Alan Wirzbicki has a new article up at TNR on one of my favorite subjects: the US-Australian alliance. He writes that Aussie PM John Howard
faces a tough challenge from antiwar Labor party candidate Mark Latham in elections that could take place as soon as August. Not surprisingly, Iraq is high on the agenda. Most Australians opposed the war, and Latham, to the consternation of U.S. officials, has promised to bring Australia’s 850 troops home by Christmas.
Australia’s troop contingent is small, but the Bush administration has made a big deal about the race. Earlier this month, the president attacked the Labor leader during a joint Rose Garden press conference with Howard. “I think that would be disastrous,” he said in response to a question about Latham’s pledge to withdraw from Iraq. “It would embolden the enemy who believe that they can shake our will.” Other high-ranking U.S. officials have also stepped in to criticize Latham. Bush’s ambassador to Canberra, former Texas Rangers co-owner Tom Schieffer, has repeatedly warned Australian voters that a Latham win would hand terrorists a victory.
American officials are not only pulling for Howard, but making noises about U.S. retaliation if Australia chooses Labor instead. In March, Schieffer hinted darkly at “very serious consequences” if Latham wins and carries out his withdrawal pledge, a comment widely interpreted in Australia–where the entire episode is front-page news–as a threat to the longstanding U.S. military alliance. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was more ominous, suggesting Australians “ought to think what it would be like without this relationship.” […]
But whatever the outcome of the race, the administration’s strident interference has already exposed just how unhinged Bush’s worldview has been made by the chaos in Iraq. U.S. officials are plainly willing to make Iraq the determining factor in America’s bilateral relationship with even an ally as close as Australia. “Bush is making Iraq a test of the alliance,” Hugh White, the head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the Age newspaper. “Latham is saying the alliance is bigger than Iraq–Bush is saying ‘No, it isn’t.'”
This message has the virtue of being clear. It also has the drawback of being, well, crazy.[…]
No matter what Latham does if elected, the fact will remain that Australia helped fight the war in the first place, back when its boots on the ground really mattered. If the world comes to believe that in U.S. eyes Australia’s sacrifice counts for nothing–that a U.S. ally as historically close as Australia can be excommunicated by a single-minded Bush administration–it sends a clear message that cooperating too closely with the Americans is a no-win proposition. Ornery American conservatives expect French goodwill from World War II to last forever; but ours apparently expires after 18 months.
I’d rather the Aussies didn’t go home. But at this point going home is within the range of reasonable policy options for everyone except the US and the UK. And real, durable alliances are bigger than any given partisan election in one of the allied countries, or than a policy disagreement. Failing to respect the boundary between short-term policy disagreements and the long-term importance of an important alliance was one of Gerhard Shroeder’s sins in his re-election campaign. Now it’s the Bush Administration doing that.
I’m ambivalent about the election itself. John Howard has always been one of my least favorite politicians as far as Australian domestic politics goes. The strength of his commitment to the American alliance is, as far as I’m concerned, his only real virtue. But that strength is real, and the virtue is an important one; and Latham hasn’t inspired any goodwill in me yet. But, of course, the election result isn’t for me to decide– or for the Bush administration to decide, either.
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