 Good evening. Wow you all look fantastic. Admiral Goldrich, Professor Hatendorf, Major General Stephen Cider and Mrs. Mary Jones Cider, George Lang and Wendy, and members of our Naval War College Foundation who are in attendance tonight or who are watching online tonight. Our C&O distinguished fellows, Admiral Saunders, so good to have you here. Our former Hatendorf Prize awardee, Jeffrey Till, so nice to have you here. Our interim provost, welcome. To our deans, our faculty, and to our wonderful students and staff members in attendance tonight. Good evening and thank you for joining us tonight for the presentation of the Hatendorf Prize. The purpose of the Hatendorf Prize is to recognize and honor distinguished academic research and writing in the field of maritime history. Today the Naval War College is honored to present the fifth award of the Hatendorf Prize for distinguished original research in maritime history to rear Admiral James Goldrich, Royal Australian Navy, retired. This prize is presented in order to recognize world class achievement in original research that contributes to a deeper understanding of the broad context and inner relationships involved in the roles, contributions, limitations, and uses of the sea services throughout history. It is widely viewed as the most prestigious award that any scholar can receive in the field and we hope that it will serve as a permanent beacon to encourage and promote scholarship in this very important field of study. This prize serves to reinforce the United States Naval War College's role as the U.S. Navy's most important link between sea services around the world and the broader academic community. I would like to thank the Naval War College Foundation for permanently endowing the Hatendorf Prize. Retired U.S. Navy Captain George Lang, the Foundation's Chief Executive Officer is here with us this evening as is Major General Stephen Sider, U.S. Army National Guard, retired, and his wife Mary Joan, who have made this award possible through their generous gift to the Foundation. Thank you, General and Mrs. Sider and Captain and Mrs. Lang. This endowment also allows us to present a bronze medal designed by Professor Hatendorf's youngest daughter Anna. Our honoree tonight is Rear Admiral James Goldrick, Royal Australian Navy retired. Admiral Goldrick joined the Royal Australian Navy as a 15-year-old cadet midshipman in 1974. He rose through the ranks to retire as a Rear Admiral in 2012. A principal warfare officer and anti-summary warfare specialist, he has seen sea service around the world with the Royal Australian Navy and on exchange with the British Royal Navy. His tours include the patrol vessel HMS Alderney, the frigates HMS Sirius, HMAS Swan and Darwin, and the destroyer HMS Liverpool. He served as executive officer of HMAS Terriken and Perth and as commanding officer of HMAS Sessnock. He twice commanded the frigate HMAS Sydney and later served as the inaugural commander Australian surface task group where he commanded the Australian task group deployed to the Persian Gulf in early 2002 and served as commander of the multinational naval forces conducting maritime interception operations to enforce the United Nations sanctions on Iraq, including units from the Royal Australian Navy, the United States Navy, the Royal Navy and the Polish Armed Forces. In his shore assignments, he has served at academic and command positions, ranging from Chief Staff Officer to the Chief of Navy, the Commander Australian Defense Force Academy and the Defense College and Commander of the Australian Border Patrol Force. Being simultaneously a successful naval officer and successful historian is not common and his books have demonstrated how the expertise as a naval officer can inform his work as a historian. Admiral Goldrich, your cute historical understanding and your professional naval experience have worked in complementary and interlocking ways that have informed your scholarship in vividly recreating and understanding naval history in a period of rapid technological change. We honor you today as a highly successful professional naval officer with an intimate and authoritative knowledge of how navies work both in the past and in the present. Moreover, you have been an inspiration and a mentor to many young naval officers and naval historians around the world. I would ask the audience to please rise and Admiral Goldrich, Dr. John Hattendorf and Major General Cider, Naval War College Foundation Chairman Emeritus, please join me on the stage. Admiral Goldrich, the Naval War College is pleased to recognize your achievements by naming you as Hattendorf Prize Laureate for your distinguished original research in maritime history. You have been a frequent visitor and lecturer at this college since you first came to Newport as a newly promoted commander in the Royal Australian Navy and visiting scholar in our Advanced Research Department in 1992. Your academic career has been nearly as long as your naval career starting with your first book in 1984, The King's Ships Were at Sea, followed by no easy answers the development of the navies of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in 1997 before Jutland in 2015 and after Jutland in 2018. Your long and impressive naval service combined with your continuing body of scholarship represents a singular contribution to the future of history. This award honors you and your incomparable work as a naval professional and as a scholarly historian expressing appreciation for your distinguished contributions in framing our collective understanding of the influence of sea power upon international history. Admiral Goldrich, I would like to turn the rest of our time over to you to address our wonderful faculty and students. Thank you very much. It will be clear that I'm greatly honored by this award and the more so because the selection committee includes the previous winners who include in their number historians whom I have always deeply respected and admired and who themselves have done an extraordinary amount to get navies to understand themselves better and also because the prize is named in honor of Professor John Hattendorf to whom I owe a great deal and who has himself contributed so much to our understanding of navies. I also value this award because of the link to the Naval War College. The admiral has mentioned that I'm something of a groupie really. Three of my books in fact are directly the results of my association with the college and the 15 happy months I had as a research scholar did also include the birth of my first son in Newport. I'm intensely appreciative also of the role of the War College Foundation in funding and supporting the award. I must express my gratitude to the foundation and in particular to General Seidl and to Mrs. Seidl for their personal commitment which is really extraordinary. There is however one somewhat better irony for me in the opportunity to deliver the prize lecture in Spruance Theatre. The last time I attended a special evening lecture in this auditorium was in November 1991 and the speaker was Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Vladimir Nikolayevich Chernavin. It