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Launch
by the Hon R J L Hawke AC of CONTINENTAL DRIFT:
AUSTRALIA’S SEARCH FOR A REGIONAL IDENTITY Written
by Rawdon Dalrymple Sydney 10th June 2003 Hosted by: Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific Level 2 G12, 353 Abercrombie Street Posted
to Web Site: 24 July 2003 |
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His ambitions were summarily
squashed by Lord Hawke, first Lord of the Admiralty. History, I believe, would endorse his
preference for Cook. Now, Rawdon, I don’t know
whether any of the blood of those two gentlemen courses through our veins — I
am an excellent sailor, but you are certainly not a bombastically
self-promoting type. Be that as it
may, our career relationship has been quite contrary to theirs. We enjoyed a warm relationship
as fellow Rhodes Scholars at Oxford — Hazel, I recall typed your B.PhiI
thesis — and I returned to pursue a PhD at the ANU and you to a lectureship
in philosophy at Sydney University. I was surprised one day in
Canberra to receive a request from you to act as a referee in your
application for a cadetship in what was then the Department of External
Affairs. With that modesty which has
been the hallmark of my career, I protested that I was merely a humble PhD
student and wondered what weight any reference from me would carry. But with your characteristic
doggedness you insisted and I happily agreed. I am sure that it was your intrinsic merit rather than my
objective testimony to that fact which ensured the success of your
application and the beginning of your outstandingly successful diplomatic
career. A generation passed and one day
I had the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Prime
Minister’s office discussing a coming round of important diplomatic
appointments. The name Dalrymple came
up and I immediately declared my proprietary interest. The Secretary asked if I would like to refresh my memory of what
I had written in support of this fellow and I was delighted to see how
prescient I had been. So, on this
occasion, more than two hundred years later, this Hawke did not squash this
Dalrymple. Rather I endorsed him as
Ambassador to the U.S.A. (1985-9) and then as Ambassador to Japan
(1989-93). These appointments followed
terms as Ambassador to Israel (1972-75) and Indonesia (1981-85). Few people in the history of our foreign
service have filled such a range of critically important postings with such
distinction as Rawdon Dalrymple. |
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We are indebted to him for
distilling his considerable experience, knowledge and analytical skills into
this work “Continental Drift” which is directed to emphasising the
fundamental importance of this relationship and the challenges and the
dangers that are becoming increasingly apparent in it. Rawdon convincingly sets these
current challenges and dangers in an historical context by developing in some
detail the valid assertion in his opening paragraph: “For much of Australian
modern history, that is to say since 1788, a
sense of vulnerability was a prominent fixture of its attitudes to
the outside world. Indeed it can be
argued that it remains in changed forms, and still exerts an important
influence on Australian attitudes and foreign policy.” Although he does not
deliberately intend in that development to produce a partisan polemic I
believe however that when you put the book down you will find it difficult to
avoid the conclusion which I have long held about Australia’s stance on
international affairs in general and the Asian region in particular i.e. on the basic issues the
conservatives have consistently got it wrong, and in doing so have put
Australia’s best interests at risk. I believe it is particularly
important at a time when we have a Prime Minister now permanently draped in
the national flag, to puncture this myth he seeks to perpetuate that it is
the conservatives who are best equipped to handle our international relationships
in general, and the defence and security of Australia in particular. The history of our last sixty odd years
makes a mockery of this myth. |
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Such was
their judgement of Menzies and his conservative colleagues, the state of
unpreparedness in which they had left Australia and their demonstrated
incapacity to handle the dangers confronting Australia that in 1941 the two
Independents in the Federal Parliament, Coles and Wilson, crossed the floor
and brought to power the Curtin Labor government which so successfully met
the greatest war-time challenge in our history. Labor understood at the end of
the War that the world was never going to be the same again and,
specifically, in our immediate region, was supportive of the moves towards
Indonesian independence. Rawdon (p.
