Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, recently gave a lengthy and discursive speech at the National Press Club, the transcript of which is available on the minister’s website. In her speech, Ms Wong opined that strategic competition across multiple domains was ‘all framed by an intense contest of narratives’. This opinion appears to accord with the prevailing ethos of corporate media, where narrative is king. Objective reality, historical context, empirical evidence, these count for nothing, narrative is everything.
Penny Wong claimed that our ‘interests lie in a region that operates by rules, standards and norms, where a larger country does not determine the fate of a smaller country; where each country can pursue its own aspirations, its own prosperity’. The rules, standards and norms she refers to are those defined by the United States, not international law or the UN Charter. This clearly flies in the face of her assertion that a larger country does not determine the fate of smaller countries in our region.
She then nailed her colours to the mast with the bizarre juxtaposition of two wholly unrelated, inaccurate and irrelevant observations, asserting that: ‘Our focus needs to be on how we ensure our fate is not determined by others, how we ensure our decisions are our own. And if there were any doubt, Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine renders stark our interest in living in a region where no country dominates, and no country is dominated’.
As a representative of a country that has a long and sordid history of engaging in illegal and immoral invasions of other countries, in company with our great and powerful ally, Penny Wong’s rhetoric rings hollow and will no doubt look like hypocritical posturing to our northern neighbours. Only someone who is oblivious to our record of unprovoked aggression around the world, from Vietnam and Korea to Afghanistan and Iraq, could make a statement like this with a straight face and expect everyone to nod approvingly.
Sixty years ago, Donald Horne wrote ‘Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck’. He didn’t stipulate if that was good luck or bad, but when it comes to our relationship with our imperial masters, a more apt moniker would be ‘lackey country’. Australia is and always has been a loyal lackey of empire, an insipid, obsequious vassal with zero influence at the imperial court.
This impotence is demonstrated by our government’s inability to rescue our world-famous award-winning journalist, publisher and founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who has been abducted and imprisoned by our Anglo-American friends and allies. Ron Drew discussed this failure in his excellent letter (Echo, April 26), exposing the extraordinary deference shown to the US by our government.
John Howard preferred the label ‘deputy sheriff’, but his predecessor Malcolm Fraser, in his edifying tome, Dangerous Allies, accurately described our relationship with the US as one of ‘strategic dependence’. The only government we ever had that showed any inclination to pursue an independent foreign policy was the government of Gough Whitlam, and we all know what happened to him.
The notion that our region is not dominated by a great power defies the fact that our region is home to scores of US military bases, US-funded think tanks and ‘pro-democracy’ NGOs. The only people capable of denying this undeniable dominance are those who have so thoroughly assimilated the narrative of Western hegemony that they cannot imagine an Australian identity independent of America.
Paul Keating describes this cohort as having a compromised commitment to Australia. If Ms Wong and her speech writers believe their own narrative, they’re delusional. If they don’t really believe it, then they’re being dishonest and deceitful. Either way it doesn’t bode well for the future of our foreign policy or Australia’s international relations with our region and the rest of the world.
Ms Wong and co. might want to contemplate Henry Kissinger’s famous warning that, ‘To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal’.
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