Alison Broinowski 3 May 2007Allied and AddictedABC...

Alison Broinowski 3 May 2007

Allied and Addicted

ABC Perspective
Transcript

It is an article of Australian faith that the Americans are our friends and will defend us. This is not a mindset that only arrived with the Howard government. It is a bipartisan belief, that has been in place for over fifty years, and it is one of the three pillars of ALP foreign policy. In the Howard decade, though, it has reached new heights of fervour - or plumbed new depths of subservience, depending upon your point of view.

Many Australians do not realize that the ANZUS treaty does not commit us or the Americans to defend each other unless either country is attacked in the Pacific, and then we are committed only to consult in accordance with our constitutional processes. It does not guarantee that the United States will defend Australia, nor that Australia will fight in America's wars.

The United States has never come to Australia's defence under ANZUS. Indeed, successive American leaders have made it clear that the United States will always act in its own interests, not those of allies or other countries. On the few occasions when Australia sought United States support, over West Irian, Confrontation, and East Timor, military participation was refused. For our part, Australia made it clear in the mid-1950s that we would not get involved in a war over the Taiwan Straits and the offshore Chinese islands Quemoy and Matsu. But it is perilously unclear now what Australia would do if the United States became involved in a conflict between China and Taiwan, or in an invasion of North Korea, or Iran.

The cause of this uncertainty is that the Prime Minister unilaterally invoked ANZUS immediately after the attack on America on 11 September 2001, offering Australian support for the United States anywhere in the world. A year later he asserted Australia's intention pre-emptively to strike countries in our region suspected of harbouring terrorists. By this threat, and his reinterpretation of ANZUS, he made it difficult for Australia to accede to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which binds its parties to non-aggression and non-interference in each others' affairs. In 2005 we did so, rather than be excluded from the East Asia summit, but with reservations.

Apart from defence against an attack, the other benefit that ANZUS is usually said to deliver to Australia is access: access to top American officials, to highly classified intelligence, to defence cooperation, and to military equipment. These too are questionable. The value of intelligence depends on its quality, timeliness and accuracy, all of which have been found wanting by recent American reports. As for the claims that the equipment we buy from the United States delivers inter-operability and military superiority, that might be true if we have the right equipment, delivered on time and at the right price, that our enemies don't.

So the alliance is defective, and Australia's excessive dependency on it endangers us more than it protects us. We expect the United States to do for us what it will not do, but we do for the United States what we should not do. In my new book, Allied and Addicted, I show how Australia's habit of dependency on the United States is not limited to defence. We have developed a national culture of fear and subservience. This spreads to foreign policy, where our capacity for diplomacy is reduced because our enemies and almost all our opinions are the same as those of our ally. It also permeates trade, where bilateral preferential agreements deliver Australia few identifiable advantages, while our capacity for leadership among agricultural exporting countries has withered.

Some commentators claim that Australia under Mr Howard has paradoxically achieved unprecedented closeness to the United States as well as performing impressively in our region. If success means Australia being able to export coal, gas, and uranium to some of our neighbours, and to discuss with others how to fight terrorists and deter refugees, well that's hardly remarkable. In fact, Australian policy is seen abroad as uncritically identified with that of George W. Bush: do as we say and we'll do as we like. To be really impressive, Australia must develop independent policies in consultation with our region, with the UN, and with multilateral trading partners. If we do not, as the damaged Bush presidency ends and distaste for its policies spreads even among America's friends, Australia will be left behind, left alone, and it will be our own fault

Alison Broinowski
Former Diplomat

Visiting Fellow
Faculty of Asian Studies
ANU

Publications
Title: Allied and Addicted
Author: Alison Broinowski
Publisher: Scribe as part of their Short Books Series
ISBN 978 1 921215 27 8
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/perspective/stories/2007/1909776.htm