I retired from my former profession, as an Australian diplomat and foreign policy analyst, in 1998 after 30 years’ service. My final postings were as Ambassador to Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia (1991–94) and to Cambodia (1994–97).
In those years I was proud to represent Australia. Now I am a contrarian writer. The present government’s international security settings are damaging both to Australia’s security and to the personal security of ordinary Australians. They have undermined Australia’s international reputation, and misled public understanding on these matters. The government’s deliberate cruelty towards asylum seekers who arrive by boat—at the border protection stage, in detention, and finally in the limbo of Temporary Protection Visas—shames Australia’s conscience.
Australia’s national direction and tone have changed radically since 1996. The former bipartisan foreign policy consensus that suited Australian interests, subtly balancing Australia between the US alliance and the Asian region, no longer exists. We have security and trade agendas, but we no longer have a real engagement agenda towards our region.
Since 2001, Australia has become umbilically attached to the present Washington administration. It is a sad accident that the Howard and Bush administrations coincide. With any other US president, Howard’s unbalanced foreign policy tendencies would have been contained. With any other Australian prime minister, Australia would have kept a cordial but prudent distance from Bush’s Washington.
The causes of the attack on the Twin Towers had nothing to do with Australia; they lay in decades of troubled American engagement with intractable Middle Eastern problems. The attack did not jeopardise Australian national security, or the personal security of individual Australians. John Howard achieved this himself, by plunging Australia voluntarily into a global security cauldron where we had no need to be. After our government’s military partnership in the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Australia is now tied firmly to George Bush’s unilateral interventionism. Our security professionals now worry, alongside their American counterparts, about ‘homeland security’. Six years ago this would have been inconceivable. Now it is real.
Contrast Australia’s situation with Canada’s or New Zealand’s. Both maintain good international citizen credentials that Australia has lost. New Zealand, without sacrificing essential bilateral interests, keeps a safe distance from Washington. A perceived decency and modesty in New Zealand’s international profile protects New Zealanders. Yes, some New Zealanders died with Australians in the 2002 Bali bombing. But the major targets there were Australians, the first collateral casualties of Howard’s national security policies.
The Prime