Howard's war and peace

With a Federal election fast approaching, thoughtful citizens will be weighing up the pros and cons of changing their government.

In evaluating a government’s performance in any area (here I will be looking at security and defence issues), one has the advantage of the record. It is harder to assess an Opposition, especially one that has been out of office for 11 years. Here I am attempting the easier task: holding a government accountable for outcomes (I will discuss the Opposition in my next column).

I would like readers to consider seriously the following responses by the Prime Minister to questions on two recent editions of the ABC’s 7:30 Report. The first is:

Now, we're not perfect, we're not full of ourselves, but I think we've been a government well above average competence.

I am not qualified to judge the extent to which Australia’s economic performance in recent years has been the result of government policies, of changes made by earlier governments or of trends beyond government control. Others can say whether Howard’s claim of economic competence is as justified by the evidence as he seeks to suggest. I can, however, say something about his government’s competence on national security matters.

This brings me to my second Howard interview response (actually the first, in date). This was a response to claims that Mr Howard is dishonest:

I'm not dishonest. There are many examples thrown up by my critics in relation to that but let me take one of the most egregious of all and that is weapons of mass destruction in relation to the war in Iraq.

I believe there were weapons of mass destruction because that's what the intelligence said … To say that I lied to the Australian people on weapons of mass destruction simply because I stated a view based on intelligence, and justified Australia's involvement in the military operation based on that, is not to say we took the country to war based on a lie.

I am not suggesting that on this matter at least John Howard is a liar. Quite the contrary, I believe him. But think for a moment what it means if Howard’s statements are true.

It means his government went to war by mistake. So, of course, did Bush and Blair and in reality if Bush hadn’t made his mistake first, the other two would not have made theirs. Now governments, like any other human institution, can make mistakes. But they must be held accountable for these mistakes. The worse the mistake, the more important accountability becomes.

In fact, Australian conservatives have bad form when it comes to ill-starred foreign military adventures - remember Indochina. In the nearly four decades since that disaster, it seems our Tories have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. We are now complicit in the illegal invasion and conquest of a foreign country - by mistake. We share in the huge responsibility for the disgusting post-Saddam carnage on all sides, for the dollar costs, for the enormous damage to the credibility and reputation of the west in the Middle East - and all by mistake.

The Iraqi debacle is certainly the most spectacular of Howard’s security policy failures. What of the rest of its record?

This too is in part a consequence of Iraq, because that black hole has been sucking up scarce resources which should be available for more useful endeavours. The deteriorating security position in Afghanistan, where al-Qaida and the Taliban continue to rack up successes, is at least partly due to the drain on Coalition resources in Iraq.

More significant for Australia has been the conservatives’ neglect of Australia’s own region. One result has been the continued decline of Papua New Guinea; another, the inadequate deployments to East Timor which let the lid off serious internal pressures there.

Another was the shambles in the Solomons, which need never have happened if the government had not refused a request for aid from that country made in 2000. Because it did refuse, the Solomons descended into chaos and armed gangsterism and, three years and many deaths later, a far larger and more costly effort had to be made to restore a semblance of public order. Today, of course, a Minister in the Solomons Government is wanted in Australia on child-sex charges having escaped from custody in PNG, possibly with the connivance of PNG’s Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Commodore Bainimarama, the latest illegally-appointed ruler of Fiji, continues to thumb his nose at Australia.

“Border protection” is a Howard government mantra. But now it appears that, quite aside from the scandalous instances of Australian citizens being illegally detained or even deported from their own country, this policy has been appallingly cost-ineffective. The so-called “Pacific” solution - which involves bribing needy neighbourhood governments to house asylum-seekers on their territory - has cost upwards of $1 billion, whereas to process the same number of people in Australia would have cost less than a tenth of this amount:

… so far the cost of the Pacific Solution is $500,000 per person to process fewer than 1,700 asylum seekers. And yet there’s clear evidence that it’s cheaper, more effective and humane to process asylum seekers here on the mainland. It makes no economic sense whatsoever to house a detainee offshore at a cost of $1,830 per day when it can be done here on mainland Australia for as little as $238 per day, according to the latest estimate by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

Nor is this mere fiscal carping. While Howard was busily whipping up xenophobia over a few hundred asylum-seeker unfortunates, his government’s eye clearly went off the main game in border protection for Australia. Inattention to customs and quarantine has now resulted in equine influenza escaping the very facility intended to contain such diseases. We have good cause to be grateful that what escaped was not something nastier.

