AUSTRALIA IS ON ITS OWN

America is now an unreliable ally

https://cdn.creatureandcoagency.com/uploads/2017/02/Australia-facts-1.jpg

Michael’s Curious World investigates history and other curious things. Become a free or paid subscriber for increasing levels of access to posts, the archive of past posts, my ‘Newbies Guide to Substack’ and to support this curious journey.

This post is free, so enjoy and I hope you find it interesting.

Australia is stuck in the middle, with our security tied to the USA, but our economy tied to China.

This isn’t a new dilemma, but it’s increasingly urgent. Our politicians have long argued that Australia doesn’t have to choose between America and China, but the fact is it increasingly clear we will have to make a choice - and soon.

Like a Big Red kangaroo, we are bounding along in a sparse landscape, while predators lurk in the undergrowth, waiting to pounce.

This could actually be a good thing for our maturing as a nation, if we can outgrow the instinct to behave like the colony of a great power.

Problem is, under Trump America has become an unreliable ally, so we can no longer depend solely on the USA for our security.

Plus, Trump’s America no longer upholds the ideals of freedom and liberty which Australians hold dear. The re-election swing to the Albanese government showed Australians are moving away from America and closer to Europe and other democracies.

When legal residents of the US are being kidnapped off the streets and deported to foreign torture prisons, US citizens are being arrested for criticising the orange dictator, a judge is arrested for upholding the law about a person who appeared before her, and Congress refuses to do its duty to uphold the US Constitution, then America is no longer a functioning democracy under the rule of law. All these things have happened in the last 100 days.

Historically, Australia depended on our links with the founding power the United Kingdom for so long, but then Singapore fell and Australians were forced to accept that Churchill’s Britain no longer considered our security to be a top priority.

Labor Prime Minister John Curtin had to insist that Australian troops came home to defend Australia, rather than being diverted to Burma to defend Britain’s doomed colony.

Curtin then had to cast aside the colonial ties with Britain and turn to America, asking it to defend freedom in the Pacific.

Fortunately, America responded to our appeal, mostly because the Japanese High Command made the strategically foolish decision to attack America’s base at Pearl Harbour, which brought America into the war, and sent General Macarthur and American troops to Brisbane. But the stress of this pivot from the UK to America, and of the waging of the desperate war to defend Australia, broke Curtin’s health and he died in office.

The question now is, would America come to the aid of Australia again today? Would it defend Taiwan from China? Or would Trump just say it was not America’s problem?

Trump’s transactionalism and instinctive isolationism make it questionable. He might want to dominate the Americas, but seems unwilling to go beyond that, as shown by his reluctance to continue supporting Ukraine against the Russian invaders and his plan to begin withdrawing American troops from Western Europe later this year. Under Trump, America is turning inwards.

The other question is if American could actually defend Australia or Taiwan, assuming it wanted too. America’s record of colonial military achievements in the last century is very mixed. The high-point was the defeat of Nazi Germany in Western Europe. But since then the record is less impressive. South Korea was a stalemate resulting in a truce that continues even today. Vietnam was a disaster. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein was toppled, but Iraq left in a shambles. Afghanistan was a humiliating defeat. Ironically, the Taliban was formed by prisoners held in an American gaol in Iraq who, after being released, went on to outlast their former captors in Afghanistan.

It is one thing to wage war on your own territory, as Ukraine is doing, where your logistic resources are close and your citizens will fight to the death for their freedom. It is quite a different and more difficult thing to have to project power over a long distance, as America discovered in South Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, and as it would have to do if it was defending Taiwan or Australia. Bombing some distant targets is a lot easier than fighting a distant ground war.

The longer such a conflict lasts, the harder it is to maintain the effort, and the more likely it is the closer force will prevail. Ukraine is proving this now, as Russian forces suffer irreplaceable losses and their economy shrinks because of a war which has gone on for more than three years. Similarly, if China invaded Taiwan, China could be much more patient in fighting a war on its doorstep than distant America could be in sustaining that conflict across the Pacific.

In America’s case, there are good economic reasons to doubt how long it could sustain a major overseas war. The American economy is staggering under a massive and rising $36 trillion in debt (in comparison, Australia’s debt is $1.1 trillion), and America’s credit rating has been downgraded as investors become nervous about its long-term viability, particularly in any trade war with China.

So, now Australians face a big choice.

Do we stick with our security relationship with the USA, despite America having a President who doesn’t seem to value it, and didn’t even know what AUKUS meant?

Or do we go where our economy has already gone, with about 30% of our exports going to China even though China is a dictatorship, just as America is becoming a failing democracy?

Or is there a realistic third choice? Do we even have to choose, or can we stay independent? Are these real choices? Do we actually have any choice?

Can America’s so-called ‘pivot to the Pacific’ even work, or is China inevitably now the dominant power in Asia?

Can Australia stand apart from the USA and pivot our future into Asia and Western Europe, while retaining the best things about our heritage, such as genuine democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights?

Can we cobble together a new free trade agreement with the European Union, which has 450 million people, compared with only 340 million in the USA? Prime Minister Albanese discussed the proposed free trade agreement with European Commission President Von Der Leyen over the weekend and the reports suggest the remaining obstacles are only minor disputes about product names. Europe could be a more lucrative market than America for Australian exports.

Can we pivot our trade to ASEAN, linking with Indonesia, which Albanese made his first overseas stop, and which will soon be the fifth-largest economy in the world? Can we combine that with trade with India, soon to be the fourth-largest economy? About a million Australians have an Indian background, just as 5% of Australians have a Chinese background, so the links with Asia are already large.

If we combine Indonesia, India, the rest of ASEAN, the European Union, South Korea and Japan, plus our trade with China, is that enough? After all, only 5% of Australia’s exports currently go to the USA, and our main trade relationship is US investors parking money their in Australia, so do we even need America?

Is this the dawn of a new future for Australia, one in which we no longer seek to be the junior partner of a great power?

If we are now on our own, can we actually develop the political maturity to go our own way, not depending on sheltering under the umbrella of any other country?

This will be a big challenge to the outlook of older, conservative Australians, particularly Liberal-National voters, who have grown up used to the idea of sheltering under an American umbrella. This was shown when the Morrison Government signed the AUKUS deal with the US and UK, which was like wanting to have not just one, but two, Big Brothers supporting our security. It screamed a mindset of instinctive colonial subservience.

Just as the loss of the British umbrella caused Curtin to pivot Australia to America in World War II, could the unreliability of the American umbrella under Trump cause Albanese to lead Australians to pivot towards focussing on Asian and Western European links?

Instead of trying to shelter under a Big Brother, is Australia ready to stand up as a mature independent adult nation? We’re about to find out.