Philosophy.Com

The US/Australia Alliance

There is a good article by Bruce Grant on the Australia US alliance in the Australian Financial Review's Review section. At one level the alliance is not an issue since the geopolitics of Australia's situation and national interest requires it. Hence the bipartisan support for that alliance.

However, things are not that simple. Grant opens his article with this very accurate remark:

"The curious thing about the alliance with the United States is that, in Australia, it is divisive. You would expect that because it has bipartisan political backing, broad support in the Australian community, and is generally regarded as the most important security arrangement we have, it would have a unifying effect. In fact, it does not bring Australians together. Rather it creates tensions among us. This in turn engenders sensitivities in our relations with the US."

How come? Grant is very clear:

"There has been a conscious strategy on the part of the coalition parties in Australia to lift the bar of enthusiasm for the alliance to a height that their political opponents cannot jump...The complex issues which the White House has to juggle, including public opinion and relations with Congress, apart altogether from the merits of any military campaign itself, are simplified by the time they cross the Pacific to whether Australians are for or against America, or for or against America's declared adversaries or enemies, or for or against democracy or Western civilisation. Or personally for or against the American president."

As Grant points out even the free-trade agreement with the US became a political battlefield, to be decided, like Iraq, under the pressure of a contrived timetable and bluster about loyalty to the alliance. It was hustled in the same way that the invasion of Iraq was hustled: it was in the national interest because it was a vital part of our relationship with the US and if you were against it you were anti-American. All the spin was about the critics being anti-American.

It is cartoon politics based on insecurity and the desperate need for protection in an anarchic world full of threats. Cartoon politics because it is no longer about a security arrangement with the US. It is about an image of Australia; an image of Australia as pale reflection of the US. That is why many Australians critically talk about Australia becoming the 51st state of the US.They have a different image of Australia; one that that reflects Australia's different (social democratic) pathway in modernity to that taken by the US.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at October 12, 2004 09:00 PM | TrackBack