Canberra, 22 August 1968
Top Secret
The Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy—1968
Attached is the Report of the Defence Committee: The Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy—1968. 1
2. In the light of the conclusions come to by Ministers from their consideration of the Report, the Defence Department Machinery will proceed to the study of the size and composition of the Forces required, prepare a period defence programme for the future, and put to study matters that the Report proposes should be examined.
3. The Report argues that it is in our long term interests to continue to participate in regional collective security arrangements for the defence of South-East Asia, though the success of these will continue to depend on USA maintaining its present policies in relation to Communist China and Asia. It assesses that USA is likely to maintain its broad policies and strategies although reductions and variations in her force deployments are to be expected.
4. After stating the abiding nature of the basic features of our strategic situation (paragraph 172) and discussing the characteristic features of our present forward defence concept, the Report argues that in the post Vietnam period we should be aiming to achieve the maximum of strategic flexibility in which Australia would be able to make its own judgements from time to time, against all relevant circumstances, as to the directions, political, economic or military, in which Australia will be involved in South-East Asia.
5. The Report looks to the period post-Vietnam when, given the most favourable situation, Australian military deployments in South-East Asia would, subject to the terms of any new regional arrangements that might emerge, become unnecessary, though there would remain a continuing military commitment under SEATO.
6. The Report asserts that in the next few years, Australia has little option but to continue the present forward defence posture not merely because of the Vietnam war but because it is important that the situation there be not undermined elsewhere in South-East Asia.
7. The Report sees a transitional and readjustment period at the end of hostilities in Vietnam during which it should prove possible to confine Australia’s military deployments to some form of continuing presence in Malaysia/Singapore, if it then still remains, and perhaps in Vietnam as part of the terms of settlement. After this transitional period, instead of Australia continuing to have forces continuously overseas, as has virtually been the case since World War II, we would keep our forces in Australia. Meantime their organization and equipment would be so moulded as to have, to the maximum possible extent, a dual capability, i.e. for effective employment in South-East Asia, if the need arose, as well as for the direct defence of Australia.
8. Necessarily the foregoing is a highly over-simplified presentation of the argument. The argument necessarily leads on to the Committee indicating the implications of the policy proposed for the future organization of the forces, regular and reserve, for their equipping and for their concomitant infrastructure. I return to this in paragraph 10.
9. Without wishing to detract from the Report as a whole, the attention of Ministers is invited to:
(a) Section 9 of Part II of the Report which deals with the threat of insurgency in South-East Asia which the Report says ‘is perhaps the greatest threat to stability and security (and) may, as well, face Australia with its most difficult decisions’.
(b) Section 10 of Part II which takes up the close inter-relationships between Defence policy and political and economic policies and argues that we should seek to achieve organized regional relationships in respect to those countries within the area of our immediate interest, i.e. Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and New Zealand and in due course Papua/New Guinea.
10. The latter part of Part III draws attention to factors bearing on the future size and composition of our forces:
- the present unlikelihood of direct military threat to us does not mean that the development of our defence forces is any less necessary or urgent; our forces should be developed to provide a versatile and flexible force designed to perform a maximum range of roles, and capable of rapid deployment over the wide range of situations that may face us, with special attention given to the counter-insurgency role;
- it will be the role or function to be performed that determines what is needed: it will not be a question of distributing resources among the three Services as such;
- forces that deter are the most effective;
- reasonable compatibility of weapons and equipment with our Allies continues to be important; intelligence arrangements of the highest order are needed;
- because Australia must rely on ‘reserve’ forces (i.e. the Citizen Forces) to supplement the regular forces in emergency situations, the whole reserve force requirement and structure calls for thorough review;
- the ratio between combat and logistic forces should be improved;
- to the maximum possible extent, weapons should be selected that combine effectiveness and simplicity;
- the organization, equipment and techniques of our Services should be examined and developed to ensure that the minimum drain is made on our manpower resources.
11. Submitted for Cabinet’s consideration.
1 See Document 99.
[NAA: A5619, C470 PART 2]