NOTE
This article (which questions the capability of Australia’s political class to successfully lead Australia through the difficult times we live in toward a future of peace and prosperity) was written as a sister piece and meant to follow “Is Mankind About to Commit Suicide?”, the first article posted on Beyond the Spin this year.
That plan was disrupted by developments the Israeli-Palestinian War, the movement to the Right in European elections, issues which seemed more important to comment on while they were happening.
The resultant delay may make this piece look both a little dated and remote from its sister. Apologies.
On the positive side, however, the themes discussed here have become even more obvious over the last six months – highlighted by the never-ending chaos in politics caused by our parties which remain more focused on winning the next election than getting on with their real-world job of building the robustness of our nation.
As always, your feedback is welcomed.
In a previous article (‘Will Humankind End Up Committing Suicide?’) we discussed the possibility mankind might use its hugely powerful, modern technologies to bring about its own demise.
That first article’s conclusion was the probability of this happening is very high, certainly far higher than it’s been in the past.
EVERYONE WANTS MORE
The use of fossil fuels to produce all goods and services we take for granted in first world economies (electricity, cars, air travel, big houses, appliances, consumer goods – plus high turnover cycles of ‘fashion’ in everything from clothing to entertainment devices) has taken the whole world to the brink of destructive climate change. That billions of other people in less developed countries aspire to enjoy similar lifestyle benefits means demand for such ‘necessities’ will continue to grow. Governments which seek to win and retain office have to be seen to be moving towards meeting their citizens’ material expectations.
If they don’t, they’re overthrown from within. In the long run, autocracies, not just democracies, are subject to this same law to ‘forever improve material standards’ – or suffer defeat.
At the international level, the way nations vie with each other for advantage or supremacy is another feature of human behaviour, one that hasn’t changed much since time immemorial. In spite of all the treaties, international laws, legal conventions and supra-national bodies (such as the League of Nations, UN, World Bank and IMF) the way nations behave toward each other is a constant.
As little as eighty years ago the world was locked in a war where Russia, the UK, USA and China fought against the expansionary ambitions of Germany, Japan and Italy. Now we are confronted with a line up where China is determined to assert hegemony in Asia and challenge the US as the world’s number one superpower. Japan now stands with the US (and South Korea, a former enemy of Japan) to thwart China’s ambitions in Asia.
The US and Europe (principally the UK, France and Germany) now stand against Russia over the war in Ukraine. Yesterday’s foe is today’s ally…and vice versa. As usual, every state (big or small) wants things its own way. National interest comes first.
The Middle East war between Israelis and Palestinians both think their actions fully justifiable while the same actions (when carried out by the other side) heinous.
All threaten to use their might (military, economic and/or technological) to achieve their ambitions.
The military weapons the big nations have at their disposal are immensely destructive. Today’s nuclear weapons are a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Nine countries have nuclear weapons. Some are big (US, Russia, China, India and Pakistan), some mid-sized (UK and France) and others small (North Korea and Israel). They are not all friends. Add the effects of even a limited (‘tactical’) nuclear war to those of climate change and you can readily see that the whole world truly stands at the edge of an abyss.
And where does Australia stand in this struggle between giants?
In trying to answer this question it’s useful to briefly summarise our history in terms of how we’ve related with the rest of the world so far in our history.
Before the ‘invasion’ First Nations Peoples had virtually no connections with the outside world. What we now call Australia was an unknown. For many years we were but a penal colony of Great Britain – a minor outpost of empire. Then we became a bunch of colonies whose worth was built on wool exported to the mills of the mother country -and gold. After Federation, we became a dominion whose international image was forged in World War One. We remained in the shadow of Britain until Britain proved incapable of protecting us from the Empire of Japan – when, out of necessity, we turned to the USA to save us.
It was only after WW2 that we started to be seen as more than a cipher of the UK. Dr H V Evatt became the third president of the UN General Assembly in 1948…and yet we remained a nation that was too scared to finally abandon the ‘white Australia policy’ at home until 1973. Later on, in that decade Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore’s PM) warned Australians they could well become “the poor white trash of Asia” if we lacked the drive to become anything more than a culture of rentiers who lived off the quarrying of minerals for the rest of the world. Sound familiar?
