Every responsible national government must achieve a balance of national prosperity and security. As Robert Bates notes in The Development Dilemma, ‘to achieve development, a society must be both prosperous and secure.’ In the wake of the Cold War, this appeared to be a simpler balancing act as the threat of nuclear and large-scale conventional war receded, and military budgets could be significantly reduced. However, in the past decade, the rise of Chinese and Russian power and the growing instability in the global security environment has meant that governments must now turn their attention to achieving a different balance of prosperity and security for the 21^st century. Defence and intelligence budgets must inevitably rise to counter the threat of military, economic and information operations being conducted by an axis of authoritarians.

To achieve this new balancing act will require more than just reapportioning government budgets. Mobilisation involves the deliberate, planned use of a society’s resources to achieve national objectives in time of war, crisis, or disaster. It will demand a more holistic approach to mobilising national capacity to ensure not only that national sovereignty is preserved, but that democracy itself survives into the 22^nd century. Perhaps most importantly it will demand governments have honest and sustained conversations with their citizens. Mobilisation in the 21^st century must be national in character and requires a social licence from citizens.

The aim of this essay is to explore why mobilisation is a vital concept in deterring war. Key elements and implications of national mobilisation will be explored through the lens of what I describe as the Mobilisation Trinity: people, industry, and ideas.

Deterrence is the practice of discouraging or restraining a nation-state or non-state entity from taking unwanted actions. It has several key features. First, the desired effect is a psychological one, aiming to affect a potential aggressor’s decision process. Second, the effect is achieved through the ‘use’ of force in the form of a threat. Third, the psychological effect is fear of possible undesirable consequences. And finally, the undesirable consequences for a potential aggressor are failure or that costs will exceed possible gains.

One of the foremost responsibilities of any government is to deter aggression against the nation it represents, and to contribute to multinational efforts to deter war more broadly. In the broadest military sense, deterrence has been a characteristic of relations between tribes and nations since such organisations and relationships developed millennia ago. For much of our common history, deterrence has featured in the calculations of the balance of capabilities between military forces.

A key element in such calculations has traditionally been alliances between kingdoms, rulers, or nations. Once, diplomatic isolation seriously threatened and limited a nation’s deterrence. This began to change with the invention of airplanes and the development of air power theories in the 20^th century. The principal change was how these technologies allowed nation states to issue deliberate threats, which had deterrence as their core reasoning.

The development of nuclear weapons saw a more fundamental change in thinking about deterrence. The birth of atomic weapons brought about a difference because, as Thomas Schelling notes in Arms and Influence, with atomic weapons ‘it is not true that for the first time in history man has the capacity to destroy a large fraction, even a major part, of the human race… nuclear weapons can do it quickly. That makes a difference’. Many in the postwar era hoped that nuclear threats would always deter conventional conflict. Yet as the decades since the last use of atomic weapons has shown, this deterrent effect may have prevented nuclear war but has fallen short of preventing all war.

Deterrence has been traditionally discussed through a framework of three key approaches: punishment, retaliation, and denial. Deterrence by punishment promises to inflict costs continuously on an opponent until compliance is achieved, which might be thought of as a return to the status quo following a deterrence failure. Deterrence by retaliation threatens that the costs of some unwanted activity on the part of the opponent will exceed the gains secured by engaging in that activity. Finally, deterrence by denial promises that our response to some unwanted act will directly prevent our opponent from achieving their objectives.

The first two forms of deterrence are often the preserve of large, highly sophisticated nations with large military forces. For most nations however, size, force posture and resources dictate deterrence by denial as the most logical approach. One capability that even small and medium sized nations can employ to significantly impact on the strategic calculus of an adversary, is its capacity to mobilise. Mobilisation is a critical element of deterrence because the existence of mobilisation plans, and the regular rehearsal of key elements of that plan, will be visible to potential adversaries and will quite possibly have an impact on their strategic decision-making about aggression, coercion, and war.

Three key elements link deterrence and mobilisation. Primarily, mobilisation is a statement of will. The development of a mobilisation plan, much less its implementation, is a demonstration of will by a government and a nation. Will is a central concept in war, and it was a key aspect of Clausewitz’s writings about the use of force in On War. This notion of will is crucial because deterrence is ultimately about impacting the perceptions of a potential aggressor. If they perceive that will is lacking in a potential target nation, they will see this as provocative. However, if they perceive that their target possesses the will to resist aggression, this has a deterrent effect.

