Second Phase of Instability: Domestic factors

For Australia, the increased conflict between states, nations and various government entities will mostly be external (geographically) to the country, unlike the countries those wars will be fought in. Australia will not be a battlefield in the struggles between major or even minor powers, luckily due to geography (think of the distances and logistics involved). So for us, unlike Africa, parts of America and Asia etc. where the coming wars will be situated, increasing domestic instability is separate to foreign instability. In fact, most of the domestic instability common to collapsing civilisations isn’t likely to appear here since the rising spiral of external (e.g. invasions or raids) violence is a crucial part of the weakening of governments, peacekeeping forces (like police) and the breakdown of civil life that prevents many of the symptoms appearing. War bands can only function inside a country when either its military force is locked up stopping other problems or it’s ineffective/degraded. Rome had both of these problems, its defensive system was designed to stop large incursions but small warbands of 10-20,000 and raiding parties could penetrate every now and then while its military was being degraded by a shortage of funds, manpower and the stresses placed on it by a collapsing civilisation (such as a century of continuos civil wars and the regular stripping of the frontier forts this caused).  Economics will cause the majority of the internal unrest and violence Australia will face, except in the North coast where Indonesia and New Guinea are close enough for external violence to manifest in forms ranging from piracy to invasion. However, the North coast’s population makes up such a small percentage, about 1%, that it won’t cause many problems.

Banditry and piracy are often a symptom of poor and broken economies and this is where most of the domestic strife will originate. As law enforcement is slowly restricted to the more urbanized areas and poverty increases those in the more rural areas will more often turn to thievery and banditry. This will push more trade towards the seas and along safer routes such as rail and further the process of making Australian society orientated around the coast. The increase of transport along the coast will make a tempting target for pirates, who will need sailing boats and safe harbours. The main hindrance for pirates off Australia’s south coast is that apart from the Bass Strait, is its all open waters and there isn’t a profusion of small islands for the pirates to use as bases. This will make many internal transport lines safe-ish for regular trade, the same however is not true for external lines, which are currently very important for Australia. A significant increase in the general crime isn’t actually that likely, without the breakdown of civil life even deep depressions don’t often see crime waves and a civil war that could shred civil life is unlikely even if the states separate. Wars of secession are much more likely, though a peaceful secession movement is more likely and while that could easily cause great disruption it is incredibly unlikely to destroy civil life to the degree necessary for major problems.

Dealing with large scale domestic strife would only take a few things; forming militias in small towns and villages to deal with local bandits with government support for some the guns, training and basic logistics. The rural police force will need to evolve to deal with the rise of rural banditry and reduced resources, expect horses to be used more often and some kind of travelling judge system developed. Civil and secession wars can be avoided by all parties agreeing to allow the decisions to be decided democratically, instead of what happened in South Vietnam where the South decided to pull out of the vote of wether to be communist or democratic and thereby cause the North to declare war. It’s easier in our case because we’ve been democratic since the beginning and our system works fairly well (South Vietnams didn’t and was fairly young), there aren’t any major ideological battles currently around and major interference by a foreign power is unlikely. Mostly maintaining democracy involves ignoring or delegitimizing the demagogues or the extremists who turn events violent and people extreme. Our National character isn’t one of fanatics or extremists, keeping it that way and marginalising the radicals who’s revolutions so often bring chaos is the main goal to stop this sort of momentous civil strife.

Dealing with the limited internal piracy has multiple solutions depending on the circumstances either an arming of merchant ships (big and small), an increase in the number of escort ships or simply denying the pirates friendly ports. The main danger of piracy is outside of Australia in the traditional pirate havens, and armed merchants are likely the best solution to that problem due to their distance from our shores. While the relatively small amount of piracy likely to be found on Australia’s coast can likely dealt with by either light single or double seater airplane patrols or police cutters. The main problem will be the lack of funding caused by economic crisis just as adaption is required.

