Talk presented in Workshop 1: Unilateralism and sycophancy - Australian support for US global strategy, at the Now We The People conference, University of Technology, Sydney, 23.8.03


Andrew Wilkie

Thank you, and can I start by saying I've quite enjoyed today, until Damien mentioned Andrew Bolt, and in a few words he managed to ruin my entire day.

My aim is to offer some brief insights into Australia's alliance relationship with the US from an insider's perspective. Now I'm going to quite intentionally try to look at both sides of this issue. Some of it you mightn't agree with, some of it might be a little controversial, but I think it's important in a forum like this that you don't just default to your position, that you look at both sides and make an informed decision. So I'm going to do that.

Before I get into that I just want to say one thing: I'm not a peacenik. I'm not a peacenik. I'm not a peacenik. Is that the right word to use? I want to make that quite clear. Yes, I am a retired infantry lieutenant-colonel, I see a role for the use of force in very, very limited circumstances, so long as it is the option of last resort. And it may well be that we would have had to go to war with Iraq some day. The issue with this war which we've just has is that that wasn't the time, it wasn't the time to go to war at that time.

I also want to emphasise that I think that intelligence has a legitimate role in national security, particularly when you are dealing with transnational threats such as terrorism and international crime and so on, and trying to understand other cultures; I mean, intelligence doesn't just equip you to wage war, it help you, if used properly, to prevent war. It ensures that your understandings of other countries and different people is detailed and decisions are well informed. So I encourage you not to just lurch to an anti- position on these issues.

Now I'll start by saying that some form of relationship with the US is worthwhile. In general terms I think that it is unavoidable in this increasingly globalised community of nations, it is increasingly unavoidable that we do establish bilateral and multilateral relations with as many countries as possible. And in fact in this period of globalisation I think multilateral forums, particularly the United Nations, are more important than ever, and multilateral agreements - the sort of agreements the US doesn't have any interest in any more, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and so on - this bilateral and multilateral relationship is more important than ever.

I think in quite specific terms too that the Australia US alliance reflects out common interests and values. I think most of us probably would agree that Americans are very similar to us in many, many ways; we certainly share a long and common history. We need to be very careful here not to confuse a discussion about the alliance with our feelings about the current US Administration; I think that's a mistake we make very often. I think the current relationship also provides benefits to Australia, especially on the security and intelligence fronts.

Now, on the security front, I think there is value in the fact that we believe we might get some military assistance from the US at some point in the future. I think there is some advantage that we are privileged through technologies that are denied most other countries…in fact we are in a very privileged position. And hence, say the joint strike fighter - I mean the option to buy that, which we appear to have taken up without even seeing the thing - that's not an opportunity that is available to other countries. And we get access to logistic support. There was a lot of discussion about the US in East Timor, but the fact of the matter is the United States provided some logistic support that was critical…
[inaudible…talks of the benefit of access to US military support…]
To maintain the same level of defence capability we would need to spend billions of dollars, on top of the billions we spend already.

And there's also the intelligence relationship. It's hard for me to quantify just how valuable the intelligence relationship is other than to say it is very valuable. We, along with the United Kingdom and Canada, have a very privileged access to the US intelligence machine, which generally…enhances our national security, allows us to know what people are up to and so on.

Having said that, it's not without its faults. The intelligence relationshpip with the US is very very valuable, but it's not like Hollywood would have us believe. Now I'm obviously not in a position to talk about specific capabilities, but it's not as good as Hollywood would have you believe, there aren't satellites going down the road behind trucks reading number plates and things…there are huge intelligence gaps sometimes, and I think this business in Iraq has shown us just how inadequate intelligence is. The fact that for years, certainly since 1991, an enormous intelligence collection effort went in to one relatively small country but yet there were such big intelligence gaps on what was going on in Iraq…and the fact that while I have blamed the government very much over Iraq I've also acknowledged the intelligence agencies themselves did overrate the threat to some degree - and they have something to answer for. So that I think illustrates the inadequacies still of the intelligence agencies.

I think also that the alliance relationship provides Australia with some leverage in Washington. In particular, because of our responsibility for some intelligence functions in South East Asia, we have some influence with Washington, because of what we provide them, it's not all one way. And the fact that we host joint bases; notwithstanding the arguments for and against bases that we've gone through, it does at least give us a little bit of leverage in Washington, the fact that we do allow them to use our real estate.

OK, that was that. Now some of you might have been uncomfortable with what I went through just then, and I'm not saying I endorse or don't endorse…but I just wanted to run through some of the arguments for and against the alliance.

Unfortunately, I believe that under this government [I've now changed shirts] there is a belief that the alliance is much more valuable than it really is, and there is clearly a preparedness to support the alliance at any cost. How else to explain the almost blind following of the United States into the war on Iraq, when most countries in the world decided that it was not justified. How else to explain the fact that we, and very few other countries, were prepared to go along blindly with the US the way that we did?

