Listening to Australian pundits talk about the relationship of their country with the US – at least from a strategic perspective – can be a trying exercise. It is filled with angst, Freudian fears of abandonment, the strident megalomania of Australian self-importance. Critics of this complex are shouted down as Sinophiles or in the pay of some foreign power.
This unequal and distinctly unhealthy relationship has been marked by a certain outsourcing tendency. Australian foreign policy is a model example of expectation: that other powers will carry its weight: processing refugees; aiding Australians stranded or persecuted overseas; reliance on that fiction known as the extended nuclear deterrent. Self-reliance is discouraged in favour of what Barry Posen calls a “cheap ride.”
In recent years, the Australian security-military apparatus has been more than ingratiating regarding its alliance with Washington, despite such sombre warnings as those from the late Malcom Fraser. In 2014, the former prime minister argued that Australia, at the end of the Cold War, was presented with an opportunity to pursue a policy of “peace, cooperation, and trust” in the region. Instead, Canberra opted to cling on to a foreign war machine that found itself bloodied and bruised in the Middle East. Now, Australia risked needlessly going to war against China on the side of the US. Best to, he suggested, shut down US training bases in the Northern Territory and close the Pine Gap signals centre as soon as feasible.
During the Trump administration, a more than usually cringe worthy effort was made to be Washington’s stalking horse in the Asia-Pacific region. Poking China on such matters as COVID-19 was seen as very sensible fare, as it might invite a more solid commitment of the United States to the region. But the momentum for an easing of some US global commitments was impossible to reverse. The country was looking inward (the ravages of the COVID contagion, a country riven by protest and the toxic and intoxicating drug of identity politics). Those in Canberra were left worried.
This state of affairs has prompted the glum lament from the veteran strategist Hugh White that Australia’s politicians lack imagination in the face of the most significant change in its foreign relations since British settlement. They refuse to accept that China is there, not to be contained but to be accommodated in some form. The Pacific pond will have to accept two hegemons rather than one, a point the Washington-hugging types in Canberra find, not only impermissible but terrifying.
The fall of Kabul offered further stimulus for panic. The Western war adventurers had been defeated and instead of asking why Australians were ever in Afghanistan, the focus shifted to the umbilical cord with Washington. In conducting interviews with four former Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Kelly of The Australian, being more woolly-headed than usual, saw Biden’s withdrawal as “so devoid of judgment and courage that it raises a fog of doubt about Biden himself and about America’s democratic sustenance as a reliable great power.”
Of the former prime ministers interviewed, the undying pugilist Tony Abbott wondered what “fight” was left in “Biden’s America.” There might well be some in the reserves, he speculated, but US allies had to adjust. Australia had to show “more spine” in the alliance.
Kevin Rudd, himself an old China hand, wanted to impress upon the Australian public and body politic that “we are in the midst of a profound paradigm shift in global and regional geopolitics.” The US continued to question itself about what strategic role it would play in the Asia-Pacific region in the face of China’s inexorable rise. Australia had to plan for the “best” and the “worst”: the former entailing “a robust regionally and globally engaged America”; the latter, “an America that begins to retreat.” On August 14, Rudd had urged the Biden administration to “reverse the course of its final military withdrawal.”
Malcolm Turnbull opted for the small troop thesis: “America should have retained a garrison force in Afghanistan.” Doing so might have provided sufficient assurance for Afghan national forces and prevented a Taliban victory. “It was not palatable to have kept forces there, but what we have seen now is even less palatable.” The US, he noted, had retained forces across European states, Japan and South Korea “for decades.” (Turnbull misses a beat here on such shaky comparisons, given that the Taliban would have never tolerated the presence of such a garrison.)
Trump comes in for a lecturing: “The [US-Taliban] talks should never have occurred in the absence of the Afghan government and their effect was to delegitimise that government.” In all fairness to the Trump administration, there was little by way of legitimacy in the Afghan national government to begin with. Negotiating with the Taliban was simply an admission as to where the bullets and bombs were actually coming from, not to mention how untenable the existence of the Kabul regime had become.
As for John Howard, the man who sent Australian forces to Afghanistan to begin with, the garrison thesis held even greater merit. Again, the false analogy of other US imperial footprints was drawn: if Washington can station 30,000 troops in South Korea for seven decades after the end of hostilities, why not Afghanistan? Hopefully, this “bungle” would remain confined to the handling of Afghanistan and not affect the US-Australian alliance. “I believe if it were put to the test, the Americans would honour the ANZUS treaty.”