Howard must be credited with recognising in 1999 that it was high time to ditch the policy of supporting Indonesian rule in East Timor. He was able to do so because of the internal disorder which accompanied and followed the fall of Suharto’s regime. He also weathered the difficult political relations of the following couple of years, and eventually established a working relationship with the civilian regime in Jakarta.

The Government distinguished itself and won well-deserved kudos for Australia in its rapid and substantial response to the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. In Indonesian Aceh particularly, Australian aid has been important from the first response until today. Nine Defence personnel died when their helicopter crashed while on this aid work.

But gratitude in international affairs is often short-lived, and relations with Indonesia remain a difficult challenge. Howard’s grovelling to Jakarta over the affair of West Papuan refugees showed that it soon fell into the grip of the notorious “Jakarta lobby” mentality, which has distorted policy for decades and was responsible for permitting the original Indonesian invasion and conquest of East Timor.

In blithe disregard of the risk that Indonesian security harbours covert Islamist operatives, it has resumed co-operation with the notorious Kopassus: a powerful security force, mainstay of the former military dictatorship and responsible for numerous human rights outrages, which still accepts but a limited degree of control by the civilian regime and which it is dangerous to provoke.

One area in which the Government has an admittedly difficult task is managing relationships with China and the United States. It has to convince the Americans that we remain staunch allies, but the Chinese are suspicious to a degree approaching paranoia that Washington is trying to strategically “contain” them by building ties with South Korea, Japan, Australia and states in South-East Asia.

Thus far, the government has walked this tightrope with some assurance. But the rope will begin to jiggle seriously if US - Chinese relations ever deteriorate, and walking it then will certainly require great competence if we are not to be sucked into a north Asian war over Taiwan. After Indochina and Iraq, two first-rank blunders, I would worry if the conservatives happen to be in government here at the time.

Under Howard, indeed under conservative regimes generally, Australia has behaved less like the US ally it ought to be, than as a fawning satellite state. Almost every one of Bush’s worst blunders, not just Iraq, has been enthusiastically endorsed by Howard. Advocacy of pre-emptive military operations based (like Iraq) solely on “intelligence”, of a “deputy sheriff” regional role for Australia, and unilateral cancellation of the important anti-ballistic missile (ABM) Treaty to facilitate Bush’s mad pursuit of “missile defence”, are among the things to which Howard has lent Australia’s name.

The proper role of an ally is to support an attacked partner and to advise that partner if it is about to make a mistake, not to leap into the abyss if the partner insists on doing so. We are not obliged to slavishly follow US policy, nor to join it in unjustified and unwinnable wars, but this truth has escaped Howard all his political life.

My criticism of our support for “missile defence” is stringent because now it is costing us large sums of defence dollars and potential security capability. This is so because Howard has ordered the so-called Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD), three advanced US-designed warships that can be fitted with radars and weapons which turn them into part of a US “missile defence” system. These expensive capabilities are unnecessary for Australia, and they come at the cost of more relevant capabilities that have to be deferred or not acquired at all.

Whether the government is economically competent is a matter for the economically literate. But in national security clearly it is not.

It has wasted a billion dollars on its pointless “Pacific solution”, illegally detained and deported citizens in the name of border protection and allowed equine influenza into Australia.

Though behaving admirably over East Timorese independence and during the tsunami catastrophe, it soon resumed grovelling to Jakarta and has taken the incredible risk of allowing the notorious Kopassus to share anti-terrorist security information. Its record suggests that as it juggles the US and Chinese elements in our security environment we had better pray Washington and Beijing never have a confrontation. Instead of being a responsible US ally, Howard’s policies have portrayed Australia as a slavish satellite: worse, a discredited conservative himself, he has shackled us to another - the atrocious George W. Bush.

All this bad enough. But conservatives will object that it’s just the usual progressive litany. Well, maybe it is and maybe not. But here’s something that’s a fact.

John Howard’s Government took us to war, invaded, helped conquer and occupy a foreign country and bogged us down there. And on his own admission, it was all by mistake - not his mistake, he says, but it was his decision. We have responsible government in Australia and responsibility time is coming up fast.

The Indochina mistake cost us 500 dead and all the ongoing misery and expenses.

We have been lucky (and wisely careful in the field) so far in Iraq; the next time the conservatives make one of their war-or-peace “mistakes” we might not get off so lightly. When we elect a Federal government, the greatest power we give it is that of choosing peace or war: the people who sent us to Iraq should never again be entrusted with this power.