was the end of the Cold War and a time for new hopes and new directions. I clearly remember the optimism with which Chernavin spoke and with which his audience listened. Alas for many of those hopes. I think it only proper here to give recognition to the people of Ukraine and the struggle which has been forced upon them. I have no official capacity but I know I can speak for Australia and Australians as I'm sure I can for my audience tonight when I say we deplore the aggression to which Ukraine is being subjected. Australia will be providing both weaponry and non-lethal aid and doing what else we can to help. And that we are helping is germane to the story I wanted to tell you tonight for what happens elsewhere in the globe can matter very much to Australia. Because Australian maritime defence since European settlement in 1788 is woven into Australia's history as a nation. Productive empire Australia's security and development were from the first dependent upon the global maritime system which British naval supremacy fostered until that responsibility passed to the United States in the second half of the 20th century. Australia was and remains a child of two eras of globalisation in both deriving its wealth from mineral and agricultural exports and relying to a greater or lesser extent presently greater upon the import of manufactured goods and oil as well as people 30% of Australia's current population were born overseas. Even in the 21st century Australia's external trade approaches 99% seaborn by volume and about 80% by value. The figure which got to over 90% when air traffic was so interrupted. Australia is big. An Australian historian coined the phrase the tyranny of distance as an abiding theme of Australia's experience and it is apt. And Australia is at the periphery of almost everyone's Mac else's Mac projections. It is a very long way from the Europe from which it once derived the great majority of its immigrants and did the great majority of its trade. Furthermore Australia's dependence on its partners was always greater than theirs on Australia. Although Australia's major major trading partners were usually its allies and in the case of Britain along the dominant player in both spheres Australia was valuable but it was never indispensable. When it takes three times as many ship tons to move wheat from Australia to Britain as it does from North America to Britain the consequences in wartime will be obvious. Even when both the demographic of immigration and our trade patterns have shifted so decisively towards Asia we remain at the periphery. Indeed there is a defined line known as the Sanderson line past which merchant shipping can be either be bound only for Australia and New Zealand or coming from Australia and New Zealand. Australia has always been sensitive highly sensitive thus to any threat to the global system. This rational sensitivity has however often been a less important influence than the fears easily engendered in a small once largely European population located so far from friendly centres of power. Another influence has been the land itself. Australia's maritime dependence does not stop it having continental preoccupations. Australia's outback occupies a place in the national identity surprising in an overwhelmingly urban and coastal population and some have suggested that the line in Australia's national anthem which reads our land is good by sea will be more accurate if it read our land is good by beach. Nevertheless Australia's national strategy has consistently been explicitly or not and sometimes whether understood as such or not a global and a maritime strategy. For Australia has always sought the protection of the major maritime power and in return contributed to that powers wider strategic efforts to keep the system stable and secure. It was also in part to create a moral obligation to intervene if Australia was directly threatened but I emphasised that work to keep the system secure. There is another aspect. Australia's commitment was effectively unlimited during two world wars but in both our very survival was at stake. Outside these conflicts successive Australian governments were usually keen to minimise defence spending while maximising their contributions to geopolitical benefits. Sometimes accompanied by the argument that by giving priority to its own economic development Australia was contributing to the long-term welfare of the global system. A certain element of having one's cake and eating it there but it always was more than just a flag in the sand approach. Australian forces however small have always made a difference but the provision of deployed forces for limited conflicts sometimes halfway around the world was often a useful alternative to the expenditure required to maintain capabilities to operate on a fully independent national basis. And for many years the three Australian services were better constructed for and certainly more expert at operating as components of coalition forces than working together. Arguably given Australia's small population, limited resources and until the mid 20th century incomplete sovereignty for many years there was no other practical policy and mostly it worked. There were some interesting side effects. Sydney is the most famous ship name in the Australian Navy. There have been five Sydney's since 1913 and the bank owner commanding officer of the recently completed fifth Sydney, an ages destroyer, is in the audience tonight. From my research I believe ships named Sydney have since the First World War been involved in more conflicts than any other ship name in any Navy and in most of the world's oceans. Such contributions did not begin immediately. After the Australian colonies became self-governing in the 19th century coast defence and home guard were taken on by locally formed units, the British being eager to reduce their own costs. But what was relatively straightforward for local armies was not the naval forces. The British Empire's maritime defence in the second half of the 19th century was the subject of bitter debate reflecting the different perspectives of the centre and the periphery. Provided the United Kingdom itself maintained sufficient control of the sea to prevent invasion of the home islands and ensure national supply, any local losses in the empire went the argument could be reversed. This was of no comfort to colonies whose remoteness left them potential targets for an adversary exploiting any gaps in Britain's global sea control. The question acquired urgency with European colonial expansion into the Pacific and then as the new century emerged approached emergence of an increasingly powerful Japan. Now the British disliked the idea of any restraint on their freedom to deploy the Royal Navy as they thought fit. The colonies objected to contributing to forces which might not be available to defend them. Now there's an important American subtext here. It's not the direct link between the American Revolution and the Australian settlement in the need for the British to find a new dumping ground for transported convicts after the loss of the American colonies. I think you got about 52,000 up to 