Does the Dambusters story suggest the law of unintended consequences?

A fascinating story, courtesy of the BBC, about Operation Chastise, the famous dambusters raid by the RAF during World War Two, against a series of hyrdoelectricity dams in the Ruhr industrial heartland of Germany.

The hypothesis underpinning Operation Chastise had been that by destroying the key hydroelectricity dams, this could have knocked out German’s military-industrial capacity. By shutting down Germany’s military-industrial capacity, this would have a direct impact on Germany’s continued ability to wage war thereafter. At least, that was the hypothesis.

As the article points out, there has been quite some disagreement between historians as to the extent to which this operation was successful. The official historians, Charles Webster and Noble Frankland “believed that it was oversold, its achievements exaggerated and other Bomber Command raids unfairly ignored.” Such historians point to “the speed at which the dams were repaired, and production of energy, steel and other armaments resumed.” Not only did the historians disagree, even Arthur “Bomber” Harris had thought the operation a “harebrained” scheme, noting that “‘I have seen nothing… to show that the effort was worthwhile except as a spectacular operation.’”Indeed, as the BBC article notes, “British planners had known that the success of the raid largely depended on the German ability to rebuild the dams in time to store up the autumn rains.”

Other perspectives, however, suggest that the operation had strategically very important follow-on effects. It may be true that the dams were repaired and re-supplying electricity to the Ruhr industrial heartland in a matter of months, and that the absence of these hydroelectrical resources did not have a severe impact on Germany’s military industrial output. Nevertheless, by redeploying German slave labour towards the repairs of these damns, the article suggests that this had a follow-on effect on German’s plan to construct a series of coastal defences against the expected Allied counter-offensive.

My personal sense is that I do tend towards agreeing that the operation may not have achieved that much at lower levels of analysis, but at the higher levels of analysis, there is something to be said for the operation. That being said, I think it possibly spurious to assume a direct causal relationship between Operation Chastise and the German capacity to mount a coherent defence of the Normandy beaches a year later. If anything, I wonder if this effect was really a result of the law of unintended consequences.

Food for thought for current senior commanders, I wonder?

China’s Growing Military Power Under Focus

For quite some time now, there is has a great deal of focus on the growing military power of China, a growth fueled largely by China’s growing economy, of course.

The following (in bold) is an article from The New York Times’s Martin Fackler, entitled “China Is Seen Nearing U.S.’s Military Power in Region”.

TOKYO — China’s growing industrial might is likely to allow it to mount an increasingly formidable challenge to the military supremacy of the United States in the waters around China that include Japan and Taiwan, though it will probably seek to avoid an outright armed conflict, according to a detailed new report by a group of American researchers.

The report by the nine researchers, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the most likely outcome for the next two decades showed China narrowing the gap with the United States in military abilities, in areas including building aircraft carriers and stealth fighter jets. At the same time, the report, to be released Friday, said China’s economic interdependence with the United States and the rest of Asia would probably prevent it from becoming a full-blown, cold-war-style foe, or from using military force to try to drive the United States from the region.

One of the authors, Michael D. Swaine, an expert on Chinese defense policy, called the report one of the first attempts to predict the longer-term consequences of China’s rise for a region whose growing economic prosperity has been largely a result of the peace and stability brought by American military hegemony. He said one conclusion was that the appearance of a new rival meant that, for better or for worse, the current American-dominated status quo might not last much longer.

“We wanted to ask, how should the United States deal with this possibility?” said Mr. Swaine, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, based in Washington. “Can the United States continue with business as usual in the western Pacific, or must it start thinking of alternative ways to reassure the region about security?”

The other authors included scholars, former government officials and other Carnegie analysts.

The report, an advance copy of which was seen by The New York Times, said the consequences of the region’s shifting strategic balance might be felt most strongly by Japan, an Asian economic power that has long relied for its security on its alliance with the United States. The report found that in most projections, Japan would probably respond to China’s growing power by clinging more closely to the United States, as it has done recently during a heated argument with China over islands in the East China Sea that both countries claim. At the same time, despite the stance of its hawkish new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s fiscal troubles and political paralysis will probably prevent it from significantly bolstering military spending, as some in Washington have hoped it will do to help offset China’s increasing capabilities, the report said.

In the most extreme instances, the report predicted, doubts about the ability or commitment of the United States to remain the region’s dominant military power could one day grow strong enough to drive Japan to more drastic measures, like either embracing China or building its own independent deterrent, including nuclear weapons.

