“Lest We Forget” Means Preparing for What’s Coming: Peace Through Strength in a Fallen World, By John Steele
I write this on the evening of April 25, 2026 — ANZAC Day — when dawn services across Australia and New Zealand echoed with the familiar refrain: Lest we forget. I marched with a declining number of my Vietnam War buddies. Poppies pinned to lapels, the Last Post ringing out, families honouring the young lives lost at Gallipoli, on the Western Front, in the jungles of Kokoda, Vietnam, and in every conflict since. But as Mike Pezzullo, former Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, argues in today's The Australian Inquirer piece, "'Lest we forget' also means being ready for coming war." Remembrance without readiness is hollow. Conflict isn't some relic of the past, it is baked into our future.
Pezzullo's warning is blunt and timely. On this very day when we reflect on the "futility and loss" of young Australians cut down in their prime, he reminds us that honouring the fallen demands we confront reality: the world does not trend naturally toward peace. It trends toward battle. And pretending otherwise dishonours the sacrifice.
The Enduring Reality of Human ConflictWhy? Because the world consists of endless battles, precisely because of flawed human nature.
Call it what you will: original sin, the fallen condition, the Hobbesian "state of nature," or simply the empirical record of history. From Cain and Abel onward, humanity has shown a stubborn tendency toward greed, fear, power-seeking, and tribalism. Theologians from Augustine to Aquinas saw this clearly: we are not blank slates of pure reason ascending toward utopia. We are broken creatures capable of extraordinary courage and extraordinary cruelty. Peace is not the default setting, it is the fragile exception, won and defended through vigilance, strength, and moral clarity.
International-relations realists from Thucydides to Kissinger have echoed the same truth without theology: great powers compete, resources are finite, fear drives pre-emption, and weakness invites aggression. The 20th century's body count, two world wars, countless smaller conflicts, didn't "end war." It proved war is perennial. The 21st century is delivering the same lesson in real time: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the grinding stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz, rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific. Conflict is not behind us. It is ahead.
Pezzullo puts it starkly: "Conflict is not just in our past; it is in our future. Will we stand up for what's worth fighting for?"
ANZAC Day as a Call to Readiness, Not Just RemembranceThis is why "Lest we forget" must mean more than memorials and marches. The ANZACs didn't charge those Turkish cliffs because they loved war. They did it because they believed some things — freedom, sovereignty, the right to exist without subjugation — were worth defending with their lives.
Yet today, Australia finds itself in a dangerous strategic sweet spot: geographically isolated but economically entangled in a fracturing world. Our farmers are out sowing winter crops right now — wheat, barley, canola —on this very ANZAC Day, under the shadow of a global fertiliser crisis triggered by the very geopolitical fractures Pezzullo warns about. Urea prices have doubled, shipments through critical chokepoints are at risk, and planting decisions are being slashed because energy and supply-chain battles are already hitting the paddock. Food security isn't abstract; it's the next front in the endless battle.
This is hybrid warfare in action: not just missiles and tanks, but disrupted straits, weaponised scarcity, and the slow erosion of resilience. Preparing for war today means preparing for all dimensions of conflict — military, economic, energetic, agricultural. It means sovereign capability in fertiliser production, fuel stocks, critical minerals, and yes, hardened defence forces that can deter rather than merely react.
Moral Rearmament in a Dangerous AgePezzullo has spoken before of the need for "moral rearmament" — not jingoism, but the cultural willingness to recognise evil, to name threats, and to accept that sometimes the only way to preserve peace is to be ready to break it against those who would impose their will by force.
In a secular age that prefers to believe "war is never the answer," this sounds harsh. But history and human nature disagree. The original sin that runs through every empire, every revolution, every failed peace treaty reminds us: good intentions without strength are just another road to the next massacre.
True peace — just peace — isn't the absence of weapons. It's the presence of credible deterrence and the moral courage to use it when necessary. The ANZACs understood that. So did the Diggers who stopped the Japanese in New Guinea. So must we.
What Preparedness Looks Like NowOn this ANZAC Day, as we honour the fallen, let the tribute be practical as well as poetic:
Rebuild sovereign industrial capacity (fertiliser plants, munitions, fuel).
Harden critical supply chains against chokepoint blackmail.
Invest in the ADF at the scale the threat environment demands — not the budget bottom line.
Cultivate the cultural resilience that says some things are still worth fighting for.
Because the alternative, complacency dressed up as "peace," is the surest way to ensure the next generation will have fresh names to etch on the memorials.
Lest we forget doesn't just look backward. It looks forward with clear eyes.
The world is fallen. Human nature hasn't changed. The battle continues.
The only question is whether we will be ready when it reaches our shores — again.
