“Most wars were wars of contact, both forces striving into touch to avoid tactical surprise. Ours should be a war of detachment.”
– T.E. Lawrence [1]

A focus of T.E. Lawrence’s efforts in the Middle East from 1916-18 was the repeated disruption of the Hejaz Railway. This line connected Damascus and Medina, serving as one of the Ottoman Empire’s key lifelines for moving troops and supplies through the Arabian Peninsula. Arab fighters, encouraged – and sometimes led – by Lawrence, put the railway out of action hundreds of times with a guerilla campaign that destroyed sections of track, bridges, and trains.[2] This ever-present threat tied down tens of thousands of Turkish troops deep in the Arabian Peninsula, and away from British General Edmund Allenby’s Allied forces, including the Australian Light Horse, in the Palestine campaign.

“Continual change and the need to respond to it compels the commander to carry the whole intellectual apparatus of his knowledge within him.”
– Carl von Clausewitz [3]

As the Australian Army encourages engagement with professional military education (PME), soldiers and officers have access to many more written works than did British officers during World War 1. T.E. Lawrence’s own Seven Pillars of Wisdom[4] is now a staple of many military reading lists. The purpose of this entry is not to propose that soldiers should read T.E. Lawrence (they should), but that they should emulate him in their reading and PME efforts to broaden their understanding of the world.

A typical WW1 British officer tasked to deny the Hejaz Railway might have seized and held key points along the route with static, entrenched positions requiring masses of troops and materiel. But Lawrence was not a typical military officer, and he never received formal military training.[5] An archaeologist and Arabic scholar who had been working in Syria before the war, he was initially commissioned as a second lieutenant to serve as an interpreter in Cairo. Lawrence lacked the indoctrination of campaign histories that a typical staff officer of the time would have received.[6] In place of detailed studies of Napoleonic, Crimean, and Boer War battles he was more broadly read on Middle East history, anthropology, culture, and languages. This allowed Lawrence to earn the trust of tribal leaders and channel the Arab Revolt into actions that served the Allies’ interests. While most British officers regarded Arab irregulars as unreliable – and the tribesmen certainly weren’t amenable to marching in lines, manning trenches, or charging fortified positions en masse – Lawrence recognised their irregularity as a strength, harnessing the Bedouins’ mobility to devastating effect.

Much of the Australian Army’s PME efforts focus on knowledge of a specifically military nature. Reading lists are heavily weighted towards military history publications – all valuable, essential even, to soldiers’ intellectual development. But a strict diet of only military knowledge offers a limited toolset for the challenges we face.

“… if in the days to come mankind has no choice but to engage in war, 
it can no longer be carried out in the ways with which we are familiar.”
– Liang Qiao & Xiangsui Wang [7]

The present challenges facing the Australian Army are complex and varied. We face geopolitical challenges such as grey zone warfare, technological challenges such as space and cyber domain dominance, informational challenges such as artificial intelligence (AI) and disinformation, and ethical challenges related to all these fields. We also face recruitment and retention challenges in a tight labour market. These challenges require broad-minded intellectual generalists who can see beyond military doctrine, history, and philosophy.

While many military reading-list staples, such as On War,[8] and Unrestricted Warfare,[9] remain essential to understanding and interpreting modern geopolitical challenges, these texts alone do not provide a holistic appreciation of the threats and opportunities. A more complete understanding would include readings such as Sapiens,[10]Origins,[11] The Silk Roads,[12]China in Ten Words,[13] and Material World,[14] not instead of the military works, but in addition to them.

Contemporaneous emerging technologies have historically proved pivotal in war, often influencing conflict in powerful ways that are not accurately predicted. Understanding the ways technology is influencing the war in Ukraine is important, but it will be equally important to understand the ways technology influences, and has influenced, the world generally. This broader understanding will help develop a healthy appreciation for the opportunities and threats posed by emerging technologies. Reading The Invention of Tomorrow,[15]Exactly,[16] The Idea Factory,[17]How We Got to Now,[18] and The Gutenberg Revolution[19] will help.

