"Moralists" and "Realists" on Foreign Policy
Dion Giles
to put in a word of caution about the hijacking of language. Words like
"reform", "efficiency", "pragmatism", "realism", "idealism", "moralism",
"national interest" are used by those with vested interests so that they
mean something different from the meanings common sense and the dictionary
give them. Who would be against reform? Who would be against realism --
basing policies on reality? Very few. That's how fake reform and fake
realism is sold.
Robert Manne has a very important message, but by falling for the linguistic
hijack he is presenting an opposite subliminal message every time he writes
"realist" or "realism".
What parades as "realism" in this instance is geopolitics. Geopolitics is
about overriding the wishes and interests of the actual people in the
territory under discussion and substituting it with abstractions about
geography and ideology. Behind geopolitics lie interests. These interests,
too, are redifined as "national interests" -- Australia's "national
interest" was supposed to be forwarded by kowtowing to Indonesian murderers,
and by the Timor Gap oil theft. The actual interests, in _real_ terms, are
profits for a very small number of people, only a few of them even being
Australians. "Australia" is the Australian population -- actual, real,
individual people. In that sense, all Australia has got from the friendship
of Australia's appeasers with Jakarta's murderers was reduced physical
security and a disgusting reputation throughout the world.
Realism is about reality, and the people are reality. A realistic policy
towards East Timor (and all the other Javanese colonies) is a policy
directed to ptotecting and promoting the rights, wishes, needs and
aspirations of the actual people born in those territories.
Dion Giles
Fremantle, Western Australia
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Sydney Morning Herald Monday, September 27, 1999
Foreign illusions: "Moralists" and "Realists" on Foreign Policy
Robert Manne looks at the views of the "moralists" and "realists" on foreign
policy.
This month's East Timor tragedy may eventually be remembered as one of the
genuine turning points of Australian history. In every previous
international crisis of the postwar years Canberra had taken its lead from
Washington. In the international diplomacy that led to the despatch of a
United Nations' peacekeeping force to East Timor, it was, for once, to
Canberra that Washington turned.
This is no small matter. In every major Cold War crisis, Australia's
foreign policy elite reflexively followed the American line, while the
left-wing foreign policy counter-elite, equally reflexively, followed the
anti-American line.
With East Timor it is finally clear that in our region at least we are now
condemned to thinking for ourselves.
How well equipped are we for the task? During the 1990s two streams of
Australian strategic thinking gradually crystalised.
One was what I call the "realist" school. The realists continued to
support the American alliance, despite the fact that since the end of the
Cold War it had lost its anti-Soviet rationale.
They argued, more importantly, that as Australia was doomed by geography to
live alongside authoritarian and often brutal regimes, the critical foreign
policy virtues demanded of us were cultural self-restraint and the capacity,
in the face of violence, to turn a diplomatic blind eye.
Australian realism did not, of course, go unchallenged. On the left, an
alternative "moralist" school of thought emerged. Where realists thought
our greatest foreign policy challenge was to learn how to live happily with
Asian authoritarianism, the moralists thought Australia's regional policy
should be devoted to support for democracy, human rights and the principle
of national self-determination.
Where realists thought of foreign policy in national interest terms, the
moralist school saw in foreign policy little more than the application of
ethical principles to the international sphere.
It is my view that in the catastrophe that has enveloped East Timor during
the past month, some of the most fundamental weaknesses of both the realist
and moralist strands of thought have been rather devastatingly exposed.
What East Timor revealed, first of all, was how utterly unrealistic was the
core assumption of the realist school. Australian realism focused on close
friendship with Indonesia. Its most basic premise was Australia's capacity
to ignore the spectacular corruption and military brutality of the
Indonesian regime.
The problem with this kind of realism was that it left Australian public
opinion altogether out of account. A nation of Henry Kissingers we are not.
Take the critical case of East Timor. At the end of World War II many
older Australians felt a deep sense of obligation to East Timor. Since the
bipartisan Australian acquiesence to the Indonesian occupation, many younger
Australians felt a deepening sense of shame.
Given the nature of this public opinion, no Australian Government could
have remained indifferent to the East Timorese quest for autonomy when the
window of opportunity opened last year. Given the nature of this public
opinion, no Australian Government could have opposed Dr Habibie when he
mischievously offered an immediate plebiscite on full independence earlier
this year.
Given the nature of this public opinion, no Australian Government could
have failed to use all its resources to get a United Nations peacekeeping
force into East Timor after the Indonesian Army unleashed the savage militia
forces on the defenceless people of East Timor.
The foreign policy realists are perfectly right when they point out that
Australia's relations with Indonesia have now arrived at their lowest point
in 30 years. They are perfectly wrong, however, if they cannot see how
hopelessly Utopian was their project of building a deep and permanent
friendship between a liberal democracy like Australia and a brutal military
dictatorship like Indonesia.
It may be easy but it is also sometimes important to be wise after the
event. As is now clear, Australia's appeasement of Indonesia could only
last while the status quo in occupied East Timor prevailed.
When the crunch came, it was utterly unrealistic for the realists to expect
the Australian people to abandon the East Timorese to their fate. When the
crunch came, moreover, it was also quite unrealistic to expect that the
Indonesian generals we had courted would be able to understand why on this
occasion we could not, as usual, fail to notice the slaughter in the north.
Yet the events of East Timor have also revealed deep flaws in the thinking
of the foreign policy left. During the first days of the militia attacks
many moralists were seriously tempted by the option of despatching
Australian troops to East Timor, without the agreement of the Indonesian
Government or the support of the UN.
In order to curb this thought, members of the Howard Government were
obliged to point out that unilateral Australian military intervention would
almost certainly have been interpreted by Indonesia as an act of war. That
such a reckless course of action could have been seriously considered by the
usually anti-militarilistically inclined was a revealing sign of how
dangerous free-floating foreign policy thinking, in the absence of some
solid concept of the national interest, could be.
Yet the challenge of East Timor to the moralist school goes deeper still.
Many moralists favour humanitarian military intervention in the
international arena. Many of the same people are deeply opposed to
increased defence spending in the domestic sphere. If the East Timor crisis
has revealed anything it is that those who will the end of humanitarian
military intervention must also will the means.
In the killing fields of East Timor certain illusions of the Australian
foreign policy elite and counter-elite have collapsed. Will the moralists
take the obvious lesson from East Timor and support an essential increase in
the military budget next year? Will the realists now accept that while the
military rules in Jakarta, a cooler and more distant relationship is what
both Australian honour and interest demand?
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A new book edited by Robert Manne, The Australian Century: Political
Struggle in the Building of the Nation, is published today.
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