In the nearly ten years since the last edition of this book was prepared, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has faced a range of challenges and a greatly heightened tempo of operational deployments. Australian strategic policy has also been transformed under the conservative government of John Howard, partly in response to a radically altered strategic climate spawned by the terrorist attacks of September 11, but reflecting as well important shifts in the security dynamics of our region, some of which pre-date those attacks. The American alliance, for long one of the central elements of Australian security policy after 1945, has now become the keystone of Australia's security architecture. These developments have brought benefits to both the ADF and the nation, while raising some longer-term issues the implications of which have not been fully thought through, at least at the political level.

The ‘war against terror’, or the ‘Long War’ as it is coming to be called, presents a range of issues and challenges for Western interests in the struggle against Islamist extremism and the international terrorist movements it has spawned. Australian involvement thus far has been limited and largely confined to niche capabilities, and casualties have been extremely light. It is impossible to know how this conflict, in any of its current phases, will end, but it is both possible and important to see Australian involvement in a wider context.