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The U.S. and Australia: An Alliance Adrift?
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12941 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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5 / 1987 |
5,288 Words |
| Author
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Peter Samuel
Peter Samuel, Washington correspondent for The Australian, has
covered wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. |
Australians and Americans are natural allies. They get on together more easily than most peoples because they have much in common. English-speaking, deriving from the same British liberal traditions, they are both independent-minded ex-colonial peoples proud of pioneering new continents and intolerant of tyranny. They have fought side by side on numerous occasions and remain in a strong alliance now. But that alliance is coming under increasing pressure. There is no single source of trouble like the nuclear ship issue that divided New Zealand from the United States. Rather, there is an array of issues, none of which is individually too damaging but which in some combination might come to threaten the alliance.
On meeting Australians, Americans often express interest in their country and say they would love to visit. However, most probably they never will because, from the East Coast at least, it is one of the most arduous and expensive air flights anywhere in the world. And it is not on the way to any place else.
But if Australia's remoteness deters tourists, it is also part of Australia's strategic significance to the United States. Defense Caspar Weinberger learned this as a first lieutenant in 1942, when he was shipped off with the 41st Infantry Division to Australia, from whence the Allied forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur mounted the long, costly war against Imperial Japan.
Remoteness provides strategic depth. One of the values to the West of remote places like Australia is that in time of war they provide a redoubt to which the forces of unprepared democracies can fall back and regroup for the counteroffensive against shock aggression. In the 1980s, according to a Congressional Research Service paper on the armed services, the Pentagon has wartime plans to make extensive use of Australia as a way station while supplying and transporting forces to the Persian Gulf. From San Francisco, U.S. military airlift planes would fly to the Indian Ocean via Darwin in northern Australia rather than via Clark Air Base in the Philippines, because on the northern route they would be too vulnerable to Soviet fighters operating out of Vietnam. Similarly, sealift ships carrying tanks, artillery, and heavy munitions would travel south of Australia, rather than hazard the Malacca and other straits through the Indonesian islands. That could require the use of Australian harbors for refueling and reprovisioning en route. In peacetime, the opportunity for U.S. warships to visit Australian ports for reprovisioning and for rest and recreation is deemed extremely important in the maintenance of an American naval presence in the Indian
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