Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Bush and Howard's pan-Pacific love-in
Pretty unlikely, but Australia is certainly drifting ever faster eastwards across the Pacific, rather than northwards towards Asia.
This is a huge navigational shift away from the Keating era’s belief that Australia’s future lay in South East Asia. Since 1997, and the election of a conservative government, this course has been altered subtly and incrementally. But 9/12 saw Australia accelerate eastwards.
Of course, Australia has long been a strategic ally of the United States. Australian soldiers have fought beside their American counterparts in numerous occasions since 1941. Without the backing of its Commonwealth surrogate mother, Australian troops fought in Vietnam, backed up by the ANZUS Treaty of 1957.
Culturally, Australia has long been porous to US influences, albeit 20 years behind. Australia suburban highways are strewn with McDonalds hamburger joints and Chermside Shopping Centre in Brisbane was the first car-based out of town shopping mall to be built outside America. Americana can be seen everywhere, from the neo-Tuscan, triple garaged peri-urban sprawl, to the saturation coverage of US product on the commercial television networks. Many of these links resulted from commercial seepage - American TV ‘shows’ can be screened for just a fraction of the cost of home production - having already recouped studio costs from domestic markets. Economies of scale and experience can be very quickly rolled out in the form of Golden Arches to smother indigenous culinary talent.
In many nations this creeping americanisation has created backlash and resentment in variety of guises - from the French ‘slow-food’ movement to the more strident views about ‘Asian Values’ in the democratising nations in SE Asia. Even the ‘Australia Made’ brand here remains an important marketing tool.
But this is not a passive drift benignly influenced by commercial realism. It is a course actively plotted by the conservative Howard Government. Mirroring this, the Bush administration is clearly seducing Australia; and John Howard is only too willing to drop his trousers for a pan-Pacific love-in. The militant neo-conservative right in the US has found willing partner in the current conservative right in Australia.
In a range of policy areas, formal and informal relations have moved the Howard Government and Australia closer and closer to the US homeland.
Informally, the Howard Government’s support for US renegade policies has been rewarded by good old-fashioned backslapping and personal tributes from Washington. For the last few weeks, John Howard has been very publicly showered with political praise from the Bush Administration, particularly following Federal Opposition Leader, Mark Latham’s comments that the Australian troops in Iraq ‘will be home by Christmas’. In a recent speech, just two days before Australian elected representatives in the Senate were to debate a free trade agreement (see below), George Bush personally referred to John Howard as a “great leader” and intimated (as he would) that the agreement would be good for Australia. This gushing flattery and blatant political advocacy even became too much for former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who openly rebuked the Howard government for accepting the praise and allowing US pressure to influence the Australian electorate.
This politics, built upon the personal relations of world leaders, is not new, but is damaging, unaccountable and undermines democracy in polities such as Australia. Whether Bush does influence the forthcoming Federal elections in Australia or the Senators debating the trade agreement with the USA is yet to be seen, but it is undeniably his intention. His attacks on the Australian Labor Party are calculating and desperate. John Howard’s acceptance of them are shameful.
But it is the steady alignment of official policy that is most detrimental to Australia’s interests. On the environment, Australia has adopted the same supercilious stance towards climate change as the USA by not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Both governments maintain that ratification would damage jobs and economic growth. Never mind global warming, we've got voter's SUVs to think about.
Despite Australia producing a trifling amount of greenhouse gas when compared with some of the world’s giant economies, Australia's per capita levels of pollution compare unfavourably even with the gluttonous USA. Australia has agreed to adopt its own greenhouse gas target (an 8% increase) but by now there is little chance of the economy achieving it. So signing the Protocol would not save the world from global warming but would send a strong message out to the remaining Kyoto renegades. Conversely, not signing displays an arrogance and disdain for good science and global solidarity.
On a related issue, the two nation’s energy policies are similarly converging to become fully committed to a fossil fuel future. In the USA, Bush is continuing to push a new Energy Bill through Congress, which would strengthen the grip of the fossil fuel extraction industry. At the same time, the Howard Government has published a white paper, outlining his Government’s intentions to continue publicly subsidise private coal and oil exploration. Both economies have pitifully low targets for renewable energy production, which industry experts suggest is unlikely to attract the private investment needed in what is considered a high growth technology with a future in most industrial nations.
