An Extraordinary 10 Days For Australian Foreign Policy

This morning's Weekend Australian contains an excellent article by Greg Sheridan:

In the past 10 days John Howard has spoken on terrorism to the largest global audience of any Australian PM in our history, in a trip in which he made global, regional and bilateral policy with the most powerful leaders in the world; we have joined an exclusive East Asian club for the first time without the US but with Washington's blessing, in part because we can help protect its interests there; and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has announced a new grouping of Asian giants plus the US in a huge global play that underlines that the Kyoto climate control protocol is a dead dog and the centre of gravity is shifting to the Asia-Pacific.

It's a heady brew, the most fascinating, complex and significant confluence of foreign policy strands. For the Howard Government it represents vindication on three fronts: Australia's participation in the war on terror has increased our global influence; our close alliance with the US does not damage our regional interests but enhances them; and rejection of Kyoto was not only sound policy but smart politics, hooking us up to new Asia where the economic and political dynamism resides and decoupling us from the statist, bureaucratic politics of old Europe at its worst.

It is a masterful synthesis by the Howard Government, for which Howard and Downer deserve primary credit. Howard has just returned from what must rank as one of the most successful prime ministerial trips of all time. In Washington he transacted much more business with George W. Bush than we first thought, securing Bush's support for our signing up to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Co-operation in order to gain admission to the East Asia Summit in December, and finalising the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

Just last week, an acquaintance of mine spent the best part of an hour in conversation with me, trying to denigrate the Howard Government's performance in general and in foreign policy terms in particular. As is distressingly common, his argument essentially comprised that reflexive delusion of the anti-Howard, anti-Bush (and dare I say it anti-American) left, that "Australia has no foreign policy, we just obey Washington".

Sheridan's article is well worth reading in full, because it comprehensively exposes the vacuity of that line of argument.