RAA Liaison Letter – 2025 / 2026 Edition 96 He said that abstraction fed into narratives promoted by "coin-dinistas" - seemingly a reference to counter-insurgency specialists - which "caused many officers to believe that benevolence, dominant narratives, information campaigns, persuasion or the dispersion of largesse are the first means of war, with violence being a nasty side-effect or something to be avoided". "We convinced ourselves you can't kill your way to victory in war," he told the conference. "But of course you can. Just ask the Taliban." He also argued that the decision to give allowances to Australian troops "based on the logic of exposure to hazards" - which has been common practice since the early 2000s - risked treating war like a "workplace hazard". "To treat killing and dying in war as an incidental workplace hazard has potentially profound implications for how you go about those things," he said. Deputy chief pushes for more education on warfare Major General Smith said historical ignorance also fed into the reflex to ensure that even "minor tactical engagements" were coordinated at headquarters because officers wrongly assumed that technology would "overcome the fog of war". "There is a technical logic underwriting the thinking that has led to the conclusion the most senior theatre headquarters must arrange and execute certain minor tactical engagements, like engagements to sink ships," he said. "I shouldn't need to point out the folly of that kind of highly centralised approach to warfare, but it's already taken root because we've forgotten or can't imagine the great frictions of war and warfare. "The kind of thing that Clausewitz goes at pains to stress to those who are trying to get an understanding of war." The deputy chief also gave a sharp assessment of the failings he uncovered in a 2012 report that documented poor conduct by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, saying it exposed failures in leadership, a "general failure of moral courage" and a "loss of historical perspective". "If we refer to minor engagements as battles, we diminish our sense of scale and perspective. If we boast about how contemporary warfare is so much more complex or challenging in comparison to war's past, a contention with little evidence to support it, then hubris overcomes humility," he said. "And if we pander to our soldiers' every want, they develop a sense of entitlement which leads to unmet expectation and resentment. "In other words, our hyperbolising, hollow rhetoric, flattery, unwarranted praise, and pandering at the time was the weak substitute for moral courage." He said the Army was now moving to build more historical awareness by mandating the study of warfare and armies, including through a new Bachelor of War Studies degree, which would be completed by about 75 per cent of Army officer cadets. "We convinced ourselves you can't kill your way to victory in war," he told the conference. "But of course you can. Just ask the Taliban." Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior fellow Elizabeth Buchanan said the degree would be a "welcome development for Australia's strategic and defence intellectual ecosystem". "[Army Chief] General [Simon] Stuart is emboldening future generations of our army to be equipped with a deeper intellectual edge that will no doubt set apart the Australian Army on the battlefield and in reputational terms internationally," she said. "It is difficult to breed groupthink as well as 'yes' men and women when their foundation is critical early engagement with the intellectual and philosophical truths of war." Professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, Peter Dean, said the speech was "noteworthy" for the "challenge" the deputy chief had laid down to his own organisation. "Our military has to be a learning organisation — adaptive, responsive and innovative," he said. "It's one of the advantages we generally have as a democratic society, but to have that you need to have senior leaders delivering a frank assessment of where things are and where they need to go. "And what we've seen here is exactly that." Speech Highlights ttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-27/deputyarmy-chief-warns-adf-detached-from-violent-realityofwar/106397538?utm_source=abc_news_web&utm_ medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news _web
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