Rising Instability: The first phase

The changeover, or attempted changeover, from one dominate empire to the next, or to a non-empiric system (end of Rome), is typically violent and that violence can take many forms. The Napoleonic war, WW1 and WW2 were simply the latest in this ever-reliable font of conflict and they shared a specific shape. That shape was of a large, clear-cut war with formal battles in continental Europe (for applicability’s sake, assume a large continental mass) with a largely naval war in Asia for WW2. However, this is not the only shape Imperial switchover violence can be, the Roman decline’s violence was very different. It took the shape of continuous barbarian invasions on a small to medium scale, the successful barbarian invasions tended to have about 10-40,000 people with ¼-1/2 being warriors for two main reasons; one, no other growing major power existed (Parthia was on the decline) and two, the Roman’s strategic defence system could easily stop anything bigger (mostly by starvation) from the Barbarians. The current situation will likely resemble the roman empires decline somewhat, not due to starvation but  nuclear weapons, to illustrate how this works think of the cold war. The USA and the USSR, unlike every other set of empires in existence, never fought any direct major wars against each over, not even petty wars, instead they fought in proxy conflicts (Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea), Nukes stop direct high intensity conflicts and force low intensity proxy conflicts to be used instead. Note: low intensity conflicts can’t do anywhere near as much damage as high-intensity conflicts and take longer to achieve similar ends, along with limited geographic availability and spread which is why most governments throughout history prefer high intensity conflicts when they can and then use soft power.

On the first reason, there exists a massive difference between our current situation and Rome’s, their currently exist multiple rising and established major powers. The established powers include Russia, China, and potentially Germany and India, depending on how events play out. That is, they are already powerful states with the connections (Germany’s is the Euro) and strength of a major power. The rising powers Iran, Brazil, South Africa and an assortment of states that only require the right circumstances. The potential of Germany comes from the fact that it dominates Europe and while Europe will certainly be poorer than it is now, it will still be quite powerful and besides, Germany is in a much better situation to exploit N.America’s east coast than China is due to geography and culture. However there are two very important traits that further change the situation; one, the current and future decline of both modern military and political projection, two, the fact that there are now multiple power blocks instead of the previous experience of there only being two power blocks (Axis and Allies, USA vs USSR, Napoleon vs the coalitions etc)

The decline of modern military’s capabilities has arrived in several ways and to each branch, army, navy and airforce. Modern Western armies are losing the ability to control and conquer territory in the third and second world, compare when in 1941 Britain conquered Iraq with a single infantry division and it took six years before major problems appeared, to America’s recent failed attempt of simply controlling the country via local proxies. Due to high oil prices and economic troubles, navies are slowly losing the battle against piracy and are finding it harder to patrol trouble spots and police the sea-lanes (not long till privateers and/or armed merchantmen appear). And in 2006 Hezbollah managed to almost negate Israel’s airpower, look up Hezbollah nature reserve to see how well fortifications work against air power. The problem for the major powers is that modern mechanised militaries still rule open and high intensity conflicts and only powerful or highly resilient defensive measures can stop them, such as guerrilla warfare or heavily entrenched defenders. This means that they will need to keep a large fraction of their militaries as modern mechanized forces instead of changing to more other forms more effective at client state subjugation. Two of the likely adaptations to this are a rise in the use of Auxiliaries and mercenaries by the major powers and the increased use of soft power to support a local hegemony that can control the region militarily and politically in the imperial powers stead. Auxiliary and mercenary forces would be forces from outside the empires cores that complement its military and balance it out; similar to how Rome used Auxiliaries to balance out its legions.

