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Evans, Michael. The Tyranny of Dissonance: Australia's Strategic Culture and Way of War, 1901-2005. Duntroou, ACT, Australia: Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2005. Available online at www. defence.gov.au/army/LWSC/Publications/SP/SP_306.pdf.
In this excellent monograph, Michael Evans argues that Australia has a distinctive way of war that focuses on continental defensive strategies. These strategies, for most of its history, have been abandoned by statesmen upholding Australia's extended vital interests in a favorable regional and world order. In other words, Australian military strategists instinctively think about homeland defense, especially of the air and sea-lanes connecting Australia to the world, but their political leaders inevitably require them to adapt their strategies to intervening around the world as a member of coalitions of like-minded liberal democracies. In the United States, we call this a "policystrategy mismatch," but Evans calls it the "tyranny of dissonance," with the interventionist tradition of Australian...