Features Australia

Simple isn’t stupid in war

Defence is about much more than spending money

21 June 2025

9:00 AM

21 June 2025

9:00 AM

The creed of the Assassins or Hashishins from the order of Nizari Ismailis, who controlled large areas of Syria and Persia in the 11th century is expressed in a poem that says, ‘by one single warrior on foot, a king may be stricken with terror, though he owns more than a hundred thousand horsemen’. Their tactic was simple but effective, aimed at psychologically undermining more powerful opponents at little cost.

Taking lessons from how the weak win wars, Australia needs to combine the tactics of asymmetric warfare with investment in the most morale-destroying weapons systems money can buy and deploy them as rapidly as possible. In war, as in life, simple isn’t stupid.

Right now, a debate is raging on the level of defence spending in Australia, and across the West, driven by the United States. They’ve had enough of paying for everyone’s security. Led by conventional minds, the debate is focused on meaningless percentage points.

Why meaningless? First, because even with the best kit, it’s the simple things that kill or save you. Second, nothing is being said about Australia’s capacity to sustain rapid cycles of adaptation in war, let alone peace. Third, quicker than a Dennis Lillee delivery, no sooner was Covid over than we returned to depending on China. One of the Assassins’ strengths was their ability to operate from fortified mountain strongholds, like Alamut, allowing them to withstand sieges and maintain operational independence. Fourth, we lack an understanding of our opponents. Conflict always plays out along a moral, mental, and physical continuum. This means we should know as much about what we are fighting against as for.

Few Western political leaders would have the courage to aim for what would morally defeat our enemies. To paraphrase the late Colonel John Boyd (1927 – 1997), one of the best strategic minds in the modern era, our elites and politicians are not prepared to destroy the moral bonds that permit our opponents to remain a threat. The Allies defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the second world war because these three components of war (moral, mental and physical) were merged into an unequivocal unified mindset. That generation of Western leaders has passed. We could spend ten per cent of GDP on defence and still lose wars against opponents who penetrate our moral asymmetric weaknesses.


Success for Australia relies on the synthesis of two back-to-basic elements. One, the intellectual agility to adapt beyond the evolutionary cycle of our enemies; and two, the rapid delivery of lethal force making it an unfair fight for strategic effect.

Right now, Australia would struggle to do either; not because of the boots, the blame lies with the suits, although someone, deep inside the defence establishment, inadvertently adopted the Assassins’ general approach when, in the 2024 National Defence Strategy, they called for an asymmetric ‘strategy of denial’. That means they recognised we need the capability to prevent any adversary coming within effective range of our shores, let alone circumnavigating Australia willy-nilly. We have needed this capability for years.

An example of the culpability of the suits and their misalignment of simplicity, adaptability, and morale, is our pathetic adoption of drones. It can’t be technological – you can buy cheap drones from JB Hi-Fi, (unarmed, obviously). Since October 2023, the Houthis, a ragtag, khat-chewing band of Shia Islamists have held their own against the US Fifth Fleet in the Red Sea with anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. According to a recent Dow Jones article, the Houthis engaged the US Navy in its fiercest battles since the second world war despite fighting from caves. Gee, that sounds familiar. Yet, Australia has no land-based anti-ship ballistic missiles.

This theatre of operations is one of the world’s most important trade routes but Australia declined to contribute a single piece of hardware to its defence and security. That’s right, the world’s 14th-largest economy by nominal GDP versus desert jihadists in one of the poorest places on Earth, and we stayed home. Iran gives the Houthis these weapons, you might say, but it’s not like we can’t afford to buy our own missiles; the National Disability Insurance Scheme will cost $52 billion in 2025, compared to $51 billion for defence.

There are lessons from the Ukraine-Russian war where cheap, easily deployed drones are one of the most effective, soul-destroying tactical weapons on the battlefield, probably controlled by people whose mum told them they would never get anywhere playing computer games. The Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, estimates cheap drones ($300 to $500 apiece) have been responsible for roughly two-thirds of Russian losses, making them the most lethal weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal. In April, US General Christopher G. Cavoli reckoned over half of Russian soldiers were killed by first-person-view drones. A Ukrainian drone commander claimed that  for $100 million, his unit could achieve 5,000 lethal strikes.

In Afghanistan, one of the most feared weapons was the improvised explosive device (IED) planted all over the battlefield by the Taleban; a cheap but devastating weapon. When night-raids by US and UK special forces disrupts the IED-makers, the Taleban complained to the United Nations and Western NGOs. The BBC argued night-raids infringed the Taleban’s human rights. You know, the terrorists are the victims mind-trick. In that vein, opponents wouldn’t need to deploy their most advanced military assets because with Australia’s anti-Western migrant base growing in key federal electorates, we could face a moral and mental torpedo of our own making. Just look at the acceptance of Hamas supporters and Islamist extremists changing our nation. In the UK you can be arrested for criticising Islam.

In our region, we regularly hear the latest US defense secretary and a few Australian politicians and commentators threatening China should they act against Taiwan. Let’s face it, if the most powerful military in history couldn’t beat the Taleban in sandals and man-dresses, it would struggle against a far more advanced opponent with a gigantic domestic manufacturing base and a non-Western mindset. The poison tip of China’s maritime arrow is its vast armed fishing militia, the largest in the world. Notorious for swarming the economic waters of nations such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Argentina and Indonesia, its mission is to expand China’s area of denial using grey-zone warfare. If the suits lack the stomach for drones, how would they deal with hundreds of fishing boats swarming towards Australian waters.

So, it’s useless debating percentage points of GDP spent on defence, when our leaders, political class and the massive bureaucracy that thrives on inertia act against our interests. As historian Barbara Tuchman explains in The March of Folly, ‘these people are deaf to disaffection and blandly impervious to challenge’. Indeed, they cannot change because they are part of the system, grew out of it, and depend on it. Except perhaps for that one lone figure who wrote about asymmetric strategic denial. And remember Australian politicians think in three-year cycles; China thinks in centuries, and for the Taleban time is irrelevant. We need to accept this contest has no end in sight.

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