Another element linking deterrence and mobilisation, is the understanding of mobilisation as a threat to prolong the war. When faced with the decision to provoke a war, a potential adversary must weigh crucial factors such a political aims, geography, and resources. Importantly, they must also consider temporal features such as how long might the war last, and therefore, how much national treasure might be required to achieve desired political aims of that war. If an adversary is aware that their target can quickly mobilise people, industry, and other resources, they then must reckon with a much longer and expensive war. This should aid in deterring conflict, at least for most rational actors.

Finally, we must understand that mobilisation is a pathway to generating uncertainty and overwhelming an aggressor with mass. While an aggressor nation will undertake calculations about the potential size of their target, they cannot be fully sure about how much national capacity might be mobilised to thwart their aims. As Williamson Murray and Allan Millett note in Calculations, ‘short of the costly and perilous audit of war itself, the problem of estimating the likely performance of one’s armed forces against one’s potential enemy is the most intractable problem in defence planning.’ Indeed, their target could mobilise sufficient resources to overwhelm the aggressor under certain circumstances.

Any form of mobilisation, even more limited forms that include selected call up of reserve personnel and minor expansion in defence industrial capacity, is expensive. The limited mobilisation of reserve personnel and the defence industry that the US conducted to pursue its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (up to 2010) is estimated by Sarah Kreps to have cost $1.1 trillion. This was almost entirely funded through government borrowing rather than increased taxes. The more recent mobilisation by Russia now allegedly absorbs around 8 per cent of Russian GDP. There are also significant opportunity costs. Every extra dollar spent on mobilising a nation’s defensive capacity is money not able to be spent on social priorities such as schools, roads, housing, and other important concerns.

Mobilising national capacity is not just about building the ability to fight a war. It is also a means of deterring war. A nation that undertakes even limited mobilisation of its resources, or has feasible plans to mobilise them quickly, is telegraphing saying to potential aggressors that ‘we are ready, don’t try anything today’. While even a partial mobilisation for military purposes might be expensive, it may end up being much cheaper than having to fight because we failed to sufficiently invest in deterring aggression. Enhancing the national capacity to mobilise is essential.

Over the course of the war in Ukraine, Western media and think tanks have published multiple reports about the lack of capacity in the defence manufacturing sector of the US and Europe. A legacy of military draw downs and defence industrial consolidation in the wake of fall of the Soviet Union, this lack of production capacity in military equipment and munitions has been the topic of political discourse, think tank analysis and media commentary for nearly two years.

Shortfalls have been highlighted in the disparity in the supply of artillery ammunition between Russia on one side and Ukraine (and its Western supporters) on the other. Russia, which began mobilising people and industry in September 2022, has also increased its capacity through the importation of massive quantities of drones, munitions, dual use goods and machine tools from Iran, China, and North Korea. The ongoing gap between Russian and Western capacity (although this is beginning to slowly close) has highlighted the challenges of mobilising national capacity in the face of the threat posed by confident and well-armed authoritarian powers.

Mobilisation however is more than expanding the production of munitions or other defence materiel. 21^st century mobilisation will be feature of trinity of national, not military, endeavours. The three elements are industry, people, and ideas.

There remains limited capacity for producing large quantities of munitions or defence equipment in most Western nations. And while some munitions production is beginning to expand in several countries, many other elements of defence production must do the same. The manufacturers include military vehicles, as well as missiles, ships and aircraft. All have long lead times to build and are produced (if they are in production) in small lots. Expanding production is expensive and takes time. Even the US, which went through a massive expansion of defence output in the Second World War, took several years to mobilise its industry for the war.

But some newer technologies, which have demonstrated military utility in Ukraine, do not require the massive levels of investment in large factories or long lead time sub-components. Many types of drones are currently being manufactured in mass quantities at much lower prices than other conventional weapons. But to expand drone production, there must be a demand signal from governments and military institutions for thousands of units per year. Ukraine has achieved this, and it is currently producing hundreds of thousands of drones per year, with the aim to being able to produce two million annually in 2025. But this is not the situation in most Western nations.

