It is unfortunate the Australian politicians who decide how much we spend on preparing for war, as opposed to preserving the peace, did not spend less time reading Clausewitz and more time contemplating the words of Zhou Enlai, and Henry Kissinger, his collaborator and friend.
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One of Zhou's aphorisms was that "all diplomacy is the extension of war by other means". This proposition paraphrases, while at the same time reversing, Clausewitz's unflinchingly Hobbesian view that "war is the extension of politics (aka diplomacy) by other means".
The proposition diplomacy is to be preferred to armed conflict was summed up even more succinctly by Winston Churchill when he observed that "jaw, jaw" is better than "war, war".
This is one reason why it seems counterintuitive for the government to be scaling back its investment in diplomacy and soft power through ongoing cuts and staff reductions to DFAT while, at the same time, elevating military spending to levels rarely seen in peacetime.
Such a policy is even more curious when the public is told the decision to spend $270 billion on defence over the next 10 years reflects a "conflation of global economic and strategic uncertainty" that has not been experienced "since the existential threat we faced when the global and regional order collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s".
Australia will never be able to develop the military resources to stare down an emerging superpower such as China, or even some of the other regional "tigers" who are spending heavily on armaments. Our financial ability to follow former US president Theodore Roosevelt's advice that "if you speak softly and carry a big stick you will go far" is limited. The best way for this country to avoid the horrible consequences of armed conflict is to not get caught up in one. That is where the diplomats come in.
The best way to avoid the horrible consequences of an armed conflict is to not get caught up in one.
Kissinger, writing in World Order in 2014, was well aware of the volatility on which Australia's increased defence spending is based. While he felt prudent defence spending made a lot of sense, he also said diplomacy had never been more important.
"A reconstruction of the international system is the ultimate challenge to statesmanship in our time," he wrote. "The conjectural element of foreign policy - the need to gear actions to an assessment that cannot be proved when it is made - is never more true than in a period of upheaval ... The goal of our era must be to achieve... equilibrium while restraining the dogs of war".
You don't do that by going in with all guns blazing.
Australia, as a middle power with close ties to both the US and China, and geographically close to the centre of the most rapidly developing region on Earth, has far more capacity to influence the emergence of a new world order through the practice of diplomacy than through the force of arms.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adamson was quite across this when she recently spoke to the Institute of Public Administration on the same program as the Chief of Defence Force, General Angus Campbell.
"Diplomacy is, in fact, our first line of defence against forces that threaten our way of life," she said. "Diplomats keep the peace, keep trade flowing, keep terrorism away from our shores, and keep Australians safe, secure, and prosperous."
While it is prudent to have a strong military to discourage aggressive outsiders with evil intentions, a well-resourced, and wisely directed, diplomatic corps can do much to ensure the weapons can "stay in the shed".
