Interests, Not Amity, Australia's Priority

by Dennis Phillips - Canberra Times

What is it about Howard/Bush visits that is so discomforting? Certainly it is difficult to imagine that the self-congratulatory political rhetoric between these two could become any more maudlin. Bush clings to the Australian Prime Minister as if John Howard is the only friend he has left in the world - which may not be all that far from the truth. Howard repays the favour by heaping praise on Mr 29 per cent, arguing that Bush is the greatest American leader since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Whenever we witness one of these grotesquely effusive prime ministerial pilgrimages to the Big House, I am reminded of the words of a genuine leader who, more than 200 years ago, offered some amazingly far-sighted advice. It was advice originally directed to a young American nation struggling to find its place in the world. But all these years later it remains advice that should be carried in the vest pocket of every Australian prime minister and parliamentarian elected to serve the interests of this nation.

In 1796, George Washington issued his valedictory statement as he prepared to leave office after serving two terms as the first president of the United States. That speech, familiarly known simply as "Washington's Farewell Address", became the most influential single piece of foreign policy advice ever offered to the American people.

Washington indulged himself with what would eventually become the standard description of American exceptionalism, "It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence".

But then the departing president got right to the point, offering advice that applies more to Australia today than it ever did to the United States: "It is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favours from another. There can be no greater error than to expect to calculate upon real favours from nation to nation." Any government "which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave".

Washington went on to say that a "passionate attachment" of one nation for another produced a variety of evils, including "the illusion of an imaginary common interest", unnecessary participation in the other nation's conflicts and war, and discrimination in the marketplace. By allying itself with one country in preference to others, the US would, in effect, voluntarily restrict its sovereignty and attract the criticism and enmity of non-aligned states.

Washington's farewell address is frequently misinterpreted as the seminal statement of American isolationism. The address is famous, not for the wise words just quoted, but for this sentence, "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have as little political connection as possible." America's "detached and distant situation" enabled it to set a free and independent course. By steering clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, the US could maximise its global commercial opportunities while jealously protecting its freedom to act independently of others. Washington's farewell address was not a seminal statement of American isolationism. It was the foundation statement of American political unilateralism as a prerequisite for its commercial expansionism.

The effusive rhetoric of this particular Bush/Howard visit makes it appear as if someone had poured sweet, warm molasses over the White House, drowning out a host of serious policy problems. For starters, it would appear that there was no mention at all about the AWB kickbacks affair, one of Australia's most serious foreign policy crises in decades. Nothing was said about America's sensitivity to Australia's increasingly close relationship with China and the implications that may have if conflict arises between the US and China over Taiwan. There appeared to be no discussion at all about obvious gaps and inequities in the recently negotiated US-Australia Free Trade Agreement. And did John Howard dare ask how America's drive to "democratise the world" squares with its "normalisation" this week of relations with Libya, a nation ruled since 1969 by an authoritarian "former terrorist"?

Much is made of the extraordinary Howard/Bush friendship. Yet the oldest rule in the diplomatic handbook - one that even George Washington knew so well all those years ago - is that nations have interests, not friends. We need to hear a lot more about the genuine interests and a lot less about the personal friendship.


Dennis Phillips teaches American politics at the University of Sydney.