Our “great and powerful friend” the United States has suffered another humiliating defeat, this time in Afghanistan. In fact, in the more than 75 years since victory over Japan, the US has rarely won a clear victory.
Since the 1940s, in conflict after conflict, the US has had to withdraw bruised and bleeding — despite its apparently overwhelming superior force.
We are reminded of the wisdom of late PM Malcolm Fraser: “Our great and powerful friend can be a dangerous ally.” Why? Because we can be lockstep with the US without considering the chances of success, let alone whether the ends justify the means. Then, as has happened too often, we are burdened with consequences we had never really considered, let alone prepared for.
Afghanistan is just the latest instance of that sad picture of desperate people scrambling into planes to escape the consequences of taking our side in the fight.
There is much work to be done cleaning up the mess. That Australia would for a moment entertain leaving behind those who supported us in the ill-fated fight with the Taliban says it all for how amoral we and the Americans can be in escaping responsibility.
But the biggest challenge we face as Australians is not the one we face with all those party to this failure. The issues we need to face now are: where do we go next in the world, and what is to become of our alliances?
We can’t just hope it will disappear. It won’t. We can’t do what we’ve been doing for much of the time since World War II. That was locked in from when wartime PM John Curtin announced his now-exhausted decision to “look to America” for our main alliance.
“Without any inhibitions of any kind,” Curtin declared, “I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.”
That historic shift meant we changed. But we did it theoretically. We still had a long way to go culturally to move to independence. And we had really just substituted one form of imperial dependence for another.
The question we have needed to ask over many years, if not decades, is why haven’t we made the change that stares us in the face? Why can’t we stand on our own?
One reason we should have is that America is in decline; its economy is much weaker relatively than it was when Curtin made his declaration. Standing with it simply flies in the face of what is in Australia’s best interests.
Another reason is geography. We’re next to Asia — not Europe or the US. Obvious as that may be, it hasn’t been a perception shared by many.
Many have been saying these things for a long time. Fraser said it at length in his 2014 book Dangerous Allies. Gough Whitlam said it and acted on it in the generation before Fraser.
But now we have a golden and glorious opportunity to discover how to stand on our own feet, forge alliances that start to shape how we relate to our neighbourhood — and the wider world beyond.
What would that look like? There are plenty of indicators for us now to forge an identity as an Asia-Pacific nation unencumbered by our European and US allegiances. But let’s not get misty-eyed. Waiting to leap into the gap created by US mismanagement and brain dead Australian compliance are the forces that have been there for some time: the People’s Republic of China and the post-imperial imperialist power of Russia.
Decades before it got rid of its own sclerotic communist government, Russia attempted to thwart Iran by helping to boot out the shah, and then gained control of Afghanistan. That effort ended in tears too, shortly before the US turned up in Afghanistan. Now China will be salivating at the prospect of advancing its belt and road project at an unusually rapid pace as it tries to trump its major power rivals, with a strategy and resources already in hand.
What should Australia do?
The easiest and most predictable thing is to once again do nothing and fall into line with US strategy, which will keep aiming to thwart China and Russia. But we don’t need to. Other US allies probably won’t. It’s difficult to see South Korea or Japan doing that openly. The major Europeans allies — Germany, France and the UK — probably won’t either. Neither will India and other Asian countries with substantial militaries.
It is a wonderful opportunity for Australia to claw its way out of the rabbit hole we have dug for ourselves and work to become a mature and self-possessed member of the community of nations.
Michael Kelly is a Jesuit priest, journalist, refugee advocate and long-term resident of Asia, mostly based in Bangkok.
The Morrison government’s advisers on foreign and defence policy (the ASPI and the IPA and Murdoch and Nine/Fairfax and a host of Journalists like Galloway and Hartcher and Uhlmann wanting to be ‘in the know’ with the government) are never going to allow a divergence from our current dependence on the US
Our monocultural nativist conservative media is so important in maintaining +ve perceptions of our US and UK Anglosphere relationships at the expense of increasing links with Asia and Europe, e.g. avoiding promotion of diversity, compromising trade and our increasingly Eurasian profile of Australians.
You can’t live in Sydney Drew, or Melbourne. Regardless of a dominant white bread media, these two cities couldn’t be more diverse, and not Eurasian.
Unrequited hope springs eternal. I regret to report that the LNP is still assisting in building extensions to the rabbit hole. In fact, they continue to punch above their weight, as they are wont to incessantly say and do, in the many disasters they have had a foot or a hand in. Their fondness for, and demonstrated expertise in, such enterprises has already entered into Aussie folklore.
The die has already been cast in Spud’s invocation of the time honoured LNP daymare that all refugees are most likely terrorists, including those “helpers” who have been cunningly inserted into Taliban cabals hidden in open and operational view in our Embassy to Afghanistan and local ADF structures over many years without our Government, DFAT or the ADF being any the wiser.
If any of the above is only partially/slightly true the rabbit holes are definitely structurally and ideologically unsound, both in Afghanistan and Australia. If only the LNP would bolt from Australian shores with the same alacrity they have put on world display in Afghanistan. I imagine we could even spare an RAAF C-17 or two for a couple of days to assist them on their way seeing said aircraft appear to remain parked and chocked on airport hardstands in the Middle East at this time.
Julia Gillard compounded an already out-of-balance relationship by permitting a US base outside Darwin. In practical terms we can never request (order?) them to leave as it would damage any goodwill between our nations.
It requires an intelligent & farsighted statesman/woman as Prime Minister to extricate us from the bind we are in. Unfortunately there are none in sight in the current House of Reps nor any prospects of a leader with a strong spine.
There are other bases of much longer standing – not to forget many imbedded senior Australian Officers in the US pacific military. Bit harsh on Julia.
We paid off the Coral Sea War debt many many moons ago.
Bludging off the Yanks means foreign policy dictation continues.
Spineless Murdoch Government’s even take direction on acceptability of the POTUS insitu now.
Shameful .
Who exactly is bludging off who?
We allow the U.S. taxpayer to fund the hardware needed for us to assist with ‘their’ chosen indulgent wars.
We have always been those “running dogs”.
There was no debt to pay off. The US wasn’t here to help us out. We happened to have a common enemy, and they used us as a strategically useful base. And since then, the US has benefitted far more from the relationship than we have (legitimating their many wars of aggression, fattening the profits of their armaments industry).
The political ‘debt’ was accrued in early 1942, and used by conservative governments ever since, in order to co-op the public into backing any unilateral American adventurism.
Eisenhower set Kennedy up for the Bay of Pigs shambles and on the way out warned of the power of the industrial military complex …….he wasn’t wrong, and we’ve gone along with it.
True. Without Pearl Harbour we would have been stuffed. When the Great White Fleet visiting Sydney the locals didn’t realise that the US was scoping us out for a possible US invasion of things got unpleasant with Great Britain.
https://www.navyhistory.org.au/american-plans-for-invading-new-zealand-australia-part1/
The need for Australia to kowtow to the United States has long drifted into the past.
We should most definitely remain an ally of the USA, but whilst doing so, we should be not act in a manner that is detrimental to our own Country.
We have followed America into the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars, and have suffered greatly for it, despite the fact that not just Australia, but America and others shouldn’t have got involved in.
We are in the middle of a Trade War with China, that was caused by following America.
The Australian Government needs a Geography lesson. We are in Oceania not in the Americas.
Most our Trade, both Exports and Imports, are with Countries in this area, especially China.
Note to those wishing to criticize China for their particular style of Governance, and Human Right Abuses: You don’t have to like somebody to sell to them, or buy from them.