Three weeks ago, US law makers breezed the US-Australian bilateral free trade agreement through Congress. It was proclaimed as a “slam-dunk”, suggesting that the deal was something of a coup for US manufacturers but not so good for Australian primary producers who will still have to face uphill tariffs to get to the American consumer. It was further implied by a number of Congressman and women that safe passage of the Bill was more or less guaranteed as a reward for Australian support of the coalition of the willing in Iraq.
Which brings us neatly to the main driver behind the Australian application to be the 51st State: US Security policy.
10/12 and all that
The Bali Bombing on October 12th 2002, transformed the Australian psyche in much the same way that 9/11 brought home to the Americans the fact that not everyone likes them. This, despite the two traumas differing significantly - an objective fact lost amongst the horror, blood and body parts.
On September 11th 2001, four jetliners targeted American people in symbolic American political and economic icons inside the American homeland. The Bali bomb killed 190, mostly western/white holidaymakers in a predominantly Muslim country - it just so happened that a fair proportion of the clientele were Australians (70 lost their lives).
This does not make it any less of an atrocity: many hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as ‘collateral damage’ in the last 12 months: no one deserves to be subject to arbitrary slaughter.
But despite the very different emphases of the two events, Australia assumed it was directly under attack in the same way that the USA is being targeted - right in the line of fire for terrorist groups. Obliquely, Australia was a target - as part of the “Zionist-Christain alliance” as bin Laden sees it - but no more so than any nation who supported the UN action in Afghanistan.
Additionally, Australia’s efforts in East Timor, again under UN authority, put military personnel in direct danger. But following the horror in Bali, it seemed the Australian Government unquestioningly led the country into a opportunistic war in Iraq by slavishly subscribing to the US neo-conservative strategy of global hegemony. The American's war became the Australian's war. While the rest of the world listened to Bush's comments - that “you're either with us or against us” - with the patronising wry smile of a more intelligent sibling, John Howard took them seriously.
Giving staunch support to the US ‘War on Terror’ was a wise move for most rich nations and it payed off when the UN Security Council voted to go after Al Qa’ida and the Taliban in the mountains around Kandahar. But after Afghanistan, Australia unquestioningly supported the continuation of the neo-conservative agenda by going to war in Iraq on much the same assumptions as George Bush and not relying on the quasi-legal arguments of Tony Blair. America has been grateful ever since.
This geo-political strategic alliance has been personalised by Bush describing Australia (or more precisely Howard and Downer) as its own ‘sheriff in the region’ - “give that lil 'ole country a sheriff's badge, will ya”. A feather in the cap for Howard, or merely a disarming comment designed to ensure that Australia remains a strategic asset for the US in a region that contains both Indonesia and China? This military alliance has now been further bolstered by an agreement to allow the expansion of US military training facilities in Queensland and talks on using Australia as a radar base for strategic missile defence hardware.
US against the world
But the latest sidling up to a superpower has been a grave misjudgment and is, frankly, embarrassing. By backing Israel and the USA in the UN General Assembly and voting against the resolution denouncing Israel’s West Bank barrier, John Howard’s sycophancy has plumbed new depths. Australia was one of six nations to vote against the rest of the world; the three others being Pacific Islands, with a combined population of less than 250,000. This is despite the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, publicly stating that Australia maintained that the route of the barrier through the West Bank of Palestine was inappropriate and that it should follow the green line on Israeli territory.
(Palau, The Marshall Islands and Micronesia have all signed a 'Compact of Free Association' with the USA, thereby granting America jurisdictional responsibility on all defence and foreign affairs matters. It comes as no surprise then that these three 'nations' voted with the USA.In effect, this gives the USA 4 votes in the UN General Assembly.)
Ironically, this was precisely the opinion implied by the recent advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice. The Court did not question Israel’s right to build a barrier to secure its people from infiltrating suicide bombers, but did rule that the route of the barrier caused undue harm to Palestinians. It cut then off from their land and work and represented a de facto annexation of an occupied territory. Therefore it is in contravention of international law.
Downer attempted to justify the policy u-turn by referring to previous statements which iterated that the Australian Government did not believe the ICJ was competent (in a legal sense) in ruling on this matter - despite being asked to do so through a resolution of the UN General Assembly. Therefore, Australia’s opposition to the latest resolution is based purely on a technicality, not on principle.
