Dispatches From The Edge
Australia & the Pacific Wall
By Conn Hallinan
Some 230 miles north of Perth, at Geraldton on
Australia's west coast, the Bush Administration is
building a base. When completed, it will control two
geostationary satellites that feed intelligence to U.S.
military forces in Asia and the Middle East.
Most Americans know nothing about Geraldton or the U.S.
submarine communications base at North Cape and the
U.S. missile-tracking center at Pine Gap. But there is
growing concern Down Under that Prime Minster John
Howard's conservative government is weaving a network
of alliances and U.S. bases that may one day put
Australians in harm's way. As Australian Defense Force
Academy Visiting Fellow told the Sydney Morning Herald,
once the Geraldton base is up and running, it will be
'almost impossible for Australia to be fully neutral or
stand back from any war in which the U.S. was
involved.'
Indeed, that may already be the case.
Australia, along with Japan, India, the Philippines and
South Korea, signed on to the U.S. anti-ballistic
missile system (ABM), which China fears is aimed at
neutralizing its modest fleet of 21 intercontinental
ballistic missiles.
On Mar. 12 Australia signed a Joint Declaration on
Security Cooperation (JDSC) with Japan, that according
to Richard Tanter, a senior research associate at the
Nautilus Institute who writes widely on Japanese
Security policy, is an 'anti-China U.S.-dominated
multilateral alliance system' that 'confirms the
already accelerating tendencies for both Japan and
Australia to militarize their foreign policies.'
Certainly both nations have been flexing their muscles
of late.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has put a strong
nationalist spin on Tokyo's foreign policy that has
raised hackles from Seoul to Beijing. Japan has also
sent troops to Iraq and recently declared it intends to
repeal Article 9 of its post-war constitution. Article
9 renounces war and rejects 'force as a means of
settling international disputes.' Japan has the fifth
largest navy in the world and spends over $40 billion a
year on defense.
Australia, whose defense budget is slightly more than
half of Japan's, also has troops in Iraq, as well as
the Solomon Islands, East Timor, and Tonga.
Last August, Howard told the Parliament that Australia
needs to prepare for an even greater role in monitoring
and assisting troubled nations in the Pacific region
(Financial Times, 9/15/06). The Prime Minister has also
adopted some of the rhetoric of the Bush
Administration, calling for 'preemptive' strikes
against 'terrorist groups' in regional neighbors.
Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S., have moved
forcefully to assert their authority in the myriad
island nations that make up much of the South Pacific.
Using a combination of troops, aid and control over
transportation, the three countries dominate the
politics of places like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands,
the Solomon's, Fiji and Samoa.
Many of these island nations are almost totally
dependent on either international aid or money earned
from renting out their land for military bases. Some 60
percent of the Marshall Islands' GDP comes from U.S.
aid and the 50-year 'Pact of Free Association' that
allows the U.S. to use Kwajalein Atoll for missile
tests. The U.S. only got the pact by engineering a
change in the Marshal Island's constitution that allows
a simple majority of legislators to okay the
Association. Before this change, Marshallese voters had
rejected the pact eight different times.
When Solomon Island's Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare
accused Australia's High Commissioner of 'unwarranted
interventionism' in the Republic's affairs, Howard's
Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, warned ominously
'the last thing the Solomon Island government can
afford is to get into arguments with major donors who
are helping keep their country afloat.'
In an interview with political analyst and Pacific
expert Andre Vltchek, UNESCO cultural expert Mail Voi
said the 'big three' use devices like transit visas for
'effectively isolating small and poor countries of the
Pacific from each other, as well as from the rest of
the world. It is almost impossible for the citizens of
most Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines
and Indonesia, to visit their neighbors in Polynesia,
Micronesia and Melanesia.'
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is
elbowing its way into the region as well. In talking
about Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea,
NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last
November, 'We all face the same threats and it is in
their interests, as well as our own, that we come
closer together.'
U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns was
blunter: 'We seek a partnership with them so that we
can train more intensively, from a military point of
view.'
But if there is a push to dominate and militarize the
region, there are countervailing winds as well.
On the one hand, Australia is part of an ABM system
that China sees as a threat. On the other, China is
Canberra's third largest trading partner with an
insatiable appetite for Australia's coal, uranium, gas
and oil.
In 2006, energy exports earned Australia $33.9 billion,
a figure that is certain to rise steeply over the next
decade. 'With the right policies,' says Howard, ' we
have the makings of an energy superpower.'
Japan finds itself in a similar position. While there
is continuing tension between Tokyo and Beijing over
Taiwan, and oil and gas fields in the South China Seas,
China will become Japan's number one trading partner by
the end of 2007. Trade between the two countries topped
$200 billion last year.
The trade potential has made Japan and the Australia
careful about tying themselves too closely to some of
the bombast about 'Chinese militarism' coming out of
Washington.
This past April, Japan and China pledged 'closer
cooperation,' and when Beijing made it clear it was
unhappy about Australia's hosting part of the U.S. ABM
program, Australian Foreign Minister Downer was quick
to state, 'We are opposed to a policy of containment of
China. We believe the best way forward is working
constructively with China.')
Australia and Japan are caught between 'wanting to ride
the Chinese economic gravy train,' says Tanter, while
at the same time trying to 'beat the drum about
supposed [Chinese] military expansionism.'
The Howard government's muscular foreign policy has
touched off a debate about what role Australia should
play in the region and how closely Canberra should be
tied to U.S. designs in Asia and the Middle East.
Foreign policy, particularly the Iraq War, has become a
major issue for the upcoming general elections in
October, particularly the Iraq War.
Polls indicate that two-thirds of Australians want to
withdraw from Iraq, and 70 percent think Australia
should be more independent from U.S. foreign policy.
The Aussies were evenly split between what constitutes
a greater danger to the world: the U.S. or Islamic
fundamentalism.
For now, Washington is too bogged down in Iraq and
Afghanistan to pay much attention to the Pacific, but
given the importance of the region to the U.S., that it
not likely to last. Will the U.S. eventually move to
confront China, its rival in Asia? That may well depend
on where other nations in the region conclude their
interests lie, and whether most of them decide that
butter and trade trump guns and walls.
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