Australia neither moral nor powerful

 

By Daryl Guppy

Oct 24, 2024

When did Australia lose its morality, and along with that loss, its status as a respected middle power?

Australia is no longer a middle, nor moral, power in the international arena, although its political leaders think Australia is both.

The most recent example of this is the bullying of Papua New Guinea by allegedly linking an agreement to allow a PNG team to play rugby in Australia but only with a promise from the Pacific nation not to increase security or defence ties with Beijing.

This is an attack on the sovereign rights of Papua New Guinea to make its own decisions and is the latest low light in Australia’s steady descent from the moral high ground.

When did Australia lose its morality, and along with that loss, its status as a respected middle power?

Perhaps it was the derision with which Australia’s then Prime Minister treated the heartfelt climate plea at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in Tuvalu. Despite tears from Tonga’s Prime Minister, the much vaunted Pacific Family was put firmly in its place.

Or did it start with the Bali 9? The father of one of nine, concerned about his sons potential for drug involvement, tipped off the Australian Federal police. Rather than arrest the group in Australia when they returned with imported drugs, and despite knowing the Bali death penalty for drug possession, they chose to tip off the Bali authorities.

Perhaps it was lost when the SAS in Afghanistan draped their vehicles with Nazi swastika flags and were allowed to develop a euphemistically named ‘warrior culture’ that was the anthesis of the ANZAC tradition.

Maybe the loss started with the decision not to hand the investigation of alleged war crimes in Afghanistan to an Australian judge with deep experience in investigating and prosecuting war crimes from the Balkans conflict. The snail’s pace investigation makes a mockery of Australia’s strident cries to quickly prosecute others. This stands starkly beside Australia’s complicit silence on the daily social media photos and video of Israeli troops caught in the act, or boasting about war crimes they have committed.

The loss accelerated as Australia willingly surrendered vast swathes of its sovereignty, moving from cooperation, to coordination and then to integration with the United States military. The force posture agreements are in effect, an abject surrender of control over the operations of US forces on and out of, bases in Australia.

As United States Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell noted, Australia’s involvement in AUKUS was “getting Australia off the fence. We have them locked in now for the next 40 years.”

Perhaps the loss of middle power status and moral authority stems from Australia’s undermining of the UN by selectively supporting some of its foundation principles. Australia was quick to condemn and suspend funding for UNWRA without evidence. It acted swiftly with sanctions on Russia and Iran. Unlike the powerful middle power, Ireland, Australia has issued just a whisper of support for stopping attacks on UN peacekeepers. It justly made an issue of an attack on a UN aide convey which killed a single Australian aid worker, but has shown indifference to 40,000 dead from Israel’s precision’ air strikes.

Australia is so bewitched by its own propaganda that it sees no irony in telling Islamic countries at the recent ASEAN meeting in Laos that they must abide by UN conventions when it is clear that Australia is ignoring them and uncritically accepting the Israeli disproportionate response that includes starvation and destruction of medical facilities as an operational objective.

Australia remains so deeply rooted in its colonial past that it overwhelmingly rejected a proposal for improved indigenous participation in decision making. It’s the same attitude Australia brings to the ASEAN, APEC and PIF tables, happily accepting that the Americans have “given [Australia] the lane” to implement a new Pacific-wide policing pact shouldering the task as a new ‘white man’s burden’.

Engagement with Asia is a crass commercial transactional relationship. There is little pretence at engaging with cultural and political traditions that go against support for hegemonic objectives. Some may applaud the honesty in this approach, but it adds little to Australia’s stature in the region, or its ability to shape the region.

The decay in Australia’s moral authority on the international stage, and in the ASEAN region, was slow and is apparently irreversible. The low lights mentioned here are just a selection from many more instances where Australia shrunk from its moral leadership in the international area in preference to acquiescing to a foreign ideological perspective.

The moral decay in regional leadership proceeds in lockstep with the erosion of Australia’s genuine influence in the region as a middle power. The power exerted by the bully is not the same as genuine influence. Australia prances upon the regional stage, bloated with a sense of its own importance, but at the heels of a hegemonic state which has a liking for war.

Statecraft is not always a moral game, but it does not have to be consistently immoral. Australia’s support for the international rules based order has become support for the American version of this order and not for the UN’s version. It is a long path back for Australia to regain the authority and influence it enjoyed prior to the turn of the century. With apologies to Xavier Herbert, it’s become a poor fellow, our country.

https://johnmenadue.com/australia-neither-moral-nor-powerful/