{"id":70947,"date":"2022-03-07T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2022-03-06T19:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=70947"},"modified":"2022-03-06T18:04:39","modified_gmt":"2022-03-06T07:04:39","slug":"decency-in-oz-foreign-policy-the-bell-tolls-for-thee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/decency-in-oz-foreign-policy-the-bell-tolls-for-thee\/","title":{"rendered":"Decency in Oz foreign policy: the bell tolls for thee"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

International relations is work of desperate hope, beset by brutal lessons.<\/p>\n

For the society of states, Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s monstrous appointment with history in Ukraine is trauma and test and teaching moment.<\/p>\n

Turning Russia into a pariah, Putin demonstrates that might doesn\u2019t always make right.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an achingly apposite moment for one of Australia\u2019s finest foreign ministers to ponder morality in foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Gareth Evans last week released Good international citizenship: the case for decency<\/em><\/a>, an essay in Monash University\u2019s series \u2018In the National Interest\u2019.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s foreign minister from 1988 to 1996 (standing with Alexander Downer, R.G. Casey and H.V. Evatt as longest in the job), Evans casts a hard light on how we\u2019re performing on the global stage: \u2018[O]ur overall record has been patchy at best, lamentable at worst, and is presently embarrassingly poor.\u2019<\/p>\n

Evans sets up the case for good international citizenship with a typically broad question: \u2018Why should we in Australia, or any <\/em>country, care about poverty, human rights atrocities, health epidemics, environmental catastrophes, weapons proliferation or any other problems afflicting faraway countries, when they don\u2019t, as is often the case, have any direct or immediate impact on our own safety or prosperity?\u2019<\/p>\n

He mounts the case for \u2018the boy scout\u2019 stuff against the \u2018self-described political realists\u2019 who argue that \u2018the core, hard-headed business of foreign policy\u2019 is to advance and protect the national interest.<\/p>\n

The scout answer is that morality isn\u2019t an add-on; it\u2019s at the heart. Idealism can be realistic.<\/p>\n

The traditional duo of security and economic interests must stand beside a third, equal category: \u2018national values\u2019. The intellectual judo throw on the realists is that morality is a core interest that can support and advance those geopolitical and prosperity purposes.<\/p>\n

When values and morality are treated as optional, Evans argues, Australia is \u2018drawn into the kind of adhocery which has characterised the conduct, on both the Coalition and Labor sides, of so much of Australia\u2019s international relations as well as domestic policy in recent years\u2019.<\/p>\n

Policy is blown about by opinion polls and focus groups and \u2018the sometimes idiosyncratic predilections and prejudices of party leaders\u2019.<\/p>\n

The problem, Evans reckons, lies not with the attitudes of Australians but the cynicism and prejudices of our governments. He offers three kinds of \u2018hard-headed return\u2019 for a state that acts as a good international citizen.<\/p>\n

Problems without borders: <\/em>a collective international mindset is needed for the big issues no state can fix\u2014global warming, pandemics, cross-border population flows, trafficking of drugs and people, terrorism, extreme poverty, and abolishing weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n

Reciprocity<\/em>: let\u2019s make a deal. I\u2019ll help you today; you help me tomorrow. Reciprocity, Evans writes, \u2018is not always explicit or transparent, and subtlety will often be an advantage in achieving it. But no practising diplomat will be unaware of the reality, and utility, of this dynamic, and no government policymakers should be oblivious to it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Reputation:<\/em> more intangible, but perhaps most significant. \u2018A country\u2019s general image, how it projects itself\u2014its culture, its values, its policies\u2014and how in turn it is seen by others, is of fundamental importance in determining how well it succeeds in advancing and protecting its traditional national interests.\u2019<\/p>\n

Evans marks Australia hard against key international-citizen benchmarks: foreign aid generosity; response to human rights violations; reaction to conflict, mass atrocities and refugee flows; and contribution to addressing the existential threats of climate change, pandemics and nuclear war.<\/p>\n

On aid, Evans writes that Australia is \u2018the worst performed of any<\/em> rich country\u2019 in \u2018the decline in our generosity over the last five decades\u2019. Aid caused his toughest budget brawls as foreign minister\u2014\u2018an almighty struggle\u2019 and \u2018the bloodiest I ever had to fight in cabinet\u2019. Australia has been insouciant about cutting aid, he thinks, because it\u2019s \u2018not generally seen by the political class and senior public service as a core national interest\u2019.<\/p>\n

The human rights record is judged as \u2018mixed\u2019. Much of the advance within Australia, Evans writes, \u2018has been driven more by culture change from below than leadership from above\u2019.<\/p>\n

In the conflict category, Evans says Australia has been both a responsible and an irresponsible player. \u2018Down payments in blood\u2019 were a naive effort to buy defence insurance from the US: \u2018We went to war in Vietnam and Iraq, and stayed in Afghanistan much longer than we should have, not because these fights were justified in law or morality, but because the United States wanted us to, or we thought they wanted us to, or because we wanted them to want us to.\u2019<\/p>\n

On existential threats, the pandemic has been \u2018a huge wake-up call\u2019, while on climate change, \u2018the ranks of the doubtful on its nature and impact\u2014even within Australia\u2019s conservative government\u2014are rapidly diminishing\u2019.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s brandishing of nuclear weapons might have disturbed what Evans calls \u2018an alarming degree of complacency, among both publics and policymakers\u2019, about nuclear war: \u2018The fact that we have not had a nuclear weapon used in conflict for over 75 years is not a result of statesmanship, system integrity and infallibility, or the inherent stability of nuclear deterrence. It has been sheer dumb luck.\u2019<\/p>\n

As an \u2018incorrigible optimist\u2019<\/a>, Evans ends, as he starts, with two big reasons why Australia should be a good international citizen\u2014\u2018not just because it is the right thing for us to do morally, but because it is also in our national self-interest\u2019.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s leaders need to be both idealistic and pragmatic.<\/p>\n

The simultaneous ambition follows the admonition of a Scottish Labour MP, Jimmy Maxton, who coined a line often heard from the lips of Gareth Evans: \u2018If you can\u2019t ride two horses at once, you\u2019ve no right to be in the bloody circus.\u2019<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t get much poetry into The Strategist<\/em>, but as Putin tries to swipe \u2018a piece of the continent\u2019 to make Europe the less, turn to John Donne\u2019s advice in \u2018Meditation XVII<\/a>\u2019:<\/p>\n

No man is an island,
\nEntire of itself;
\nEvery man is a piece of the continent,
\nA part of the main.
\nIf a clod be washed away by the sea,
\nEurope is the less,
\nAs well as if a promontory were,
\nAs well as if a manor of thy friend\u2019s
\nOr of thine own were.
\nAny man\u2019s death diminishes me,
\nBecause I am involved in mankind;
\nAnd therefore never send to know
\nFor whom the bell tolls;
\nIt tolls for thee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

International relations is work of desperate hope, beset by brutal lessons. For the society of states, Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s monstrous appointment with history in Ukraine is trauma and test and teaching moment. Turning Russia …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":70949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,416,89,285,772],"class_list":["post-70947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-australian-government","tag-dfat","tag-foreign-policy","tag-geopolitics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDecency in Oz foreign policy: the bell tolls for thee | 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\/decency-in-oz-foreign-policy-the-bell-tolls-for-thee\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Decency in Oz foreign policy: the bell tolls for thee | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"International relations is work of desperate hope, beset by brutal lessons. 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