For the whole region, the report found the most likely outcome to be what it called an “eroding balance” — essentially, a continuation of the current situation, in which American hegemony is slowly undermined by China’s increasing military abilities and growing willingness to assert its interests. The report said the biggest risk in this environment would be an accidental escalation of a limited dispute, like the current clash with Japan over the disputed islands.

At the same time, the report said that for the foreseeable future, China would not follow the former Soviet Union in becoming a global rival to the United States. Rather, it said, China would remain a regional power with a narrow strategic focus on territorial disputes with its immediate neighbors. Even so, the report warned, that would still make it a serious challenge to the United States, which has vowed to increase its military presence in Asia despite budget cuts.

“Can the United States maintain its primacy of the past 60 years?” asked Mr. Swaine. “The United States says so, but whether it actually can is not entirely clear.”

Fackler’s article clearly suggests that China might have ambitions to be the dominant hegemon in the Asian part of the Pacific, and that whatever global ambitions anyone else thinks China might have are precisely just that – their own thoughts.

Another think-piece, this time courtesy of Pacific Forum CSIS, by Robert A. Manning and Banning Garrett, is entitled “Does China Have a Strategy? Modern China or Dystopia: Alternate Futures?” It is reproduced (in bold) in full below.

As Xi Jinping and China’s new leaders begin their tenure, Beijing’s behavior strongly suggests that although they may have strategic goals, China has no strategy for achieving them. Beijing continues to follow a development model it has outgrown and pursues an assertive, zero-sum foreign policy that is counter to its long-term interests.

The poisonous smog choking Beijing and other major cities is an apt metaphor for the challenges facing China’s new leadership: an unsustainable status quo in a state-centric economic model that has exceeded the limits of utility; a steep environmental price being paid for 34 years of breakneck development; and a political elite whose legitimacy is increasingly weakened by endemic corruption, a lack of transparency, and little accountability. Beijing’s assertive behavior in Asia is mobilizing its neighbors against it at a moment when it needs a peaceful external environment more than ever to meet greater internal challenges.

Chinese leaders are well aware of the great challenges they face, but it seems they have neither a strategy nor the political will to adequately address them. Beijing’s behavior appears a far cry from Western imagery of a far-sighted China guided by Sun Tzu and a long-term strategic calculus.

Xi: A Reform Agenda?

The legitimacy of China’s ruling Communist Party has been based on performance: more than three decades of double-digit economic growth has been the foundation for the success of this de facto social contract. But the development model that has delivered this success needs change. China’s state-centered, investment-driven, export growth model is delivering diminishing returns. This was the premise of China 2030, a report last year co-sponsored by the World Bank and the Chinese State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC), a leading policy body. China 2030, asserted that “realizing China’s vision for 2030 will demand a new development strategy.” The report outlined the sweeping reforms necessary if Beijing is to realize its goal of becoming, “a modern, harmonious, creative, and high income society.” The proposed development strategy requires strengthening the rule of law, a greater role for private markets and “increased competition in the economy.” Importantly, the strategy argues that “reforms of state enterprises and banks would help align their corporate governance arrangements with the requirements of and permit competition with the private sector on a level playing field.”

Thus far there are few signs that a sea change in China’s approach to development is in the offing. The Chinese political elite is part of a wide network of vested interests encompassing those at the top of its state banks and state-owned enterprises and PLA-affiliated interests.

This points up the dilemma of China’s new leadership. It knows that it needs to pursue far-reaching reforms that will have no small impact on the corruption and the benefits enjoyed by China’s upper echelon. But faced with entrenched vested interests, the leadership appears somewhat perplexed as to how to implement specific new policies.

Moreover, the peaceful international environment that China needs now is being undermined by China’s assertive activities in the East and South China Seas and its reflexive strategic competition with the US. It seems that in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, many Chinese hardliners concluded that China had emerged relatively stronger than the United States, which was viewed as on an accelerating trajectory of inevitable decline. The resulting Chinese behavior, from India to Vietnam, has led China’s neighbors to question its intentions and seek a counter-balancing network of actors led by the US. In effect, China has sparked the exact opposite result of what it intended, a sort of self-containment.

What strategic logic led some in China to think this is the moment to abandon Deng Xiaopeng’s dictum: “Hide your strength, bide your time”? At an historic juncture when China faces overwhelming domestic challenges, do some Chinese decision-makers nevertheless see this as the right time for an assertive China to confront the United States and its allies? It is difficult to discern a coherent Chinese strategy in all this.

