- While George Bush's government is viewed as an international
pariah by most of Europe and much of the rest of the world, at least one
country remains doggedly enthusiastic about being America's loyal sidekick:
Australia.
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- Like the weakling who echoes the words of the playground
bully as their big pal pushes people around, Australian ministers have
been busy providing supportive background squeaks for each of Bush's recent
international initiatives.
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- The US president dumps Kyoto: Australia's energy minister
applauds and the environment minister tells Europe that the treaty is dead.
Bush signals that China must back off Taiwan: John Howard, the prime minister,
provokes Chinese diplomatic fury by calling on it to renounce military
aggression against the Taiwanese.
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- And so, the US diplomats dispatched to flog Bush's missile
defence shield (NMD) to reluctant governments around the world have found
the warmest welcome in Canberra. A relieved Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the
US defence secretary, have praised Australia. Although it doesn't pack
a superpower's punch, Australia houses one of the key tracking stations
the US needs for NMD.
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- Unlike RAF Fylingdales in Yorkshire, which spied on yesterday's
cold war, Australia's Pine Gap facility is perfect for keeping an eye on
today's tension between China and Taiwan, the key defence "theatre"
in Bush's new world order.
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- "If the US were to have the capacity to shoot down
or destroy a hostile missile, they would have to know that the missile
had been launched, and where it was. Pine Gap can transmit that sort of
information to the US," said Australia's foreign minister, Alexander
Downer, recently. "The government has said we would not cut off the
transmission of that information to the US."
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- Pine Gap has already monitored America's putative missile
tests, and is likely to be even more important to any new space-based missile
defence system that Washington develops. It would also become a key component
of any "theatre" missile defence offered to Taiwan against China,
which is Beijing's biggest worry.
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- Australia as America's Mini-Me is not a new act. Ever
since it was, in effect, abandoned by Britain in the second world war,
it has seen America as its security blanket, formalising arrangements in
the 1951 Anzus treaty, which suggested but did not guarantee US military
support in times of need. While many Australians cringed, Harold Holt,
the prime minister in the late 1960s, signalled his subservience to US
President Johnson with the slogan "all the way with LBJ". Australian
servicemen were drawn into Vietnam, and Americans used Pine Gap and other
bases in central Australia for cold war surveillance and military manoeuvres,
thereby turning the country into a potential target for Soviet warheads.
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- While the "rogue states", such as North Korea
and Iraq, that are NMD's designated targets will not have the spare missiles
or the accuracy to destroy Pine Gap for decades, the system is likely to
trigger a new arms race between the US and China. Here the immediate risk
increases immeasurably for Australia.
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- Apart from Russia, China is probably the only country
in the world with a strategic interest and enough intercontinental missiles
to spare to consider pointing a couple at Pine Gap. A Chinese official
recently mentioned that one of Beijing's possible responses to NMD would
be for it to target the defence shield's communications points.
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- There is also the danger of Australia being adversely
affected by a more general regional malaise. Analysts point out that an
arms race could set back China's economic reforms and damage its trading
health. Renewed tension between China and Japan in south east Asia could
also contribute to a less open and healthy economic environment, which
would harm what is by far Australia's most important marketplace.
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- Stunned by the frosty reception for NMD in the northern
hemisphere, America is genuinely grateful for their sunny little sidekick
in the south Pacific. But the US cannot completely rely on Australia just
yet. John Howard could call an election as early as July and will definitely
go to the polls by November. His government faces a stiff challenge from
a resurgent Labor party, who have, in opposition at least, sounded a far
more sceptical note on the US defence shield than the coalition.
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- While former prime minister Paul Keating's passion for
Asia lingers in the Labor party, its leadership appears every bit as instinctively
conservative and internationally docile as Labour in Britain. If both parties
are returned to power this year, Pine Gap and Fylingdales give both governments
some leverage over George Bush's missile shield plans. But it would be
surprising if they exerted it.
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- Email
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- patrick.barkham@guardian.co.uk
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