11 May 2026
Distinguished guests, colleagues and friends, good morning.
Thank you to Professor Ian Langford and the Security and Defence Plus Alliance for the opportunity to speak with you this morning.
The academy plays a prominent role in helping us think about the very challenges of our age, and I applaud Ian and his colleagues from three great universities for their efforts to convene this forum. It is without doubt time well spent.
I have been asked to provide some thoughts this morning on three issues.
First, the idea of the general loss of warning time for major war, not just in the Indo-Pacific but globally.
Second, the shift to persistent strategic competition, and what this may imply.
And finally, the need to generate ‘fight tonight’ or ‘contingency’ land forces in the Indo-Pacific, and the contribution this makes to achieving a deterrent effect.
I will address these topics briefly in turn, but upfront they are linked and there is a reciprocal relationship between them. Taken together they present a wicked problem set that we … together with our allies and partners across the region … face every single day.
The concept of ‘strategic warning time’ has a long and checkered history.
One of the most prominent examples is actually a British one.
In 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War, the British Cabinet formally adopted the ‘Ten Year Rule’, which held that the UK would have ten years’ warning of a major war.
Sharp defence cuts followed throughout the 1920s, until the policy was overturned in 1932 in the face of resurgent militarism in North Asia and then Europe.
The British, however, found it was far harder to re-build a military than it was to reduce it, and they remained sorely underprepared at the outbreak of war just seven years later.
A decade of utopian optimism, or what might better be described as ‘inter-war thinking’, came back to bite on the beaches of Dunkirk.
For Australia, the modern idea of ‘warning time’ dates back to a landmark 1986 study called the ‘Review of Australia’s Defence Capabilities’.
The Review found that there was, quote, ‘no conceivable prospect of any power contemplating invasion of [Australia]. It would take at least 10 years … for the development of a regional capacity to threaten us’.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many found the Review’s findings highly attractive.
Even with the lingering frost of the Cold War, Australia seemed protected by geography, by great power alliances, and by the sheer lack of expeditionary military capabilities in Asia and the Pacific.
There was perhaps no nation less vulnerable to military adventurism. We truly were the ‘lucky country’, secure and prosperous at a time that would soon be proclaimed as the end of history.
The alternate view, however, is that the Review’s conclusions were far more convenient than realistic. To be blunt, they ignored the evidence of history’s inescapable gravity, the inevitable consequences of reaping the so-called ‘peace dividend’ and indeed the very nature of globalisation and its intersection with national interests.
The pattern of the following few years was predictable. The ‘warning time’ assumption underpinned a reduction in Australian defence investment that took it to historic national lows.
There seemed no need to ‘hang’ the nation, as President Eisenhower would have put it, from the ‘cross of iron’.
Today, it is universally agreed that warning time is a thing of the past. The Australian Government has made its views on this clear, starting with the Defence Strategic Review of 2023, and now through two successive National Defence Strategies.
Lord George Robertson, the former NATO Secretary General and author of the British Strategic Defence Review, said in a frank speech last month that ‘what is happening in the world today does not give us anything like 10 years’.
The question is no longer whether we need to respond, but whether we have recognised the loss of ‘warning time’ in time to prevent what might follow.
If it is 1932 again, how long do we have to re-develop the ways and means to contain a potentially global conflagration, before it sparks?
This may well prove to be the decisive question of our generation.
This demise of warning time is a result - in no small measure - of the return to strategic competition between great powers.
This is also now an undeniable fact. As historian Niall Ferguson has argued, the last forty years seem to have been far more of a ‘holiday from history’ than the end of history.
The remarkable growth of Chinese and Indian national power, the resurgence of Russian militarism, new alignment between authoritarian governments, and the relative flattening of growth in the traditional ‘West’ has seen the sharp re-emergence of competition and confrontation in the international system.
The behaviours manifesting in this dramatic arena are depressingly familiar to the student of history.
