This seems like an exercise in naïveté. I'm not sure what the author is advocating... An end to war? Reducing our armed forces will not end wars, just our capacity to contribute to them;or, at worst, defend ourselves from aggression. Reducing our propensity to engage in colonial wars seems a sensible option but is this all the author wishes?
The unfortunate truth is that their are security problems both within our borders and in our region. Whilst engaging in aggression against sovereign countries is rightly debated how would the author suggest we respond to a coup in Fiji, border aggression between west Papua and PNG or blockade of sea lanes in the Melaka strait without an ADF with expeditionary capacity?

So Professor Bickerton, you claim war, '...does not work.'

You might try telling that to American blacks whose forebears were freed by your General Grant. Grant's victory over the Confederate army liberated black slaves who faced another generation in chains.

And, why not eyeball an old Russian soldier who, along with millions of his Soviet comrades, fought and died to liberate Europe from the most loathsome, despicable and horrendous war machine in the history of humankind.

You might suggest to the Russian soldier, sub-machine gun in hand, who kicked in the gates of Chelmno extermination camp that he should have laid down his gun and not fought against the Germans.

The only thing that stopped the extermination camps at Sobidor and Chelmno from killing every Gypsy, Jew, Russian prisoner, trade unionist and Jehovah Witness in Europe was the Soviet army's crushing defeat of the Germans on the Eastern Front.

The pious pleading of Pope Pius and academics and pacifists for peace during WWII, if successful, would have ensured the complete extermination of those unfortunate 'untermenschen'.

Next time a maniacal, tyrant like Hitler gets hold of 100 divisions of armoured military force, what do you suggest we do - jaw jaw. They did that in the 1930's and look what happened. The gutless appeasers jaw jawed and allowed Hitler to build the greatest war machine in history- the result was a war war that cost 50 million dead.

And one other thing. Your article has the photograph of an Australian soldier's body being returned to his homeland. Have you checked with his family if see if they agree with the photo of their loved one being attached to an article that does not support our soldier's sacrifice?

Gerard Dean

The selective choice of examples is quite puzzling. Apparently the author has yet to acquaint himself with the names of Pol Pot, and Robert mugabe. Rwanda and DRC don't count. Apparently black people don't have wars. Somalia does not rate a mention. Central governments are not necessary obviously, and piracy is acceptable if the the pirates are black. The Sudan also does not rate a mention. Hacked off hands were just an occupational hazard in Sierra Leone. Nigeria of course is at peace as is Mali apparently, France of course was not involved in the Libyan civil war.
Wars apparently only occur between two central governments and their uniformed soldiers. So the Shining Path don't count, and the deaths in Mexico are just a glorified neighbourhood dispute. Twenty or so decapitations are mere displays of a cultural quirk.
Bashar al-Assad of Syria in his war against his own people is to be condemned because as an Alaite, he should meekly submit to genocide of his people along with all of the Christians in his country. The Kurds are to be written off as well no doubt just as the Armenians were in Turkey.
Perhaps the author could start reading the newspapers past page three.

Professor Bickerton, I wholly agree with your article. I believe we are on the same wavelength here. I knew before reading the posts that the majority of comments would belittle you in regards to war and that ignorant people would highlight the usual suspects: Hitler et al. War is gruesome, there are no winners and the final cost (human and economically) far outweighs the supposed gains of military action. When Germany was occupied by the allied forces after World War II, images of young German women throwing flowers at GIs were used as propaganda by the US Government to portray them as liberators. Germany is constantly used as an example where war led to a successful outcome and that Germany is now a world leader – in a positive way. The fact that Germany was a democracy long before Hitler came to power, and that the majority of Germans were glad to see him go, is often forgotten. Germany was not ‘converted’ after the war and no one had to be re-educated as Germany, and Europe in general, love freedom and democracy even more than the US, the UK and Australia. Having said this, you will never convince, convert or force an Arab or a staunch communist to abandon their beliefs and opinions just as Hitler couldn’t convince Germans or its Nordic neighbours of Arian superiority. Most people played along with Hitler as they didn’t want to end up in a concentration camp themselves. Hitler would have succumbed to his own people. He was hated and he would have been overthrown at some stage.

My grandmother fled the eastern German states around the time the war ended as Russian and Polish forces made their way through the now annexed territories. Millions died on the long trek due to starvation and murder by the advancing Polish and Russian forces. Millions! My grandmother told me many stories where towns would hide their female population because soldiers would rape them. In one such story, just as my grandmother and her four children walked into a village, a guy screamed at her to hide. She was taken to a factory where women were hidden in huge steel pipes and under the roof of the warehouse. In or around Schmiedeberg, that the Polish had occupied, my grandmother had to pretend she was Polish as not to be raped and beaten to death. My family saw dead Germans hanging from street lamps or strung up on roof tops just for decoration. Yep, great liberation going on here. There was no liberation – only revenge. Adding insult to injury, after walking for weeks to get to Berlin, and meeting up with her ailing mother, she found accommodation and even a job. However, the US command in Berlin rejected her application to stay in Berlin and was told to leave (I have a copy of the request for my family to stay in Berlin as well as the commander’s rejection and signature from 1945). The whole family was then transferred to a refugee camp in Munich, and from there, relocated to the Black Forest.

