Return to maturity in US dialogue
- From: Chim <ChimS1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 08:06:21 -0700
Return to maturity in US dialogue
Kim Beazley | September 03, 2007
FORMER US secretary of state Colin Powell warned President George W.
Bush that he risked "sucking the oxygen" out of US foreign policy if
he went ahead with the Iraq venture in 2003. As the President arrives
in Australia for his truncated participation in the Asia-Pacific
Economic Co-operation leadership forum, nothing could be more obvious.
The demands of the war, particularly the forthcoming report to
Congress by his commander, General David Petraeus, further kept both
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from attending the almost
as important Association of Southeast Asian Nations meetings of
leaders and ministers in Singapore and Manila taking place at the
moment. His mind this week will be many thousands of miles away
northeast and northwest.
President Bush recently introduced Vietnam War analogies into his
justifications for Iraq and was roundly criticised by historians. One
analogy is apposite. Presidents Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson
struggled in a similar way to get above the debilitating consequences
of a local war to address the many issues global leadership demanded
of them. They feared American leadership of the Western alliance would
be compromised, our enemies strengthened, our local allies betrayed.
Their worst fears were not realised. Neither will they be in Iraq,
though the outcome will be horrible enough. That is not easy to see
stuck in the middle of the morass.
One thing is clear now. The US values its allies more fervently than
at any time since the Kuwait war segued out of the cold war. The
allies wanted are those who will share burdens, military and
political. The allies needed are those who will help refocus the US on
the long-term issues of global politics, such as those emerging in
East Asia. To be recognised as a needed ally will require friends to
be both.
Looking back, the last decade of the cold war was a golden period in
relations between Australia and the US; not necessarily in the depth
of friendship among leaders, though they were close enough, but in the
evenness and maturity of the exchange.
Australia was part of the US system of extended deterrence
particularly through the role played by the joint facilities at Pine
Gap, North West Cape and Nurrungar. But the affairs of our region did
not lie at the heart of the central balance between the US and the
Soviet Union.
Unlike our European allies we did not consume American security. In a
historical act of unselfishness the US was prepared to see its people
hostage to a nuclear exchange in defence of Europe's freedom. No such
consequence flowed from any likely threat to Australia. On the other
hand the facilities made Australia a nuclear target. The US consumed,
in a global crisis, our security.
US statesmen implicitly understood this. Australian initiatives on
peace in Cambodia, global and regional arms control, relations with
China, relations with Indonesia, were heeded with respect. The process
culminated in the creation of APEC. With all its weaknesses, it is
still potentially the most valuable multilateral diplomatic instrument
the US has to hand to engage the region. Its creation is still the
most valuable diplomatic service Australia has performed for its ally
in the past two decades.
It is a measure of how Iraq has caused things to slip that it is
unlikely President Bush will be able to fully exploit the opportunity.
Useful work will be done on trade and climate change. But it is
doubtful whether the leadership forum's capacity to advance the
security agenda will be realised or the attempt made.
Potential leaders in future administrations are thinking through the
consequences of this. Lael Brainard, an adviser to presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton and a former Clinton White House co-
ordinator for APEC, recently attended the Australian-American
Leadership Dialogue. She lamented that APEC appeared to have fallen
into disuse.
Still, it was the only regional forum that included the US.
At elite political levels, whoever emerges as US president a year or
so from now, there will be a determination to engage globally whatever
the mess in Iraq.
But that cold-war era selfless commitment referred to earlier was not
simply a Washington beltway phenomenon pursued at elite levels.
Preparedness to sacrifice was shared across the US. The missile silos,
submarine bases, strategic air command bases, were at a plethora of
middle-American locations in Washington state, the Dakotas, Wyoming,
Colorado. One hundred million Americans would have died in a Soviet
strike and the living would have envied them.
Thankfully, nothing like that is entailed in any conceivable outcome
in Iraq, but it is the communities of middle America who are bleeding.
It is they who provide the National Guard units and many of the
regular troops. Though casualties are small, the wounded are horribly
obvious. The character of the struggle with fundamentalist terror does
not permit disengagement, but it won't stop thedesire.
We know much about US national politics and popular culture in this
country. We know little about the deeper rhythms in US politics,
economy and society that drive these communities. Hopefully,
institutions such as the new United States Studies Centre will help
us.
The opportunity exists for a return to the maturity of the Australian-
American dialogue that existed in the late phase of the cold war. The
welcome accorded new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and new
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is a fair indication that in the
remaining months of this administration and into the next one,
supportive but strong-minded allies will be valued.
Kim Beazley, a former leader of the Labor Party, is a board member of
the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
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