The multiple power blocks and the inability for direct wars of conquest to be fought provide an interesting dynamic since no one state can gain complete dominance and any weakening of one front allows another power to act. Here’s an unlikely but potential scenario; China’s dominance of Africa is being undermined by both South Africa and Brazil (working separately) who want better access to Africa, so it responds by moving forces (military and economic) from the Asian and N.American theatres to Africa to counter their ambitions. The resulting almost century (remember soft power is slow) long conflict called the Great African crisis by future historians and involves mostly the economic and political manipulation of proxies, with some battles and open conflicts (such as the Zaire war where a South African force attempts to reach Sudan and must battle a Chinese army back up by Tanzania) between the powers, but most of the battles are fought by Africans either as wars or insurrections. India responds to the weakened state of China in Asia to use its strategic location along the sea-lanes of China to Africa to force concessions out of China, such as eliminating the support given to Maoist (or other) rebels. Lest its forces and access to in Africa be cut of from the homeland, where they would be useless in a second Sino-Indian war, China is forced to acquiesce, until the great African crisis is over and it can punish the arrogant Indians. Germany, with the hegemony of Europe and as the client of Russia, takes advantage of China’s weakened position in the Americas to spread its influence and begins a long and difficult takeover of the both central America and N.America’s west coast, bringing it into conflict with Brazil. Iran uses the chaos in Africa to take over the Horn of Africa and consolidate its middle-eastern holdings. Then there’s all the little (relative to the big ons, big to those involved) wars and regional powers that are either in the firing line or taking advantage of the situation. Going by the War Nerd; the Tutsi will probably get their Central African Empire, the Vietnamese will almost certainly try to conquer Indochina (drawing a response from China), Indonesia trying the same trick as India, and what about a new power in N.America attempting to retake the coast (either one or both). Now the scenario above is a dramatisation of what could actually happen, and the time scale could easily be centuries since they’d be mostly using soft power and I just wanted to illustrate the dynamics. Important detail; all the powers would be using indirect forces heavily and supplementing their military with Auxiliaries (especially local forces) and mercenaries.

Why is all this important for Australia? Because Australia’s historical relationship with the dominant Imperial power has a fairly mercenary aspect. Australia has always exchanged military forces and a close alliance so that the dominant naval power, Britain once and now America, would protect our sea-lanes, not because of any ideological or moral reasons (though historical and cultural factors have helped). As it stands the military aid Australia has given has been of a high quality; in WW2 the Germans considered the Australian (and other colonial forces) to be the elite of the British army and there’s a quote from a Viet Kong commander that amounts to the same. Now that no power is likely to control the sea anywhere near as completely as the British did or America does now in the near future, an interesting choice will soon confront Australia. Since the agreement can’t exist and Australia will lose most of the wealth conferred by the sea-lanes no matter what agreements are made, Australia can either choose to disband most of its army and only keep enough to defend Australia while suffering the economic damage this brings. Or it can choose to continue with the current practice of exchanging military forces for wealth and sea lane protection and begin recruiting and sending out essentially mercenary brigades, both options have their pros and cons.

Downsizing the military would immediately free up resources that could be put to other ends, further the process of isolating Australia from the world, insure the safety of our soldiers and no blowback would occur from our forces being in a war somewhere. However, it does leave Australia more vulnerable since while Australia is in a phenomenal defensive position, it only matters when there are soldiers to back it up and this option could leave Australia without any forces with combat experience, also it lacks what can be a useful social valve and a replacement would be needed (currently it’s sport) and it involves greater economic damage and most likely greater loss of trade/resources. Keeping the current arrangement and instead working for multiple powers however allows Australia to gain wealth from the outside world, via both contracts/deals and old fashioned looting, make Australia an impenetrable fortress (Awesome defensive situation and experienced soldiers) and slow the isolation of Australia from the world. Blowback could occur (think terrorist attacks), there will be deaths, in the 1000 to 10,000s, potentially every year or decade and it requires an investment in the Australian military from a diminished pool of capital.  The deciding factors will be recent experiences (does China push us hard to ally with it), dominant values and the perception of the problems facing the world. It’ll be an interesting time.