War is never just. It sucks! It is evil and is good for nothing. Especially our involvement in the Middle East and Asia has not and will never result in an acceptable outcome for anyone. More human lives and materials are wasted than if we let these countries work out their differences in their own time. Do we invade China, India, Pakistan et al because they have a very poor human rights track record? No! Why? Because we’d get our arses kicked – we’d lose! We pick our wars based on economic gains and a host of other factors that Australia usually does not control. Australia’s involvement in all wars has been due to requests by the US or the UK,

Again, the total cost of war far outweighs the purported benefits. Whilst I also abhor racism, violence against women and all those bad things we are told about certain countries, we still have no right to tell foreign countries how to run their countries and how to treat their population. If the population doesn’t like it, they can have a civil war.

Free movement of people in europe maf have avoided out right war between nations in the short term

But instead there has been a clash of cultures, particualry between islam and christianity, leading to low level simmering domestic tensions that will inevitably lead to out break of civil wars at some point in the future.

The only real solution to these problems is population control so that tens of millions of people in non-western countries do not feel the need to immigrate to the west and such that the west does not need to all but take resources from non-western countries to sustain the lving standards of an incresing number of consumers.

Hell even involuntary fertility control via some sort of biological agent would be better than the alternative means of population control we are increasingly seeing around the world - war and genoicde.

Nothing changes.

Through history, appeasers espousing the 'yawn', tired old ideas of the good professor have created the circumstances loved by the trigger happy dictators who justifiably perceive "talkers" as weak.

Only through a thorough military preparedness do we - ironically - avoid the circumstances for war.

Our choices post WW2 included creating a viable nuclear deterrent.
Had Menzies taken up the offer, no soldier would have had to go to Vietnam.

Because of the Left's appease think, hundreds had to die, so we could enjoy the shade of the US nuclear umbrella.

This too, was the unspoken reason for our forays into Iraq and Afghanistan. To shore up relations with our great defender. Whom we will beg for salvation when the inevitable challenge comes.

With a credible and mature nuclear defense, no power from the old Soviet Union, India, Indonesia, or our greatest ever threat, the dictatorship of the PRC, none of these would have or would continue to bother us.
Why? Well, a guaranteed annihilation of say Beijing and/or Shaghai alone, would give even these ruthless dictators pause for thought.

However, because of Leftist Appeasers, our defences are heavily compromised, leaving us totally dependent on another countries defence and intelligence establishment. Reliant on the whims of a foreign power's domestic politics as it, in turn, impacts its own foreign affairs and defence establishments.

As to our neighbours, as John Howard once said: "They hate us!"

No amount of chanting from the good professor is going to change that position.

We are a small, internationally uncompetitive population, in charge of a continent, surrounded by:
1/ An increasingly bolshie, nuclear armed and nuclear powered India who see the "Indian" ocean as its sphere of influence.
2/ The largest muslim population in the world in Indonesia. One jihad away from a radical dictatorship. A substantial percentage of its population want to turn their country into a theocracy, with all the appalling conflicts that would bring.
3/ The WTO funded dictatorship of the PRC. Growing a blue water navy of nuclear powered and armed warships, including hunter killer and ballistic missile subs, cruisers etc, with plans for power projecting nuclear powered 100,000 tonne aircraft carriers. Many of our former ministers work for them - such is their buying power.

In amongst all that, this character and many other Leftists on these pages want to flatulate old, discredited ideas of appeasement...

Guaranteeing a military challenge and quite possibly, something quite worse.

I believe that a defence strategy that might be worth exploring is as follows.

First of all let us note that the US has embraced computer gaming as a recuitment tool for their army. If you are not aware of it google "americas army" which is a first person shooter game that is very realistic with gun re-coil etc. They are enticing gamers into their army to play the game for real and having some degree of success I believe.

We already have a generation that is adept at various flight simulators including the realistic microsoft ones. No doubt the US is exploiting them to some degree to 'pilot' their drones in the middle east.

Why couldn't australia follow a similar defence strategy?

Part of it will be cheaper drones rather than much more expensive manned aircraft.

But perhaps also sacrificial drones carrying high explosvies, tactical nuclear war heads, chemical weapons or biological weapons. These would be produced cheaply with the aim of crashing them into enemy ships and positions etc, akin the the Japanese Kamikazee, except that we would not waste trained pilots who could do this over and over again. There would be less need for sophisticated and expensive weapon guidance systems etc.

And, with appropriate flight simulator games released, Australia could potentially train generations of drone pilots at relatively little cost. In fact the training could generate revenue for our defence forces through sale of the games.