And I think that this government's almost blind support for the US at any cost is at the expense of the other pillars of our national security, in particular, support for the United Nations, and in particular regional engagement. There is no doubt that Australia's relationship with the UN - or with the countries in the United Nations - is diminished because of our position on Iraq. And I don't think there is any doubt that our position with some of the countries in our region is diminished because of our support for the US over Iraq. And I think that is a real problem for us now, that we've got to remedy.

So I think this is pretty dumb, the position the current government has taken as far as the alliance relationship. I've singled out four main reasons why I think the current alliance relationship is dumb - that's probably not a good word…why I think it is wrong.

I think the current alliance relationship undermines our sovereignty, because it is tying us directly to another country's strategic interests. In the case of Iraq, it has tied us to the US's attempts to stamp its authority on the Middle East, and to safeguard its global ascendancy more generally.

Secondly, I think the current alliance relationship undercuts our democracy, because it effectively shifts decision-making from Canberra to Washington, where decision-making has obviously been hijacked by the extreme right. And of course, we've shifted our decision-making to Washington, where we don't actually know what future decisions will be. I mean, it's uncharted territory. Some of the few certainties about the future are that the US's belief in pre-emption, and the US's belief in unilateralism or virtual unilateralism, and he difficulties of us disentangling ourselves from that future US adventurism if I can call it that.

I think the third problem with the current alliance relationship is that it actually risks our security, because it presupposes the reliability of the US security guarantees, which I don't think you can presuppose. Because at the end of the day, the US administration - any administration, not just in the US - will make decisions based on its national interest, and we cannot be guaranteed that our national interests in the future will always be synchronised with the US national interest. It wasn't that long ago - I think it was during Confrontation, have I got my history right here? - that the US was really siding with Jakarta.

Plus, I think there is a dramatically increasing cost to this alliance, a cost of us wanting to remain interoperable, for example, with our military forces. For example, the command, control, communications and intelligence, and see-through-eye systems, the joint strike fighter and the fact that we appear to be prepared to support their theatre missile defence system - they will all come with enormous cost, enormous cost. So you've got to start now cross-referencing that enormous future cost with the argument a few minutes ago about the great financial saving, and we're slowly starting to cancel one out with the other.

My fourth one is that the current alliance arrangement I think risks our broader interests, in particular our economic interests, in that it is encouraging the US to presuppose Australian subservience, i.e. they now take us for granted. Our strong desire to get close to them, to get leverage with them, has got us so close that we've lost our leverage, if that makes sense.

OK. I think that Australian participation in the invasion of Iraq was support for the alliance gone mad.
[laughter erupts]

I'll be very quick with the rest of the notes I've got here. I think it was the alliance gone mad. I think that Australian democracy was seriously wounded over the Iraq business, not least because the PM was more beholden to Washington than to the Australian community. I think that Australia's place in the world, and especially the region, has been seriously diminished. Regional suspicions of Australia have been heightened because of our too close alliance with the US.

I think that Australian interests in particular are now at greater risk of terrorist attack, and I think that the government's continuing denials of this are dishonest and unforgivable. At least the head of ASIO was honest enough the other day to acknowledge that we are at greater risk of terrorist attack because of our alliance relationship. And I think there is a very high likelihood that at least some of our military forces are going to be stuck in Iraq indefinitely, because the government is keeping a very low profile about the fact that there are still hundreds of Australians stuck in Iraq. And the fact that we have fortunately been casualty-free may not continue that way indefinitely.

I'm going to propose a sensible alternative to the current arrangement. Now you can probably imagine what this is, because I obviously see advantages and I obviously see disadvantaged, so you're probably expecting not a minimalist, but a sort of middle-of-the-road position, and that's what I'm going to offer you.

· I think that a sensible alternative would be for Australia to develop an independent foreign policy based on Australia's interests, not the US's. That's radical. What was the word used earlier this morning? Hysterical.

· But for Australia to continue to support within an alliance framework, but for only so long as that is the desire of the majority of Australians.

· Australia in moving to this more independent position, to be prepared to take some setbacks in the short term, but in the longer term to establish a much stronger relationship with the US, based on confidence, trust and mutual respect. I think that we would have more leverage with the US if we had more influence in our region. We're cutting off the nose to spite the face.

· I think that aspects such as the intelligence relationship will help to preserve the existing security guarantees.

· I acknowledge that the trade relationship could suffer, but since when should trade be hostage to issues such as signing up to an illegal and unjustified war?

· And I think changes to the alliance can be offset by enhancement of the UN, including security guarantees.

Thank you.

Andrew Wilkie has become better known since he left the Office of National Assessments than he was while he was there.

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