Obama makes security deal with USA’s best ally (and guess who that is?)

Nov 16th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

President Barack Obama is welcomed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard after arriving in Canberra, Australia. Photo: REUTERS/Jason Reed.

The estimable Bill Maher was surprised a few weeks ago to hear that the most loyal follower of the United States – the one other country of the world which has enthusiastically joined every foreign policy adventure Washington has concocted over the past 60 years – was not Canada. (He had maybe been paying too much attention to the mistaken understandings of his frenemy Ann Coulter on this point.)

As urged on Mr. Maher by Michael Ware, the Australian journalist formerly with CNN, the real holder of this exalted status is Australia (which unlike Canada, eg, followed the USA into both Vietnam and Iraq – ready aye ready). President Barack Obama, on his first official visit down under this week, has no illusions on this issue. Major domestic crises had postponed two earlier visits. But, the president told an audience in Canberra, he has remained “determined to come for a simple reason: The United States of America has no stronger ally than Australia.”

President Obama inspects honouyr guard at Parliament House in Canberra, November 16, 2011. (AFP: Saul Loeb).

President Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard have taken advantage of the visit to announce “an increased US Air Force and Marine presence” down under. Some “200 to 250 Marines will be deployed to Australia’s Northern Territory in mid-2012,” eventually “ramping up to a full force of 2500. There will be no US bases; instead, the plan is for American Marines and the USAF to use Australian bases.” Obama national security aide Ben Rhodes “said the US military boost would amount” to a “sustained” as opposed to the kind of “permanent” US presence “in such regional places as South Korea” (which does have US bases). Apparently, the “only American base currently in Australia is the secretive joint Australia-US intelligence and communications complex at Pine Gap in central Australia.”

President Obama, accompanied by Australian Governor General Quentin Bryce (in orange dress), greets opposition leader Tony Abbott. Photo by Stefan Postles/Getty Images.

The obvious elephant in the room here is the rising Pacific economic and military power of what used to be known as Red China – with which both Australia and the United States have increasingly intimate trade and other economic relationships. President Obama himself stressed that the (in fact rather modest) “increase of Marines” in the mystic Land of Oz “was in no way a reaction to any potential threat from China … ‘the notion that we fear China is a mistake.’” At the same time, “China’s state-owned media … said Australia should not be caught in China-US crossfire and ‘play China for a fool’’ … A story on the People’s Daily website said: ‘Apparently, Australia aspires to a situation where it maximises political and security benefits from its alliance with the US while gaining the greatest economic interests from China.’”

Meanwhile, back in Canada (Australia’s fellow former self-governing dominion of the now fallen British empire) we have our own new border security deal with Barack Obama’s USA still hanging in the air. Some of us at least are annoyed by the recently announced delay in the US decision on the Keystone oil pipeline, from Alberta to Texas. And many purport to be surprised by “Buy America” provisions in US government stimulus proposals (that will almost certainly just remain proposals, at least until the 2012 elections next November).

President Obama receives hug from Chelsea Gallagher from Dungog Primary School in Canberra. (Reuters: Jason Reed).

Australia, of course, has never had to deal with the problems of living right next door to the old American elephant (as opposed to the new Chinese one) – or with the advantages of having a major francophone member of its federal system. There are nonetheless some aspects of the new Australia-US security deal that will remain familiar in northern North America.  An unscientific online opinion poll conducted by The Age in Melbourne currently shows 56% of respondents answering Yes to “Do you agree with increased military ties with the United States?” – but also a substantial enough 44% answering No.  And: “Brendon O’Connor, associate professor at the US Studies Centre in Sydney, said the US was clearly moving its focus from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region. But … there needed to be a more ‘fulsome discussion’ about the costs and benefits of an increased US troop presence in Australia.” Still more familiarly for Canadians of all backgrounds, Mr. O’Connor also “noted there would have been more objection if the previous president, George Bush, had made such an announcement.”

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  1. Australia and the US mirror mainly anglo culture. Each has its own niche now in the world. The world now calls it US culture, it’s not, it’s an adaption of British culture. The Australians have also adapted this mutually inherited culture. That is what makes them so similar. Not the American culture, but the manner in which they have both adapted the British culture – almost like a mirror of each other. And so they oppose China together, in spite of the prosperity that China offers, but neither country will give ground on basic principals, sovereignty of it’s own people to determine their own destiny, not by manipulation of ANY foreign power. This is something the Chinese just do not understand.

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