Pearls and Irritations

Joe Courtney, who serves as Congressman for Connecticut’s second district, has received a rather curious honour. It has come in the form of a tribute from a US satellite – some would rightly say annexure or some other subordinate status. A press release from his office on October 22 announced that Rep. Courtney had been “appointed by the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia as an Honorary Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO).”

On November 18, the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C. held an official dinner to celebrate the award. Courtney spoke of an incongruous link, meaningless till recently, between Australia and his state. “Eastern Connecticut and Australia share an ironclad mateship – even at 11,646 miles apart.”

Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, whose continued role has garnered some commentary with Donald Trump’s election victory, showed he can play the role of able simperer if required. Hardly surprising, given Courtney’s effusive remarks calling Rudd “an outstanding partner in building strong bipartisan support for AUKUS in the United States.”

As for the award itself? “We don’t give them [the Order of Australia] out like confetti,” declared Rudd at the dinner. “You are a seriously good man. You are a great member of Congress. You are deeply engaged in the affairs of the world. And you’ve become deeply engaged over the years with the Commonwealth of Australia.” If crawling could be set to music, those words would suffice.

The award citation read by Commodore David Frost, Acting Head of Australian Defence Staff in Washington, D.C., was fabulously crawling, if revealing. “Congressman Courtney is a strong and tireless advocate of the alliance between the United States and Australia. He has been instrumental and committed to progressing Australia’s international and security interests, particularly advancing AUKUS enabling legislation required to make the AUKUS trilateral security partnership a success.” It would be easy to believe, on reading those words, that Courtney was an Australian lawmaker, not an American politician well and truly bought by the US naval establishment.

What made this award more curious was how an individual, who co-chairs the Friends of Australia Caucus, a body positively lethal to Australian sovereignty, could have been said to have performed “extraordinary service to Australia” as required by the honorary award. Services for the US military-industrial complex would hardly have stirred comment. Courtney not only represents the good people of Groton, the “Submarine Capital of the World” but proved instrumental in bringing Australian sovereignty to its already weakened knees, a feat that culminated in the AUKUS agreement between Australia, the UK and the United States.

Costing the Australian government somewhere in the order of A$368 billion – a blinding figure that will surely bloat with inflation and administrative incompetence – it envisages the utter capitulation of Canberra to a foreign power, one that promises nuclear powered submarines Australia may never see, and the broader militarisation of the country’s north by the US Marines, which is proving only too visible for residents. In the meantime, Australian taxpayer funds are flowing into Courtney’s electorate.

Other remarks also do much to shed light on the nature of the relationship – and what a trickster the wily Democrat from Connecticut has been. “The connection between our state and Australia is actually pretty special,” Courtney is reported as saying by WSHU Public Radio. Pretty special, indeed, in so far as the agreement operates almost totally in favour of one side. Take, for instance, the education of Royal Australian Navy officers, currently “going to sub school.” Or those shipyard workers “coming into Groton” which will serve US building needs far more than anything Australians could hope for. “I think it’s going to be very noticeable in the coming months and years about the fact that it’s the sort of a destination point for a country that’s just about as far away as you can get on the globe.”

Ostensibly, these security arrangements are meant to secure Australia against any threats posed by the Yellow Red Devils in Beijing, portrayed by neurotic strategists as incipient global conquerors. In fact, AUKUS is designed to turn Australia into a forward base, with an eye to containing Beijing in the Indo-Pacific. All the while, the parties are being made more attuned to the possibility of actual conflict.

Courtney’s statement acknowledging the award says all the right things in pleasing the awarding party. The overlord’s pleasure is always sweet, measured and disguised. He sees the US-Australian relationship as one “founded on a shared commitment to preserving international rule of law and democratic values.” It would be more accurate to describe the alliance as a facilitator of power and vested interests over law as understood by the enforcers, rather than a statement of law itself.

Rudd was not quite right in claiming that the Order of Australia is as infrequently bestowed as one might imagine. When the group includes emissaries and representatives of the US imperium, eyeing Australia’s role as overseer and satrap in the Indo-Pacific, it suddenly seems rather common. As in so many unequal relationships, the one with less power often finds ways to please their more powerful counterpart.

Consider the following previous recipients: Senator Roy Blunt, former Co-Chair of the Friends of Australia Caucus; Admiral Harry Harris, former US Ambassador to South Korea and Commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, and David Petraeus, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. That picture says it all: the ideological conditioning facilitated through the Caucus; the strategic conditioning achieved through the Indo-Pacific Command; and conditioning from the intelligence community best represented by the CIA.

When it comes to manufactured insecurity, spectral threats, and the conviction that Australia is vulnerable in a region so many of its babbling pundits and lawmakers have failed to understand, Washington has done an exceptional job. It has exploited lingering anxieties and a numbing gullibility, gaslighting the Australian psyche with stunning effectiveness. Courtney, especially, has shown himself particularly adept. A real friend indeed.

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