The defensive militaries structure would most likely be infantry based and rely on an increase in either the reserve or the beginning of militias, with fixed defensive points on strategic locations and limited support in the form of tanks, artillery and airforce and a navy focussed on sea denial tactics and anti-piracy operations. Even if the mercenary route is chosen that defensive army is likely to exist. The mercenary military structure would be based around elite infantry, limited quantity means quality needs to be higher, with attached armour and artillery divisions (won’t be enough for use as separate units), severely limited air support and a small expeditionary navy that would be dependant on friendly ports. Actually most support would come from local forces or the employer. It would probably be best practice to continue acting relatively independently from the various employers (as seen here, started by John Monash) so pragmatism stays high and Australia’s interests are represented (also in case the employers turn out to be idiots), and as a Vietnam Vet once told me ‘We went in with 16 helicopters and came back with 17’.

Imperial change over: USA to China

Australia’s relationship with its imperial overlords is remarkably stable, unlike most imperial subjects we accept it almost unconditionally (still stop nuclear ships from docking) and the only wars fought by Australia were either British or American and some UN peacekeeping. Heres the thing, unlike most imperial subjects Australia occupies an incredible defensive position, has a modern army and suffers no territorial threats, unlike Europe theirs no aircraft base (Britain) stationed of our coast and our submarines (Diesel) have destroyed American carriers in war games. Obviously, we don’t pay standard tribute, our democratic government hasn’t been overthrown and replaced with a violent dictator (Iran, Venezuela etc) and our relationship is more akin to a partner than an imperial subject. However, the question remains, why did Australia fight Britain’s wars and why does it still fight America’s wars? Because that and international support is the only cost involved and we have paid quite a bit of it. It can’t be for protection or a fear of America’s armed forces, fearing an invasion was sensible at one point but once defences are built, a small navy is produced and a relatively high tech army and airforce created it’s no longer sensible, and that’s what we have. And with submarines that advantage just grows, especially when you consider that highly mobile modern armies, which is what you’d invade Australia with currently, use supplies at a tremendous rate and the supply lines can now be cut easily, with missiles this advantage has become almost insurmountable, if Australia ever needed to defend itself and had time to prepare, which Australia would have because any invasion would need substantial preparation. Economic control also can’t be the deciding factor, Australia has fought with America often over trade and other terms and if we wanted out, well trade partners (China’s big currently) can be shifted and a lot of Australia trade has been directed one way or another by the government for strategic reasons. So, why?

The key trait about Britain’s empire was it’s utter naval supremacy, policy and fact was that it had to be able to fight the next two biggest navies at once and win, and the USA’s empire also has command of the seas, mostly because the USSR was a land power. China, while it could certainly gain command of the seas, isn’t a similar naval power (Japan has a similarly sized navy) and three important trends exist to complicate things. First is peak oil and from it the decline in fuel availability for navies, this is already limiting anti-piracy operations, and ocean transport is being similarly affected. Second is the diffusion of naval power, effectively many powers are building up their navies, significantly India and Iran since they can easily shut down or control major sea routes (Persian Gulf and the Malacca Strait), notably where most of China’s oil goes through. Thirdly is the rise of missile technology and while they haven’t been used to full effect, a missile swarm (50-300) could easily destroy a carrier taskforce (or any other naval taskforce, except submarines), or alternatively they could be turned on transport ships, wether of troops, supplies or cargo. Effectively, missiles have made projecting naval power and moving military forces via the sea harder and almost impossible against a serious, tech capable and prepared defender, once they’re finally used this aspect will become quite clear.

