"Rethinking our place in Bush's world", by Tony Kevin, Australian Financial Review, Weekend Review page 10, 20 September 2002

This is a good time to resurrect on my website this piece I had published in the "Australian Financial Review 18 months ago. It has travelled well.

The Iraq War played out pretty much as I predicted it would. As I write this, we have just learned about shocking American army sexual tortures and humiliations of captured Iraqi independence fighters. We know that the Sunni popular insurgency in Fallujah was brutally suppressed at a death ratio of about 100 to 1 – just as in Mogadishu, Somalia a decade ago ("Black Hawk Down") , and a pro-American Iraqi mercenary force has been installed to "control" the town, run by a former Saddam general. It is a face-saving compromise after hundreds of Iraqi civilian deaths under massive US bombardment that was certainly a war crime under the Geneva conventions. We know that the holy Shia city of Najaf remains at imminent threat of similar massive artillery assault and destruction by US surrounding forces. And an insulting new flag has just been imposed on Iraq by the quisling "government" of assorted carpet-baggers that is about to assume "sovereignty" on 30 June.

Over the past year, we have had to get used to the reality of a world of double standards whose rationale was defined by Robert Kagan and Robert Cooper (see my article), where Western civilisation is properly to be defended by barbaric means in the non-Western world.

The news today is not all so bad. Across the Atlantic, Europe welcomes many former Soviet-bloc and other states into the expanded European Union. The alternative European view of the world, discussed in my article, retains a powerful global attraction and potential for good. There is no doubt where China and Russia stand on this argument about global order, however much their own conduct in Tibet and Chechnya is reprehensible. Like Europe, they want a rules-based world.

There is a new world order evolving and it will not necessarily be US-unilateralist. John Kerry and a sizeable proportion of US voters fortunately don’t think so either. The coming US election will pit two sharply contrasting US views of the world against each other.

My article talks also about Australia’s role in "Bush’s world", which has not been an honourable role either. But Bush’s and John Howard’s world may be history by the end of 2004. Let us pray so and work to this end, whatever our party or beliefs.

Tony Kevin 30. 4. 2004

(With thanks to "Australian Financial Review" for their courage in financially supporting this kind of writing).

"Rethinking our place in Bush's world", by Tony Kevin, Australian Financial Review, weekend Review page 10, 20 September 2002

Tony Kevin seeks an Australian response to America's new unilateralism.

Are sovereign states free agents, or are they part of a multilateral system of rules that governs how they should deal with one another? This debate has been around for a long time. But from 1945 until a few years ago, the governments of all major states at least paid lip-service to the ideal of a world order.

No longer. Since the election of George Bush (January, 2001), "new sovereignty" concepts have moved to the centre of American international relations theory and practice .(1). Now, the European Union, China and Russia - permanent members of the UN security council - are asking what the new US "whatever it takes" unilateralism means for the international security system. At the level of theory, eminent mainstream US scholars like Joseph Nye are trying to persuade an unsympathetic Washington that it is in US interests to exercise sovereignty within a rules-based multilateral system.(2).

September 11 is not central to this argument. Long before then, the Bush team had signalled a harder-edged America-first view of the world. The tense confrontation over a US spyplane forced down in China; the scheduling of "rogue states"; the singling out of Iraq as a state whose alleged development of weapons of mass destruction requires a US-led pre-emptive strike to remove Saddam Hussein (or possibly unilateral action by the US); the hardening of support for Ariel Sharon's Israel and US abandonment of active interest in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process - all predated September 11.

The academic debate is now focusing on two more disturbing questions: Are there two worlds, one of civility and one of barbarism? And is "whatever it takes" the only possible strategy for civilised states defending their interests in the latter world ? Recently, Francis Fukuyama (3) and Robert Kagan (4) have opened up these propositions for timely debate.

I cannot offer reassurance that these wrong-headed propositions are a Swiftian irony or a reductio ad absurdum. They are offered seriously as a guide to policy, which is why they necessitate a response.

Kagan's world is not new: it has been around a long time. The counter-view of a world order is the recent arrival. For China, civility was Chinese: outside lurked the barbarians. Likewise for the ancient Greeks, civility began and ended within the Greek world: Alexander's premature universalising experiment did not take root. For the Romans, civility and civil rights flowed from their civic statehood, which is why the later imperial decision to extend citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Roman empire was such a great leap. Roman military behaviour beyond the frontiers was untrammelled by any concept of common humanity. The Crusades were similarly marked by the lack of comprehension that brutalised Orthodox and Muslim populations might share any common human rights with the Crusaders. Human rights, such as they were, were conceived to exist only in the context of Western Christendom.

With the Reformation came the beginnings of international law: endless religious wars and massacres within Christian Europe encouraged more enlightened concepts of international law, rules governing war and toleration towards different faiths. But such reciprocal rules and conventions of civility, which underpinned the development of European diplomacy and humanitarian law, remained largely Eurocentric until the 20th century.

