Peter Cosgrove warns: ‘Plan for a more dangerous world’

Australia is confronting a much more dangerous world which ­demands a growing and sustained upgrading of defence and national security, General Sir Peter Cosgrove has warned.

Lieutenant Colonel Angus Campbell, right, shows Peter Cosgrove, centre, around the 5th Aviation Regiment at Balibo, East Timor, in 2001.

Australia is confronting a much more dangerous world which ­demands a growing and sustained upgrading of defence and national security, General Sir Peter Cosgrove has warned on the 25th anniversary of the international peacekeeping force in East Timor.

Sir Peter said the strategic challenges posed by the rise of China had ushered in a new era in Australia’s security that would require heavy and ongoing investment in the Australian Defence Force to ensure it had the manpower and modern weaponry to counter ­regional threats.

“We are more obliged to consider our national defence than we have been for very many years,” the former governor-general, told The Weekend Australian. “We’ve been looking at the stated aims and objectives of China. Now we want China as a friend, but we also want our own freedom of action and stability in the Pacific for ourselves and for other players.

“We need to be more observant of our own vulnerability and the fact that the benign and remote nature of this part of the world is not as benign and not nearly as ­remote.”

Sir Peter was speaking ahead of this month’s 25th anniversary of his leadership of the 10,000-strong international peacekeeping force (INTERFET) in East Timor in 1999. The deployment of 5500 Australian military personnel was the country’s largest military deployment since the Vietnam War, and the mission’s success made the then Major General Cosgrove a household name. He went on to become chief of the army and then chief of the ADF before serving as governor-general from 2014 to 2019.

Sir Peter said the INTERFET deployment in East Timor ‘shaped the rest of my life’ and would also have had a profound impact on those Australian soldiers who served there.

“They can look back on that as a high point of their lives where they actually were present at the birth of the nation,“ he said. “And they can take great pride in the professional and very diligent way they did their duty at the same time as showing enormous compassion and sympathy with the East Timorese.”

Sir Peter said the East Timor deployment allowed Australians to “rediscover their military” after several decades where the bitter experience of the Vietnam War had disconnected the ADF from the public and had made the military “become hermit-like”.

“It was the East Timor operation that said, ‘hey, look at this, there’s a lot of Australians and they’re doing well’.

“The Australian people had a front-row seat to it.”

Sir Peter said he hoped the 25th anniversary would remind Australians of the country’s long, proud and ongoing record in peacekeeping missions around the world.

“Australians since 1947 have been in 62 different peacekeeping operations so we’ve been one of the mighty peacekeeping nations,” he said. “The United Nations knows that when they ask Australia, they’ll always get a very serious consideration, and that we are a nation of lifters, not leaners.”

Sir Peter said he was proud of the fact that since the peacekeeping mission to East Timor, which helped the country transition to independence, the new young country had proved to be a successful democracy having had eight undisputed elections and five peaceful transfers of power.

Sir Peter said it was up to Australia to persuade East Timor that it could help meet its security needs amid reports that China is seeking to increase its security and economic ties with the island nation. He said the deterioration in Australia’s strategic circumstances in recent years would require greater investment in both manpower and equipment.

“We are not able, at the moment, to recruit and retain enough of our brilliant people. We need to keep them and recruit others. So the manpower aspect has to be addressed,” he said.

“Then we need very modern technologies. A lot of the stuff that we had (has) rapidly fallen into obsolescence and (other powers are) fielding new and very potent capabilities in the region, like hyper velocity missiles and an enormous jump in cyber capabilities.”

Sir Peter and former prime minister John Howard will speak at a 25th anniversary commemoration for the Timor deployment at the Australian Peacekeeping Memorial on Anzac Parade, Canberra, on September 20.