Developments in how information is generated, transmitted, and interpreted always have a transformative impact on the world. Keeping ahead of the disinformation efforts of issue-motivated groups and foreign powers as well as and recognising how AI amplifies those efforts requires a broad perspective. It is not enough to understand how AI works; we need to understand how our own brains interpret information. Consider reading The Alignment Problem,[20]Standard Deviations,[21]Knowing What We Know,[22]Predictably Irrational,[23] and Like War.[24]

Military ethics is a subject everybody knows is important and nobody knows how to teach – ethics training tends to fixate on ethical philosophy. For junior soldiers especially, knowing the difference between deontological and contractarian ethics is of little value. Instead, they need to learn that at difficult decision points, the short-term hindrance of adhering to ethical principles yields long-term benefits for themselves and others. And that the opposite is also true. Readings should include Night,[25]Our Bodies, Their Battlefields,[26]Talking to Strangers,[27]Sources of Power,[28] and Less Than Human.[29]

Recruiting and retaining quality personnel is a current challenge faced by all Western militaries. Financial and quality-of-life incentives may help but are costly and don’t distinguish those who value service from those who value only the incentives. Many management principles we in the Army regard as fundamental are simply performative habits. If the goal is to develop confident soldiers who show initiative and courage, we must acknowledge that many of our training methods produce the opposite effect. Society at large long ago discarded some Army management practices for good reason. Readings such as Punished by Rewards,[30] and Primed to Perform[31] explain more.

“Drones have become one of the most important tools in the fight against the occupier, both on the front lines and behind enemy lines.”
– Volodymyr Zelensky [32]

Many benefits that flow from a broad knowledge base are intangible and unpredictable. It is not a matter of reading a certain book and subsequently gaining a certain quantifiable skill. Instead, the broadly read soldier sees connections, opportunities, and solutions to problems where the strictly militarily educated soldier sees only tactical options.

Australians in past wars were renowned for their innovation. The ANZACs at Gallipoli did not have nearly enough Mills Bombs for trench and bunker clearing. What they did have was gun cotton, fuses, various small metal objects – barbed wire, cartridges, shell fragments – and jam tins. Among the diggers were men with experience using explosives, owing to backgrounds in mining, farming, and other trades. So, the jam-tin bomb became a key weapon of the Gallipoli campaign, with a makeshift “bomb factory” above ANZAC Beach producing more than 200 a day by June 1915.[33]

Innovation is no less important on today’s battlefields. The Ukraine War has become synonymous with improvised drones, and Ukraine’s ability to innovate in this field has been essential to its war effort. Before the invasion, Ukraine had the largest absolute IT labour market in its region.[34] It was an IT powerhouse when Russia invaded, and many engineers turned their efforts towards national defence. This pivot has allowed Ukraine to quickly adapt commercial and improvised solutions in a rapidly evolving drone, counter-drone arms race.[35]

Australia’s technology sector, less specialised than Ukraine’s, is significantly – about four-fold – larger.[36] Australia has the technology workforce to achieve innovation as impactful as that occurring in Ukraine right now. The Australian Army needs personnel at all levels, most importantly in middle- and upper-leadership, who recognise the value of technology expertise and channel it towards meaningful battlefield impacts. The military value of home-made drones is established, because innovators in Ukraine have proven it. But what of the next great innovation? The game-changing battlefield technologies of the future can only be implemented by those with broad knowledge and understanding, able – and willing – to recognise value beyond traditional military sectors.

“While active reading remains the foundation of effective study, 
we ought to take a broad approach to learning.”
– LTGEN Simon Stuart [37]

A strong foundation of military knowledge and understanding is essential to soldiers’ professional development. History shows, however, that military knowledge alone is insufficient. T.E. Lawrence’s success in WW1 was built on intellectual range, not narrow military specialisation. Some of the most important and game-changing wartime innovations, from jam-tin bombs to jamming-resistant drones, have been developed by people outside traditional military fields. As Army professionals, we must adopt an approach to learning that draws from a wide range of disciplines, trusting that the connections to military problems will emerge naturally from this breadth of understanding. Our ability to identify and embrace the opportunities for success in the next conflict depends on it.