re: little john with the giant dream... Little John, who was...

re: little john with the giant dream... Little John, who was just about to retire...
grabs the last minute chance, to be jeted into Grand History...yes, he will show everybody he is not the Little anymore...


Great Expectations of a Minor Power

Overestimating its international power status is placing Australia at risk, writes Allan Patience

Australian foreign policy has conventionally presumed middle power status for the country in global politics. The presumption is both misplaced and misleading when measured against the criteria that normally gauge a state’s claims to middle power status. Simply, the crucial criteria are: (i) population size and structure, (ii) size and structure of the economy, (iii) military capacity, (iv) membership of a network of meaningful alliances, and (v) a capacity for ‘niche diplomacy’.

On each criterion, Australians are unwise to imagine that they deserve middle power kudos in international affairs.

Let’s briefly assess Australia against the conventional middle power criteria.

First, our population is simply too small to give us middle power significance in world forums. Nineteen million people, a large proportion of whom are getting older every day, who are spread unevenly and thinly over a vast continent, simply don’t attract much attention or respect, but maybe a bit of jealousy or resentment.

Second, though we are not economically small in comparison to our Southeast Asian neighbours, the Australian economy remains fundamentally reliant on resource exports. About the only really value-adding industries in the contemporary economy are education and tourism. In structural terms we look very like most of the poorer economies in the region.

Third, our current military engagements in East Timor, Afghanistan and a few other peace making/keeping exercises around the globe have stretched our military capacity to the limit. With such a small population base and such a vulnerable economy, any thought of a more plausible military posture for Australia is utterly out of the question.

Fourth, while we have some formal alliances (including the all but defunct ANZUS) they are essentially of the paper tiger or motherhood and apple pie variety—lots of nice words and sentiments and very little substance.

For example, the US was less than seriously helpful about our engagement in East Timor. Yet our engagement was made on the assumption that we are a middle power in the eyes of the Indonesians and that we matter to the US. On both counts, arguably, we were mistaken.

Fifth, there have been moments when we have engaged in effective ‘niche diplomacy’ (a middle power successfully punching above its weight and exercising leadership and/or moral suasion in international affairs). Malcolm Fraser’s influence in the Commonwealth over apartheid in South Africa or Gareth Evans contributions to resolving the crisis in post-killing fields Cambodia are examples. But such moments are sporadic and unsustained. And as we retreat more and more from active involvement in critical UN committees, especially in human rights arenas, we emphasise our inability to measure up to middle power expectations.

Thus, far from being a middle power (presumably winning a particular respect from the US and EU, for example, and from Japan, the ASEAN states, China, India) Australia is in fact a lonely country. It is a very small tadpole on the metaphorical and physical periphery of the vast ocean of contemporary international politics. We are simply not regarded, by the important (and often rough) players in the global game, as being very significant at all.

And yet the middle power presumption continues to mislead our foreign policy makers. This is most starkly evident in Australia’s almost singular endorsement of the clumsy and jejune declarations by George Bush about mainly Islamic states constituting an ‘axis of evil’ in the world today, that is, the world post-September 11, 2001.

Bush’s speech was frankly abysmal. It is steeped in Orientalist prejudice, racism, crass misunderstandings of what Professor Chalmers Johnson refers to as ‘Blowback’, and old Cold War rhetoric containing childish echoes of Ronald Reagan’s musings about the USSR as an ‘evil empire’ (see Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2000).

Why did our Prime Minister plunge in crassly to laud President Bush after his ‘axis of evil’ outburst? He would say, of course, that he was demonstrating loyalty to a great and powerful friend. And his realism would lead him to argue that it is in Australia’s interest to continue currying favour with the US superpower. But he also believes that he is taken seriously, that Bush and Colin Powell see him speaking as a leader of a substantial middle power. Howard genuinely believes that Pentagon officials and US military strategists actually give a hoot about Australia’s support.

If anything Australia should pull its horns in. It is time for us to see that we are not a middle power. We make ourselves either a laughing stock or a target for something far more dangerous, if we persist in thinking so inappropriately of ourselves. All the way with George Bush on his crusade against the ‘axis of evil’ is patently not the way to go. It is time for us to grow up.