US-Australia alliance slowly develops new unity

The 2019 Lowy Institute annual poll provides new data on how Australians view this nation's most important international relationships, which includes the US/Australia Alliance. The pivot point for Lowy polls in recent years has been the US and China, contrasting Australian attitudes toward the nation's most important trading partner and its most important security guarantor. Public opinion data is, of course, always yesterday's news, and not necessarily reliable news, but the Lowy trend lines visible in the new data in respect of the US and China are interesting, perhaps suggesting a systemic change.

Allen and Unwin's decision in late 2017 to reject Clive Hamilton's manuscript detailing efforts of the Chinese central government to influence politics and culture in Australia, including the US alliance, for fear of retribution from China, may have been the apogee of a narrative that once appeared compelling. That trope was that Australia's economic dependence on China involved only interests. The Chinese regime was viewed as benign and Australia's economic interest would stifle critical responses to any of China's anti-democratic tendencies: interests would, and should trump, ideas.

Already the tide was turning. Julie Bishop, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, was perhaps the first, in early 2017, to enunciate a counter narrative that continued with Malcolm Turnbull's more critical statements on China and culminated in the forced resignation of ALP Senator Sam Dastyari at the end of 2017 over charges of improper Chinese connections. Irony was served as this occurred just as Allen and Unwin was making its decision not to publish Hamilton's book. The decision of Hardie Grant to publish the book (Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia)in late February 2018 reflected a dramatically different tone to Australian-China relations. The Lowy polling data appears to reflect this wider change in attitude.

The localized change that runs against convergence is of course the Trump Administration, which has weakened Australians' affinity with the US as the new Lowy data also shows. Donald Trump inspires even less confidence among Lowy respondents than Xi Jinping. Yet trust in China to act responsibly in the world fell to the lowest level (32%) in 15 years of Lowy polling. Trust in the US to act responsibly remained the same as last year, albeit not at an encouragingly high level (52%). Threat perceptions of foreign interference in Australian politics and culture rose from 41% in last year's poll to 49% in 2019. And despite President Trump and the anti-Americanism that has perennial appeal in Australia (especially when there is a president of whom elites strongly disapprove), seven out of ten Australians believe the alliance is either very or fairly important for Australia's security, not far different than the reading 15 years ago. Even Trump has not trumped this valuation.

For the US-Australia Alliance, a shared purpose, and a broad understanding of its purpose, may be coming into focus in Australia as it is in the US. Views change in both countries as evidence mounts of China's movement toward an authoritarian and autocratic political order directed against liberal democratic ideals. In much of Congress, the White House, and the US military this is more harshly set as part and parcel of an existential threat posed by autocratic societies (China and Russia) to replace the liberal international world order established after the Second World War.

Nowhere is this shared perspective more evident than the similar challenges faced by both Australia and the US as they confront the contested domain of cyberspace, a matter central to the their defence and security. In this there is a recognition that the cyber world has enabled autocracies (China and Russia) to exert control over their populations while simultaneously providing the tools to attack the openness of democratic societies.

A balanced alliance is based on strong economic, diplomatic, and military relationships. The Australia-US Alliance has all three. But who wants a hollowed-out alliance where every initiative comes from the highest level? As trust develops, links forged at every level: government, institutional, professional, individual become stronger. Strong multi-level links arise from mutual understanding and a shared purpose.

Like any relationship, the US/Australia relationship has shifted over time, moving, very slowly and far more recently than we might think, from shared interests to shared ideals. Trust across the multiple dimensions of the Australia-US relationship creates the stepping-stones along that path. Making that pathway difficult is the dichotomy between an Australian political culture rooted in a Benthamite focus on the primacy of interests and the American political culture arising from a Lockean political philosophy, in which interests certainly exist but ideals remain central.

The American approach to Chinese economic development rested on an ideational assumption: that a middle class would arise and would aspire to, and would gain, democratic rights and freedoms. The Australian approach was far more interest driven: that China's development was an economic boon for Australia. Over the past few years, the shifting perception of China in both nations has resulted in a diminution of that disconnect.

Instrumental in this are the web of complex relationships spawned by the two treaties that link Australia and the US: the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) of 1951 and the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) of 2005. As is so often the case, these treaties have generated a network of trusted sub-agreements even if the treaties themselves have major weakness and problems.