166) refers to Menzies reaction: “By undermining Dutch rule in Indonesia the
government was in effect ‘contributing to a doctrine which would justify the
expulsion of all colonial powers in South and South-East Asia — a dreadful prospect for Australia.’” This monumental inability of
Menzies and the conservatives to understand the “winds of change” in the
region and to disentangle issues of nationalism from the broader Soviet
threat was then more tragically reflected in their gratuitous insertion of
Australia into the Vietnam War. You
may recall, Rawdon, the arguments that we had about this in 1970 at your
residence in Jakarta when you were then the Counsellor at the Australian
Embassy. |
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“Certainly they misunderstood
the relationship between the Soviet Union and China at critical points and
they misunderstood the relationship between the Vietnamese communist
leadership and the Chinese. They
underestimated the role of nationalism and overestimated the attraction of
western values…. In retrospect the threat as
depicted at the time was often exaggerated and over simplified.” Do those words — I repeat them —
not have a frightening and eerie resonance at the present time? The misconception, the deception, the
outright lies that characterised the Conservatives insinuation of Australia
into Vietnam are detailed in Michael Sexton’s aptly titled War for the Asking:
How Australia invited itself into Vietnam. Surely, there is a similar book waiting to
be written about this conservative government’s identification of Australia
with the Bush Administration’s reckless adventurism in Iraq. The starting point for such an
examination is provided by the damming exposure in the Sydney Morning
Herald, Weekend Edition May 31 — June 1 in an article by Andrew Wilkie,
the analyst in the Office of National Assessments who resigned in protest at
the government’s actions over the Iraq War — “A
Lack of Intelligence: Australia’s
spies knew the United States was lying about Iraq’s WMD programme. So why
didn’t the Government choose to believe them?” Wilkie says: “‘Intelligence’ was
how the Americans described the material accumulating on Iraq from their
super-sophisticated spy systems. But
to the analysts at the Office of National Assessment in Canberra, a decent
hunk of the growing pile looked like rubbish The Howard Government will not
be keen for an enquiry into Australian assessments on Iraq. Much better to let the whiff of US
intelligence failure drift across the Pacific in the hope it implies that
Australia was the victim of advice beyond its control. The last thing the Government
wants is too much scrutiny of its claims about Iraq’s WMD and links to
aI-Qaeda, or the fact these claims were in the
main contrary to advice from the Government’s intelligence community. Australia’s intelligence agencies made it
clear to the Government all along that Iraq did not have a massive WMD
programme. Nor was Saddam Hussein
co-operating actively with al-Oaeda.
And there was no indication Iraq was intending to pass WMD’s to
terrorists. There would not have been any
doubt whatsoever about all this in the mind of
the Prime Minister or of any member of the National Security Committee of
Cabinet. Report after
report from the bureaucracy made it abundantly clear that the US impatience
to go for Iraq had very little to do with WMD’s and an awful lot to do with
US strategic and domestic interests. John Howard’s suggestion
(yesterday) that the Government’s strong line on WMD’s matched intelligence
advice is contrary to the more moderate line
contained in ONA reporting.
Yet Australia was happy to go along with George W Bush. Shame it put thousands of Australian
troops at risk, cost nearly a billion dollars and has
increased the terrorist risk to Australia. In the light of these comments,
putting aside the WMD’s, what did John Howard have to say before the war
about any other reason for invading Iraq.