1778. Rather it was no taxation without representation. The American enforced British sensitivity to the fact that self-governing colonies could not be made to pay for military or naval forces which were not under their control. On the other hand the idea of allowing component elements of the empire a full say in imperial defence decision-making proved very hard for London to swallow well into the 20th century. A series of unsatisfactory compromises resulted most notably when in exchange for an annual contribution from the Australian colonies in New Zealand additional warships were stationed in Australasian waters and with the agreement with the Admiralty gritting its teeth that they would not be deployed away without the consent of the local governments. As to colonial naval forces although it helped when it had to the British Admiralty had good reason to dislike them. They had no legal basis to operate outside the three mile limit while colonial governments as you'd expect proved more willing to provide an initial investment than the funding needed to maintain efficiency over many years. By federation in 1901 when six colonies formed the Commonwealth of Australia the naval forces they contributed recollection of obsolete gun boats and light crafts from the decade which followed provided few answers and more problems. The Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902 was recognised as an act of real politic but was little liked in Australia. The Australian sense of vulnerability was increased further withdrawal to British waters the battleships of the China fleet a few years later. Partly justified by the destruction of Russian naval power it left Japan as the dominant power in the region. Australians began to look thoughtfully at the United States now inextricably involved in the western Pacific. The power vacuum be filled by the Americans. This was certainly Australia's prime minister's thinking in inviting the great white fleet to visit Australia in 1908 an initiative viewed with dismay in London. A handful of British warships present during the American visit sent a clear message and one contemporary commentator wrote and I quote the moral that Australians drew was that they simply must have a fleet of their own. Now the deficiencies of the global strategy were not lost on the British even as they navy concentrated in home waters to meet the threat of Germany. During the we want eight and we won't wait controversy over Britain's naval strength in relation to an expanding German fleet Australia and New Zealand offered to pay for additional dreadnoughts for the Royal Navy. But the following 1909 Imperial Conference to discuss this and other matters the first sea lord the formidable Jackie Fisher exploded a conceptual bomb with a proposal of three fleet units each centered on the dreadnought battle cruiser be established in the Pacific. Australia's offer would be converted to a battle cruiser for the Australian Navy supported by new light cruisers destroyers and submarines. The fleet unit concept cut the Gordian knot creating national forces that could make an effective contribution to both local Imperial defence. They put Imperial naval development closely into the abnormalities embrace would ensure money was well spent in the prestige of the Royal Navy protected providing not only an effective force structure but a career for local personnel. It also ensured that training doctrine equipment could be maintained at the necessary levels. It not only represented the beginning of really systematic naval activity for Australia but laid the groundwork for many other as yet unimagined navies many of whom are represented here tonight. The fleet unit proved the most timely strategic investment Australia ever made after the battle cruiser Australia arrived in Australia in late 1913 the war plans of the German East Asiatic Squadron ceased to include a venture into Australian waters. When war came in 1914 the German decision to head for South America was partly to keep well away from the Australian battle cruiser but there was a downside new Royal Australian Navy the RAN was a remarkable bargain and capability for the money invested but Australia had in effect acquired a fleet not a navy because so much remained outsourced. Despite efforts to develop local naval shipbuilding Australia's naval political industrial complex failed to mature understanding of what was really involved in running a navy was incomplete and remained so for many years. In describing this situation I once paraphrased Mahan and I quote those far distant naval administrative structures research organizations design authorities and equipment manufacturers upon which the eyes of the Australian parliament never set stood between it and a vastly greater demand for the fence expenditure for many decades and perhaps we're still coming to terms with that challenge. The Navy itself was also accused of being too British the irony is that the Australian army and later the Air Force for justice derivative of British models I did have to point out once to an army Brigadier that I might sound a bit Brit but I was not the one with the order of the bath on my rank insignia. In part in fact the Royal Australian Navy was simply behaving like a navy with its more global outlook than either of the other services for much of government by the way I think this is an area where that relationship internationally between national navies and national armies with their different perspectives is something that has not actually been properly examined other than in specific inter-service rivalry contexts. But Australian officers did spend so much time with the Royal Navy under training or on exchange that they could appear wholly captured by the British model and always tended to encourage the view in some Australian quarters described by a journalist called Libby Pervers of Seabline Britain in 2000 and I quote that the Navy is a subversive body which deliberately keeps going to sea in order to waste taxpayers money where nobody can stop them. The war profoundly influenced Australia's strategic culture. Despite the achievements of the Australian fleet and the Global Maritime Alliance Australia's commitment troops and commitment of troops and the casualties they suffered were on such a scale they dominated the national memory. With a population one twentieth the size the United States in 1914 Australia actually had more casualties than World War One than the United States did and the proportionate loss where only exceeded in the British Empire by New Zealand. Failure at Gallipoli in the ordeals of the Western Front created a mythology which did not connect such operations to the overall global strategic effort. Bartley acknowledged and this slide shows one day in early 1916 was that Australia's Navy followed its contribution to the capture of German Pacific colonies and protecting the new Anzac army on its way to the Middle East with a global effort that extended from the eastern coast of North America to the North Sea Mediterranean and Adriatic as well as the South China Sea and Bay of Bengal. As I pointed out two Chinese authorities are more than one occasion