Analysts can, and do, argue that the 2020s resemble any number of historical analogies: the 1950s and the emergence of the Cold War, the ‘twenty years of crisis’ between 1919 and 1939, the mid-1600s and the Treaty of Westphalia, the times of Machiavelli and the Italian renaissance, and even as far back as Ancient Greece.
There is a common theme that links these periods. The necessity of statecraft.
In each of these times in history, it was a requirement to master the practice of statecraft if nations were to at least survive, and at best to thrive.
Strategic competition demanded that nations coordinate and apply all elements of national power in the defence of – and indeed the pursuit of – their interests.
These circumstances demanded that the first duties of governments were: territorial defence, a strong economy, freedom from coercion, the protection of national identity, and the imprimatur of their citizens.
Contemporary times are unlikely to be different. Statecraft is essential.
The study of history and a good measure of humility will teach us much as we engage with our new era, but it will only get us so far.
This is because there are four key factors that exist today that make our situation different to strategic competitions of the past.
These factors mean that the yesterday’s solutions will not work today, at least not predictably. There are new uncertainties and risks that must be taken into account.
The first is ubiquitous surveillance. On any given day the time when one is not under the watchful eye of a potential adversary’s satellites can be measured in minutes.
Cyber penetration accesses state secrets, intellectual property, wealth and utilities in a manner that was impossible just a decade ago.
Technology is evolving espionage just as much as it is changing war.
Second is the accessibility, range and lethality of modern weapon systems. We all live inside a WEZ, or ‘weapon engagement zone’, every day. This has arguably been the case for a while, but what is new is the low bar of entry for access to such range.
The Shahed-136, which costs as little as $50,000 to produce, has a remarkable reported range of 2,500km. One no longer requires an exquisite military to attack another at distance.
And some are increasingly willing to do so: in 2025 alone, a remarkable nine capital cities were struck by the missiles and drones of other nations.
For nations like Australia, this change is fundamental. Our remote geography was central to our strategic logic in the 1980s. Geography can no longer underwrite our approach to defence and national security. The tyranny of distance is no longer protective in this regard.
The third is the growing spectre of nuclear proliferation. Of all the rules and norms that have degraded over the last decade, the demise of nuclear arms-control is most concerning.
There is but one historical example of a nuclear arms race. This suggests that, in the absence of mechanisms of control, a precipitous and escalating growth of nuclear weapons is inevitable.
There were more than 60,000 nuclear warheads in the world in the 1980s. Today, there remains but a sixth of this number.
The advances in technology in the 21st Century make this trend all the more concerning. The list of nations that might have the sophistication to develop nuclear weapons is more expansive today than in the 1950s.
Miniaturisation, hypersonics, artificial intelligence, and quantum sensing: all of these are as likely to exacerbate nuclear risks, than to manage them.
And finally, in terms of new factors, we have the sheer sovereignty of the state system we now live in. In the Indo-Pacific, this is arguably unlike any time in history.
The emergence of a sovereign system of states in the Pacific and South East Asia in the aftermath of the Second World War has created a system wonderfully rich and vibrant in its culture. This freedom of self-determination is an outcome that we collectively celebrate and value.
This new system is, however, as complex as it is vibrant. The ‘great game’ of the modern era is being played by a cast with more diverse backgrounds, and more diverse interests, than ever before.
So, while there are unmistakable historical echoes in the great power competition of our era, they ought to be considered accordingly.
The years ahead are likely to place a more complex, urgent and demanding tax on statecraft if we are to avoid the traps that lead to the worst of outcomes: great power war.
Most nations find themselves out of practice for such a challenge. We are not ‘match fit’.
This should worry us … and should compel us to step forward rapidly to build the required skills.
This is particularly the case for middle powers such as Australia. As I argued in my keynote at LANPAC last year, middle powers have never been without agency.
The role played by the Corinthians and the Megarians in driving Athens and Sparta towards war in the 5th Century BC is a cautionary tale of middle power influence – for good or ill – among great power competition.
Middle powers today cannot define or dictate the policies of great powers, but they can certainly influence them, and even more so if they work together.
