15 May 2025
Aloha. Picture if you will a maritime region, one of peninsulas, islands and seas… one where trade flows through the straits of strategic terrain.
The affairs of the region are shaped by two dominant nations. One a long-standing established power, with a storied history of regional leadership. The other a rising power… the result of trade, mercantilism, opportunity and resolve. The rising power is building a great navy, of a scale that appears to go well-beyond just influencing its proximal seas and securing its prosperity.
For some time these two nations have prospered together. Indeed, they have often worked in league with each other, and against common foes.
But in recent years, tensions have grown. These nations talk less, and a deep suspicion has taken hold. Competition is now the norm. Conflict, it seems, is on the horizon. It may be inevitable.
This story may have a familiar echo, but it is not a contemporary one. It is instead a story of more than two and a half millennia ago… set in the Peloponnese, where the great powers of the day of Sparta and Athens spiralled into a conflict that would eventually destroy them both.
One of the most relevant contentions to be drawn from the Peloponnesian Wars is what has today become known as the ‘Thucydides Trap’.
The idea that conflict is inevitable when a rising power challenges an established one… that it was, as Thucydides recalls, ‘the rise of Athens, and the fear this inspired in Sparta’ that made war inevitable.
As an Australian I reflect on a different story, one much less well-known but no less important: the story of the role that allies and partners… what we might today describe as ‘middle powers’… played in creating the conditions for the Peloponnesian Wars.
Athens and Sparta’s respective allies were not helpless bystanders in this great power competition. Indeed in many ways they were quite the opposite, key players who - in their own interests - stoked the friction and encouraged the war.
The Megarians, a Spartan ally and whose city dominated regional trade routes, were furious when the Athenians levelled unilateral trade sanctions against them.
They demanded a Spartan response, saying that the sanctions were an offence to all nations in the region.
The Corinthians ventured even further. Faced with what they saw as Athenian aggression, they sought to shame Sparta into war. They publicly lambasted the Spartans for their failure to contain Athens and their rise to power… and threatened to find new allies if the Spartans were too weak. Spartan pride served as an accelerant in this response.
So, yes, the rise of Athens created the possibility of war. But one might reasonably conclude that allies and partners were the catalysts of its inevitability. They stoked fear in Sparta, questioned Spartan honour, and seemingly engaged the interests of both protagonists.
Fear, honour and interest… a familiar and compelling set of motivations to engage in the devastating contest that is war.
A lesson to be drawn perhaps is that allies and partners have agency and influence, and with these come great responsibilities.
Given what is at stake, it is incumbent on all Nations and all institutions of national power to wield their agency and influence judiciously, transparently, and with a tragic sensibility.
It is a real privilege to be here at LANPAC, to be here among friends. It is an honour to have been invited to deliver a keynote in such company.
I would like to use the opportunity I have been afforded to me today to speak to you all directly and plainly.
We are a powerful collective. The strategic land power network that we represent is quite remarkable when considered in its entirety. The armies and marine forces we are privileged to steward collectively number in the region of one and a half million regular soldiers, and over three and a half million including reservists.
We collectively hold over 6,000 armoured fighting vehicles, over 10,000 artillery pieces, and several hundred attack helicopters (for example).
That’s interesting, but we are far more than just hard power. The friendships in this room are built on the sacrifice of those whom have gone before us, and the rich histories of our nations and our region.
Many of our relationships have been forged in the crucible of war, for good and for ill, and we are stronger for it today.
Our collective will and cohesion is - in my estimation at least - more valuable than all our hard power put together.
The land power we collectively generate is a force to be reckoned with.
Its value proposition can be described by a set of five advantages that we individually and collectively share.
These advantages derive from our common purpose. They drive unity of effort and serve our collective interests.
We can use these advantages to reduce the likelihood of conflict and war – surely that is the acme of deterrence.
The first of our shared advantages is our sheer presence. Our soldiers and marines are in every corner of our nations and our region, we are deeply connected with the societies we serve.
