Watch in YouTube — the WP embed lately is blocked so I do this instead. Of course you can still watch the video here in the post.
Ain’t gonna study war no more!
Why should we spend anything on defence? Or is “Defence” really the “Ministry of War”? Clearly in the past there have been very curious outcomes for military spending. Look at Wollongong’s cannons for example.
See Smiths Hill Fort at Cliff Road.
Since the end of the Crimean War (1853-1856) there have been at least two scares of the Russians invading Australia. These resulted in Royal Commissions, which urged an upgrading of Wollongong’s port defences. The outcome was that in 1873 the NSW Government received 23 cannons, all 80-pounders, as a gift from the Imperial Government. This was followed in 1879 by three 68-pounder Crimean War relics being relocated from Sydney to Wollongong and placed on Flagstaff Hill. These guns were mounted on wooden bases.
The Royal Navy, in the mid 1880s, and the Legislative Assembly of NSW were of the opinion that enemy ships could demand bunker coal in return for not bombarding the town or invading the country and that the ports of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong were prime targets.
Though Wollongong had cannons installed on Flagstaff Hill these, by 1887, had a very short range and were regarded useless. The solution was to build a concealed battery on high ground with underground rooms for supplies, ammunition and shelter with emplacements for two 80-pound cannons on iron carriages.
At the height of the Russian Invasion scare the Government acquired 2½ acres of land along Cliff Road. W Hart of Sydney carried out the construction of Smith’s Hill Fort for an overall cost of £2,000 with work commencing in 1892.
The threat of an invasion had disappeared before the fort was completed in 1893, but the cannons were used extensively for company training under the supervision of Major Henry Osborne MacCabe and maintained by the Wollongong-Bulli Half Company.
But then there have been times when NOT spending on Defence has in retrospect been a mistake.
Our RAAF’s pride and joy in 1939:
After all we had Fortress Singapore to protect us, and the Royal Navy! See my recent post Not definitive — just noting… Some reflections…. And I am still not being definitive, even at the risk of “sitting on the fence”. But make no mistake — I am NOT pro-war!
Lately of course we have this, and everything that flows from it.
Again I may shock you — but I believe this is not entirely unreasonable. I happen to think that in the long run China will be too smart to involve itself in a full scale war, despite VERY clear militarism you may find in items like this.
And talk about the military-industrial complex!
Both of those come from Chinese TV, not from some anti-Chinese outfit.
But in say the Taiwan situation I think, as Linda Jaivin says in her recent reflections on Penny Wong’s speech, that China will in the end go for rather more likely ways of attaining the long-held aim of reunifying China, an aim once shared by Taiwan (The Republic of China — remember?) itself until recently.
Linda Jaivin siggests something very plausible, and entirely consistent I might add with the principles of that great Chinese classic, The Art of War.
Meanwhile I have been going down a variety of paths as I think about these matters.
And a Marxist view…
A Trot? The direction he takes is not entirely what I expected, as he questions one geopolitical line you commonly see on the Left.
Update 29th April
Take note of Hugh White’s Our directionless defence policy in The Monthly 26th April.
…the Albanese government, like its predecessors, has no intention of building forces that can achieve either of these objectives. For all the bold talk, the review makes no serious, concrete proposals for substantial enhancements to Australian Defence Force capabilities for either role, and makes no commitments to the sustained increases in defence spending that would be needed to fund them. That means there are no plans to materially enhance Australia’s ability to help America deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, or to defend ourselves. Australia’s nonchalance about this is typified by the reckless gamble of entrusting our future submarine capability to the impossibly protracted, complex and risky AUKUS nuclear program, when much faster and more cost-effective conventional options are available.
‘What this tells us is that the government does not really believe Australia has a serious role to play either in preserving the US-led regional order or in guarding our own security. Nor does it really believe its own rhetoric about us facing, in Albanese’s words, “the most challenging strategic circumstances since the Second World War”, because it still takes US power and resolve for granted, and cannot bring itself to see that America might not always be there for us….
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