The Politics Essay I Got 'D' For Last Year - How Do You Get A Recount?

I mentioned in a previous blog about getting a 'D' in a politics essay last November, that's kind of made me gun-shy of academic essays since. Basically I argued against the 'conventional' wisdom and got 'caned' for it. Well I got a D. I look forward to your opinions - if there's anyone still interested.

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POL 2 AAW – QUESTION 4.

Do you agree that the alliance with the United States is an indispensable element of Australia’s foreign policy?

INTRODUCTION : Ever since Curtin’s decision to overrule Churchill in 1942, diverting troops home to defend Australia and to turn our gaze eastward instead of our 150 year gaze to England, the alliance with the United States has been Holy Writ. With only New Guinea standing between Australia and the Japanese Army and Churchill’s high handed attitude to use of Australian troops, Curtin had no choice. History shows that when we made the call, the U.S. answered - in the form of General Douglas MacArthur and American troops. One can only ponder what the reply would have been if MacArthur’s “valiant delaying action in the Philippines” had been more successful. We’ll never know.
Australia, like much of the world, has always had an ambivalent attitude to America. For example whilst we admire many of their democratic principles and institutions, we abhor the money spent on American electoral politics . Most of us love their movies and music – Nashville, Motown, and Hollywood’s ‘dream machines’ have for a century been the most potent exercise of ‘soft power’ the world has seen. On the other hand my grandfather and his RSL mates believed that the Yanks got into the two world wars after the hard work was done and after they’d made a packet supplying arms, the long held suspicions of Americans slick predatory ways: ‘never get between a Yank and a pile of money’ - “overpaid oversexed and over here”. Of course back then they were infinitely preferable to the Japanese. Many survivors of Changi considered their behaviour less than human – many Nanking survivors and ‘comfort women’ would probably agree. (If something was very bad Grandad would say – You wouldn’t give that to a Jap on Anzac Day. Tinny shoddy merchandise was universally disparaged as Jap Crap until the mid 70s.)
And our dichotomous attitudes to America continue according to the just released Sydney University’s U.S. Studies Centre survey of Australian views of our security relationship with the US (and other foreign policy issues). Of the 1,200 people polled, more than three-quarters viewed the security alliance as important, and believe the US will defend Australia if threatened. However, nearly half wanted more independence within the alliance, nearly double the numbers expressing the view back in 1975. Consistent with previous polls, nearly two-thirds of respondents oppose Australian and US military involvement in Iraq, and half oppose the commitment in Afghanistan. The view of President Bush himself is largely unfavourable, and there's been a dramatic fall in confidence in America's ability to deal responsibly with world problems. Only 37% expressed 'a great deal' or 'a fair amount' of confidence compared with 66% in 2001. Asked which was the bigger world problem, around three-quarters of respondents saw climate change as a threat at least equally great as Islamic fundamentalism. China almost rates at the same level as the US (59%), and Japan trumps both of them. 75% of Australians are well disposed, or have a favourable view, of Japan, a very significant turnaround in Australian attitudes to the region. (Interesting signs of the gradual ‘Asianization of Australia’ – two recent ads featuring Asian interracial couples –a gay couple for Delfin, an Asian male/ caucasian female in a new ANZ Home Loan ad.)
I do not believe our alliance with the US is indispensable –like the previous 150 year old alliance with the British Empire, our 50 year old asymmetrical alliance with the American Empire is illusory at best and past its usefulness as we continue to concentrate our gaze north to the ‘Eastern Hemisphere’. However, I’m not naïve enough to believe we will ever cut strategic ties with the U.S.
And don’t get me wrong – I’m not a knee jerk anti-American. I happily lived in America as an exchange student (1975-6). . American civilization has given the world innumerable wonderful people of genius –Benjamin and Aretha Franklin, Thomases Jefferson and Edison, Abrahams Lincoln and Simpson, the brothers Gershwin and Marx, two Ray Charles Robinsons, Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt to name but a few. Back in the US in 75-76, the humiliations of Vietnam and Watergate were still fresh – in retrospect it was probably the best time to have been there: deep down they still believed they were the greatest people on earth but they didn’t bellow or gloat about it.. A return in the early 80s saw the growth of Moral Majority influence and ‘Reaganomics’ bellicose triumphalism . Returning 20 years later post Sep 11, 2001 I was staggered at how oversized and vulgar everything was – endless miles of strip malls, billboards and restaurant chains: so many morbidly obese people, living on mountains of junk food and watching junk TV (On Oct 1, CNN gave Britney Spears’ child custody case three times more airtime than the Iraq War) . The ‘Land Of The Free’ now organizes secret rendition for torture sessions , The ‘Home Of The Brave’ passes such draconian authoritarian laws as The PATRIOT Act without debate .
Are They Ancient Rome?
David Walker, US Comptroller General of the non-partisan Government Accounting Office recently made the comparison in an interview with the Financial Times. Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.
“Sound familiar?” Mr Walker said. “In my view, it’s time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time.”
In his book and website, Are We Rome? Cullen Murphy also reflects on the many similarities – beyond the obvious like the American Legion and the eagle regalia to things like privatizing former government responsibilities, privatizing/contracting the Army (Blackwater) , gaols etc
Or Fascist Rome?
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross” – Sinclair Lewis .
Left wing writer Naomi Wolf’s recently released book ‘The End Of America’ discusses the many similarities between the Bush administration and historically fascist governments... According to Wolf there are 10 common steps for fascist/totalitarian regimes…The use of a terrifying external threat to justify repression (the unending global war on terror), establishment of secret prisons and military tribunals operating outside the law (Guantanamo, renditions, the Military Commission Act ), ability to arbitrarily declare anyone an enemy of the state and imprison them for years without trial (Juan Padillo), paramilitary force (Blackwater, United Resources Group) surveillance of citizenry (16 different spy agencies with levels of technical sophistication beyond Orwell’s worst nightmare ), infiltration of citizens groups with government agents, targeting key individuals (Joe Wilson /Valerie Plame), restriction of dissent by equating it with treason (villifaction of The Dixie Chicks , any FOX news broadcast) , co-opting/repressing the mainstream media (embedding journalists with troops, gaoling of journalists who refuse to reveal sources), subversion of federal and international law by the Executive branch.(PATRIOT Act, non recognition of International Criminal Court, repudiation of the Geneva Conventions)
What have the bloody Romans ever done for us?
It would be hard to argue that the British Empire didn’t provide some benefits to its far flung penal colony for 150 years. Rule of law, property rights (for free white men), mostly able administrators (for free white men) and when duty called Australian sons always answered Mother England - South Africa and the two world wars and the 12 year Malayan Emergency. But as great a maritime military empire as Britain was in the 18-19th centuries, what could it have realistically done if Australia had been attacked?. If a ‘Yellow Peril’ had indeed ever descended upon Australia in the numbers always bruited - the chance of England ever coming to our rescue were realistically zero. It would have taken months for them to react with any appropriate force to ‘liberate’ the colonies.
And like the British Empire before it, what could our US ally do tomorrow if Indonesia or China (regularly considered our most likely threats) launched an invasion of Australia? America is currently bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is unable to reliably meet recruitment targets . In a conventional war Indonesia or China could lose a million soldiers and call up 2 million more. In a nuclear exchange no-one would win.
As former PM Malcolm Fraser said at the 2000 Asialink Sir Edward Dunlop lecture ‘When there have been concerns in our region, the United States has made it plain they didn’t really want to be involved, and that includes East Timor. But going back over the years, whether in relation to West Irian, whether in relation to attitudes to Indonesia itself, or to the spread of Communism in Malaya or to confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia, the United States adopted a studied policy of distance and of relative disinterest. ANZUS was a deterrent to Communist attack but that is not on the cards.’
The recent Sydney University USSC study also found our dissonant attitudes to America as a trade partner. The vast majority of respondents (88%) expected the US to remain a 'very close' or 'fairly close' economic partner and few (15%) were against US investment in Australia. On the other hand, more than two-thirds (69%) were 'very worried' or 'somewhat worried' about US trade subsidies, and almost as many (63%) said the US was likely to do better than Australia out of the Free Trade Agreement.