The Army that I am privileged to command is one of the oldest and most respected national institutions in Australia. The story of the Australian Army is a part of the foundational story of our nation. We are garrisoned in some 157 locations across the breadth and depth of the Australian continent. We are intimately connected to our community.
And I know you each have a similar story. The history of armies tend to reflect in the history of nations.
But increasingly we are present in our region together. And I cannot recall a time in nearly four decades of service when we have trained and operated together at the frequency, scale, level of sophistication and with a sense of shared purpose as we do today.
From Super Garuda Shield, to Alon, Yama Sakura, Chapel Gold and Wantok Warrior… to the nineteen nations that will convene in Australia this coming July for TALISMAN SABRE, our collective presence demonstrates our collective will for a peaceful region. This matters.
Our presence is supported by our second advantage… our ability to persist. It is impossible for even the most capable militaries to maintain a continuous presence of platforms across the vast scale of the Indo-Pacific.
Our armies, however, can offset these challenges by our ability to persist indefinitely, regardless of season, weather, or terrain.
Land forces are survivable, able to conceal in the diverse jungle and complex urban terrain that characterise our region.
Now some argue that persistence is being challenged by the changing character of war, by the proliferation of sensor technology. It is, and the experiences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are held up as evidence.
But when we view the lessons of Ukraine through an Indo-Pacific lens, the effects of the environment create a very different set of challenges. Many of the nations represented here are in the top ten countries for average rainfall per year, experiencing up to four meters of rain annually. Mist and thick canopy are prevalent. And then of course there’s the tyranny of distance.
The use of massed technical systems to detect, recognise and identify concealed land forces is a very different proposition in our region. Concealment, dispersal, and deception all remain viable counters for a disciplined, diligent, and innovative force.
The ability of land forces to persist, and to survive in the face of attack, is a common strength.
But presence and persistence can go beyond physical and tactical benefits. Our most important choice is to be present together, and persist together.
The presence of allies together in key strategic terrain diminishes the impact of coercion and aggression against them.
It increases the risk associated with any choice by an adversary to use hard power, applied as it must then be against the many. Against the collective.
Collective capability, habitually employed side-by-side, is a remarkably powerful expression of collective will.
We can do more to enhance our presence and persistence, tangibly, in the immediate term. The simplest approach is for better interoperability – between our people, our technology, and our doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures.
But there is an opportunity to be more strategic in our approach. Ad hoc relationships are good, but the more we do to formalise our agreements and arrangements, and to normalise our collective presence, the more credible it becomes.
Enhancing our presence and our capacity to persist together is, in my assessment at least, central to any collective ‘theory of success’ and is vital in deterring conflict.
Our third advantage is asymmetry: our ability to apply our strengths against the weaknesses of adversaries, ideally in ways that delay and disrupt their will and their capacity to respond.
I view this particularly through a defensive lens. History tells us time and again that even small, well-prepared ground formations in well-fortified defensive positions - layered and sensibly arrayed - generate asymmetry against much larger forces.
The anti-access / area-denial and very long-range fires that predominate in parts of our region are optimised for ships, or planes and for infrastructure. Land forces in the defence and dispersed are harder to identify and target, hiding among the clutter of the land and the EMS, and employing multi-domain deception.
We are able to disperse and to deceive, to create dilemmas for adversaries who must choose how low to set their targeting thresholds, and where to expend their magazines.
Distributed land forces can in this way blur the kill web, making it harder for an adversary to apply decisive action.
Now asymmetry is an inherent strength we all share. The question for us is however, how do we best combine our efforts in support of our common interests?
Perhaps we need a concept like ‘distributed asymmetry’, to ensure that collectively we are more than the sum of our individual contributions?
Asymmetry is most effective when it is applied in the right place, and at the right time. Tilt the map and the geography of our region literally ties us together, a ‘land-bridge’ that connects New Zealand to Japan. [CA indicates the DSR ‘landbridge’ map displayed behind him…]
The history of our region tells us exactly where the strategic terrain is.