What Futures?

China appears to be lacking coherent and sensible domestic and international strategies that serve its self-proclaimed interests in peace and development. Nevertheless, there are many people in Beijing who understand that China needs a cooperative relationship with the US not only to ensure a peaceful environment for its development during a difficult period ahead but also to confront the global challenges that neither China nor, nor any other country can manage unilaterally. They – and many of their counterparts in the US – recognize that a cooperative US-China relationship is essential for the future of both countries and a stable global future.

The 18th Chinese Party Congress Report called for “a new type of power relationship.” While vaguely defined, the report contains a section called “Continuing to Promote the Noble Cause of Peace and Development of Mankind” with interesting, but again, platitudes about global challenges and common interests. This may be empty rhetoric, but it merits testing by the Obama administration and other G20 nations.

Persistent strategic mistrust clouds US-China relations, posing a major obstacle to far-reaching US-China cooperation. Each country sometimes portrays the other’s intentions as a strategic challenge inherently hostile to its interests. Many Chinese strategists argue that US strategy is containment to keep China weak and divided and claim the US “pivot” to Asia strategy is proof of this intention. American strategists see China bent on dominating Asia and sharply curtailing US presence while bullying US allies and friends in the region.

Rethinking the US-China Relationship

The strategic logic for building a US-China partnership is as compelling as the obstacles to it are difficult. The ability of Xi and Obama to rebalance the relationship so that it becomes predominantly cooperative rather than competitive is highly uncertain, buffeted by contending interest groups, factions, and political forces pulling in contradictory directions.

In addition to the long-term global challenges, there are a host of compelling near-term issues, progress on which could put the US-China relationship on a more cooperative path. On the issues below there is, at least in theory, ample common ground to find a balance of interests both the US and China can live with:

1. Afghanistan/Central Asia: As the US phases down its military presence in Afghanistan, China, which has substantial economic investments and has been free-riding on the US security presence, needs to rethink its approach. Overlapping US and Chinese interests in Afghan stability, counter-terrorism, and support for economic integration in Central Asia shape a potential agenda for new regional dialogue and cooperation;

2. Cyber-Security: Cyber-attacks are proliferating and a realm where agreement on global rules and norms are desperately needed. Both the US and China have a mutual vulnerability, and at the strategic level could benefit from moving from obfuscation on the issue to a serious dialogue aimed at establishing codes of conduct and accepted norms;

3. Greater Middle East: The ongoing turmoil and transformation in the Middle East and North Africa should be an area of overlapping interests in stability and accountable governments that are not hostage to extremist forces. Syria is the most pressing test case for Sino-American cooperation;

4. East Asia: There is an urgent need to create a new modus vivendi and rules of the road on what sort of US military footprint in the region China can live with, and vice-versa.

Alternative Futures for China

How the US deals with China – and how China manages its internal transformation – will have major if not decisive impact on what future China evolves toward. Below are three futures for China – not predictions, but heuristic tools to think about outcomes of current strategic and policy choices: “Harmonious World,” Muddle Through, and Middle Income Trap.

1. Harmonious World: This is the best case scenario. China’s new leadership begins over the next 5-6 years to strengthen rule of law, move its financial system to a more market-based allocation of resources, allows the RMB to become convertible and ascend as a global currency. Consumer-driven growth sustains a 6-7 percent annual growth rate as China decreases its reliance on exports and increases social stability through political and judicial reform to open up the political system and enhance rule of law, transparency and accountability. Internationally, as China and other G20 nations push for a larger voice in rule-making, they cooperate with Western countries to revise the international rules-based order. China also finds a new, more stable and cooperative modus vivendi in East Asia.

2. Muddle Through: This future is a crisis-reaction rather than strategy-driven China in which the leadership responds with limited effectiveness to environmental crises, bursting of the residential real estate bubble, corruption, and increasing inequality and social discontent. China engages in reform by default more than by design. Over a decade-long journey over a bumpy road, China, slowly takes steps to enhance rule of law, increase accountability, and gradually reforms the economic and financial system to enhance competitiveness, reduce the monopoly power of the SOEs, and take other steps, reluctantly and belatedly, to restructure the economy and slow the trend of increasing inequality. This future is characterized by a reactive foreign policy that is a mix of nationalism, caution, and both cooperation and competition with the US.