Surely then, the logical position to take - and that which most accurately reflects the government’s position - was to abstain, alongside Canada and nine other nations.
In statements following the vote, John Howard said “Israel does have a right to protect herself and you can't hope to have any kind of lasting settlement in the Middle East until there is an understanding that those suicide attacks have got to stop.” By remaining silent on the matter of where any barrier should be, Howard remains either ambivalent or dishonest about his Government’s position.
This suggests that the vote backing the US and Israel has more to do with giving succour to the US and being seen standing shoulder to shoulder on all strategic issues. So rather than carving out a defensible and independent opinion on the barrier, the Howard Government has shown it will back Bush all the way.
Alarmingly, this view was openly espoused by US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage in recent interviews in Australia. He said that an alliance [with the US] was not an a la carte menu, from which Australia could pick and choose policies to agree with. This simplistic reductionism is dangerous: uncritical alliances degenerate into servitude and ridicule - not something that goes down well with 'fair go' Aussies.
Whether this will become an election issue in Australia is uncertain. Each political party would need to make a fine judgement on how this universal alliance with the USA is viewed by the Australian people. Whilst Australians do not live in the same reactionary climate of fear experienced by Americans and perpetrated by their government, it would require a skilled pollster to decipher the range of public opinion and brave political party to campaign hard either way.
The Howard Government’s continued strategic, cultural and policy alignment with the Bush administration undermines its own stated objectives of needing to practice independent decision-making on a geo-political scale. And it also comes with risks. On the environment and energy, Australia is threatened with Pariah status if it continues to slash and burn remnant vegetation, consume energy and not commit to Kyoto. On an international front, the benefits of ANZUS would be undermined if Australia could not take the position of ‘honest broker’ with China if trouble flares in Taiwan between the PRC and USA. And finally, where Howard’s slavish support of the neo-conservatives in Washington lead him to take an indefensible and derisory position in the UN General Assembly, it risks undermining Australia’s thus far impeccable liberal internationalist reputation in global governance.
Bush and Howard's pan-Pacific love-in
Posted by Living with Matilda at 7:45 AM
Pretty unlikely, but Australia is certainly drifting ever faster eastwards across the Pacific, rather than northwards towards Asia.
This is a huge navigational shift away from the Keating era’s belief that Australia’s future lay in South East Asia. Since 1997, and the election of a conservative government, this course has been altered subtly and incrementally. But 9/12 saw Australia accelerate eastwards.
Of course, Australia has long been a strategic ally of the United States. Australian soldiers have fought beside their American counterparts in numerous occasions since 1941. Without the backing of its Commonwealth surrogate mother, Australian troops fought in Vietnam, backed up by the ANZUS Treaty of 1957.
Culturally, Australia has long been porous to US influences, albeit 20 years behind. Australia suburban highways are strewn with McDonalds hamburger joints and Chermside Shopping Centre in Brisbane was the first car-based out of town shopping mall to be built outside America. Americana can be seen everywhere, from the neo-Tuscan, triple garaged peri-urban sprawl, to the saturation coverage of US product on the commercial television networks. Many of these links resulted from commercial seepage - American TV ‘shows’ can be screened for just a fraction of the cost of home production - having already recouped studio costs from domestic markets. Economies of scale and experience can be very quickly rolled out in the form of Golden Arches to smother indigenous culinary talent.
In many nations this creeping americanisation has created backlash and resentment in variety of guises - from the French ‘slow-food’ movement to the more strident views about ‘Asian Values’ in the democratising nations in SE Asia. Even the ‘Australia Made’ brand here remains an important marketing tool.
But this is not a passive drift benignly influenced by commercial realism. It is a course actively plotted by the conservative Howard Government. Mirroring this, the Bush administration is clearly seducing Australia; and John Howard is only too willing to drop his trousers for a pan-Pacific love-in. The militant neo-conservative right in the US has found willing partner in the current conservative right in Australia.
In a range of policy areas, formal and informal relations have moved the Howard Government and Australia closer and closer to the US homeland.
