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By GARY BROWN
Howard’s war and peace
WITH a federal election fast
approaching in Australia, thoughtful citizens will be weighing
up the pros and cons of changing their government.
Let’s consider seriously the following responses by prime
minister John Howard to questions on two recent editions of the
ABC’s 7:30 Report.
The first is:
“Now, we’re not perfect, we’re not full of ourselves, but I
think we’ve been a government well above average competence.”
Howard’s claim of economic competence may be justified by the
evidence he seeks to suggest.
The second was in response to claims that Howard is dishonest:
“I’m not dishonest. There are many examples thrown up by my
critics in relation to that but let me take one of the most
egregious of all and that is weapons of mass destruction in
relation to the war in Iraq.
“I believe there were weapons of mass destruction because that’s
what the intelligence said … To say that I lied to the
Australian people on weapons of mass destruction simply because
I stated a view based on intelligence, and justified Australia’s
involvement in the military operation based on that, is not to
say we took the country to war based on a lie.”
If Howard’s claim is to be believed, and I do believe him, it
would mean that his government went to war by mistake.
So, of course, did US president George Bush and former British
prime minister Tony Blair.
In reality, if Bush had not made his mistake first, the other
two would not have made theirs.
Governments, like any other human institution, can make mistakes
but they must be held accountable for these mistakes. The worse
the mistake, the more important accountability becomes.
In fact, Australian conservatives have bad form when it comes to
ill-starred foreign military adventures – remember Indo-china.
In the nearly four decades since that disaster, it seems
Australia’s Tories have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
We are now complicit in the illegal invasion and conquest of a
foreign country – by mistake.
We share in the huge responsibility for the disgusting
post-Saddam carnage on all sides, for the dollar costs, for the
enormous damage to the credibility and reputation of the west in
the Middle East – and all by mistake.
The Iraqi debacle is certainly the most spectacular of Howard’s
security policy failures. What of the rest of its record?
This too is in part a consequence of Iraq, because that black
hole has been sucking up scarce resources which should be
available for more useful endeavours.
The deteriorating security position in Afghanistan, where
al-Qaeda and the Taliban continue to rack up successes, is at
least partly due to the drain on coalition resources in Iraq.
More significant for Australia has been the conservatives’
neglect of Australia’s own region. One result has been the
continued decline of Papua New Guinea; another, the inadequate
deployments to Timor Leste, which let the lid off serious
internal pressures there.
Another was the shambles in the Solomons, which need never have
happened if Australia had not refused a request for aid from
that country made in 2000.
Because it did refuse, the Solomons descended into chaos and
armed gangsterism and, three years and many deaths later, a far
larger and more costly effort had to be made to restore a
semblance of public order.
Today, of course, a senior Solomon government official is wanted
in Australia on child-sex charges having “escaped” from custody
in PNG.
Meanwhile, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, the latest
illegally-appointed ruler of Fiji, continues to thumb his nose
at Australia.
“Border protection” is a Howard government mantra. But now it
appears that, quite aside from the scandalous instances of
Australian citizens being illegally detained or even deported
from their own country, this policy has been appallingly
cost-ineffective.
The so-called “Pacific” solution – which involves bribing needy
neighbourhood governments to house asylum-seekers on their
territory – has cost upwards of A$1 billion, whereas to process
the same number of people in Australia would have cost less than
a tenth of this amount: … so far the cost of the Pacific
Solution is A$500,000 per person to process fewer than 1,700
asylum-seekers.
And yet there is clear evidence that it is cheaper, more
effective and humane to process asylum-seekers on mainland
Australia.
It makes no economic sense whatsoever to house a detainee
offshore at a cost of A$1,830 per day when it can be done here
on mainland Australia for as little as A$238 per day, according
to the latest estimate by the Department of Immigration and
Citizenship.
Nor is this mere fiscal carping. While Howard was busily
whipping up xenophobia over a few hundred asylum-seeker
unfortunates, his government’s eye clearly went off the main
game in border protection for Australia.
Inattention to customs and quarantine has now resulted in equine
influenza escaping the very facility intended to contain such
diseases. We have good cause to be grateful that what escaped
was not something nastier.
Howard must be credited with recognising in 1999 that it was
high time to ditch the policy of supporting Indonesian rule in
Timor Leste. He was able to do so because of the internal
disorder which accompanied and followed the fall of Suharto’s
regime. He also weathered the difficult political relations of
the following couple of years, and eventually established a
working relationship with the civilian regime in Jakarta.
