How the US-Australia relationship has been weakened by the war in Iraq

Public Justice Report has recently drawn attention to the idealism and ideology implicit in the US government's National Security Strategy (NSS). [see the PJR discussions: US National Security Strategy and Reader's responses]. Bob Goudzwaard detects an idolatrous motif at work in this rationale for military action and international diplomacy. When "the question of whether the means are just [is] pushed aside by insisting that the means are necessary" then a government has taken a path which makes state power into an idol; this path excludes rigorous self-examination by all involved in the national policy-making process.

This provides an important insight for an analysis of the way international relationships are formed. I want to develop this discussion in relation to one specific dimension of the recent military conflict: I want to draw attention to a significant change that has occurred in the Australia-US friendship. It shows a lack of genuine national self-respect on both sides. This relationship, like all friendships, has a complex structure with various levels, and there are many and varied demands made upon all those who are parties to it. To follow Goudzwaard: no friendship is firmly based when self-examination is excluded. One way to short-circuit a friendship is to act within the friendship as if it is necessary, as if it is just there, something that does not require our ongoing self-examination. The strength of the US-Australia friendship to date has indeed been in the manner in which participants from both sides have freely encouraged each other's contribution to the world community of nations in a spirit of forthright and mutual self-examination. It has been a taken-for-granted aspect of US-Australian relationships in a variety of social contexts. As a result this "multi-lateral" relationship has also enabled Americans and Australians to join in efforts for a just world for all peoples in a variety of ways. Think, for example, of co-operation in the United Nations. There are always more things to do and good friends think up new ways to get them done - together. Good friends know that there is much more to it than nice words, orchestrated handshakes and warm embraces. If long-established friendships, as much as new ones, are going to negotiate new and complex situations they need to be open to new challenges. Friends find the paths of justice and peace via mutual friendly criticism. And that's why we should expect that an ongoing friendship between two nations demands mutual self-examination.

When national political leaders seek to give a new form to an old nation-to-nation relationship, as they must from time to time, they can not be content with cliché and congratulatory headlines. They have to help each other by being open to new responsibilities that are emerging in the context of that new form of relationship. This is what an ongoing friendship is all about. It is forged in self-examination and develops a mutual self-respect. Both elements are vital if friendship is to truly serve both parties and promote justice. International friendships require both parties to rightly and frankly reckon with the challenges that are present in the other party's situation.

Australia needs to respect the US's changing role but it cannot do so without developing a new self-respect for its own new role. Whenever Australia's foreign policy is assessed its peculiar geographic position needs to be kept in mind. Lying to the north of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, it is at the southern end of South East Asia with Indonesia its largest neighbour to the north. To the east across the Tasman Sea are the South West Pacific island states of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and New Zealand. The expansive Indian Ocean is to the west.

Since a new form has been given to our military relationship with the US, the Australian Government has allowed its role in the region to assume a new shape. Regional relationships are no longer exactly as they were, even as our task to seek justice remains undiminished. Clearly the USA and the UK, the major parties of "the coalition of the willing" could have acted as a duo had Australia not made it a threesome. But it still has not been explained how or why the Australian Government decided that Australian troops had to join the coalition. Some observers suggest that the explanation is extrinsic to the military and political situation in Iraq. They believe that the Australian Government joined the coalition in order to give added weight to its desire for a free trade pact with the US whether Weapons of mass destruction could be found or not. It is reported that the New Zealand Prime Minister holds this view. It may clarify the decision of the Australian Government but it exposes an idolatrous dimension of Australian Government policy-making - the necessity of the free market - and the policy assumes our own economic interest is necessary for the region.

Iraq was already under intense international scrutiny. Australia was not being threatened with attack either directly or indirectly. And when the US President and the Australian Prime Minister announced that Australian troops would join the US led "coalition of the willing", they were by-passing further UN action. They said it was an expression of our long-term friendship. But the long-established military aspect to the multi-lateral US-Australia friendship does not actually explain Australian participation in the war. Whatever weapons Iraq may have held, it posed no immediate military threat to Australia's security. If the friendship between Australia and the US was somehow at risk the threat did not come from Saddam Hussein's regime.

The problem with some misalliances, as we know, comes with the rush, the hasty manner in which a union is contracted. We also know that hastily contracted alliances usually involve complex power plays on other fronts. (Recently, in Australia, we have seen such a scenario played out with the crisis that derived from an obviously unwise appointment when a senior Anglican churchman was invited to take the office of Governor-General). But in the case of US-Australian relations after the Iraqi war  we are now left with a new form of military alliance which has an enormous potential to reshape other levels of our nation-to-nation friendship. Both governments have failed to adequately explain their view of the newly formed kind of military alliance that their commitment has brought into being. To return to Goudzwaard again: they have allowed their policies and subsequent actions to express a presumed necessity at the expense of an open and self-critical mutual search for justice. This action has enormous implications not just for US-Australian friendship, but also for Australia's relations with its neighbours and friends in the region. In their rush to make something out of a well-established friendship the friendship has been transformed into significantly new ways which they mutually did not talk about and still have not explained. We should not be surprised that at some later stage, perhaps around the time that a free trade deal is signed, that a mutual embarrassed evasiveness will characterize Australia-US relations in this region. A valid international friendship has been put at risk because the friendship has lost its openness. The friendship is rendered ambiguous in important respects and Australia is now more of a regional misfit than before. (The term 'regional misfit' is not mine - it is the considered view of a former senior and prominent Australian diplomat to Asia).

Strategic "risk assessments" prior to the deployment of Australian troops did not consider the impact upon the Australian-US friendship. That miscalculation occurred because of a determination to avoid the "just war" question. Instead it was said to be integral to our "national interest". Much more can be said and the full impact upon US-Australian multi-lateral relations is yet to be fully worked out. But it will require ongoing and careful scrutiny. Clearly what is necessary now is for this country to find the path of genuine repentance, turning from the presumptions of necessity, a disavowal of all idolatry, military, political and economic, with a recommitment to the search for authentic public justice in international relations. Such self examination is also needed if the US-Australian friendship is to grow as it should. With God's help that can still happen of course since the way is still open for nations like ours to help each other seek justice and walk humbly with God also in this part of the globe.

June 2003 © Christian Radical Reflections, is written by Bruce C Wearne (PhD), 29 Lawrence Rd., Point Lonsdale Vic 3225 AUSTRALIA, 61-3-5258-3913. Each edition may be photocopied or retransmitted in its entirety but not otherwise reprinted or transmitted without permission. This personal project aims to encourage positive Christian citizenship, the development of policies and political attitudes that better express our love for God and our neighbour. Your comments are welcome. Email can be sent to bcwearne@ozemail.com.au . http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bcwearne/index.html