Such reflections, part moaning, part regret, should provide brickwork for a more independent foreign policy. Alison Broinowski, former diplomat and Vice-President of Australians for War Powers Reform, offers some level-headed advice. “If Australians ignore the change in the global power balance that is happening before our eyes,” she writes, “we will suffer the consequences. If we can’t defeat the Taliban, how will we prevail in a war against China?” Such a question, given the terrifying answer that follows, is not even worth asking.
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
No worries, start training like Spartans. Build our own robot submarines. Be nice to the Chinese. Consider neutrality, though this is unlikely with our present regime. And don’t forget we are only outnumbered 40 to 1. Which is bugger all to an Australian especially on home turf.
“I believe…”is the political comment on anzus but for me I have never trusted the septics as being more than as fair weather acquaintances and selfish bullies. Their treatment of NZ, over nuclear weapons, confirmed my opinion of bullyboy tactics.
For the last 70 years ANZUS has been a sheet of paper held together with a paper clip no binding in sight. A terrible fact in an american facebook post: “after 2400 deaths, 10 times that number wounded and US$2000000000000 we have replaced the taliban with the taliban (and ISIS is there so terrorism has returned so quickly).
It is as though ideological and business powers that be, are attempting to reclaim some ‘Anglosphere’ exceptionalism with the US in the lead, ably supported by the UK and Australia, to follow shared foreign, defence, trade and sociocultural policies, with a whiff of old WASP eugenics and many NewsCorp and/or Koch related grifters to oil the PR wheels.
This is exemplified in Australia by our lack of knowledge (Asia etc. is disappeared from our media), engagement, leadership on Australian issues and our region, versus the new need for looking up to UK and US (also throwing up oddball ‘leaders’ or sock puppets); backgrounded by ageing monocultural electorates and others to vote conservative, hence, supporting this neo-eugenics or colonial obsessions encouraged by libertarians.
Australian governments are just puppets for the USA and should be very weary of the USA’s motives. It’s a sordid story with much historical precedent illustrating how at the drop of a hat Uncle Sam is liable to hang erstwhile “allies” out to dry. As American elder statesman Henry Kissinger once noted, the U.S. doesn’t have permanent allies, it only has interests. Anyone who accepts American patronage must know that the small print in the contract always reads: to be dumped at any time of Uncle Sam’s choosing and convenience.
Some 46 years ago, the Fall of Saigon saw the United States scurry away from a corrupt puppet regime it had propped up in South Vietnam as the North Vietnamese communists finally routed the redundant American pawns.
Afghanistan is the most glaring proof perhaps since the Fall of Saigon in 1975 of that American treachery. It’s a cautionary tale for others who incredibly still seem trusting in hitching their wagon to a U.S. alliance.
ajogrady, seems there are 2 of us with the “very same backs to the wall philosophy” when alerted to the presence of the USA military forces on or near our soil. You can back it in they are not here to do us any favors.
The treacherous Howard, the arch-fiend Abbott, the man with the vision of great wealth for himself, Turnbull, lastly the pentecostal funds providing Scatmo. none of ’em understood the evils of the USA having anything at all to do with America wanting to help Australia.
No, America has become a nation of raiders, resource plunderers, corporate scammers, and lastly, they present as a threat to our national sovereignty.
What can we expect from these invading USA into Australia with all their Arms & Weapons corporations that had been given the green flag to do whatever they chose to do?
Mostly to continue their plunders and subsidies, oh, and a reluctance to paying their fair amount of taxes on their revenues.
In other words, the USA offer nothing of substance, that is except their almost worthless fiat currency, just another failing of the American economics, Same goes with their 100 odd Trillion dollars of debt, to which they tend to ignore.
Australia has never lost it’s colonial mentality and thus can not even contemplate the idea of not serving under a imperial power.After Britan abandon Australia durring WW 2 like a discarded orphan it could not wait to attach itself to another Anglo imperial power that of the USA . Under both the British and now the American regimes Australia has fought many wars for their master’s interest with it never dawning to it’s leaders that non aligned countries have far fewer wars .