The government distinguished itself and won well-deserved kudos
for Australia in its rapid and substantial response to the
Indian Ocean tsunami disaster.
In Indonesian Aceh particularly, Australian aid has been
important from the first response until today.
Nine defence personnel died when their helicopter crashed while
on this aid work. But gratitude in international affairs is
often short-lived, and relations with Indonesia remain a
difficult challenge.
Howard’s grovelling to Jakarta over the affair of West Papuan
refugees showed that it soon fell into the grip of the notorious
“Jakarta lobby” mentality, which has distorted policy for
decades and was responsible for permitting the original
Indonesian invasion and conquest of Timor Leste.
In blithe disregard of the risk that Indonesian security
harbours covert Islamist operatives, it has resumed co-operation
with the notorious Kopassus – a powerful security force,
mainstay of the former military dictatorship and responsible for
numerous human rights outrages – which still accepts but a
limited degree of control by the civilian regime and which it is
dangerous to provoke.
One area in which the government has an admittedly difficult
task is managing relationships with China and the US.
It has to convince the Americans that Australia remains staunch
allies, but the Chinese are suspicious to a degree approaching
paranoia that Washington is trying to strategically “contain”
them by building ties with South Korea, Japan, Australia and
states in South-East Asia.
Thus far, the government has walked this tightrope with some
assurance. But the rope will begin to jiggle seriously if
US-Chinese relations ever deteriorate, and walking it then will
certainly require great competence if we are not to be sucked
into a north Asian war over Taiwan.
After Indo-china and Iraq, two first-rank blunders, it would be
worrying if the conservatives happen to be in government here at
the time.
Under Howard, indeed under conservative regimes generally,
Australia has behaved less like the US ally it ought to be, than
as a fawning satellite state.
Almost every one of Bush’s worst blunders, not just Iraq, has
been enthusiastically endorsed by Howard.
Advocacy of pre-emptive military operations based (like Iraq)
solely on “intelligence”, of a “deputy sheriff” regional role
for Australia, and unilateral cancellation of the important
anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty to facilitate Bush’s mad
pursuit of “missile defence”, are among the things to which
Howard has lent Australia’s name.
The proper role of an ally is to support an attacked partner and
to advise that partner if it is about to make a mistake, not to
leap into the abyss if the partner insists on doing so.
Australia is not obliged to slavishly follow US policy, nor to
join it in unjustified and unwinnable wars, but this truth has
escaped Howard all his political life.
Australia’s support for “missile defence” is stringent because
now the cost is huge.
Whether the government is economically competent is a matter for
the economically literate. But in national security clearly it
is not.
It has wasted a billion dollars on its pointless “Pacific
solution”, illegally detained and deported citizens in the name
of border protection and allowed equine influenza into
Australia.
Though behaving admirably over the Timorese independence and
during the tsunami catastrophe, it soon resumed grovelling to
Jakarta and has taken the incredible risk of allowing the
notorious Kopassus to share anti-terrorist security information.
Its record suggests that as it juggles the US and Chinese
elements in our security environment we had better pray
Washington and Beijing never have a confrontation.
Instead of being a responsible US ally, Howard’s policies have
portrayed Australia as a slavish satellite – worse, a
discredited conservative himself, he has shackled us to another
– the atrocious George W. Bush.
All this bad enough. But conservatives will object that it’s
just the usual progressive litany. Well, maybe it is and maybe
not. But here is something that is a fact.
Howard’s government took Australia to war, invaded, helped
conquer and occupy a foreign country and bogged us down there.
And on his own admission, it was all by mistake – not his
mistake, he says, but it was his decision.
We have been lucky (and wisely careful in the field) so far in
Iraq; the next time the conservatives make one of their
war-or-peace “mistakes” we might not get off so lightly.
When Australians elect a federal government, the greatest power
we give it is that of choosing peace or war – the people who
sent us to Iraq should never again be entrusted with this power.
– onlineopinion
Note: Until June 2002 Gary Brown was a defence adviser
with the Parliamentary Information and Research Service at
Parliament House, Canberra, where he provided confidential
advice and research at request to members and staff of all
parties and Parliamentary committees, and produced regular
publications on a wide range of defence issues.
 
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