3. Middle Income Trap: Pressures to sustain 7-8 percent growth result in more excessive and politically motivated, unsound lending by state banks to keep the economy appear to be growing while increasing the debt load and engaging in unproductive investments. This proves counter-productive and hits a wall as the residential real estate bubble deflates, middle-class investors who put their savings into buying apartments are hit hard, and social unrest grows. China falls into the middle income trap as it fails to move up the value chain in production to compete with advanced countries and yet its higher wages render it unable to compete with other developing countries. As China focuses increasingly on internal challenges, including social unrest and political instability, it tends to view the outside world as a source of its problems and a strategic threat, thus stoking nationalism.

Between these two reports, the picture of China’s growing military capabilities starts to look a but more muddied, I suggest.

Is Singapore about to buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter?

This is a story that just won’t quit.

A few days ago, it was reported by several news agencies – Reuters, for instance, Aviation Week for another – that the Singapore government might be very close to making a decision about acquiring the F-35 as a replacement for the RSAF’s F-16s that were first acquired back in the early 1990s. It shouldn’t be news. The Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen had stated during the March 2013 Committee of Supply debate on the defence budget, “I’m telling you we’re now in the final stages of evaluating the F-35. MINDEF will have to be satisfied that this state-of-the-art multi-role fighter meets our long-term needs, is on track to be operationally capable and, most importantly, is a cost-effective platform.”

Colleague Kelvin Wong recently had a commentary on the F-35 decision published in Today. Kelvin is generally positive about the F-35, although he does suggest that the Australian experience with this air combat platform might be an important morality tale for everyone interested in this aircraft.

Here’s the thing about the F-35: it is the SNAFUs and cock-ups in the entire programme that just won’t quit. A recent BBC article chronicles the various problems the programme has had to experience from the very start. As this BBC article ends, “Despite its problems, the F-35 so far appears to have avoided the axe amid the current budget turmoil. The president this week requested $8.4 billion to continue the Joint Strike fighter during the next fiscal year, leaving the aircraft safe – at least for now.” More recently, CNBC called the F-35 the “pricey benchwarming plane”. One study from the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight estimates each aircraft to cost about USD200 million per platform. Even the USAF’s Air Force Magazine editor in chief, Adam Hebert, wrote an editorial in April 2011: “Lies, Damn Lies, and the Trillion-Dollar Plane”. Italy and Norway have either reduced their orders or have temporarily frozen decision-making on this issue. In 2012, Canada announced it was scrapping the F-35. Whichever way you look at it, I just cannot find anything worthwhile about the aircraft.

And this is the aircraft that the Singapore government might be (I stress, might be, not confirmed or definite) buying???

Analyses on North Korea’s Threat to Regional Security

For our readers who might be focusing on the Korean peninsula security dynamic as it continues to unravel (or at least appear to unravel), a series of analyses from a variety of sources of North Korea’s threat to the region:

From the BBC:
Andrea Berger from RUSI (available here), and her recent analysis of what drives North Korea’s military threats to South Korea, the United States, and indeed just about ANYBODY Pyongyang does not like;
The threat that North Korea’s missile programmes and nuclear programme poses to the Asia-Pacific region (available here), and possibly to the United States (although the article pretty much rules that out as technologically impossible for North Korea); and
North Korea’s missile programmes analysed in detail (here).

From The Washington Post:
North Korea’s declaration of war (delivered very recently ), the analysis (available here);
But declaring war is one thing, being able to wage is a completely different thing for North Korea, so what kind of military plans can Pyongyang scrape together? A possibility is outlined here;
And if North Korea possesses no capacity to wage war, does this mean the current rhetoric is all just one huge strategic bluff? An answer can be found here.
And if all this was not enough, a suggestion (here) that the pictures circulated by North Korean official news agencies may have been doctored (gasp!)

My own take: its all bluff and bluster. North Korean policy makers aren’t that dumb, they know they cannot afford to piss off their Chinese backers, and doing anything to piss the United States off will consequently piss the Chinese off as well.

Visual Representation of US-China Military Balance

My thanks to colleague and friend Greg Dalziel for this (link here), a visual representation of the military balance between the United States and China. As the infographic demonstrates, there remains a vast gulf in terms of military spending and military power (or at least, potential military power) between the two states. And it is worth noting that the military expenditures of China and the US look by and large fiscally very prudent.

