{"id":57350,"date":"2020-07-08T12:21:21","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T02:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=57350"},"modified":"2020-07-08T12:21:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T02:21:32","slug":"oz-strategists-owen-harries-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/oz-strategists-owen-harries-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Oz strategists: Owen Harries (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

\u2018It is extremely dubious whether uncritical, loyal support for a bad, failed American policy will have enhanced our standing as an ally in the long run. A reputation for being dumb but loyal and eager is not one to be sought.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 Owen Harries, After Iraq<\/em><\/a>, 2006<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The admonition that Australian strategy must be smart and cautious, not dumbly eager, is classic Owen Harries.<\/p>\n

Much as he loved the US, Harries always warned his adopted country, Australia, to maintain a constant, steady gaze on the dangers as well as the blessings of the alliance.<\/p>\n

In embracing the US, Harries noted in 2003, Australia must never forget that great powers are cold monsters<\/a>, little motivated by gratitude.<\/p>\n

These were central themes in the final two decades of his life, when he returned to Australia from editing The National Interest <\/em>in Washington, joining the Sydney think tanks the Centre for Independent Studies and the Lowy Institute.<\/p>\n

Harries was happy to share his understanding (no light without heat<\/a>) that good think tanks, like good thinkers, must have good fights. The founding head of the Lowy Institute, Allan Gyngell<\/a>, gives this example of the Owen effect:<\/p>\n

New to the world of political controversy and with my lingering public servant\u2019s sense that controversy was to be avoided, I was shaken by the public attacks on the first Lowy poll in 2005<\/a>, especially in The Australian<\/em> newspaper, when we found Australian attitudes to the United States that showed the Australian people not quite so enthusiastic as commentators had been arguing. (The results, in fact, were remarkably similar to those this year<\/a>: a clear distinction in the public mind between attitudes towards the US and its president and support for the alliance.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, I was feeling quite shaken by the battering (charges of push polling, et cetera). But then Owen came to my rescue. I still remember him springing through the front door of Bligh Street with his eyes alight and a broad beam on his face, saying, \u2018You must be absolutely delighted by the response. Just what you want!\u2019 He made me realise for the first time that I was in a different business now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gyngell said it was an illustration of why Harries was so important in the early days of the Lowy effort to create an Oz think tank devoted to foreign policy: \u2018Owen knew what public debate was and how you generate it, but although he had strong views himself, he was intellectually\u00a0fully open to\u00a0other\u00a0ideas. In any case, he thoroughly enjoyed the stoush.\u2019<\/p>\n

Harries distilled his world view in six Boyer lectures<\/a> for the ABC in 2003, gathered under the heading, Benign or imperial? Reflections on American hegemony<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>His core question: Can America\u2019s great power be contained or balanced?<\/p>\n

The final lecture\u2014\u2018Punching above our weight?<\/a>\u2019\u2014is a brilliant bit of work. In it, Harries divides Oz diplomacy into three schools, defined through the personalities of Australian leaders: the US alliance (the Menzies tradition), multilateralism and the UN (the Evatt tradition), and the region (the Spender\u2013Casey\u2013Keating tradition).<\/p>\n

The US alliance, \u00e0 la Menzies<\/em><\/p>\n

The realist view of the world is expressed by Australia\u2019s longest-serving prime minister, Robert Menzies, with John Howard as the Menzies manifestation of our times. The Menzies tradition is all about Australia allying with a \u2018great and powerful friend\u2019.<\/p>\n

Harries pronounced: \u2018As a realist and a conservative, Menzies was sceptical of abstract, general schemes. He looked to interest rather than principle as the motive for action, to history and experience rather than abstract reasoning for the basis of sound judgement.\u2019<\/p>\n

Australia gives political and military support to maintain the system and seeks security in return. The mindset confers political advantage and was \u2018highly congenial to Menzies personally\u2019 because he was \u2018wired into the main game of global power politics in a way that was otherwise impossible\u2019. A visit to the White House matters, for personal, political and policy reasons.<\/p>\n

Multilateralism and the UN, \u00e0 la Evatt<\/em><\/p>\n

As exemplified by Labor\u2019s H.V. Evatt, this tradition is both nationalist and internationalist, seeking to establish Australia\u2019s independence while cleaving to the framework of international rules and laws:<\/p>\n

[I]international organisations are regarded as the most congenial and effective forums for a middle power like Australia to register its presence and extend its influence.<\/p>\n

This tradition is assertive and energetic. It is concerned to give Australia a high profile as a country capable of making a distinctive contribution to international affairs. Sometimes it leads to hyper-activity and attention-seeking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The core Harries (and realist) critique of Evatt internationalism is in this: \u2018Power politics tends to be seen as chosen mode of behaviour, rather than something inherent in a system of sovereign states and necessary for survival.\u2019<\/p>\n

The region, \u00e0 la Spender, Casey and Keating<\/em><\/p>\n

The quest for Australia\u2019s place as a natural regional player is represented by two Liberal foreign ministers and a Labor PM. Each was passionate about Asia while being firmly wedded to the alliance. The traditions aren\u2019t separate, but intertwine and interact.<\/p>\n

The Menzies and Evatt traditions colour Australia\u2019s approach to the region. It starts with a first-principles commitment to the US alliance system. Working from that base, Canberra has strained mightily to help build diplomatic and strategic structures that can span the Asia\u2013Pacific.<\/p>\n

What this demands of Australia in the 21st century is that we achieve a balance between alliance and region. And that thought about balance\u2014between power and purposes, commitments and resources\u2014is at the heart of Harries\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n

In a conference room in Canberra in 2002, discussing the chances and choices offered by Indonesia\u2019s new democracy, I argued that Australia should abandon its traditional attachment to the Indonesian military as a base for stability. Starting his logical demolition of my paper, Harries told me, with a suitably Kantian knout, \u2018He who wills the ends, must will the means.\u2019<\/p>\n

Such was the prudence Harries offered Australia in concluding his Boyer lectures. Punching above our weight, he said, may produce pride, but it\u2019s \u2018also hazardous and a form of activity best avoided\u2019. Better to follow one of the most important sentences ever written about foreign policy, penned in the 1940s by Walter Lippmann:<\/p>\n

\u2018Without the controlling principle that the nation must maintain its objectives and its power in equilibrium, its purposes within its means and its means equal to its purposes, its commitments related to its resources and its resources adequate to its commitment, it is impossible to think at all about foreign affairs.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With that grand flourish, Harries went to the minor key to end with typically dry advice: \u2018Those responsible for Australian foreign policy could do worse than have that sentence framed and hung prominently on their office wall.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018It is extremely dubious whether uncritical, loyal support for a bad, failed American policy will have enhanced our standing as an ally in the long run. A reputation for being dumb but loyal and eager …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":57357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2047,285,181],"class_list":["post-57350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia-us-relations","tag-foreign-policy","tag-international-order"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOz strategists: Owen Harries (part 2) | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/oz-strategists-owen-harries-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oz strategists: Owen Harries (part 2) | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u2018It is extremely dubious whether uncritical, loyal support for a bad, failed American policy will have enhanced our standing as an ally in the long run. 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