Time to reconsider our US ties

You win one, you lose one. Immediately after coming out of the Tampa affair well ahead politically, John Howard found that the main purpose of his trip to Washington – the negotiation of an agreement on a bilateral trade deal – had been aborted even before he had fastened his seat belt.

Frustrating as this certainly was, it may also have been salutary – a healthy reminder that however sweet the rhetoric and however warm the hugging, the priorities of the two countries are likely to differ at least as often as they coincide.

This is a reminder that some Australians seem to need. Since returning here two months ago after 18 years in Washington, I have been struck by how criticisms of US policy that would be considered routine by many American conservatives are characterised as anti-American by some of their Australian counterparts. And by the praise lavished on the policies of the Bush administration by some commentators here, praise that would make even a loyal Republican blush.

Many things conspire to make it difficult to think realistically about Australia's relationship with the superpower. For one thing, there is the grip of habit – the result of cleaving closely and pretty uncritically for 60 years to what Robert Menzies used to delight in calling ‘our great and powerful friend’.  That policy served us well in World War II and the Cold War when there were credible threats to our security, but times change.

The English statesman, Lord Salisbury, once warned that ‘the commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies’.  While the US-Australian alliance is anything but dead, habitual ways of thinking and behaving can obscure the extent to which different circumstances have altered the nature of the US-Australian alliance and the way it fits Australian needs.  It is necessary to cultivate the habit of breaking habits.

There are other obstacles to clear thinking about our relations with America: the fascination that enormous power exercises, especially on politicians who are occupationally conditioned to be power worshippers; the desire to be liked and approved of by others, still not a negligible factor in the Australian make-up, as demonstrated by the recent consternation at being lectured by a Norwegian sea captain, and by European countries that have made a dreadful mess of their own immigration policies.

 And, of course, on the other side of the ledger there is the persistence of that unlovely cultural ambivalence that causes Australian elites to denigrate and reject things American even as they borrow and imitate.

 As these things are easily misrepresented, let it be clear that my point is certainly not that the US alliance should be dispensed with. And equally certainly, it is not that we should relapse into a region-first policy.

But Australia should proceed carefully and without illusion in dealing with its powerful ally.  For one thing, post-Cold War American foreign policy is still, in some respects, a work in progress, and those who get too close to it run the danger that a piece of the scaffolding might fall off and hit them.

That is certainly so in the case of America's China policy, as powerful domestic forces still contend to determine its ultimate shape and direction.

Even more important, while the US is by historical standards a benevolent hegemon, a hegemon is what it is.  Not only is its power vast, but it is concerned to use that power – economic, military, ‘soft’ – to create a world in its own image, with institutions and rules determined by Washington (though Washington sometimes insists on excluding itself from its own rules).

While such a world would have many attractions, the attempt to bring it into being will inevitably generate serious opposition and involve a great deal of strife and conflict. It would be inappropriate and dangerous for a country of Australia's limited means and interests to associate itself closely with such an enterprise.  Above all, Australia should not put its trust in a ‘special relationship’.  Such relationships usually exist principally in the imagination of the weaker parties, and even when they have some limited reality, they are incapable of bearing the weight of a serious clash of interests.

Witness how, only a decade after the closest of partnerships during World War II, the US had no compunction in cutting Britain off at the knees during the 1956 Suez crisis.

Or for a contemporary example, consider the current treatment of Pakistan. In recent decades it has had a close relationship with the US.  But now, with Washington concerned to improve its relationship with India for geopolitical reasons, Pakistan has been unceremoniously dumped.

The ubiquitous and loquacious Richard Armitage has recently characterised it as a ‘rogue state’ and dismissed the past US-Pakistan amity as a ‘false relationship’. Can we assume that Australia will always be an exception in this respect? Not really. Those with good memories will remember that, even at the height of the Cold War, when it came to the choice between supporting Indonesia – then under the rule of the ultra radical, anti-western Sukarno – or Australia over the future of the Western half of New Guinea, the US supported Indonesia.

Nothing wrong with that (except, of course, for the poor people of West Irian). It is the way international politics works.  A troublesome Indonesia outweighed a compliant Australia in American calculations.

Rather than engaging in a futile effort to change it, or proceeding on the assumption that we are a special case, the sensible thing is to come to terms with it and act accordingly. 
 
About the Author:
Owen Harries is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. He is a former foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and editor of The National Interest in Washington (1985-2001).