A mere fifty years later we now see ourselves as a multi-cultural nation, a nation that self -congratulatingly describes itself as one ‘that punches above its weight’. Our politicians repeatedly use the phrase, so do our sportsmen and women – as do our allies when they need to show they have our ‘support’ when pursuing their own national interest in foreign wars. Whether most other nations see us that way is a moot point. There’s a thin line between being seen as serious mid-range power or a mouse that roars, a nation with something to say or the mouthpiece for a puppeteer who pulls the strings.
HARD POWER
In terms of hard power (military capability) Australia is a lightweight nation. Our armed forces are small and poorly equipped. We lack the capacity for self-defence yet alone the wherewithal to project enough power into the region to protect our interests or deter an aggressor.
There are many deficits in the Navy. We lack ships of the required capability. Even the surface ships we have are too few in number and carry far too few missiles to compete against their likely opponents – or stay on station long enough to deter anyone (because they have to return all the way back to Australia to take on board another small number of missiles after they fire the few they carry).
AUKUS is likely to turn out to be little more than an expensive PR exercise of the Emperor’s Clothes kind. It is unlikely that even the minimum of three boats we’d require (to keep even one in the water at any given point in time) will arrive from the US on time. Nor is it likely we’d have the crews to man them even if they did. Besides, in ten to fifteen years’ time, advances in electronic detection technologies might well render these invisible weapons platforms ‘visible’ – and destroyable. If the latter becomes likely the whole AUKUS exercise could well be abandoned with net zero result.
The Army is in a parlous condition. Troop numbers are declining at a time when more, not less, are required. The Army lacks helicopters, has outdated armour, no offensive drones and precious few missiles of even intermediary (yet alone long range) capability. Modern warfare has convincingly demonstrated that having big numbers of inexpensive weapons (that are readily replaceable from many sources) provide a small army with the repeatable firepower it needs to deter a bigger force. This is not a new revelation. In part the Germans lost WW2 because, in spite of their superior small arms, big tanks, V1 and V2 rockets, they were swamped by sheer number of inferior Sherman tanks on the Western Front and Russia’s T34s tanks in the East. Numbers count. Small numbers of the best in weaponry rarely beats hordes of the slightly inferior.
The RAAF’s aggressive power is tied up in the 72 F-35As it now has. And as admirable a weapons platform this plane is it lacks the range to operate beyond Indonesia. That’s not far enough to project meaningful power or to support the Navy operate where it needs to protect our sea lanes.
None of these far from ideal circumstances is the fault, yet alone sole fault, of the Armed Services. It’s the government’s responsibility to set and fund a grand strategy for the nation – and for The Department of Defence to procure the equipment needed to operationalise that strategy. It’s been a long time since either has performed their tasks well. The result? In terms of hard power Australia is of minnow status. Militarily we play the role of a Vatican Swiss Guard. We’re a ceremonial, token force to show the world we serve to protect the allies we rely on to protect us. Our ability to stand alone is very, very limited.
SOFT POWER
So where does Australia stand in terms of soft power – the ability to sway others by reasoned, principled argument and discussion (diplomacy) and/or using money to buy the allegiance of other states (also called diplomacy)?
States outside of Western Europe and North America know Australia has invariably followed in the slip stream of the Anglo-democracies. We’ve been their allies for a long time. Australians participated in The Indian Mutiny, Madhist war in Sudan, the Second Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion, WW1, WW2, the Korean War, the Malaya Insurgency, Vietnam, The Gulf War, Afghanistan Civil War, the second Afghan Terrorist War (post 9/11) and the Iraq War. To those living in Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East or Eastern Europe it’s pretty obvious where our values are rooted. Our flag is a mnemonic that triggers those deep-rooted associations. We have been the small white tribe of Asia and South Pacific for a long time.
Such a positioning didn’t make for easy relations with our near neighbours.
We’ve a history of lecturing those around us about what they should be doing, what they need to do to live up to the standards we believe they should if they want to be seen as a liberal democracy like ours. The tone of condescension in which such well-meaning missives were often delivered didn’t go unnoticed in Indonesia, PNG and Pacific Islands. The whiff of assumed ‘superiority’ was noticed – as it still was as recently in 2016 when Dutton and Morrison quipped about rising sea levels endangering Pacific Islanders.
Once Australia could get away with such hauteur because our near neighbours played no role in our economic life and were happy (in the case of PNG and Pacific Island states) to accept our aid because there was so little else in the offing .