“There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare” – Sun Tzu
Our ally is on a permanent war footing . Given Jimmy Carter’s interview on PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehr on Friday, pointing out that America’s presidents had authorized use of force over 100 times since he left office in 1980 one could argue the announcement was redundant. Our alliance with America has now led us into two of the worst foreign policy disasters of the last 50 years (not counting the possibility of bombing Iran) - Vietnam and Iraq,. In the case of Vietnam at least the Sth Vietnamese government invited military advisers in. No such courtesy applied in Iraq’s case. Close to 3 million people (mostly Vietnamese) died – innumerable other Vietnamese have suffered from Agent Orange expose without US compensation. Roughly another 3 million became refugees . It’s impossible to know accurately how many Iraqis have died in the 4+ years of the American invasion as the US is apparently only concerned about its own death toll though the estimates range from 60,000 to The Lancet’s 600,000+ . (Thanks to recent testimony before Congress from Blackwater CEO Erik Prince we now know that an Iraqi’s life is worth $15,000. More than that would only encourage them to get themselves killed for money.. The US could have paid the 25 million Iraqis $15,000 each up front to depose Saddam Hussein in 2003 and saved over 400 billion and counting). Instead up to 3.7 million Iraqis are estimated to be refugees – approx 14% of the population according to the UN. The repercussions will be felt throughout the region for decades - given the use of depleted uranium ammunition who knows what other long term damage a la Agent Orange will be uncovered.
IT’S THE ECOLOGY STUPID!
Despite ‘globalization’ being the buzzword of the last 20 years, globalization was a fact from Marco Polo, Sir Walter Raleigh, Columbus, the conquistadors to the Opium Wars. Centuries of exploration led and fed the unbridled development of resources creating the Western World’s astonishing wealth. Trade and Foreign Affairs and Defence issues have always been interwoven for maximum advantage – but if the planet is to survive the days of unbridled Western development are over.
The most important issue of the next 10 years is how our Eastern Hemisphere – China, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam can develop without doing the enormous damage that the Western Hemisphere has already done : with clean energy before we reach global warming’s tipping point – if we haven’t already . (Thousands of walruses have appeared on Alaska's north-west coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming, melting the Arctic sea ice. The lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas in which they normally feed.)
Carbon sequestration and other ‘clean coal’ technology is John Howard’s dream: a far off one given the World Coal Council admits that only 9 coal power plants with carbon capture and storage plants will be online by 2020 . Our industrial policy should be dedicated to creating the most cost effective clean car technology – and selling half a billion of them to China, Indonesia, India etc.

