Greg Bilton is our military man in the US Army Pacific

The US pivot to Asia has a decidedly Australian military flavour.

Bilateral Talks with Lieutenant General Suzuki.JPG

Whose boots, on whose ground?

Paul Keating, when treasurer 25 years ago, said: “I guarantee if you walk into any pet shop in Australia, the resident galah will be talking about micro-economic policy.”

The galah hasn’t stopped talking, but its spiel is now all about “boots on the ground”.

In recent decades, any Australian troop deployment beyond the immediate region invariably has happened alongside our US allies. This makes it crucial that we speak the same military language.

Most important, we’re communicating via the US’s Pacific Command, headquartered in ­Hawaii.

The target for the “pivot” or “rebalance” back to Asia announced by US President Barack Obama in Canberra four years ago is for 60 per cent of US military personnel to be based in our Asia-Pacific region.

The Pacific Command now oversees 378,000 people — ­already 58 per cent of US military staff, though the overall defence quantums have diminished.

The command has to remain alert for the possibility, albeit still unlikely, of a strategic switch back to deployments in the Middle East or even Afghanistan.

Conveniently close to Hawaii airport, which is shared between civil airlines and the military, rows of army vehicles are parked in yards — all of them still ­camouflaged in sand colours for desert combat, not in the jungle greens for deployment to the lusher lands of East Asia or the Pacific Islands.

The new Pacific commander, Admiral Harry Harris — the first of Asian heritage, in his case Japanese, to be promoted to that powerful role — has visited Australia four times in the past two years and anticipates it will be the country he visits most in his new role.

Forty-two senior Australian ­officers are working under him within the Pacific Command, including most importantly a general who is deployed there as a deputy head of the army covering the vast region.

Australian two-star general Greg Bilton recently ­was commanding US soldiers participating in the biggest annual war game in South Korea when a surprise bloody episode turned the exercise into a real-time live confrontation.

This was a serious moment, on the world’s most intensely guarded and perilous border, just 50km from Seoul, an ultra-modern city of 10 million. Ulchi Freedom Guardian, which takes place just south of the border, had entered the “provocation” phase in the lead-up to ­potential conflict, where in the exercise, Bilton says, “the leaders were looking for off-ramps to avoid conflict”.

Suddenly, two South Korean soldiers were maimed when — in real life — North Korean troops stealthily crossed the border and planted fresh landmines near their guard post.

One soldier lost both legs, while the other lost one as he tried to help his wounded colleague to safety.

The new pathways towards ­bilateral rather than unilateral decision-making — which Bilton had played a role in building — swung into action, and “the response was proportionate, and achieved a positive outcome for South Korea”.

That involved broadcasting propaganda across the border into North Korea from towers of loudspeakers, leading eventually to a statement from Pyongyang that as much resembles an apology as any it is likely to deliver.

Bilton was heading a forward component of 26 people within the vast exercise, in which 25 Australians also were participating from Canberra — reflecting the commitment Australia has maintained during and since the war on the peninsula that ended in 1953.

Ulchi Freedom Guardian was paused for 24 hours as the allies led by Seoul decided their response to the maiming.

US ambassador Mark Lippert and commander of US Forces Korea Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti played key roles alongside their South Korean counterparts.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appeared in the outside world’s eyes as the aggressor in the exchange, says Bilton, and was reported to have responded by removing senior officials from their positions. Then the world’s largest computerised command and control exercise, which focuses on defending South Korea from a North Korean attack, continued for another fortnight.

Bilton embodies the intense strategic enmeshment between Australia and the US, the future contours of which will become clearer once the Turnbull ­government publishes its long-­anticipated defence white paper.

The Australian major general is deputy commanding general of the US Army ­Pacific, which has access to 106,000 personnel, many of them based on the US west coast, but “assigned for tasking” to Pacific Command, Bilton says.

Besides Hawaii, Japan and South Korea, soldiers under that army command are also based in Guam.

Bilton wears an Australian army uniform to work but is obeyed by US colleagues as his role requires.

“I don’t directly command them,” he says. “But I have a responsibility to task them, and ­arrange for various exercises and activities that feed into our international engagement plan.”

He is the second Australian to be embedded in this way, following Major General Rick Burr, who is now Deputy Chief of Army in Australia.

Bilton joined the army at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1983 after finishing school at Melbourne High School, where he had been a cadet.

He joined alongside two friends. One is still serving in the army and the other only recently retired.

After a highly successful, varied career that included deployments in Afghanistan and with UN forces in the Sinai, Bilton was asked by then chief of army David Morrison to take up his two-year posting in Honolulu.

