Do we need a military alliance with anybody?

The moment I’ve been dreading. George brought his ne’re-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I’ll call Kinsley over at the "New Republican" and see if they will have him as a contributing author or something. That looks like easy work.

This is an extract from the diary of Ronald Reagan dated May 17, 1986. The “George” referred to is George Herbert Bush (then Vice-President) and the “ne’re-do-well son” was, of course, John Howard’s mate, George Walker Bush. Reagan used the word “dreading”. He must have appraised Dubya to be a proper ninny.

Reagan, by the way, was the president who seems to have reserved his important decisions for those days his wife’s spiritual friends advised her were his lucky days. Before Reagan there was the amoral Richard Nixon, a weeping drug addict who was close to being off his head.

The more matey our leaders are with the people in the White House, the more easily we end up signing alliances followed by orders for American weaponry. It is not in our interests to have a prime minister as a purring cat on the lap of a US president who is obsessed with his sense of righteousness and who is in command of a military obsessed with its sense of righteousness.

The road to Iraq

As reality is full of hidden variables, all of the information needed to arrive at a solution to a complex problem can never be there on the table. And yet, if the information is incomplete, the outcome of a decision is significantly determined by luck.

So said Edward de Bono who should be sitting-in at the US Cabinet meetings and reporting back to the members on the distortions in their thinking.

Bush and his inner circle saw with crystal clarity a logical path in front of them. They saw that the events of September 11, 2001 were a golden opportunity to get directly involved in the Middle East’s oil production. After quickly finishing with the basics in Afghanistan, the bigger plan was to move into setting up a US-friendly government in oil-rich Iraq. The plan didn’t work as the planners didn’t know what they were doing.

Riding on the glory of knocking-off the Taliban, this illegal invader was met with weak condemnation by the rest of the world. Now we all know the outcome. The “liberation” of Iraq has exchanged one set of problems with another. And, the Taliban are back.

Fundamental to American foreign policy is its gigantic war machine. That country would not get into its adventures if that awesome power was not sitting there waiting to be used. Where it is now going wrong for the US is that her war machine is obsolete.

In spite of more bombs dropped on Indo-China (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) than in World War II, the soldiers with thongs on their feet won the war. Likewise, the US will be defeated in the Middle East because the enemy, by melting-in with the population, does not fight a high-tech conventional war on the invader’s terms.

When we joined the Coalition of the Willing, we forgot about our 10 years in Vietnam

As we in Australia have continued to re-elect the party which, when in government, got us into the Vietnam mess, what were we actually forgetting?

• That ANZUS placed no obligation on us to join the US in Vietnam - but our “mateship” did;
• that we jumped in when even the UK knew better than to get involved;
• that when the regulars were not enough, we resorted to conscription;
• that we lost 500 dead and many more were mentally or physically permanently damaged;
• that the Pentagon Papers revealed that we and the American public had been fed lies from the start; and
• that we lost the war and, to add to the absurdity, we are now welcomed as tourists.

Vietnam was the first war in which it cost $1 million to kill one enemy soldier.

The cost of defending the indefensible

Our alliance with the US is a pressure upon us to arm expensively and inappropriately. It is clear from what is occurring in Iraq that high-tech systems are ineffective when the enemy is elusive. We are also incompetent in the high-tech marketplace. We have submarines which after rebuilding still cannot do the job and we have obsolete navy helicopters purchased as state-of-the-art.

Without counting the surveillance and other aircraft on order, we are talking of spending $22 billion just on new fighter planes. That is enough money to save dozens of our dying country towns. We have lost many of our F111s in training crashes, and the new fighter planes cost about $US170 million apiece: should such high-tech wizardry be out of contention for a nation the size of Australia?

New Zealand pulled out of ANZUS in 1985. Since then NZ has been able to cut back its defence spending to that appropriate for the situation. On a population basis, we should be spending five times as much as NZ on defence. We actually spend 15 times as much (and that discrepancy is set to grow).

So far the military support has been one way. Our guaranteed protection by our great and powerful friend has not been tested. It may turn out to be no more than what Britain’s was in 1942 - “Sorry, our hands are full. Find somebody else”.

It is a myth that the US saved Australia in the Battle of the Coral Sea. After being attacked herself, the US declared war on Japan. This meant meeting the enemy head-on at every opportunity - including the Coral Sea. We have since learned that Japan had no intention of occupying Australia as she did not have the resources.

We largely imagined that we were vulnerable in 1942. We are certainly vulnerable to being crippled as a functioning society right now.

Our communication systems can be shut down by cyber-terrorists. If our power supply is knocked out by cheap bombs in backpacks, we can no longer feed ourselves after the refrigerated food spoils. With pipelines knocked out, our hygiene ends with the last toilet flush. Traffic jams will bring all movement on roads out of the cities to a stop.

In panic we will turn on each other. And, while we disintegrate as a society, the Super Hornets will be still in their hangers. So - why are we fantasising about “air combat capability”?

Our best plan of defence is not to antagonise other nations (or religions) by having military alliances with those nations they don’t trust.