ANZUS is not NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), though they were created at almost the same time. NATO requires member nations to come to the aid of any other member; ANZUS requires the member states to consult about coming to the aid of another member. Nevertheless, the ANZUS Treaty has provided the framework for the increase in trust between Australia and the US and the movement from shared interests to shared ideals and values. The ANZUS treaty created the Australia US Ministerial talks (AUSMIN) to bring together the foreign and defense ministers on an annual basis: this has given rise to 250 additional bilateral legal agreements. Increasing levels of military interoperability have developed: Australia has preferred status in the purchase of US military equipment, which is not code for dependence: the Australian Defence Force could not be the force it is without access to external technology. And the other options are perhaps less palatable. Perhaps the most valuable spin off from the increasing place of trust in the Australia US relationship was the inclusion of Australia in 1956 as a member of Five Eyes, joining the foundation members (the US, UK).. .

Likewise, the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement has led to powerful sub-agreements. Economics, of course, is overwhelmingly a matter of interests and the clashes of interests were on full display in the development of the AUSFTA. Various Australian government-sponsored modelling programs produced fantastical predictions of massive trade expansion between the two nations. Some academics, on the other hand, predicted an economic disaster for Australia as imagined in How to Kill a Country: Australia's Devastating Trade Deal with the United States.The result after 24 years is indeed worsening trade deficits in Australia's trade with the US in both goods and services: up from 30% to 43% in goods and from 30% to 46% in services.

But these trade imbalances have hardly killed the economic relationship. Investment flow (probably a better measure of trust than merchandise and services trade) has increased substantially and largely to the benefit of Australia: two-way investment flow has tripled, with the US as the largest home of Australian investment and the US as the largest investor in Australia. Moreover, an economic treaty, like a defense treaty, is important for the development of the new areas of agreement. Just as AUSMIN has made possible a framework for expanding the scope of ANZUS so has the Joint Committee of the AUSFTA. The regular meetings between the US Trade Representative and the Australian Minister for Trade have produced side-bar agreements in quarantine restrictions, recognition of professional qualifications, provision of financial services, cost of medicines, and government procurement. The most spectacular, if still not fully utilized gain, for Australia, which is clearly also a measure of trust, is the E3 visa agreement, which annually provides to Australians, and Australians alone, 10,500 additional visas (which are renewable) to work in the US. This is indeed a special relationship. By contrast the Lowy data reports that a large majority of respondents think Chinese investment in Australia is too high, even as confidence among those respondents on Australia's economic performance shifts significantly more negative.

High levels of trust characterizes the military domain, reflected in profound interoperability and intelligence sharing, institutionalized through ANZUS and Five Eyes. Economic intersections grow through side agreements of the AUSFTA.

This is not to say that views are uniform. Australian antipathy toward the centrality of the US alliance is reflected overtly in a long-standing argument that Australia's best role in the Alliance would be to ease the US out of its hegemonic position in the region and to welcome the rise of the replacement power: China. This is the classic Benthamite view that material interests must outweigh all else. It is an argument harder to sustain as the reality and the perception of China shifts to that of an autocratic regime determined to retain power, regardless.

As the Chinese government actively seeks to drive wedges between the US and Australia, the ideational stakes increase. The Australian responses, like the American, have been many. There is now Australian legislation against foreign influence programs and Australia has taken a stronger position against the engagement of China's Huawei in the rollout of the 5G network than any US ally, even as President Trump clouds the US position.

That the celebratory language of affinity between the two nations remains imperfect is demonstrated by persisting misperceptions. The US media's notion that Prime Minister Scott Morrison's unexpected electoral victory reflected the same socio-cultural forces operating in Australia as those that created President Donald Trump's unexpected electoral victory betrays a massive misunderstanding, or lack of interest, in the profound political and ideational differences between the two nations.

Indeed, the Australian election was remarkable in the determination of both political parties to remain fixated on politics as interests and a parallel unwillingness to even mention the reality, much less the reasons for, the new Australian language in respect to the nation's most important trading partner. And on the other side of the ledger, the US until very recently has remained enamored of its naïve ideational stance that the economic rise of China will surely create a middle class that will exhibit those same liberal democratic values of Americans.

The US economic dis-engagement from China and the transformation in American thinking on China from a competitor to an existential threat to the American position in the Indo-Pacific and to the entire liberal international order is as profound as the changed Australian position on China. Perhaps that US shift is even more momentous than the Australian change of heart for in that changed perception the US must accept the hard truth that the rise of this existential threat was greatly assisted by and fed by American policy. Blindness is not one-sided.

Perhaps the trust slowly built under the Australian-American relationship as a result of its dual treaty basis will be a platform on which both nations can develop a common language for their new perspectives on China: an Australian recognition that interests are not everything, and an American realization that its ideational wishes were not connected to reality.

That would be a new Alliance bridge of some considerable importance.