It’s often said that Australia faces “the most challenging strategic environment since the Second World War” but the government’s approach to national security decision making has not developed much in the time since.
It’s true that more structure has been brought to cabinet processes. In 1996, the prime minister John Howard established the National Security Committee of Cabinet (NSC) and subsidiary bodies, which essentially endure to this day. But it’s open to question how much actual decision making has been affected.
The cabinet decision, made on 18 March 2003, to join the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq was based only on “oral reports by the prime minister”. There was no National Assessment prepared by intelligence agencies and no Cabinet Submission. Then DFAT secretary Ashton Calvert reportedly rebuked a colleague who queried these absences by telling him: “What do you think we are running here? A f---ing debating society?” So, although more relevant cabinet documents have been belatedly transferred to the National Archives following an incomplete release after 20 years in January this year, it is unlikely that they will reveal much.
What we know of Iraq decision making accords with a political culture that is comfortable with unstructured decision making. Political leaders are experienced intuitive decision makers. Getting a sense of the room is less onerous than articulating and weighing the multiple factors that go into any complex decision.
But unstructured group decision making is susceptible to numerous flaws, especially cognitive biases such as groupthink. Howard’s reflections on his 1999 decision to commit to Australian forces to East Timor (on which the records are also silent) shows awareness of these risks. Howard noted that once he’d made up his mind very few of his cabinet colleagues were likely to disagree. But his defence of the of the Iraq decision rest mostly on mutually-reinforcing affirmations from other members of cabinet’s national security committee.
Historian and columnist James Curran is right to argue that an inquiry into the Iraq decision could help teach Australia how to handle future crises. But whether or not Australia made the right call on Iraq is almost besides the point. Poor process can still land on the right decision. But good process is demonstrably less likely to produce the wrong decision. So, any inquiry should focus on the process rather than the outcome.
What sort of crisis? The question of whether (and how) Australia would join a US war with China understandably gets a lot of attention. But growing geopolitical competition short of war will present Canberra with many tough choices that have to be made with limited time and information. The unpredictable interplay of geopolitics with a widening array of transnational issues – from climate change to new mutations of political extremism – will only add to this complexity.
Australia could learn more about how to make these sorts of decision by expanding and building on the Covid-19 Response Inquiry. The pandemic – including its knock-on effects on geopolitics and economics – was a Black Swan event. The varying responses of governments, in Australia and internationally, provides a rare opportunity to compare how different real-world decision makers perceived and responded to the same crisis. But Australia’s inquiry will, unfortunately, not look into “actions taken unilaterally by state and territory governments”.
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology are transforming our understanding of decision-making. The fields in which computers can reliably make better decisions than humans are constantly expanding. At the same time, the flaws in human decision making are becoming more apparent as the list of cognitive biases we’re all susceptible to grows. It’s reasonable to assume that, over time, Australia’s competitors and adversaries will make more use of this knowledge as they seek to manipulate Australian decisions, just as private corporations already use technology manipulate most consumers daily choices.
For all these reasons, the old model of government decision making is no longer good enough. Political leaders remain, however, unlikely to welcome the imposition of more structure, which many would see as impeding their freedom to exercise political judgement. There is deep reluctance to show how the sausage is made. But policy areas that are more technical or apolitical may be more amenable to grater structure.
National security bipartisanship is more of an aspiration than a description. The 2003 Iraq decision was opposed by the Labor opposition. Even when disagreements are minor politicians will instrumentalise them if they deem it necessary. But major disagreements on substance are relatively rare and the current government has sought to minimise them.
Canberra should commit to more rigorous national security decision making procedures. This could improve a range of decisions, from slow-moving defence procurement through to rapid crisis response. These procedures should be informed by lessons learnt from history and science. A major goal should be to seek multiple intermediate assessments and better integrate competing perspectives. New processes could range from establishing an Advisory National Security Council through to simply adopting the principles of decision hygiene.
