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Turning the Page of Labor appeasement

By Alexander Downer - posted Monday, 23 May 2005


And I reckon that is a pretty surprising thing to say about your own country.

The "Little Australia" mindset persists in the Labor Party. In 2004 Kevin Rudd defined us in his Asia-Link speech as "a small country on the periphery of this region".

No doubt, along with a preference for populist appeasement and isolationism, it played a part in Mark Latham's thinking when he argued that our contribution to the war on terror should be limited to our own region and that our troops' proper place was not on the other side of the world but at home. Perhaps, in retrospect, he was right to see himself as one of Curtin's heirs.

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Of course there's a sense in which all the Australian political class say that they believe in freedom and democracy, at least as abstract ideals. But only the Coalition is unequivocally committed to supporting the global struggle for freedom on the ground which has, in the last 20 years, shown itself an unstoppable force for change.

Pope John Paul II understood the irresistible force of freedom in the battle of ideas. He grasped how the collapse of Communism in Poland could be achieved without warfare, by harnessing the instinctive attachment to freedom and solidarity which are embedded in Polish culture. To the sceptics, content to settle indefinitely for détente as a default position, it seemed counter-intuitive or merely foolish. Yet he saw and repeatedly said that it was not wealth or military might but culture which was the great engine of history.

History has proved him right. History also established that in the long run free enterprise would outstrip the command economy and the democratic nations would be willing and able to outspend the Soviet empire in the arms race.

But, along with military might, when Ronald Reagan came to speak at the Berlin Wall in 1987, he brought with him the moral authority and urgency befitting the spokesman of the free world: "If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate. Mr Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

What seemed at the time almost unimaginable soon came to pass. The wall was torn down and the Eastern Bloc collapsed.

But a fresh threat to our liberty has emerged, in the form of global terrorism. The great struggle of the present is between freedom and terror and its totalitarian ideology.

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In 2003 Labor went to water on Saddam Hussein and his regime, declaring Iraq an irrelevance in the war on terror. There was no shortage of so-called realists prepared to tell us that democracy was unsuitable for export and even that the Islamic world would never accept what they airily characterised as cultural imperialism imposed by force of arms.

What actually happened?

Free elections in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the Palestinian Territories have reconfigured the political landscape. Libya has renounced the use of weapons of mass destruction. Saudi Arabia has taken a first step on the path to participatory democracy. Egypt is proposing a real contest at its next elections and the Syrian regime has beaten a humiliating retreat from Lebanon. In recent weeks the Cedar Revolution brought nearly a million people out on the streets of Beirut, demonstrating their support for democracy.

It was yet another powerful reminder of the truth that freedom is the most contagious idea in history. It is far too soon to reach triumphalist conclusions. But the belief of some that the only way out of the political impasses of the Middle East is to introduce democracy and the experience of freedom into the equation can no longer be dismissed as naïve. It is a strategy in the battle of ideas which, strange to relate, didn't much appeal to the intelligentsia of the West. However its popular appeal is already some sort of vindication.

At street level, as with governments, the experience of freedom can change our self-understandings and the way we relate to one another. Freedom binds nations together with shared values and priorities. The much closer ties we now enjoy with our next door neighbour Indonesia, relations with Afghanistan and Iraq, the momentum for change in Palestinian-Israeli relations - they are all encouraging signs for the future and for the prosecution of the war on terror.

They are all outcomes profoundly affecting Australia's interests. They are reminders of the powerful, even inexorable, force of freedom. And they are reminders of Earle Page's argument that the national interest is best served by a judicious balance of pragmatism and principle.

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This is an edited version of a speech given to the Earle Page College's Annual Politics Dinner at The University of New England, Armidale. Read the full text here.



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About the Author

The Hon. Alexander Downer MP is Minister for Foreign Affairs and Member for Mayo (SA).

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