Mission creep in the Gulf shows Australia hasn’t learned from past wars |
Australia has again joined a US-led conflict with little transparency or debate, raising the risk of mission creep, economic costs and another drawn-out military failure.
Another military disaster looms, showing how little Australia has learned in in two decades. Mission creep is likely.
Australia prided itself on getting into Iraq ahead of other US allies in the 2003 invasion. We have now done it again with a military deployment to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In mid-March, Australia sent a RAAF Boeing E7A Wedgetail surveillance and targeting aircraft, and 85 personnel, to the United Arab Emirates for an ‘initial deployment of four weeks’. That’s been extended, indefinitely.
This deployment, says Defence, is ‘at the request of the Gulf nations…to help protect and defend Australians and other civilians’. Australia doesn’t admit we are at war. But the Wedgetail has been sent also ‘to assist in the defence of Gulf nations and support the UAE’s air defence capabilities’, AeroTime reports.
Defence of which Gulf nations against what neighbouring country? The UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait against Iran, obviously. At whose request? The Americans’ is what we know: President Trump’s overnight call to Prime Minister Albanese on 12 March produced a commitment from Australia within hours. The decision to enter the war was made by the Prime Minister and a few hastily woken ministers. The public and our parliamentary representatives heard nothing about it until the morning. We have been told nothing about what our Australian forces are doing, but we’re assured their deployment is purely ‘defensive’.
Yet a mere fortnight later, when Australia’s Wedgetail and armed forces were already operating in collaboration with the US in the UAE, Trump began complaining that........