Are we falling foul to regency bias when it comes to preparing for the next war? ⬇️

The Lowy Institute ran a recent event with The Economist’s defence editor, Shashank Joshi and covered issues including the Ukraine war, the Middle East, China’s nuclear ambitions, tensions between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, the implications of the US presidential election for international security.

Joshi covered a number of issues but his points about Defence preparedness and Western nation’s ability to mobilise and scale their Defence capabilities jumped out at us ⬇️

“We are thinking about long wars again… and it’s very clear that we took a holiday from that idea. We eroded our Defence Industrial bases, we ran them down. We didn’t think about the replenishment of second and third echelons in armies.  What happens when your regular professional army is worn down and chewed out. What do you replace it – what’s the training pipeline, what’s the equipment pipeline, what are your Reserves?”

In the years since Australia’s Defence Strategic Review it still isn’t clear that the Australian Government and the Department of Defence are truly grappling with becoming ‘future ready’ – ready to mobilise and scale at a rate this nation has not done since at least the 1950s. We need to move past our recency bias and relearn lessons from our history if we are to be better prepared for the geopolitical context of the present.

Joshi also covered the importance of rapid adaption and innovation in warfare – his example of how the Russians have quickly adapted to defend against the sophisticated Western weapons employed by the Ukrainians (as the Ukranians have been able to do against Russian weapons) is a reminder of this. Slow and steady doesn’t meet the needs of modern large scale combat operations.

Please see link to the video below and we recommend that you add the Lowy Institute’s podcasts to your listen list!

📷 via the Lowy Institute

– YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.