Industrial mobilisation in many countries might also be improved and accelerated with more distributed forms of manufacturing, underpinned by advances in robotic assembly and additive manufacturing. 3D printing will impact on what is made and where it is made and will allow for rapid prototyping and mass customisation. As T.X. Hammes has written about changes in the manufacturing landscape, ‘today’s transformations represent not merely a prolongation of the third industrial revolution but rather the dimly perceived arrival of a fourth and distinct one: velocity, scope, and systems impact. The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent.’

Another component of mobilising industry is the IT sector. Weapon systems require multiple computer chips and clever programming, modern data processing, command and control systems and AI support systems all must be sourced from civil industry. The current scale and pace of producing these products fits a peacetime environment. Any mobilisation effort will need to scale up this aspect of industrial production in addition to production of more traditional equipment.

This will all have an impact on the labour market however and will result in a more competitive environment for people with IT skills in the civil sector, while also exacerbating military recruitment of people with the same skill sets. Collaboration and not competition will have to be the solution to this. Which leads us to the next element of mobilisation: people.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the all-volunteer force models, adopted by many Western nations in the past half century, are increasingly unreliable ways of ensuring adequate numbers of military personnel. This is posing significant challenges to the readiness and size of military institutions in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere.

It also has a flow on effect with military units running at lower personnel levels, which in turn impacts capability, readiness, and sustainability. The concept of mobilisation becomes crucial in such an environment because it may provide the foundations for a different approach to securing sufficient soldiers, sailors, airmen and women for the military forces of democratic nations. Western nations will probably have to consider mixed forms of military service which include volunteer, reserve, and national service personnel if they are to build the forces with the mass, and more importantly, array of different skill sets required in modern and future military forces.

Another aspect of mobilising people is addressing the current exquisite approaches to military training and education. Many nations have small, highly professionalised military institutions which put their people through exquisite training regimes which consume a lot of time. It is likely that these approaches are not survivable in an environment where mixed service categories may be required, time is limited, or where they may be a need to significantly expand the size of military forces. Shorter training regimes are required for an expanding force and these regimes must be focussed on the absolute basics needed for operational service. The lessons of the Ukrainian expansion in 2022 from 250,000 troops to a million offers insights into the challenges of mobilising civilians rapidly for military service.

An array of different training and simulation technologies, as well as AI and big data approaches, will be needed to address this challenge. Mobilising people will be closely linked to the mobilisation of industry; new training and simulation methods will probably be sourced from commercial entities. Some of these solutions will experience cultural resistance from long-serving professional military personnel. There is a long history, and a deep literature, on military institutions resisting change. While we must listen to the concerns of military leaders, urgency will need to be weighted more than perfect training when mobilising the population.

Mobilising the people will also require mobilising academia. There are already many examples where military-academia collaboration is occurring in countries such as Australia, Britain, Sweden, Canada, and others. But more can be done. This must be a collaborative effort between military and academics to exploit the centuries of knowledge possessed by universities. In doing so, nations can enhance the intellectual armour of military leaders in a more lethal, complex, and ambiguous environment.

The 2022 Russian partial mobilisation debacle provides insights into mobilising people. Having hollowed out the training cadres required for military expansion, the Russian mobilisation effort struggled for months. Therefore, just as industry needs to build new factories in any mobilisation of defence production, military services must build their training workforce if they are to have any hope of effectively expanding the size of military forces when called to do so.

Western nations must learn from this lesson and ensure that there is a peacetime expansion of an instructor workforce, and the supporting physical infrastructure such as base accommodation and training ranges, that is critical to any mobilisation of personnel. But, as these changes are implemented, new and evolving ideas about warfighting and military affairs will also be required. This is the third and final element of a 21^st century national mobilisation concept.

In 21^st century mobilisation, nations must be able to leverage their best minds as individuals and in collectives to develop solutions to military and national defence problems, implement them effectively and to learn and adapt as events (in peace and war) transpire. The mobilisation of intellectual capacity is a foundational national capability in peace and war.

An important element of mobilising intellectual capacity is building an improved understanding of current and potential adversaries. Western nations have studied Russia intensively over the past several decades. The decade of reforms under Shoigu and Gerasimov were the subject of many reports and other analyses. But this proved to be insufficiently robust as the predictions of Russian military effectiveness in the opening days of the invasion of Ukraine fell short in 2022.

