Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Howard's very foreign policies

By Gary Brown - posted Wednesday, 29 November 2006


The Howard Government’s foreign policy in several key areas and on several levels is in serious disarray. There have been significant policy failures, leading in some cases to a deterioration in relations with regional states. But of course the worst failures are to be found in tormented Iraq.

Iraq

Despite the ongoing slaughter - no other word seems appropriate, given the appalling level of civilian casualties - in Iraq, it does not appear to have dawned on the government that the presence of its troops there is not part of the solution but of the problem.

The situation Bush, Blair and Howard created by their invasion and occupation of Iraq has been exploited by al-Qaida, by Sunni and Shia extremists, by Saddam loyalists and others, to the point where scores die violently (some by torture) every week, where basic services like power are still not available 24-7 even in the capital and where no one is secure outside the fortified enclave in central Baghdad.

Advertisement

Now, with the scale of the failure too great to be plausibly ignored, the thieves have begun to fall out as our still purblind PM disputes Blair’s belated admission that Iraq is a “disaster”. This doubtless explains why the British are now talking about exit plans and schedules - something a bit too realistic for John Howard.

I harbour no illusions that the departure of foreign troops will herald a new era of peace, democracy and prosperity in Iraq. More likely, it will be the signal for another traditional ethnic (and religious) cleansing war or wars, where the major interest groups slug it out to see who gets to lord it over the rest and steal the oil revenue. The likely outcomes of that include an Iraq governed by some kind of authoritarian regime, possibly a Shia theocracy allied to and dependent on Iran, or a fragmentation of the country into de facto independent and probably warring regions.

Some might think this prospect reason enough to stay, but after nearly four years it is clear that the occupation regime has failed. Consider the differences with Germany and Japan by 1949, four years after their occupation by the victorious powers. True, Germany was divided - but by the Cold War only - the West German democracy was ready to begin work, and both Germanys were at least places where people were personally secure (with the obvious authoritarian exceptions in the East) and basic services were again available.

By 1949 Japan too was well on the way to recovering its sovereignty under a US-imposed democratic constitution which, whatever its failures, helped Japan achieve prosperity, stability and more in the way of democracy than it ever had before. It is noteworthy, too, that the successful occupiers of Japan were at least as much out of cultural context there (as alien to the locals) as are those presently failing in Iraq.

In Iraq, however, the US-led war of conquest has been succeeded by two concurrent conflicts - first, between the occupiers and largely anti-US forces, and second, between the major religious groups with a potential ethnic conflict (the Kurds) as well.

It is this dual postwar threat more than anything else which has tripped up the occupiers: their withdrawal now will only end the first war, and perhaps remove a goad prodding some groups into militant action. The second war was probably inevitable once Saddam’s regime fell - however it fell: consider the chaos in ex-Yugoslavia and parts of the ex-USSR once the strong authoritarian regimes there failed. Bush, Blair and Howard created the conditions for this second war, and their continued occupation of Iraq only prolongs the first as well.

Advertisement

The Oil-for-Food scandals

Something the government did not bargain on when it joined the clamour about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD - remember them?) was being hoist on its own petard. The pre-war UN sanctions were intended to prevent Saddam developing WMD (obviously, they did), but of course they led directly to the now infamous Oil-for-Food program and the Australian involvement in huge wheat sale kickbacks to that same Saddam regime we were excoriating daily.

Now there are revelations involving imports of Iraqi oil by at least one company, and six further “matters” are under Australian Federal Police investigation. The damaging political fallout from these scandals is the price Howard pays for his sanctimonious hypocrisy over the reasons for going to war. Unfortunately our wheat farmers, already beset by a once-in-centuries drought, get to pay the dollar costs.

It would now seem that the duplicity many suspected Howard was practising in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq was duplicity indeed. New documents from the AWB (Cole) inquiry apparently show that Howard had taken his pro-war decision about a year before the war, and long before he told the people he made it. Honest John - never ever a GST - strikes again.

Relations with Indonesia

Managing relations with Jakarta is no easy task for any Australian government. It is in fact so difficult that the foreign policy establishment gave up trying years ago, and fell back on the deceptively easy course of appeasement.

All through the bleak Suharto years a bipartisan succession of Australian foreign ministers pursued this policy: even the rape of East Timor was not enough to force their hands. Not until the Suharto regime, rotting from within, began to lose its grip did Australia perform its backflip over East Timor.

But of course Jakarta also has its West Papua problem. I have discussed this before, but after 40 West Papuans fleeing the oppression of the Indonesian military successfully gained asylum here, Jakarta embarked on a course of noise and bluster, successfully intimidating a supine Howard Government to accept an Indonesian-dictated revision of our asylum laws.

The year thus far was capped by the signing of a fresh treaty with Indonesia - the previous 1995 agreement, the crowning achievement of years of grovelling by Hawke, Hayden, Keating and Gareth Evans, was dumped in a huff by Jakarta over East Timor.