In response to a question from Michelle Grattan at the National Press
Club on the 13th March 2003 the Prime Minister said: “...l couldn’t iustify on its own a military invasion of Irag
to change the regime. I’ve never
advocated that. Much in
all as I despise the regime.” And to
a subsequent question: “…(regime change) has not
been one of our policv obiectives. That could be a consequence...but our goal is the removal of
the weapons of mass destruction.” But what has this same Prime
Minister said on every one of the several occasions when he has welcomed home
our forces returning from Iraq: you were sent as “the liberators of an
oppressed people.” Those forces went
and risked their lives, in good faith and they rightly have and deserve the
respect of all Australians. The same cannot be said of this
Prime Minister who has added another sad, and dangerous, chapter in the
history of conservative incompetence and deviousness in the conduct of Australia’s
international relations. If I can play on the description
of an 18th century British conflict this was the War of Howard’s Fear, the
fear that if we did not tag along with the neo-conservative adventurism of
our great and powerful ally, the United States, we would be left more to our
own devices in an increasingly troubled world. It was part and parcel of the
vulnerability syndrome that Rawdon, as I have said, opens this book with as a
prominent influence on Australian foreign policy. As it was with Menzies and his dread of the end of colonialism
in the region and his clutching of the United States skirts in Vietnam so it
has been again with Howard’s “all the way with the USA.” The tragedy for Australia’s
relations with Asia is that this embrace of “big brotherism” by the
conservatives, in emphasising dangers rather than opportunities, inhibits our
capacity to establish firmly in the minds of Asians that we see our future —
as it undoubtedly is — intrinsically bound up with theirs. Howard’s total and unquestioning
support of this US adventurism in Iraq has enabled the deputy-sheriff badge
to be stuck even more firmly into his lapel by those Asian countries, in
particular Malaysia and more recently, Indonesia, who seek to portray us as a
country apart from them, a white outpost more attuned to the interests of
America and the United Kingdom. |
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Now 60 per cent of our exports go
to Asia (only 3 per cent to Britain) but our security arrangements have been
increasingly aligned with an overseas power — now the United States rather
than the United Kingdom — which sees a significant measure of threat to
security from countries in Asia. The truth is that there does not
need to be in fact, or in perception, a tension or conflict between an
intelligent pursuit of our economic interests in the Asian region and the
maintenance of appropriate security arrangements, including with the United
States and a continuing commitment to inherited British traditions such as
the rule of law which have become and will remain foundational to the
Australian way of life. |
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I know it is not fashionable
these days, amongst Liberals, to regard Malcolm as one of them, but he was
then, albeit in many ways much more enlightened in regard to Asia than his
successors. He built constructively on the
bold initiative of Whitlam’s immediate recognition of the P.R.C. after coming
to office in December 1972 and I was indebted to Malcolm in that my first
reception of a foreign head of Government was for President Zhao Ziyang of
China in April 1983 who was visiting Australia in response to an invitation
from my predecessor. Speaking of Fraser may I just
pick up on one little slip in the book Rawdon. You rightly say Malcolm “was different from his Liberal
predecessors in his sense of solidarity with the third world of developing
and largely un-aligned States.” You
then acknowledge his Cold War warrior credentials and say that in protest
against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan he “largely prevented Australian
participation in the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980.” In fact, despite his endeavours
the AOF by six votes to five voted to participate. Australia was represented by 127 athletes winning 2 gold, 2
silver and 5 bronze medals making us with Greece the only two countries to
have been represented at every Olympic Games. A couple of amusing sidelights
to the meeting of the AOF Executive Board on the 23rd May 1980: The Chairman,
Syd Grange, in explaining his vote against, said: “We have to live with this
Government because I’m certain Mr Fraser and his government will be
re-elected. They could be in power for another six years.” This was of course a happily
incorrect prediction. The vote stood at five all and everyone waited with
bated breath for the deciding vote of Lewis Luxton a former fundraiser for
the Liberal Party and a member of the Melbourne establishment. As Harry Gordon puts it in his
classic book, Australia and
the Olympic Games: “Luxton told the others that he had given the matter
great thought, and had earlier intended to vote against going. That morning
Malcolm Fraser had telephoned him at home and lectured him for an hour on
reasons why the AOF should not allow a team to go to Moscow. ‘The hide of
him’ he said ‘I know his mother!”’
Thanks again Malcolm. |
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In spending a little time now in
referring to how we stimulated that process of enmeshment I will, in the
process, deal with a recurring question that Rawdon puts at the centre of his
analysis — is Australia part of Asia? My attitude to this question
was, and is, quite straightforward.