A “New” Perspective on North Korea’s Military Power

A very interesting read, courtesy of The Washington Post (available here). For readers interested in North Korea, definitely worth your time reading this piece.

It suggests that the million-man armed forces that North Korea possesses may be less threatening than it appears. This is something that I had, in a previous life, argued consistently, that there are very likely serious technological and qualitative shortcomings in the Korean People’s Army.

Revisiting Military Conscription (aka National Service) in Singapore

Unless you are not Singaporean, you will not have missed how the institution of National Service (military conscription as it is called in Singapore) has been discussed quite a fair bit in recent months. The following lines are my own, highly unstructured and rambling, thoughts on this subject.

WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF THE SINGAPORE ARMED FORCES (SAF)?

It seems like a silly question – because the obvious (or as we say in Singapore English, or Singlish, ahbutthen!) answer is to defend the state against external threats. I am certainly not about to question that rationale, although how the SAF thereafter is structured to actually defend Singapore is going to be an issue I want to return to later in this post. But what specifically are the scenarios in which we can envisage the SAF being called to fulfill its national mission? I think this question is something that really needs to be seriously discussed before any subsequent discussion on the existence of National Service can be undertaken meaningfully.

Lee Kuan Yew outlined in his memoirs the scenario in which he would, as Prime Minister, would have had to activate the SAF – and it had to do with a scenario in which Singapore’s water supplies, which were in the past heavily dependent on Malaysian sources, had been severed by unknown third parties. Clearly, in his scenario, it would not have been the Malaysian government that severed water supplies, but for a number of reasons too complicated to go into here, the Malaysian government would have been unable or unwilling to re-establish water supplies thereafter. At this point, Lee Kuan Yew admits, he would have no choice but to use the SAF as a leverage to compel the Malaysian government to honour the international agreement between the two states.

In other words, if the SAF needed to go to war to protect Singapore, the casus belli or cause of war would have been the severance of water supplies. In this scenario, the structure of the SAF begins to make sense – a land force component comprising 2PDF whose function is island defence, and 4 manoeuvre combined arms divisions, an air force comprising both air combat as well as heavy air lift capabilities, and a naval force component that included heavy sea lift. If you think through the strategic logic of Lee Kuan Yew’s scenario, therefore, I suspect you would come to the conclusion that the SAF would have had to practice a limited military offensive against Malaysia, impose a temporary military occupation of parts of Malaysian territory, and subsequently use that temporary occupation as a political leverage to compel Malaysia’s government to honour the water agreements.

Here’s the thing, therefore – the first of the two water agreements between Singapore and Malaysia lapsed a few years back, without any angst from the Singapore government. The simple point is that Singapore is moving increasingly towards a self-sufficient potable water policy, utilising desalination and recycling technologies. Water, in other words, is no longer the casus belli of the hypothetical war that the SAF might need to fight!

WHAT IS THE 21st CENTURY PURPOSE OF THE SAF?

I am not going to suggest that the SAF is no longer needed to defend Singapore in the event that Singapore becomes embroiled in a war with another state. Nevertheless, I suggest that it is fundamentally important for us to think through what that imagined war is going to be about, against whom Singapore will be going to war, and thereafter, how that war can be fought with what type of SAF.

So, if this is true, then what is the scenario in which Singapore has to go to war? What is the politics of this imagined war? What is the likely casus belli? Clausewitzian strategic logic tells us that the politics that underpins any war will shape not only the political objectives of the war, but also shape the military instrument that is used to fulfill those political objectives.

In that regard, the SAF’s current structure reflects a different war scenario, a different politics, and a different set of political objectives. The SAF reflects the Lee Kuan Yew scenario, which may no longer apply in 21st Century Singapore. In other words, the 4 manoeuvre combined arms divisions, the heavy air and sea lift capabilities, were necessary in Lee Kuan Yew’s scenario because the SAF would have had to invade and occupy a limited portion of Malaysian territory. But what cause of war today would require the SAF to still invade and impose a limited and temporary occupation of Malaysian territory?

Because the Lee Kuan Yew scenario involved the severance of then-absolutely essential water supplies, it was probably possible to portray an SAF invading and occupying limited portions of Malaysian territory as politically and strategically defensive in nature, even if the type of military operations would have been inherently offensive. Presumably, Singapore could have then justified to the United Nations that this hypothetical war was consonant with UN principles of just war – war as self-defence and last measure.