Things have changed – mightily – in a few decades.
Our economic well-being now depends on trade with China. China may well want Australian raw materials such as iron ore and coal, but Australia needs that export income to sustain the high living standards Australian citizens increasingly regard as their human right. Such economic dependence on China makes it extremely difficult for Australia to challenge or oppose China on anything for fear of retaliation. China holds an ace card here. It’s overwhelming military superiority gives it another ace to make a pair.
China also has the resources, and will, to supplant Australia in its own backyard. Pacific Island nations don’t love Australia enough to refuse ever increasingly attractive ‘money’ bids from China. China has already won the Solomons. Eventually it will expand its forward positions to threaten the sea routes that connect us to the outside world. That’s another ace in their hand. Three aces is a hard hand to beat.
From a security viewpoint we have one ace card – our alliance with America, the very country that Xi is challenging for world hegemony, the country that blocks his ambition to absorb Taiwan. Australia is indeed very much caught between a rock and a hard place.
So far we’ve managed to walk the tightrope by being sufficiently ‘nice’ to both sides. We won’t be able to do that forever. In the short run we’ll need to keep a low profile so as not upset anyone. That’s not a characteristic of a nation that sees itself as punching above its weight in everything. The insecurity of being a small, new white nation amongst ancient Asian countries with populations in the billions, may explain why we try and cover up our insecurity by puffing out our chest. That habit might be understandable, but it can still irritate others.
MEANWHILE AT HOME
While the world was being rocked by seismic shifts in power politics, economics, technological weaponry and the deleterious impacts of climate change Australians,since 2007, have, in the main, been preoccupied with matters domestic.
For a decade and a half our political class poured its energies into winning and holding office – and promoting, then dispatching, prime ministers. Such short-term political manoeuvrings kept our leaders’ eyes firmly focused on ‘local’ matters. Our senior politicians retreated from positioning themselves as Statesmen and Stateswomen to become vote-brokers who preoccupied themselves filling their party ‘showbags’ with enough goodies and promises to win the next election.
Voters were similarly preoccupied with a host of local crises ranging from recovering from droughts and bushfires through COVID to social equality issues such as same sex marriage, the liberation of LGBQTI+ cohorts, gender equality and controlling the influx of boat people.
Yes, by 2020 there was, for example, a lot of talk about climate change but nothing much happened because Australia’s preeminent position as a coal and gas exporter made the choice between dollars and principles an unusually difficult one to resolve. It was easier, yet again, to push things down the road than confront them. This was a template our governments applied in many areas; the early 2000s was a period of posturing, a period of much high sounding, obfuscatory talk and little pragmatic action.
The mood of the times is captured by how the Country’s movers and shakers reacted to an alleged rape of a young staffer in a Minister’s office in Parliament House. That allegation triggered street demonstrations outside Parliament, multiple internal inquiries, complaints about the misogyny of the then PM, innuendos damaging to the reputations of two female ministers, a secret settlement of around $2.4 million dollars, an aborted criminal case, a judicial review, the resignation of crown prosecutor and a civil defamation case brought against the media and particular journalists by the alleged rapist. Millions of dollars of public monies have been spent to no avail. Four years after the alleged incident we stand little further ahead.
Much of the last decade has been like that – big, principled discussions, a lot of navel gazing, blame shaming, principled posturing – and little effective action.
Voters in modern, western democracies expect, indeed demand, a lot from their governments. Voter expectations and their sense of entitlement are high – so too are their impatience and unwillingness to tolerate, yet alone compromise, with voters who want something different to what they want. Such touchiness triggers divisiveness.
The spread of what the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre calls the ‘acids of individuality ’ (including the ability for all to access and uninhibitedly express themselves on social media) has accelerated that trend toward divisiveness to a point where democratic governments are near paralysed, unable to take decisive action for fear of losing voter support somewhere. Timidity and playing around at the margins are the unfortunate consequences.
In the broader world the reluctance of democracies to advance policies that might upset or impose hardship on any sizeable group of their voters leaves autocracies with the advantage of being able to take the initiative. We’ve seen this international configuration before, most dramatically in the 1930s. We’re seeing it again now.