Informally, the Howard Government’s support for US renegade policies has been rewarded by good old-fashioned backslapping and personal tributes from Washington. For the last few weeks, John Howard has been very publicly showered with political praise from the Bush Administration, particularly following Federal Opposition Leader, Mark Latham’s comments that the Australian troops in Iraq ‘will be home by Christmas’. In a recent speech, just two days before Australian elected representatives in the Senate were to debate a free trade agreement (see below), George Bush personally referred to John Howard as a “great leader” and intimated (as he would) that the agreement would be good for Australia. This gushing flattery and blatant political advocacy even became too much for former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who openly rebuked the Howard government for accepting the praise and allowing US pressure to influence the Australian electorate.
This politics, built upon the personal relations of world leaders, is not new, but is damaging, unaccountable and undermines democracy in polities such as Australia. Whether Bush does influence the forthcoming Federal elections in Australia or the Senators debating the trade agreement with the USA is yet to be seen, but it is undeniably his intention. His attacks on the Australian Labor Party are calculating and desperate. John Howard’s acceptance of them are shameful.
But it is the steady alignment of official policy that is most detrimental to Australia’s interests. On the environment, Australia has adopted the same supercilious stance towards climate change as the USA by not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Both governments maintain that ratification would damage jobs and economic growth. Never mind global warming, we've got voter's SUVs to think about.
Despite Australia producing a trifling amount of greenhouse gas when compared with some of the world’s giant economies, Australia's per capita levels of pollution compare unfavourably even with the gluttonous USA. Australia has agreed to adopt its own greenhouse gas target (an 8% increase) but by now there is little chance of the economy achieving it. So signing the Protocol would not save the world from global warming but would send a strong message out to the remaining Kyoto renegades. Conversely, not signing displays an arrogance and disdain for good science and global solidarity.
On a related issue, the two nation’s energy policies are similarly converging to become fully committed to a fossil fuel future. In the USA, Bush is continuing to push a new Energy Bill through Congress, which would strengthen the grip of the fossil fuel extraction industry. At the same time, the Howard Government has published a white paper, outlining his Government’s intentions to continue publicly subsidise private coal and oil exploration. Both economies have pitifully low targets for renewable energy production, which industry experts suggest is unlikely to attract the private investment needed in what is considered a high growth technology with a future in most industrial nations.
Three weeks ago, US law makers breezed the US-Australian bilateral free trade agreement through Congress. It was proclaimed as a “slam-dunk”, suggesting that the deal was something of a coup for US manufacturers but not so good for Australian primary producers who will still have to face uphill tariffs to get to the American consumer. It was further implied by a number of Congressman and women that safe passage of the Bill was more or less guaranteed as a reward for Australian support of the coalition of the willing in Iraq.
Which brings us neatly to the main driver behind the Australian application to be the 51st State: US Security policy.
10/12 and all that
The Bali Bombing on October 12th 2002, transformed the Australian psyche in much the same way that 9/11 brought home to the Americans the fact that not everyone likes them. This, despite the two traumas differing significantly - an objective fact lost amongst the horror, blood and body parts.
On September 11th 2001, four jetliners targeted American people in symbolic American political and economic icons inside the American homeland. The Bali bomb killed 190, mostly western/white holidaymakers in a predominantly Muslim country - it just so happened that a fair proportion of the clientele were Australians (70 lost their lives).
This does not make it any less of an atrocity: many hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as ‘collateral damage’ in the last 12 months: no one deserves to be subject to arbitrary slaughter.
But despite the very different emphases of the two events, Australia assumed it was directly under attack in the same way that the USA is being targeted - right in the line of fire for terrorist groups. Obliquely, Australia was a target - as part of the “Zionist-Christain alliance” as bin Laden sees it - but no more so than any nation who supported the UN action in Afghanistan.
Additionally, Australia’s efforts in East Timor, again under UN authority, put military personnel in direct danger. But following the horror in Bali, it seemed the Australian Government unquestioningly led the country into a opportunistic war in Iraq by slavishly subscribing to the US neo-conservative strategy of global hegemony. The American's war became the Australian's war. While the rest of the world listened to Bush's comments - that “you're either with us or against us” - with the patronising wry smile of a more intelligent sibling, John Howard took them seriously.