In terms of dominant ethnicity, cultural and political traditions we
are clearly not a part of Asia. But while Rawdon is right in
raising and dealing with the question — for it is a recurring theme in the
debate — I believe the question misses the point. Asians understand the above facts and I do not believe that
they demand as a condition of co-operative acceptance by them that we have to
move to a position where a majority of our population is of Asian origin or
that we have to abandon our cultural and political heritage. Rather, they understand the
reality of our geographical contiguity and the increasing integration of our
economies. To optimise our
relationships what they expect, reasonably, of us are these things: that -- a) we recognise the enormous challenges they are facing in modernising
their economies and meeting the challenges of an increasingly competitive
globalised economy, b) we do not preach to them on the basis of some implicit assumption
about the superiority of our values system, c) we do not tolerate or in any way encourage discrimination on the basis
of race, and d) certainly, in the case of China — into the future the most significant
country in Asia — that we are not seen as an automatic ally of the United
States. My government, as did those of
Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating, conducted Australia’s relations with Asia in
a manner consistent with these expectations.
Both in terms of bilateral and multilateral relations, and without in
any sense ignoring or down-playing the importance of our non-Asian
relationships, we put Asia squarely at the forefront of the conduct of
Australian foreign and trade policy. And we did this because we
accepted the indisputable truth of what I had said at that initial press
conference i.e. more than any other
single external factor the future welfare of Australians would depend on our
productive enmeshment with the Asian region. Without being exhaustive in
listing the initiatives we undertook in establishing Australia’s standing and
bona fides in the region let me
mention: a) the creation of the Cairns Group as an integrally important
negotiating bloc in the moves toward a liberalised international trading system, b) the creation of APEC, c) the initiative, resisted at first by the United States, in opening up
to Vietnam and d) the initiative for the settlement of the Cambodian issue that led to
Gareth Evan’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. In all of this we made it clear
at all times that we were acting in terms of what we saw as Australia’s
interests and no in any way as a surrogate for the United States, or any
other power. Our alliance relationship
with the United States was understood and accepted by our Asian friends
because they, like us, were conscious of the reality of the Soviet
threat. This acceptance came the more
easily because, from the beginning, we emphasised to the Americans that,
while we had that alliance relationship, we would not hesitate to diverge
from them if that was what our perception of Australia’s national interest
demanded. And we backed that expression of
intent with action — again without being exhaustive I mention our rejection
of co-operation in President Reagan’s Star Wars program, the South-Pacific
Nuclear Free Zone, disarmament initiatives and the opening up to
Vietnam. Presidents Reagan and Bush
senior respected our integrity and made frequent public references to the
strength of the US-Australia relationship. We demonstrated, and Asians
understood, that it was possible for Australia to have that strong
relationship without offence or detriment to our relationship with them. |
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Rawdon makes it clear (p. 220)
that we are not here quibbling over some mere academic point but one of
potential critical importance for Australia.
