Australia needs a real debate on a national security strategy
Michael is joined by Senator Jim Molan to discuss the series of contributions he’s made to The Strategist over the past few months that makes the case for Australia to develop a national security strategy.
Molan notes, ‘there’s only limited consensus on the main security challenges we will face in the years to come’. This a highly contested policy area and even the process of debating the purpose, horizon and value of such a document would be an important exercise.
Molan has set out some boundary markers for the scope of a national security
strategy. The analysis, he argues, ‘must go beyond purely military concerns to
include social and economic factors that could affect Australia’s ability to fight a
future war’.
Australia needs ‘a brutally realistic national security policy’ that tests ‘the
coherence between policy, national strategy, concepts for national resilience,
security and defence, and the steps needed in preparing a nation for war’.
Molan advocates ‘a whole-of-nation obligation led by the government’ that
encompasses ‘infrastructure, spare parts, liquid fuel, industrial base, contingency
plans, political leadership, national resolve and support from the nation’. His national
security strategy is a blueprint for major, if not total, war.
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