Brown is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Sydney's US Studies Centre, former Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute, and one-time Australian Army cavalry officer (armoured vehicles, not horses, he insists).The current security milieu suits this resumé, and a re-examination of Australia's priorities. New powers are scrappily rising and old overlords ebbing. The post-Cold War 'moment of unipolarity', in which undisputed US military hegemony underwrote relative global stability, is over. Looking beyond news bulletins, there is more at play than ISIS and Donald Trump.

Brown reminds us that the 'possibility of war between major powers, slight though it might be, is creeping back into the deliberations of Moscow, Beijing and Washington'. Brown suggests that this precarious situation has yet to dawn on Australia. Military issues are far from public consciousness and, when they do arise, our imagination of war 'remains largely mired in the past', in inflated Anzac mythos – a subject that his first book, Anzac's Long Shadow (2014), convincingly disarmed – and genuflections toward Gallipoli. Complicating Anzac hagiography is a new war wariness borne of another failed invasion of Middle Eastern soil.

Brown's case for a new strategic debate begins with what he calls the 'Iraq template'. He describes this as a set of instincts conditioned in the public by George W. Bush's undercooked expedition. The Second Iraq War reflex pre-disposes politicians towards small targets in military decision-making: an over-reliance on special forces, no deployment time frame, and unspecified objectives. Media scrutiny revolves around suspect political motives and potential 'mission creep', rather than military aims. Caught on the outer of this unedifying discourse, the public views war as 'distant and discretionary'.

According to Brown, the Iraq template, consummated in 2003, inculcates a failure to see the tectonic shifts of the present – particularly those of our region and an assertive China which has, in just two years, terraformed 'more than 3200 acres' of fortress islets in the South China Sea. Only a few are unblinkered: diplomatic cadres are deepening the ANZUS alliance and the Australian Defence Force is reorienting towards the Pacific, having embarked on the expensive construction of the 'most advanced and complex [amphibious] defence force Australia has ever seen'. Functionaries are quietly readying Australia for Pacific conflicts.

An Australian cavalry scout in Iraq (photograph by Robert H. Baumgartner, Wikimedia Commons)

Brown's survey of this complicated landscape yields some striking phrases and arresting moments. He is a natural and precise writer with a vivid sense of place. However, the essay bends beneath his rapid tempo, not so much arguing as cataloguing, using the globe as its canvas and unduly detailing the middle distance. Brown rushes between Kuwait, Iraq, Darwin, China, Washington, New South Wales, and Canberra. Facts, figures, and vignettes are jammed in around the larger objects. This is more a rummage through Brown's garden shed of ideas than a progressing thesis.

The main problem with this essay is the lynchpin concept, which not only fails to anchor the argument but also contains a hidden agenda. Brown uses his reductive 'Iraq template' to characterise the strong public rejection of a Darwin-based US marine taskforce in 2011. Thereafter it sees no further usage. The concept serves only to make a straw- man of public hesitancy towards imbrication in the US 'pivot to Asia'. In aggregate, Brown signifies Australia a pre-destined place at the side of an old eagle in staring down a rising dragon. This pre- positioning discourages an unbiased appraisal of our nation's strategic and diplomatic possibilities. There are innumerable countries, risks, and opportunities in the Indo-Pacific and many other solutions to regional realignment besides an arms race.

James BrownAlthough his international review is suspect, Brown advances several practical suggestions for improving domestic oversight of Australia's 'grand' strategy. Grand strategy comprises the political objectives that demarcate all subordinate military strategies that descend, babushka-doll-like, from the Defence White Paper down to battlefield manoeuvring. To ensure Australia's grand strategy is broad, deep, and topical, Brown suggests the creation of parliamentary committees for its development and scrutiny. Another idea is the creation of an independent 'parliamentary defence office' modelled on the Parliamentary Budget Office. These and several other parliamentary reforms are well pitched and resonate in the political era of the trust deficit. One is inclined to throw as many technocrats as possible between the executive and its unlimited war-making prerogative.

This essay covers excessive ground in whistle-stop style, without adequate signposting. A cynic might also interpret its call for first-principles 'public debate' on Australian strategy as a coded command to re-route existing discussion: for opinion makers to forget our ally's Iraqi cataclysm; to encourage the force build-up in our region; and to see the world in black and white while accelerating its re-polarisation. Whether intentional or accidental, 'thinking like eagles' seems a more accurate – though less publicly popular – encapsulation of Brown's main contention.