it might not be long by their standards but we have been there for over a hundred years. If though the Great War removed Germany from the Pacific it created new potential for trouble with Japan. The 1921-22 arms limitation and security agreements known as the Washington Treaties were welcomed by Australia but cancellation of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty ended a key restraint on Japan and the ban on fortifications in the western Pacific seemed to Australia to be of much more benefit to Japan than others. Furthermore the government was determined to secure a peace dividend but had little concept of the cost of a peacetime navy. Between 1919 and 1923 there were 83 separate reductions in naval funding. By 1920 the Australian fleet's commander claimed bitterly that his force was and I quote strategically impotent and tactically inefficient. The British at least retained the option of developing Singapore. Evolved a plan to build a base for the battle fleet to be dispatched from European waters in America but although Australia would soon be committed to the British plan there were those who were considering the United States and the future chief of naval staff pointed out as early as 1923 that if the British were unable to dispatch a fleet a facility at Singapore would provide the USN with the base in the west of the Pacific it could not create for itself. And indeed the RN had worked and socialized with the USN after 1917 and I include this picture because I do think that's the US boat alongside HMS Sydney and USS Wyoming and HMS Sydney had quite a thing going. HMS Sydney's captain was not pleased by the boatload of US officers who did the baseball yell outside his cabin at three in the morning. And the US fleet made another welcome visit and there were many personal links renewed in 1925 when 56 ships visited East Coast ports. I will say I'm pleased that American admiral's dress standards have improved in 97 years. But this which may be the largest peaceful visit by a naval force anywhere in history had as much of a Japanese dimension as that of 1908 although mainly it was actually a test of trans-specific logistics in the direction that clearly could not be construed badly by Japan. And when newly completed heavy cruiser Australia went by the United States on her delivery voyage from the United Kingdom in 1928 the American welcome was equally warm. Britain's main fleet to Singapore concept was laid out at the 1923 Imperial Conference. With financial contributions with the Dominions Britain would rebuild the required base. For its part Australia would acquire cruisers and submarines to supplement Britain's standing Far East forces. But wishful thinking dogged the strategy from the first and none of the nations involved ever fully met their promises. There were repeated delays to construction of the naval base. Local naval forces with a partial exception of a powerful British submarine flotilla which got the 15 boats at its peak never achieved their proposed strength. Australia's planned six strong submarine squadron stopped at two and after four years was abandoned outright with the submarines being given to the British. And the strategy also lacked a joint approach. For too long the role of land forces was minimized. The failure allowed to pass by Australia in part because its own army was based upon militia forces which could not be deployed overseas without specific legislation. This restriction did much to embed continentalist ideas in Australian military thinking and an obsession with the prospect of invasion which neglected the much more critical and much more likely problem of isolation. Australia's tiny air force suffered similar preoccupations. There were other problems. Sorry. Although Britain formally recognized the individual sovereignty of the Dominions through the statute of Westminster in 1932 that statute was not ratified by the Australian parliament until 1942. Then ironically the motivation was not the new strategic situation but a legal dilemma following a murder on board in Australian warship. Australia's passage to nationhood remained a work in progress. And yes our new parliament house was in the middle of sheet paddocks. It had almost no diplomatic corps and few defence experts. Australian politicians tended to accept British defence advice at face value. Often to the frustration of unable leadership as well as the other services. Further arms controlled treaties tightened restrictions. The British Admiralty became loath to encourage Australian development in some warship categories in which the allowed tonnage was limited. Australia still counted as part of Britain in this matter. It was not identified separately as a sovereign country. But Britain could not automatically assume that it could control Australia's ships. Australia had first to agree to that each time. Although it always did when it really mattered. There are popular narratives which foster the idea of British betrayal in 1941-42. But Australia was equally complicit in the approaching disaster. The British did too little and certainly said too little about their changing strategic priorities in the late 1930s. But Australia was rarely an active listener and never spent enough on defence to support any strategy. But Navy received the lion's share of the limited funding. Even that was only enough to manage protection of shipping and some local defence. It had little offence of capability and no strategic weight. Contrary to mythology, surrounding the collapse of British power in Southeast Asia, I am certain had Japan initiated hostilities before Germany, a British fleet would have been dispatched to the Far East immediately. But in 1939, and I think there are resonances here, history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme in 2022, Britain, Australia and their allies had to manage the war they got, nor other wars they were fearing. Something had been done right. British Commonwealth naval arrangements for the global control of shipping swung smoothly into action in 1939. And the continuing development of this system as well as the accompanying chain of signals intelligence stations and operational intelligence centres is an achievement that did much to win the war at sea but which has actually gone largely undermined. It was much more than the battle of the Atlantic. Perhaps it's because the work never ended. Continuing in both today's global naval control and protection of shipping organisation as well as intelligence sharing between the Five Eyes partners. The fall of France in 1940 surrounded the sound of the death knell for the Singapore strategy. While Japan held off, Australia could only continue to dispatch forces to assist the British wherever they could help. But maybe that meant the Mediterranean and Atlantic as well as the Indian Ocean and Pacific. As the prospect of war with Japan increased, Australian units began to be called home. But by that stage naval losses were so great that any British force would be at any token. Destruction of the Royal Navy's force said in December 1941 marked the start of a disastrous campaign in which the Allies inadequacies became