Giving staunch support to the US ‘War on Terror’ was a wise move for most rich nations and it payed off when the UN Security Council voted to go after Al Qa’ida and the Taliban in the mountains around Kandahar. But after Afghanistan, Australia unquestioningly supported the continuation of the neo-conservative agenda by going to war in Iraq on much the same assumptions as George Bush and not relying on the quasi-legal arguments of Tony Blair. America has been grateful ever since.
This geo-political strategic alliance has been personalised by Bush describing Australia (or more precisely Howard and Downer) as its own ‘sheriff in the region’ - “give that lil 'ole country a sheriff's badge, will ya”. A feather in the cap for Howard, or merely a disarming comment designed to ensure that Australia remains a strategic asset for the US in a region that contains both Indonesia and China? This military alliance has now been further bolstered by an agreement to allow the expansion of US military training facilities in Queensland and talks on using Australia as a radar base for strategic missile defence hardware.
US against the world
But the latest sidling up to a superpower has been a grave misjudgment and is, frankly, embarrassing. By backing Israel and the USA in the UN General Assembly and voting against the resolution denouncing Israel’s West Bank barrier, John Howard’s sycophancy has plumbed new depths. Australia was one of six nations to vote against the rest of the world; the three others being Pacific Islands, with a combined population of less than 250,000. This is despite the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, publicly stating that Australia maintained that the route of the barrier through the West Bank of Palestine was inappropriate and that it should follow the green line on Israeli territory.
(Palau, The Marshall Islands and Micronesia have all signed a 'Compact of Free Association' with the USA, thereby granting America jurisdictional responsibility on all defence and foreign affairs matters. It comes as no surprise then that these three 'nations' voted with the USA.In effect, this gives the USA 4 votes in the UN General Assembly.)
Ironically, this was precisely the opinion implied by the recent advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice. The Court did not question Israel’s right to build a barrier to secure its people from infiltrating suicide bombers, but did rule that the route of the barrier caused undue harm to Palestinians. It cut then off from their land and work and represented a de facto annexation of an occupied territory. Therefore it is in contravention of international law.
Downer attempted to justify the policy u-turn by referring to previous statements which iterated that the Australian Government did not believe the ICJ was competent (in a legal sense) in ruling on this matter - despite being asked to do so through a resolution of the UN General Assembly. Therefore, Australia’s opposition to the latest resolution is based purely on a technicality, not on principle.
Surely then, the logical position to take - and that which most accurately reflects the government’s position - was to abstain, alongside Canada and nine other nations.
In statements following the vote, John Howard said “Israel does have a right to protect herself and you can't hope to have any kind of lasting settlement in the Middle East until there is an understanding that those suicide attacks have got to stop.” By remaining silent on the matter of where any barrier should be, Howard remains either ambivalent or dishonest about his Government’s position.
This suggests that the vote backing the US and Israel has more to do with giving succour to the US and being seen standing shoulder to shoulder on all strategic issues. So rather than carving out a defensible and independent opinion on the barrier, the Howard Government has shown it will back Bush all the way.
Alarmingly, this view was openly espoused by US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage in recent interviews in Australia. He said that an alliance [with the US] was not an a la carte menu, from which Australia could pick and choose policies to agree with. This simplistic reductionism is dangerous: uncritical alliances degenerate into servitude and ridicule - not something that goes down well with 'fair go' Aussies.
Whether this will become an election issue in Australia is uncertain. Each political party would need to make a fine judgement on how this universal alliance with the USA is viewed by the Australian people. Whilst Australians do not live in the same reactionary climate of fear experienced by Americans and perpetrated by their government, it would require a skilled pollster to decipher the range of public opinion and brave political party to campaign hard either way.
The Howard Government’s continued strategic, cultural and policy alignment with the Bush administration undermines its own stated objectives of needing to practice independent decision-making on a geo-political scale. And it also comes with risks. On the environment and energy, Australia is threatened with Pariah status if it continues to slash and burn remnant vegetation, consume energy and not commit to Kyoto. On an international front, the benefits of ANZUS would be undermined if Australia could not take the position of ‘honest broker’ with China if trouble flares in Taiwan between the PRC and USA. And finally, where Howard’s slavish support of the neo-conservatives in Washington lead him to take an indefensible and derisory position in the UN General Assembly, it risks undermining Australia’s thus far impeccable liberal internationalist reputation in global governance.
Posted by Living with Matilda at 7:45 AM
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