The failure of the League of Nations, the trauma of the fascist totalitarian regimes and the Holocaust, as well as the challenge of postwar decolonisation, encouraged a rapid flowering of the twin ideals of international rules-based co-operation among sovereign states (as expressed in the 1945 UN charter) and of universal human rights (as in the 1949 Declaration of Human Rights). The declaration was not a Eurocentric or Christianity-based construct. (5).

For the first time in world history two great universalising ideas - that states exist to serve their subjects, and that all human beings have an irreducible entitlement to certain basic human rights, regardless of race, politics, religion or gender - were agreed among sovereign governments as the basic building blocks of a postwar international order.

Cold War rivalry impeded the early realisation of these ideals, though both rival blocs claimed to share them. With the end of the Cold War came new challenges: rogue or failed states; chronic civil wars; and now the new label of "Islamism". A recent variant on the old sovereignty/global order debate is: When do considerations of humanity and justice require that national sovereignty be overruled, and who decides? (6). Slobodan Milosevic claims before the Hague international tribunal that he is not accountable for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, because whatever he did was sanctioned by decisions of the sovereign state which he legally led.

Goaded by "universal standard" arguments, Bush's America falls back on a crudely assertive unilateralism: We are a strong and self-sufficient power, and only we will judge our conduct in the world, according to our own laws and codes. US exceptionalism is the order of the day, in every area of international life except trade negotiations where the US still sees self-interest in supporting multilateral regimes.

The wheel has turned full circle. The US is the new Rome or Chinese Middle Kingdom, ready to do whatever it takes beyond its borders to defend the sphere of civil rights within those borders. Europe, with a partially sympathetic Russia and China, clings to the ideal that universal regimes should govern international relations and international humanitarian law. Mockingly, America's new sovereigntists say that Europe is living in a fool's paradise; that it enjoys its present civilities only because America is strong and determined enough to exercise power ruthlessly in the barbarian world outside Europe and North America. European civility is a free rider on American resolve.

These are not absolute polarities: Tony Blair’s Britain flirts with the US view. A senior foreign policy adviser to Blair, Robert Cooper, cited by Kagan, says: "The challenge in the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards". Yet Colin Powell in his January 2001 inaugural address as US secretary of state set out a "European" worldview. There are European leaders like Italy's Berlusconi who are "American". But Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac seem more representative of a general European tendency. The transatlantic difference noted by Fukuyama is there, and growing.

 

Where does Australia sit in this pressing debate? Traditionally, we have been multilateralist and rules-based. As a smallish power in an Asian region lately emerged from colonial governance, Australia worked since 1945 to build a rules-based world based on an ideal of universal human rights. That trend in Australian foreign policy was countered by other strands: the old fear of Asia and the attachment to White Australia; and the search for protection from powerful friends with whom we felt comfortable. But generally since 1945 Australian patriotism and pride in our sovereignty went hand in hand with a "European" view of the world.

All that is fast changing. By a coincidence of history, it is under John Howard's leadership that we confront Bush’s "new sovereignty" view of the world. With Bill Clinton or Al Gore in the White House, or with Kim Beazley or Simon Crean in the Lodge, this would not have become the neuralgic issue it is now. Canada and New Zealand countries with which Australia should normally have most in common have both taken themselves out of the Iraq invasion loop. Not so Australia.

For Howard’s Australia and Bush’s America, each side compounds the other’s foolish aggressiveness and lack of a broader international and humanitarian vision. The ambassador of the country that arguably got us all into this mess [the USA] has solemnly warned Australians that Sydney might soon be a terrorist target, and Howard's government has done its best to make this so by clumsy and divisive war talk.

Australia is moving into the worst of all worlds. Under Howard, we have trashed 50 years of effort to engage seriously with our region and with the UN system of global rules. Yet we have nowhere else to go. The US will not protect us from "blowback" from our own lengthening list of diplomatic blunders. Mimicking our American mentor, we are increasingly shrugging off the disciplines and constraints of the international rules-based system which we helped create. Yet we remain barely noticed in Washington. We lack the military or economic power in our region to sustain a "whatever it takes" foreign policy. We have become a country that occasionally tries to speak loudly but carries almost no stick at all, and one that has lost its way in terms of any generous moral vision of its own society or place in the world. We present ourselves to the world as a selfish and not very interesting vassal state, dutifully voting with its senior partner on all major issues.

Yardsticks for measuring Australia's international conduct and standing include: our UN voting record and relations with UN agencies (eg our hold-out on Kyoto, brittle dealings with the UN human rights and refugee agencies); our shrunken influence in regional organisations; and our stance on large issues of international security like Iraq and Israel-Palestine. We may include in that list specific black marks like: international criticism of our deterrence-based border control and asylum-seeker regime; harsh and prolonged mandatory detention of asylum-seekers; punitive use of temporary protection visas; our vote against a UN inspection system for prisons and detention centres to strengthen the Convention Against Torture; our indifference to the indefinite US military detention without trial or legal protection of two Australian nationals; and the effect of our draft anti-terrorism legislation on human rights standards, including the rights of children and families.

