Is it wise to link Australia's economic and security alliances with the US?

Recall the Prime Minister, speaking at a luncheon in Washington DC, circa 2002:

I know that I would be speaking on behalf of the Australian Labor Party in saying today to all of you that they share our commitment to the American alliance and I know that they would want me to say on their behalf that the friendship that is felt between our two countries is felt across the political divide in Australia.

Not two years ago John Howard said that! My, how things change. He's hardly spruiking for his political opponents these days:

[Mark Latham] has demonstrated that in his new position he is dangerous so far as the American alliance is concerned ... The reality is that the Leader of the Opposition has allowed his tribal dislike, because of the politics of the current American President, to overwhelm his concern for the national interest.

Labor's cool reception to the newly concluded Australia-United States free trade agreement has only reinforced Howard's profound volte-face.

Other equally momentous changes have also recently occurred in the politics that surround Australia's foreign relations. Of particular note, the government has finally jettisoned the long-standing public fiction that our economic relationship with Washington is somehow separate from our security relationship; that the high strategy of alliance is held at arms-length from the grubby scrapping over trade and investment.

Take a look at Alexander Downer back in 1999, responding to calls for the government to use the ANZUS security alliance as a negotiating coin in efforts to break American tariffs on Australian lamb imports:

Linking trade and security would neither advance Australia's trade objectives with the United States nor protect our security and wider national interests. Rather, it would undermine security, weaken US strategic engagement in the region and place at unacceptable risk one of Australia's most valuable national assets which has stood the test of time - a genuinely close relationship ... which continues to offer tangible benefits to Australia and reflects the deepest values held by Australians across the generations.

By 2002 the Foreign Minister had undergone a remarkable diplomatic transformation. Fears of damaging Australia's most valuable asset evaporated, and he began openly linking security with economic issues:

An FTA with the US is a real opportunity to put our economic relationship on a parallel footing with our political relationship, which is manifested so clearly in the ANZUS alliance.

Now the FTA is signed and gestating in the great bellies of democracy. Anxious political midwives await the parliamentary delivery, hoping that the benefits of linking trade and security will soon become apparent.

And they're especially keen to explain why this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. See this ensemble from Howard over the past 12 months:

You won't get this remarkable conjunction of political and other circumstances that make it within reach.

What exactly are those "other circumstances" Prime Minister?

Well I think certainly the political amity between the US administration and the Australian government was a factor.

And what led to that "amity", such good relations between the two countries, Mr Howard?

Our principled support for the US-led action in Iraq made a deep impression and will not be readily forgotten by the US. Our relationship has never been stronger or closer.

What of those who feel that Australia has been "dudded" by this so-called free trade deal?

Nothing is perfect in this world, this is not a perfect agreement but it's the best we could get in current circumstances.

And herein lies the problem with the government's position. By linking economics together with security, it talked up the natural progression toward a more mature and profitable Australia-US relationship. The government built high expectations. Yet if people judge that the special relationship between Howard and Bush failed to deliver a respectable outcome in the FTA, what value will Australians continue to put on ANZUS? Won't the same disappointment felt in the economic realm simply translate into the security sphere?

This is not to say that the FTA deal is worthless. Indeed, that verdict awaits the reports of the parliamentary commissions, now busily wading through some 1100 pages of sticky legalese which is the full text of the agreement.

But perceptions are often more important than reality in politics. Last month the New York Times also made the economic-security connection, criticising the Bush administration for allowing protectionist sentiment to contaminate free trade agreements "even when dealing with an allied nation". A conservative columnist with the Washington Post went even further. "America has no better friend than Australia," he declared, and despite this the administration forced its ally into an unseemly and unhealthy "not-exactly" free trade agreement.

If a general consensus takes hold that Australia got a second-rate trade deal, some will inevitably wonder whether the much-touted military alliance delivers anything more.

This is actually a good debate for Australia. There is nothing inherently dangerous in a careful evaluation of the alliance. Nor is an acknowledgment that dividing the relationship with America into neat, disparate compartments - one economic, the other security - is only academic convenience. But it is certainly not the outcome that the government intended.