all too clear. The RN suffered heavy losses in the battles which forced the Allies out of Southeast Asia. And the force were only two days past the 80th anniversary of the battle of Strait, at which the light cruiser Perth and the heavy cruiser Houston were lost after engaging a Japanese invasion force. The British could provide nothing for the Pacific and were hard pressed to defend just the Eastern Indian Ocean. Now there had been Australian efforts to describe later events of 1942 as the Battle for Australia. It was much more a battle to seek communications. It's often forgotten how much the early Allied counter offensive, most notably the Solomon's campaign, was to ensure the Japanese could not interdict direct sea communications between the USA and Australia and New Zealand. Australia's maritime forces, however, conform only a small contribution to the United States lead effort. And much of the RN's capability had to be concentrated on protecting shipping around Australia and supporting campaigns in New Guinea and the islands. There were setbacks. The disaster of Savo Island confirmed the interoperability needed work and worked on it was. The Australian Navy, the superiority of American naval technology was the revelation. Just how far the USN had evolved the truly oceanic capability maritime power projection became even more obvious when the British Pacific fleet began operations to the end of 1944. The British struggled to match the Americans and knew it. The Australian Navy would never look on the Royal Navy in quite the same way again, however, welcome the return of British forces to the region. Now the end of the Second World War did not mean continuation of the relationship with the United States at the same level. This was partly due to efforts to reconstruct cooperative security arrangements between Australia and its British Commonwealth partners. But both Australia and the United States had a lot to work out about their dealings with each other, particularly as recognition of the threat posed by the Soviet Union and its satellites took time to dawn. Australia continued to fear a resurgent Japan more than it did the Soviet Union and even after 1949, communist China. The 1951 ANZIS pact was substantially to reassure Australia and New Zealand when Japan was brought back into play, albeit in a limited sense, as a security partner as the Korean War raged. That maritime-enabled war brought renewed Allied Naval cooperation. The Iran contribution included not only destroyers and frigates, but a deployment by the new aircraft carrier Sydney. But navies were at work in other less visible but really important ways. Several months before ANZIS was signed, Commander-in-Chief Pacific and the Chief of the Australian Naval Staff breathed the Division of Effort for the protection of shipping in the Pacific between the United States and the Australian-led Australia, New Zealand and Malaya region, a Commonwealth arrangement for sea lion's protection that included the British. The Radford-Collins agreement with revisions remains operative. It's an agreement, it's not a treaty, but it has been the basis for continuing information sharing, doctrine development, exercises and operational planning. Effectively, it's actually an extension of the British Commonwealth's pre-1939 global organization to control and protect shipping. Unlike that global organization, it's an example of the quiet back office arrangements, which provide the capacity for effective combined action in a contingency, and which you don't need to talk much about in public. However, although the Korean War gave impetus to improving interoperability, any increases in Australian defence spending were temporary. First war effort to create independent naval power protection capabilities centred around at least two aircraft carriers with short lived. The RAN was soon reduced to a single anti-submarine warfare carrier. In part, this was logical, given the expanding communist bloc submarine force on Australia's continuing dependence on sea communications. But in a high-threat environment, the Australian Navy could operate only under the umbrella of its major partners at sea. Nevertheless, this was the era of forward defence. Even without the contemporary domino theory, the events of 1942 confirmed that Australia's security was directly dependent upon the security of Southeast Asia. Thus, Australian forces were committed to the British-led efforts to protect Malaya and Singapore from both external threats and local insurgencies, and later the newly created Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation. And Seattle, in particular, provided opportunities to strengthen links with the USA and the USN without having to erode those with the UK of the Royal Navy. Driven by a number of factors, including uncertainty over Indonesia's intentions, Australia's defence spending increased significantly in the first half of the 1960s, breathing new life into naval aviation. Australia's closest neighbour had begun to build a huge fleet and air force for Soviet support, and it was clear that in the event of a conflict, Australia had practically no capabilities to meet Indonesia's growing steeper. In the event, Indonesia's naval ambitions were short-lived, and the key lesson for Australia was that its own security was and is best served by friendship with an Indonesia that is itself stable and secure. And in 2022, there very much hope that Indonesia will fulfil its stated maritime ambitions in both their economic and security elements, and extend its capabilities and influence as an important player in the region. By the late 1960s, the Royal Australian Navy was still centred on one carrier, but this had regained a strike capability however limited. There was another profoundly important change. Australia turned to America for new destroyers, largely because the British could no longer match the USA and some technologies, particularly missiles. British link was not broken, Australia ordered submarines from the UK at the same time, and the project for modified Type 26 frigates confirms it continues in 2022, but the Australian Type 26 will carry America's Aegis system and American missiles. 1965 brought Australian involvement in Vietnam at the same time as it supported Britain in the limited conflict with Indonesia known as confrontation over the new federation of Malaysia. Vietnam in particular represented the continuation of Australian efforts to maintain a credit balance in the alliance with the United States, and both campaigns drew heavily on Australia's operational forces, but also in a naval context accelerated interoperability between the Australian Navy and the Seventh Fleet. British withdrawal from East of Seward in 1971, US withdrawal from Vietnam and President Nixon's Guam Doctrine of 1974, signalled a new era for Australian defence. The first accelerated the loss of many links to the Royal Navy, and the resulting force growth of the Australian Navy's raised train and sustained infrastructure. Furthermore, the Indian Ocean could no longer be considered a British problem. From this time, signalled by the start of development of a new fleet base in Western Australia, Australia had to consider the Indian Ocean more fully in its calculations. The difficulty, as one Chief of Naval staff later complained, was that the RN was faced with being, and I quote, a two ocean navy on a one ocean budget. 