Last week, amidst a great deal of pomp and ceremony at a San Diego, California naval base, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed off on the AUKUS submarine deal with the United States and the UK.
Under this extraordinary arrangement, Australia agreed to pay $368 billion for eight nuclear-powered submarines to be manufactured mostly in America and Britain. The staggered delivery dates stretch decades into the future.
The AUKUS pact, however, is not just about the purchase of a few over-priced submarines that may be technologically obsolete by the time they are built. The pact also firmly binds Australia to the wheels of the US and UK in respect of security issues in Southeast Asia. More importantly, this week\u2019s submarine deal represents an important shift in Australia\u2019s foreign policy settings towards craven dependence on the US and UK, and away from its recent rapprochement with China.
Footage of Prime Minister Albanese gazing in admiration at President Biden and Rishi Sunak in San Diego reflects perfectly the subservience that now characterizes Australia\u2019s relationship with the US and UK. \u201cI am so honored to stand alongside you both,\u201d he said.
Albanese described the AUKUS deal in his characteristically mangled prose as follows: \u201cThe sum of the three is more than one plus one in this case. And I think that the cooperation we\u2019ve had is really exciting.\u201d No mention of abandoning Australia\u2019s foreign policy independence, disturbing regional stability, alienating China or becoming dependent on two waning world powers, one of which hasn’t had a military presence in Southeast Asia since the 1970s.
China responded to this week\u2019s events by reiterating its characterization of the AUKUS pact as being informed by a \u201ctypical cold war mentality which will only motivate an arms race, and harm regional peace and stability.\u201d
From an historical perspective, Albanese\u2019s obsequious capitulation to the foreign policy and economic interests of the UK and US should come as no surprise. Australia remains a member of the British Commonwealth, and King Charles III, in his regal capacity as King of Australia, is the nation\u2019s head of state. Unlike other British dominions, Australia has never opted to become a republic. Until the Whitlam Labor government came to power in 1972, Australian Prime Ministers inevitably supported the UK on foreign policy issues. Prime Minister Menzies defended Britain during the Suez crisis, and was dispatched by his British masters to Cairo to lecture President Nasser on the error of his ways.
When Australia did briefly break free from British domination during World War II, it simply replaced one colonial overlord with another \u2013 this time the United States. Australia\u2019s ill-advised involvement in wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan followed, together with decades of wasted opportunities to cement better relationships with neighboring nations in Southeast Asia \u2013 most importantly China and Indonesia. And who can forget Prime Minister Holt\u2019s stirring \u201cAll the way with LBJ” speech delivered at the height of the Vietnam war \u2013 yet another ode to Australian subservience.
Additionally not without precedent is the spectacle of Australia being lumbered with overpriced American military hardware in exchange for support for unwise American foreign policy aims. In the early 1960s when the Menzies government urged President Kennedy to escalate the war in Vietnam, part of that disastrous pact involved Australia purchasing the expensive and trouble-plagued F-111 aircraft from its (no doubt very grateful) US manufacturer.
This brings us back to the AUKUS deal itself. It is, of course, the brainchild of former conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison \u2013 who Albanese soundly defeated at the polls in May last year.
In September 2021, in typically duplicitous fashion, Morrison reneged on a $90 billion deal brokered by former Prime Minister Turnbull to purchase a number of submarines from France \u2013 and, at the same time, proudly unveiled the AUKUS security pact. This unprincipled act of diplomacy resulted in a serious breach in Australian-French relations that has still not been remedied.
Albanese immediately supported the AUKUS pact, despite its far reaching consequences \u2013 in part to avoid a political conflict in respect of foreign policy in the lead up to the 2022 election, but also \u2013 as this week\u2019s events have made clear \u2013 because he craves dependence on the UK and US just as much as Menzies, Holt and Morrison ever did.
It became obvious this week that Albanese \u2013 for all his allegedly left-wing radicalism \u2013 adheres to exactly the same irrational foreign policy world-view that unreconstructed cold war warriors like Morrison, and those conservative Prime Ministers that preceded him subscribed to.
Not only does the AUKUS pact, like most disastrous Australian foreign policy stances, have bipartisan support from both major political parties, but it has also been endorsed by all of the major media organizations in Australia \u2013 including the so-called left wing ABC and Channel Nine newspapers, and the undoubtedly right-wing Murdoch press and Sky News.
In the circumstances, critics of the AUKUS pact have been very thin on the ground in Australia.
Earlier in the week, however, former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra, had the audacity to deliver a devastating critique of the AUKUS deal and the Albanese government. Keating made the following points:
\uf0b7the AUKUS deal is \u201cthe worst deal in all history\u201d and \u201cirrational in every dimension\u201d
\uf0b7the San Diego meeting was a \u201ckabuki show\u201d
\uf0b7the AUKUS trilateral partnership is all about \u201cseeking to maintain US strategic hegemony in Asia\u201d by containing China
\uf0b7Australia is \u201cshunning security in Asia for security in and within the Anglosphere\u201d
\uf0b7the UK is \u201clooking around for suckers\u2026 (to create a) \u2026 global Britain\u2026 after that fool Johnson destroyed their place in Europe\u201d and reminded his audience that the UK had \u201cdumped Australia all through the twentieth century\u201d
\uf0b7\u201cAustralia is locking in its next half century in Asia as subordinate to the United States\u201d and Albanese is \u201ca Prime Minister with an American sword to rattle\u201d
\uf0b7Albanese\u2019s decision to ally Australia with the US \u201cto try and contain China as an economic rival\u201d could have \u201cdeadly consequences for Australia\u201d and that the \u201cincompetent\u201d Albanese government had \u201cembarked on a dangerous and unnecessary journey\u201d
\uf0b7Joe Biden \u201ccouldn\u2019t string three words together \u2026 but wants to go to war\u201d
\uf0b7he reiterated his previously expressed view that China did not pose a security threat to Australia and that Taiwan was \u201ca manufactured problem\u201d
\uf0b7Albanese is being been duped by the \u201cdopes\u201d in the defense and national security establishments
\uf0b7Albanese could have purchased 40 to 50 conventional submarines for the same money as he is spending on the 8 AUKUS submarines
He also claimed that \u201cthere was only one payer at San Diego\u201d \u2013 namely Australia \u2013 and that the AUKUS deal was structured to support the US economy and \u201cbail out British companies.\u201d
The responses of Albanese and his defense and foreign affairs ministers to Keating\u2019s attack have been predictable. They have resolutely avoided dealing with the issues raised by Keating and simply claim he had \u201cdiminished himself\u201d by attacking them personally, as well as criticizing him for being \u201cnasty\u201d to the foreign affairs minister, who happens to be a woman.
This kind of all-too-common petty ad hominem attack, based on confected outrage or offense – which enables the real issues to be completely avoided – is, of course, what passes for political debate in the West these days.
Paul Keating\u2019s iconoclastic speech last week was both timely and welcome. He single-handedly attempted to initiate a necessary debate on an issue of fundamental importance to Australia\u2019s future and the security of the entire Southeast Asia region.
Whether a serious public debate will happen or not \u2013 it seems unlikely at the moment \u2013 Keating, who left office in 1996, has done Australia a great service by drawing attention to the deeply problematic and troubling nature of the AUKUS pact.
Keating has also obliquely reminded Australian voters \u2013 at least those who are old enough to remember it – of a time when a few politicians of stature and principle still sat in parliament, and when genuine public debate took place, as a matter of course, in respect of issues of national importance.
Sadly \u2013 if Prime Minister Albanese and his defense and foreign affairs ministers are any indication – that time seems to have long since passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n