Pearls and Irritations

In a recent article, the Hon. P.J. Keating berated the wretched Greg Sheridan for manifold errors in a typical The Australian Newsrag opinion piece. Only a fool provokes PJK on spurious grounds.

Though enjoyable to witness the public dissection of a noxious Murdoch apparatchik, there is much more to note in Keating’s article. A phrase that has surfaced with strength of late – Austral-Americans – commands focus. Keating references Manning-Clarke’s term Austral-Britons: ‘people whose ambivalence as to their identity and allegiances compromised their commitment to Australia’ as the progenitor of this descriptor. The trans-Atlantic shift is old news now.

This switch permeates our society; the root of communication nowadays is social media, in which USA-based organisations predominate. The challenger to that hegemony – Tik-Tok – is portrayed (obliquely) as another incarnation of the Yellow Peril by those who push the anti-China barrow.

However, Austral-Xxxx proclivity has been a dominant feature of our national security posture for a long time. That is not an ephemeral matter: the over 103,000 names inscribed in bronze on the walls at the Australian War Memorial (‘AWM’) record Australian lives terminated, mostly as a result of a compromised commitment to Australia. So many towns and villages have a memorial that attests to the local impact.

In two World Wars, Australian troops fought under the title of ‘Imperial Forces’. Our servicemen lying in Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries were deemed Commonwealth property. When it was proposed that we repatriate and entomb at the AWM the Unknown Australian Soldier, the CWGC initially resisted the idea. It took a diplomatically-crafted but unambiguous message that this project was an Australian government priority and it would happen – with or without CWGC assistance – delivered by a very senior member of the AWM staff to prise the Soldier loose from the Commonwealth grasp. (Who was PM at that time? – see para 1, above.)

For quite some time in the early days of the project, the RSL was also against the idea: a striking example of moribund Austral-British centricity. One would have thought this compromised commitment to Australia to be unlikely of the RSL but it is indicative of how pervasive is the culture.

But let us step back further: to 1939, when we were told: ‘Great Britain has declared war upon her [Germany] and that, as a result, Australia is also at war.‘

That arch Austral-Briton Menzies committed us to war as a matter of unquestioned obeisance to ‘the homeland.’ His own government did not share his depth of Austral-British attachment nor his lack of strategic savvy and his acquiescing to supporting Churchill’s second-greatest failure of military judgement – the Greek campaign (next after Gallipoli, of course) – was possibly the last straw.

When Curtin became PM he specifically discarded the Austral-British focus and adopted pragmatism in his approach to the defence of Australia – a defence by then a matter of survival, following the outbreak of the Pacific War. He declared his strategy: ‘Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom’.

Curtin’s commitment to Australia (even to not just enduring but actually cultivating the odious MacArthur) remains unchallenged as having saved Australia from a Japanese invasion. Naturally, Churchill was miffed at the uppity colonials unbending the knee and looking to our own interests. C’est la guerre…

In fact, the sad history of Australians fighting other people’s wars is a salient warning that the Austral-Xxxx path leaves us wide open to abuse of de facto or de jure allegiances (aka becoming cannon fodder). A pat on the head of our PM from the leader of another country is damn poor return for lives lost for no good purpose, but is an observable product of a compromised commitment to Australia. Too often, that is all we get for the blood and treasure we provide.

Moving on…

Trivia Time: who said ‘All the way with LBJ’ regarding Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War?

Harold Holt, who succeeded Menzies as PM, in the completion of a flip from Austral-British to Austral-American focus for our national defence. It was contentious at the time, widely protested by Australian society, and of course (as time has played out), another contemptible waste of Australian lives and resources for no useful purpose. Another compromised commitment to Australia due to political ambition.

Menzies had taken us into joining with the USA in the Vietnamese conflict because he felt it would help cement the Austral-American bond – quite the personal shift of allegiance and done in subterfuge of Parliament. By that time, our national defence materiel procurement strategy had angled towards interoperability with American forces. Those interested in the minutiae of defence procurement as an indicator of perceived alliances can find much to guide them in the AWM National Collection.

We can pass quickly by our unfortunate involvement in actions post Vietnam: often stupid, some potentially illegal and possibly criminal by international conventions of warfare/conflict. Some are explicable only by comprehension of the political factors at the time since they were in no imaginable way necessary for national security.

The ‘modern’ conflicts – as the AWM nowadays calls them – are sufficiently recent to be appreciated by most of us. The AWM depicts the earlier conflicts expansively in exhibitions, research material and the commemorative elements of the building. There is nothing there that one could point to as a benefit from an Austral-Xxxx mindset. To appreciate the length and strength of impact of Austral-Xxxx influence on Australia’s national security, I recommend an extended, inquisitive visit.

Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

Keating’s article highlights the most recent development of Austral-American sentiment – ‘AUKUS’ and the submarine conundrum. AUKUS is of course an anagram of USUKA – and it is most likely that, as things will prove, Australia is not just the tail of the dog but the sucker thus defined.

For more on this topic, P&I recommends:

The “little Americans” that populate Australia

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