Beginning of a more beautiful friendship (Australia - UK

IT was good to see Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Aussie troops just before Christmas. That is the right place for a leader to be. Rudd bolstered the troops' morale, showing them that we all care about them.

The trip also had geo-strategic purposes. In Iraq, Rudd is withdrawing our combat troops, but he underlined Canberra's continuing commitment to help Iraq, not least through military assets, and indeed help the US project in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, Rudd said Australia was committed "for the long haul" to fighting the Taliban.

These are admirable and important statements. They indicate clearly that, contrary to the wishes of some commentators, Rudd is not withdrawing from Australia's global engagement in security matters, including involvement in the Middle East.

It also means the US-Australia intimacy of recent years, especially the military intimacy and its all-important intelligence aspect, will continue. It was not an aberration born of the unique circumstances of Iraq but a natural evolution. Although Rudd will rightly put heavy emphasis on Asia, he also cites the US alliance as another of the three pillars of his foreign policy. (The third is the UN.) He also has close British connections and spoke to Gordon Brown soon after his victory.

Last year I wrote a book on the US-Australia alliance called The Partnership. In researching it I was astonished at just how intimate the US-Australian military and intelligence relationships have become. But the most surprising thing I discovered while writing the book did not directly concern the Americans at all.

I would certainly have preferred Rudd had left our combat troops in Iraq, and I would have even more preferred a re-elected Howard government. But I really don't think Rudd is all that bad on international issues - a Labor government is going to cause problems for us domestically, but a Rudd government isn't likely to make major changes internationally. To an extent, Mr Rudd was painted into a corner by previous Labor leaders - most notably, Mark Latham, who lead Labor at the 2004 election, and who was far more left wing than Rudd, but more importantly far, far more unstable as a politician. Latham was rabidly anti-Iraq, and even more anti-Bush, and anti-American, and his policies would have been disastrous for Australian-US relations. Since his policies were rejected, and he was consigned to the history books, Labor has moderated a great many of its policies, and Rudd has been part of the reason for doing that, but he couldn't completely turn his back on stated Labor party policies, or on the extreme faction of his party.

If Rudd (or, for that matter, Kevin Beazley) had been Labor leader in 2003, Labor probably would have supported the war in Iraq, but he wasn't, and he has to deal with the fact that he is leading a party that has been opposed to that war from the start.

He has basically done the minimum he can get away with, without repudiating his party's policies for the last half a decade. He is withdrawing Australia's main combat force from Iraq, but they represent only one third of our troops in theatre. He's leaving two thirds of the troops in place.

Something that a lot of people don't seem to be aware of, is that Australia withdrew its main combat troops from Iraq in mid 2003 under John Howard's Prime Ministership, leaving in place a similar force mix to the one that we will have in place in a few months time. There was no real negative comment from the US government, or American conservatives on Howard's actions - why? Because those troops had done the job they were sent to do. Australia had committed to the invasion, and to support troops after the war, but not to a long term combat commitment in Iraq. We fulfilled that commitment, and then we changed the force mix.

We sent mainline combat forces back into Iraq in 2005 to provide combat support for Japanese military engineers, but, for two years, more or less, our commitment in Iraq was a support commitment under John Howard, coupled with a significant naval commitment in the Gulf - to the extent that, on occasion, all Coalition naval forces in theatre, were under Australian command.

I believe we were pulling our weight militarily with such a commitment coupled with our combat commitment in Afghanistan, and our leadership of military operations in East Timor and the Solomons, which are considered by Australians, and many others, to be theatres in the overall war on terror (particularly the Solomons, as dealing with a terrorist threat is the main reason we are there), even if they don't get the same publicity as the bigger theatres of the war.

In essence, Kevin Rudd is being criticised in certain quarters for wanting the same type of military presence in Iraq as the Howard government maintained from mid-2003 to mid-2005, and for which it was not criticised.

And, I actually think it's very likely that a re-elected Howard government would have withdrawn a large part of the forces Rudd is withdrawing mid next year anyway.

There is a difference - the Howard government would only have done so if conditions continued to improve as they have been improving, and so the withdrawal would have clearly been a product of the troops having finished the job, while Rudd committed to doing it regardless of whether the job was finished or not. Luckily, it probably will be - but this is a real difference, and it's one I don't like.

But overall, in the final analysis, the Rudd government's end result isn't all that different from a Howard government's result in Iraq.

And I think Rudd will have to make an increased commitment to Afghanistan to compensate - a larger government than the Howard government would have to.

Why?

Because even though, personally, I do think Rudd will do a decent job on issues of defence and national security, and, very importantly, on preserving the Australian-United States Alliance, he has to prove it.

Every new Australian government has to do it - for that matter, so does every new US administration. They need to show their commitment.

The Howard government had to do it, but it did this years ago now (1998, basically, when it supported the Clinton administrations military build up in Iraq), to the extent that it has no longer been seriously questioned.

The Rudd government now has to prove its credentials. And it's going to have to do that in Afghanistan in a way the Howard government wouldn't have been expected to do.

As you say, actions speak louder than words. We need to wait and see the Rudd's governments actions in this war. Personally, I do believe they are totally committed to Afghanistan. And still willing to maintain some level of support in Iraq. But they do need to prove that, and until they do, people are certainly not unjustified in being suspicious.

There's a great deal of difference between being 'All right for a lefty' and 'All right.'

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.