Now, these three trends aren’t insurmountable and China could still end up dominating most of the world’s oceans. A mixture of stockpiling, preparation and an active approach by the government to lower oil use to save for future military use can counter the first trend. The second trend can be solved by increased military build-ups or solid alliances but that’s prohibitively expensive or difficult, a more likely approach is that China will limit its scope of control to important sea lanes (from its point of view) and gain the alliances of several other major naval powers, note that the sea lanes China uses aren’t the ones we use. The third trend is harder to counter, and while its always possible that some new technology will solve it (If a certain trend holds they will, when its to late), I wouldn’t hold my breath. Soft power will certainly become more important and having steadfast allies on all continents would help, however those methods aren’t anywhere near as reliable, especially without adequate hard power to back them up.  In summary, while it is possible for the Chinese to gain total dominance of the seas, its unlikely and it’s instead likely to be restricted to the important sea lanes (for China) with many sections of the world’s sea under regional naval powers instead and others under the other large naval powers.

Another important detail, which is directly related to overshoot, is that of technological superiority. Naval warfare is highly technical in nature, and only small advantages in technology are needed to completely change the strategic and tactical landscape. The Romans before they fought Carthage had absolutely no experience as a naval power and while they did have a few client cities with a strong naval tradition, those cities lacked the numbers and industry to significantly contribute to challenging Carthage (who ruled the Mediterranean back then). So what happened that allowed Rome to destroy Carthage’s navy and dominate the Mediterranean in just 20 years; One they confiscated a Carthaginian quinquereme that had run aground, they then it used to design their fleet of 120 ships the they built in 2 months. Later on they bested that feat and built a bigger navy when a storm wrecked the first one. Two, to make up for their lack of maritime skill and the lack of manuverability this caused, since ramming was the dominate tactic back then, they invented the Corvus, basically a giant plank on a swivel table with a spike in it (a.k.a a boarding bridge) and used their legionaries at sea. The battle of Lepanto had a similar dynamic where the modern but outnumbered Holy League fleet destroyed or captured 200 of the Ottomans 275 strong fleet while only losing 15 ships. The victory in what turned into a large slugging match happened because the Holy League had 1815 cannons while the Ottomans had only 750 cannons, they also ran out of gunpowder. Another advantage to the Holy League also had 6 galleass (midway between a galley and a man-o-war) which were said to sink 70 galleys by themselves (while they were several miles in front of the holy league fleet). The conditions that allowed Britain and the USA to keep naval superiority don’t exist anymore, while Britain didn’t always innovate itself, due to its huge industrial might it could put any innovation into large scale action first and the USA navy has massive funding. China will have many industrial opponents capable of innovation and implementation and one of the key traits of post-peak naval warfare will be technological flux, meaning global naval superiority is out of China’s reach. Also Britain main rival France never had the skilled sailors necessary to fight Britain openly and the USSR was a land based power, while China is a land power with a strengthening but not unusually big naval culture (which can be very important) and some of its opponents have a strong maritime tradition.

Heres a what I remember of a short sci-fi story to illustrate the differences between the army and the navy. The imperium is subjugating some natives on the planet and an Admiral and a General are walking along having a chat. Suddenly a hover car zooms by them with a spear sticking out of it and the Admiral exclaims ‘how can we lose against someone who can only throw spears at a hover car’. The General responds by saying ‘how can we win against someone willing to throw spears at a hover car’.

Now, why are those details important? Because of the answer to our previous question of why the link Between Australia and then Britain and now the USA is like it is. Link. None of our strategic concerns are territorial, their all to do with trade routes, specifically maritime. Since Britain and the USA controlled the seas, aligning with them made perfect sense and so that’s what we did. But China’s (or any other potential empires) empire’s position isn’t anywhere near as strong in naval terms and since Overshoot is already limiting modern navies ability to police the seas (which is their main job, even during war), that deal cannot exist in as strong a form as it historically has. So, how strong could our relationship with China be?  