That treaty was basically a collection of meaningless platitudes with no substantive provisions; so is the new one: only the content of the platitudes is different. Both treaties boil down to: we recognise each other’s borders, and we will consult and co-operate when it suits us both.

Meanwhile several terrorists (involved in the Bali bombings) and Australian drug smugglers (caught in the Bali Nine sting) are on death row in Indonesia awaiting execution by firing squad. Australia has a bipartisan policy against the use of capital punishment; where will this policy lead us in these cases? Do we ask Jakarta to spare Amrozi and his ilk to try and save the drug smugglers? Certainly any inconsistencies in our position will be gleefully seized upon by those countries who still think that judicial killings are a good thing.

Relations with the Pacific

In 2000 the then Solomons Island Government requested assistance from Australia. It wanted troops to help head off a coup and stabilise the country. In its wisdom, the Howard Government declined the request. The feared coup duly took place, the country slid into chaos, numbers of people died violently and we eventually had to cobble together RAMSI (Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands) to try and clean up the mess to which Howard’s earlier neglect had contributed. The rest, as they say, is history and now we are confronted with a complete failure of policy in relations with the Solomons.

This has had spillover effects in relations with Papua New Guinea because of its involvement in the flight of the wanted Solomons minister, Julian Moti, from PNG to escape extradition to Australia. The government is of course right to be outraged at what appears to have an illegal act under both PNG and Australian law, but banning the PNG prime minister from visiting Australia hardly seems a constructive or even appropriate response.

Fiji is showing renewed signs of instability this year, with important issues only shelved. The Fiji military has been pursuing an anti-Australian line of rhetoric, including unfounded accusations of covert illegal shipments of personnel and equipment. This caps off a sorry year in our overall relations with Melanesia, which may yet get worse as corrupt and failing regimes resort to bluster and false indignation to fend off pressure for reform.

Tonga is Polynesian, not Melanesian, but its long-established monarchical regime is under pressure from a pro-democracy movement. Recent serious rioting has led to the despatch of a force led by New Zealand and including Australian military and police to restore order but, one hopes, not to help the monarchy suppress its pro-democracy opponents.

Wider international issues

If ever ideology blinded a government to a vital issue, it did so with this government to climate change. The refusal to ratify Kyoto, the niggardly allocations to alternative sustainable energy research and developments, the devotion to fossil fuels while simultaneously throwing the nuclear dead fish into the ring (safe clean nuclear energy? Don’t make me laugh - unless fusion power is ever realised, that is), all these things show clearly where this government’s sympathies, preoccupations and fundamental mindset lie.

Being the only major western Kyoto holdouts, Australia and the US have suspect environmental credentials, which probably didn’t help us fight the Japanese and Nordic whalers at the International Whaling Commission. Moreover, our refusal to accept the new realities only delays the day when real global action is taken to protect the climate. Let’s hope the blindness of the conservatives hasn’t cost us too much time.

The case of David Hicks is a national disgrace which has now been taken up by Amnesty International, which used to have to lobby for the freedom of people like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent years in Soviet gulags. Whatever Hicks has done, it is clear (on the government’s own admission) that he has broken no Australian law. Yet he has been held without trial on a US base in (at least) questionable conditions for nearly five years with no prospect of anything better than a military tribunal where normal standards of proof and rules of evidence do not apply.

I thought such things happened in Saddam’s Iraq, China or the ex-USSR, not in the democratic US with the full support of our own government. No wonder they don’t criticise the Chinese anymore. Even Tony Blair had the gumption to get his citizens out of the Guantanamo gulag.

Nor is Hicks’ case the only Australian departure from civilised international human rights standards. Our post-Tampa immigration policies have been condemned by a wide range of national and international legal authorities, and have led to such excesses as the illegal detention of Australian citizens by our own immigration authorities and, incredibly, the forcible deportation of a citizen to the Philippines. And of course John Howard’s mantra, “we decide who comes to Australia and how,” sounds hollow indeed after he allowed the Indonesians to dictate revised asylum-seeker entry procedures.

We are fortunate that - alarmist breast beatings from a security establishment on the lookout for more funds notwithstanding - we are one of the most secure countries in the world. We are threatened principally by terrorists, and for the foreseeable future need not fear military attack, invasion or attempted conquest. But though our immediate region holds few threats other than terror cells, it does present many problems.

Until an Australian government recognises that adventures like Iraq, as with Vietnam, are lethal quagmires, and that - with the exception of wider co-operation against terrorism - our security priorities lie mainly in our region, we play our regional role with one hand tied behind our backs.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

16 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Until June 2002 Gary Brown was a Defence Advisor with the Parliamentary Information and Research Service at Parliament House, Canberra, where he provided confidential advice and research at request to members and staffs of all parties and Parliamentary committees, and produced regular publications on a wide range of defence issues. Many are available at here.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Gary Brown

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of Gary Brown
Article Tools
Comment 16 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy