Slightly EFL
CANBERRA, Australia - The Australian government on Thursday branded multilateral forums such as the United Nations as "ineffective and unfocused" and said its future foreign policy would increasingly rely on "coalitions of the willing" like the one that waged war in Iraq. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also said that in Canberra's view, other nation's sovereignty was "not absolute."
| Kind of an echo of the argument against extreme libertarianism that "your right to throw a punch ends where my nose begins." |
The assertive new doctrine outlined by Downer comes a day after Australia announced it would lead an international force of troops and police to restore order to the violence-wracked Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific. Downer's speech reflected comments late last year by Prime Minister John Howard that Australia would be prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes against terror targets in Asia — words that sparked outrage in Asia. Australia's decision to support the U.S.-lead war in Iraq without U.N. sanction "has signaled that we are prepared to take the hard decisions to enhance our security," Downer said in a nationally televised address to the National Press Club. "Some multilateral institutions will remain important to our interests," he said. "But increasingly multilateralism is a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator."
Just letting folks know you won't be tied down by the UN should start to downsize the problem.
Australia has been an unflinching supporter of U.S. President George W. Bush, sending 2,000 troops to the Iraq war and backing Washington's so-called "pre-emptive strike" policy in which the United States would invade countries if it believed they were harboring terrorists. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, Canberra was a harsh critic of the U.N. Security Council, where France and other nations wanted to give weapons inspectors more time to determine whether Baghdad was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Howard has stood with the United States in its war on terrorism and earlier contributed troops to the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. "We are prepared to join coalitions of the willing that can bring focus and purpose to addressing the urgent security and other challenges we face," Downer said. "Sovereignty in our view is not absolute. Acting for the benefit of humanity is more important."
| Neat grab at the UN's boilerplate... |
Howard and Downer announced Wednesday that Australia stood ready to send troops and police to the Solomon Islands if New Zealand and other Pacific nations joined the peacekeeping force. The proposed force follows a request for help from Solomons Prime Minister Alan Kemakeza. The Solomons have been torn by ethnic violence since 1998, and the government has little control outside of the capital, Honiara. Howard said the Solomon Islands was in danger of becoming a failed state that could be exploited by "international drug dealers, money launderers, international terrorism." Australia would "pay dearly" if it did not act, he said.
| When the cops are coming to your neighbors' house at all hours it's not making your neighborhood any better, is it? |
Downer's decision to so clearly articulate such an assertive approach to foreign policy is likely to cause further unease among Asian neighbors. Australia's strident support for Washington during the seven years of Howard's conservative government has often been a source of concern in Southeast Asia. Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim nation and longtime critic of Australia, has accused Howard of acting like a deputy sheriff to Washington.
I'd call this development, or at least the articulation of the reasoning behind it, very significant — and another nail in the UN's coffin.
When it was just us, the argument could be that Bush was a cowboy, he was stoopid, he didn't know any better; a Democrat like Mr. Clinton would eventually replace him and the world would get back to normal. Now we'll go through the period where it's us and the other warmongers and puppets — Cowboy Bush and That Awful Howard and Poodle Blair. There's also Berlusconi — probably a Mussolini in the making — and Aznar (insert some sort of nasty comment about Franco, whether plausible or not). Oh, and the Eastern Europeans — they don't know any better... Eventually, the impatience with the drool coming out of the UN will broaden the numbers of those acting decisively in their own interests (and coincidentally those of the real humans making up humanity, versus the faceless "masses") to the point where the UN is going to be nothing more than a propaganda outlet.
I think this is a process that's only accelerated by the WOT, by the way. The UN had already gone past the point of no return with the Durban conference, the month before 9-11. It's probably also a bad thing, in that the framework the UN pretends to provide could, say 100 years from now, provide the brake to other actors who act "decisively" — like Chuck Taylor and his imitators, Milosevic, the late Zviad Gamaskhurdia, the 1991 model Sammy, most of Pakistan's generals (see the compendium below, under India/Pakistan), the VHP in India, Qaddhafi on those days when he's had his coffee and Viagra... |
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