Unfortunately, but inevitably, Australia lives in the slipstream of the world’s bigger powers. In the long run their actions will determine our fate. Australia’s ability to tilt the world in the direction of peace and cooperation is very, very limited no matter how virtuous and skilful our advocacy of the ‘good’ in international forums is, no matter how well we example the benefits of democracy at home.
In the terminology of ‘real politics’, we might well punch above our weight, but it pays to remember that we still are in the bantam weight division. If the major powers don’t effectively combat climate change and/or decide to throw nukes at each other they will take us down with them. Their suicide would be ours.
Australia lacks the hard power to stand alone. To protect ourselves we have to continually remind the US (and its military) of why it’s in their self-interest to support us. That’s the status of a dependent. Vassalage is the price we pay for their protection.
We are also, paradoxically, economically dependent on exporting huge quantities of iron ore to the nation that bullies us most, the country that seeks to supplant the US. One of our other closest allies, Japan, needs our gas. Another ally, India, wants our coal. Overall, only about 30% of the fossil fuel products we produce are used domestically – the rest we export. Stopping those exports would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.
We might well wish it weren’t so, but we need that export income to maintain the high living standards we enjoy at home – and to fund sufficient overseas aid to convince our near neighbours to resist the attractions of Chinese largesse.
Australia is tied up in a knot of very uncomfortable dilemmas both at home and overseas -dilemmas that severely limit the degrees of freedom our governments have to say or do anything that may upset anyone.
At home, Australians have encouraged our political class to use consumer-marketing techniques to seduce (if not please) enough of the honey eaters, justice seekers, complainers, privilege seekers, the hip pocket driven and squabblers to build the numbers they need to stay in power. This ‘it’s-all-about-you’ style of politicking has distracted the attention of Australians from recognising the vulnerable position the nation is truly in. It has blunted us to the need to put the national interest first.
SECURING THE LUCKY COUNTRY’S FUTURE
So what does all we’ve been talking about add up to with regard to the future of the Lucky Country? For a start we should realise that, as a nation, luck will not see us through. We are guaranteed neither a comfortable nor prosperous future.
Second, our remoteness from the major population centres of mankind no longer protects us.
Our dependence on trade means we’re very much plugged in to the rest of the world from an economic point of view. Technology means we’re accessible from a military viewpoint.
No nation can aspire to live in splendid isolation anymore.
All the world now sails in the one boat. If anyone holes that boat, we’ll all sink together. The persistent, old behaviours of nation states are an existential threat to humankind because their deeply ingrained habit of fighting each other remains strong. World War 3 on board ‘the good ship’ earth could well trigger events that irreversibly split its hull.
Thirdly, the success of supra-national organisations (primarily the UN) is critical to controlling individual, national states, in constraining them, from putting their own interests ahead of others. It was unfortunate The League of Nations failed. It would be a disaster if the UN followed suit.
The effectiveness of UN is severely hampered by the fact that the wishes of The General Assembly (including those of the ten, non-permanent members of the Security Council) can be vetoed by any one permanent member of the Security Council – the very states that are usually in opposition to each other (the US, UK and sometimes French block versus Russia and China). Notwithstanding this problem member nations need to support the UN far more unitedly, forcefully and financially than they have in the past.
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Australia is one of the top per capita contributors to the UN budget with a per annum contribution of around AUS $90 million (less than the cost of a single, new F35 A fighter). If we were serious about building a robust, world peace-body we could and should be spending more – as should the vast majority of member states who contribute very, very little toward an institution that provides them one of the few avenues they have to have a say in international affairs.
Many states prefer to accept monies from those states seeking hegemony than contribute to a body dedicated to protect them from the bullying of those big states.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, we at home (both politicians and voters) need to lift our eyes from a myopic focus on the ins and outs, the trials and tribulations of daily life, (our preoccupation with bread and circuses and winning elections) – to look at and address the big issues that will determine the future of Australia; the hard issues that we are reluctant to look at because they scare us, the issues that require the making of big and brave decisions, the issues that require commitment and, sometimes, the sacrifice of a few of the niceties of life.
Our political life has swung too far in the direction of treating the nation as if it were a giant department store whose directors aim to secure their lofty positions by striving to meet every trivial demand of the picky customers that come through the revolving doors of their emporium. That’s an adolescent version of democracy. It’s a shallow, brittle version of democracy, one prone to divide and collapse when put under pressure.