My letter of 17 February 2003 to Australian Prime Minister John Howard Dear Prime Minister You wrote to me, as to others, on 3 February, regarding security matters. I have read with care the materials you sent, as also I have listened with care to things you have said on return from abroad. You may recall that I have some familiarity with the issues, having been a division head in the Department of Foreign Affairs during the Fraser Government and thereafter been Ambassador to China; at earlier times I held a senior position in the Defence Department and was head of the political section and for a time Minister in the Washington embassy. Behind the public concern at the direction of public opinion on the matters of internal security and war with Iraq there seem to me to be paradigm shifts occurring which are not fully comprehended in either public policy or the public outcry. I find myself unable sensibly to compare this situation with Vietnam (except in the Vietnam lessons about attempted regime decapitation) or with the Second World War, with its relative clarity of issues. The more valid comparison is with August 1914, the outbreak of the First World War, when there were massive changes underway in social systems in individual countries and between haves and have nots generally. President Kennedy commended to his National Security Council the historian Barbara Tuchman’s book August 1914 with its account of how absence of other than military options for dealing with issues led to widening war then, and that helped in dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, where Kennedy refused to be driven by the military steamroller. We have seen a pervasive spread of violence since September 2001, which needs to be addressed in terms of new strategic thinking rather than narrow status quo reinforcement. Here is what was about in the evolution of strategy in 1914: There is too much of this around now. You have been placed in an extraordinarily difficult situation. There will be no time better than now to review directions, to avoid following the military command to military ends. Clausewitz warned statesmen that war, an instrument of policy, tended to drive out policy and replace it with its own ends. We are already seeing that in the preparations for war against Iraq. Changing direction will get harder for you and Australia, as time goes by. Time to sit down with people, not call their bluff. Not fools out there. I do not think you have been well served by the officials’ brochure Let’s look out for Australia; worse still, I think the future good governance of Australia as a democratic state with independent public service has been done a great disservice by an elected government justifying its posture with statements by and pictures of non-elected officials. This is a pattern which by increment can undermine basic principles for which your party and others all stand. You speak of the need to lead, not just follow public opinion. Excellent. But the direction in which we are led needs to reduce the prospect of widening conflict and attraction of such conflict to Australia and Australian interests. And the single clearest thing evident to me (and to independent senior American systems analytical opinion with which I have had some correspondence) is that an attack on Iraq won’t work. When you look hard at the war aims, away from the virtuous abhorrence of the Iraqi leadership - which latter is not the point, Tony Blair’s speech about comparative numbers is passion, not military or strategic sense - they don’t do a useful job. I have worked at times in the past to do important things in relation to the treaty with the United States and have been proud to do so. I think there is as much risk to the alliance now in Australia as there was in New Zealand in the early 1980s. It has always seemed to me that there was the narrowest of margins between out situation and New Zealand’s situation then. Right now, the readiness of the United States to speak of use of weapons of mass destruction, when taking unto itself a strategic dictator role (it’s not democratic, what other term can I use for a one power strategic balance like this) and when refusing to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court is establishing in Australia the historically broadest church of distaste for the United States and alliance with it. Mr Crean doesn’t see this. Assert your strategic initiative and remaining popularity, don’t let the bathwater, baby and kitchen sink get lost. Don’t imagine that the conservative rump, which has helped you at polls in recent times, will be enough to get you east of Goondiwindi on this one. There is now far too much at stake. You may be confronted by swords on all sides… Choose wisely. Yours faithfully Dennis Argall
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