1970s.

We need to invest in air and sea power. We need to concentrate on the sea-air gap to our north. We need to take George Kenney’s ­advice. Spend on a winning hand. Expand our air and space power. And confine our influence to where it can make a difference, namely in our own immediate region.

Catherine McGregor is a former RAAF and army officer and works as an adviser to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.