“Trust and Leadership” consists of thirteen chronologically sequenced chapters, each being an essay on Mission Command as demonstrated in the operation covered from World War I to the Queensland National Emergency of 2010-2011 and extending from Gallipoli to the Southwest Pacific, Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam, Somali, East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Iraq, Afghanistan and domestic disaster relief and recovery.  Each chapter concludes with endnotes. 

“Mission command is the practice of assigning a subordinate commander a mission without specifying how the mission is to be achieved.”  Page 7.  This tome is a series of case studies of mission command in a variety of situations.

 I see this work as appealing to two audiences, military practitioners and historians.  For practitioners it chronicles experiences.  To the historian, with which I identify myself on an amateur basis, it provides insights into how divergent approaches play out among allies. 

It is good to see coalition warfare presented from the junior partner’s perspective.  The Australian experience has reflected its Commonwealth heritage and its shift to a dominating American alliance.  Just as comparing garments in the light brings out colors better than isolation in the closet, so too contrasting practices more clearly presents high level policy and tactical practices. 

Australian participation in the Korean and Vietnam Wars solidified its growing alliance with the United States. 

In focusing on World War II in the South Pacific, Chapter Three documents the diverging American staff system extending its centralized managerial approach and the Australian/British more decentralized command structure.  Lacking inter-war consultation, the two systems and developed differently. In contrast to the European theatre which integrated American and British officers into a united command, General MacArthur excluded Australian officers from his staff, leaving intact national policies working in parallel, rather than in tandem. 

In Korea, described “as the century’s nastiest little war”, Commonwealth and American commands’ had marked differences in approaches.  While Americans practiced a greater degree of micro-management, perhaps reflecting pressure to position for a political resolution, Commonwealth forces maintained a greater reliance on lower-level initiative creating friction among United Nations forces. 

Australian involvement in Vietnam is presented as a continuum of its largely successful anti-insurgency experience in Malaya and Borneo.  Australian doctrine made security of the population top priority.  Believing they had a good grasp of counterinsurgency warfare, Australian commanders felt constrained by, but obligated to follow, American policies which called for big battles, rather than the small-scale engagements prevalent in the Australians’ area of operations in Phuoc Tuy Province, southeast of Saigon.  After the enemy’s reduced capacity in the wake of the Tet Offensive caused a shift in the American approach toward pacification, freeing the Australians to apply their doctrines more freely. 

Australia’s participations in Anglo/American lead interventions in Somalia in 1993, Iraq, 2006-2009 and Afghanistan in 2011 are examined. Australia assumed a theatre leadership role as it became more willing to intervene in regional threats, including defending the newly independent East Timor in 1999 and restoring order in the Solomon Islands in 2003. 

As a reader I found differences between the early chapters, which were written by historians, and the more recent accounts authored by offices involved in the operations.  I feel unqualified to evaluate the utility of this work to professional military.  From the perspective of a War History Network member, I found several interesting features.  I have often read of Australian participation in military actions, but the nature of its roles and problems encountered in alliance warfare are better appreciated in a narrative focusing on them, rather than their inclusion in an account of the whole.  Details woven into these pages, such as the comparison of the later, stalemated years of the Korean War with the Western Front of World War I provide insights often buried in other histories.  Overall, I find this to be a worthwhile for readers interested in military history of the past century and a quarter.