In the nude

Britain has indicated, through the defence review and Mr. Bowden in Canberra in February, that her involvement in the area will be reduced, while keeping the options open. So we will probably be helping to foot the bill some day for a combined British-Australian-New Zealand base in North Australia. This is probably the sort of arrangement which would most suit Britain's policy and budget.

Australia's spending on defence is now almost exactly 10 times our own. But she is still well away from total selfsupport. So while the letter of the treaties might remain, the substance of their fulfilment could just conceivably melt away.

We would be very suddenly in the nude.

Anyone with our relaxed attitude in a world arming to the teeth, with at least three arms-races now going on (Latin America. AmericaRussia-China, Israel-Arabs) must be either very safe or a fool. Obviously we're not the former, in our present stance of dependency. One can only conclude that we're the latter.

There is really no alternative way to diplomatic and strategic flexibility other than to arm for war to keep the, peace. As our interest so often coincide with Australia's, this sugggests common action in deployment. If any lesson stands out in history, it must, be that international goodwill is not, ever, a guarantee of a nation's peace. The road to hell has been paved with such good intentions. In the long run we have no friends: only interests. So good diplomacy and good defence are complementary aims.

Setting woolly-minded sentiment aside and bringing a little cold logic to bear, what is the actual nature of the threat? How safe are we?

Sadly the Vietnam debate seems to be cooling with no answer to this in sight. However, any threat there is must come either from the sea. the air, or overland across Australia. To even an optimist, the Asian theatre shows signs of getting a lot worse before it gets better. So the body of the threat comes from the danger of catalytic warfare in Asia involving us.

Such a war could come for many reasons: strategic, ideological, accidental, escalation out of a local conflict, for reasons of economics, selfdefence and peversity. Wars start, not in the minds of men. but because there's nothing really to stop them. They are an extension of diplomacy, a forceable expression of one's point of view. Possibly we should be amazed, not at how many wars there are (four or five moderate ones each year) but at how few.

In order of ascending seriousness, we now stand the risk off:

1.	Sabotage of our overseas' interests, say by guerrillas as in Malaysia.
2.	Sabotage of vital sealanes.
3	One-country swoop on Australia, for which only Indonesia and Japan seem now to have the potential resources.
4	A major non-nuclear Asian war, which would almost certainly come to involve America. Russia. Britain and possibly a European state or , two.