Howard's move damages Asian relations

By Kerry-anne Walsh

CANBERRA: Australian Prime Minister John Howard has penciled in early October to visit his new mate in the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush. Howard has a few months of preparatory work before he announces the visit and what he hopes to achieve.

Despite keeping the visit under wraps, there seem to be two obvious objectives: To pursue a free-trade agreement with the Bush administration, and bolster his credentials before the federal election, widely tipped for the end of the year, when his government will seek a third term.

By achieving the former, he believes he will succeed in the latter. The Howard government's bold intention to sign off on a free-trade agreement with the United States puts into perspective its zealous -- some would say unnecessarily sycophantic -- support for Bush's recent actions.

Both Howard and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer have rushed to support aggressive stances adopted by Bush in recent months as he attempts to assert his tough new administration globally.

Risking political fall-out from Australia's powerful environmental groups, Howard backed the Bush administration flouting the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, much to the outrage of many European countries.

But it was Australia's quick salute to Bush's recent hawk-like military and defense actions that has sparked concern that Howard's U.S. policy objectives are blinding him to the probability of a dangerous deterioration in Australian-Asian relationships, most notably with China.

The Australian government was quick to stand beside the U.S. in March in its confrontation with China over the spy-plane incident.

Howard and Downer also rushed to back Bush's decision to sell arms to Taiwan. The U.S. declaration that it would defend Taiwan was given the thumbs-up by Canberra, further raising China's hackles.

And the stand-off with China over the presence of Australian naval vessels in the Taiwan Strait in April has put additional strain on the relationship.

Yet the riskiest pledge of allegiance in the last few months' re-positioning has been the open-armed embrace of Bush's brave new world of a missile defense project, which will assuredly involve the joint defense facility on Australian soil at Pine Gap. Both China and Russia have objected strongly to the project. But Howard is taking his chances nevertheless, demonstrating by his actions that the relationship with the U.S. is the country's priority.

Respected commentators in Australia are now writing that the country is entering a new and difficult era of Australia-China relations.

The Australian newspaper's long-standing foreign editor Greg Sheridan wrote that "if Beijing is willing to beat up on the U.S., with all its might, how much more tempting is it to bully the infinitely-smaller fry of Australia? It is now clear that China is going to extract a price from Australia for our close alliance with the U.S.".

The paper's respected international editor Paul Kelly theorized that "the diplomatic moves afoot between the Howard and Bush governments are potentially the most decisive shifts in our foreign policy for years".

But he warned the Howard government in March: "A groundswell of opposition is building in this country, alarmed about the consequences for our ties with Asia".

Former conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser also chipped in, declaring that Australia's close ties with the U.S. were compromising Australian independence, and that the Anzus Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. was no longer relevant.

Academic and author Michael McKinley, an expert in international relations based at Canberra's Australian National University, is blunt about the Howard government's foreign-policy priorities.

He told The Straits Times that the government was "uneducated, ideological and ignorant" when it came to its unquestioning support for the Bush administration.

"What they tend to do is always defer to a reactionary ideology, and the Bush government is the most reactionary since the Cold War," he says.

"Within the Australian government there is a belief that everything that the U.S. does as the dominant alliance partner has to be supported, and there are people within the Howard government who are very close in ideology to those in the Bush administration".

He believes China and other regional countries now view Australia as an "automatic-reflex follower of everything the U.S. does", and therefore cannot be taken seriously as an independent player.

"As long as we support the U.S. no matter what, our regional image is not credible. In the long term, it keeps reinforcing an attitude in the region that we do not want to be part of it other than for economic gain," he said.

The prospect of a new economic partnership between Australia and the U.S. is a driving force behind Australia's eagerness to support the bullish defense and military declarations of the Bush administration.

It is the closest Australia has been to negotiating a free- trade agreement with the U.S. since it was first raised with former President George Bush Sr eight years ago.

U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick said the administration was willing to look at a deal if it had bipartisan political support. Labor leader Kim Beazley gave that support on behalf of his party.

Another obstacle has also been removed. Australia's largest trading partner, Japan, was violently opposed to such an idea when it was raised eight years ago.

Now, Japan is negotiating its own stable of free-trade deals and Australia is attempting to move closer to its powerful Asian neighbor.

Only this week, Downer publicly called for Japan to play a major peace-keeping role in the Asia-Pacific region, a proposal condemned immediately by China.

If Howard opens up difficult agricultural markets in the U.S., it would have powerful political spin-offs at home. The most disenfranchised voters are in rural areas.

If he can promise that he and his ideological ally in the White House can deliver trade deals that Labor may not be able to, it could have a significant impact on the voting intentions of rural Australians.

But there is a growing fear that Australia may pay dearly in the region for Howard's political and ideological priorities.

The writer is a Canberra-based senior political journalist who writes for Australian national and international publications.

-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network