East Timor testing our military resources
Around three hundred and fifty Australian troops are by now on the ground in east Timor to help quell the rising violence in the small and newly independent nation.That’s on top of the troops still serving in Iraq, and presumably not including the ones that have just returned from helping calm things down in the Solomon Islands.Are we getting a little thinly stretched, considering we are an island nation that with an army that until the past few years didn’t really expect to see much active service.Professor Hugh White from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in Canberra, also a visiting research fellow at the Lowie Institute, says boots on the ground will be in short supply if Australia continues with this kind of regional crisis management.