Abbott’s Persuasive Case for National Service

A well read colleague in Washington — a former member of the Bush Administration — recently told me a column of Tony Abbott’s, published this year in the Wall Street Journal, was about the best thing he’d ever read regarding the West’s crisis of strategic competence. As perhaps only a former national leader can do, Abbott seems to have a particular knack for finding the nexus between military strength and Western cultural confidence. His February piece in the Journal essentially linked self-inflicted degradation of Western freedoms at home, to self-defeating military weakness abroad.

This week, Abbott found that sweet spot again, positing that mandatory national service for young Australians could be an effective unifier for the nation. Speaking for the Institute of Public Affairs, Mr Abbott put forth the proposition that school-leavers undertake at least one year of service in a branch of the military, or alternatively, in a community outreach organisation, or…