1970s and 1980s brought more challenges than solutions. Forward defence appeared discredited, but maritime Southeast Asia remained key to Australia's own security, and what part Australia should play was unclear in the uncertainties of the post Vietnam era. The 1979 invasion of Afghanistan was a wake-up call, if only temporary, and resulted for a few years in a much increased Australian naval presence in the North Pacific. Although seater had collapsed, probably a more long-term significance for activities like the US-led Rim of the Pacific exercise, which provided an interoperability substitute for seater, and Australia initiated its own series of major joint exercises. There were also efforts to reach out to Indonesia in particular. Diplomatic ties had never been broken, and the end of confrontation in 1966 allowed renewal and further development of military links. Australia began to provide both aid for the navy and the former patrol boats in training. Australia's involvement in the US maritime strategy of the 1980s was relatively limited, although the RN submarines and the Royal Australian Air Force's maritime patrol aircraft made useful contributions to monitoring Soviet activities, and there were important American special facilities on the Australian continent, such as on-gap. In practice, the maritime Cold War lost priority for Australia some years before it did for the USA coordinator. Australia had its own challenges to resolve. Managing its relations with Southeast Asian neighbours was one, and whether the navy should replace its aircraft carrier dominated defence debates for years, only concluding in 1983, with the incoming Labor government's decision to abandon naval fixed-wing aviation completely. The 1987 defence of Australia white paper was an effort to square the circle of naval national strategy. While focusing on the defence, the direct defence of Australia had limitations, which became increasingly clear in the years ahead. It justified forces which had a reasonable minimum capability. Enough for maritime to mean something, given if there was too much emphasis on dominating the sea air gap to our North, and not enough on Australia's continuing dependence on shipping. For more than a decade, however, successful governments failed to meet funding promises made in 1987, further drawing a peace dividend which had already been paid in the 1970s and early 80s. This failure has coloured attitudes to the 1987 effort. The matters were not helped by drive to integrate the three services into a single Australian defence force. This effort was necessary, inevitable and well intended, but in retrospect, overly focused on an army vision of operational command, incomplete in regard to the maritime and air environments, with joint administrative arrangements that did not make full provision for the specific needs of the platform centric, high technology navy and air force. In the decade that followed, the RAN struggled to meet the conflicting demands of the government's desire for, quote, self-reliance, unquote, with continuing budget austerity and an increasing enthusiasm for commercial outsourcing. This combination in a period when the Royal Australian Navy was becoming responsible for much more of its own technical governance, rather than being able to be back on either the Royal Navy or the USN, was not good. Two things became evident. Firstly, the relationship between the combat capabilities generated and the human and material infrastructure required to support the wide range of force elements wanted was at its most unfavourable for a navy of the size of Australia's. Second, with the extra pressures of jointery, was that the navy was not big enough to generate all the experts needed to cover the whole range of naval development, governance and management, let alone training and operations. Autonomy to the level of complete, quote, self-reliance, unquote, was never and is not achievable for a multi-role medium navy like Australia's. With insufficient intellectual capital to go around and not not money anyway, something has to give. What has to be identified is what is essential and unique and must be done only by Australians. For the remainder, relationships must be fostered. It is no accident that in 2022 Australia is deeply embedded in America's submarine combat data system program and its heavyweight torpedo program. The 1987 white paper was critical in other respects. At a time when the governing Labor Party's left wing was still very anti-American, it endorsed Australia's alliance with the United States, the maintenance of American special facilities in Australia and the Five Eyes intelligence sharing arrangements. Furthermore, although such capabilities were not what were termed, quote, force structure determinants, unquote, Australia's forces would contribute to alliance operations outside Australia's area of direct strategic interest if necessary. In all, the 1987 effort provided for a reasonably effective minimum defense capability in what many at the time felt was the complete absence of a credible contemporary threat. The American government recognized the Australian finesse for what it was. Indeed, events in the Middle East would soon see Australia respond to calls for assistance. Although Australia did not in the end provided units for the tanker war, preparations were in hand when the Iran-Iraq conflict ended. In 1990, with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Australia was an early contributor to the coalition. There was more to Australian strategies on the defense of Australia in other ways. Australia's fundamental interest in Southeast Asia's security saw its maritime forces increase their presence there. Cold war focus for the maritime patrol aircraft Gateway Patrols, operating out of Malaysia in the South China Sea Northeastern Indian Ocean, shifted, for the time anyway, to a general maritime security effort. While Australian units engaged in an ever more complex web of bilateral exercises, as well as continuing commitment to the protection of Malaysia and Singapore through the five power defence arrangements. The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention also brought fundamental changes, not only to Australia's own maritime interests, but the small island nations of the Pacific. It was soon clear that they would require continuing help to govern their vast exclusive economic zones. That would include Australia's Pacific Patrol boat program, as well as cooperation between Australia, France, New Zealand and the USA in what we could term the first quadrilateral. Australia's own security required the development of capabilities to protect the nation's own huge maritime zones. Although there was a tiny civil force in the custom service, we did not and do not have a Coast Guard as such. Even now, with a much larger civil capability in the Australian Border Force, contributing to maritime surveillance