Like-minded middle powers might do well to develop new and collective skills of statecraft if we seek to shape the great games of the 21st Century, and to avoid catastrophe.
And what of the role of the military in this new era of statecraft? This brings me to my final theme this morning: the need to generate ‘fight tonight’ forces in the Indo-Pacific.
Hard power has always played a prominent role in statecraft during times of intense strategic competition.
With global spending on defence growing by 2.9% in real terms last year, the military instrument of national power is clearly resurgent.
The momentum of re-armament is gathering.
The challenge today is to ensure that the use of this instrument remains defensive in nature … that nations continue to eschew the use of political violence as a viable tool in the pursuit of national ambition.
That hard power remains a tool of last resort.
This is why ‘deterrence’ remains the strategic objective of most nations, especially across the West. Nations seek to develop sufficient hard power to deter aggression, to prevent coercion, and to continue to underwrite a system of global rules and norms that maximises the chance of stability, if not peace.
But deterrence is a tangled and difficult concept to with which to come to terms. Lawrence Freedman once described it as the ‘Goldilocks’ strategy … it must be not too hot, not too cold, but just right.
Like statecraft, our understanding of both the theory and practice of deterrence are likely not yet match fit for the coming era.
Two ideas within deterrence theory stand out to me as important.
The first is that, for hard power to have a deterrent effect, it must be both relevant and credible to the actor being deterred.
Relevance and credibility are therefore relative, they cannot be viewed in isolation.
As Admiral Paparo noted in his recent testimony, the demonstrable ability to defeat aggression is the most effective way of deterring it.
The second idea is that hard power must be effectively demonstrated and communicated, if it is to deter. Deterrence is, ultimately decided in the mid of its object.
The ‘Singapore Strategy’ used by the British to deter the Imperial Japanese in the 1940s was only effective when it was underpinned by a visible fleet that could use Singapore to launch overwhelming sea power into Asia.
As the strength of the fleet declined, so did its deterrent effect.
The fall of Singapore shows that, as the title of today’s conference rightly suggests, deterrent forces require the three factors of readiness, resilience and posture if they are to be effective.
If any of these three factors are lacking, such forces become – as Mao Zedong once framed it – ‘nothing to be afraid of … a paper tiger … unable to withstand the wind and the rain’.
So what does this mean for us today? Diminished strategic warning time and challenged international norms means that war is more proximate – not inevitable, but more proximate.
J.R.R Tolkien pithily summed up the implications of this in his novel the Hobbit, when he observed ‘it does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him’.
This is why it is vital to maintain contingency or ‘fight tonight’ forces in the Indo-Pacific. Our capacity to deter war relies explicitly on our capacity to credibly respond to and defeat aggression.
This requires forces that are postured, ready and resilient, underpinned by appropriately communicated national will and commitment.
We know that none of us can achieve this alone, and this is why we act together.
This is why 19 nations gathered in Australia for Ex TALISMAN SABRE last year to rehearse and to demonstrate our collective will and our collective capability.
This is why together we are witnessing an acceleration and expansion of multilateralism in all its forms.
To ensure that war remains a tragic exception, rather than the norm.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. This week I will participate in my fourth and final LANPAC as the current steward of the Australian Army, and I am struck by the cohesiveness and collective will demonstrated by the nations that gather here.
We are stronger, more aligned and better integrated than ever before. The collective will to deter war is unambiguous, and the means to do so are evolving quickly. However there will be no slacking of pace, and no space for complacency. The time is now, and it is up to us. The intensity of today is our new normal.
President Eisenhower was right in the aftermath of the Second World War when he argued that nations should be cautious before they hang themselves from the ‘cross of iron’ of hard power.
But, to borrow from Lord Robertson again, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey was also right in 1976 when he said, ‘when our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no schools, we have no hospitals. We have a heap of ashes’.
The answer is not ‘guns or butter’. It is both. The art of statecraft will be finding the right balance in order to secure our collective futures. Thank you.