Is war America's 'Manifest Destiny'? If so, what does Australia gain by it?

Rob Goodfellow, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia

The Bush administration has been trying very hard to argue a rational case for war with Iraq. Most Australians, like most Indonesians, are unconvinced. In fact most people are confused about what is "really" motivating the U.S. administration to pursue such a desperate course of action.

Is it an understandable reaction to the horror and insecurity of Sept. 11 and a genuine desire to make the world a safer place from tyrants such as Saddam Hussein? Or is it simply a case of needing to control the world's second largest reserve of oil in light of turmoil in Venezuela and potential instability in Saudi Arabia? Are U.S. concerns focused on the expansion and protection of trade? Perhaps they believe that a "short war" will kick-start a seriously declining U.S. and global economy? Or could it be a consequence of intense pressure from within the United States to indirectly support Israel's response to the Palestinian's uprising? Is it in fact personal, as in George W. Bush's claim that: "Saddam tried to kill my Dad"?

It is all of these things. However one factor that has not been raised in the debate, which sheds a great deal of light on what is ideologically motivating the American political elite, is that men like Bush desperately want the 21st Century to be "the American Century". They, in fact, sincerely believe it is their "manifest destiny" to be pre-eminent amongst nations.

In 1845, an influential newspaper editor named O'Sullivan attempted to explain America's thirst for expansion by presenting a defense of their claims over new territories. He suggested that the U.S. had: "A right of manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given (them) for the development of the great experiment of liberty ..."

The notion of "manifest destiny" was applauded as defining the energy, enterprise and creativity of North American New World Civilization. Unfortunately, it was also used to justify the slaughter, dispossession and subjugation of the Native Americans and the annexation of Mexican possessions in Texas and California as well as a large section of Maine from the Canadians.

And when the "covered wagon trains" reached the West Coast, in a sense they just kept on rolling, as the Islands of Hawaii, and the Spanish possessions in the Caribbean, Panama, and then the Philippines, came under direct U.S. control. It has been the engine of American life and culture ever since. It is, as one commentator suggested, "the intangible ideology that created American history".

The arrogance that flowed from the "manifest destiny" philosophy was exemplified by the words of one 19th Century U.S. Senator: "God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Tectonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish a system where chaos [now] reigns ...".

The U.S. is the Roman Empire of our day. They are the unrivaled and unsurpassed military and economic superpower of the era. For this reason they have their own logic of imperial power that both Australians and Indonesians find difficult to understand.

This is typified in George W. Bush's language of "axis of evil" and exemplified in his Government's unshakable conviction that they are absolutely right and just in their cause and that anyone who opposes them, or in fact desires to engage them in open debate, is either ill-informed, misled, wrong, a cowardly appeaser, or else "a terrorist". (In fact over 60 percent of all Americans support military action against Iraq with or without UN approval, in spite of strong opposition from nations such as France and Germany.) So what about Australia and the Howard Government's support for President Bush? Is there also an ideology involved?

Australia's first wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin, may have given the clearest signal of pro-American ideology in 1942. It was as the Japanese Army advanced through the Dutch East Indies on Northern Australia that Curtin marked this point in history by saying: "Without inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom".

Australia reached out to the U.S., first as an ally in War, and then as a trading partner in peace. This relationship grew and prospered to the extent that by the early 1980s the United States had become Australia's principle source of imports and its second most important export destination after Japan.

In order to maintain this relationship Prime Minister John Howard is in part motivated to support the U.S. in order to secure a bilateral free trade treaty, variously estimated at many billions of dollars a year to the Australian economy. (This arrangement will be small enough not to aggravate the overly protected U.S. farm lobby, and will almost certainly cut the Europeans out of a multilateral deal.)

However like Bush, Howard is also motivated by ideology, in Australia's case an old tradition of seeking the support and protection of "great and powerful friends", first Britain and now the U.S.

Like George W. Bush, John Winston Howard will be motivated by a complex range of determining factors, both just and highly questionable, however, like the U.S. President, the Australian Prime Minister has his eye on geopolitical developments well into the "American Century".

"The United States had no better friend than Australia as it [prepares] to launch military strikes against Iraq", U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said last week during Howard's visit to Washington.

There is no question that the region (including Australia's neighbor Indonesia) is vitally important to Prime Minister Howard (witnessed by his visit to Jakarta this week), however, the Australian Government's clear priority is to be identified as a loyal friend of the greatest power of our age. Unfortunately in the final analysis, Washington's case for War, and Canberra's support for that War, may not rest on a convincing argument, but on power and ideology.

The writer is co-author of Investing in Australia: A Cultural and Practical Guide.