He refers to the infamous interventions of Richard Armitage on this
issue here in Australia in 2000 when he said, to quote Rawdon “that Australia
would be expected to stand by the United States with force involvement should
conflict develop over Taiwan”; and Armitage’s elaboration of those remarks in
2001 when he said that he had spoken of expectations that Australia would be
involved in the “dirty, hard and dangerous” work if it came to that over Taiwan. There could be no more dangerous
manifestation of the assumption in this United States administration of a
flaccid, compliant Australia which is all the way with the U.S.A., an
assumption which will have been reinforced since then by our unqualified involvement
with them in Iraq. While there has been a welcome
lessening of tension in Sino-US relations post-September 11th 2001, there is
still substantial reason to be concerned about the bellicose unpredictability
of the neo-conservatives in Washington who pass their moral judgements on the
continued right to existence of other regimes. It is imperative if we are to
have any regard to Australia’s national interest that we make our position on
this issue unequivocally clear in terms that I have adumbrated on other
occasions. The fact that China
continues to press its totally legitimate claim to Taiwan does not make it
some threatening giant. In emphasising the legitimacy of
the Chinese position it is worth recalling that in beginning the process of
normalising relations with China, President Nixon signed the Shanghai
Communiqué on 28th February 1972 in these terms: “The United States
acknowledged that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain
there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. “The United
States does not challenge that position.” In signing in these terms Nixon
was simply reflecting the fact that Taiwan was recognised as part of China in
international law by the Cairo Declaration of 1943 and confirmed in the
Potsdam Declaration of 1945. The fact
that the Communists under Mao defeated Chiang Kai-Shek and established the
People’s Republic of China in 1949 does not alter that fact. Indeed, I suggest it is
interesting to ask the question: what would the attitude of the United States
have been to the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland if it had been the
communists who had fled to Taiwan and taken control of that island? Fortunately, I believe, the
increasing integration of the Taiwanese economy with mainland China, including
the residence there of up to perhaps a million Taiwanese who are working in
the more than 50,000 Taiwanese enterprises that have relocated to the
mainland will mean that the power of economic self-interest will prevail over
any temptation to political adventurism by Taiwanese politicians. However, I have been told,
directly, by one of the most senior figures in the Bush Administration that
were that to happen and conflict with China to ensue, the US would not stand
aside. We should tell President Bush,
and any subsequent US Administrations — Australia
will not be there. |
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We have not received the degree
of support for our inclusion from countries like China that we could have
expected to arise from the good relations we had built up over earlier
years. It is not difficult to see
why. John Howard’s alienation of many
in the region began when he gave oxygen to Pauline Hanson in 1996 by refusing
immediately to repudiate her obnoxious anti-Asian sentiments. Rawdon emphasises that continuing
alienation: in referring to the Prime Minister’s belated disassociation from
the deputy-sheriff label he says this occurred “only after it have been given
wide publicity in the region. It has
never been erased from regional perceptions of the Howard government’s
foreign policy and has contributed significantly to the discomfort which many
feel over that policy.” And again (p. 221): “When the
Prime Minister gave the impression that Australia was now the close associate
of the United States in bringing light and peace to East Asia the reaction in
the region was unequivocally negative.
It served to make Australia more alien in its own part of the
world.” And all of this, my friends,
before the hand in glove exercise with the United State in Iraq. Rawdon addresses what needs to
be done, including handling the particularly challenging question of our
relations with Indonesia but he does it, understandably with pessimism. Let me quote his concluding
words (p. 232): Australia “should be preparing in terms of public debate and
argument, in terms of public policy including substantially increased
immigration, in terms of its diplomacy in the region and in terms of a
resumption of the emphasis on Asian languages and studies in the universities
to maintain and develop the capacities to relate to the region and interpret
it with understanding and expertise.” “But there is little sign that
will happen soon. Australia still
seems to reacting against the earlier attempts to engage much more closely
with East Asia, and to be drifting rather aimlessly with only a firm
commitment to the United States alliance and leadership as the main
determinant of policy.” Rawdon you were and you still
are the diplomat. I am not. I can say what you cannot, although I
believe it is implicit in your erudite analysis. On any examination of history
and of the current situation the changes that you cry out for will not occur
under this Prime Minister and this Government. Their misperceptions and habits of mind are too deeply
ingrained. The benefits that to some extent
we still enjoy from that enlightened generation of relations with Asia are at
risk, including very particularly optimum opportunities for trade with the
region. Only a change of government,
in my judgement, will enable Australia to have that full, constructive
relationship with Asia which can enhance both our economic prosperity and our
security. Ladies and gentlemen I thank
Rawdon Dalrymple for his scholarship and his exposition of issues fundamental
to the welfare of our country. I have
much pleasure in launching this important book, “Continental Drift”, in the
profound hope that it will help to stimulate the public debate, for which he
so passionately calls, on these issues. |
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