Capitalism’s ‘perfect storm’?
Despite the hubris of the neoconservatives at Project For A New American Century , the 21st century will not be another American one. Whilst English remains the lingua franca for the foreseeable future, the fastest growing language classes in the world are for Mandarin. Marx’s theory of capitalist ‘self-destruction’ could come to past at the hands of a new kind of economy : a command-supply & demand economy with an endless supply of cheap labour, and the biggest market on earth, allowing for previously undreamt of economies of scale. The formerly devastated Europe has arisen, initially with help through the Marshall Plan, united and economically powerful. Only 18 years after the West danced on the grave of Communism at the Berlin Wall, Russia (no Marshall Plan there) is now strong again thanks to enormous petroleum and gas revenues . As America loses blood and potentially trillions in treasure, killing countless others in Iraq, China is building up huge trade surpluses. As America comes to terms with the speculative greed of their $US 1.3 trillion sub prime nightmare China has the world lining up to invest with them or requesting aid.
Conclusion
Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day – it wasn’t destroyed in a sudden cataclysm either. It took centuries to rot – Cullen Murphy posits that it actually melted – the centre couldn’t hold and it was dispersed . For the last 50 years (and especially the last 7) we have been shackled to an American imperium that is much more Roman than British and ‘puts us completely out of step with most of our neighbours and most of the region of strategic and economic interest in Asia’. It is a bloated, corrupt quasi-fascist/authoritarian military-industrial petroleum addict state , voraciously wasteful of its own and the world’s resources, amoral at best (793.2 billion for Iraq so far, as Bush vetoes health insurance for 10 million poor children, along with 40 million adults) . It is a hegemony religiously convinced of its own righteousness and centrality to the world, armed to the teeth, arming half of everyone else and paranoid about the other half.
Of course I might be taking a very short sighted and unnecessarily pessimistic view. Perhaps Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore will be drafted by Democrats and win the presidency (with Hillary as VP? Probably not – maybe Obama) and, despite the immense power of the Oil lobby, he will actually do something to stop America’s destructive addiction. Perhaps real verifiable global warming targets will be set at Bali in December. Perhaps the six permanent members of the UN Security Council, coincidentally the world’s six biggest producers of armaments, will ban all future weapons sales to bankrupt nations and mankind will all join hands as one.
I guess anything is possible.