AUSTRALIA AND THE PACIFIC WALL

Australia & the Pacific Wall

Forwarded message

Dispatches From The Edge

Australia & the Pacific Wall

By Conn Hallinan

Some 230 miles north of Perth, at Geraldton on

Australia's west coast, the Bush Administration is

building a base. When completed, it will control two

geostationary satellites that feed intelligence to U.S.

military forces in Asia and the Middle East.

Most Americans know nothing about Geraldton or the U.S.

submarine communications base at North Cape and the

U.S. missile-tracking center at Pine Gap. But there is

growing concern Down Under that Prime Minster John

Howard's conservative government is weaving a network

of alliances and U.S. bases that may one day put

Australians in harm's way. As Australian Defense Force

Academy Visiting Fellow told the Sydney Morning Herald,

once the Geraldton base is up and running, it will be

'almost impossible for Australia to be fully neutral or

stand back from any war in which the U.S. was

involved.'

Indeed, that may already be the case.

Australia, along with Japan, India, the Philippines and

South Korea, signed on to the U.S. anti-ballistic

missile system (ABM), which China fears is aimed at

neutralizing its modest fleet of 21 intercontinental

ballistic missiles.

On Mar. 12 Australia signed a Joint Declaration on

Security Cooperation (JDSC) with Japan, that according

to Richard Tanter, a senior research associate at the

Nautilus Institute who writes widely on Japanese

Security policy, is an 'anti-China U.S.-dominated

multilateral alliance system' that 'confirms the

already accelerating tendencies for both Japan and

Australia to militarize their foreign policies.'

Certainly both nations have been flexing their muscles

of late.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has put a strong

nationalist spin on Tokyo's foreign policy that has

raised hackles from Seoul to Beijing. Japan has also

sent troops to Iraq and recently declared it intends to

repeal Article 9 of its post-war constitution. Article

9 renounces war and rejects 'force as a means of

settling international disputes.' Japan has the fifth

largest navy in the world and spends over $40 billion a

year on defense.

Australia, whose defense budget is slightly more than

half of Japan's, also has troops in Iraq, as well as

the Solomon Islands, East Timor, and Tonga.

Last August, Howard told the Parliament that Australia

needs to prepare for an even greater role in monitoring

and assisting troubled nations in the Pacific region

(Financial Times, 9/15/06). The Prime Minister has also

adopted some of the rhetoric of the Bush

Administration, calling for 'preemptive' strikes

against 'terrorist groups' in regional neighbors.

Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S., have moved

forcefully to assert their authority in the myriad

island nations that make up much of the South Pacific.

Using a combination of troops, aid and control over

transportation, the three countries dominate the

politics of places like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands,

the Solomon's, Fiji and Samoa.

Many of these island nations are almost totally

dependent on either international aid or money earned

from renting out their land for military bases. Some 60

percent of the Marshall Islands' GDP comes from U.S.

aid and the 50-year 'Pact of Free Association' that

allows the U.S. to use Kwajalein Atoll for missile

tests. The U.S. only got the pact by engineering a

change in the Marshal Island's constitution that allows

a simple majority of legislators to okay the

Association. Before this change, Marshallese voters had

rejected the pact eight different times.

When Solomon Island's Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare

accused Australia's High Commissioner of 'unwarranted

interventionism' in the Republic's affairs, Howard's

Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, warned ominously

'the last thing the Solomon Island government can

afford is to get into arguments with major donors who

are helping keep their country afloat.'

In an interview with political analyst and Pacific

expert Andre Vltchek, UNESCO cultural expert Mail Voi

said the 'big three' use devices like transit visas for

'effectively isolating small and poor countries of the

Pacific from each other, as well as from the rest of

the world. It is almost impossible for the citizens of

most Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines

and Indonesia, to visit their neighbors in Polynesia,

Micronesia and Melanesia.'

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is

elbowing its way into the region as well. In talking

about Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea,

NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last

November, 'We all face the same threats and it is in

their interests, as well as our own, that we come

closer together.'

U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns was

blunter: 'We seek a partnership with them so that we

can train more intensively, from a military point of

view.'

But if there is a push to dominate and militarize the

region, there are countervailing winds as well.

On the one hand, Australia is part of an ABM system

that China sees as a threat. On the other, China is

Canberra's third largest trading partner with an

insatiable appetite for Australia's coal, uranium, gas

and oil.

In 2006, energy exports earned Australia $33.9 billion,

a figure that is certain to rise steeply over the next

decade. 'With the right policies,' says Howard, ' we

have the makings of an energy superpower.'

Japan finds itself in a similar position. While there

is continuing tension between Tokyo and Beijing over

Taiwan, and oil and gas fields in the South China Seas,

China will become Japan's number one trading partner by

the end of 2007. Trade between the two countries topped

$200 billion last year.

The trade potential has made Japan and the Australia

careful about tying themselves too closely to some of

the bombast about 'Chinese militarism' coming out of

Washington.

This past April, Japan and China pledged 'closer

cooperation,' and when Beijing made it clear it was

unhappy about Australia's hosting part of the U.S. ABM

program, Australian Foreign Minister Downer was quick

to state, 'We are opposed to a policy of containment of

China. We believe the best way forward is working

constructively with China.')

Australia and Japan are caught between 'wanting to ride

the Chinese economic gravy train,' says Tanter, while

at the same time trying to 'beat the drum about

supposed [Chinese] military expansionism.'

The Howard government's muscular foreign policy has

touched off a debate about what role Australia should

play in the region and how closely Canberra should be

tied to U.S. designs in Asia and the Middle East.

Foreign policy, particularly the Iraq War, has become a

major issue for the upcoming general elections in

October, particularly the Iraq War.

Polls indicate that two-thirds of Australians want to

withdraw from Iraq, and 70 percent think Australia

should be more independent from U.S. foreign policy.

The Aussies were evenly split between what constitutes

a greater danger to the world: the U.S. or Islamic

fundamentalism.

For now, Washington is too bogged down in Iraq and

Afghanistan to pay much attention to the Pacific, but

given the importance of the region to the U.S., that it

not likely to last. Will the U.S. eventually move to

confront China, its rival in Asia? That may well depend

on where other nations in the region conclude their

interests lie, and whether most of them decide that

butter and trade trump guns and walls.

End of forwarded message

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