Lessons collection, distribution and conversion into new capability is a strategic priority in military affairs. More robust studies of current and future adversaries are central to any development of evolved or new war fighting concepts.

Several recent developments will have an influence on new war fighting and military support ideas. The massive expansion in autonomous and semi-autonomous systems across all domains is having a profound impact, particularly on tactical operations in the ground and maritime environments. They are also beginning to have an impact in longer range strike complexes as well as on air defence environments. More importantly, as the number of these systems increases, they challenge military organisation to rethink old ideas about tactics and campaigning.

This is likely to force changes in military organisations at least as consequential as the formation of air forces in the 20^th century. It is likely to result in a shift in the ratio of humans and autonomous systems across the deep, close, and rear operations of military endeavours. As this ratio of humans to autonomous, quasi-intelligent machines shifts, so too must leadership, training and education regimes evolve. Contemporary military training and education systems are founded on humans using machines, but there must be a shift to a training culture where humans partner with machines and algorithms. This will drive a major change in the culture of military organisations.

The investment in new warfighting ideas, underpinned by understanding the enemy, evolved cultures and better lessons processes, will be the focus of individual nations. But such efforts are rarely most effective if done this way. We will also need to engage in collective efforts as well. But the mobilisation of intellectual capacity cannot only be restricted to military endeavours. Mobilisation demands the harnessing of the research and development skills of a nation to solve defence related problems of a non-military nature.

This will require collaboration with the research and development sectors in academia and industry. An array of problems, from medical to manufacturing, transport to telecommunications, will be faced in wartime which will require dedicated research. Thinking about how this might be done before a war must be part of the anticipated mobilisation of national intellectual capacity.

Two final strategic issues related to mobilisation bear scrutiny: coordination and timing.

The strategic orchestration of mobilisation activities must be undertaken at the highest levels of government. It is not a military enterprise, rather, it is a national concern. It will require inter- and intra-governmental coordination, which includes collaboration between national government agencies as well as coordination with state/province authorities. The coordination of national mobilisation will also demand close collaboration between government and industry, with commercial enterprise likely deliver the equipment, bases, infrastructure, and services required for the expansion of national defence capacity.

Examples from the Second World War and the Cold War offer multiple case studies on the national coordination of mobilisation. A recent study by the RAND Corporation found that the key elements of a strategic coordination mechanism includes the planning model (who is responsible for what, where and when and what mobilisation is); activation (what degree of crisis precipitates mobilisation and who makes this decision – this will need to take into account the need for mobilisation before an actual conflict in order to deter war); and, attributes and principles (the guiding philosophies behind national mobilisation, including societal involvement and national service models).

Finally, the timing of mobilisation matters. Mobilise too early, and much national wealth and human capital may be squandered or at least put to unproductive ends. Mobilise too late, and a national catastrophe may result, or you might see a total loss of sovereignty to an aggressor state. As such, strategic planning models and activation plans and policies must account for when the best time to mobilise might be, including mobilisation at different scales over time. It is important to note, if mobilisation is to be employed as part of a nation’s deterrence regime, it must be planned and coordinated well in advance, and capable of being conducted in conditions before a national crisis.

The term ‘mobilisation’ can be an emotional one, particularly for Western politicians who must balance diplomatic relationships, domestic populations more focussed on prosperity and inflation control than national security, as well as achieving a sustainable approach to budgeting and providing social services. There are many elements of democratic societies that are resistant to young people being forced to serve their nation.

Unfortunately, Western nations must now confront a different reality than that of the immediate post-Cold War era. Russia, an existential threat to Ukraine and a threat to Europe, is driving different thinking in European capitals. This is also taking place in the Indo-Pacific where countries like Japan have doubled its percentage of GDP spent on defence and procure capabilities such as a counter-strike force.

But while many are waking up to the massive national security challenges posed by Russia and China, most nations are yet to make the intellectual shift and take the political steps needed to build the kinds of deterrent capabilities to ensure that Ukraine is the end of authoritarian predatory behaviour and not the beginning. Possessing a concept for what national mobilisation might look like in the 21^st century, with its constituent elements of people, industry, and ideas, is just the beginning of this journey.