THE OTHER SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: the UNITED STATES and AUSTRALIA at the START of the 21St CENTURY
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THE OTHER SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: THE UNITED STATES AND AUSTRALIA AT THE START OF THE 21st CENTURY Edited by Jeffrey D. McCausland Douglas T. Stuart William T. Tow Michael Wesley February 2007 Visit our website for other free publication downloads http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/ To rate this publication click here. This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. As such, it is in the public domain, and under the provisions of Title 17, United States Code, Section 105, it may not be copyrighted. ***** The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. 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ISBN 1-58487-276-4 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface. vii Jeffrey D. McCausland, Douglas T. Stuart, William T. Tow, and Michael Wesley Acknowledgments. xvii Introduction . 1 The Honorable Bill Hayden Panel I: Foreign Policy: Setting the Context. 19 1. Panel I Chairman’s Introduction. 21 Douglas T. Stuart 2. The Future of U.S.–Australia Relations and the Curse of George Harrison. 29 John C. Hulsman 3. The Australian-American Alliance: Towards a Revitalization . 39 Paul Kelly Panel II: Foreign Policy: The Alliance in the Asia- Pacific Region. 63 4. Panel II Chairman’s Introduction . 65 William T. Tow 5. The Alliance and the Asia-Pacific Region: An American Perspective. 77 Andrew Scobell 6. The Alliance and the Asia-Pacific Region: An Australian Perspective. 109 Robert Ayson iii Panel III: Political and Legal Aspects of the Special Relationship . 133 7. Panel III Chairman’s Introduction. 135 Michael Wesley 8. The Relationship’s Political Aspects: An American Perspective. 145 John Higley 9. Australian Public Opinion and the Australia-U.S. Alliance. 161 Brendon O’Connor Panel IV: Economic and Business Aspects of the Special Relationship . 179 10. Panel IV Chairman’s Introduction. 181 Brendan Taylor 11. The United States and Australia: Competing Economic Perspectives. 189 Leif Rosenberger 12. Economic and Business Aspects: An Australian Perspective . 215 Don Russell Panel V: Security and Defense Aspects of the U.S.-Australia Special Relationship . 243 13. Panel V Chairman’s Introduction. 245 Jeffrey D. McCausland 14. The United States, Australia, and the Search for Order in East Asia and Beyond . 261 James J. Przystup iv 15. Security and Defense Aspects of the Special Relationship: An Australian Perspective . 279 Michael Evans Conclusion . 311 16. The Future of the U.S.-Australia Alliance: Adapting to New Challenges?. 313 James A. Schear About the Contributors. 327 v PREFACE Jeffrey D. McCausland Douglas T. Stuart William T. Tow Michael Wesley The idea for this volume grew out of a previous collaboration between Jeffrey McCausland and Douglas Stuart. Arguing that the bilateral relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom was both underappreciated and understudied, they organized a series of conferences in 2005 which brought together a group of well-known American and British academics, journalists, and policymakers to discuss political, military, and economic aspects of the “special relationship.” The conference proceedings, published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College under the title U.S.-UK Relations at the Start of the 21st Century, proved to be extremely popular— requiring a second printing and generating follow- on public discussions on both sides of the Atlantic.1 Conversation during these public events tended to focus on one basic question and a couple of ancillary questions: Was the U.S.-UK relationship unique? If so, in what respects? And why? Scholarly inquiry into the “other special relation- ship” between the United States and Australia flowed logically from these discussions. With the generous financial and administrative assistance of the U.S. Army War College, Dickinson College, the Australian National University, and the Griffith University Asia Institute, and with the indispensable scholarly collaboration of William Tow and Michael Wesley, a vii series of professional conferences was organized in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC, on the U.S. side, and in Brisbane and Canberra on the Australian side. A team of American and Australian experts came together in all four locations to discuss issues relating to foreign policy, economics and business, domestic politics and public opinion, and security and defense affairs. The U.S. Army War College also enriched our discussions with panels in Carlisle and Canberra relating to the Global War on Terror. This volume is designed to summarize the major findings of our fruitful collaboration over the last year. To provide the participants with a common lexicon, all of the contributors to this volume were asked to return to their dog-eared copies of Arnold Wolfers’ wise and wide-ranging book, Discord and Collaboration.2 Although Wolfers’ book is more than 40 years old, it was selected because of its valuable (and still-valid) insights regarding alliance behavior, the goals and interests of nations, and the interaction of individual, national, and international factors as determinants of foreign policy. Readers will find references to Discord and Collaboration throughout this volume. It came as no surprise when many of the themes that surfaced in the study of U.S.-UK relations resurfaced in our deliberations on U.S.-Australian relations. One recurrent theme was the importance of leadership in both the U.S.-UK and the U.S.-Australian relationships. Both Tony Blair and John Howard have cultivated close personal relationships with George W. Bush, based on the shared “Anglosphere” values of political and economic liberalism and a shared appreciation of the need to act assertively, and globally, in defense of these values.3 The result has been a level of comfort and mutual trust among the three leaders that has greatly facilitated international cooperation. viii In contrast to Prime Minister Blair, who was able to maintain a close friendship with both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the personal chemistry between John Howard and Clinton was never strong. President Clinton’s oscillations on China policy, his relative lack of interest in Japan, the absence of tangible progress on bilateral free trade negotiations, and Howard’s disappointment regarding U.S. support in East Timor, all worked to impose strains on the relationship. This all changed, however, with the arrival of George W. Bush. As Paul Kelly observes in this volume, “Howard and Bush are political soul mates” whose close personal ties have provided the foundation for what Kelly describes as “the new intimacy” between America and Australia. Beyond the thematic resemblance between this volume and the previous study of U.S.-UK relations, another similarity is the importance of two events in determining London and Canberra’s relations with Washington. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11) represent the first turning point. The British and Australian governments reacted similarly to these attacks—immediately identifying 9/11 as a transformative moment in international relations. But the Australian Prime Minister’s presence in Washington, DC, during the 9/11 terrorist attacks intensified the personal impact of the events, and within a few days his government had invoked the ANZUS Treaty to offer its full support to the United States. This development would have been hard to imagine a half- century before, when the Australians who negotiated the ANZUS Treaty tended to assume that if the alliance were ever called into action, it would be done to apply American power on behalf of Australian security. ix The second “big event” dominating both U.S.-UK relations and U.S.-Australia relations has been Amer- ica’s management of the Global War on Terror and, in particular, its leadership of the ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Once the Iraq campaign began to look like a quagmire, a growing number of critics in both Britain and Australia began to question the wisdom and the propriety of close collaboration with the American “hyperpower.” In Britain, this has taken the form of Tony Blair’s “poodle problem,” which has contributed to demands from both the British public and Mr. Blair’s own Labour Party for the Prime Minister’s resignation. John Howard has confronted his own “poodle problem” (often portrayed in the Australian news media as a “deputy sheriff problem”). To date, Mr. Howard has managed this problem more effectively than his British counterpart. Mr. Howard is nonetheless likely to face increasing domestic criticism about the substantive results he has achieved in his efforts to translate his support for the United States into economic and political benefits. Don Russell addresses one aspect of this cost-benefit issue in his discussion in this volume of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. John Hulsman addresses the same problem at a more general level, arguing that “the U.S. must get away from taking Australia for granted” in its management of foreign affairs.