He works directly to four-star general Vincent Brooks, commander of the army force within Pacific Command — who assigned him the prime task of intensifying the engagement with nations in northeast and South Asia.

His US counterpart is working with Southeast Asian and ­Pacific countries, including Australia.

If an incident occurred in the Pacific Command region — which covers more than half the world’s surface and 60 per cent of the global population — demanding a US response, Bilton says, he would not be placed in command of those US forces.

But he has authority on a day-to-day basis, including for exercises and for activities alongside other countries.

Besides liaising on some of the intricate challenges involved in basing thousands of US troops in Japan and South Korea, he is also responsible for helping build greater capacity to respond to ­humanitarian needs following disasters.

This includes pursuing the implications of the recent reinterpretation of Japan’s constitution to permit a greater military role in peacekeeping and in assisting neighbours and allies.

He has managed a program involving US, Australian and East Timorese forces working together, including on engineering works.

The US helps Mongolia, Nepal and Bangladesh contribute to UN work by providing, in a program costing tens of millions of dollars, education for the military there to enable them “to run the missions”, says Bilton, including language and medical training and courses on UN activities and requirements.

Bilton is responsible for these programs, and for exercises and exchanges to boost disaster relief preparedness with those countries.

“Our main aim is to help take them from operating bilaterally, to multi-agency, multilateral capability,” he says.

“It is designed to build their ­capacity and resilience to work with civil as well as military organisations if a country is confronted by a disaster.”

China is also part of that program — though Bilton does not lead US Army activities relating with the regional giant, for which Brooks has responsibility.

Bilton says: “(Brooks) sees the US Army role as different from that of the marines, navy and air force” in relation to China, with which the army places an emphasis on playing a role in helping “police the global commons”.

He says: “We see it as important to continue to engage” the Chinese army through “mil-to-mil” contacts.

China hosted a joint humanitarian disaster relief exercise in February, on its subtropical Hainan island.

China also participated in Khaan Quest, a peacekeeping exercise in Mongolia in June that involved forces from 23 countries, including US soldiers from Pacific Command.

Chinese, US and Australian soldiers also participate — now annually — in Kowari, a survival exercise in the northern Australian bush.

And China sent a two-star general, of Bilton’s rank, to participate in a Pacific army commanders’ conference in Bali, which included 15 chiefs of army from the Asia-­Pacific region.

When an earthquake struck Nepal in April, killing 9000, US army staff were deployed there on disaster relief training roles.

“They played a critical role” immediately afterwards, says Bilton, particularly in running Kathmandu airport to enable the most rapid possible arrivals of equipment and experts.

He says most of the countries with which he frequently relates from Pacific Command also wish to grow their relationships with the Australian military, including Japan, South Korea and Mongolia.

The Indian and Australian navies are already working together, he says, and now the Indian army is looking to emulate that relationship with its Australian counterpart.

“Generally,” he says, “there’s a very positive view in the region of Australia’s military and its capacity. But a lot of people are surprised how small our forces are” — 31,000 regulars and 15,000 active reservists in the army, and the navy and air force combined, a similar total.

Bilton says the senior officers with whom he works closely in Hawaii and through the region are now used to meeting Australians in such a role at Pacific Command, after three years of the deployment.

He says: “They understand that I come from a different perspective, and that is welcomed. We have been very, very warmly welcomed and incorporated into the team.

“General Brooks has gone to great lengths to ensure I am treated as any US two-star general would be. I have clear guidance on what I am expected to achieve, and the Americans I interact with ­facilitate my job, and make me more successful as a result.”

Consequently, it is only on his annual week-long visits to Washington for discussions at the Pentagon that Bilton has occasionally had to explain what an Australian is doing in a senior US army role.

“It’s valuable for me to go there,” he says, “to understand what is happening at the centre that drives what we are doing in the Pacific.

“It helps us understand the political-military environment more effectively, including the budgetary settings.

“It’s not dissimilar to the pressures and processes at home.”

In Pacific Command, he says, “we have to be frugal with our spending, while making sure we can cover off our objectives in the region”, in which he leads the US Army engagement with 11 of the 34 countries — in many of which the military plays a bigger day-to-day governance role than in democratic societies such as Australia or the US.

Australia’s Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, has confirmed that a third senior officer will be sent to Pacific Command once Bilton’s term has ended.

And now that Australia has pioneered such a role, other US ­allies such as Japan, South Korea or The Philippines — Thailand is unlikely while military rule continues — may also deploy top brass at ­Pacific Command.

“It’s just the beginning of an initiative that has the potential to grow,” says Bilton.

“The depth of understanding I’ve garnered from it is just extraordinary.”