We can ill-afford to overlap one another’s asymmetric strengths. It makes a lot more sense for us to offset each other’s vulnerabilities. There is, I believe, an opportunity for us to consider this in further detail in our staff talks, our planning, and in our operations, activities and investments.
If we can position our asymmetry in the right place, at the right time, then we can make the most of our fourth advantage, our versatility.
I contend that land forces are the most versatile of military forces. Practically any well-led and trained army formation can fulfil practically any task, ranging from domestic HADR to combat operations.
It is in this regard that I most often look to our team mates in the United States Marine Corps as an example. They have spent their entire history nurturing a culture of versatility and adaptability that is instructive.
Versatility is all the more important in the face of the ‘tyranny of distance’. As I stand here today I am just over eight and a half thousand kilometres, or around five thousand miles, from home. Twelve hours by air. A 13-day sail at economical speed.
The versatility of land forces in the Indo-Pacific is critical to overcoming this tyranny of distance.
I need the Australian Army to be able to transition in-stride from ‘training and rehearsing for battle’ to ‘disaster relief’ should the need arise.
I certainly need them to be able to go the other way as well.
When viewed through a collective lens, our capability and capacity to adapt, and to successfully meet the challenges of today and tomorrow, are evident… and are indeed continually evolving.
For evidence of this, look no further than at what our soldiers learn from one other as they operate together, at home and abroad every day.
So, finally, what do we generate from the relative advantages of land power; presence, persistence, asymmetry, and versatility? This combination, in my estimation, generates exceptional value.
Some of this is about value for money. This really matters today. I advocate that armies offer significant return on investment, particularly given the prominence of land power in the history of defending nations, and ending wars.
But the collective value of land power is perhaps best viewed through a broader lens, starting with the relationships that exist in this room. These are strong. Some are new, but most are the product of a long-term investment.
Our army to army, and our army to marine relationships, are enduring, resilient and dextrous. They have tangible but often overlooked value that goes well beyond the defence dollar.
They allow us to look past the news of the day, and to engage on a foundation of personal and institutional trust.
There is true value of the enduring strategic land power network.
In bringing this to a close, let’s return to 432BC and to Athens and Sparta. Even though a ‘tragic sensibility’ demands that we seriously consider the worst and apply the lens of a professional pessimist, I do not believe that any war in inevitable.
The Peloponnesian Wars were in large part a failure of transparency, of strategic empathy, and of communication.
‘Fear, honour and interest’. Thucydides’ diagnosis of the three elements of the human condition that drive the behaviour of states in international relations continues.
The obvious question is, could the Athenians and the Spartans have found a way to reduce their fear of each other, to respect each other’s honour, and to have found common interest?
Perhaps the question worthy of our consideration today is, how could the likes of the Megarians and the Corinthians have eased the tensions, rather than stoked them?
One of the other popular theories that emerges from Thucydides’ witness of the Peloponnesian Wars is the ‘Melian dilemma’. The idea that ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’.
Some argue that this is a reality of the world and our times, and they are right to assess that the spectre of great power competition dictates the organising principles, and that the inherent tension is real.
But I contend, that like most simplifications, the ‘Melian dilemma’ implies determinism and obscures agency and the potential of collective resolve.
The real story that Thucydides tells is that allies and partners have agency: the capacity to ease tensions at least as much as to exacerbate them… accompanied, of course, by the weight of great responsibility.
I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of this exceptional team of leaders in our region and beyond – when I consider our common purpose, we are truly ONE TEAM!
In closing I’d like to extend my thanks to General Brown, General Clark and all at the AUSA and the US Army Pacific for bringing us together at another superb Land Forces of the Pacific.
This year marks the two hundred and fiftieth birthdays of the US Army and the US Marine Corps, and I want to wish you all a very happy birthday in advance.
We in the Australian Army are very proud of over a hundred years of friendship and mateship, and we look forward to serving alongside you over the course of the next one hundred years. Thank you.