CANBERRA – While Australian Prime Minister John Howard has proclaimed the reelection of U.S. President George W. Bush as "a victory for the anti-terrorism cause," foreign policy analysts believe he will have to distance himself from the image as a U.S. "deputy sheriff" if he wants to improve relations with regional countries.
Scott Burchill, a renown lecturer in International Relations at the Victoria-based Deakin University, argues that Australia will be forced to pull back from its close identification with the key elements of U.S. foreign policy.
"The government’s idea that it can both echo Bush’s foreign policy and have good relationships within the region will become impossible to sustain," he told IPS.
According to Burchill, sooner or later Howard will be forced to recognize that the more he is viewed as a proxy of the United States in the region the harder it will be to develop good relationships with countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
But former Australian career diplomat, Tony Kevin, thinks Australia has already subtly started to signal its emphasis on developing a more independent regional identity.
"I think Howard’s emphasis on regionalism on getting closer to the Asian community such as through free trade agreements with China is all about sending a signal to Washington saying ‘Hey we are standing a little back from this from now on,’" he said in an interview.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who comfortably won reelection in early October, spoke with Bush in a ten-minute long phone call Thursday morning to congratulate him on his return to the White House.
Speaking to reporters later in the day Howard said Bush’s win "will send a very clear signal around the world that the coalition of more than 30 nations in Iraq is determined to stay the distance, is determined to give the people of Iraq the opportunity of reaching out for a democratic future," he said.
Howard said he plans to meet Bush at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Chile on Nov. 17-18 to discuss regional issues and "our ongoing partnership in the campaign against terrorism."
Both Burchill and Kevin believe that a spillover effect of the war in Iraq will be the tempering of any inclination for Howard to support aggressive action aimed at those dubbed the "axis of evil" by Bush.
"The fact that there is a quagmire in Iraq will force the Americans to hesitate before escalating tensions with the Iranians, Syrians or North Korea," Burchill said.
Added Kevin: "The decision on whether the American people elected the challenger [John] Kerry or Bush doesn’t matter as much as it would have a year or more ago when we seemed to be so gung ho with the Bush crusade. I think we are holding back from it a bit now under the Howard government."
Accepting the Sydney Peace Prize in Sydney Thursday night, Indian writer Arundhati Roy took aim at Howard – who "among other things, led Australia to participate in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq" – and those who voted to reelect him.
"Those who support the invasion and vote for the invaders cannot take refuge in ignorance. They must truly believe that this epic brutality is right and just or, at the very least, acceptable because it’s in their interest," she said.
Roy expressed her dismay that despite the debacle in Iraq, voters in countries such as the U.S. and Britain are being offered little choice. "To imagine that the world would change if they [Bush and Blair] were removed from office is naive."
"The tragedy is that their political rivals have no real dispute with their policies. The fire and brimstone of the U.S. election campaign was about who would make a better ‘commander-in-chief’ and a more effective manager of the American empire," added Roy.
On Wednesday Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer expressed his view that he wanted to "keep encouraging the Americans to remain actively engaged in our region in the war against terrorism, not just elsewhere."
Of critical regional concern have been the bombings in Indonesia in Jakarta and Bali that have killed and injured hundreds of Indonesian and Australian citizens.
On Sept. 9, a powerful car bomb was detonated by a suicide bomber outside the gates of the Australian embassy in Jakarta killing nine people and injuring almost 180. It came about two years after the nightclub bombings in Bali, which killed 202 mostly foreign Australian tourists and a mere 12 months after Jakarta’s J.W. Marriott hotel was blasted, killing 12 people.
With the prospects of further attacks, Burchill thinks that foremost in the mind of Australian diplomats will be the rising levels of anti-U.S. feeling among Indonesia’s political elite.
Defusing the hostility, he argues, will require a greater willingness to pursue an independent foreign policy.
"Australian governments tend to overrate the benefits of having a close relationship with the United States as we saw in the outcome of the free trade agreement in which we gained little and gave a lot," said Burchill.
In her passionate speech, Roy argued that the condemnation of "terrorism" by leaders such as Howard, Bush and Blair was disingenuous. "It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable."
"We cannot support one and condemn the other," she said.
The challenge confronting citizens, Roy said, was how to escape being hemmed in a "crevasse" between "the horror of a putative peace and the terror of war."
For her thousand strong audience Roy concluded her speech with a pointed question.
"For those who are materially well off, but morally uncomfortable, the first question you must ask yourself is do you really want to climb out of it? How far are you prepared to go? Has the crevasse become too comfortable?"