Centres of Power: The Capital cities

An important part of any civilisation’s description is both what form its centres of power/wealth take and how they are spread out. The Germanic barbarians that the Romans fought had almost all their power (specifically military) and wealth locked up into small, spread out, villages, they had towns but their destruction would have been of little consequence. While the Parthians had most of theirs locked up in towns and seminomadic settlements (mostly in the Iranian foothills), the capital and other major cities were sacked quite often without breaking the Arsacid’s power base. If your wondering if that had anything to do with the limits of the Roman empire, the answer is yes it had a lot to do with the empire’s limits, since the Romans could conquer any city centred society and the Roman empire was city based for this reason. The main difference between the Roman empire and say, Renaissance Italy was that Rome was the major centre of power of the entire empire while Renaissance Italy had multiple competing centres, one of which was Rome. Australia’s case is closer to Renaissance Italy than Rome, with the addition of a political capital rather than a religious one, Canberra, which isn’t an economic, military or cultural powerhouse. Contrast Canberra with London, Paris or Beijing and you’ll see how odd Canberra is as a capital.

The reason for this is that each state would be a separate country if they where in Europe, either by size or population, after all Victoria has the same population as Denmark and the South Australia has a missile test range the size of England, it used to be twice as big. The main difference is that while most European countries have several big cities, Australian states only have one. So, when it came around to needing a political centre, neither Sydney or Melbourne (the two biggest and wealthiest cities at the time) were willing to let the other be that centre and they obviously didn’t want a new city which was economically powerful enough to be that centre. Thus Canberra, a town without any of other method of becoming nationally important, it’s not even on the coast, became the political capital. Canberra, unlike most capitals, isn’t a centre of power or wealth and this has one important property. Unity is a lot easier since each state isn’t competing directly against one another, with one being the centre and the rest peripheral but instead on neutral ground. Put it like this, if Edinburgh has a grievance with England, its sorted out in London, which is England’s centre and that’s a large part of Scotland’s drive to Independence due to the disadvantages imposed on Scotland by this arrangement. If you had an equivalent argument between Adelaide and Melbourne, it’s sorted out in Canberra which isn’t any states centre and while Adelaide is at a disadvantage because its smaller (like Scotland), Melbourne doesn’t have the home ground advantage London does. It also helps that Australia is a single Nation (i.e. a nation state), as opposed to the United Kingdoms, which is several nations in one state.

An important consideration is how Australia’s power distribution change due to Overshoot. Since this is a question of distribution, instead of absolute numbers, a decline in population won’t affect power centres unless it includes relative changes. Most Roman cities survived the collapse and continued as power centres, London and Paris were both around back then, even if Barbarians took over because that was just a case of out with the old boss, in with the new, same as the old. The key thing to remember about cities is that they only require about 5-10% of the population to become the main power centres, economic and political rather military, except in a few cases (today and Rome after Gaius Marius’s reforms). Parthia’s military might was centred around its dual use of horse archers and what eventually became knights (yes, knights were originally middle-eastern), without being nobles, who were recruited from the Iranian foothills, destroying the cities would have weakened this army, because it would have been harder to fund and equip but wouldn’t have broken Parthia’s military. For the Western world, the process has run towards centralisation more often than not, after all Germany now has cities and many of the people the roman’s conquered didn’t have cities during Alexander the Great’s time. In the Middle-East the process has run in the other direction more often than not as the fertile crescent has become less fertile. The entire place used to be filled with city states (like Babylon) and while there are still cities, their importance has dropped. Centres of power don’t normally shift rapidly and when they do shift rapidly its only in response to quite rare events, such as the various diseases which wiped out 90-100% of the Aborigines and Native Americans, otherwise it takes centuries or more often millennia to change.

What is likely to happen in Australia is that cities will remain as the centres of wealth and power, but that the current extremes in the capital cities will disappear. While the current capitals will most likely stay the capitals, the other cities (such as Albany, Launceston, Newcastle or Bendigo) will gain in relative importance as well as housing a greater proportion of the urban population. Most of the social and physical technologies necessary for a city based society are present in highly resilient forms e.g. Boats, farms, roads (not necessarily for cars), granaries, a working justice system etc. The main difference from most historical examples of city based societies is the greater distances between our major cities and all the major cities are on the coast.