and enforcement is an inviting component of the work of both the RAN and the Air Force's maritime patrol elements. Now there's a point at which a historian ceases to be analysing events as a historian and becomes something else. But any examination of Australian maritime defence for tonight's audience would be incomplete if it is not fully up to date. So I speak now with the authority of a simple observer. The campaign to liberate Kuwait marked Australian involvement in the Middle East that became more substantial in the wake of 9-11 and the 2003 Gulf conflict. Between 1990 and 2020, there were some 68 ship deployments. Now Australia's commitments matched those of many previous conflicts, in being small in size and helpful rather than decisive in effect. But there were two problems. The first was that in focusing on the operational and tactical requirements of the maritime interception work which dominated its effort. The RAN became expert in this fifth, but only partly at the expense of many other skills, particularly in the rapidly degradable arts of high-intensity warfare. The Air Force had similar challenges in maintaining maritime expertise for their MP Air Force. We were not, as many in my audience, well aware alone in this. Secondly, we took our eye off the ball of developments in the region. In part, this was due to the optimism with which the rise of China was initially viewed, at least until the end of this century's first decade. Optimism obviously associated with the benefits Australia derived from China's boom economy. The Defence White Paper of 2009 marked the first overt acknowledgement by Australia that all was not well, and the years since have seen continuing erosion of the hope that China would become a constructive contributor to the security of the global maritime system. This casualty of a China's efforts to achieve regional dominance and global influence in its own terms is ironic given China's new and increasing maritime dependence. It is more ironic when one considers the growing contribution of another rising power, India, to protecting the maritime system. This has presented new challenges for Australia. Its major trading partner, and the source of much of Australia's recent prosperity, is the nation whose geostrategic aims are increasingly at odds with Australia's security requirements. That China is, perhaps temporarily, more economically dependent on Australia than the old imperial power of Britain ever was, is yet another irony. So China has to be managed across many dimensions. Personally, I have not lost the hope that the 21st century will see the protection of the global maritime system become a fully multipolar effort. The shocks of the last few years have also drawn attention to the extent to which Australia's dependence on seaborn transport has become not only even greater, but more vulnerable to disruption than in the past. Awareness of those vulnerabilities is also being driven by the increasing consequences of climate change, as well as the supply chain disruptions of COVID. The latest forms of globalisation have proved no friend to national resilience. There is increasing realisation that reducing our vulnerabilities is not just a matter of protecting shipping, but of rebuilding national infrastructure. Even continuing proponents of the continental defence of Australia by means of airborne strike forces ranging over the sea air gap to Australia's north must reflect on the fact that the closure of supposedly uneconomic refineries means Australia no longer produces aviation fuel. Supplies thus need to be imported, and this can only be by sea. The question to be resolved is what onshore capacity and reserves as a minimum should Australia rebuild and maintain to ensure national survival? The emerging strategic environment presents other equally profound challenges. Australia's population remains small by global standards, but its resources and location mean that our defence force has the potential and the need to exercise much more strategic weight than at any time in the past, or at least since the fleet unit of 1913. Australia must now work on a much more equal basis with powers like the United States than ever before, at the same time as it strengthens its links with regional powers such as India and Japan, and Indonesia. Both the Quad and the more recent AUKUS agreement reflects this reality and the fact that things are being done about it. In particular, AUKUS is significant not so much for Australia's potential to acquire nuclear submarines, but what it means cooperation in so many spheres. The era of the flag and the sand has ended. Australian force development will need to provide much greater long-range conventional strike capabilities, a much more long-range and long endurance force, and one that is capable of both independent national effort as well as making a real contribution to any coalition. It's going to cost a lot more, and Australia's customary equation of defence expenditure is going to have to change. Work to achieve these things is in hand, but questions remain. Will it be enough and will it be in time to meet the strategic challenges that we face? One thing is clear, as it always has been for those who think about maritime dependent Australia, and as we've had a sharp reminder in the last week, the paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, our message for our allies, our security partners and our own people is we must sail together or surely we will sink separately. Thank you very much. I'm happy to take questions. Would you please use your microphone? I would look at it between your seats and press the button and talk. Thank you. You'll just hear my dulcet tones even more Admiral. Thanks Steve. Yeah. Admiral sir, I think we all watch in disbelief as one autocrat invades a neighbour, claiming that land for his own, and at the exact same time we know of another autocrat who openly states he intends to invade another country, and obviously I'm referring to Xi Jinping and Taiwan. Now history tells us that appeasement does not work, yet many leaders have appeased, put in and ignored the warning signs, and some have even praised them, but we won't mention that. Noting that Russia predominantly the western part is a land power, whereas China is a land sea power and has to balance her forces. My question to you is, you've just mentioned it, but does the resurrected quads and the Augusteel provide an opportunity to create a regional maritime strategy to counter China? Thank you. I think managing China is actually a better expression, because quite literally it's not China's not going to go away. Yes, I think there's potential for what could be in effect a regional maritime strategy and greater regional cooperation. I suppose the subject of what I've been saying is that a lot of it, in my view, can be manifested through back office work and the creation of shared doctrine, shared planning, and further conducting exercises and so on, not necessarily making a big thing of it. In other words, leave the commitment to the contingency, but have the ability to operate with as many partners as you can at as high a level as you can. As