Australia – the indentured state

 

By Scott Burchill

Aug 23, 2024

At primary schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Australian children were prescribed textbooks with titles such as New Worlds to Conquer, and taught to admire the British Empire as a gift to the world.

The theft and occupation of indigenous peoples’ land together with their enslavement and annihilation, was synonymous with progress and what in the French empire was called la mission civilisatrice.

It was a modern history to be proud of and grateful for. Australians inherited British political and legal institutions and imposed surprisingly few local modifications, declining to establish their own head of state and, initially, an independent foreign policy. These structures, children were told, were world’s best practice and the envy of other, less fortunate societies.

Unlike the fate of others, European settlers in Australia achieved independence from the mother country without the need for conflict: decolonisation came as a voluntary concession by London. How fortunate Australia had been to avoid German, French or Russian “discovery”!

The idea that freedom and independence could only be won at great cost by violent and protracted struggle against a repressive occupier was a foreign concept to European Australians, and difficult to fathom both then and now. The sacrifices which normally have to be made to achieve independence, and a deep sense of national and cultural difference from the imperial overlord, were missing.

As was the galvanising effects of bitter struggle, including the elevation of heroic martyrs to the pantheon of a national story. This explains why resistance to colonial rule elsewhere in the world often fails to resonate in Australia.

In the lifetime of these students, the greatest challenge to orthodox historiography has been the exposure of both terra nullius as a fraud and the cruelties of colonialism: its extreme violence, criminal self-righteousness and the sense of entitlement which comes from a belief in one’s moral and cultural superiority.

More recently, stories of imperialism’s victims and their resistance to colonial rule have appeared in both the academic world and, subsequently, in mainstream media. In addition, the recovery of indigenous land rights and recognition of pre-colonial history in the constitution have become prominent features of contemporary public discourse.

The fate of indigenous peoples at the hands of colonists is distressingly similar whether they be in the United States, Canada, Australia or Palestine. According to anthropologist Patrick Wolfe, the insatiable appetite for land leads settler colonialists to a “logic of elimination” in their behaviour towards the indigenous populations they encounter, displace and annihilate. According to Wolfe, “elimination is an organising principle of settler-colonial society … [which] destroys to replace … it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base … invasion [therefore] is a structure not an event”.

Wolfe claims that “whatever settlers may say — and they generally have a lot to say — the primary motive for elimination is not race (nor religion, ethnicity, grade of civilisation, etc.) but access to territory. Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element … [because it] always needs more land”.

Reconceptions of Australia’s colonial history such as Wolfe’s have angered conservative Anglophiles in Australia, such as John Howard, Geoffrey Blainey, Tony Abbott and right-wing lobby groups, including the IPA. Railing at what they call a “black armband view” of Australian history, they seek to silence and ultimately censor the focus on Australia’s ugly past.

Conservative Anglophiles want to restore school and university curricula to what they believe was an earlier “non-ideological” narrative which stressed the positive aspects of colonisation as if it were a balance sheet where assets easily exceeded liabilities. They want discussion about the dispossession and elimination of First Nations people to be de-emphasised, mentioned only in passing or avoided altogether. Apparently it’s not classroom indoctrination when orthodoxy reinforces the status quo world view of the political right.

From British dependency to US indenture

For many Australians, the same thought process renders the United States a beneficent actor on the international stage, not perfect, but overall “a force for good in the world”.

It may lead all comers in violently interfering in the internal affairs of other states, overthrowing their governments, murdering their populations, stealing their resources and propping up repressive dictators, but all of this is done with the purest of democratic motives: not self-interest. Funding and supplying Israeli génocidaires in Palestine is what leadership of the free world means in the 21st century.

Why are Australia’s political elite so indentured to Washington’s world view?

There is a deep sense of insecurity that comes from a belief that Australia constitutes the “odd man in Asia”, is incapable of self-defence, and must therefore rely on a great and powerful friend for its security. Reinforced by the war in the Pacific after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941, an irrational fear of the country’s Asian neighbours has been encouraged by Washington to foster a greater sense of dependence on a superpower which claims to share the same values.

From SEATO to ANZUS and now AUKUS, Australia’s relationship with the United States is widely seen as analogous to an insurance policy, though the fine print exempts all parties from providing security guarantees.

Insurance requires the regular payment of premiums which, for Australia, means hosting US intelligence and military bases, buying its overpriced baroque military hardware, and involvement in America’s endless wars. The reputational damage which comes with complicity in Washington’s crimes, at the cost of political independence and the pursuit of unique national interests, is considered a fair market price.

This should not be seen as a reluctant or unavoidable choice. As a sub-imperial player, Canberra has always been an enthusiastic participant in Washington’s quest for strategic preponderance and its efforts to make the world safe for American business. Whether on the Korean peninsula, in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, Australia has been “all the way” with the US, to quote Prime Minister Harold Holt. Canberra’s approach to China and Israel is also enthusiastically vicarious despite having very different interests at stake to its great and powerful friend.

The key consequence of this has been to widen the gap between elite and popular opinion, with attitudes towards AUKUS and Israel being clear contemporary examples. Governments know there is a tipping point which they cannot traverse without causing serious electoral damage, even if their political opponents are more conservative than they are. For the ALP it’s about holding the base together.

When unpopular US presidents such as George W. Bush and Donald Trump entered the White House, public support for the US alliance in Australia dipped significantly. During these presidencies, those tasked with socialising Australia’s political elite into the essential importance of the US alliance really earned their money.

Many, especially in the corporate media or those who attend networking soirees such as the Australia America Leadership Dialogue have long since been talent-spotted and pre-socialised into responsible thinking about international affairs. Others, especially former radicals and activists with principles may need to be flattered with official dinners, swanky summits and the promise of lucrative consultancies after politics based on contacts made while working for the public dollar.

Ultimately, the cosmopolitan lifestyle of the transit lounge proves irresistible for the ruthlessly ambitious. Amongst elite policy makers and other movers and shakers, the US alliance remains successfully insulated from all serious challenges – even when Washington commits its most heinous crimes.

Until Australia develops an independent foreign policy based on realistic assessments of its political, strategic and economic interests, the binding of the country to a powerful benefactor, who is only concerned with its interests and not those of its subalterns, will continue indefinitely.

Scott Burchill

Dr Scott Burchill is Honorary Fellow in International Relations at Deakin University. He is the author of The National Interest in International Relations Theory (Palgrave Macmillan 2005), Misunderstanding International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2020) and co-author and editor of Theories of International Relations (5th ed Palgrave Macmillan 2013). He has also taught at Monash University, the University of Melbourne and the University of Tasmania.

He is a regular commentator on ABC Radio and TV.