The best thing Barack Obama could do for Australia has nothing whatsoever to do with building a warm personal relationship with Kevin Rudd and everything to do with whether he can fix the American economy and restore his country’s standing in the rest of the world. It won’t matter if Obama and the Australian Prime Minister never exchange more than a few polite words in the coming years. Yet some commentators can’t help pondering what Obama’s election as the next US president “means” for the bilateral relationship with Australia.
There are no big problems in the Australian-US relationship that require urgent attention. If Obama simply has the same courteous relationship with Rudd as he is likely to develop with dozens of other national leaders around the globe, that will be fine. But some analysts fear that Australia will lose the improved access to the White House supposedly created by John Howard’s “special relationship” with George Bush after he steps down as President on January 20.
Speaking in Canberra last Thursday, however, the US Ambassador, Robert McCallum, denied suggestions that Australia had increased its access while Howard was Prime Minister. Although a close friend of Bush, McCallum said, “Any time there is a change of government in Australia or the US, I'm sure there are some people who will be concerned that the relationship between the two countries will be diminished. Historically that has not proved to be the case and I do not see that being the case going forward with a new Obama administration”.
Perhaps McCallum is simply being diplomatic. But there is no evidence that he is wrong.
The last thing Australia needs is a repeat of the mistakes and disappointments that flowed from the close relationship Howard forged with Bush. Howard eagerly committed Australia to joining the US in an act of international aggression against Iraq in March 2003. Howard justified the action because of Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. None existed.
The invasion destabilised the country, increased the power of Islamic clerics sympathetic to Iran, and unleashed terrible waves of violence. More than five years later, the invaders have achieved no net strategic gains. Yet the US has run up a bill which will ultimately run into trillions of dollars.
The UK and Poland were the only other countries to join the invasion. But this cut no ice with Bush when Howard later rang him to plead for an easing of the ban on Australian sugar being sold to the US. Bush refused to allow even a spoonful in. Reflecting where US interests lie, he later let more sugar be imported from South America.
Although Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 terrorist atrocities in the US, Bush and Howard walked away from the unfinished military job in Afghanistan — the country which harboured the al Qaeda terrorists that attacked New York and Washington. A huge effort then went into invading Iraq, a country whose secular dictator Saddam Hussein, was an enemy of al Qaeda. The situation in Afghanistan has since deteriorated so badly that the UK military commander on the ground recently said that victory for western troops is no longer feasible and some sort of negotiated settlement is required.
Howard’s closeness to Bush is generally regarded as inspiring his comments in February 2007 that have widely seen as too partisan for an Australian prime minister in the context of an American election race. The day after Obama announced his candidature for the Democratic presidential nomination, Howard attacked him for proposing to bring US troops home from Iraq.
Howard said that if he were running Al-Qaeda, he would “pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats”. Last Monday, the current Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, tried to neutralise his predecessor’s comment by saying, “I firmly believe that the next president of the United States, whether it is Obama or McCain, will be resolute and robust in dealing with terrorism”.
Turnbull’s statement followed a clumsy attempt by Rudd to deflect attention from reports that Bush had revealed his ignorance of an important group of countries, called the G20, during a phone conversation. Rudd took Bush’s call while entertaining the editor-in-chief of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, late at night at Kirribilli House in Sydney. The Australian later reported that Bush asked, "What’s the G20?" Rudd has declined to deny that his office was involved the “leak”, but denies that Bush asked the alleged question.
The most pressing priority for Australia, and just about every other country, is for Obama not to start any more costly wars and concentrate instead on rescuing the US economy from the recession caused by Wall St’s financial excesses.
Neo-conservatives won’t get much traction from accusing Obama of being an anti-market ideologue who is eager to give the government a domineering role in Wall St — the Bush administration has already intervened massively after it learnt a devastating lesson that markets aren’t always as efficient as presumed. If anything, Obama will probably start untangling the government’s involvement with Wall St and focus more on helping the rest of America.
Bush also leaves behind a large budget deficit after inheriting a surplus from the Bill Clinton’s Democratic White House. Again, that is not how conservatives are supposed to behave during a sustained period of economic growth. Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility is a disgrace. But that’s the hand Obama’s been dealt. No matter how he plays it, the deficit will have to expand still further before US emerges from recession.
If Obama somehow comes up a solution, it won’t only be US voters who are immensely grateful. Meanwhile, if a leaked version appears of a future conversion he might have with Rudd, it would help if it showed that the PM had restrained his usual urge to deliver a lecture on how the world works.
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