To peruse such lists is depressing. Even our eventual decision to support the International Criminal Court, which the US opposes, has been undermined by the possible acceptance of a US request to permanently exempt its citizens from ICC jurisdiction.

A truculent assertiveness of so-called Australian sovereignty is the usual response to criticism from those supportive of the UN system. But this is a "new sovereignty" with a difference, because it sits comfortably with vassalage to an ever more unilateralist America.

This is where Fukuyama and Kagan offer a useful explanatory paradigm. The Kagan worldview tells us much about the foreign policy practice of Howard and Downer. Over the past three years, Australia has accelerated away from its former support for a rules-based world to a self-serving issue-based practice of "whatever it takes" out there in Barbary.

Last year, our out-of-control "people-smuggling disruption program" in Indonesia and our harsh military deterrence in our northern waters violated both the basic human rights of asylum-seekers and Indonesia's sovereignty. President Megawati's anger was palpable when she opened the Bali people-smuggling conference - an exercise forced on Indonesia by the sinking of SIEV X on October 19, 2001, drowning 353 people, mostly women and children. In the Asian and Pacific regions, Australia's proferred solutions seem to our neighbours more and more selfish, manipulative and ruthless. We may gain short-term runs on the board eg there are no more boat people coming to Australia, but at what long-term cost?

We cannot assume that the US will back us in any trouble we get ourselves into in our region. Any Iraq credits will not be bankable. US homeland defence no longer needs Australian strategic geography. We have become of little value to the US as a diplomatic asset in Asia, as our loss of international weight continues.

If Kagan’s America is becoming the rogue tiger or elephant in the international jungle, self-sufficient in its own strength and fearsomeness, is Australia now the attendant jackal padding along behind, hoping for protection and scraps in the form of favoured trade deals? This would not be a happy or honourable place for any self-respecting Australian sovereigntist who believes in a moral and judicial international order; or even for a realist merely concerned to rebuild our nation’s standing and influence in Asia.

If on Iraq Australians foolishly allow Howard to cast us as minor supporting Crusaders, we will pay a heavy price in terms of lost Australian and Iraqi lives, fractured multiculturalism here at home and damaged trade relations in the Arab and Islamic world.

If the US cannot get the full UN security council on board its pre-emptive war, Australia should not be there. If there is to be a unilateral pre-emptive US strike on Iraq, it will not be because, as some have suggested, the UN has failed to support the Americans. It will be because the Americans have failed to respect the collective wisdom of the UN security council based on the UN charter. That is the lesson from reading Fukuyama and Kagan.

As a US ally, Australia should be quietly supporting those Americans who are calling for a more sober rules-based approach. Here at home, this analysis suggests a different kind of foreign policy from that being framed by Howard, Downer and Hill.

The Labor Party should be trying to widen the terms of the public debate. We already know: that Downer was foolishly provocative on Iraq, thereby sacrificing $200 million in wheat sales; that there is no real evidence yet that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons; that the security council needs to restart inspections; that there should be a full parliamentary debate on any government proposal to go to war against Iraq, now and not as a mere formality after Howard has decided to send our soldiers in.

Labor must now move beyond these sound propositions to deeper issues, such as: If the security council is not convinced by US evidence of Iraq's nuclear weapons development, who will be the better judges the council or the Bush administration? Is this a just or necessary war, given the possible huge loss of life in Iraq? Should Australia care what Europe or Russia or China or New Zealand or Canada or Indonesia or Malaysia thinks? Shouldn't we support the UN-based international security system that we were glad to call upon in 1999 over East Timor? What will we do when we need the UN system again?

Fundamentally, is Australia's foreign policy world shrinking to one dominant bilateral relationship? Are we nothing more than Rome's tributary state, a defensive outpost on the edge of a world we quite wrongly see as Barbary, and where we too often act accordingly?

And are these the terms on which Labor will tacitly consent to conduct Australia's foreign policy debate with Howard? Has he been allowed again to set a narrowly restrictive agenda? One awaits the publication of the government's forthcoming foreign policy white paper, and Labor's response, with interest.

NOTES

(1) Peter J Spiro, "The New Sovereigntists: American Exceptionalism and its False Prophets", Foreign Affairs, November-December, 2000.

(2) Joseph Nye, "Between Concert and Unilateralism", The National Interest, Number 66, Winter 2001-02.

(3) Francis Fukuyama, "Has History Restarted Since September 11?", Nineteenth Bonython Lecture, Melbourne, August 8, 2002 (the text can be found at www.cis.org.au).

(4) Robert Kagan, "Atlantic Crossing", AFR Review, August 23, 2002, and Policy Review, June-July 2002.

(5) Michael Ignatieff, "Human Rights: the Midlife Crisis", New York Review of Books, May 20, 1999; and Brian Urquhart, "Mrs Roosevelt's Revolution", April 26, 2001

(6) William Shawcross, "Deliver Us From Evil: Warlords and Peacekeepers in a World of Endless Conflict", Bloomsbury, London 2000.