Tuesday 29 April 2014

Australia's dependence on a major power lies deep in our national psyche

Australia's dependence on a major power lies deep in our national psyche

In distant days, if Britain went to war, we also were at war. We have tragically put ourselves in the same position with the United States

My latest book Dangerous Allies focuses on Australia’s strategic dependence – first on the United Kingdom, and then on the United States. It tells the story of sometimes enormous sacrifice and loss of life, and of fighting wars that were not always in Australia’s direct interest.
The need for dependence on a major power lies deep in Australia's psyche. It is in our DNA. 
There was a grand bargain: we would help Britain fight Empire wars and in return, Britain would defend us should we ever need it. Later Robert Menzies and John Latham, attorney-general and minister for external affairs, would not ratify the Statute of Westminster passed in 1931 through the British parliament because they thought it would weaken Britain’s obligation to defend Australia. They did not realise, even then, that Britain had been so weakened by the first world war that it no longer had the capacity to protect us.
Of course, a new world war would soon erupt – and as a result, Britain’s Navy no longer had the capacity to fight in two oceans, and was not able to fulfil its part of the grand bargain. With small numbers and inadequate resources, Australia clearly could not defend itself against the advancing Japanese. Our prime minister, John Curtin, appealed to the US for help. American interest then, following Pearl Harbour, was the ultimate defeat of Japan – which also assured Australia’s freedom.
After the second world war, the cold war evolved. Communism was regarded as a worldwide movement. It was outward looking and dangerous. In 1948, Berlin was blockaded. In the same year, Soviet tanks drove into Czechoslovakia. In 1956, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary. There was a communist insurrection in Malaya, which delayed independence for 10 years. Later still, there was an attempted PKI coup in Indonesia, and there had been major wars in Korea and Vietnam. All of which, in the conventional wisdom of the day, represented a dangerous and aggressive Soviet or Chinese-inspired communism.
Strategic dependence on the US and the ANZUS treaty therefore made sense in those years, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan reaffirmed the need for close links with the US. But a decade later, the Soviet Union disappeared, and communism was no longer a global threat. After 1990, an opportunity for greater independence appeared, and the capacity to build a strategic capacity to be fully master of our own decisions was within reach. Unfortunately, this did not happen.
Since 1991, we have become more closely entwined and committed to US policy than ever before.An Australian, Major General Burr, is second in charge of 60,000 US troops in the western Pacific. We have a frigate periodically acting as one of the escorts to USS Washington stationed in Japan. We have US marines in Darwin. That military force is turning step by step into a hard hitting, aggressive one, capable of exercising power anywhere throughout the region. With the development of new weapons technologies, the purpose for which joint Australia-US defense facility Pine Gap is used has been subtly and dangerously altered. It is now integral to the targeting of a variety of weapons systems, including drone killings, even of Australians in Yemen. 
While our forces have become more closely enmeshed with US plans in the western Pacific, America has also changed. It is now one of the most powerful military country, no longer restrained by an equivalent Soviet Union. The American exceptionalism doctrine, coupled with neo-conservative policies, have created a different America.
In 1997, the neo-con Project for the New American Century think tank published a statement of principles outlining that the US would only be secure if the whole world were a democracy. America’s duty was therefore to achieve that – if possible by peaceful means, if not, by force of arms. And indeed, the most credible reason for the Iraq war was the naive and foolish belief that to destroy Saddam Hussein would lead to a benign democracy – a model which would spread through the Middle East. No account was taken of the blatant hostility between Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.
We should note that Canada, also a US ally, did not follow America into the Vietnam war or into Iraq. They exercised a degree of independence of which we appear to be incapable.
The next chapter is starting to unfold. The US has embraced a policy of containment of China. Military relationships from Japan all the way south through the Philippines, Singapore and Australia are being strengthened.
Hugh White has said, and I agree with him, that a clash between China and Japan, who are not really talking to each other, is highly possible. While technically the US remains neutral over disputed islands in the East China Sea, they have de facto sided with Japan.
If the US is involved with a war with China as the result of Japanese provocation, Australia, on current policy settings, would inevitably be involved. Our national interest would require us to stay out of such a war, but the marines in Darwin and the current use of Pine Gap would make it impossible for us to stay neutral. We would not be believed, because we are hosting an aggressive military force which is integral to the firing of a variety of weapons systems.
In distant days, if Britain went to war, we also were at war. We have now tragically put ourselves in the same position with the US, in circumstances far more serious for our future.
That is the decision Australia faces today. Some commentators have argued that Australia has to choose between the US and China, which is nonsense. I want Australia to be strategically independent, to have the capacity to make our own decisions, to not to be bound by US decisions and not be allied with the US or with China. 
I want Australia to be able to work closely with our neighbours, and with organisations like ASEAN. Such an Australia would be able to contribute much more to peace in our own region than an Australia caught in the mesh of US policies. This is especially so since America has still not learnt that political outcomes can rarely be achieved by military means.
• Malcolm Fraser was Australia’s 22nd prime minister. His latest book,Dangerous Allies (MUP), is published tomorrow

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/29/australias-dependence-on-a-major-power-lies-deep-in-our-national-psyche

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