More than ever, Australia should have the objective capacity to determine its own defence and intelligence requirements, instead of being heavily influenced by American interests and perspective.

America’s influence is most obvious in intelligence, naval procurement, ADF recruitment and the so-called interchangeability and interoperability of forces that Richard Marles keeps talking about.

The five Eyes Intelligence Alliance originated in the UK’s Bletchley Park code breaker centre during World War II. It led, in 1946, to a formal agreement between Britain and the US to share signals intelligence. Canada joined in 1948, followed by Australia and New Zealand in 1956. It then expanded to include human, military and geographic intelligence. After 2001, terrorism and cyber threats were added to the list of concerns. Six Australian intelligence agencies have a stake – the Criminal Intelligence Commission, Federal Police, the Geospacial Intelligence Organisation, ASIS, ASIO and the Australian Signals Directorate.

Such an elaborate Australian network should be robust and independent, and its agencies able to make up their own minds about Australia’s best interests in conflict situations. But starting with Vietnam, their capacity for independent thought has increasingly been distorted by an American perspective.

Examples include US intelligence assessments about Vietnam and Afghanistan. Australian ministers and defence bureaucrats were conned into believing that the war in South Vietnam was driven by outside communist forces and could be won. In response, Australian troops were sent in in 1965 to combat “outside forces” from North Vietnam, Russia and China. Only after the 1968 Tet Offensive did Australian authorities belatedly realise that the war was a civil one and would be lost.

It suited President George W. Bush to believe that the perpetrators of the destruction of the World Trade on 11 September 2001 were from Afghanistan.  (Fifteen were from Saudi Arabia, two from the UAE, one from Lebanon and one from Egypt).  Following Bush’s declaration of war against terrorism in the same year, he invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of al-Qaeda. Eleven thousand Australian troops were sent to Uruzgan province, where many remained in Australia’s longest war until 2021. They were withdrawn by President Biden in an ignominious American defeat.

The invasion of Iraq was even more misguided. As multiple credible intelligence reports reported at the time, Saddam Hussein harboured no weapons of mass destruction. Yet John Howard swallowed Washington’s line that he did, and in 2003 Australia sent a 500-strong task force into Muthanna Province where they remained until 2013.

On US advice, Australia declared Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis “terrorist” organisations, which justified Australia taking part in more losing wars against US enemies.

The latest US distortion of intelligence concerns Iran’s nuclear program. The Shah had wanted 17 nuclear power reactors along the Persian Gulf, but Iran succeeded in building only one, a Russian-designed pressurised power reactor of 1000 MW at Bushehr at the head of the Persian Gulf. That, and an experimental nuclear program including a small heavy water reactor at Arak, continued under the Ayatollahs. Iran consistently said it had no intention or interest in developing nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless in 2015 the US, China, Russia, and prominent Europeans negotiated a deal with Iran designed to slow down its nuclear program. Called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it included the most comprehensive IAEA surveillance of any country’s nuclear program. Iran also agreed to close 13,000 of its 19,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges, remove its entire stockpile of highly-enriched uranium and heavy water and shut down its Arak reactor. It had earlier arranged to send irradiated fuel from Bushehr to Russia for re-processing.

In 2018, however, President Trump walked away from the JCPOA on the dodgy grounds that it was not comprehensive enough. The Iranians shrugged their shoulders and resumed their experimental program, including further enrichment of uranium. Trump then peremptorily demanded that Iran close down its entire nuclear program, declaring that the country must (unlike Israel) never acquire nuclear weapons. More disturbingly, he allowed the continuation of nuclear talks with Iran as a cover while conniving with Israel to launch its current comprehensive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a most dangerous development that could easily lead to widening the conflict to the entire Middle East region, if not beyond.

Trump’s double standards are breathtaking. Iran is surrounded by six nuclear powers – Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and the United States Fifth Fleet stationed in the Persian Gulf. Rather than accepting Iran’s now possible and justifiable intention to acquire nuclear deterrence, he supports  Israeli propaganda that Iran will attack Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as soon as it acquires nuclear weapons. Hardly credible, since such an attack would immediately lead to Iran’s own nuclear destruction by Israel.

Another way in which Canberra’s government and defence community have allowed undue US influence on Australian decisions on defence matters concerns submarines. Instead of making an independent assessment of Australian requirements, which entail close surveillance and patrolling of shallow waters close to the mainland, particularly but not exclusively to our near north, we have been conned by former Prime Minister Morrison, uncritically supported by his Labor successor Anthony Albanese, to acquire three second-hand Virginia class nuclear-propelled submarines under the AUKUS deal. To perpetuate adherence to such an expensive deal, three senior American shipbuilding executives were hired to reside here to reinforce the arrangement without the Australian public being told their function or what they are costing the taxpayer.

Instead of such a precipitate rush, we should have retained French interest while also examining diesel electric boats from several other companies, including Saab Kockums of Sweden, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki Heavy industries of Japan, South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries and Germany’s ThuyssenKrupp. All make boats with air independent propulsion which extends their range. All would be much cheaper (and quieter) than second-hand Virginias, all more suitable to the defence of Australia, and all less likely to draw us into a war with America against China, our largest trade partner.

Trump’s erratic administration not only makes US intelligence less reliable than ever, but exposes us to the danger of relying for defence on a declining power whose military warns of impending war against China – our largest trade partner.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.