Iraq is the outstanding foreign policy issue in this election, yet both sides are avoiding it. For the Howard Government it represents failure, which is difficult to defend. For the Rudd alternative it is divisive, raising profound policy issues that disturb the smooth electoral surface on which Labor is skating.
So, at the business end of the campaign, the scheduled Press Club debate on foreign policy today will probably have little impact. Yet beneath the surface lie policy issues that will determine the course Australia as a nation takes over the next decade.
Iraq is Australia's most serious foreign policy blunder since Vietnam. Setting aside collateral damage, like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Australian Wheat Board scandal and David Hicks, the military commitment itself, undertaken at the time with bravado, was mistaken.
It increased the catchment for terrorist recruitment by invading a country that was not its source, heightened Islamist fervour, radicalised the Palestinians, revived the terrorist organisation Hezbollah, weakened Israel's security and promoted Iran as the dominant power in the Middle East. It distracted attention from a legitimate commitment in Afghanistan and the problem of rogue elements in a nuclear Pakistan.
It lowered the international standing and influence of our major ally, the United States.
This is surely enough to require what used to be called a "great debate" but there is also the consideration that massive military commitments, as in Iraq, are not the way to deal with terrorism. The strategy, not just the target, is mistaken.
The lesson of terrorism is not to be terrorised. See it off. It is a mistake to go to "war" as if the adversary is a great power. Military force is a crude instrument, ethically risky when used against "soft" targets involving civilians. You do not "win" by military might, but by undermining terrorism's human credentials.
Australia has been careful to do this in cooperating on counter-terrorism with Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation. Intent on remaining a secular state, Indonesia has at least as much at stake as Australia in seeing that extremist forms of Islam do not become dominant in our region.
Political leaders like moral clarity, which gives them an edge over rivals who have forked tongues or try to walk on both sides of the street or are otherwise complex. The problem with foreign policy is that the world outside is incorrigibly complex. Moral clarity and strategic honesty are rarely compatible.
On Iraq, the Howard Government holds grimly to justifications that have so far been unpersuasive. One justification has not so far been used, at least publicly. Hinted, inferred, floated subliminally, but not explicitly stated, is the "better there than here" rationale, which lies deep in the expeditionary tradition of Australian policy.
The advantages are self-evident. War is destructive. Look at what happened in Vietnam and the devastation in Iraq. Almost daily, we invoke the tradition of military valour abroad. The self-interest of "over there" becomes the selfless heroism of nation-building.
The conservative side of politics has been especially fond of this tradition. The problem with it is that you cannot disclose its immoral, strategically shrewd core.
Labor has tended to favour self-reliance and what is now called homeland security. The difficulty for Labor is that self-reliance is expensive.
Australia's "forward defence" has been cheap around 3 per cent of GDP. Also, the intelligence network, giving us access to American technology, is valuable. And without our superpower ally, Australia would have to consider whether to develop nuclear weapons itself.
The immediate task for Labor is to show that withdrawing troops from Iraq will strengthen, not weaken, the "war on terrorism". The "war" is a misnomer, as are warrior words like "victory" and "defeat", but terrorism is a fact and must be countered.
Vietnam and the Cold War provide a useful pointer. In April 1975 the Americans scrambled out of Saigon; by the end of the year, the Helsinki Accords signalled a new and fruitful course in the West's Cold War diplomacy based not on military strength but human rights. The Americans lost the battle of Vietnam but won the Cold War.
There is still debate among strategists about how they did it, but if we rely on public opinion the marker was not in 1990 when the two sides declared themselves no longer to be enemies or 1991 when the Warsaw Pact was formally disbanded. It was November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was breached. The Wall was not erected in 1961 in response to military pressure. It was built to stop East Germans from escaping to the good life in West Germany. Nor did it collapse in response to military pressure. It was breached when it failed to stop East Germans from getting to West Germany through Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In other words, it was built and demolished in response not to military pressure but human rights.
Men and women were encouraged by the Helsinki Accords to stand against the power of the state. Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul ll, was a catalyst of the end of the Cold War, as were Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Mikhail Gorbachev and many others. It was arguably they, rather than cruise missiles that brought the Soviet Union to an end.
The objective now should be to encourage brave Muslim men and women to stand against terrorism's appeal to violence and martyrdom. Australia's foreign policy should be turned in that direction. That is Labor's opportunity. Not just to extricate itself from a mess but to undertake a sustainable policy toward terrorism.
To do so, it will need at times to distinguish Australia's objectives from those of the current US government.
Writer and diplomat Bruce Grant
is the author of several major works
on Australian political culture
and foreign policy.