with the work before between 1919 and 1939, the Commonwealth Navy's did, as with the Redford-Collins agreement, it's that back office stuff that I think is actually important. Indeed, AUKUS really, I think, is almost the open statement of there's an extraordinary amount of back office work to be done, which can really create opportunities and capabilities for us. What I would say is it's not entirely, it's not the usual, it's not just the usual suspects. I'm delighted with our growing relationship with India. I do think we need to do more than we do with Indonesia and with the other players in Southeast Asia, but that has to be done in a way that leaves them freedom from maneuver given that they have very different circumstances to ours and different pressures. How does one find the quietly stated development of mechanisms? How do you do that? So if you do need to come together, you can. To run US Army, Steve's told most of my question. It was similar with the events in Russia, how they galvanized the European Union and NATO's defense. Do you see the opportunity with China's growing aggression in the South China Sea to reorganize a SAIDO-like organization with that opportunity? Thanks, sir. No, I don't. It's quite simple. It's a very different situation and no, I don't. And the South China Sea to me, the real problem the South China Sea is the learn bad behavior it involves rather than the actual events in the South China Sea. It's the idea that my concern is that China has created a narrative which is not true and has denied aspects of the law of the sea, which are not a Western construct, which actually is a deep insult to countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, which were critical players in developing major aspects of the law of the sea. So this idea about China saying, oh, we weren't there as a Western conflict. China was there for the law of the sea negotiations. And it played a very active role. So I think the South China Sea can be over-egged as of itself being a problem for direct conflict. Taiwan worries me much more. As I say, my real problem is learn bad behavior. If they get away with it, for instance, the declaration of wider baselines and so on around the Spratlys, then what other assertions and changes to the law of the sea will happen and other elements of accepted international law. But Asia is not Europe. And I think it's implicit in what I was saying earlier that what will work better will be working out that you can operate together and having all the doctrine and, you know, cons crypto stuff and everything else available so that you can work together if a situation emerges in which you feel as has, you know, happened in Europe. And I think the most striking thing is how Germany's reacted. If you feel you really do need to do something together to deal with what has been done. But trying to do NATO in Asia would be, I just don't think it would be worth the effort, which would be better expended doing the things I've been talking about. Sir, thanks for being here, Christina Lee, US Air Force. So you mentioned something that was that I'm passionate about, which is the lack of refined field in Australia. As we know, the knee and the curve in terms of missile range in China ends around the middle of Australia. So our retrograde, if you will, in the event we ever have a conflict will involve southern Australia. To what you mentioned with Ryan's question, is it better to have an offset strategy where you're looking to invest in the next transformational technology, whether it's green energy, nuclear, mobile nuclear reactors, or is it better to try to rejuvenate that refined fuel industry base in the same sense with, is it better, like you said, to confront what's happening in the South China Sea with continued presence, more forward presence, perhaps multilateral phonops, or is it better to say, you can have it, we actually need to invest in what is going to be an offset strategy for the long term. Thanks. I suppose you've got to do both. The future must not be allowed to be the enemy of the present, and particularly must not be allowed to be the enemy of the near term future. What I was putting to you was the idea that it's important in Australia, in my view, to reconstitute refinery capacity across the various products to a level that provides for the defence of Australia and keeps the country going. As I in fact say to people when I explain this, you're not going to be able to drive your children to school, they're going to have to walk. But you know, you can say, right, that is the level of refining we need to run in Australia, and we need to have x number of weeks, months, oil reserves. In fact, oil reserves are currently in America, which is an interesting point. And then after, over that you can say, yes, that can be left to the market, because that's about economic activity and all the rest. I mean, we can't feed ourselves if we haven't got diesel, not only agriculture, but our domestic transport system runs on diesel, you know, Brailleways are rubbish. So that's the sort of decisions got to be made. Yes, you need to be doing offsets, you know, offset stuff as well. But you need to actually have capability all the time. My worry in Australia is that we're too slow over some of the things that we're doing. I don't think our shipbuilding program is working fast enough. We're going to have to find some way with the nuclear submarines of answering the nearer term capability problem in addition to the longer term. And they're two slightly different questions. So you have to walk and chew gum. And it's going to be more expensive. I mean, that is the thing. It's, you know, it's dawning in Europe. Australia has committed to 2% in so some time and sort of needed, you know, and particularly if we go into nuclear submarines, we are in a, we will be in a different space as regards defense expenditure. In my view, we can't do nuclear submarines without going to something like 3% current venues because they're really expensive. So it's always going to have a tension between what you have to have for the short notice stuff because this has happened. And I mean, I'm very admiring the way the US government's handled the last couple of months because it did actually, the intelligence was well used. And I think the pretenses for the aggression were undermined. But it has, this has all happened quite fast. So you have to have forces which are credible and capable in the short term and the medium term and the long term. Well, thank you all very much. I must say again, I'm deeply honored to receive the award. It does put a cap on my time at the Naval War College, which has always been enjoyable every time I'm visited. And my eldest son does count himself a new porter. But he's 30 now. Admiral Goldrich, thank you so much for your presentation this evening. I would like to also recognize the presence of Admiral Grogan here in the audience supporting you from Australia. And I just want to say that we've been away from our evening lecture series for a long time. And you have given us a great gift this evening in bringing us back and on such a relevant topic. Thank you. Thank you.