Maybe, jut maybe, the SAF can envisage other war scenarios today that still compel Singapore to adopt this limited operational offensive capability. Certainly one could use the strategic geography argument – that Singapore lacks strategic depth – to begin to justify such a limited operational offensive capability. But with an air force that is widely regarded as the most modern, most well-equipped and most well-trained in the Southeast Asian region, surely this air power, augmented by an increasingly professional and well-trained naval force component, could have imposed a cordon sanitaire of sorts around Singapore that would have prevented ay enemy forces from being able to bring deadly force to bear on any part of this densely populated and over-crowded island! In other words, surely an artificial and temporary strategic depth can be acquired without the need of ground forces to occupy another country’s territory?

REVISITING CONSCRIPTION – MAKING NATIONAL SERVICE MEANINGFUL

Thus far, the Singapore discussions on National Service do not appear to have addressed the need for military conscription to be continued. It has addressed another issue, namely, how National Service can be made more meaningful.

This second issue, about making National Service more meaningful, is an important issue. And it was heartening, at least to me, that much of the on-line chatter response to Hri Kumar’s suggestion of a defence and security tax on non-citizen residents was pretty dismissive of this suggestion. I remembered one particular response: “Don’t cheapen my service to my nation” was how one netizen responded. I do like some of the ideas that have since been forwarded – in particular the idea that the SAF could do more to match civilian skill-sets with military vocations (although I would also think that this can only be done up to a point!). I am less certain about some of the other suggestions – like giving NSmen priority access to a number of government services, in particular health care, housing and education.

I personally think that the best way to make National Service more meaningful is to not insult the commitment and intelligence of National Servicemen, whether in full-time or reservist (the SAF calls this ‘operationally ready’). The SAF can do better to relate specific activities to broader strategic objectives. I remember one particular month during my National Service where I was over a 3-week period deployed to support three different military exercises, and because the exercises were conducted in the same training area albeit with different companies, it was for me utterly meaningless; by week 2, I was merely going through the motions, doing the barest minimum to not piss off the captain I was attached to for the duration of the exercise. Many years later, I found out that that three week period coincided with a major military exercise involving pretty much all of the Singapore Army. I wondered then if my motivation during the three-week period would have been better had I been told that those three weeks, as painful as they were, were part of a much larger strategic enterprise. Would I have been more committed to training seriously?

My suspicion is that I probably would have been more committed, I would have taken the training a little more seriously. Which brings me back to my point about not insulting the intelligence of the SAF’s NSmen. I think the best way to make National Service a more meaningful experience is to be up front with the NSmen, tell them specifically what they are doing and more importantly why they are doing it, and to avoid the banal platitudes of “defending Singapore”. When a battalion is going out for what appears to the soldiers as just another bog-standard training exercise, tell them instead that this is not a normal bog-standard exercise, but that it is part of a larger exercise involving other component elements of the SAF. Maybe this makes the specific exercise thereafter more meaningful for the soldiers.

REVISITING THE NECESSITY OF NATIONAL SERVICE

But I also want to come back to this point about the need to maintain conscription. If my preceding analysis is correct, then maybe Singapore no longer needs National Service. If the wars the SAF is likely to fight in no longer require the temporary occupation of another country’s territory, then maybe the SAF no longer needs to maintain such a large land force component. Maybe the Singapore Army no longer needs 4 manoeuvre combined arms divisions. Maybe all the Singapore Army hereafter needs is sufficient soldiers (volunteers) to perform island defence against potential enemy invasion. As my friend and colleague, Professor Paul Mitchell of the Canadian Forces College has argued, the SAF will need to maintain a seriously professional and well-trained air force and navy, but guess what, it seems like the current air force and navy are already professional and well-trained!

There is another argument to support the abandonment of conscription. It is an argument that taps into the Revolutions in Military Affairs thesis that was so popular in the late 1990s through to the early 2000s. The RMA, as most scholars argued, was never going to be easy: it demanded very high technological competencies and technical skill-sets of soldiers, it was doctrinally sophisticated which therefore demanded soldiers who were very well-trained and well-educated (and this, by the way, was why these scholars concluded that conscript-based armed forces would not be able to do the RMA).

In the final analysis, I recognise that these thoughts are potentially very controversial, and that I am possibly stirring up a hornet’s nest. But I believe these are issues that ought to be discussed alongside the existing discussion about the meaningfulness of National Service.